Learning Language Arts Through Literature

Language based literature and history curriculum used to intimidate me because of the sheer cost of acquiring the required books. I have since learned that it is not only possible, but smart (and for me necessary) to utilize my local libraries to supplement our schooling budget. This annotated book list covers all of the books currently used in the LLATL program. All books are listed in the order in which they are used and are available at Rainbow Resource (my favorite homeschool shopping source.) (RR) except the three noted. Information about Learning Language Arts Through Literature can be found at Common Sense Press. Book lists were taken from that website, and compiled together here for moms like me who have children in multiple grades. I have added which libraries they are available at locally. I checked Fort Smith Public Library (FSPL) first because of their larger selection. I then checked the Crawford County system because I have a card there also, but I did not check CC if it was available at FSPL, so there may be more overlap that is not noted. This will hopefully save time for those of you who use your library to supplement your schooling. You can have your local library request a library loan from either of these libraries. Since there were so few that were not available at either one of these locations I did not bother to look more extensively for libraries that carried the books for library loans because I plan to look at the used book store or buy them from Rainbow Resource.


1st grade The Blue Book
Who Took the Farmer's Hat?. Nodset, Joan L. HarperCollins. FSPL
Goodnight Moon. Brown, Margaret Wise. HarperCollins. FSPL
The Story of Ferdinand. Leaf, Munro. Puffin-Penguin Group. FSPL
Caps for Sale. Slobodkina, Esphyr. HarperCollins. FSPL
The Snowy Day. Keats, Ezra Jack. 1962. Puffin-Penguin. FSPL
Bedtime for Frances. Hoban, Russell. Harper Festival. FSPL
The Little House. Burton, Virginia Lee. The Little House. FSPL
Old Hat New Hat. Berenstain, Stan and Jan. Random House. RR
Make Way for Ducklings. McCloskey, Robert. Puffin-Penguin. FSPL
The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter, Beatrix. Penguin Group. FSPL
Blueberries for Sal. McCloskey, Robert. Puffin Books-Penguin. FSPL
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Burton, Virginia Lee. Houghton Mifflin. FSPL
Babar's Little Circus Star. DeBrunhoff, Laurent. Random House. (out of print but easy to find on e-bay for around $5.00 including s&h)
The Runaway Bunny. Brown, Margaret Wise. HarperCollins. FSPL
(Babar’s Little Circus Star not offered by Rainbow Resource)


2nd grade The Red Book
A Tree Is Nice. Janice May Udry. HarperCollins. FSPL
Little Bear. Else Holmelund Minarik. HarperCollins. FSPL
The Fire Cat. Esther Averill. HarperCollins. FSPL
Bravest Dog Ever. Natalie Standiford. Random House. RR
Ox-Cart Man. Donald Hall. Puffin Books - Penguin. FSPL
Corduroy. Don Freeman. Puffin-Penguin Group. FSPL
The Little Island. Golden MacDonald. Random House. FSPL
Billy and Blaze. C.W. Anderson. Simon and Schuster. FSPL
Harry the Dirty Dog. Gene Zion. HarperCollins. FSPL
Abraham Lincoln. d'Aulaire, Ingri and Edgar Parin. Beautiful Feet Books. FSPL
Yonder. Tony Johnson. Dial Books. (out of print) FSPL
(Abraham Lincoln and Yonder not offered by Rainbow Resource)


3rd grade The Yellow Book
The White Stallion. Elizabeth Shub. Yearling-Random House. Crawford County Library System
Madeline. Ludwig Bemelman. Puffin Books - Penguin. FSPL
Meet George Washington. Joan Heilbroner. Random House. Crawford County Library System
The Courage of Sarah Noble. Alice Dalgliesh. Simon and Schuster. FSPL


4th grade The Orange Book
The Boxcar Children. Gertrude Chandler Warner. Albert Whitman and Company. FSPL
Wilbur and Orville Wright. Augusta Stevenson. Aladdin Paperbacks. RR
Benjamin Franklin. Augusta Stevenson. Aladdin Paperbacks. RR
The Sign of the Beaver. Elizabeth George Speare. Yearling-Random House. FSPL


5th grade The Purple Book
Farmer Boy. Laura Ingalls Wilder. HarperCollins. FSPL
The Trumpet of the Swan. E.B. White. HarperCollins. FSPL
Meet Addy. Connie Porter. Pleasant Company. FSPL
Caddie Woodlawn. Carol Ryrie Brink. Aladdin Paperbacks. FSPL


6th grade The Tan Book
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. Jean Lee Latham. Houghton Mifflin. FSPL
The Bronze Bow. Elizabeth George Speare. Houghton Mifflin. FSPL
Big Red. Jim Kjelgaard. Yearling-Random House. FSPL
The Horse and His Boy. C.S. Lewis. HarperCollins Publishing. FSPL


7th grade The Green Book
Star of Light. Patricia St. John. Moody Press. RR
Adam and His Kin. Ruth Beechick. Mott Media. RR
Much Ado About Nothing. William Shakespeare. Penguin. FSPL


8th grade The Gray Book
Across Five Aprils. Irene Hunt. Penguin. FSPL
A Lantern in Her Hand. Bess Streeter Aldrich. Puffin-Penguin Group. FSPL
Eric Liddell. Catherine Swift. Bethany House Publishers. RR
God's Smuggler. Brother Andrew with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. Baker Book House. Crawford County Library System


The Gold Book - American Literature:
Great American Short Stories - Edited Wallace and Mary Stegner, Random House (RR)
The Mentor Book of Major American Poets - Edited Oscar Williams and Edwin Honig, Penguin (RR)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway, Simon and Schuster (RR)
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane, Random House FSPL
The Pearl - John Steinbeck, Penguin FSPL


The Gold Book - British Literature:
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelley. Bantam-Random House (or any edition of the 1818 publication). ISBN: 9780553212471. FSPL has an edition of the 1818 publication, but not the one listed here. (RR)
Emma - Jane Austen. Bantam-Random House. ISBN: 9780553212730. FSPL-not the same edition (RR)
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens. Penguin Group. ISBN: 9780141439600. FSPL – not the same edition (RR)
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells. (Any unabridged publication). FSPL
Animal Farm - George Orwell. (Any unabridged publication). FSPL
The Mentor Book of Major British Poets - edited by Oscar Williams. Penguin Group. ISBN: 0451626370. (RR)

Books: My Not So Secret Obsession

I will be completely honest and admit that I am totally book crazy. I love books. This fact, in addition to being a homeschool mom means that it would be easy for books to overtake our home. To keep the addiction under control I purge our books at least twice a year. I take those to a used bookstore and get credit. I turn around and use that to get books for gifts or books we need for our history or language curriculum.

It may sound odd to buy used books as gifts, but our family does not mind at all. My niece loved the beautiful vintage horse book I bought her and my nephew was thrilled with his Jeff Gordon book that I found one day. I bought my friend Jamie a bag full of books from a used bookstore for her classroom as a graduation gift, and was able to buy more there than the couple of books I could have afforded new. In addition, our girls get books for their birthdays and Christmas. Every year for Christmas they get a classic hardback book. We have bought vintage copies of books in lovely condition from various sources. It may be trendy now to buy resale as well as being seen as a green shopping choice, but true book lovers know that there is nothing like having a hardback even if it had another love before you.

Another great source is library book shops and sales. One of our local libraries has a shop and I have found lots of things there. I try to look each time I go in. I know my areas of interest. Classics and children's for the girls and schooling, as well as Christian fiction for Nicole. Barry ahas been given gifts from their military section. I also check out their art section, as the large glossy books that go for a few dollars there are usually expensive at retail bookstores.

The books that are pictured in this post were all bought for around $11.00, not including trade-in credit, which amounted to about $9.00 I think. Five of them were required for history and language, two are for gifts, two are excellent composer biographies, three are supplemental history books, and one is a great living science book.

I do have checks in place to keep my book buying to a minimum. Any new release just "for fun" reading books we check out from the library. I use the First Baptist library, as well as Crawford County and the Fort Smith Public Library.

I have copied and pasted book lists from my history and literature curriculum from the publisher websites to my computer and searched for each book at all three libraries using their on-line card catalogs. I have printed the lists and keep them in my purse for quick reference. (I am going to post my annotated lists here eventually.) I usually try the author's name as well as the title, because subtitles and how the books have been entered into the library system can sometimes give false negative searches. I then go back to my saved lists and make a notation as to which library it is available at. If they are not available at any library locally I either buy or request by loan. Some books that take longer for us to work through I make a point to look for used or may even buy new. This also comes in handy for hard to find books; because I had my list I was able to recognize the title of an out-of-print book required for Bitsy's next year's lit curriculum and bought it for $1 at the FSPL bookstore. On e-bay the same book would have cost me a minimum of $5.

I also use the inter-library loan system to borrow books from other libraries through my local branch. FSPL just requires you to fill out a form. There is no charge for this service, but it does require advance planning on mom's part to utilize this during the school year without creating lulls. It is also important to move through inter-library loan books at a brisk pace, as some have a higher late fee and are not always renewable. Even with all these sources, there are times when I have just not been able to find or afford books for our history curriculum and I have simply found something I thought was similar enough and went with it instead.

Hope this is helpful as you plan for your school year.

Love,
Shawna

A Time of Transition

This upcoming school year is different for me. I am sorting and planning as usual, cleaning out all the nooks and crannies that hold all of my homeschool paraphanelia. I have perused my favorite catalogs and websites, ordered my curriculum, and filed my intent to homeschool. The difference is, this year I only have two students. Enrollment in our exclusive private academy has dropped by 1/3.

I am 100% thrilled that we lived through homeschooling all the way through high school. I am also excited for her next schooling experiences in college. It is odd to think of planning for only two students. It has made me re-evaluate how to teach certain subjects. Taking a page from a friend's book and have decided to start teaching several of my subjects to both of my remaining students. Although their grades are quite a span apart, there are certain subjects that lend themselves to this.

We are going to try this with our science, history/geography, Bible, Shakespeare, some of our poetry (Grace will be studying some more advanced works than Bitsy), picture study, hymn study, some art, and trying to start nature walks in earnest. Grace will be trying to teach Bitsy a little piano basics, with Coley helping out there. Coley may also be giving weekly art lessons to the girls if we can work that out with her work and college schedule. I am going to make a very sincere attempt to adhere more to the Charlotte Mason method with a sprinkling of classical thrown in. I have found Simply Charlotte Mason's curriculum guide invaluable in my planning. That is not to say I have everything sorted that I need to, nor is my schedule made out yet, but it is somewhere. Only a month to go, so still lots to do!

Waiting For UPS

com·pul·sive [ kəm púlssiv ] : adjective. Definition: 1. driven to do something: driven by an irresistible inner force to do something. Example: Shawna has a compulsive desire to check the status of her UPS delivery.

Yep, that pretty much describes it. I was later than usual ordering our school books this year and I have been compulsively checking the UPS website to see where my books are. They trudged down from Illinois, through Missouri, into Arkansas and are finally headed here today. "In Transit" and "On Time" are lovely phrases aren't they? "Scheduled For Delivery Today" is a pretty good one too.

We "started school" this week by finishing up some things from last year. Shh!!! Don't tell my kids, but we weren't official this week. I told them that a week early so we could be in the groove a little better by next week. Perhaps this bit of mental subterfuge was more for me than them, but it worked. I was not stressed about getting it all done and they have settled into a nice routine.

If we apply ourselves in the morning, all homework should be done by noon or shortly there after, leaving plenty of time for play, nature time, music, and such. (This applies to Grace and Bitsy.) I am very excited about school this year. I have finally decided to throw myself into the Charlotte Mason educational style and see how it goes.

We have been listening to our classical music each day as we do other things; our composer this term is Vivaldi. We (I) picked our artist for the fall term, Mary Cassatt, and checked out several books about her. I hope to review some of those here as we go through them. I was so impressed by one book of her art that I ordered my own copy from the used book section on Amazon. By the way, I found out that you can search by ISBN number on Amazon and it is more efficient than entering either the author, title or subject.

Oh! Oh! I just heard a horn! That may be the UPS man....

I'm Picking Out Our School Books!

Read the above title in sing-song and you know how I feel today. I do not know if this falls into the normal or weird category, but I love ordering our homeschool books every year. I feel like I did when I used to browse the Sears & Roebuck Christmas catalog as a child. (Very much akin to how it feels when I look at a seed catalog in late winter!) My favorite is Rainbow Resource. They have simply everything and it is cheaper. It is truly rare that I cannot find something I want in their catalog. I start out with my pre-printed wants & needs form - I think there is one like it on Donna Young's site. I have one for each child and I make my wants list. Then I go back through, total everything and see what I need to purge (if anything) to stay within budget. Of course, I first have to visit the bookshelves to see what I have left from the previous child. Perhaps that would be a good summer project. Cataloging curriculum by grade and putting it up. Hmmm..... Add that to the project list.

Love,
Shawna

Home Birth at Shawna's House!

We had a dramatic home birth overnight. Triplets! We knew the mother was getting close, but we had no idea that she would give birth here! You see, the nature center director, Jaima, is gone this week and next so we brought home the Egyptian Spiny Tailed Mice. Grace noticed the day we brought them home that she was larger than the rest of the mice and thought she was pregnant. (Or had a tumor...she was stressing out a bit.) We looked them up on the Internet and found that their gestation is 5-6 weeks. I explained to her that the birth, if she was pregnant, might not happen while they were here with us. It did! The girls are all so excited! We took her out and looked at her yesterday to try to determine if she was pregnant. We noted how she was larger than the other mice and her little mouse "mammary glands" were more prominent. It has been a great learning experience.

The mice are born with hair and their eyes open. They start exploring their environment at three days. The mice are very social and the other females help to care for the newborns. They are the cutest mice I have ever seen. We started out with five mice in one cage and two (the biters!) in another and now we have eight!

Love,
Shawna

Listening to Crickets

It is relatively cool in the house right now, which is amazing, considering the fact that our air is out! A family friend from church is coming tomorrow to try and fix it, but for the moment we have windows raised, fans on, and have sent the girls to the much cooler house of Memaw and Papaw. If I closed my eyes it would sound like camping. The crickets actually sound quite melodious tonight. Isn't it odd how one cricket can be annoying, but listening to a cricket chorus at night is quite a lovely thing to hear.

I had big plans for tomorrow so I will have to keep it short here tonight so I may wake up early enough to sort through the mess on my dining room floor and table. I had pulled out everything from my "currently in use" bookshelf in our dining room a.k.a. the school room. Little piles were everywhere...English, art, math, history, art supplies, organizational helps (HA!), things that look neat but I am not sure what to do with or if I will ever use them... All you homeschool moms know what I mean.

Well, even if tomorrow does not go as planned I am off work this week (Praise the Lord!) and can catch up on it eventually. Rather than a rest oriented vacation, this is a sanity vacation. I have to put the house in order and get everything organized for the school year. I should have already done this but I was foolish enough to take two summer courses (What was I thinking??? I do lesson plans in the summer?!) so I am having to do things as I go along. I also hope to do a bit of cleaning, such as cabinet fronts and pulling out the washer, dryer and fridge to clean behind them...coils and all that type of thing.


So far classes are going well for all the Mason family. Coley has started and we are adding things here and there, but we have a good general plan. I was not going to start Grace until this week, but she actually wanted to start sooner, so we started a few subjects with her last week. We will incorporate the others this week. Bitsy has things from last year to finish up until her books get here. There was a mishap in the ordering of her K4 curriculum, so we are making do with leftovers and some little store bought workbooks for PK. I am enjoying my classes so far this semester. US History II and World Lit to sometime in the 1600's (In other words, I am not going to go look for that book.)

Barry has a hard bunch this semester. Arkansas History, Int. Spanish and History of the West. He needs all the prayers he can get. He is a tad nervous. His History of the West professor actually is particular enough to tell them how to staple their paper (at a 45* angle) and he has to write a 10 page research paper in there. I may have to shoot him with a tranquilizer gun if he, he who makes straight A's and goes to work 40 hours a week, and still finds time to play with his kids, and pay attention to his adoring wife, and help around the house, says one more time that he may fail. Yes, it is a run-on sentence, but I do not care. I wonder if they sell tranquilizer guns on e-bay?

How a man with such a loving and supportive family, who did wonderfully in school before and is now on the Dean's list despite all his other responsibilities, who is funny and brilliant, can be so truly negative about himself is beyond me. Do I have to have a license for that type of gun? I have never understood that. I am not saying nice things just because I love him, he is very intelligent and "practically perfect in every way", to the point of actually annoying me at times just because he is so GOOD. I wonder if it will come with darts, or will I need to order them? He thinks I just say all these things because I love him, but they are true. Just ask his mom, we agree completely on this subject. I wonder if that gun will kick much.

Love,
Shawna

An Ideal Day

My friend Melissa sent this to me, and I thought it was very appropriate for this time of year. With school starting, and being a homeschool mom, I know that expectations can be high. I know that, at times, I let those expectations set the tone for my day. If we don't meet them then the whole day is rot. I need to prayerfully consider if those expectations are mine or the Lord's.

Love,
Shawna

An Ideal Day
Read Psalm 92:1-6

As we begin each day, we trust we'll still be around at the end of the day. What happens in between depends on how we start in the morning and how we end in the evening. Verses 1 and 2 describe an ideal day: "It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; to declare Your loving kindness in the morning, and Your faithfulness every night."

That's how we ought to live each day. When you wake up in the morning, remember His loving kindness. Don't wake up grouchy, saying, "Oh my, another day." Wake up saying, "Today the Lord loves me, and His loving kindness endures forever. God has my life in His hands. There's nothing to be afraid of."

During the day offer praise and thanksgiving. "It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High." Find every reason you can to praise Him--even for little things like parking places, phone calls that bring a blessing to you or perhaps news of a friend.

At the close of the day, remember God's faithfulness. In the morning we look forward to loving kindness. During the day we experience that loving kindness. And at the end of the day, we can look back and say, "God has been faithful." No matter how difficult this day may be for you, when you get to the end, you're going to be able to look back and say, "Great is Thy faithfulness."
* * *
Each day has its own set of burdens, blessings and challenges. How you begin and end a day determines what kind of day you will have. Begin your day with loving kindness. Praise God and thank Him during the day. In the evening, remember His faithfulness during the day. What a great recipe for living a day at a time!

Ladybug, Ladybug Fly Away Home...

We have had ladybug nature study this past week. It is nature study at it's best-we did not choose it, it just happened. I had noticed a large number or ladybug larva around Pumpkin's water bowl and was eager to share that with the girls. We took a couple of pictures. When I was at a friend's house this weekend I noticed that her door was hosting a large number of larva. Upon closer examination I found pupa. When I was back home I looked around the brick near where ours were and sure enough, we had pupa also.

We were able to identify our ladybugs as the Asian Ladybeetle or Harmonia axyridis. These are the ladybugs that are prolific in this area in the fall when they are invading homes in search of a place to overwinter. Grace, Bitsy, and I were outside on Monday and came across another ladybeetle. We were quite excited as it was different from the often seen Asian variety. It was a beautiful black beetle with two red spots. We believe it was a Korean variety of ladybug known as Chilocorus kuwanae.

Grace pulled out her nature sketch book with no parental prompting and sketched the ladybug lifecycle (we also printed out a lifecycle chart and cut and pasted it in.) We had fun identifying our beetles and learning about them. The best type of learning is spontaneous learning. Seatwork may be a necessity of life, but spontaneous learning is a necessity to nurture a love of learning.

Love,
Shawna

Love or Fear

Grace asked an interesting question last night. We just got her new computer game, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, in the mail on Saturday and she has been glued to the screen. She was especially interested in the level that deals with Medieval England. Barry is taking a college course in that subject and she noticed that it was the same subject as his course. She has been peppering us with questions ever since. Along the same lines (kind of-if you stretch a little) we had recently bought the special edition Disney Robin Hood so that just fueled the fire. She has been asking all about Prince John and King Richard the Lion-Hearted.

She remarked that King Richard seemed to be well loved and Prince John much hated. She then went on to ask about taxing in that time period and what it went toward. Finally she asked if it were better for a king to be loved or feared. (her words) I asked her what she thought because I really was interested in her take on this. She said that she thought it would be better for a king to be well loved because his subjects would want to serve him if he were a good king. She also thought that a feared king could not really trust his servants because they would not be loyal to him. I told her I thought that was an excellent answer and that I agreed with her. I then sent her to ask Barry the same question. He agreed also. It has been touching to see her sit and talk to her Daddy about a common interest.

She has also been listening to books on tape that, while they are fictional books about animals, evoke that time period. The Redwall series by Brian Jacques. I have actually read several of the books and think that are a wonderful read. The can be quite long for young readers, so she really has to listen to them on tape. Quite a bit too long for a read aloud unless you want to devote several months to it. (Or perhaps you are a better aloud reader than I am.) I would think that it would probably be around a fifth grade reading level. You should check them out!

Love,
Shawna

Math

Here is a subject I never, ever, ever thought I would post about. Math! First, as many of you may know, I have to admit something. My name is Shawna and I am a list checking perfectionist. Before this year I had always viewed math as something to be dealt with, moving from lesson to lesson, just trying to finish the book in our allotted time. (List checking at its worst!) I have come to realize this year that mastery is more important than finishing the book. In the early years math builds upon itself so much that a bit of time taken off to make sure that multiplication is thoroughly learned will alleviate much heartache and headache in the future. Is this not one of the reasons I love the homeschool lifestyle is that it promotes mastery?

Each new year in the elementary grades (in most curriculum) starts back at an earlier point to review so that anything that was grazed over the year before will be brought up again. And while I always loathe to compare to public school did you realize that, according to statistics, most teachers teach about 75% of a text? Oh for a text that did not make me guilty by having more lessons and tests than there are in my 180 day school term! :)

I have been putting more emphasis on mastery with my eight-year-old by using speed drills. For her text work in math we use Abeka but there are sooo many problems that I choose work for her to do. If she has mastered her facts then why do endless repititions of a type of problem? If her facts are mastered then working a long division problem is not a matter of multiplication facts in reverse, it is a matter of knowing the correct steps that need to be worked to do this type of problem correctly. I would rather her do one problem perfectly correct and check it herself than to do many of said problem and be tired and sloppy with her math before the end.

I read something earlier this year, I am sorry I do not remember what it was, but it was a lightbulb moment for me. It was describing math in a one room schoolhouse. The children did work on the board with a teacher, they had oral drills, even speed drills as a competition, and they had a "hard problem" to work on their slate. One that challenged them and made them think. They had their facts down, they then put them to use. That is more of what I want in our math.

"The chief value of arithmetic, like that of the higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords to the reasoning powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual truthfulness it engenders. There is no one subject in which good teaching effects more, as there is none in which slovenly teaching has more mischievous results." Vol 1 p254 Charlotte Mason

When I read this I also think about what I see happening in our society as a whole. Less emphasis on thought and more on feeling. How important it is to teach our children to think and reason!

Book Review~Science and Art

I have two new children's books to recommend. Both are good stories but the main reason I enjoyed them are the illustrations. A picture book's illustrations can make it or break it and these certainly bring the books to a higher level! These will definitely be on my "Books to Read for ..." list. I keep a binder for Science and History ideas and keep book lists as I come across quality children's books.

The first is Water Dance by Thomas Locker. Mr. Locker's oil on canvas illustrations are the basis for this book. Scientific information was written by Candace Christiansen. This is an interesting science based book that follows the water cycle with beautiful land and seascape paintings. This would be a great extra when your child is studying water or atmosphere. While the text is brief in the body of the book, there is a four page section in the back that shows each illustration in miniature with a more detailed discussion on that part of the water cycle so it could be used for primary and elementary school ages. If you have your older child read it to your younger I think they would enjoy the book also.

My next find is going to be a favorite because it features the watercolors of Edgar Degas (1834-1917). I Dreamed I was a Ballerina is a brief story of Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org with Degas's paintings as illustrations. While the text is again brief in this book, there are short biographies of Degas and Pavlova at the end of the book. This book tells the story of Anna's first visit to the ballet to see Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty and how it inspired her to become a ballerina. Pavlova came from a very poor family but overcame various hardships to become a world renowned ballerina. The ballet dancers of the Paris Opera were a favorite subject of Degas, which inspired him to create works in watercolor, drawings, pastels, sculpture and even photographs. I am thankful he was so inspired, as his Paris Opera works are among my favorite art. So, here is an assignment for you! Check out this book from FSPL, along with Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. Read the lovely little story to your children and then allow them to contemplate the illustrations while listening to Tchaikivsky. I never become tired of art or music. They both continue to show a new side every time you view or listen.

Love,
Shawna

If You Give a Mom a Muffin...

This is funny~and sadly too close to the truth. Just had to share it! (This is why I need to get back to flying @ flylady.net)

Love,
Shawna

If you give a mom a muffin,

She'll want a cup of coffee to go with it.

She'll pour herself some.

Her three-year-old will spill the coffee.

She'll wipe it up.

Wiping the floor, she'll find dirty socks.

She'll remember she has to do laundry.

When she puts the laundry in the washer,she'll trip over boots and bump into the freezer.

Bumping into the freezer will remind hershe has to plan for supper.

She will get out a pound of hamburger.

She'll look for her cookbook("101 Things To Do With a Pound of Hamburger" ).

The cookbook is setting under a pile of mail.

She will see the phone bill, which is due tomorrow.

She will look for her checkbook.

The check book is in her pursethat is being dumped out by her two-year-old.

She'll smell something funny.

She'll change the two-year-old's diaper.

While she is changing the diaper, the phone will ring.

Her five-year-old will answer and hang up.

She'll remember she wants to phone a friend for coffee.

Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.

And chances are... If she has a cup of coffee,Her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

~author unknown

A Good Book

I love a good book, it does not matter if it is a children's book or adult, fiction, non-fiction, whatever! We recently checked out two storybooks from the library that I really liked. Ones that make you realize how important it is to make memories with your children.

First is What Comes in Spring by Barbara Savadge Horton. This was a sweet book with hazy watercolor illustrations. (I love watercolor! To me it is how things look in my mind-I don't remember with sharp vivid details, I remember in soft vignettes of watercolor.) A little girl askes her mother about the seasons and the mother, in the telling, also tells the story of how she met her father, their wedding and her birth. My girls love to hear Mine and Barry's love story. They ask for it to be told. They love to look at our wedding pictures. Even if your love story isn't perfect, tell it to your children. Show them how you cherish the love you have with your spouse!!!

Another good one is Making Memories by Janette Oke. This book is truly a work of art. Oke's paintings make lovely illustrations. In this a grandfather and grandson learn how to "make memories". What a great time to share with your child memories from your childhood...and talk about things that are special to her!

Love,

Shawna

Spring is in the Air

I was thinking about this post and remembered Susan's comment about looking forward to my girly things I would post. You will get a laugh out of this!

Spring is in the air! How do I know? Is it the buzz of bees and the smell of flowers? Is it the spring breeze and the sound of that bird outside my bedroom window that sings all night? (Someone leave me a comment and let me know what birds sing at night!!) Well, it is all of that and...roadkill. Have you ever noticed how spring brings out the animals? The are starting to get out and around---probably hunting and being frisky! With all that night roaming comes increased roadkill. So, being a homeschool mom (actually it is just my nature-I have always been like this!) I ask my kids--what animal is that? We have seen beavers, opossum, raccoons, coyotes and most lately a bobcat!

How shocked the girls were to see that. It made us a little sad to see such a beautiful animal like that. Sadness aside we slow down every time we drive past there and look at it as close as we can. "How big do you think it is? Look at its tail! Isn't the fur pretty!" Except in a zoo we would not see such a cat up close. We had to look it up when we got home and find out what type of cat it was "for sure". Barry actually had to drive Grace back down to check it out with the book!

The raccoon had to be the funniest of late though. We drive by it almost daily and the girls noticed it was "growing". So Grace, being Grace, wanted to know why the dead raccoon was growing. We had a discussion about decomposition and gases and how eventually he would start to "deflate". Well, Wednesday he was deflated and she yelled, "Look mom, the raccoon popped!" It was a real Grace moment.

Live and laugh!

Love,

Shawna