“I would pray, but I don’t know how… Nobody taught me how to pray… Nobody… taught me… how to pray…” says Sandra Bullock’s character in “Gravity” – a recent Hollywood movie which garnered seven Oscars. If that’s not the cry of every adult who grew up without religious guidance from his parents… If that’s not the cry of every young adult who goes off to college, runs into trouble, and does not know what to do.
I know that cry. Nobody taught me how to pray growing up. Continue reading
What if you did not have to pay for college because your child got really high SAT scores? What if I told you all you needed to do is spend 20 minutes of your time every day reading to your child since birth until way into the teen years? By the way, it’s never too late to start. Continue reading
For a couple of months now, the kids and I have been listening to Allons Danser! – a CD with French music for kids, produced by Whistlefritz. It has been such a great tool for my French Play Group, not just for my children. We use the Bonjour, Les Amis song to start the meeting and Au Revoir to close. Continue reading
Two years ago, when I heard about Bringing Up Bébé, I was not interested. The subtitle of the book is, “One American Mother Discovers the Joy and Wisdom of French Parenting.” I knew one thing about French parenting: it’s very hands-off, i.e. they put their babies in crèches (daycare for babies) at three months old and, later, they send them to all-day preschool at three. This is the way I was raised in Romania by my working parents.
Pas pour moi. Continue reading
Still reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Just when I get lost in her poetic writing and can’t tell what she means anymore, I stumble upon a new pearl. For instance “All Eyes,” – the concept that spiritual life is a striving to become like the cherubim described in Ezechiel, who are covered with eyes. Thus, they can behold God’s glory constantly, from all the angles. Continue reading
We have both the book and the CDs. I don’t plan which one we do first, the reading or the CD. It just so happened that we listened to Chapter 3 in the car a couple of weeks ago, coming back from Knoxville. When I finally got around to reading Chapter 3 to them, they were listening to me while playing on the carpet.
I asked my son, the first grader, the comprehension questions. He answered me while rearranging his LEGO bricks. I’m happy with that. I don’t always ask him to do narration at this point. Continue reading
Living five minutes away from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park means that we see many species up close and personal right here in our yard.
I have shared before some pictures of bear, groundhog and rabbits. Two more species we saw in our back yard last week: turtles and millipedes.
These two turtles were just walking through our yard. We have seen turtles here before. A few years ago, there were as many as four in one spot at one time. So seeing two was not unusual for us. Continue reading
Sometimes you just need to eat raspberries slowly to wake up to the sanctity of the now. Ripe, juicy, sweet, tart, red raspberries.
I am reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Finally. I have been circling and circling around this book, avoiding it because it is a New York Times Bestselling Book. Sometimes bestsellers disappoint me. So I did not have the courage to pick it up.
But then, thankfulness seems to be the answer to all my questionings. Continue reading
We made the crafts or, rather, our own version of the crafts suggested in Chapter 4. But before that, we checked on our Nile river model. It had dried up under the overhang of our roof, so we overflowed the Nile river to water the grass seed. We can already see some tiny blades of grass.
Instead of the sand-cube step pyramid suggested in the Activity Book, I opted for a DUPLO pyramid. I asked my son, a LEGO fan, to build me a DUPLO pyramid. He built me one out of 10 DUPLO bricks. I told him I wanted a bigger one. He brought me another small one, then another. I decided that was the sign that he needed some help. Continue reading
I love reading and I love organizational tips. So you can imagine how glad I was to read and review Flourish, Balance for Homeschool Moms, by Mary Jo Tate, published by Apologia Educational Ministries. This book contains everything a homeschooling mom needs to organize her life AND her way of thinking.
The most important thing in the book are not so much the forms and the organizational principles, as much as the philosophy underlying everything, i.e. that your goal should be balancing your many roles and tasks throughout the day and the years, not juggling them. The image you should have in your mind, as a homeschooling mom trying to do it all, is not that of a juggler, throwing things in the air so you can catch the urgent ones ready to hit the floor. Instead, you should imagine a tight-rope walker, carefully making small adjustments, as she advances to the other side. Continue reading