I just watched a wonderful TED talk on the significance of the Walls of Constantinople to the West. I enjoyed that this video is both concise and clear. The only criticism I have is that those fleeing Constantinople did not only go to Rome, but to many other major cities. It was not so much the crusaders who brought the culture and knowledge from Constantinople to the west as it was the Eastern Romans themselves. Most of our books call them Byzantines, but they knew themselves as Roman. Go watch the video. Use it as part of your Church History … Continue reading
Category Archives: Parenthood
Did you know that Louis L’Amour would scour libraries, court houses, and museums for original source materials such as diaries, old letters, records of all sorts, in addition to newspapers before writing his stories? Supplement a unit study with his books or build an entire unit study around them, Mr L’Amour’s intense research makes his stories a good source for educational enrichment. His westerns are Historical Fiction and better researched than nearly anything else in that genre. Westerns are a form of Historical Fiction that often gets overlooked. As parent educators we have the opportunity to bring history to life for … Continue reading
I purchased two dolls from the Lammily company. Why? Well, they have created a doll with the AVERAGE measurements of a 19 year old girl. Thus, the doll is athletic looking. She is healthy and normal looking. She looks real. AND she appears both pretty AND intelligent! I am a delighted parent! Why two? Well, one for my child, one for me to use as a model for making clothing. I like doing garb for SCA activities, but don’t really want to make much for myself. I also like to explore various periods of clothing without the need to wear … Continue reading
What a difficult decision! I want more good adult influences on my Kindergartener, and reinforcement of her Catholicism. The main groups suggested by other home school moms are Girl Scouts (GS), American Heritage Girls (AHG), and the Little Flowers. The last has no group here. Leaving Girl Scouts and American Heritage Girls as the sole options at this time. Girl Scouting, at the national level, holds many positions and alliances with which I do not agree. I will leave the listing of them up to other persons. On the up side, the local troop is run by Catholic Moms, meets … Continue reading
Small children are durable. Perhaps not all small children, but certainly mine are very durable. They run full tilt, fall flat on their faces in the gravel, and if you compliment the speed they attained before the fall, they pop back up with a smile and take off again without any notice of the scratches on their knees. I am an older mom. I take these spills with what is apparently a degree of calm that shocks other people. I see persons leap up to rescue the poor fallen waif, when all I see is a perfectly normal learning experience. … Continue reading
Starting to do daily home schooling. I am taking advantage of the ipad and some apps that build skills that will translate to handwriting. I can see that the younger set want a turn with the fun educational programs. That is good, will give them a turn later. The main goal at the moment is to gently build a habit of schoolwork in the mornings. I will be pulling out the curriculum bit by bit and we will be using the workbooks in the various subjects. Right now, the preliminaries are being honed so that the math and language arts … Continue reading
We were sitting in my office and the Little Crow climbed into my lap and pointed to the rain falling on the skylight and outside the window. I was snuggling him because the weather turned colder and the office was chilly. That, and I love any chance I get to cuddle my kids. I also love to sing to them. This is what I found myself singing to the little one: The Rain Came Down The rain came down the water went up into the sky the temperature dropped oh my oh my! the clouds are quickly blowing by the … Continue reading
Today I spent a gleeful several minutes playing with my Little Crow, who is a sporting almost 2 years old, and a 2 foot diameter heavy duty yellow exercise ball that once upon a time was taller than the child who pulled it down and rolled it over to me, a wide grin and sparkly eyes expressing joy. I dribbled it like a basketball. Little Crow thought that was the best thing ever. Each time I stopped, small hands thrust the ball back against my knees until I dribbled it again. Giggles and jumping up and down in place, toddler … Continue reading
LECTURE MODE: Everyone has met someone who gets onto their favorite subject and goes into so much detail you want to scream and run away. Some of us share our families with people like that. In our family we have learned to laugh at what we call “LECTURE MODE”. We are all brainy, and we all tend to get into a groove with our favorite subjects, and so as a family we’ve worked on learning to control this tendency. The trick is learning to see it happening and do something to cut it off before the other person begins to … Continue reading
I like the title up there, but truth is, I have never found a satisfactory way to handle the stress of loneliness while staying home with small children. I enjoyed taking graduate classes and found that I could study genetics while sitting on the floor as the kids played around me. Getting out to class was really good for me and it helped me to feel very good when I was home with the little ones. I currently have a special interest group I joined and that is fun too. But the truth is that finding ways to support your … Continue reading