book bonanza – pride and prejudice

I have finally finished a Jane Austen book. Much to my surprise, I even loved it. Back in high school when girls were swooning over her books, I rejected the whole genre outright. I had no interest in reading about ridiculous girls flirting in an ever-so-polite way with so-called gentleman. Now, however, I loved pondering the social commentary Jane was making, the deep flaws of character she was exposing, and the greatness of the human heart she was praising.

I learned much about what type of woman I value and what type of man is worth any woman’s time. I have much to ponder on the power of mentoring, the role of manners, and the value of marriage to a society. I see much of myself in Miss Elizabeth Bennett and hope I would have been like her. I know very well I would not have fit into 18th Century England. I don’t have it within me to become a doormat, a gossipy neighbor, or a wife contented with a loveless marriage. I don’t think I have the grace or the demureness to receive approval of my manners. I would probably have gone nuts dealing with it all and run for the hills!

Now, I get to watch the movie…which version should I start with? Colin Firth or Keira Knightly?

book bonanza – the king’s chessboard

We read The King’s Chessboard at my Math Alive! class this week. The children all loved it and I hope it taught them the power of knowing math, the foolishness of pride, and the immensity of the doubling principle.

This book tells the story of a proud and foolish king who wants to reward one of his subjects. The man does not want to be rewarded, but the king insists. The man then allows the king to give him one grain of rice on the first day, two grains of rice the second day, four grains the third day, eight grains the fourth day, sixteen the fifth day, and so on, for the course of 64 days. One day for every square on a chessboard. Well, if you do the math, you end up with a VERY large number by the 64th day. Go ahead…figure it out and post back here with your answer! Bonus points for anyone who also figures out the total amount of grains of rice that would be given over the full 64 days.

My children love this book and now my math students love it as well. Check it out at your library or buy it for your own home library and I guarantee you will love it! Make sure you add in a proud and loud voice for the king and you are assured read-aloud success!

book bonanza – nick of time

We have been listening to this book on our travels this week and are loving it! We tried listening to it about a year ago and we liked it then, but we never finished it. The girls begged to check it out again, so we gave it another shot and this time around it is fabulous.

Isn’t it interesting how sometimes it isn’t the right time for a book? We change, we grow, we have different needs, different perceptions, and then, all of a sudden, it IS the right time for said book. I am really hoping that happens for me this year with Pride and Predjudice, as I have started it umpteen times and it has never clicked for me in the past.

Back to Nick of Time…this book is set in 1939 England, right on the cusp of WWII, and the hero of the book, twelve-year-old Nick MacGyver, is a lighthouse keeper’s son who loves to sail his little boat, Petrol, all through the reefs of Gravestone Cove. His father is also part of a group of English citizens collecting information about German air and sea activities and passing it on to Churchill. The German U-Boat, Alpha-33, is patrolling Nick’s coves, searching for Lord Hawke and his illustrious inventor, Commander Hobbes. Things turn dicey when the U-Boat actually captures Commander Hobbes and Nick’s six-year-old sister, Kate. Leonardo Da Vinci’s time machine shows up on Nick’s beach with a letter from Nick’s Great-Grandfather pleading with Nick to travel through time back to the Napoleonic Wars to help him win a battle with everyone’s enemy, William Blood, who has another of Da Vinci’s time machines and uses it to travel through time kidnapping children, stealing great treasures, amassing a fortune, and terrifying people all over the world and throughout all time.

Sounds gripping? Yes, it is! I highly recommend the audio version because the voices are done fabulously well and you will fall in love with little Katie the first time you hear her speak and tremble with fear at Blood’s threatenings. It isn’t too scary for Fisher at age five, but it is hard to know how much he has really been paying attention to it, and it is completely fascinating for this mama who loves mysteries, WWII history, and anything with the heroes using science to win the battle for good vs. evil.

book bonanza-rise to rebellion

For the last few weeks I have been reading the book Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara. He is also the author of Gone for Soldiers, Gods and Generals, and The Last Full Measure. His father is Michael Shaara who wrote The Killer Angels, which I also loved.

Rise to Rebellion covers the period of time from 1770 to 1776 from both the colonists and the British points of view. It looks in depth at four men and their experiences: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Gage. This book was so wonderful I want to read it every June in preparation of Independence Day. If I don’t do that, I will at least be reading a history book from that time period because it was an amazing experience to delve into the history and miracle of this country while celebrating our nation’s birthday.

This book allowed me to understand the British perspective which is something I have never been able to do. It also shed light on the loyal-to-the-crown colonial viewpoint. I walk away from this book a more well-rounded person because now I can see where each of the various groups were coming from and what beliefs drove their behavior. Instead of being infuriated with Dickinson from Pennsylvania, who resisted going to war till the very end, I am able to appreciate his earnestness in articulating his cause for reconciliation. Instead of being disgusted with King George, I am able to see a man stuck in the middle of a mess with an unruly Parliament, colonists he couldn’t understand, and treasury shortages he needed rectified in short order. It was thrilling to witness the evolution of John Adams from his early years as an unknown lawyer into a statesman who was able to convince people of the rightness of the path of independence through his logic and oratory skills. I developed mercy for the Tories and increased my love of the radicals. I am more grateful for the hand of God in the establishment of this great country.

I can’t wait to read book two and the rest of the story of the Revolution – A Glorious Cause. Anyone want to join me?

and now there are three!

Remember this?

Remember how it is my favorite birth book ever?

Remember how I lost it?

Yesterday at gym I was SHOCKED (yes, screaming and crying and jumping up and down and totally shocked from head to toe) to be given THREE copies of it!!! I am so, so happy to have these three wonderful books. My children love this book and I use it all the time in my childbirth classes. I love the artwork, and the language, and the message, and the clothing, and the lack of clothing, and the cute little baby socks, and, and, and…I just love it!

Thank you so much to the Gale and Lamoreaux families for being such good friends to give me something I will treasure for always.

I was given a myriad of other fun goodbye-for-the-year gifts from my fabulous students, including dark chocolate truffles, a TJMaxx gift card, a plant (that I will try to keep alive), judging cards with the number 10 on them (that all the kids surprised me with after I did a forward roll!) and precious notes from the kids on the back, drawings, hugs, and lots of love from everyone. We had loud music, crazy games, and lots of demonstrations of everyone’s favorite tricks.

Yep, I love teaching gym. I love interacting with so many neat people and having a day once a week to hang out in sweats and exercise. I especially love helping children realize they can do hard things, they can progress, they can show courage, and practice will bring improvement over time. I love watching their eyes light up with pride when they finally conquer a difficult skill. I love seeing them cheer each other on. I love how funny they are and how much they love me. I love helping them learn that adults can be silly. I love being part of their hearts and part of their lives.

I even did some back handsprings and a back tuck…not bad for a 36-year-old mother of four!

I will be offline for the next week…off to Homeschool Swim Camp…hoping it doesn’t rain all week long, but bringing lots of rain gear in case it does.

book bonanza – welcome with love

I have been attending births this month – two so far with one more to go – so birth is on my mind. I want to share one of my favorite birth books with you. Welcome With Love by Jenni Overand and illustrated by Julie Vivas is a delight to the eyes and heart. The artwork is colorful and portrays a laboring and birthing mama quite accurately, especially those who birth outside of the hospital with all its tubes, gowns, uncomfortable beds, and machines beeping in the background. The birth story is told from the perspective of the big brother, Jack, who is around the age of five in my estimation. He talks about the noises his “mum” makes, the walking, dancing with dad, and groaning that is going on all in a calm, matter of fact manner that teaches that while birth is a special event it is also a normal part of life. His mum proceeds to give birth holding on to dad with their midwife catching and the older sisters watching and welcoming the new little one. At the end of the story the family curls up together in front of the fire and mum drinks and drinks some more while explaining to Jack “thirsty work having babies.” Indeed it is! I prefer homemade popsicles during labor made with R.W. Knudson’s Morning Blend juice and cannot get enough of them when I am bringing a baby into this world.

This book is not available for a reasonable price any longer, but it is published in Australia under the name Hello Baby. Hopefully you can find it at your local library or in a thrift store. Mine is missing at the moment after it got lent to a client and not returned…big mistake since it is now over $200 at amazon.com (Hello Baby in hardcover is $969.00 – how on earth can a book that sold for around $15 now be worth 969 buckaroos?). If you find two cheap copies, pick them both up and I will buy one from you!

This lovely treasure conveys the beauty and simplicity of birth in a family setting with soothing words, gentle illustrations, and the wonder of a boy experiencing it for the first time. I hope you love it just as much as we do.

thornton w. burgess

Oh, how we love this author. I mean, love, love, love him. We discovered him when Blythe was just a wee little girlie. She loved to check out a collection of his short stories from the library that were on audio. She checked it out over and over and over again. Listening to it hundreds of times. Finally, I decided to buy the books. All of them. They are available from Dover for $1.50 a book, so we bought the whole set and read them to her again and again and again. Yes, this child has issues with obsessing on a subject. Remember my post about that?

Anyway, Fisher has recently discovered them and we have started rereading them. We finished The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat last week and are now starting on The Adventures of Grandfather Frog. He begs me to read them every day. He is learning so much about animals, forests, meadows, and being littler than the humans. He is learning about kindness and courage. He is learning to sit still while I read to him, which is a feat in and of itself for this wiggly little boy.

Now for you moms that don’t see how you can fit read-aloud time in, let me tell you, you CAN read these books. Most chapters are 2-3 pages, so if you only have five minutes you can still squeeze a chapter in. If you want to curl up and snuggle for a while longer, you can get through four or five chapters pretty quickly.

We are always on the lookout for old hardcover editions at DI and other thrift stores, but until we track them all down, our trusty Dover paperbacks will be just fine.

These are gems that you will love!

book bonanza – just rewards

The full title of this book is Just Rewards or Who Is That Man in the Moon and What’s He Doing Up There Anyway?, but that is too long to put up there in the title of my post, don’t ya think?

This has been one of our favorites for years. We first heard it at storytime at the Treehouse Children’s Museum in Ogden, UT back in the days when we were frequent visitors to that magical place. The storyteller was fabulous – his voice was dramatic and brought the characters to life. The illustrations are soft and folksy; they speak volumes and aren’t in the way of the story at all. We immediately came home and started checking it out from the library. We have checked it out over and over again. We shared it with our favorite Childrens Librarian so she could use it in her storytime.

One word of caution: this book begs to be told with a very kind voice and a very greedy voice. Children will love the different voices you come up with and will want you to read it repeatedly with the same voices, so choose a voice you can duplicate for the next twenty years or so.

The story teaches the consequences of our behavior in a funny and outrageous way so that the lesson sinks in enough to get children thinking, but not in a way that encourages shame or self-punishing thoughts by the child. Go find it at your local library and you may have to buy it just like we eventually did…

Today our very own copy came in the mail! I found a great used copy for .01 from a goodwill store in Connecticut and after paying 3.99 in shipping, it was mailed to us lickety-split.

choice – the deciding factor

The difference between sacrifice and punishment is not the amount of pain involved, but the amount of choice.

Interesting thought, isn’t it?

I just read a wonderful book, Influencer, for February’s colloquium. It is full of powerful ideas about effective motivation, change-making, and turning hearts.

The quote above jumped out at me. I realized I have not sufficiently helped my children to see their choices in this life. I have not taught them to fully understand the concept of agency and their ability to make a choice about their situations. They often view stuff in their lives as a punishment when I wish they would see it as a sacrifice…like washing the dishes for their family when they would rather be reading, changing the baby’s diaper when they would rather be drawing, like waking up early to get packed and on the road for a family camping trip. Many times these things have been viewed as a punishment when they are not at all punishments in my mind. I am not punishing them, life is not punishing them, God is not punishing them…instead they are being presented with an opportunity to serve, to help, to work for a better situation…a clean kitchen, a happy baby, getting to the campsite in time to set up in daylight.

This quote makes me think of struggles people have had – patriots burning their businesses during the Revolution so the British wouldn’t have access to them, pioneers crossing the plains in bitter cold and burying loved ones along the trail, immigrants scraping every penny together to come to America to build a better life, concentration camp prisoners sharing their meager rations with someone in worse shape than themselves, mothers willing to endure months of uncomfortableness, nausea, pain, and exhaustion to grow a baby, the throes of labor, fathers going to work day after day at jobs that don’t bring them joy – and I realize in all of these situations people could choose to view them as punishments, as the cruel servings of life OR they can view them as sacrifices that they are completely willing to choose to reach their goal.

How do I view my life…as a sacrifice or a punishment? How do you view yours?

I am going to continue pondering this statement and try to own my choices more and more and try to teach my children to do the same.

How about you?

Home School Read-A-Thon

Blythe, Keziah, and Fisher are participating in the First Annual Idaho Home School Read-A-Thon. They have been challenged to read 300 minutes in the next two weeks. They are searching for sponsors for their Read-A-Thon and have created a plan to raise $1000. They are trying to find 100 people to donate $10 to their cause. If they read for at least 300 minutes, they will be able to buy books – 50% for their personal use and 50% for children who live at F.A.I.T.H. – Families in Transitional Housing. These are families that used to be homeless who are now in a program learning job skills, taking classes, and working towards purchasing their own homes. There is a library at F.A.I.T.H. for the children who live there to check out books from. They are in great need of books and are very excited that the home schoolers of Idaho have adopted them for their Read-A-Thon project. There are over 100 children from all over the state of Idaho participating in the Read-A-Thon and reading books to earn books for needy children.

If you would like to become a sponsor, please paypal your donation of any amount, large or small, to mom2bmw@aol.com or you can mail a check to our home (email me and I will give you the address):

Thank you so much for considering this cause!

With much gratitude from,
Blythe, Keziah, and Fisher

Blessings to each of you!