Beware New Year's Resolutions

by SarahFranco CC2.0

Not to put a damper on New Year's aspirations, but a book I'm reading suggests a good test when deciding whether to make a new commitment:

1. Is this activity worth my time?


2. What will I have to eliminate to make room for it?


3. What will its impact be on my family life?

The book I'm reading is called Help for the Harried Homeschooler: A Practical Guide to Balancing Your Child's Education with the Rest of Your Life by Christine M. Field. It's a good book; I may write more about it later. She actually gets the test from James Dobson's pamphlet, "Fatigue and the Homemaker."

Chess with My Son: 8 Steps to Beating Dad

photo by Jose Daniel Martinez (CC3.0)

My ten-year-old son beat me at chess today for the first time. Not to make excuses, but the sun was in my eyes, not to mention that annoying hangnail I've been nursing. Kidding aside, I knew the time would come; I just didn't think it would be so soon!

Here is how he learned to play chess and beat me. Some things I taught him, and some he learned on his own.

1. I first taught him how to set up the chess board and all the ways that pieces can move and take opposing pieces.


2. I talked him through our first several games as we played, telling him what I was doing and why. I also asked him to explain his moves to me, and I gave him feedback on his strategy.


3. When we first started playing, I allowed him to turn the board around at any point in the game (as long as he wasn't in check) and for us to finish the game playing each other's original pieces.


4. I started playing with just half of my pieces, then increased the number of pieces I used as he improved.


5. I let him take back moves if I hadn't yet touched a piece.


6. I never lost on purpose; I handicapped myself, but always played to win. This kept things fun for both of us.


7. Recently, he read this beginning chess book and did the exercises in it.


8. He played a chess game on my ipod touch on the way to Kyoto and back.

And today he beat me with both of us playing at full strength! I'm proud of him. Pretty soon he'll be spotting me pieces just to keep our games interesting.

Japanese Kite-Flying on New Year's Day

Schoolchildren in Japan often make kites during the winter holidays and fly them on New Year's Day. T made one this year. He designed, built, and flew it himself. It's made of paper and bamboo sticks. The first flight ended with the kite in a tree. After patching it up, he went back and flew it well in the park, as well as could be expected on a windless day.

Japanese Paper Kite (patched up)

This kite will fly!

Benefits of Sudoku

We're on a sudoku kick at the moment. I spent a couple hours today on a really tough one and messed it up twice. T, R, Tomomi and her parents are all in on the action. Besides being fun, addictive, and sometimes frustrating, sudoku helps development in the following areas.

• logic
• problem solving
• working memory
• concentration
• perseverance
• pattern recognition
• creativity
• confidence
• dealing with frustration

by jen_maiser

Of course it's important to start children out with easy puzzles so they don't get too frustrated right away and give up. You can model solving a puzzle and talk your way through it, but once your child has the basic concept, don't help too much. A big part of what makes sudoku fun is the satisfaction of completing a puzzle "all by myself!"

You can find easy printable sudoku puzzles beginning with 4x4 grids.

Here is a link to the more typical 9x9 sudoku grids with various levels of difficulty. 

If you'd rather work with words than numbers, there are lots of logic puzzles that are more like story problems. Here is a collection of 12 printable logic puzzles with grids.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

I watched "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" today with my kids. What a fun and wacky movie! Like many of the other animated movies that come out these days, it touched on several important themes without being too heavy handed.

• Generation and communication gap between fathers and sons. "Not every sardine was meant to swim, son."" I don't understand fishing metaphors!" 

• Large food portions and obesity. "Bigger is better!"

• Smart girls/women who act dumb to be accepted. "It's a solid, it's a liquid, it's a viscoelastic polymer made out of polypeptide chains but you eat it! I mean, it tastes good! "

• Living on past glories. "I'm Baby Brent!"

• Redeeming past failures. Spray-on shoes

• Unintended consequences of messing with nature.

I also loved the voice casting, especially these two guys. Know who they are? The first one is easy.

Ice Skating at Hirakata Park in Osaka

It has become a winter family tradition for us to skate at the Hirakata Park ice rink in Osaka. This year D had grown into the smallest size of rental skates so he came with us and had his first ice skating experience. He got tired of skating after about one minute ("It's fun but the ice is too slippery") and went to play in the fake snow for a while.

He came back later and gave it another go. This time he was able to keep his feet under him and skate around the rink several times (with help). He was the littlest guy on the rink and had quite the fan club of junior-high girls. "Soooo cuuute!"

R and T somehow improved a lot even though we hadn't been skating in a year. Between hauling D back and forth to and from the snow area and helping him skate, Tomomi and I even had a little time to hold hands and skate around like teenageers.

Hirakata Park is a nice place for ice skating in the Osaka area but it's a little pricey. If you go by train, you can save quite a bit of money by purchasing a combination train/park entrance/skate rink entrance ticket from any Keihan railway ticket office. This year they are calling it the HiraPa Go!Go! Ticket. If the link is broken, search google for ひらパーGo!Go!チケット.

Father-Son Day

Tomomi, R., and D. took off for Kyoto today. Today was my last day of classes so I can't leave until tomorrow. T. decided to stay back and hang out with me. There's no telling how long he'll be into spending time with Dad so I made the most of it. We played some chess, cooked together (reheated together is more like it I guess), and watched Prince Caspian.

What an excellent movie! I liked everything about it except the Susan-Caspian romance stuff which was nowhere in Lewis's original book. I also thought that the disagreements between Caspian and Peter were overdone.

Edmund was just cool, especially when he stopped the necromancy session and when he popped Peter's arm back into place while Peter was beginning to get sentimental.

After the movie, T. asked why Aslan didn't just come and help from the beginning. That led to a short, yet meaningful discussion about why God allows evil to continue. Gotta love C. S. Lewis.

Christmas and "The Little Prince"

I'm reading The Little Prince with T and R at bedtime these days and I want to share a passage from what we read last night. Christmas is a great time to slow down and focus on the important things in life. Sometimes though, I start to feel more like the lamplighter whose world is spinning faster and faster. Read on and see if you identify too.

When the little prince reached this planet, he greeted the lamplighter respectfully. "Good morning. Why have you just put out your lamp?"

"Orders," the lamplighter answered. "Good morning."

"What orders are those?"

"To put out my streetlamp. Good evening." And he lit his lamp again.

"But why have you just lit your lamp again?"

"Orders."

"I don't understand," said the little prince.

"There's nothing to understand," said the lamplighter. "Orders are orders. Good morning." And he put out his lamp. Then he wiped his forehead with a red-checked handkerchief. "It's a terrible job I have. It used to be reasonable enough. I put the lamp out mornings and lit it after dark. I had the rest of the day for my own affairs, and the rest of the night for sleeping."

"And since then orders have changed?"

"Orders haven't changed," the lamplighter said. "That's just the trouble! Year by year the planet is turning faster and faster, and orders haven't changed!"

"Which means?"

"Which means that now that the planet revolves once a minute, I don't have an instant's rest. I light my lamp and turn it out once every minute!"

"That's funny! Your days here are one minute long."

"It's not funny at all," the lamplighter said. "You and I have already been talking to each other for a month."

"A month?"

"Yes. Thirty minutes. Thirty days! Good evening." And he lit his lamp."

Christmas is a time to decide if we want to buy into the idea that we have to keep up with the whirling society around us. A time to question "orders," that leave us exhausted and always behind. A time to rediscover the place that is Silent and Holy, Calm and Bright. A time to be in the presence of Jesus.

New Hope Narimasu Kids' Christmas Party

Today was New Hope Narimasu's annual Kids' Christmas party. Several wonderful volunteers from the church and the preschool put together a fun day for 150 kids in the community.

Kids fished for candy canes,

made silver bell ornaments,

got their faces and hands painted,

 tossed rings for juice,

and stuck the nose on a snowman.

They saw and heard the Christmas story,

and blew out a candle on Jesus' birthday cake.

The big guy even came to celebrate with us.

A big thank you to everyone who served!

Preschool Christmas Party

The preschool's Christmas party was today. The kids had made decorations and candy cane cookies.

We played Christmas bingo. R helped D while T read a book.

Everyone made graham cracker cookie houses.

Here's how D's turned out, with some help from R.

 Looking good!

From these pictures, it looks like my kids were the only ones at the party. There were actually about twenty others.  I'll post pictures of the other kids and more about what we did on the preschool blog later.

Ballet Recital

R's first ballet recital was today. She danced beautifully and I am really proud of her.

Her teacher is a wonderful Japanese woman who is married to a French chef. After the recital, he served a meal for the parents. I had foie gras for the first time. It was delicious but I'm kind of glad I didn't know what was in it before I ate it.

Daddy Breakfast: Egyptian One-Eyes

Egyptian One-Eyes (photo by Scott D. Feldstein)

I recently posted on facebook that R and I had made Egyptian One-Eyes for breakfast. Some people asked what they were or how to make them, so I thought I'd share here.

Egyptian One-Eyes have been a weekend breakfast tradition in my family as long as I can remember. They're usually made on Daddy breakfast day because they are simple yet fun. In researching this post, I found that they are called, among many other names*, "egg in the basket," which is more politically correct but a lot less fun. Without further ado, the recipe for Egyptian One-Eyes:

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 1 slice of bread
• butter
• salt
• pepper

Directions

1. Cut a round hole through the center of the bread. (I usually use the lid from a spice container).
2. Butter both sides of the bread and both sides of the "hole."
3. Put the buttered bread and hole in a buttered frying pan on medium heat.
4. Crack the egg into the hole in the bread.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Turn the bread-egg combination over when the egg white in the hole has turned from clear to white. (Don't forget to turn over the hole too!)
7. When egg is cooked, remove the One-Eye and hole from the frying pan.
8. Serve and enjoy!

(Low cholesterol version: Leave out the egg, butter, salt, and pepper. Just cut a hole in a piece of bread and eat it. Toasting is optional.)

Other names for the Egyptian One-Eye are  "egg in a basket," "egg in a blanket," "egg in a window," "egg in a frame," "egg in a bed," "toad in the hole," "Rocky Mountain toast," square egg," Popeye" or a "one-eyed Egyptian sandwich," "spit in the eye," "Tiger's eye,"camel's eye," "midnight sun," "peekaboo eggs,"and "one-eyed jacks." These names and more are in the Wikipedia article, "Fried Egg."

I Love My Church!

Today was another beautiful Sunday in Tokyo and my family and I enjoyed ourselves at New Hope Narimasu, our local church. This season between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a great time to list up the top 10 reasons I am thankful for my church.

1. God-honoring praise and worship. We have a wonderful worship team that consistently leads us in worship. The focus is always on God, and even when we sing songs I've been singing for years, the worship leaders somehow make them new again.
2. Practical, biblical sermons. Shintaro Watanabe, our lead pastor, and the other New Hope pastors preach challenging sermons that are simple, applicable, and faithful to scripture.
3. Friends. Many of my friends at church are people I wouldn't have made friends with except at church. At first, I didn't have much in common with them except our mutual faith, but getting to know them has been a great pleasure.
4. Friends for my kids. My children's best friends are their church friends. Our church isn't all that big--50-70 people in attendance each week--but we have a LOT of kids. (And more all the time; five babies were born to church members this year.)
5. Many new Christians. I've been a Christian for most of my life, so I take certain things for granted and tend to fall into predicable churchy patterns of thought, speech and action. The constant influx of new Christians in our church is refreshing and challenges me to think about what I do and why.
6. The location. 10-minute walk or 5-minute bike ride. We still arrive late sometimes.
7. Bilingual. This is important to us as a family with two languages.
8. International. I think there are always at least five nations represented. A taste of heaven where every tribe and tongue will be gathered before God's throne.
9. Teens. Amazing kids that love Jesus, serve cheerfully, and are great role models for my kids.
10. Pot-lucks. New Hopers go all out with food.

A book by the senior pastor of New Hope Oahu, our church's grandmother church.

Pray Daily for Your Children - A 31 Day Prayer Calendar

I've been wanting to pray more regularly and purposefully for my children.  Recently I came across a list of "31 Ways to Pray for Your Children" by Bob Hostetler. I'm going to use the list to pray for my children every day.

Here are the first five days' entries:

1. salvation "Lord, let salvation spring up within my children, that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory" (Isaiah 45:8, 2 Timothy 2:10).
2. growth in grace "I pray that they may 'grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ'" (2 Peter 3:18).
3. love "Grant, Lord, that my children may learn to 'live a life of love,' through the Spirit who dwells in them" (Ephesians 5:2, Galatians 5:22).
4. honesty and integrity "May integrity and honesty be their virtue and their protection" (Psalm 25:21, NLT).
5. self-control "Father, help my children not to be like many others around them, but let them be 'alert and self-controlled' in all they do" (1 Thessalonians 5:6)

Mr. Hostetler said to feel free to duplicate or improve on his prayer list. I can't improve on it, but I did duplicate it as a calendar in the iCal format. You can view it in your browser with this link. You can add this calendar to any calendar software that supports the iCal format (most do) with this link. I'm having my calendar send me an email every day with that day's pray topic so I remember to pray for my children.

And here is a daily agenda view. It should refresh automatically.



Please let me know in the comments if you find this helpful or if you need help getting the data in a format you can use.

Looking for a Bible reading plan? Here is how I am reading God's word this year.

Jewish Feasts and Crafts

In our first nine weeks of homeschooling this year, the kids learned about ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. They also studied the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) and learned about creation, the calling of the Patriarchs and the Exodus. They learned about the Israelites' wanderings in the wilderness and the institution of the Law through Moses (including fun and meaning-filled feasts). Here are some pictures from the unit.

R's cereal-box ziggurat (the corn meal was meant to be mixed into the paint to add texture. She forgot, then sprinkled it over the top like snow).

A shelter for the Feast of Booths.

A shofar for the Feast of Trumpets.

The kids made a display about Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur.

Breaking unleavened bread (made by T and R) at our Passover feast.

Broken bread at Passover.

T made challah, a bread that is eaten at Sabbath and feasts other than Passover.

Nerima Ward Agricultural Festival

Last month, we went to Hikarigaoka, our favorite park, and the agricultural festival for Nerima Ward was going on. It's kind of like a county fair in the US, but without the carnival aspect. Enjoy this slice of Japan.

Fall in beautiful Hikarigaoka Park.

Prize vegetables on display

Perfect box of onions

Tokyo's Nerima Ward is known for dried daikon radishes.

Boat made from vegetables

Detail of vegetable boat

Fishing for fruit

 The idea of this game was for people to see how much CO2 was prevented from being released by buying locally grown produce.

Holding a chick at the petting zoo

Marmot at the petting zoo

No agricultural festival would be complete without an Ampanman show!