Terribly Interesting

I love how we stand outside of church on Palm Sunday and all enter together waving our palm branches. The physical picture of the act is rich with meaning. I thought this was such a great follow up to share with my six year old. I always enjoy how R.C weaves words to help bring understanding to such a powerful topic.  This sweet little book about the donkey spoke even to me. It speaks to the attitude of servanthood that we carry. Even though we are allowed to carry such a great thing, such as the gift of Christ in us, we are to do so with great humility. Carrying a great thing does not make us great, it should humble us to our core. This is an excellent read. I am also taking a class by R.C. Sproul called Poets, Prophets, and Wisdom. It is excellent. I always enjoy his resources. Download the ebook or pick up your copy. This book was graciously provided by Ligonier for review.

My dear friend Nicole lent me this book that her aunt wrote about raising daughters. I just love the title, Help Wanted. Girl, do I ever want help. This book is different from most every other parenting book I have read. The author is a Christian, but this isn't really a "follow these biblical principles" kind of book. It's practical, every day advice that is periodically infused with the author's faith. I enjoyed reading it. As you all know, that is hard to say about a lot of parenting books. It's relaxed, conversational style is easy to sink into. Mostly, it reminds us to relax. We put all this pressure to perform a certain way and God has given us each a unique journey to follow. We each must have grace and give grace for our girls and other moms. I liked the viewpoint because it reminded me to chill out and just enjoy my girls. Love does amazing things in the life of a child. I had recently been reading in Man's Search For Meaning about ...

Y'all, my eldest daughter and I just read Sarah Whitcher's Story in homeschool. I cried at the end of it. Really. I know it's a read aloud for second graders, but I loved the story. This little girl was lost in the wilderness for 4 days and the search party couldn't find her. Her mom and dad prayed and prayed. God answered by giving a man from miles away that had never met her a dream about where to find her. He had never been to the area before, but was able to follow the landmarks of the dream. He found her where she had been sleeping with a bear that was guarding her as though it were her cub. By all accounts the story was true. What I learned was that God is faithful and He goes out of His way to let His children know the HE hears them. He hears us.

What about Heaven is a sweet little book written by Kathleen Bostram and illustrated by Elana Kucharik, illustrator of Care Bears. The author gives a simple directive to how we get to heaven and what we will be doing when we arrive there. This is a cute first book to begin leading your children to the only way to heaven, Jesus Christ. As soon as I got this book out of the package from the publisher, my five year old ran off with it. She had read it several times by the time I found her and had her read it to me. She thought the drawings were adorable and liked the rhyming text. I agreed with her. It is a great addition to any pre-school library. 

I stumbled across this album somehow and it quickly escalated to one of my very favorites. To my knowledge, no one has combined scripture and gorgeous lullaby music before this group. They have brought this project together masterfully. To be completely candid, I abhor most all music geared for children. It's whiny, incessantly peppy, and poorly made. I can make it through one or two songs and then, I need some music therapy. This is completely different. Each night we signal the transition to bed time with soft music. We listen to classical, to Jewel's lullaby cd, etc. I have been long searching for music that would be soothing and sing scripture over them. The artists who put this album together have written hundreds of songs for people like Trace Adkins, Marc Broussard, Francesca Batistelli, Mandisa, Clay Walker, Brandon Heath, and many more. I think the genius here is undeniable. My husband and I love it just as much as our girls do. We have both volumes. You can...

People are always asking me how I taught Laomai to read so well so early. Truth is, I am not completely sure. Let me just tell you that I found this idea completely daunting. How was I ever going to teach another human being to read? Truthfully, I asked God to teach her because I had no idea what I was doing. I taught her the letters of the alphabet when she was one and a half. From there, we started working on phonics. She was reading small words by two and a half. We would look at hundreds of flash cards together and read book after book each day. We went through Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. One of the things we did with learning the phonics properly was to do them with sidewalk chalk. Three days a week, we would spend an hour just playing and talking about the sounds letters and letter grouping made. We would write simple words and draw pictures. The secret here was to make it fun and never exasperate or bore her. She also did the phonics program on starfall...

We don't buy a lot of mainstream children's literature because we don't find it to be God honoring and it dumbs down things to bright children. Several of the books we have been given have met their demise in the trash can. We do love Charlie though. Laomai has been asking me to blog about him. If you know anything about Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, you know Charlie is a character. He has more personality than a herd of other dogs. In this book you can follow him all over the ranch and with his friend Suzi. It is neat for children to see what all goes on at a ranch. It's a great book to help get children interested in animals. I asked Laomai why she liked it and she said because Charlie is so very cute. He thinks he is fast but he isn't. He thinks he does a lot but he doesn't. They still love him."  Sounds good to me. A portion of all purchases made through this Amazon link support Gomer's House.

This is a beautiful book about love, hospitality, and finding joy even when life isn't what you thought it would be. We got into the home of Willie Juan and Ana. The warm smells of sopapilla eminates from the kitchen and there are children strone all about waiting to eat even though the couple has no children of their own. With full bellies of warm food, the children are told how they are in the center of God's love. As I was reading this book, it took me back to a time of watching Lavar Burton on Reading Rainbow. It gave me that warm feeling of delighting in a good story. The story reminded me of something my grandmother might have taught me over a warm treat in her kitchen. The illustrations were rich and different from many of the children's books we see today. Besides all of these wonderful attributes, "smack dab" is fun to say and I loved reading it to my daughters. You can read this flip book full screen at ThomasNelson.com . Full Screen Flipbook This boo...

We love to do art around the Cherry house. Why should we do worksheets when we could color, paint, or sidewalk chalk it? That's my theory. I saw this really fun idea on a Bible memory website for children. I was really excited about it because I am nerdy and I love school supplies. It truly is fun. We memorize a new scripture every two weeks. Every day we try to artistically recreate it in some way. The great thing is that I learn and have as much fun as she does. That is the secret to great homeschool. Enjoy yourself thoroughly.  On the inside of the binder you use the plastic pouches to hold your memory verses. Then you can flip through them like flash cards. I either do a search for the particular verse as a color sheet or I make my own. The word of God is rich and I have been deeply blessed to see my daughter learn so many verse using this method. Turn everything into a song and paint it. Then pray that the Holy Spirit plants it deeply into your children's heart. Create. ...

My name is Stephanie and I have a strong-willed child. There are days that I fail miserably at parenting this child, but I have prayed about it unwaveringly and God has pointed out some things to me. I thought that I might share them with you in case you may be sitting at your house overdosing on chocolate and weeping over your computer because you lost another battle. One day during my prayer time, God asked me a question. He asked, "Who is your favorite character in Pride and Prejudice?" I didn't even have time to think that it was an odd question before I mentally cooed, "Elizabeth Bennett!" The Lord went on to ask me what kind of character traits she displayed. Fortitude. Unwavering tenacity. A complete lack of care for others imposed opinions of her. Now, mathletes, are you adding this up? As I sat in discussion with the Lord, I realized something very profound. Most every character I loved in literature and in Scripture displayed the trained characteristi...