Book Review – Saint Clare, Beyond the Legend, by Marco Bartoli

I expected this book to be a biography of Saint Clare of Assisi, but it was more an account of what has already been written about Clare, and how this information was come by, as well as a discussion about how accurate (or inaccurate) the information we have about Clare may be.

Nevertheless, though it wasn’t what I expected, it did hold my attention and I learned quite a bit – about Clare and her beliefs, as well as about the times in which she lived. 

Clare’s story is entwined in the story of Saint Francis of Assisi, and so I also learned a bit about Francis.  Many of us know about Francis, the lover of nature and animals, but he was apparently even more so a lover of lepers and the extremely poor.  Clare followed in his spiritual footsteps, loving poverty to the extent of owning absolutely nothing of her own.  Born into a wealthy and noble family, through her love of God she developed a social conscience that would not allow her to live in luxury while knowing there were many at that time in Italy who were the poorest of the poor.

The fact that we have any account of Clare, a woman living as a religious in the 13th century, is amazing.  Her order of nuns were a silent order (except in cases of necessity) and Marco Bartoli makes a point of the fact that despite being cloistered and silent, Clare’s life of holiness spoke out loudly in a time when women were hardly considered prominent members of society or worth listening to.  In other words, Clare definitely made an impression.

I came away from this book wanting to know more about St. Clare, and will be looking for an actual biography about her.  It’s possible that we may never know the complete story of St. Clare of Assisi since she did live in the middle ages, but I feel she is a great example for Christians of any age or time.

Thank you to the Catholic Company for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

Farm Yard and Dino Land Play Sets

I’ve been on a mission lately to increase M’s interest in non-battery-operated toys.  It’s been a tough job.  I’m not sure how it happened that he became so addicted to toys that “do something”, I only know that it was a turn for the worse.  After receiving several hand-me-down toys from cousins in January, all of which are battery operated, he just hasn’t been as interested in expending any energy or imagination when playing.  He will push buttons and watch toys light up, make sounds, and move, and somehow being entertained has become more pleasant than actually playing.

I could go on and on about this topic, but I will save it for another post, another time.

In an effort to engage his imagination and creativity in play again, I (very)  quickly put together some play sets for him using fabric I’ve had lying around in my sewing cart for ages. 

I’ve mentioned in other posts that I’ve been trying to have something interesting waiting for him when he wakes in the mornings so I don’t have to hear any whining before my first cup of coffee. ;)  Often, it’s something like playdough or a new sensory bin, but one evening I made a farm playland for him and had it ready the following morning.  I included his farm animals and barn (Target) and some Duplo blocks.

It started off like this:

Then became this:

And eventually ended up like this: He had gotten out more blocks, a zoo, a truck, and some books and was sitting in the middle of his farm, reading books to a little plastic duck.  Hello, imagination! :)  And I realized something a bit bigger might be better.  So, off we went to the fabric store.

I purchased a yard of green fleece, and put it on the floor when we got home.  He spent 45 minutes, I kid you not, mowing the green fleece grass with a little toy tractor.

I cut a larger pond out of some blue fabric from my stash, and we used the other pieces I’d had for the smaller version to make more hills ( by putting fabric over an upside down bowl, or over large blocks), and a chicken yard.   

I wish I had a better picture than this… in fact I think M may have taken this picture: but you get the idea.  He loves his new farm yard! 

I should mention that none of the fabric has been hemmed or sewn together.  I simply grabbed what I wanted and cut it to roughly the size and shape I needed for a pond or hill or dirt field.  I’m not worried about pieces unraveling - fleece doesn’t unravel, and the other pieces were just leftover scraps from old projects.  This way he can rearrange the layout of his farm if he wants to.

This was such an enormous success that the following week I used the same green fleece, added some new pieces, and made a dino land for him:

There’s a cave (a small crate from Dollar Tree turned on its side with brown fabric on the floor and covered with some other green fleece):

And a volcano (note the dino skeleton at the base of the mountain, hee hee): 

This was a huge success too, and M had a lot of fun playing with it.  It was definitely worth the 15 minutes it took me to cut fabric and put it all together for him. 

I won’t say it cured him of his preference for toys that “do something”, but it did help him see how much fun a little imagination can be!  Baby steps, right? ;)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Happy Memorial Day

I hope everyone is having a very pleasant Memorial Day!

I’ve been missing around here lately, but everything is fine.  Life has just been… happening… and I haven’t been able to find a spare minute to put two thoughts together much less blog about them.  Thank you to those of you who have emailed with concerns, you all mean so much to me. :)

No Art Box today (or last week – oops!), but I do have some fun posts scheduled for the coming days, so stay tuned!

Have a beautiful day! :)

eBook Review – Finding Educational Activities in the Most Unexpected Places by Angie Kauffman

Do you know Angie Kauffman?  She is the founder of no less than 3 blogs: Many Little Blessings, The Homeschool Classroom, and Catholic Mothers Online; as well as the co-founder of Homeschool Lifestyle Media.  I really enjoy reading her blogs; she’s a homeschool mama and has tons of inspiring ideas.

She recently published an e-book titled Finding Educational Activities in the Most Unexpected Places.  She was kind enough to send me a free copy to review, and I loved it!

I’ve gathered a lot of great (and simple) ideas from this book that I hope to use with M in the weeks to come.  Three activities in particular that grabbed my attention, and that I know M will enjoy are an egg-carton train craft, a cardboard tube rocket ship craft, and a playhouse for small dolls (or action figures as the case may be… and is in this house) made from an old box.

There were many ideas that I know I’ve seen around the internet in one form or another, but it’s so great to have them all in one easy-to-refer-to spot, and there were many, many ideas that I haven’t come across anywhere else. 

This is really a fabulous resource for families with small children.  Your children will be having fun and you’ll know they are developing much needed skills.  The activities described in this book help develop fine and gross motor skills, hand-eye coordination, social interactions, daily living skills, cognitive skills, spatial awareness, and imagination to name a few.

If you order your copy of this book before May 31st you can get a discount of 20% by using code TNS20!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – Bible Jumble for Kids by Christopher D. Hudson

I recently received this little game book from Tyndale House Publishers.  It is full of jumble puzzles based on the Bible.  I think this would be a great companion to any home Bible lessons you may do with your children (it would be perfect for ages 8 to 12).  It’s sure to be a lot of fun, and it helps reinforce what they’ve already learned.   What a wonderful way to spend time together as a family!

Most of the puzzles were easy for me, but I still got a lot of enjoyment from them. :) 

Included in the book are the following:

• Traditional Jumbles
• Mystery Person Jumbles
• Jumble Detective
• Jumble Criss-Cross
• Find the Jumbles
• Bible Passage Jumbles

There are a total of 200 jumbles in the book.

Thank you to Tyndale House Publishing for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

Exciting Things Ahead

Most likely you have heard of CSN Stores.  They have thousands of items to choose from, in over 200 websites,and all are very reasonably priced!   Check out this bathroom vanity and all the great furniture and toys they have!

I’m going to be reviewing some items for CSN, and it has literally taken me days to browse and make my choices.  What a chore, huh? ;)

Stay tuned, there are going to be some very exciting things ahead!

Updated Build-A-Letter Templates

My old templates for this activity have bugged me since I made them.  There are missing lines and they just didn’t look as nice as I wanted them to.  Of course I made them in a hurry, finishing them in the middle of the night if I remember correctly… so maybe that had something to do with it. 

Anyway, since I’m in the middle of transferring all my printables from Google Docs to Scribd, I thought I’d update these little guys in the process.

Go here to see the new version.  The old version is still out there, but in my opinion the new ones are much better.  I did forget about “W” (how can I forget a letter?  Is this a sign I should not homeschool?!), so if you use these, you’ll have to print 2 “M”s. :)  I didn’t realize this until I’d already turned it into a .pdf file and deleted the original.

*Never delete your original document.*

I’m working on some lowercase letter templates too and will have them posted as soon as they are done.  Making these is trickier than you’d think!

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – 5/17/10

     In the Art Box last week:  new watercolor paints, tempera paints, bug stamps, glue, paper, a handful of collage materials, scrapbook scissors, paintbrushes, sparkly gel pens

We bought some new Crayola watercolor paints over the weekend, and M is in love with them.  They are so bright and vivid… I was sure we’d tried Crayola in the past and they weren’t that much better than the Roseart ones we’ve been using.  I don’t know – maybe they changed up their recipe or something, because these are really beautiful watercolors!  It’s all he wanted to do all week (art-wise).

Here’s a bit of what he did…

Trying them out for the first time:

Three of the many paintings he made with these:

Do you see the “spider” in the last one??  :)

Other than watercolor painting he didn’t do much.  He cut some paper and made me a little stamped card (he called it a card):

And he stuck a googley eye onto his forehead and walked around one evening like this:Swearing, the entire time, that he could actually see us. ;)

Have some children’s art you’d like to show off?  Link it up below (remember to link back here in your blog post)!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science – Sink or Float & Magnetic or Non-Magnetic

I’ve been trying to have a morning activity ready for M when he wakes each day.  If I don’t he wanders around whining “what can I dooooo???”, and at that time of day it can be a very dangerous thing to whine anywhere near Mama.

So one day this past week I set this out for him:

It’s a basic sink or float activity, and he had to guess what each object would do before he placed it in the water.  He was right about 95% of the time. 

Then, I told him some of the items were magnetic and that he could find them by using his little fishing pole (from our homemade ABC fishing game).  He LOVED this and spent a good 25 minutes fishing things out and then putting them back in to fish out again. :) 

This idea came from this post at The Wonder Years.

Next time we do this (and I’m sure we will be doing this again), we’ll do some sort of graphing activity… floats/magnetic, floats/non-magnetic, sinks/magnetic, sinks/non-magnetic… is what I’m imagining. 

This time he just sorted them into a pile of magnetic things and left the non-magnetic things in the water.

Check out Science Sunday for more kids’ science!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week – 5/15/10

Our top two favorites this week…

Little Bear’s Visit, by Else Minarik:I just can’t say enough good things about these Little Bear books – they are even better than I remember from when I was a child!  In this one Little Bear visits Grandfather Bear and Grandmother Bear, and gets a story from each one.  One story is about when Mother Bear was little and made friends with a little robin.  The other story is about a gremlin who has magic shoes. :)  M asks for this every day at least once.  It’s quite long – 4 chapters – and he sits for the entire thing, even the 2 pages where there are no pictures! 

His other favorite this week was Big Brown Bear’s Up and Down Day, by David McPhail(thanks, Kim!) : This is a cute story about a rat trying to get Big Brown Bear to give up one of his slippers so he can use it for a bed.  But M loves this book mainly because there is a little toy car in it that winds up and goes, and the rat gets to drive it at the end. :)   

This is being linked to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, and Feed Me Books Friday.  Check out both of these great sites for more book recommendations!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up – 5/14/10

M is 3.5 years old

We had a fun week, with no particular theme.  I am trying to have 1 to 2 weeks of theme-based activities, followed by at least 1 week of non-themed activities while I prepare for the next theme.  I’m hoping to get in a bug unit, then we will be DONE.  The plan is to enjoy a nice long break, get some much-needed things done around the house and just spend time having fun as a family.  :)

We started our week with a scavenger hunt.   This was so much fun.  M and his cousin, S, had a blast with this.  In fact, we had to do the whole thing again one evening with Daddy. :)  I created a chart for the kids, with pictures of 12 things for them to find in our backyard.  They took their little charts, a couple of crayons, and some plastic containers outside and began hunting:

My niece was the first to find everything pictured, and was quite proud of herself:

A close up of her treasures, which she insisted on bringing home with her (much to my brother’s delight, heh):I uploaded our scavenger hunt chart and you can find it here, if you think you’d like to use the same one.  It was a big hit!

The weather was awful, so we did a lot of indoor activities the rest of the week…

Fine Motor Skills:
A little fishing game where you try to catch the fish as they go in a circle and open and close their mouths:   
M’s Lite Brite made its way onto his shelves, and he really had fun with it – all closed up in his room with the shades drawn. :)
His little wooden dress-the-bear puzzle was out for him also; he played with it once and never bothered with it again:
Literacy Skills:
I made a little name train for M, and he connected the train cars in order to spell his name.  I used velcro dots so they could stick to each other:
He did his Bob the Builder Name puzzles (For these I use large flat marbles and write the letters on them with a sharpie):
Colors / Sorting:
We’ve had this file folder game forever, and M always enjoys it.  I used Jolanthe’s color cards, and created pockets with the color name cards.  M goes through the stack and places each picture in the correct pocket.  He just loves pockets. :)
Math Skills:
I found these at a thrift store and at first glance I thought they were Cuisenaire rods.  However, once I got them home and took a look at them… well, I’m not sure what they are or what to do with them.  Each single block unit is 1/2 inch.  The rods go from 1 unit up to 12 units, and apparently we don’t have a full set.  There’s only 2 8-unit rods, and only 1 10-unit rod.  Sigh.  Any ideas how we can use these?  Or, does anyone know what they are?  They are not the traditional Cuisenaire rod colors either.  I let M just play with them and explore them the first time I set them out.  I showed him how to create some designs, like a house and a stair (the stair was useful for showing the relation between the rods from shortest to longest).
I hope everyone had great weeks!  I’m linking this up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up.  Be sure to go check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – Hunter’s Moon

To be honest, I had some difficulty really getting into this book.  The beginning is set against a very promising backdrop - a grandfather dying and a family with too many secrets reuniting at the old family home as he passes away.  However, it's pretty slow-moving through the entire first half of the book, and I was often left wondering where, if anywhere, the story was going.

It seemed to me that the author tried to set up too many mysteries among the family members, without bringing half of them to any sort of resolution.  

The last few chapters were satisfyingly action-packed and I couldn't turn the pages quickly enough, but truthfully getting there was painful and there were several times I was tempted to not bother finishing it at all.  I have read my share of complicated and detailed novels that take some time to get into, but are well worth the wait; unfortunately I can't include Hunter's Moon in that group.   

Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

Watercolor Painting with Markers

M has been doing this forever and somehow I’ve never posted about it.  This was something he discovered completely on his own! 

We had a set of 6 chunky markers and he left them out for several days without their lids on.  Of course they were completely dried out by the time we realized it.   This happened about a year ago, and he still has, and uses,  the same markers!  His easel has a spot for a cup of water (for watercolor painting obviously), and one day he filled it up with water, dipped his dried markers in the water, and began drawing with them like nothing had happened.  

I think I’ve read somewhere that you can use dried markers this way, but I have no idea how M knew it!  He has made some really neat artwork in this way… kind of like regular marker drawing with a bit of watercolor painting here and there.  Again, he’s been doing this for the past year and the markers are still working great (as long as they are wet).

Want to see a little demonstration?  :)

Dip the dried up marker into the water:
Color on your paper:
And voila!  Beautiful artwork:
So, put those old markers to good use! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)