The Themes for This Month: Passover (4/19-4/27) Easter (4/21/19) Everything about birds! Passover: Read the story of Moses in Egypt from a Children's Bible Teens:  Read the book of Exodus from the Bible Easter: Read the story of Christ's passion, death and resurrection from a Children's Bible Teens:  Pre-read the readings for Holy Week or read pertinent parts from one or more Gospel. Movies: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dream Coat (a tiny bit risque when Potiphar's wife gets the hots for Joseph, but other than that, lots of fun.  Kids learn how the Israelites got to Egypt in the first place.) The Prince of Egypt - I love this reverent retelling of the story of Moses.  The music is amazing. NB:  The study of Passover overlaps nicely with learning about Egypt. He Is Risen - I think this is the animated movie we had which told the story of Easter for kids.  The movie is long gone from our house, but for many years we watched...

This list sort of goes in order of listening comprehension, from youngest to teen. The Beginner's Bible - I'm pretty sure this is a Protestant version.  I don't remember how we acquired this one.  And yes, the bad cartoon drawings made me cringe a little.  BUT my kids loved this bible.  We took it with us on vacations (so many stories in just one volume!).  We read from it frequently when they were little.  Through frequent reads with five little ones, it got rather threadbare.  It served as a good introduction to well known Bible stories. The Weight of the Mass - We came to this book in mid-homeschool career.  But it didn't matter.  It is so beautifully illustrated and such a powerful folktale that even adults (and teens) are affected by it. St. Jerome and the Lion - We would read this every feast of St. Jerome.  Lovely book. The Holy Twins - A great story about brother and sister saints. Catholic Tales fo...

This resource is probably something that every Catholic homeschooler already knows about. Vision books have been around for a long time.  I actually remember reading Vision books when I was young.  I clearly remember reading the one about Father Isaac as a child in hard cover.  I just looked it up and it was first printed in 1956.  I remember being completed captivated by the idea of the Canadian wilderness and trying to teach the Indians about Christ.  And how frightening the idea of torture was to me and how holy and willing to give himself up for Christ and his Native American children Father Isaac was.   While I read many of these out loud over the years, we didn't get to all of them.  The only one that I recall that fell flat was the one on Edmund Campion.  For some reason we just couldn't get through that one.  We loved the ones about St. Therese and St. Elizabeth of the Three Crowns, St. John Vianney, known as the Cure of Ars, ...

We only watched a couple of videos from this guy in our homeschool.  That's because, alas, as the kids got older it was harder to have a particular time to meet for breakfast.  My son started attending classes at the community college and my daughter got really ill and has been struggling for the last two years of high school.  So basically we stopped meeting at breakfast.  I miss it some, but frankly, kids need to move on and create their own schedules anyway at some point.  It's tricky as a parent who is used to calling the shots having to relinquish a lot of the daily details. But I did use this resource for a class I was teaching on Modern European history.  Tom Richey is a high school history teacher from South Carolina.  He's a hoot!  He is a southern conservative, so keep that in mind.  He might not be everyone's cup of tea.  But he's a great teacher and on his youtube channel he's made lots of great videos that actually prepar...

If you want to learn about the periodic table in the most charming way possible, you've got to watch Sir Martyn Poliakoff's wacky scientist videos from the University of Nottingham.  These were breakfast videos par excellence!  We thoroughly enjoyed these short, informative, engaging, humorous videos and we learned tons about chemistry and the periodic table.  These will make your kids fall in love with science, or if not, at least they will love the lovable professor and find the science entertaining. We spent a year watching all these videos together.  A few a week at the breakfast table. A fun resource to go along with watching these videos is the activity book Fizz, Bubble & Flash.   We enjoyed reading this book aloud and we did a few of the experiments out of it.

One day we went to see a special museum exhibit on Beatrix Potter.  I remember it was a real pain driving everyone in, parking, walking to the museum which was very crowded.  I remember I lost my 4 year old for a while and had a huge panic searching for him, before I found him in the little movie theater where they were showing a short bio of Potter.  My heart is racing just remembering that panic! We had read lots of Beatrix Potter stories for years, so everything in the exhibit was charming and familiar to the kids.  They had a little gift shop too and so I bought these blocks  for my littlest ones. The way I used this resource: This was one of the Montessori trays I would put out for my 4 and 2 year old every weekday morning. I think these blocks work a lot like the pink tower in Montessori.  My kids would spend intense periods of time taking up two blocks, comparing them for size and then stacking them in order from largest at the bottom to sm...

This post expands on some thought from the previous post. I am a terrible housekeeper.  I hate it.  I don't see the clutter until it gets to an absurd level or someone is coming over.  I'm not a hoarder but when I see those hoarder houses on TV, I think that is what I am always struggling against, that I could so easily become that person!  I always feel like I have my finger in the dike so to speak, holding back the flood of disorganization, but at any moment the wall will break!  And I hate cleaning.  I'm terrible at it too.  I never seem to do it as well as others.  I'm so slow!  I think maybe I'm allergic to dust because cleaning actually gives me a headache and I often get all woozy feeling.  I'm really clumsy and I can't tell you how many times I've banged my head or slipped and fallen or tripped over the vacuum cord, etc.  LOL.  I am so weird.  I've never heard anyone talk about this kind of reaction.  I was ...