Tree of Life Mothering

Last Saturday, I blogged about making homemade chocolates, in honor of Valentine’s Day. Today I am blogging about picture books that have a romantic theme and then some books that are wintry because they involve ice and George Washington, in honor of his February birthday. So, first, let’s talk about The Princess and the Kiss. It may be a little, I don’t know, maybe schmaltzy, but I still like it. It’s a story with a moral, to teach young people not to carelessly give kisses and other forms of physical affection away before marriage. These signs of admiration and love mean a lot more when they are treated like a sacred gift, given after vows are made. A young princess is reminded of the gift God gave her, her first kiss. Who will she give it to? Where will she find her prince? This is a great book to prepare children, especially girls, because of the princess theme, with the idea of saving a first kiss, Duggar style, until the marriage altar. Of course, it works best to open their minds to this vision long before they start dating or courting.  

So here’s the boy version of The Princess and the Kiss, The Squire and the Scroll, by the same author. It’s about a squire who has to pass three tests as he travels a fearsome path with his knight on a quest for their king. The tests determine if the squire will hold to his determination to guard his heart from all that is impure so he can best serve his king and and fight the dragon. A wonderful book to read and talk about with your kids!

Oooh, this book makes me want to get back to Huntsville, UT to go ice skating again! I was already a fan of the illustrator, having seen her work in other books like the picture book version of the Secret Garden. Who knew that ice could take so many forms? Only someone who grew up on a farm in Maine, and has fond childhood memories of wholesome family activities exploring the beauties of nature. I am reading this one a little bit every day to the kids when they clean up the kitchen after dinner. A perfect wintry story!

Dear husband read aloud The Hobbit and the whole LOTR trilogy to Cowboy and Princessa over the course of maybe two or three years for their bedtime stories. Now they are ages 8 and 9, so it was maybe when they were ages 5-8.  I thought it would be fun to read the above book so I can finally understand the whole attraction to LOTR. Yes, I admit, I am culturally unliterate, having never read them. I couldn’t get past all the strange names that I can’t pronounce. I am not a huge fan of fiction. I would rather just read books telling me what they mean than actually read them. This isn’t really a picture book, but it does have pictures and I find it very appealing. We are reading it during dinner dishes as well. Maybe it will motivate the 12 year old to read them on his own.

I’ve been wanting to read the above book ever since I started my homeschooling career, back when Valor was 5. He’s 20 now, and I am finally reading it aloud to the littles and my 12 year old, when they do the breakfast dishes, to celebrate Washington’s birthday this month. I think it will add a lot to Venture’s Key of Liberty class (about the founding of America). It is full of stories of the different people, all around the world, who were doing important historical things when George Washington was a boy, a young man, the general of the Revolutionary War, and then as president. The author wrote it in order to hlep her understand the interconnectedness of people, places, and dates in history. It’s not really a picture book either, but it does have pictures by the author which are line drawings of the historical figures. I love her realistic style. It’s a lot easier to remember history when you hear it in story form, so we are enjoying it! The author also has similar books about Caesar, Columbus, Captain John Smith, William Penn, and Abraham Lincoln. It might take me the rest of my homeschooling career (my youngest is 4) to read them all but I am determined to do so!

So what might happen if you memorize the Declaration of Independence? You just might be asked to recite it spontaneously, at a seminar on the Making of America, and then have a Ben Franklin given to you by someone who is really impressed! That’s what happened to Venture yesterday! I give credit to his Key of Liberty class, from LEMI. This class is for young practice scholars to learn about the beginning of American history. One of the requirements is to memorize the Declaration. V did it and now he got to see that “chance favors the prepared mind!” Of course, I am saying he gets to give half of it to me, as I was the one who told him about the event and brought him! Don’t be afraid of your freedom, go study some historical documents! You never know how it might pay off! 

The Key of Liberty class is such a great environment to motivate my kids to study! So far my four oldest kids have all taken the class/project at our commonwealth school, and they have all memorized the Declaration. I don’t think they would have memorized it just for me at home. Sometimes a little peer pressure from other homeschooled youth is what my kids have needed to study. V says he is the one creating the peer pressure in his class! In the picture below he is holding the key, with ribbons, attached, that they earn if they complete the requirements. The key is actually the one that I earned when I took the training. His is coming at the end of the school year, with a lot more ribbons, he says!

The seminar we attended was presented by NCCS and sponsored by Smith and Edwards. Here is a sampling of what we learned yesterday.

You can watch the seminar and get the study guide as a PDF here. Enjoy learning about the roots of our liberty!

Do you love chocolate as much as I do? Did you know that you can make chocolate goodness at home, sugar-free? It’s so simple.

Alison Russo, of Healthnutnation.com, has a new chocolate paleo cookbook out. The best news: if you use coupon code MOMMY40, you can get 40% off the ebook, so it’s $12 instead of $20. Just go here to order. Happy, Chocolatey, Valentine’s Day! 

As promised last Monday, I am going to blog on Fridays about a movie to suggest that you and your family watch over the weekend. Tonight’s movie is Love Song, an old classic based on the true story of the love story between Clara and Robert Schumann, starring none other than Katherine Hepburn. The great news is that the whole movie is on YouTube and you can watch it right here in this video featured above! Watch if next Friday for Valentine’s Day!

I heard about this movie years ago from a homeschooling mom at an LDSHEA conference, when she gave a presentation about the power of wholesome movies. She raved about how this movie shows a wonderful romance of married love. I wish we could hear more stories and movies about true, wholesome married love. Most movie romances are all about boy-meets-girl, boy-overcomes-trials, boy-gets-girl, and then we don’t hear about the rest of the story of married love, which is really where all the trials and adventures lie!

Today I am blogging about a classic, The Hiding Place, and the inspiration it has created in my friends’ lives. The above video shows my friend Audrey, cofounder of the Ten Boom Institute, raving about the book.

Then today, we talked about the main character of this book, Corrie ten Boom, in my homeschooling Hero Project class for youth. I think the youth had never heard of her before. I announced to them that we will be reading her book, The Hiding Place, in March after I told them a little about her story. Her story is incredible! Corrie is the epitome of Christlike-love. As Audrey says in the video above, if we can even get our children to approach Corrie’s character, we will know we have pointed our children in the right direction.

At the same time we have our class every Thursday morning at my Commonwealth School, there’s a class going on down the hall for my three little kids, called The Ten Boom Project. The Ten Boom Project is a class for core phasers pursuing a Thomas Jefferson Education model, or for those who wish to implement a solid foundation for life. My friend Katie Hansen has been creating the curriculum with Aneladee Milne and she has been teaching the class at our Commonwealth School. Every month, the kids learn a new song, dance, story, and script to help them learn the core phase values of what’s right, true, and good. They also get to play a lot in the class too! You can read more of what’s goes on in the brain of Katie at her blog here.

I just assumed that these kids in my class, and my kids included, knew why that class is called The Ten Boom class. I found out today they didn’t know, so I clued them in. Corrie risked her life to help the Jews, and Hebrew is the ancient language of the Jewish people. Hebrew is the language of liberty! Corrie exemplified what it means to have a Christ-like core character. The purpose of the Ten Boom Class is to expose children to stories of great character traits by exploring the meaning behind the symbols of the Hebrew alphabet.

I discovered Dr. Karp at a La Leche League International Conference in San Francisco over 10 years ago, after 8 years of AP mothering with four babies and severe sleep deprivation. What a godsend Dr. Karp is!  He is the real Baby Whisperer! Because of him, I have had much better sleep in the latter half of my motherhood. I have never believed in CIO (crying it out) to get my babies to go to sleep. There is another way! Without giving them drugs! (When I was a young mom I heard stories from distant relatives who would give their babies drugs to make them sleepy…that sounded quite dangerous to me!)  My babies #5, #6, and #7 have all been “Karpized” to sleep. Dr. Karp’s name is blessed in my house! Learn his secrets of 5 S’s and you will actually feel excited to practice calming a baby when she cries!

Here’s a dad putting the some of the 5 S’s into action! Watch and be amazed!

Family Watch International just released these videos about how important the family is to solving the world’s problems. I agree wholeheartedly. Families have untapped capital we can use! Families are the key to solving poverty! We just need to help families find the “missing pieces” they need to change their lives on a permanent basis by giving them education and vehicles to earn money sustainably. Watch these videos and learn what people are saying about these topics.

My baby sister, the one I blogged about yesterday, who used to work at the real children’s bookstore in NYC featured in You’ve Got Mail, has been raving about this cookbook for years. She loves it so much she gave it away at a bridal shower we attended for a cousin last spring. She didn’t order a new one in time, so she gave away her own copy, complete with penciled in notes for her favorite recipes. That’s how much she loves this book, she is willing to give it away to help a new bride embark on getting in the tradition of fixing family dinner! Of course, she then ordered more copies, so she would have more to give away!

It’s not just a cookbook, it’s a resource book for making family dinner a memorable, connecting time, so that your kids are more likely to talk to you about everything and less likely to get involved in crime, drugs, and alcohol. I really love the resources listed in the back of the book. It’s by Laurie David, an environmentalist.  I am happy to see an environmentalist giving equal time to the environment that has a higher priority in saving, the family. I am always on the lookout for ways to make family dinner more fun, and this book really delivers on that. I loved the resources in the back, such as the suggestion to use the weekly Table Talk Family Dinner downloads from the Huffington Post. I intend to start using these topics right away! I also want to remember to use Pres. Monson’s idea from a General Conference talk several years ago, when he recommended asking children what they have done to serve someone else that day.

I was already partial to another “family dinner cookbook,” the one pictured below, because it’s by a Mormon mommy, Liz Edmunds, who I got to meet last year. I love that Liz gives a template for fixing meals by having a theme for each night of the week. You can read more about what I wrote about the Food Nanny’s book on my blog by doing a search for Food Nanny in the search box in the upper right corner. ( I know it would be nicer to provide you with a link but for some reason my browser right now is not working to give me the breadcrumb URL trail.)

These books both have great recipes and great reasons to motivate you to have family dinner. Although, if you have special preferences like real, not processed food, low-carb food, Paleo, or vegan,  you will have to adapt the recipes. Laurie’s book is a bit more comprehensive, I have to admit. She even has a chapter on what to do about family dinner when divorce hits, as it did in her family.

While my sister bustled about the kitchen last Sunday at my mom’s finishing up her contribution to our family dinner, I skimmed over her copy of The Family Dinner. (I did help her a bit, but I have to admit I was lured into reading the cookbook she has been raving about for years. I already had my contribution all finished.) I loved the gorgeous full-color photos and mention of a special Jewish Shabbat meal. If you need some new recipes and motivation to have family dinner, get both these books!

In an attempt to be more orderly in my blogging, I am going to see if I can blog on each day according to themes:

Monday: picture book reviews

Tuesday: some kind of educational resource, homeschooling tip, or family fun idea

Wednesday: a breastfeeding, healthy pregnancy, or other naturally healthy, holistic mama health tip

Thursday: a review of a classic book

Friday: a classic movie review or date night suggestion

Saturday: a recipe or homemaking tip

Sunday: review of a General Conference talk or some kind of gospel-based presentation

So here goes with picture book reviews. See the above book? We just read it this past week. I know it’s after Christmas, but I love to let the season linger longer by reading Christmas picture books in January. Or even chapter books. I remember reading the Christmas chapter book, Holly Claus, to two of my older kids in February. So, back to Lighthouse Christmas, l love stories like this that show characters who care about each other, have dreams, sacrifice and serve. On top of all those things, I love surprise endings, like this one has! I give it 5 out of 5 stars. It made me want to go live in a lighthouse for a year with my kids just to see what it’s like.

I just discovered the author Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She wrote the above book. It’s a darling book that challenges you to read words that have numbers substituted for letters. It’s pure fun to figure out the words and laugh at the cute illustrations. This is a winner! I give it 5 out of 5 stars. 

I was talking to my sister, a children’s book lover and former worker at the real children’s bookstore that You’ve Got Mail featured, and she said that so far Rosenthal has never disappointed her. This is coming from not just a children’s book lover, but a connoisseur of children’s picture books. We both agree that Rosenthal’s books are wonderful! Here are some more titles:

This one is full of equations made with words. Like “wishes” plus “frosting” = “birthday” and “smile” + “wave” equals “hello.” I don’t like the illustrations as much as the Wumbers book, but it’s still a cleverly written, good book. 4 out of 5 stars.

This one is utterly delightful. It’s definitions of words, in terms of eating cookies. I love Jane Dyers’ illustrations of the children, but I don’t like the animals in clothes. That is just a little creepy for me. But I love the idea of the words defined using cooking eating metaphors. It’s very clever and thought-provoking and a great vocabulary-building book for kids. 4 1/2 stars (because of the animals in clothes).

So what picture books have you read this past week with your kids?

I’ve heard people raving about this art exhibit at BYU’s Museum of Art. It reminds me of all the hoopla about the Etruscan exhibit that was like, what 20 years ago or so. If you are a Utahn and as old as I am you probably remember the big one before that about Ramses.  I went to those because I felt like I should, like it was my educational obligation. I don’t really remember being wowed by any of the art pieces. I know, my high school AP art history teacher probably feels I have failed her, but it’s true. Sometimes it’s hard to engage with art when you don’t know any stories of the people behind the art. Just who were the Etruscans, and why are they cool?

This new exhibit will be different I hope because it involves art work and stories I am already familiar with, especially since it’s about our Savior Jesus Christ.  It is entitled Sacred Gifts, and it involves paintings by four different European artists about the life of Christ. I don’t recognize the names, other than Carl Bloch’s, but as soon as I saw some of them featured in BYU Magazine, I recognized the art. Many of them have been featured on the cover of Ensign magazines. My LDS chapel even has a reprint of one of them on a wall in the foyer. I am hoping to get to the free exhibit when it’s the least crowded. A weekday morning for a homeschooling field trip sounds good to me. On second thought, maybe I will leave the kids home and just have it be a date with dh! Then maybe I will actually be able to linger at each piece!