(You can download this movie for FREE on Itunes. )

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.

For the past few weeks the girls have been keeping a dialogue journal, a little pocket notebook to record the spoken words of the siblings, friends, and strangers. We’ve called it “Dialogue Detectives” (an idea from Julie Bogart, see note at the end of the post). The purpose of the assignment is to recognize patterns, word choices, and inflections that make a two year old sound like a real two year old and a grandmother sound like a grandmother. We’ve talked about writing dialogue in stories that really sounds true to the age and background of the characters they create. We’ve looked at examples in the books we’re reading as family.

On friday we combined the Story Squares and the research they’ve done on dialogue and asked them to freewrite for fifteen minutes, telling most of their story through dialogue.  We decided they should stick with a two year old as the main character in their dialogue since their best research has been with their own sister.

Mookie, the 11 year old, wrote a story about a princess and a castle (she didn’t actually draw the squares because as we were getting them out she said, “Oh, I have an idea” and I let her go with her inspiration instead of forcing the squares since they were only there for inspiration. Though her story ended up using several of the squares since she already had them in her head.)

Here’s an excerpt from her writing:

Sophie the maid was always up and about first in the castle each peaceful morning.  These days they weren’t too peaceful.
“Now if I can only brew the tea without the Princess waking up, ” she said to herself. As she pulled over a chair so that she could stand on it to reach the tea cupboard, she heard, “Need to go pooootty!” from upstairs.

“Ughhh,” Sophie said in disgust.  She walked down the flight of stairs that led to the Princess Victoria’s room.

“Need to go pooootty!” Victoria shouted again, this time more urgently.

“I’m coming, ” Sophie shouted back.

She reached the princess’ room and took her to the bathroom.  Once Victoria was seated, Sophie asked, “Why did you have to wake up already?”

“I don’t know,” answered the Princess, innocently.  ”I’m dooo-ooone.”

Jellybean, age 9, drew the following squares.  A Viking, Mystery Person, Hut, Forest, and Crown.

I think she got a little distracted by the story  brewing from the squares to remember to include much dialogue, but it’s still fun to see how a prompt can get a story started.

Once upon a time there was nothing.  There was absolutely nothing.  But then, as we all know, God created the world and the real adventure began.  Now, I know I’m going forward a little, well, a very long time, I should say. When there were forests everywhere and there was many, many peasants in the land.  My story is about a viking who went to the future, to medieval times, when there were knights and castles, dragons and two year olds.

My story begins on a bright summer day at a peasant’s house when a little girl named Evie and her little sister Sylvia were playing outside. Suddenly…

“Girls! Girls! Girls! Come quickly! Go inside!”

“Why, Why, why? Why must we Papa?” cried little Sylvia.

“Because there is to be a blizzard!”

This week the girls are observing and recording the dialogue of a different person in the family.  (This can be dangerous, mamas, your own dialogue might show up in a story!  Mookie said the Queen in her story would be saying, “Why are you bothering me? I didn’t fall asleep until five in the morning!” when the Princess Victoria went up to see her.  I can’t imagine where she gets these ideas.)

Other Activities with Dialogue:

• After your child has recorded several days worth of dialogue have her write her observations, such as “run-on sentences, words that aren’t pronounced correctly” etc, on a notebooking page so that she can refer back to it for future assignments.
• Talk about the purpose of dialogue in a story, such as: it moves the plot along, it develops character, it helps you believe the story really happened.*  Ask your children to find examples of dialogue in their current chapter books and decide what purpose the dialogue fills from the list above.
• Use story squares (two squares with characters), a painting or picture and ask them to create dialogue for the people in the picture. For an extra challenge, ask them to choose one of the purposes from the above list and show it through the dialogue.
• Talk about dialogue as you read aloud together.  Point out bad dialogue and ask why it’s bad.  Does it move the story along, does it sound believable to the age and background of the character?

*This list is taken from Julie Bogart’s Grammar and Literature Program, called The Arrow, in the unit on Half Magic.

The day of the birthday party arrived and two anxious girls asked me, “Did you find the woooden blocks so we can make our gift?”

“No I didn’t, but I have another idea.”

Disappointed that they couldn’t duplicate the story blocks that we’d made last year for our writing prompts, they took a little while to warm to my idea.

But eventually it caught on and they headed off to the party with a unique gift.

A few days later they followed it up with a similar, but customized, gift for their Dad.

We decided to call the gift Story Squares:

Using my paper cutter, I cut 1.5 inch squares from one full sheet of watercolor paper.

With a sharpie they drew characters, props, and places.

Then they watercolored the pictures.

With the fine point sharpie, they added a one or two word description on their picture in small print.  (If you have young ones helping you with the project, you can do the labeling to help clarify the picture for others.)

After decorating a recycled box with a title,
we put these these directions inside:

Story Game: The first participant takes a square (without looking to see what it is). He/she begins the story, including the character, prop, or setting from their square in the story. The story continues through the circle of players, each participant using the picture they draw to carry the story along. Used squares remain in a pile and participants take fresh squares to continue another round.

Story Prompts for Writing: Draw three or more cards and begin writing a story, don’t stop for correct grammar or to get the right word, just write!

At the birthday party, the newly turned 12 year old opened the Story Squares first.  Then she opened all of her other gifts and when she was finally done she picked up the Story Squares and said, “Can we try these?”.

So we had the chance to see our idea played out with a very large circle of girls. This kept them entertained for about thirty minutes, with several rounds as they mixed the cards and began again.  One aspect that makes this fun is to have elements and characters that wouldn’t normally be found in a story together. There were some very funny moments when snow men popped up in castles or trolls ended up on a viking ship.The only rule I would add for next time is to include at least four to five sentences per turn in order to challenge your players past a dry and less imaginative, “And then the knight came”.

For their Dad’s birthday we brought our squares to our favorite pancake house and dove into stories of Yoda, Vikings, and Wizards (I said it was customized for their Dad right!)

Today the girls used the story squares for their friday freewrite and I’ll share a bit of that with you next time.

My ideas are brewing with variations on the Story Squares:

• Substitute a line of dialogue  instead of  a picture for some of the squares.
• Play the story game “Fortunately, Unfortunately” with the squares.  An example: The first person draws a princess and says, “Fortunately, the princess was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom”.  The next person draws an invisibility cloak, “Unfortunately, an evil wizard was secretly following her that day.” And the story continues by alternating “Fortunately” and “Unfortunately” on each turn.
• Mark the backs of the cards with P, C, and S (plot, setting and character) or color-code them and store them in separate groups for writing prompts.
• Creating theme sets such as “historical”, “fairy tale”, “favorite book characters”, based on school projects to extend our learning and narration.
• Mod Podge the squares to give then durability and a finished look.

Whether you make these for a gift or make them for your own family, I’d love to hear about it.

With all the talk of kids and early learning it’s a relief to find out, in my mid-thirties, that learning doesn’t end when we reach the end of school.  In fact, I would be willing to bet that I’ve learned more in my years out of school, than in my desk wearing knee high socks.

As an adult and homeschool mama, learning again through a child’s eyes, I’ve discovered, among many other things, that:

- I can paint

- I enjoy hiking in the woods

- I can be good at math

- I love learning about birds

- Great children’s book are still great when the reader is no longer a child

- And history is one of my favorite subjects (this one makes my husband particularly excited)

I hope my kids actually learn plenty during their school years, but I also hope they get these joyful moments of discovery for the rest of their lives.

I overheard this quote last night as my husband watched a documentary about the historian, David McCullough. He’s speaking about my epiphany with history (even if he didn’t know it at the time).

“History is not about dates, and quotes, and obscure provisos. History is about life, about change, about consequences, cause and effect. It’s about the mystery of human nature, the mystery of time. And it isn’t just about politics, and the military, and social issues, which is almost always the way it’s taught. It’s about music, and poetry, and drama, and science, and medicine, and money, and love.”

Our Soft Start planned for Wednesday, became a Non-Start that rolled over to our Official Start today!

We broke out the brownies and popcorn to celebrate the start and finish of Day 1!

After our slow, to stop, to slower start, I especially needed to mark our success with some chocolate.

I thought I’d give a brief view into what our first day looked like, particularly for those of you with multiple (and little) children. Our children are 11, 9, 6, and almost 3.

Many new homeschooling mama’s have asked me if I have our day scheduled by specific times.  For example, 8:30am-math, 9:15am-history.

I don’t organize our day that way and I never have.  I think there are too many variables to guarantee exact times and I would feel like I was behind before we even finished breakfast.

Instead I have a list of our subjects and assignments for the day and a general order and plan to accomplish them. It works for me and allows for flexibility.  If most of the assignments get done, even if I have to shift the order, it’s been a good day.

A Peek Into our Window on the First Day

(as I said we don’t schedule times, the times below are from looking back to the day that’s already happened)

Between 8 and 9-We all get up and I get a shower while the 9 and 11 year old get dressed and get started on their individual school work like math practice sheets and cursive.

9am-The kids eat eggs and grapefruit while I attempt to read the Bible and a book on art.  Squishy interrupts constantly and tells us long toddler versions of the Bible story so she’ll feel included in the conversation and I finally decided to postpone the art book until later.  Bible and breakfast are completed.

9:45ish-The kids go off to finish morning chores, such as brushing teeth, tidying their rooms, wiping off the kitchen table and sweeping the kitchen floor.  I grab yogurt and check my email.

10ish-Since the girls have already gotten some assignments done, I instruct them to go play with Squishy for 30 minutes while I help 6 year old Drummer boy clean out his school bin, do his handwriting, and read aloud for to me for 15 minutes.

Confession: the girls’ play gets very loud and completely distracting as they decide to play hide-and-go-seek throughout the house.  I confine their play to the back bedroom and things settle down.

Mid morning snack-We’re all at the table again and I finally get to read that art book from breakfast.

11:30ish-Instead of an hour of room-time for Squishy, I give her and her brother the privilege to watch a Scholastic Video and I work with the girls on their cursive (which is copying the first stanza of our hymn for this week) and introduce Simply Grammar to the 11 year old.

12ish-The girls finish their cursive and I head into the kitchen to make soup for lunch (we didn’t have anything quicker on hand).

12:30ish-We sit down for lunch and I eat my soup quickly so that I can try to read some of Little Lord Flauntleroy, our newest read-aloud, while everyone (meaning, Squishy) is occupied with food.

confession: Squishy interrupted every two minutes, exactly like Bible time that morning, so I finally gave up on reading.  I need to trouble shoot that problem and see if it can be rectified presently or if our longer reading times just need to happen during naptime for the greater peace of the reader and the listeners.

1:30ish-The kids have played a bit and Squishy is settled down for nap.  The three big kids sit down with me to do a history review which includes updating our timeline.

Confession: I had planned on doing this history review in the morning and starting a bit of our new history unit during this afternoon time.  The review was moved to this spot and the new history moved to the next day. The kids squabbled over who got to put which timeline pieces on and Mama started to get grumpy.

2ish-The boy plays on the computer in Microsoft Word while I do math with the girls.

2:30-The weather is sunny and actually warm, so I send the kids out to play and I make brownies and sit down to write part of a blog.

Confession: the blogging was a “yea, we made it” indulgence since I really had other things to do, but instead sat down to the computer and a spoonful of chocolate.

The end of Day 1 of our Winter/Spring Semester!

Do your days ever go just as you planned? Do you schedule specific times for school subjects? Your ideas and thoughts are always welcome!

I don’t know about you, but I can only describe December as a whirlwind month on a sugar high.  By the day after Christmas my brain turned itself off in an act of self-preservation in order to recharge from the planning involved in the previous month.

Planning school, planning advent, planning presents, planning a service project, planning food- What a relief to find a week of nothing to plan and no lists to make.  I put off anything related to planning (school, groceries, other life resposibilites) until the very last day or two of my husband’s generous vacation time.

And then when the planning brain did turn itself back on again, fully charged, my synapses and fingers were clicking on endless great ideas-a hymn study over at Practical Pages, Composer Studies from Harmony Arts Mom, music lessons for the kids from the husband, new science curriculum that hadn’t been cracked open this year, grammar for the 11 year old…

With the planning brain now on overload and as the cut-off to vacation life drew closer, I considered post-poning school an extra few days or maybe a week (this is a perk to homeschooling, I can add on extra days at the end of the year to make it right).  But experience has shown me that we didn’t need an extra week to flounder about (the kids) and feel grumpy about responsibilities(me).  It would take us down a road of fighting and general discontent which can aptly be titled- Chaos.

Thankfully, around monday evening I remembered The Soft Start.  I reminded myself that if I added all of my ideas into our first week back there might be a few of us no longer here by the end of the week (namely me, I’d probably be driving to the beach).

So I arranged my list by what I wanted to start with the first week, add in the second week, third, and by the end of the fourth all of my hopeful plans would be included in the schedule.

An example of what this might look like:

This Week:

• Bible
• Math
• Reading
• History

Next week

• All of the above plus,
• Science
• Hymn Study
• Art

Third week:

• Composer study
• Music Lessons with Dad
• Flesh out weekly schedule

You’re soft start might look slower or faster than the example above based on the ages and numbers of your children, family illness or other extenuating circumstances.

The Soft Start is about feeling successful, for everyone. The entire family gets to feel successful in getting back into a normal schedule, with a lighter load of academics in the first week, and ease into the realization that we actually like normal life quite a lot.

This Soft Start was actually even slower because, on monday, when we planned to take down the christmas decorations, we went out for hot chocolate instead and then took a nap.  Which means today we took down the decorations and brought order to the school room and peace to my mind.

You might not need a slow start.  If you have older children, who are quite capable of managing their work, and no little ones to call out for snacks and books and people to play with them, than I bet you can hit the week running.

But if you’re life this past week, minus school, has already felt full with working through sibling fights, accepting the fate of the grocery store, looking around at potential chores in every room, and finding one quiet moment to kiss your husband, and you’re wondering how in the world your going to start schooling multiple children in multiple grades, then consider the slow method.

And when you do start, start with the most important thing, the thing your kids(and you) need more than anything else, start with the Word of God, first thing in the morning, right at the table with your pancakes and cereal.  Then you’ve tasted success before you’ve even finished breakfast.

Your check list is a mile long, but a nagging thought sticks beneath the presents and the dinner preparations, “I wish we could focus more on Jesus as a family.”

It’s not too late.

Each year of parenting we seem to sort out a little further how we want to “do” Christmas with our family. Saving some old traditions, starting new ones, but most of all focusing on Christ through His word and serving others. Last year our family enjoyed an evening devotional time together during Advent.

Some things don’t seem to change.  My husband and I marvel at people who bought all of their presents eight months ago, have most of their Christmas dinner cooked and frozen ahead of time, and gets all of the kids to the right rehearsals on time.  But we scramble at the last minute for presents, wrap things at 2am on Christmas morning, and this year we’re beginning to think soup sounds like a fine Christmas dinner if it means we aren’t in the kitchen very long.

But what we didn’t procrastinate on was our family time in the evening.  All of last year’s presents are forgotten, stuffed in the back of closets or under a bed, but we all remember how much we enjoyed the six of us sitting down together to do our Advent Bible Study.  This year we started with Nancy Guthrie’s devotional book and it served us fine but it started to feel like it was just getting the job done, not leading our hearts to be challenged, encouraged, or filled with praise.

Last week Quiet Times for kids put their new Twelve Days of Christmas study on sale and I bought it, read through it, and a few nights ago we tried it.

Before this study, I only associated the twelve days of christmas with the song I sang every year in school and I knew nothing about the historic and church related celebration by the same name.  This study will not teach you anything about turtle doves or leaping lords. But in the five nights that we’ve done the study we’ve learned about the incarnation of Christ, the crown at the end of a long road of obedience, and the promise of never being seperating from our Lord. The poems are one of my favorite parts of the study, including John Piper and George MacDonald.

Each of the twelve days includes a quote, a Bible verse, a short devotion, a suggested celebration from the feasts of the historical twelve days of Christmas, and a heart-provoking poem.

Also included is an individual Bible study for the kids that correlates to the family devotion.

The study can be used at any time during the Christmas month or you can start it on the 25th, the traditional beginning of the Twelve days of Christmas, which means it’s not too late for you to begin your family devotion.  In fact, you can enjoy it more peacefully since the busy commercial season is almost at a close.

A note on recommended ages: Our kids are 11, 9, 6, and almost 3.  If my oldest was 7, I’d consider this study too advanced for our family.  But the 11 and 9 year old have been able to follow along fine, and the six year old tags along as usual, hearing important Biblical truths and he helps read the scriptures.

If you use the code below, you can purchase the study half-price, which is $7.00.

halfoff12days

You can read a review of some of their other studies here.

Praying for peace and hope that comes only through the knowledge of Jesus Christ, our savior and Lord.

For years I’ve been adding to our Christmas book library, and it all began with one book.  While pregnant with our first child, I worked as the special orders clerk for a bookstore.  As the only soon-to-be-mother employee, any free children’s books that arrived for the staff ended up on my desk.

Who knew that the first Christmas book, Mooseltoe, would be delighting our fourth child a decade later?

Our collection is a hodge podge of pure silliness, to beautifully illustrated, to heart inspiring.

A few years ago I began a tradition of wrapping one of our beloved books for each day of December first through the 25th.

Each day a child unwraps a book and we read it and count down one day closer to Christmas.

I’ve found it stays exciting if I’m always mixing in a few new treasures (old treasures, really, from the thrift store and used bookstore) with our old ones.

Here’s a list of our favorites (in no particular order of most loved):

Picture Books

• Mooseltoe by Margie Palatini
• One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham
• Petunia’s Christmas by Roger DuVoisin
• Silent Night: The Song and Story by Margaret Hodges
• The Other Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke
• Drummer Boy by Loren Long
• The Christmas Cat by Efner Tudor Holmes, illustrated by Tasha Tudor
• The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg
• Spruce the Moose cuts loose by Sarah Stapler
• The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden, Illustrated by Barbara Cooney
• Night Tree by Eve Bunting
• Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story by Sally Lloyd-Jones (author of the Jesus Storybook Bible)
• Jan Brett’s Christmas Treasury
• Silver Packages by Cynthia Rylant
• Boxes for Katje by Candace Fleming
• The Nativity by Julie Vivas
• The Little Spider by Sigmund Brouwer
• The Last Straw by Fredrick H. Thury
• A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill
• The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story by Gloria Houston, Illustrated by Barbara Cooney
• The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown, Illustrated by Barbara Cooney
• Babar and Father Christmas by Jean De Brunhoff
• The Glorious Impossible by Madeleine L’engle, Illustrated with Frescoes by Giotto

Chapter Books and Collections

• Snowbound with Betsy by Carolyn Haywood
• The Trees Kneel At Christmas by Maud Hart Lovelace (author of Betsy-Tacy Books, haven’t read this yet)
• Once in the Year: A Christmas Story by Elizabeth Yates
• A Little House Christmas: Holiday Stories from the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Children of Christmas by Cynthia Rylant
• Christmas edited by Alice Dagliesh (we haven’t read this yet)
• Holly, Reindeer, and Colored Lights: The Story of the Chrismtas Symbols by Edna Barth

Note to Myself, Books to try next year:

• Star Mother’s Youngest Child by Louise Moeri
• The Animals Christmas by Anne Thaxter Eaton
• Christmas Long Ago from A to Z by Bobbie Kalman
• Christ in Christmas: A Family Advent Celebration by James C. Dobson, Charles R. Swindoll

The longer chapter and story collection books have not been wrapped, we’ve been reading chapter by chapter through them each day while unwrapping a picture book to read as well.

Whether you wrap them or check them out from the library, here’s wishing you many days of hot chocolate and good stories.

Do you have any favorite Christmas books that I need to add to my library?

The expectations that arrive with the Christmas season parked themselves on my couch yesterday morning, and the growing lists of “to do’s” paralyzed me there for a good while (actually they drove me to my bed with a book).

When I think of family Bible study time in the evening, worship on sundays, the dark of the evening lit with our christmas tree, reading favorite christmas stories, and lighting the advent candles each sunday I look forward to the next month.  When I think of Advent not as a packed calendar but as the chance  to grow together in our understanding of the gift of Jesus, I’m anxious to enter this short season.

But when I think about money, presents for lots of family (budgeting, deciding, buying, making), making lots of treats to bring to librarians and sunday school teachers and others that serve us all year (this is one of the best things we do for our spirits, it’s just not exactly simple to add in to life with four kids), balancing school (which is already challenging right now) and the daily busyness of home and children, I want to skip the next four weeks.

So let’s just talk about the good stuff-the stuff of Advent without the world and its demands (and lies of what’s important) getting in the way.

Last year our family did an Advent Bible Study by Quiet Times for Kids.  The focus of the study is the prophecies of the old testament and how they were fulfilled in Jesus.  The study includes a daily individual Bible study page for the kids (the kids shared their study at dinner each night) and prophecy bags or boxes.  Prophecy bags might sound weird, but just listen.  In each bag, I placed an object as a hint of a prophecy and then printed slips of paper with the Old and New Testament scriptures.  Each night a child opened a bag, pulled out the object, and tried to guess what the prophecy might be.  Then we read aloud both scriptures.  At the end of the month we knew at least 25 ways the Word of God foretold Jesus. The scriptures and object ideas are included in the study, but you do have to take the time to gather the objects, print the scriptures and put them in boxes or bags.  The prophecy in the bag each night corresponded to the Bible Study page the next day.  We all learned and were led to worship through this study.  This year we’re bringing out the prophecy bags to enjoy again each evening.

We’re also going to read through Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room by Nancy Guthrie, this will be our first time using the book.

Quiet Times for Kids has a new Christmas Bible Study that will be available next week.  In an attempt to keep our time in the Word simple, rather than like a stew with a lot of things thrown in, we’re going to wait until next year to use this new Christmas Study, but it might be exactly what your family is looking for this year.

My friend, who is passionate about the Advent season, is sharing her advent ideas here.  She has the first week of advent posted and it’s full of good reads and activities to inspire a Christ-Centered month.

Waiting for Christ is so much harder than doing, and it’s even more difficult to figure out exactly what waiting looks like in this very imperfect world when day to day life demands much doing.

Today, as opposed to yesterday when I hid from the approaching weeks, I’m reminded of the privilege it is to lead hearts and be led by God in my own heart.