I highly recommend you listen to this podcast episode of the Wise Traditions to gain a sense of empowerment in this time of pandemic.

The following is copied from the westonaprice.org website here.

“Wise Traditions Podcast

EPISODE #232

Protect Yourself from the Coronavirus (or Any Virus)

with Sally Fallon Morell

The Coronavirus, known as COVID-19, was recently labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Thousands have died and there is much concern about the rate of there is much concern about the rate of the spread of the virus and its severity. Along with the Coronavirus, anxiety and concern are sweeping across the U.S. and the world.Today’s conversation with Sally Fallon Morell, the head of the Weston A. Price Foundation, empowers us to take our health into our own hands. Through a nutrient-dense diet, we can strengthen our bodies naturally and improve their ability to confront what may come their way.

Sally offers practical tips for boosting immunity including:

• taking 1 Tablespoon of coconut oil per day
• eating liver once per week
• drinking bone broth regularly for detoxing
• including saturated fat to safeguard respiratory health”

 

Read more of the synopsis and listen to the podcast here.

I recently listened to this book on audio for the second time. For my hsuband’s Christmas present, he asked all of our adult children and me to read/listen to it and 20 of Dave’s podcasts. He gave us the deadline of this birthday, which just happened. I am happy to report that I completed the gift. I enjoy listening to Dave, whether to his podcast, or his books, because I always feel a supreme sense of order. This is “core phase” for adults. I always feel encouraged and organized by listening. It’s always fun to play “what will Dave say?” as I listen. I hear the caller’s scenario and predict how Dave will reply, and usually I’m right or pretty darn close. I’ve called in and been on his show twice but that’s another blog post for another day.

This book is what inspired me to start our own Total Money Makeover. Which was a long time in coming. I “read” (really listened to it) on audio, borrowed from the public library, in the spring of 2012. It took us awhile to get serious about the principles, but we finally applied them starting in January of 2016, and then got debt-free in June of 2019.

This book is so wonderful! I give it five out of five stars! If you are in debt, I highly encourage you to read/listen to it. Even if it seems impossible or overwhelming because of all your debt, just listen or read to it and you will plant the seeds. They might take a long time in bearing fruit, as it did for us, but it will be worth it in the end!

You will learn why debt is so bad, how to get out of debt, and how to stay out of debt. The audio is extra fun because you hear it narrated by Dave himself so you hear all of his passion for avoiding debt!

Borrow it from your library on CDs or get it free in digital format using Scribd.

Here are some great quotes from the book:

“For your own good, for the good of your family and your future, grow a backbone. When something is wrong, stand up and say it is wrong, and don’t back down.”

“Change is painful. Few people have the courage to seek out change. Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.”

“You must walk to the beat of a different drummer. The same beat that the wealthy hear. If the beat sounds normal, evacuate the dance floor immediately! The goal is to not be normal, because as my radio listeners know, normal is broke.”

“Years ago, in a motivational seminar by the master, Zig Ziglar, I heard a story about how mediocrity will sneak up on you. The story goes that if you drop a frog into boiling water, he will sense the pain and immediately jump out. However, if you put a frog in room-temperature water, he will swim around happily, and as you gradually turn the water up to boiling, the frog will not sense the change. The frog is lured to his death by gradual change. We can lose our health, our fitness, and our wealth gradually, one day at a time. It might be a cliché, but that’s because it is true: The enemy of ‘the best’ is not ‘the worst.’ The enemy of ‘the best’ is ‘just fine.’ ”

“The typical millionaire lives in a middle-class home, drives a two-year-old or older paid-for car, and buys blue jeans at Wal-Mart.”

“Someone who never has fun with money misses the point. Someone who never invests money will never have any. Someone who never gives is a monkey with his hand in a bottle.”

Disclosure: the link to Scribd is my affiliate link. If you sign up for Scribd, you can get two free months. The cost is the same for you and I get another free month. If you are a bibliophile like I am, you will love it! It gives you unlimited access to thousands of audiobooks and books in text format, more so than Audible. I have Audible too and love both platforms. Often I can find a lot more of what my children are reading for their homeschool subjects/classes in scribd than in Audible. I can also get sheet music, documents, magazines, newspapers, and picture books in Scribd. I can also get all the Little House books in audio and text, and many other read aloud chapter books for the kiddos, that I see recommended on readaloudrevial.com, on Scribd. I hope you sign up and enjoy it!

I got the cute head topper, which matches the tablecloth, from the Pioneer Woman party goods aisle at Walmart. Lesson learned: Just keep the candles far way from the plastic caketopper, otherwise the lit candles will melt it, as you can see on the left!

This past Sunday was dear husband’s birthday. So I made him the two-layer cake above, entirely out of ice cream. (Here are the directions for an ice-cream cake.) In the midst of the panic going on right now, it was nice to have a Sabbath Day where I could stay at home all day and have a  cozy family celebration. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I had received an email earlier in the week that our church was cancelled because of the pandemic and that was actually a relief. It meant I got out of accompanying the ward choir’s performance which I was just a lee-tle stressed about because based on past experiences of accompanying in sacrament meeting I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to see the chorister and she has certain pauses in the music that I hadn’t fully marked on my copy of the sheet music. I had thought about calling her to ask her more about that and hadn’t so when church was cancelled, I thought, whew, I got out of that one. Now the regular accompanist (I was filling in as a sub) can take over. Also having church cancelled meant I could get extra sleep and relax a lot more than I usually get to do on Sundays. I did end up taking a hot soak in my tub and a two-hour nap in the afternoon, something I hardly ever get to do, and that was glorious! After the nap, the kiddos and I worked like busy beavers to make dear husband his requested birthday dinner of lasagna. It was so yummy!

It’s the Pioneer Woman’s recipe on her site. You can read my take on it and get the link for the recipe here. I highly recommend it. I always get rave reviews when I serve it! I was feeling too lazy to make my low-carb, grain-free version of the Trim healthy Mama lasagna here so I indulged in the wicked pasta.

As homeschoolers, we are already used to using our home for more than just a motel, an entertainment center, and a place to eat. We use our home as a place to study and learn.  We use it as a place to get to know each other.  We use it as a place to create. So I am not freaking out about being home more in this pandemic. (I am soooo happy about it! Almost as happy about the Church leaving the Boy Scouts! It means we get to push the “pause” button on the treadmill of life! More than just the Sabbath-day pause button. I get to have a week off of driving to seminary that starts at 7:25 AM and driving to Mutual and Primary Boy activities on Tuesday nights!)

This was a welcome opportunity for “homechurching.”  I insisted the kiddos dress up in Sunday best as we usually do for the Sabbath Day. I invited my adult children to join us via video chat and we had a mini worship service, minus the passing of the sacrament. Two of my adult children and my three littles were there in person. I shared my sacrament meeting talk that I gave the Sunday after last Christmas because some of my children left the day before to go back to Utah so hadn’t heard it.  After one of my sons shared a story from his mission to Argentina, the two adult children had to leave so I did some “Come, Follow Me” study with my littles.

Earlier, in my personal study, what I call my “PoWeR Actions” for Pray, Read, and Write, or what Becky Edwards calls Heaven Journaling. I got this amazing revelation from using the question in the Come, Follow Me Study Guide for Jacob 1 that says the following:

Think about your own “[errands] from the Lord” as you read Jacob 1:6–8, 15–19 and 2:1–11. Why did Jacob serve so faithfully? What does his example inspire you to do to magnify your Church callings and your responsibilities at home?

As I pondered that question, I realized, that “Hey, my roles of wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, sister-in-law, and cousin are callings too! How can I magnify those? and what does it mean to magnify them?”

I immediately thought of this example of a little girl who magnified her office as a daughter. It is from the January 2012 issue of the Friend, called, “Chocolate Cake.”It basically tells the story of a little girl who earned a whole dollar by babysitting a non-family member for a whole week. This story obviously took place a looooong time ago, LOL! AS a kid, I earned a dollar an hour, over 30 years ago. Anyway, after she earns her dollar, she wonders what to do with it. She thinks about all the things she’s been lusting after, a hair ribbon, a drawing pad, and pencils. She goes to the store to decide what to buy. As she’s walking around the store, she remembers it’s her dad’s birthday tomorrow. She realizes that she wants to use her money to please him, by surprising him with a chocolate cake. That’s another way we know the story is old, is that she can buy all the ingredients for just a dollar! So she buys the ingredients, gets up early the next morning, and has the cake all cooled and frosted by the time he comes home. He is definitely thrilled and pleased by her surprise birthday gift. She feels satisfied that she spent her hard-earned money on something to please her dad. Ahhhh! So sweet! It brings tears to my eyes. I want to be more like that little girl, willing to sacrifice for my dear family members.

So in honor of that little girl who magnified her calling as her father’s daughter, I am showing pictures of the various chocolate cakes I have made through the years (the good ones- they haven’t always turned out, LOL!) and then my recipe for a grain-free, sugar-free chocolate cake over here.

I read this story years ago and loved it. It really drove home to me the point that as family members we can go out of our way to do special things for our family members and that’s important. Even if nobody else sees it. Even if it doesn’t get shown on social media. Even if the result isn’t perfect and/or pretty. After all, “The most important work will be within the walls of your own home,” said David O. McKay.

I realized that to magnify means to “make larger.” It means to make the role or calling more visible. Doing so makes a greater vision of that role, so that when people think of that calling, they know more of what it can involve, because the picture of what it can look like, the vision, has increased. Not to glorify the person doing the work of the calling, but to glorify God. Our most important callings are that of family roles.

This is the card my children gave to me that came with the best Mother’s Day gift ever last year: a yearly subscription to Audible! Yes…my adult children were really thinking about me and led out in magnifying their “calling” as their mother’s children and totally nailed it on what they could do to please me for Mother’s Day! 

So I’ve been thinking of examples/stories of what I’ve heard of people magnifying their “callings” as family members in the following roles:

husband

wife

father

mother

daughter

son

brother

sister

cousin

niece

nephew

grandchild

Whew! Then we have all the “half”,  “in-law” and “step” modifiers you can add to all of those which “round out” to be the same roles, actually. I couldn’t think of examples for every role but this is what I came up with:

-brother: I have a friend who says that one of her sons helps his little four year old sister say affirmations each morning to help her start her day on a positive note.

-aunt: My sister, Emily, would take my older children swimming when they were 7 and under, when I was a young mom, giving me a much needed break.

-father: I’ve heard Pres. Henry B. Eyring talk about how he lovingly would create gifts for his children that he hoped would inspire them to do great things and aim high

-grandfather: I have a friend who said that her children’s grandfather had a standing weekly date to call his grandchildren and read stories to them over the phone.

-grandmother: My own grandmother was a high school home economics teacher. She loved sewing for her granddaughters. She sewed anything she could think of for us, elegant velveteen, lacy “Nutcracker” type dresses for us at Christmas, pillowcases, even underwear! In the summer when we would stay for a week when my parents went away for my dad’s work, she took us to her classroom and taught us, meaning my sisters and me, how to sew. The first article of clothing I ever sewed, was a pair of shorts, under her tutelage during our “summer sewing camp.” I was so proud of those shorts!

-extended family member: a woman in a previous ward had a Sunday tradition of getting out her collection of blank birthday cards every Sunday to write Happy Birthday greetings to all her extended family who had birthdays in the coming week and then she would mail them out, of course.

-I’ve heard of a grandmother who takes her grandchildren for a day so parents can go to the temple

We have so many chances to magnify our “homemade” callings of wife, sister, mother, niece, daughter, granddaughter. I hope these examples give you some ideas. I would love to hear any examples you have. Please share them in the comments below. I especially want to hear about magnifying the “uncle” role.

As it says in the song, “Have I Done Any Good?” by Will L. Thompson

Get my modified version of the Trim Healthy Mama Trimtastic Chocolate Cake here. 

This one’s about the guy, Edwin Binney, who invented Crayola crayons, and his cousin, C. Harold Smith. So fun! Now I know where the business name “Binney and Smith” came from.

This one above is a fascinating look into colonial times. It features the story of a real young woman, Amelia Simmons, who learned how to cook as an indentured servant for a family of little boys in the late 1700s. She determined to make the first American cookbook, using local New England ingredients, like cornmeal and squash. I always thought Fanny Farmer was the first person to write an American cookbook, but according to author Deborah Hopkinson, it was Amelia. This story shows how she received the honor to bake Independence Cakes (one for each colony) to serve at George Washington’s inauguration in New York City, and includes the recipe to make 13 cakes, including 20 lbs of flour! Thanks to Amelia, who introduced the word “cookie” to American readers. The word cookie came from “koejke” which Dutch settlers used.

What would it be like not to know how to read until you learn at age 116? This is the amazing true story of Mary Walker, who lived to be 121. She was born into slavery and lived until 1969. When she felt lonely, she read from her Bible.

A very sweet book about a very sweet man. Who doesn’t like him these days? My third book that I’ve read about him.

I love this book because it shows how to be inquisitive. Which we need some modeling of because as we grow up in this screenful, pre-programmed world we sometimes lose it. 🙂

This one is cute for introducing kids to the amazing, inventive life of Ben Franklin. you might need to clarify that Ben didn’t really have a talking mouse. 🙂

I heard about the story of Emily Roebling from Ramona Zabriskie’s Wife for Life book, which I read over a year ago. Emily is an example of a “Wife for Life,” because of how she helped her husband in his quest to build the Brooklyn Bridge, a feat of engineering, which in turn helped build their marriage. Fascinating! I enjoyed reading this book to my 9-year-old. I love picture books about real people that tell real stories in a short amount of time and leave me feeling so good. It’s just inspiring and amazing and wonderful to think that someone, especially a woman in the 1800s, could just decide that she can study something and be an expert on it, without going to formal school and getting a degree in that subject. Emily’s father-in-law, John Roebling, who started the Brooklyn Bridge, died, after getting tetanus while working on the bridge. Then her husband, who was left with the task of finishing the bridge, got ill and bedridden. So she took over the monumental task of being the liaison between her husband and the crew, communicating his vision and instructions, getting the bridge finished! Amazing! I’m going to get the book about them by David McCollough in Audible to get more details.

Is there such a thing as a biography of an animal? This is another true story. It shows the power of people to cause change. I love it!

This book, by the author of Snowflake Bentley, is such a fun celebration of the life of Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse, a famous restaurant, and her passion for uniting people with wholesome food. I love Alice’s idea of the Edible Schoolyard.

I love this picture book story of the life of Booker T. Washington. He was an amazing man. I didn’t know he was so visionary that he literally built the school that he founded brick by brick, even making the bricks himself, after intense study. In this age of easily accessible tutorials, he leaves us no excuse for not accomplishing our dreams. The watercolor illustrations are just lovely.

Here are more. I don’t have time to comment about them, just go get them. You will love every one!

(The rest of these below aren’t picture books. Just so you know that I know.)

The Faithful Spy is a graphic novel, not a picture book, about a theologian turned spy who felt duty bound to assist in the plot to kill Hitler. The mesh of words and illustration by the author/illustrator John Hendrix is amazing. I wish I could have learned history in my youth reading books like this and Nathan Hales’ books, along with picture books.

Here’s one about an underrated hero in American history: Nathaniel Bowditch. He was a mathematician who wrote a guide for ocean navigation, The Practical Navigator. According to this site, he “made seamanship a science and left all mariners in his debt.” Why I didn’t learn about him in public school, I don’t know. It was only until I homeschooled my own children that I discovered the man and this book.

So this one below is not a picture book, or for children, but I’m including it here as I transition to talk about biographies for adults. It’s not a biography per se but the story of three famous men and their life with food, so that’s sort of biographical right?

I saw the book above in the gift shop at Colonial Williamsburg and so hunted it down at my local public library as soon as I got home. I didn’t know that Washington was such the fisherman. It includes recipes for such things as Jefferson’s ice cream (with a copy of it written in his own hand!) and Boston Baked Beans. If you are like me and don’t drink alcohol you may want to skip all those parts about their fascination with spirits.

The rest of these aren’t particularly for children either. I’m listening to these in Audible as “treats” every Thursday when I take my long drive home from my homeschool group meetup (90 minutes one way) after the kids fall asleep in the car:

Last but not least I have to mention Louisa May Alcott and her mother. This one is actually a children’s biography of Louisa that I read aloud to my kiddos a few years ago…

and then a “bio” of sorts of Louisa and Abigail May, her mother, and their mother-daughter relationship, for adults.

You can read more about the book here! It is a gem! If you want to go deeper, read the compilation of Abigail’s letters and diary entries in this book below, by the same author as above. She is actually a grand niece of Louisa.

I hope you can enjoy all these great books!

So I’ve been lusting after the card game Codenames for some time. I heard about it when it was brand new and got it for my older daughter’s fun Christmas gift four years ago when she was in college. (See my post about my “three-gifts-for-Christmas tradition” here.) I had never played it or heard about it, but liked what I read in the description on amazon. I risked that it would be a hit. Turns out, I was right, as it has became a highly ranked party game (#2 Party Game on boardgamegeek.com) and she loves it too. (I know the lid in the pic above says #1 but it’s since been edged out by Decrypto.) Daughter #1 hasn’t ever lived for longer than 4 months at home since being in college and is now married so we haven’t played the game much because she keeps it with her, imagine that, LOL!

You can’t tell, but the Hilton cousins on the long table are playing Disney Codenames.

We play it when she brings it home for Christmas and at cousin reunions and love it too. I’ve seen it at other family reunions as well. Like when I went to my husband’s Hilton Family Reunion and the grandkids were playing the Disney Codenames version. Amazon has it with over 6000+ reviews giving it a five star average rating.

I had just played Codenames one week prior for our World War 1 Movie/Game Night, having to borrow the game. I made my own agent cards/word cards using keywords from the WW1 book that we read for our Hero LEMI project class.  i just took a bunch of index cards and wrote words on them. You can adapt Codenames for any subject you are teaching, making it great for gameschooling.

So…imagine my pleasant surprise when I went on my latest thrifting jaunt, during my small window of time available after the 8 AM Goodwill opening for the day and before 8:15 when I pick up the older kiddos from seminary. This time I had my 10-year-old in tow, and he found Codenames casually tossed askew on a shelf amidst housewares, still in shrink-wrap, for $2.99! And with my educator’s discount, I got 20% off that! God was definitely watching out for me. He knew I’ve been wanting this game for some time and blessed me with it. Yes, I could have bought it at Christmas time with my budgeted Christmas money, as it’s only around $15 on Amazon, but I chose to do other things with the money.

You can bet we played our new Codenames game for the next Family Home Evening after getting such a great deal on it. Sorry about the maps underneath the cards cluttering the view. I keep those on the table under plastic to capitalize time with my kids’ brains while they are eating. A trick I learned from LaDawn Jacobs.

I also got Taboo, brand new in shrink wrap, for 20% off $1.99, and four other games, including Quelf. I saw Quelf in a Chinaberry book catalog like 10 years and have wanted it ever since. That one was 20% off $1.99 as well. Score! I got 6 games total for $13.55. Yum! See all the games in the photo below.

That was the beginning of my amazing weekend last week. The day before, on Thursday, I also felt God working in my life as He brought a copy of the Zeta Mathusee Teacher’s book into my life. Most people aren’t thrilled to stumble upon the teacher’s edition of a math book, but when you are me, who knows she had bought the book a long time ago (with my career of homeschooling spanning 20+ years I have most of the mathusee books, DVDs, and manipulatives) but then you have a son who starts the Mathusee Zeta book but claims that the teacher’s book is lost, and you search yourself and can’t find it, then you are thrilled! This book is like gold to me, as I have to be out the door at 2:45 every weekday to take him to track practice and need to correct his math work for the day without having to think about it. Teacher’s edition of math book with answer key = time saving for this homeschool mama = peace.

My homeschool mom friend who owns the farm with the twin baby goats we visited last Thursday had it sitting on her shelf, looking very unused at the moment, as it was jam-packed in between other books. So I asked if I could borrow it, not wanting to shell out another $35 on ebay or $40 on the official mathusee site. She graciously agreed to let me borrow it, so I am feeling very blessed indeed. I did not want to buy another one, especially when I know I’ve had a copy in this house for the previous four older children and most likely some careless child lost it. I’ve probably even bought it twice and was not about to buy it again. God is so great! He prompted me through the Holy Spirit to walk around and look at all her books on her amazing bookshelf that covers her whole wall and I was then able to see this much needed math book. The view of it was blocked by her dining room table and chairs. It was only after I got up and walked around the table to sit on the side closest to the bookshelves that I saw this precious math book.

So, back to my wonderful weekend, on Friday morning I bought the games while my two teen kiddos were at seminary, drove home to do gameschooling, then exercised and ate and packed and went off to my homeschool group’s moms’ retreat for a day and a half of estrogen-charged connection and the best food. I’ll have to blog about the moms’ retreat another time. It’s my 6th time with this group of friends and It’s always amazing. We’ve done it in the fall and spring, every school year. You can go here to read about my first one with this group as well as how to replicate your own, DIY. The photo below of homemade pavlova and flowers pretty much sums up the experience.

Yes, beauty and food! Delish!

Four years ago when I moved to AZ I felt lonely. Since then, I have been blessed with the resources, close friends/deep connections, and events that I was craving. I chalk it all up to following President Russell M. Nelson’s charge to step up my game with family history work and temple work from his 2017 RootsTech Presentation. Here is what his wife Sister Wendy Nelson said in the same presentation:

It is my testimony that however fabulous your life is right now, or however discouraging and heartbreaking it may be, your involvement in temple and family history work will make it better. What do you need in your life right now? More love? More joy? More self-mastery? More peace? More meaningful moments? More of a feeling that you’re making a difference? More fun? More answers to your soul-searching questions? More heart-to-heart connections with others? More understanding of what you are reading in the scriptures? More ability to love and to forgive? More ability to pray with power? More inspiration and creative ideas for your work and other projects? More time for what really matters?

I entreat you to make a sacrifice of time to the Lord by increasing the time you spend doing temple and family history work, and then watch what happens. It is my testimony that when we show the Lord we are serious about helping our ancestors, the heavens will open and we will receive all that we need.

I had been doing the work in Utah, but then when we moved four years ago, I got out of a regular schedule. When I heard the above words, I got back into the work regularly and I have seen the promise come true, with my thrifting treasure hauls, more friends, closer friends, my homeschool group, getting out of debt, and angelic protection as evidence.

We read Chapters 6-9 of this book then played the games below. I let my 15-year-old read the book aloud while the rest of us did crafts or drawing. Then we played the game below, because I had promised my 10-year-old we would play it yesterday and then we ended up not playing it. So despite it not having anything to do with History or Geography (I have the theme of History and Geography for Wednesday) we played it.

I used the “our world” question cards from the game below to inject some geography quizzing into the game since it was History and Geography Day.  I wish I had noticed the age recommendation on the box, as it says “ages 6-9.” which I only saw while putting the cards away.  The questions were too easy for my 10-15 year crowd. Oops, lesson learned! Always check the age recommendation on the box! In the future I will use the geography and history cards from the other game pictured below this one, or my Carmen Sandiego games.

Then I let the boys play football as a reward for listening better than they have been on previous days. I do “three strikes, you’re out!” If I have to remind them three times to keep quiet and/or pay attention during the read-aloud time then they don’t get football. We had our quietest day today so far! It’s because I was finally super clear that it’s not three strikes for each boy, it’s three strikes for the group of three boys. And it’s not just if they are talking that they get a strike, but if they are interacting silently with gestures or looks, which even though silent, distracts them from the story. I’m glad I’m seeing improvement in their behavior. These boys are doing better knowing they have a chance for some physical play outside after sitting quietly and listening. It’s important to give them that time, I’m realizing. Boys do learn differently than girls.

Most of the girls then played Reverse Charades. Another great filler game to expand to whatever amount of time you need to fill up.

Check out this PDF of my slides about the “what, why, when and how” of gameschooling. These are the slides I used for my presentation at the Winter Homeschool Conference in Layton UT. on Feb. 8. 2020.

Here is a PDF called How to Build a Gameschool Collection on a Budget. It also includes 7 educational games you can play right away with stuff you most likely have in your home already.

Happy gameschooling! I hope it brings as much joy to you as it does to me!

Game playing and gameschooling help you get your kids off screens. Yay! Here’s a great book about that:

You can buy it on amazon or read it for free by signing up for a free two month trial of scribd.com over here, using my affiliate link. Disclosure: If you do sign up with my link, I get credit for a free month. The cost is the same to you. That’s a win/win for both of us!

What is scribd.com? scribd.com is a collection of books, audiobooks, magazines, newspapers, and sheet music that you can access using an app on your mobile device. Much better than Audible, because you have unlimited access to all those resources for a low flat monthly fee. I have Audible too and love them both!

Enjoy reading and playing!

As I have delved into the Trim Healthy Mama world, I have been delighted to discover that the authors of the Trim Healthy Mama books, Serene Allison and Pearl Bennett, are the daughters of Nancy Campbell. When I was a young mama, I often read the online articles and email newsletters written by Nancy. She is the founder of the Above Rubies ministry. As an exhausted and overworked mom of three little children ages 4 and younger, Nancy’s encouraging words about being a wife, mother, and homemaker soothed my soul. My husband went out of state almost every week for 3 to 5 nights a week on business, so I had to do everything on the homefront while he was gone. I would put the kids to bed, recharge my batteries by reading Nancy’s words, among other things, and then go clean up the kitchen, around 10:30 PM! Fortunately, things have changed and my kids are old enough to do the dishes. They also do the laundry and clean the bathrooms, and help fix dinner. I have to credit the homeschool movement for putting people in my life who inspired me to teach my children to work.

Anyway, it was fun to find out that Serene and Pearl are homeschool moms! From what I can tell, the Biblical Christian worldview created Trim Healthy Mama, in my perhaps incompletely informed opinion. It makes sense to me. That worldview gives these ladies  the confidence to write books about health and food, based on science, without degrees after their names. I believe that the Biblical Christian worldview these ladies were raised in gave them the confidence and work ethic to create their Trim Healthy Mama books and business.

This video shows Pearl and Serene introducing their husbands and kids.

Here’s a video of Serene and Pearl’s parents, Nancy and Colin Campbell, showing the power of turning a family mealtime into a family devotional and prayer.

Then a two part video series of the Above Rubies vision.

Tuesdays we do math, science, strategy, and the related skills of logical thinking involving deduction. In honor of upcoming Pi Day on Sat. 3/14 we listened to the above book in YouTube. Here is a summary of the book from Amazon:

For fans of the Sir Cumference series with Pi on their mind, here is the second installment in this fun look at math and language. This time the math adventure is centered around a potion that changes Sir Cumference into a fire-breathing dragon. Can Radius change him back? Join Radius on his quest through the castle to solve a riddle that will reveal the cure. It lies in discovering the magic number that is the same for all circles. Perfect for parent and teachers who are looking to make math fun and accessible for everyone.

Then we did a related activity from Bethany at mathgeekmama.com, from her list of Pi Day Activities, over here. She has some great ideas. I love the sing a long songs about pi, sung to familiar tunes.

The measurement activity that we did from that link, related to the Sir Cumference picture book, was hard for most of the kids (in our group we have ages 10 to 15). I was hoping to play the game she had listed but the kids couldn’t even get past the activity measuring different circles I gave them (lids, pie tin, cake pan, etc.) and understand the relationship of pi to the diameter and pi to the circumference. Some of them wrote down answers just to write down answers and say they were done. When I tested them with questions, they couldn’t answer correctly. So I’ll be working on teaching pi again another time.

To lighten things up a bit we played Da Vinci’s Challenge, since it involves patterns that derive from intersecting circles, and pi relates to circles. It’s a 2 player game, or a 2-team game. You score points by making patterns that all come from “the flower of life” that Da Vinci used. I’m figuring what groupings would work best so to minimize the negative talk and competitiveness. We did girls vs. boys today and the girls won, because they completed a “star” pattern for 10 points that the boys didn’t even see coming. I’m going to play this with my husband for date night at home, it will be a lot more enjoyable with no arguing. Maybe we will do Bethany’s Pi Logic Puzzle as well. What a nerdy date. 🙂

That’s it for another day of gameschooling! We also made pie today in honor of pi. 😉 We’ll probably do it again on the actual Pi Day and sing the songs from the the mathgeekmama.com’s site I linked to above. They are clever!

If you want to know what else we’ve been playing, go here.

If you want:

-to get my presentation about about gameschooling, my slides turned into a PDF

-AND a PDF of how to build a gameschool collection on a budget

-and the link to read a free copy of The Board Game Family, go here.

Here’s a big tip for gameschooling: have theme days. This is how I do it:

Monday: Language Arts

Tuesday: Math, Science, Logic, and Deduction

Wednesday: History and Geography, i.e. Social Studies

Thursday: we take a break to attend our co-op school

Friday: Art (including Drama) and/or Music

I like to pick a picture book and a game or games to go with those themes. So yesterday, Monday, Language Arts Day, we read the book pictured above, after listening to Maple Hill as an audiobook in Scribd. It’s an ah-MAAAZ-ing story about a woman who was born into slavery back in 1848, saw slavery end, and worked hard from dawn till dusk at menial jobs. During all those decades she never learned to read, until after she was retired from hard labor. She didn’t learn to read until she was 116 years old! Guess what book gave her hope? Yes, the Bible. I hope you read her story, it’s true and wonderful and so inspiring. After she learned to read, whenever she got lonely, which was often since she outlived her husband and children, she would read her Bible and not feel lonely anymore. So sweet. She died at age 121 in 1969. Incredible! What a reminder to all of us that one is never too old to learn. I also hope whoever reads it will feel grateful for the ability to read.

Then we played Hidden Hints and Whoonu. Hidden Hints is more for younger students, I’d say ages 7-12. It was too easy for the older 12s. Hidden Hints is all about reading comprehension using contextual clues. A fun game but I’ll save it for a younger crowd.

Whoonu is one of the best games ever, because everyone plays at once, and you get to learn about each other. A great getting-to-know-you game. I’m so grateful I scored it for free at my girlfriends’ yard “giveaway” instead of yard sale. Actually just the girls and moms played the game today. I sent the restless boys outside to play football. I also love the game because you can have it be as short or as long as you want. So it’s a great filler game when you have some to fill up. I love it!

Another gameschooling day in the books! If you want to know what else we’ve been playing, go here.

If you want:

-to get my presentation about about gameschooling, my slides turned into a PDF

-AND a PDF of how to build a gameschool collection on a budget

-and the link to read a free copy of The Board Game Family, go here.

So last week, on Thursday, after the Wednesday full of cheating in Secret Hitler, I took the kiddos on a trip to the farm of some friends to see their “Georgic” lifestyle. It was the first day I let my 15 1/2 with a learner’s permit drive for the whole route. My nerves were up to it and it was mostly country driving so I could handle it. I usually let dear husband be the driving coach but he wasn’t with us. We all got there in one piece, including the car, but on the way home he hit the neighbors’ mailbox. Fortunately no damage.

“Georgic” means having to do with being a wise steward of the earth.  It’s the name of a LEMI Scholar Project my two teens are studying in our homeschool group. We had a wonderful time observing this family’s ecosystem of the birds, goats, manure, dirt, grass, chickens, carbs, proteins, and the end to inflammation. It’s all too complicated to explain here but if you are into science and agriculture you might understand what I’m talking about. I loved seeing Isaac the pig gobbling up the grass, as seen in the photo above. Isn’t he cute, in a piggy way?

The farming family had twin baby goats born earlier that week so it was delightful to see such new life wobbling around.

We played a game that night with just my kiddos but now I don’t remember what it was. I also read the above picture book to my 10 year old for a bedtime story. Very sweet! I just love, love the dreamy watercolor/colored pencil illustrations, especially the flower endpapers. On Friday we listened to more of Miracles on Maple Hill.

What a nice book to accompany our field trip! Someday I want a little farm like their’s but I am so not there yet. I am still afraid of chickens.

Then on Friday I got to play some music games in the morning for gameschooling. See above and below. I had just picked up Carpool Karaoke that morning at Goodwill for only $2.40 so I was thrilled to find another music game. It looked like it had been barely used. The game just got released last year. On Fridays I like to do either art or music games. Then I had lunch, exercised, attempted to correct schoolwork but ran out of time, and then left to go to my Moms’ Retreat for my homeschool group of mamas. It was a wonderful day and a half of estrogen-charged connection. Here are the games we got to play before I left:

The kids weren’t comfortable enough to super get into this game. Most of them are 12 and older so they have the ability. They were too inhibited and would not “own it/rock it.” I could foresee problems with them judging them each other and being rude so I turned it into a cooperative game. The six of them were all on the same team and the two moms were the judges. I challenged them to see if they could get 20 points in 30 minutes. That was much too short of time. In the future I will give them an hour.  I can foresee this would be a super fun game if you have the right crowd. I want to play it with my adult children for one of my online family game nights. Can’t wait! Since the mentors of Shakespeare Conquest class teach the students to “put their pride in the bag,” it would probably be a great game for that LEMI Scholar Project.

See the video at the very top to learn how to play. Hey, my oldest son was at that very game convention last fall.

We also played Spontuneous, one of my very favorite party games. I love that everyone can play all at once. I’m hosting an adult game night this Friday and we are going to play it. It’s also one of my thrifting treasures that I scored for $2.99 at Goodwill last fall. Once again, my country loving music son, the learner’s permit owner, won, with his vast knowledge of lyrics. I can’t wait to play it with adults this weekend! If you ever get a chance to snatch it up, get it, you won’t regret it! So far I have played it about six times, two times with just adults, and loved every minute of it.