The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the fifth volume of The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. The Dawn Treader is a Narnian sail boat which belongs to Prince Caspian. Lucy and Edmund join him on this ship and end up going to the end of the world in it.
One of these days, you will have to sit down and read this book. Especially if you miss the seaside and it’s cold outside and you just got overwhelmed by wanderlust. It’s an adventure and most children will enjoy it, too. Continue reading
Calendar activities help small children grasp the concept of time, as divided in days, weeks and months. For older children, calendar activities can be a five-minute reading on what happened this day in history. It does not have to take long and the benefits speak for themselves.
Today, for instance, is the birthday of Western Civilization – an event marked by the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC and acknowledged by most historians as the turning point in the Greek-Persian wars. Because they won the Battle of Marathon, the Greeks started believing in themselves as a nation and as a culture. After this battle, the Greeks started developing what we today call classical Greece, which is, of course, the foundation for Western thought and civilization. Continue reading
Fifteen years ago, I was working in Stockholm, Sweden. A colleague walked over to my desk and told me a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. For the rest of the day, we tried in vain to get news from the overwhelmed site of BBC, which was loading very slowly. I suppose all of Europe and beyond was desperate to find out what happened.
World Trade Center (image courtesy of Wikipedia.org)
So much has happened since that fateful day. Our lives have never been the same. As I homeschool my young children, it is hard to decide at what age I can talk to them about what happened on 9/11/01. The tragedy seems so senseless. Continue reading
If you like scrambled eggs but your cholesterol is over 200 overall, you might want to learn how to fix scrambled tofu. You get 0 cholesterol and all the benefits of lean protein. The taste, while not close to eggs, is savory and delicious. You can put it on toast and serve it with tomato slices or, even better, on a bagel, with your favorite orange juice or warm morning drink. I like Kaffree Roma prepared with rice milk. If you add a teaspoon of honey, it tastes better than hot chocolate.
Scrambled tofu and toast
As you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. A hot breakfast based on lean protein helps your homeschooling day go much better than a high-sugar cold cereal one. Continue reading
I know, I know. Blanket statements do not stand the test of real life. Let me explain my title. “Homeschooling is parenting” means one cannot homeschool without being really good at parenting. You don’t have to be a certified teacher to teach your own children at home, but you do need to be a good parent to homeschool. Academics, believe it or not, are not as important in homeschooling as parenting skills.
My daughter in The Village, downtown Gatlinburg
That does not mean your child will suffer academically if they are homeschooled. On the contrary, most homeschoolers score higher on standardized tests than their peers who attend public or private schools. But it does mean that unless you have some parenting skills, you will never even get to the table to teach junior how to read. Continue reading
The homeschooling movement may be growing, but homeschooling misconceptions still abound. The more I talk to people about it, the more I see how prejudice and misconceptions have kept many from looking into homeschooling. Here are seven misconceptions about homeschooling I have encountered: Continue reading
Chapter 4 in The Story of the World Volume 3 deals with the struggle to look for a Northwestern passage. Hudson and Champlain are the main heroes of the two stories in the chapter. I did not exactly have the milk cartons required to make the craft boat – we drink non-dairy milk which comes in a totally different shaped-carton.
Floating cakes of ice during the search for a northwestern passage. Yes, LEGO friends in the boat…
So I set the kids on an adventure with LEGO people and boats. We used white LEGO bricks as the floating cakes of ice mentioned in the stories, an expression which made them laugh. Cakes of ice? They kept repeating it. This is why we read extensively. They learn new ways to use words and to put them together. Continue reading
Prince Caspian is the fourth volume in The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. We read these books out loud – I read them to the kids – one chapter or two per day. They love Narnia. We also listen to the radio theater version created by Focus on the Family and watch the BBC version from 1988.
The children liked Prince Caspian a lot. In fact, my six-year-old said she liked it better than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I think I liked it better myself. The journey narrative made me think of our own journey through life.
And then, why do we journey? A battle awaits at the end of a journey – a confrontation with envious, jealous people, who want to either kill us or take away our birthright. Whether they symbolize the forces of evil or mean-spirited people in our own lives, it depends on every context. But I can see this scenario repeated in small things and big things in the human experience and especially in the experience of a Christian – somebody who has taken God, the King of Kings, as their Father. Which, of course, makes us princes and princesses, heirs and heiresses.
There were some funny parts, especially the ones involving Dwarfs. And then there was the chilling realization that the White Witch is back in a different form. Even the radio theater people, by using the same voice, made sure we got the hint. When I asked the children, they said they knew. They could tell it was her again.
The moments when Aslan pops into the story are as touching as ever. My children love Aslan and they know he is a symbol of Jesus.
The best part for me was the location of the battle: Aslan’s How. I think C. S. Lewis was brilliant when he came up with that. The method of Aslan or his “how” should be paramount in our minds and hearts. All in all, a great, meditative read.
About four months ago, we returned from spending 15 days in Romania. My sister and her family still live there, along with all my relatives except for my parents. My father passed away almost two years ago. My mother lives in Spain. She came over to Romania while we were there and this whole trip felt more like a family reunion than anything else.
My sister with my children inside a mall in Bucharest
Not that we did not see things. We acted like tourists by renting a nine-passenger automatic Mercedes van and traveled through 10 cities. We did not stay anywhere longer than three days. It was a fast pace, but we had much to see and many relatives to visit. Continue reading
Last spring, Smoky Mountains Soccer Academy started operating in Gatlinburg, at the multi-million dollar facility known as Rocky Top Sports World. It costs $100 per child for ten weeks. The practice is one hour on a weekday. They have no games over the weekend.
Smoky Mountain Soccer Academy – my son’s group of players and coaches
The main coach is a teacher and a soccer coach in the public school system and he said, “I believe weekends are for the family. Plus, I need my weekends off. I’m a teacher.” I could not agree with him more. Continue reading