Garrett was all dressed in blue trying to take pictures of bluebirds with his new blue camera. By the time he came outside the bluebirds had all flown away, but then he decided to take pictures of our house. I gave him permission to cross the street so he could get the whole house in the shot. He marched across in such a funny way that I decided to start filming him. I was rewarded with a repeat performance of Garrett’s grand way of marching across the street. Notice how he looked both ways before he crossed, too. Very nicely done.
Preparing Preschoolers’ Hearts for Resurrection Sunday
Here’s a fun idea for Lent.
If you have preschoolers (or kids a little older) and you want to help them prepare their hearts for Easter, you can read The Jesus Storybook Bible to them for the 40 days before Easter (Lent) and end up at the Easter Story at just the right time. You can read one story each day and end up on Day 40 at the story of The Resurrection on the day before Easter. Then there are 4 more stories in the book for follow-up.
The Jesus Storybook Bible is a wonderful retelling of the whole Bible that whispers the name of Jesus in every story. It portrays Him as the One who rescues us from sin, which is really what He did!
So, if you want to give your kids an overview of the Bible in 44 days, you can do it during this Lenten season. Or whenever you choose to read through this charming story Bible.
I have seen people recommend this book even for adults to get a good overview of the Bible, because it is so well-written!
And to make it even more wonderful, they now offer a deluxe edition which includes a CD with narration by David Suchet. I already owned 2 copies of The Jesus Storybook Bible, but upon the recommendation of a friend, I bought the deluxe edition, too, so that I would have the CD. I am so glad I did! Listening to David Suchet read it is like watching a movie. He is an excellent narrator. I enjoy reading aloud to my children, but this CD makes this Bible even better.
Now Garrett and Fiona can follow along in their Bibles, and I can follow along in mine while we listen to it. And when Emma gets a little older, she will already have a copy of this Bible.
I realize that Lent has already been going on for a couple of weeks, but if you want to catch up to Day 12 (we skip Sundays in the counting of Lent), you can read one story in the morning and one in the evening until you catch up. Or just read it at your own pace. Just realize that you can read an overview of the whole Bible in 44 days if you read one story a day, and do what’s right for your family.
From the Catholic Icing blog here
Miracle at the Gym
Patrick, our third child, was born with arthrogryposis. He couldn’t bend his elbows. Fibrous tissue had grown over his elbow joints. He had not bent his arms or moved them much in the womb.
He also had a club foot. The Achilles tendon was really tight so he couldn’t bend his foot up and down.
The first pediatrician I took him to was concerned that he may never be able to walk or stand or feed himself or groom himself or just about anything.
I took him to therapy, and the therapist was not very supportive. She didn’t want my other 2 kids to come to therapy sessions, and she tried to get me to stop nursing him and wanted me to start feeding him solid food before I thought he was ready for it. There were many things that I did not like about taking him to therapy all the time.
We kept praying for his healing from the time he was born. One night I got a word from the Lord through Benny Hinn that “Patrick is going to be fine”. Soon after that the therapist said that she thought he had plateaued and that he wasn’t going to get much more range of motion than he had.
I was fine with that because it meant we could have our lives back. I never took him back for therapy after that. We had 2 surgeries on his club foot when he was less than a year old.
Later we had to get another surgery on his foot because it had started to turn in when he was about 5 years old.
The first surgeries would have taken care of the problem but the arthrogryposis caused his Achilles tendon to be stiffer than it should be, and it caused trouble in the alignment of the bones in his foot.
So we had those medical interventions for him when he was young.
But ever since then he’s just been growing and developing with the Lord’s blessing on his health and His healing touch ever present.
He walks and runs just fine and always has!
The doctors who saw him as a baby would be shocked if they saw him doing this.
He is lifting 205 lbs. here.
He put up 205 lbs. eight times. Shawn was amazed. Then he went and lifted 205, too! He was inspired by Patrick to do more than he thought he could do.
He can do amazing things with his legs, too. He does kicks and lots of martial arts moves that require strong legs.
The next time Gary was home, he videotaped Patrick benching, and he benched 225 lbs!
Stay tuned. More to come!
How to Start Homeschooling from Scratch
I have to think backward and forward here.
I’m thinking back to when I first started homeschooling Shawn over 15 years ago, and I’m thinking forward to what I’m going to do with Emma, since she’s ready to start more formal lessons now.
And I also have some experience with starting 7 other children in between with homeschooling from scratch.
So, to the best of my ability, I intend to put in a nutshell the things I have found to be the easiest and most effective methods for beginning a child in homeschooling.
First, I like to check out lots of picture books from the library from the time they are very young and read aloud to them. I have several picture books of my own now after hitting lots of library sales, so I can read some of the Classics and my favorites to them any time I get the urge. Book lists are very helpful for finding really good books that are engaging and educational and “living” books. To find out what “living” books are, read books about the Charlotte Mason approach.
Before Five in a Row is a good curriculum that will help you find good books to read at the appropriate level of development and give you great ideas for activities to do based on those books.
Other wonderful sources of book lists are the free Sonlight catalog from sonlight.com;
Teaching Children by Diane Lopez. You can get that at Amazon here. 
and Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt
There’s a book that you might want to get if you want to start early with your child. It’s called Homepreschooling and Beyond written by Susan Lemons. You can find it at susanlemons.wordpress.com
Another book that I highly recommend is For the Children’s Sake. This book helped me to figure out the style of homeschooling that I wanted to use. God brought this book to me very early in my homeschool career. The author is Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, Francis Schaeffer’s daughter. She introduces us to the Charlotte Mason approach. When she wrote this book, not many people had heard of Charlotte Mason. Boy, has that changed in recent years! I think most homeschoolers would enjoy reading this book even if they don’t decide to use the Charlotte Mason method. I already talked about an accompanying book that has some good lists and suggestions for what your child should know when and ideas for how to teach concepts called Teaching Children by Diane Lopez. It’s part of a set of Child-Light books. The other book in the set is called Books Children Love by Elizabeth Wilson, and it is strictly book lists.
You can find all of these books on Amazon. Just use my convenient Amazon search button in the extreme right sidebar of my blog, right under the pretty new Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival button (it’s the third button from the bottom), and you can bless our family with some affiliate income.
Another piece of advice for beginning homeschoolers is to go to a homeschool conference as soon as possible. But you may want to leave your checkbook at home. I recommend going to some workshops, listening to keynote speakers and visiting the vendor hall just to get a feel for things at first. I wouldn’t buy curriculum right away. I would wait and think and pray and research before buying any books or resources. Many people advised me to do that, and I was grateful for that advice. I did buy the book “For the Children’s Sake” at my first homeschool conference, but that was a “God thing”.
Currclick is a curriculum website that has lots of downloadable ebooks, lapbooks, activities, etc. where you can find very affordable products that you can download immediately. I have gotten lots of freebies from them. My account there is so full I could homeschool for years and years just using the stuff I have there.
Here’s an example of an activity I got from Currclick: Pocketful of Penguins.
I shared a lot of ideas in this post a few years ago. We do some things differently now, but there’s still the general underlying theme of “Education is a Life”. Our life revolves around homeschooling. We learn from life. We don’t have to interrupt life to do school. Life IS school.
Another really good source of worksheets and activities is Enchanted Learning. There is a yearly fee. I think it’s $20, but it’s well worth it.
Well, I promised to put this in a nutshell, so here it is:
1. Read lots of good books to your child. Start with nursery rhymes and other rhyming stories and move to picture books as they seem interested in looking at them.
2. Pick a book to do some activities around, such as eating the same kind of food as the book talked about or going out and finding the same kind of insect or tree. For instance, we did a unit about The Very Hungry Caterpillar that went on and on because I kept getting new ideas of things to do related to it. We ate the fruits that were mentioned in a little party with all of the kids with decorations, pretty presentation of the fruits and everything. Look in my archives to see some of the activities we did to supplement this book.
3. Find videos about a topic you read about and let your child watch them on YouTube or Netflix or DVD, etc.
4. The above steps are basic tips for how to do unit studies. Build a unit around a picture book or the holiday that’s coming up or the season of the year or some topic that your child is excited about.
5. A fun way to get your child writing, drawing, doing hands-on work to accompany the study is to make lapbooks and do notebooking.
There is lots of help online for learning how to make lapbooks. There are templates for the booklets on sites like Lapbook Lessons and homeschoolshare.com. There are places that sell lapbook packets that provide the information you need to study the topic and the printables so that you can print them out, have your child fill out the information in the booklets and glue them into the lapbook. I have several of them listed in my sidebar under Lapbook Resources.
I have some posts under Homeschooling and then under Lapbooking and Notebooking in my sidebar that you can check out.
6. Immerse your child in words and books and nature study and beautiful art and music.
7. Use real life and your child’s interests to teach from.
8. Talk with your child and listen to him/her.
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Green Eggs and Ham Read by a Superstar
It seems that we are not the only ones who like “Green Eggs and Ham”. We eat them every year on St. Patrick’s Day. Here’s my post from last year’s celebration:
Kelsey’s St. Patrick’s Day Celebration
Who else likes them?
None other than TIM TEBOW!
Watch this and see what I mean.
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
