Praiseworthy Book: Homeschooling With A Meek and Quiet Spirit

One of the things most homeschooling mothers hear over and over is "I don't know how you do it. I could never do that." Well, the truth is most of you could do it just as well, if not better than I can! Homeschooling is a big commitment and it's not easy but probably not in the way those who don't homeschool think. I love looking at curriculum. I find it very good brain food to think and ponder what to teach my children and how. To read and talk to others about how and why. I love to buy the books. What is hard is dealing with the day to day commitment of the routine of homeschooling. I used to be a teacher in a public school and it was no different there. Teachers don't always feel like teaching. Just like anyone who goes to a job. You have your good days and your bad days and sometimes you just get through it one step at a time. The difference with homeschooling, as much as I hate to admit it, is these are YOUR children! The little stinkers can push your buttons like no one else can!!!! Well, I have found the perfect antidote for those days when you feel overwhelmed and angry. It's Terri Maxwell's book, "Homeschooling with a Meek and Quiet Spirit."

This is a book that should be read over and over again in an endless loop. It is very short really and doesn't take long to read. It manages to be both inspiring as well as practical. And Terri knows whereof she speaks. She is the homeschooling mother of eight children and has homeschooled since 1985. She shares openly and transparently about her failures as well as her successes. Terri is known by many as the author of the very popular book Managers of Their Homes but this is no Martha Stewart, perfect with all the answers. This is a woman like you and me who struggles to do the best job she can. Terri shares about the path God lead her on as He taught her how to be a homeschooling mother. The lessons she learned from Him are invaluable. There is also a study guide for groups who wish to study this group together. You can see both at the Maxwell Family's website titus2.com.

Teaching Loyalty

The Fighting Gillises - Norman Rockwell

I have been influenced in my educational philosophy by Charlotte Mason an educator who lived in England and died in 1923. Miss Mason wrote that children are persons with the ability to chose between good and evil and part of the goal of their education is moral teaching. Loyalty is one of the virtues held in esteem by Miss Mason and patriotism is a way of teaching loyalty.

On our trip to the grocery this week there was an older gentleman from the V.F.W. selling poppies as often happens around Veteran's Day. He was a sweet gentle soul and for the change I put in his collection jar he made sure that both my children had poppies (more on the poppies here) and then tried to give me one too. It struck me later that this sweet older gentleman was likely in some pretty scary places as a young man. He may have seen some horrific things during his service to our country. That's why it's called SERVICE. He put aside his own wants and needs to SERVE our country. He was obedient to the call for help. That obedience comes through loyalty.

Thinking on loyalty brought to mind another older gentleman I'm acquainted with. This gentleman is a door greeter at my church. He loves children and when we come through the door he always pretends there is a baby bird in his pocket and pulls it out to show my children. He makes little soft chirping sounds and bends down to show them. As they peer closer and closer he puts the "bird" back in his pocket to keep it safe. It never fails to delight.

In his youth this young man parachuted into Europe over enemy territory during World War II. He got stuck in a tree and considered himself fortunate since another friend who parachuted in with him was shot on the way down. He was captured and put in a prison camp. I've heard him testify that his faith in God was all that got him through those long months. After all these years he still tells the story with a catch in his throat. Yet despite his suffering he loves this country and still dons his cap and salutes the flag on patriotic holidays. That is loyalty.

A wonderful book to help you teach your children about loyalty, obedience and sacrifice is In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae. The illustrations are beautiful and with the text of the poem manage to communicate feelings that are difficult to put into words. The poem was written after a friend of McCrae's was killed in World War I and it urges the reader to remember the sacrifice made by the soldiers. In between the pages of the poem are pages devoted to historical information about John McCrae and World War I.

Take this Veteran's day to tell your children about the soldiers and their families who acted out of obedience to this country by serving in our military. Introduce them to someone you know who served our country. Let them see you thank the Veterans you see for their service. For their loyalty.

Reformation Day

Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing the 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany in 1517. This bold move started a global tidal wave that would become the Reformation.

To share this information with your children I recommend a book by Paul Maier titled Martin Luther. I really like Paul Maier's books. They explain history and concepts well to older elementary children and the illustrations of this book are beautiful and captivating. You and your child will understand Luther better after reading this book.

Here is some more information about Luther:

"In his preaching and writing, Luther began to emphasize two main points:
justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers.

Justification by faith means that Christians can never earn God's love or forgiveness. All that Christians must do is to accept [have faith in] God ...

The priesthood of all believers means that every Christian has his or her own personal relationship with God, reading the Bible and worshiping in his or her own language, and praying directly to God without anyone's going in between.

So Protestant Christians give thanks to God on this day for the
opportunity to lead lives of faith, instead of lives of fear."

Praiseworthy Book Review: Halloween Is It For Real?

There is quite a debate in some Christian circles about Halloween. I don't want to throw my hat in the ring for that, but I do want to share a fantastic book written from a Christian perspective about Halloween. It's called "Halloween Is It For Real?" It's written by Harold Myra, Chairman and CEO of Christianity Today International in addition to being an author.

Myra started writing a series of books for children based on the "...Are You For Real?" theme back in the seventies. I own several of them and my family really enjoys them. They give children the straight scoop on many "myths" of the holidays we celebrate and talks about how Christians should respond to these holidays.

In "Halloween Are You For Real?" a family talks about the holiday and the parents explain the early pagan origins of Halloween. It goes on to explain how the Church responded to this holiday by creating All Hallows Eve as a way for people to remember their family members and other Christians who have died in a godly way. The book suggests that Halloween can be spent celebrating the hope that those people had in Jesus Christ for their salvation from their sin. There is a discussion about fear and how as Christians we don't need to be afraid because of that relationship.

I highly recommend this book as a tool to teach your children about Halloween and how to see it in a godly light, not participating in evil practices but celebrating our faith. I think this book would be a good starting place for a discussion of salvation and also helpful for children who are scared of the dark. I found it very praiseworthy.

Learn Out Loud

I love audio books. We read a lot of books and I can't possibly do all the reading to my children. So I use audio books to give us some variety and me a rest. I have been a long time fan of Librivox but now I'm found something new, Learn Out Loud.

Learn Out Loud provides a list of classic downloadable audiobooks for sale, but they also have several free downloadable audiobooks. The have a wonderful collection of children's audio listed by age. I recently received an email from them with this information on those audio collections:

By far one of the largest collections of free literature to be released for free on MP3 download is the University of South Florida's Lit2Go collection, now available through iTunes U. This treasure trove of free downloadable audio books, poetry, and short stories is aimed at K-12 educators, but most of its resources can be enjoyed by literature listeners of all ages. We've compiled a comprehensive list of what they have to offer for each grade level:
Lit2Go: Audio Files for Kindergarteners:Features Robert Louis Stevenson poems for children, as well as classic nursery rhymes like "Jack and Jill", "Little Bo-Peep", "Hickory Dickory Dock", and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 1st Graders:Features more classic poems and fairy tales including Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", "Fire! Fire! Burn Stick!" from Aesop's Fables, "Humpty Dumpty", "Peter Piper", and "The Twelve Days of Christmas".
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 2nd Graders:Features "The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit" by Beatrix Potter, "The Hare and the Hedgehog" by The Brothers Grimm, more Robert Louis Stevenson poems, and an unabridged audio book called The Outdoor Girls in Florida by Laura Lee Hope.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 3rd Graders:Features a number of Aesop's Fables, "The Ugly Duckling" & "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Anderson, "How the Alphabet Was Made" by Rudyard Kipling, and the audio books Squinty, the Comical Pig by Richard Barnum, The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf; or, Rescuing the Lost Balloonists by Captain Quincy Allen, and Jack Tier, or the Florida Reef by James Fenimore Cooper.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 4th Graders:Features many more of Aesop's Fables, tales by Beatrix Potter, and the unabridged audio books The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Seven O'Clock Stories by Robert Gordon Anderson, The Tale of Tommy Fox by Arthur Scott Bailey, Whitefoot the Woodmouse by Thornton W. Burgess, and many of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 5th Graders:Features "Sleeping Beauty" by The Brothers Grimm, even more of Aesop's Fables, tales by Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Brownie Beaver by Arthur Scott Bailey, The Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motor-Boat by Ross Kay, Curly and Floppy Twistytail the Funny Piggie Boys by Howard R. Garis, The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat by Thornton W. Burgess, Half-Past Seven Stories by Robert Gordon Anderson, Beyond the City by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 6th Graders:Features dozens of short stories including many by Virginia Woolf and Rudyard Kipling. Also features the audio books The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, & The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum, Famous Stories Every Child Should Know, The Story of Siegfried by James Baldwin, The Light Princess by George MacDonald, The Open Boat by Stephen Crane, A Florida Sketch-Book by Bradford Torrey, Sylvie and Bruno & Sylvie and Bruno Concluded by Lewis Carroll, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Philosophy and Fun of Algebra by Mary Everest Boole, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 7th Graders:Features Edgar Allan Poe's most famous short stories, as well as the audio books The Tin Woodman of Oz & Tik-Tok of Oz by L. Frank Baum, The Little Lame Prince by Maria Dinah Mulock Craik, The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 8th Graders:Features poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, short stories by Emily Bronte, more of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous short stories, and the audio books In the Wilds of Florida by W. H. G. Kingston, Logic: Deductive and Inductive by Carveth Read, M.A., The Number Concept: Its Origin and Development by Levi Leonard Conant, Ph. D., The Mystery of Edwin Drood & Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 9th Graders:Features "History" essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, more poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the audio books Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Wakulla, A Story of Adventure in Florida & Canoemates: A Story of the Florida Reef and Everglades by Kirk Munroe, Florida Trails by Winthrop Packard, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson, A Victorious Union by Oliver Optic, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, Dracula by Bram Stoker, The Mystery of Cloomber by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 10th Graders:Features the audio books St. Augustine Under Three Flags: Tourist Guide and History, Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll, The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, The Professor by Charlotte Bronte, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 11th Graders:Features the audio books The Game of Logic by Lewis Carroll, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance & The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Deductive Logic by George William Joseph Stock, M.A., Lettres Philosophiques by Francois-Marie Arouet, and Beowulf translated by Frances B. Grummere.
Lit2Go: Audio Files for 12th Graders:Features the audio books Physics by Aristotle, Lectures on Ten British Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century by Alexander MacFarlane, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics by W. W. Rouse Ball, History of Modern Mathematics by David Eugene Smith, Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, The Flamingo Feather by Kirk Munroe, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, and Spherical Trigonometry by Isaac Todhunter.

I urge you to check out these files today. Listen to them from your computer or copy them onto cd's to listen to in your car or child's room. Very Praiseworthy!

Free Online Magazine

I was recently surfing the Peakmore Academy blog and found a link to Seasonal Delights, a wonderful blog that is offering a free magazine through September 2007. If you've been reading my blog for awhile you know that I love celebrations and heralding the seasons. This blog does just that. And now they have a new magazine called Seasonal Delights that promises to be very, very praiseworthy. The magazine is designed for "young ladies and their mothers." Articles will include letter writing, tea time, recipes, poetry, puzzles, crafts, sewing, nature study and more. I urge you to check it out QUICKLY in order to get your free subscription!

Make it Yourself

I have said here before that I like to make my food from scratch as much as possible. Last night I was able to finally find a way to make a convenience food from scratch that my family likes. In fact they like it better! Taco seasoning. That's right. We eat tacos several times a month and I always have relied on a packet of Taco seasoning. Well, last night I find a recipe on line and altered it for my family and I decided to post it here for those of you who might be looking for something similar.

Taco Seasoning
3 tbsp. chili powder
2 tbsp. flour
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp. dried oregano, crushed
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt

1. To prepare the mix: in a jar, combine the chili powder, flour, cumin, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, and salt; screw on lid and shake until completely mixed.
2. To prepare taco meat from the mix: Brown 1 pound of lean ground beef and drain off excess fat (reserving some drippings if desired). Mix with 1 finely chopped onion, 2 tablespoons garlic, a scant 1/4 cup of the seasoning mix and ½ cup water or pan drippings. Cook until the onion is translucent about 10 minutes.

That’s all there is too it. Make a double batch and freeze some for those nights you are in a hurry. I also use this meat as a filling for beef enchiladas.

September

I Meant To Do My Work Today

My friend Terri of Home At Last Farm posted this poem on the Motherculture yahoo group that she and I both belong to. I thought it so aptly described what I fight almost daily! So I would like to post it here for you.


I Meant to Do My Work Today

I meant to do my work today -
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree.
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land
Tossing the grasses to and fro.
And a rainbow held out its shining hand -
So what else could I do but laugh and go?

Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)

Free Gifts from The Old Schoolhouse

You know, one of my pet peeves is when someone says you get something free but you have to buy something to get it. That doesn't seem free to me! And I just realized I'm about to do the same thing to you. Okay, you have to purchase a subscription to The Old Schoolhouse magazine to get their free gifts promotion. But this promotion is 25 free gifts with any new 1 year TOS subscription for just $25.00. In the past you have had to purchase a two year subscription but this time it's $25.00 for 4 informative issues of TOS and 25 free gifts valued at almost $400. It's their biggest gift package ever!

If you haven't received TOS before it's full of really great content written by homeschoolers for homeschoolers. There are many practical how to articles along with great inspiration and encouragement. And reviews, and giveaways...I could go on and on!


There is a special limited time offer for renewals to be able to get the same offer. Until Oct. 1, 2007, they are allowing subscribers to renew their subscription for $19.95 and they get the 25 free gifts. This is a huge savings plus the bonus gifts valued at almost $400.

I have a personal reason for sharing the good news about this offer. You see, a few years ago in our first year of homeschooling my husband was laid off. I borrowed most of my curriculum or checked things out of the library. I was given a copy of The Old Schoolhouse and read inside that they provided subscriptions to people in financial need. I emailed them and explained our situation and asked if they could provide a subscription. This was the first year that they did free gifts with two year subscriptions. They wrote me a kind letter back that said not only would they provide me with a subscription, but they had decided to send me the two year subscription with the special gifts as well. It was such a blessing to me at that time. So I recommend this magazine to you whole heartedly with no reservations. It's very praiseworthy!