Tree of Life Mothering

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.

Have you been wondering how to follow President Nelson’s admonition to study the restoration of the gospel in order to prepare for General Conference this April 2020?

One way is to watch the above video. Then ponder in what ways you have heard God the Father, and write about it. Then ponder what ways you are seeking to hear Him, and write about that. Then approach General Conference with those questions in mind, with a prayer, and write the thoughts that come to you after Conference regarding those questions.

Here are some more videos to watch. These three videos below by David Butler are so incredibly funny, engaging, and insightful.

Photo Credit: ldsliving.com

Emily Belle Freeman has a Countdown to Restoration Advent here on ldsliving.com. I love how she has a theme for each week, and then within each week she has an activity for each day.

Then there’s this study guide here from agospelcenteredhome.com.

I have directions for making a Gospel Restoration Timeline Card Game here.

I hope those don’t overwhelm you. Pick what works for you and enjoy! Personally, I’m barely having my family keep up with the Come, Follow Me study readings and questions. I may just do Emily’s Restoration advent on my own and then share what I’m learning with my family at mealtime.

Today was History/Geography Day for our gameschooling. So that means we use that theme for our book(s) and our game(s). I always like to do a biography on this day, in addition to our regular read aloud chapter book. We are still making our way through Miracles on Maple Hill, which is our daily read aloud chapter book. It’s a delightful book all about stewardship in nature and community interdependence. You can listen to it in YouTube, but the end of Chapter 5 is missing. You can listen to it intact in Scribd.

On Wednesdays, for our History/Geography theme, I like to read aloud a biography for children, after I do the regular read aloud chapter book. So today we did Mr. Rogers, using the above book at the top of this post. We are doing 3-4 chapters a week, every Wednesday. The chapters are short and have lots of illustrations. Wow, Mr. Rogers, what a rare national treasure. He’s a wonderful example of how when you live your Christian values, and persist even if people make fun of you, you will eventually get more recognition for being nice, even if it’s after your death. I love his posthumous popularity. When I was a teen, it was cool to make fun of him, but now it’s cool to pour on the accolades about him. He didn’t change. So what’s the deal? Why do people think he’s so cool now? He should have been cool then. Shows how fickle people can be.

Anyway, then we played this game:

Oh I wish! Not really! I just discovered this game two days and now I’m drooling over it. That would have been wonderfully synchronous to play it. I don’t have the Mr. Rogers game yet, but now it’s on my wishlist! I just may save it only for the adults though. The back of the box says it’s more for my generation because of the nostalgia involved.

For our gameschooling, we really played Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? pictured below, and Secret Hitler, for our History and Geography games of the day.

I’m working on getting the kiddos to like the Carmen Sandiego game. They just don’t appreciate how long in the making this game was for me. I picked it up used at a thrift store years ago before we moved. After the move to AZ, it sat unused for four years. Just a few months ago, when I went to use it for our gameschooling, I discovered the board was missing. Ugh! After much looking in the house and then searching online for a download soft copy, I resigned myself to having to find a hardcopy on ebay. My dear husband granted my wish and got it for me as a Christmas gift. Yay! That shows how much of a nerd I am, LOL, that I want a used Carmen Sandiego board game for Christmas. I like the quiz aspect of it about US geography, US landmarks, and that it uses memory skills as well. The game started as a software game, then evolved into a TV game show, then a board game.

You play the first round answering US geo questions and remembering where certain cards are to catch the crook with the matching warrant, loot, and crook cards. Then to catch Carmen Sandiego the whole group has to correctly place capital city tokens on the USA map board. I think it’s fun but the kids not so much. Maybe they are just spoiled by flashier games? It just brings back nostalgia for me of long winter days being home as a new young mom with one and then two little babies. I would watch the PBS Carmen show for fun and intellectual stimulation on dreary afternoons. Please be nice to young moms. They are often cooped up too much! This was in the Stone Age of the mid 1990s before I had the Internet accessible in my home. 🙂 (The show is actually Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, not the USA. I have both versions of the game and plan on playing the world one soon.)

I also love the Rockapella group from the show. They sang amazingly! Oh how I love those a capella vibes.

The Millennials in the video below are just too young to know the song. Too bad Sean Altman didn’t interview middle aged people like me.

How I digress! Anyway, the Carmen Sandiego game was like the “vegetable” the kids had to eat today and Secret Hitler was “dessert.” Secret Hitler is probably my children’s overall favorite board game.  It is a social deduction game with subtle history and political lessons, as it simulates the climate of pre-WW2 Germany when Hitler rose to power by first being chancellor and then president by gaining favor among his fellow fascists. My children love it for some reason. Probably because of all the sneakiness.

It is similar to the board game Avalon, where you have secret roles and you are trying to figure out who is who so you can foil moves. My firstborn, age 26,  asked for it as a Christmas present a few years ago so I obliged. Every time he returns home to the nest, he brings it and they all have a grand time playing it, even on Christmas morning, Christmas Day, the day after Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. That’s how much they love it! I’m still figuring it out. The more I play, the more I enjoy it. I just seem to have a hard time adapting to games involving lying/acting.

You can get your own free copy of it over here. Just download, print and play! It is black and white. If you want to be fancy, color it like below, with the fascist boards blue and the liberal board reddish orange.

photo credit: amazon

I think we all had fun playing it this morning, even though the metagame wasn’t the true metagame it could have been because it turned out my two sons colluded/cheated and dealt out the Hitler card to one of them, one fascist card to the other of them two, and then the other fascist card to the other boy of the group so they could all collude. It’s supposed to be random! So that’s the last time I let either son deal out cards for a LOOOOONG time. Or let them sit together.

Note: “Metagame” is the “game behind the game” which involves the people’s personalities, emotions, and their sportsmanship.

So what to do when people cheat in board games? in this case, what I’m doing is not trusting them for a long time. They just lost the privilege for any type of leadership role in a board game, including dealing. They get to earn all of our trust back. Here’s what Ellie Dix, author of The Board Game Family, says to do about cheating:

Don’t leave one person to do all the setup on their own. Reduce the opportunity for cards to be ordered and resources to be manipulated before the game starts.    

Make it harder for players to cheat during the game. Place pooled resources and banks well away from individual players’ boards, ideally slightly higher up (maybe on top of the box) and in full view of all players.    

If you suspect cheating during a game, pause and take a few moments to review the rules. Make sure it is really clear what qualifies as cheating and what behaviours and moves are acceptable.    

Avoid playing games that use mechanisms like rolling dice behind a screen as these rely on honesty and manipulating the outcome is too tempting for some.

 Make sure that there is no extrinsic motivation for winning. Neutralise the reasons why they might want to win as far as possible. Make sure you’re praising brilliant play of the metagame and clever moves, rather than only rewarding the winner.

Take time to talk to the culprit individually away from the game, possibly afterwards or even on another day. Avoid using the term ‘cheating’, but ask them why they felt the need to manipulate the results. Find ways to remind them about good gamesmanship and make sure you recognise their excellent choices in the next game.    

If necessary, declare the game void because you’ve noticed cheating. Don’t openly state who you think the offender is, but remember to follow up later on. Then move briskly on to a different game.

You can read this book for free here.

That’s from Chapter 5 of The Board Game Family by Ellie Dix. You can read it for free if you sign up for Scribd here. I like how she concludes the section on cheating where she says that if you let the “metagame” kick in people will see how enjoyable that is and eventually stop cheating because they won’t have a need to cheat. I think by that she means that when you let people experience the metagame involving true gamesmanship or sportmaship they will enjoy it. They will learn that it’s the experience of the game with people acting honestly with skill, by giving a great “go at it” or “the old college try” (the metagame), and not the victory, that is really enjoyable. The older son, the ringleader, expressed a belief that if you aren’t a fascist in the game, it’s not fun. Aha! So somehow I’m going to figure out how to create a situation where he enjoys the game without being a fascist, by enjoying the metagame. Here’s Ellie below explaining the metagame.

Which brings me to my next questions. Why do we always say someone is a “good sport” or “a poor sport” and not just a “sport”? What exactly is a “sport” in the form of a person, not a dog or a cute little boy? How come “sport” used to be an affectionate name for someone but now we hardly hear it used without a qualifier? This definition here says a sport is “a person who behaves in a good or specified way in response to teasing, defeat, or a similarly trying situation.” So why do we need to qualify a “sport” with the word “good” nowadays? Has our language deteriorated to only saying someone is a good sport or a bad sport because a plain sport is hard to come by? Has our language deteriorated as a reflection of a culture losing the values of  living and playing fairly?

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.

I love the above book because of the fun cheery illustrations that give a nod to illustrator Jan Brett’s trick of putting a hint of what’s going to happen on the next page with a small image. So engaging!

We are also listening to Miracles on Maple Hill. The perfect story for this time of year, because it’s about winter giving way to spring. We do a chapter a day. The YouTube version cuts out at the end of Chapter 5. So now we are listening in Scribd. Sign up with my affiliate link and you can get two months free.

For our game, we played Therapy, my wonderful thrifting treasure that I found last month in Utah for only $1.50 after getting nostalgia and thrifting envy over it. (You can read the backstory about that here.) The metagame involved did not go over well. The “metagame” is the game behind the game, involving the players’ personalities. We had too much drama with that today with trickery, lying and irritation, so…yeah, we probably won’t play it again among this homeschool group of mine. I’ll save it for playing with my big kids who are out of the nest and other adults. I found out it has an updated version here. I highly recommend it for kids who appreciate psychology and won’t argue about the answers or try to trick the other players. (One more thing…if you do get this game, you might want to screen all the cards first and take out certain cards so the game is G-rated and not PG-13.)

Disclosure: I do get a free month of Scribd if you sign up with my affiliate link.

I’m back sharing a book and a game a day that I’m doing for the #abookandagameaday challenge from thewaldockway.com. For the record, I’ve been playing a game (usually more than one) and reading a book a day for every weekday of the New Year, except for Friday February 7 when I was in Utah away from my kiddos. Last month I got in a time crunch with some other deadlines so I gave up blogging about our books and games each day, I’m hoping to do better at tracking here on the blog this month of March. It has brought much joy to my life! Yay!

Today I read aloud the picture book above based on the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I love this series of books, which capture the essence of the Little House chapter books in picture book format. This one is illustrated by Doris Ettlinger, in the style of the original illustrator of the Little House books, Garth Williams.  I love her simple, innocent, sweet illustrations. Her style is similar to Renee Graef, who illustrated other Little House picture books. (Truth be told, I can’t really tell their illustrations apart, they seem identical.)

So we talked about Laura Ingalls Wilder a bit, with her birthday being last month, which I’m sad I missed celebrating, because of my trip to Utah, and then we played Letter Jam and Say Anything.

The first was Letter Jam. This was the second time I’ve played this game. My oldest child, the biggest game playing fan of all us, gave it to me last Christmas, after seeing it debut at a board game convention. It’s absolutely delightful! The first time I played it was two days after Christmas, with my children. I highly recommend that you not play this game on a tablecloth, like we did that time. The tablecloth swallowed up one of the tokens which caused me to miss one of the clues, so that totally foiled my deduction of my secret word. I felt so frustrated!

In this game, everyone gets a secret word, spelled out with letters on cards. Everyone can see the letters of all the other players’ words, one at a time, but not their own. You work cooperatively as a team to give each other clues about each others’ letter by using some or all of the letters displayed to spell a word. The pool of letters is constantly changing. It’s a lot of fun! Two of my sons didn’t like it however. One because he didn’t completely understand how it worked. The other son guessed his word and then mentally checked out, not wanting to participate anymore to help other people figure out their words by giving clues. I reminded him that the game is like life, where you only win by helping other people win. In the words of Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf: “the only way for you to progress in your gospel adventure is to help others progress as well.” Just substitute the word “gospel” with “game” and you perfectly describe this game. We only played with three letter words, which I highly recommend for doing with kids and/or beginners. I’m looking forward to playing this at my next Adult Gameschooling Night or Game Date Night with Adults that I host at my home. It will be more fun with adults who aren’t bickering and don’t get flustered with long words. 🙂

Photo credit: barnesandnoble.com

Then we played Say Anything Family Edition. This is probably the best party game ever! It involves questions, but they’re not trivia questions. These are questions to get to know other people better. So you win according to how well you know the other players so that you correctly predict their opinion, and how well you can read body language, to see if you can tell if other people know the answer. You also win by writing creative answers. Such a clever idea!

So if you are in the mood for a game, but don’t want a game that involves a ton of strategy and hardball thinking, then pick Say Anything Family Edition (apparently the non-family edition can get more risque with the questions). I picked it last week for Family Night when I wanted something to encourage sociable feelings and wanted to relax and not strategize. It fit the bill perfectly! It’s similar to Wits and Wagers, which I played with my parents and son, over here on my last visit to Utah, but instead of using questions that involve numbers for the answers, you use questions that involve the players’ opinions. I love it! I will be playing this one again and again! I scored by getting it used while thrifting, for $2.40 (20% off the $3 price with my teacher discount at my local Goodwill). Sweet!

I’m also feeling awfully pleased with myself that I correctly predicted the metagame workings that might happen with Say Anything. The metagame is the game behind the game, the game that involves the player’s personalities and feelings. I learned about the metagame by reading Ellie Dix’s The Board Game Family, which I preview slightly over here, the fourth paragraph down, and give you a link where you can read it for free. It’s really important to watch what is going on with the metagame and use that intel to improve the next iteration. Watch the video of Ellie below to learn about it.

Based on previous metagames with my group, I knew that some of the kids would not vote for certain other people’s answers if they could recognize handwriting on the dry erase boards, so I had each player write their answer on slips of paper and then my mom friend and I each copied the answers onto the dry erase boards provided in the game. Sure enough, during one of the rounds, when a certain player found out that a certain person had written a certain answer that she ended up choosing, she wanted to recant her vote! Of course we wouldn’t let her and the original vote carried. Everyone had fun, whereas if I hadn’t had inserted that piece of the game where we didn’t show their handwriting, I think there would have been some arguing. So if you have personalities that clash, I highly suggest you use slips of paper, and then copy the answers onto the little white boards. If you want to save the time of having to rewrite the answers, then just read out loud the answers with numbers attached, and have the kids vote for the numbered answers, writing the the numbers on the white boards, maybe with a keyword.

Happy gameschooling everyone! Here are more ideas, including how to build a gameschool collection on a budget.

Happy Leap Day! It’s almost midnight and I can’t let this day pass without recording the classics we enjoyed this month of February 2020. If you want to know why I love reading classics/”the best books” so much, go here.

First comes a book I just started reading this past week. I discovered the above book by the prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Russell M. Nelson, many months ago when surfing the Internet. I requested it through my public library’s interlibrary loan system. I never did get the book so I figured that it just wasn’t available in any public library. Imagine my delight when I went to pick up our  books on hold at the library over a week ago and this book was there on shelf, under my husband’s name. He had requested it through ILL and never told me. Somehow the request went through for him. So I’ve been enjoying it! I love the stories in it. I’m not done, but so far I love it. I think God gives me big assignments, but they are so small compared to being asked by God, through President Benson, to establish the Church in all of Eastern Europe starting in 1985, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was President Nelson’s charge, and I’m happy to report he fulfilled it.

He tells stories about that in this book. My favorite story is about the young mother, Svetlana, who lived in Russia and was searching for Jesus Christ. This woman left her homeland to go to Finland in search of Jesus. As she was walking through a public park in Finland, she found a book hidden under some fallen autumn leaves. It was the Bible, a testament of Jesus Christ, written in the Russian language. She exclaimed joyfully about her blessed discovery, telling another mother in the park about her providential fortune. This other mother happened to be the wife of the mission president for the Church of that area, Sister Raija Kemppainen. Sister K  asked her if she wanted another book about Jesus Christ, written in the Russian language and Svetlana said yes. So Sister K. gave her a Russian Book of Mormon, and Svetlana eventually got baptized and took the gospel with her back to Russia. I just loovve this story, as I fell in love with the Russian language while studying it for three years in high school. I love the Russian people and hope to go to Russia to minster to them with my husband as missionaries when all the kiddos are out of the nest.

Next, here’s one of my most exciting new books, above. I love it! It fell into my lap while I was in Utah, the night before I presented about gameschooling (using board games to homeschool) at the Winter Homeschool Conference, while looking through my Scribd app. If you haven’t heard of Scribd, I recommend you check it out. It’s a subscription membership for bibliophiles, which includes an app, much like Audible. You pay a flat fee around $10 a month, and then you can download unlimited audiobooks and digital books in text format through the Scribd website or the Scrib app. So amazing! You can sign up for a free 60 day trial through my affiliate link right here. The cost is the same to you if you sign up through my link or not, and I get a free month if you sign up through me. Win-win!

I love the above book because author Ellie Dix tells why board games are so full of wonder and bonding for you and your family, how to deal with the pitfalls of game-playing, such as tears, tantrums, poor sports, and the “meta game,” which is the mysterious, insightful life “game behind the game” as the players interact. So interesting! Read it in Scribd.

The above one is my latest fave picture book. Such a clever story and it promotes the values of stewardship and community interdependence.

I’ve read other books about Mr. Rogers but this is the first one for kids I’ve read. Nice. It shows all the elements that came together in his show early on in the very first two chapters.

This one is one of the best books on friendship! A new Celestial Family Tradition read-aloud for February to go with Valentine’s.

This is my new favorite picture book for winter. It totally gives me ideas/excuses for slowing down in winter and playing up the coziness.

Another great one on friendship, thanks to reader Sarah Eastley who recommended it on my sister’s blog. Thanks Sarah! I like the idea that friends can be what seems like unlikely pairs (a frog and a dog) and the “circle of life” reference. So sweet!

It’s a Celestial tradition to read the above book every winter.

The top and below one are for my two teens’ math and science class for the homeschool co-op. I listen to the one below in Audible. It’s helping me to remember I learned this stuff in college and how it all fits together.

On audio, on the way to homeschool co-op once a week. We finally finished! I had forgotten all the funny lines. The wedding at the end is so enchanting, and no, it’s not Anne and Gilbert’s. I read all of L.M.’s Anne books as a teen, so it’s a ton of fun to share the stories with my kiddos. I’m determined they shall have as much of Anne as I did!

The kiddos listened to Anne or this one while doing dishes if I can’t read aloud.

I’ve been listening to the one above since October and the one below since January, because I only listen on the way home from co-op.

I revisited the one below to lead a discussion about for the 13-15 year olds I mentor at my homeschool co-op. I need to revise my rating for it in Goodreads down to 4 stars as I’ve never agreed with his explanation of 9/11. It’s not a blow=by-blow play of WW1 but how WW1 fits in with the broader context of  world history.

I got this book below in Audible. I loved the author’s previous two books about motherhood, so I figure I’ll love this third one. I’ve grown up as a mother reading Katrina’s books, having read the first one, Mitten Strings for God, when my oldest was 6. I’m still stuck in Chapter 1  because of all my other great listens of books and podcasts but I know I will finish it. Katrina knows how to tell great personal stories that resonate with mothers.

The next three I got through Scribd. Did I tell you how amazing it is? Do sign up for it! You will love it if you are crazy about books like I am.

A Wilder Rose is such a clever title for a fictionalized account of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s only daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. A fascinating story of how it might have looked and sounded when she collaborated with her mother to write the Little House books. The narrator does a superb job with different voices, especially Laura’s. I wonder what Laura thinks about it and her everlasting fame.

This is what Marilla’s life might have looked like as a little girl and then growing up. How did she meet John Blythe, Gilbert’s father, and fall in love? Again, I got it through Scribd.

I choose to read the Book of Mormon by myself and with my family every morning as a ritual because I don’t want to miss a day, it is so full of light. I love the study guide below to guide our family’s discussions around the dinner table.

I know I’ve had way more than 2 adventures of being Dr. Mom, but I didn’t start naming my Dr. Mom cures in a series until last year, with this post, about the killer cactus that attacked me remotely. Sometime I will have to start relabeling all the other posts I’ve done here on this blog about times I’ve been able to facilitate healing with holistic remedies. Then catch up and blog about all the other times I haven’t recorded yet.

Anyway, in the past 18 months I’ve had problems with my skin. First it was itching from bed bug bites, then the stinging and itching from the Bluetooth-enabled evil cactus on my wedding anniversary, and then just last month, I had this weird itchy rash.

I’m sharing what worked to relieve the itch in hopes it will help someone out there. Sometime in the middle of January, I got this strange rash right out of the blue, below my collarbone and above my breasts. It was red and SO itchy. I had not changed laundry soap or skin soap or deodorant or perfume. I had not eaten anything different, other than a fancy gourmet cheese that my married daughter had bought when she was here to celebrate New Year’s. I was totally mystified as to where this rash came from. Were the dreaded bed bugs back? No. I searched for any tell tale bed bug signs other than the itch and couldn’t find any.

I went to my trusty homeopathy remedy blog, by Joette Calabrese, to research skin issues. I found these different articles:

This one called, “Itchy Skin.”

This one, “Sickening Summer Rash,”

Then this one, “Let the Skin Be Our Guide,”

Then finally this one, “Everywhere an Itch, Itch,” which includes a podcast episode and the transcript of the podcast.

None of them completely matched my situation. I didn’t have “here an itch, there an itch, everywhere an itch, itch.” In other words, my skin didn’t itch all over. It just itched in that one location below my neck. It didn’t come from summer heat. It did feel better when I scratched it. The bumps were not even bumps, but irregular patches. You can’t really tell in the photo above. The patches don’t show up in the picture, it just looks red all over. Despite never finding an exact match for my situation I went ahead and tried Joette’s different recommendations. I used these different remedies, as mentioned in those posts: sulfur, urtica urens, antimonium crud, and ledum. sometimes in different potencies, just because I couldn’t always find the exact potencies she recommends at my store.

At first they seemed to work. My skin that was inflamed red seemed to calm down a bit, to look like this below, within minutes of taking the remedy. It doesn’t look red any more but the bumps are there.

Then, after a day, or two of using the different remedies, it seemed like the rash wasn’t getting better and I was just barely feeling relief. I still felt like scratching my skin to the point of bleeding to get relief! It was horrible! I ran out of the pellets that seemed to be barely relieving the pain the most (sulfur) and asked my husband to get more but they were out at the local health food store.

So I switched from using homeopathy to using essential oils. I remembered that when my five youngest children got the chicken pox 8 years ago this June what worked was oregano essential oil. The one child who I applied the oil to when the bumps first started erupting had a much milder case of the pox. He had much less itch and shorter duration of pox. The pox didn’t itch at all and scabbed over after just two days for him. I wish I had figured out to use the oregano oil with the kids who got it before him. I decided to use this remedy for myself. So I applied the oil to my strange bumps/patches, and then also used Redmond clay (mixed with water to form a paste), a hot cloth to keep the clay damp, a ziploc bag over that, and then a heating pad to keep this “poultice” warm. I held this to my rash and  then I was barely able to function at my other tasks. Many nights I had to apply this heated poultice in order to fall asleep.

The oregano oil gave a burning sensation for the first 20 minutes or so, but then my skin felt better. It was like the oil plus the heat and the clay numbed it so I couldn’t feel the itch. After reapplying this concoction a few times a day for about two days, the rash finally went away. It was like the oregano burned it away. The past few years my homeopathy remedies have outperformed my essential oils, but this time around, the essential oil gave more relief and cured the problem. So that’s what I did and I hope it helps someone! I haven’t had a problem since. I am so grateful! At one point of many rounds of Googling to find images of different skin rashes, it seemed like the closest image to what I had was a chronic, incurable skin disease. Nooo! That was too hopeless for me. I kept looking and experimenting.

I’m not sure if the homeopathy paved the way for the oregano to work, or maybe the oregano would have worked without the homeopathy.

Either way, I’m so grateful my rash cleared up! My heart goes out to all of you who suffer from chronic diseases. I hope you can find relief. I recommend Joette’s resources, especially the protocols she has learned from the Banerjis, a father and son team of medical doctors who practice in India and have a tremendous success rate of healing diseases, even those that appear to be incurable.

I’ve been on a Timeline Card Game kick since discovering the game by Asmodee and getting it for Christmas. Santa stuffed some stockings with the classic and the inventions sets. The others are on my wish list. What a simple idea yet so adaptable to any subject. Every subject has a history right? So you could make this game to study the history of anything. My mind is reeling with the possibilities! (I wish I had learned history like this when I was a kid, along with storytelling and other history-based games. My children don’t know how good they have it!)

So when my Hero class read and discussed this book

about a theologian who turned into a spy to help plot the assassination of Hitler, I thought it would be super fun to turn the historical facts we read in the book into a timeline card game. (I taught a Hero class six years ago, so you can read about the Hero class project here where I describe the class. It’s basically a class for homeschooled youth about heroes of WW2. I like to add WW1 to the study as well.)

You can read the directions for my DIY Timeline Card game here. The game involving the cards above and below is based on The Faithful Spy, about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Notice how the cards above are missing dates and the ones below have them.

So we’ve been playing the original, commercial game for our gameschooling and then playing my homemade game involving Bonhoeffer’s life and pre-and post- WW1 events in my Hero class. In the Hero class, every month we are reading a different book relating to the world wars so we are adding 10 new cards each month based on the new history facts we learn from each book.

So far, from playing the commercial games, I’ve learned the following:

• the cell phone was first invented in 1973
• the NBA got started in 1946
• the first encyclopedia was published in 1751
• the first hourglass was invented in 900 AD

Not earth shattering facts, but fun to know, right? It’s fun to know history, enlightening, and important too. Not just the political events, but the times of inventions and non-political people’s lives. So imagine my delight and surprise when I found a timeline of the Restoration of Christ’s Gospel in the January 2020 Ensign, called “Seeing the Lord’s Hand”!

It was just begging me to turn it into a “Gospel Restoration Timeline Cards Game.” This is so exciting! What a great way to follow Pres. Russell M. Nelson’s invitation in last General Conference to prepare for the 200th birthday of the Restoration by studying it in a timeline game format! He also issued a similar invitation on New Year’s Day 2020, here.

You can use these directions for making your own Restoration Timeline Cards Game:

1. Get the PDF of the article here.
2. Print out the 6 page document, making two copies. I prefer doing mine in full color. I used my library’s laser printer because my printer at home was low on color ink. It cost me $3 to make 12 pages, 25 cents each. Totally worth it!
3. Get a pack of blank index cards.
4. Gather up scissors, glue stick, and clear your work space.
5. Find something yummy to watch/and or listen to. In my case, I did this while the Face to Face Devotional with President and Sister Oaks was livestreamed yesterday. You can watch it here.
6. Spread out your pages and stack duplicate pages together.
7. Start cutting! For every card, you just want to mention one event. So cut out the mention of each event (including the date) twice, once from each of your duplicate pages. Include the image if you can. About half of the events mentioned on this timeline have an associated image. When the image is too big I cut it to fit. So far only one has been too big.
8. For one of the “mentions” cut the date out and discard that itty bit of paper.
9. Line up the event and the duplicate event with the date missing over each blank card, just so you make sure you have all your little papers in the right order, matched up correctly. I like to cut out four events at a time, and then glue them, four at a time.

10. Glue the mention of the event, with the date on one side of the card. Like in the card above. Then glue the duplicate mention of the event, with the date missing, on the back side, like the card below. See how I cut out the missing date? If the mention has an associated image, glue that too, one on each side. I just love this image of John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson working on the Declaration of Independence! Isn’t it beautiful?

Keep gluing and gluing and then play the game!

Here are instructions on how to play the game:

Shuffle your deck of cards to get them out of order. Deal out four cards to each player with the side that shows the date facing down. Emphatically instruct them NOT to turn the cards over. They are not supposed to see the date side. Just have them spread the cards with the date side down, in front of them, so they can see them all at once.

Place the rest of the cards in the draw pile, with the face of the card that has all three things face down. Turn the top card over and place in the center.

Person whose next birthday is closest goes first. He/she looks at the playing card and picks a card from his/her hand. Have the person read out loud the event. Then that person decides if it goes before or after the playing card, placing it to the left if “before” and to the right if “after.” Then he/she turns over the card from his/her hand, after making the decision. If the person is right, the person doesn’t have to draw another card from the draw pile. If the person is incorrect, the person places the card in the right spot, then draws another card. Play goes clockwise, with play getting increasingly harder as more cards are played and you have to place cards in between other cards. First person to run out of cards wins!

I hope this game increases your knowledge and delight of the wondrous age we live in! It truly is an amazing, miraculous time! Christ our Savior is at the head of history, which is really “His Story.” He is the head of the events going on today as well. He is our Creator and Redeemer, Judge, and Messiah. He is preparing to come to earth again to rule and reign for the Millennium.

Up until 1830, when the Church of Jesus Christ was restored by Joseph Smith, as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,  inventions didn’t happen as fast. But since 1830, they have increased exponentially because of the outpouring of God’s light. This light has made people smarter, all with the purpose of gathering Israel to prepare the earth for Christ’s Second Coming. This article here by Mark Skousen, economic historian, explains this phenomenon in detail. Here is an excerpt from that article by Mark:

As an economic historian, I too have noticed the dramatic rise in sustained economic growth and standard of living starting in the early 1800s. In the area of science and technology, the vast majority of advances have occurred since 1830. The World Book Encyclopedia, for example, chronicles the major inventions throughout history. Over 70% occurred since the LDS Church [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] was organized. Progress prior to 1830 was slow and plodding. Afterwards, it was dramatic. Material life prior to 1830 was about the same as it was a thousand years earlier. But the standard of living after 1830 has increased incredibly for the better.

Before 1830, inventions included paper and moveable type, the microscope and the telescope, the steam engine and the locomotive, cannon and firearms, and the spinning wheel.

Here’s a partial list of major inventions after 1830: photography, reaper and cotton gin, telegraph, gas refrigeration, rubber tire, sewing machine, elevator, hypodermic needle, internal-combustion engine, dynamite, typewriter, automobile, phonograph, light bulb, airplane, radio and television, anesthesia and Novocain, air conditioning, nuclear reactor, xerox machine, fax machine, computers, and the Internet.

Was this all co-incidence? Or was it related to what the Mormons call the restitution and the fullness of times? According to the Mormons, the Lord spoke through the Prophet Joseph Smith and ushered in the final dispensation, the fullness of times, also known as the last days. It is the final dispensation in mortality, before the great millennial day when Christ reigns on the earth for a thousand years.

 

I echo what Elder M. Russell Ballard said in this January 2020 Ensign article that  accompanied the timeline. Here is a quote from that:

I testify that in the very beginning, the Lord’s hand prepared the world for the Restoration of the “true, pure, and simple gospel” of Jesus Christ, the “saving doctrines of Christ” that are available to all God’s children.¹⁸ I also testify that the Lord’s hand is in our individual lives inviting us to follow Him, serve others, and love Him as He prepares the world for His glorious Second Coming.

Elder Ballard gives basically the same content in speech format over here.

Spurred on by my sister’s blog here, I have put together my own list of books for goal-setters for the New Year of 2020. Enjoy!

I read the first book, above, The Toothpaste Millionaire, about ten years ago to my older children, after finding it listed in the Sonlight Catalog.  (That’s a trick I often do, finding books from catalogs or word of mouth and then getting them at the library.) Just mentioning the book stirs up fond memories of all my children at home, with my husband taking turns with me, reading it aloud. I remember the electricity going out, which drew us all together to the living room to listen to the book being read. It was summer so the swamp cooler couldn’t work with the power out. We were too hot to move much and just relaxed listening to this book. Great times! Here’s what Amazon says about the book:

Sixth-grader Rufus Mayflower doesn’t set out to become a millionaire. He just wants to save on toothpaste. Betting he can make a gallon of his own for the same price as one tube from the store, Rufus develops a step-by-step production plan with help from his good friend Kate MacKinstrey. By the time he reaches the eighth grade, Rufus makes more than a gallon — he makes a million! This fun, breezy story set in 1960s Cleveland, Ohio contains many real-life mathematical problems which the characters must solve to succeed in their budding business. Includes black-and-white illustrations by Jan Palmer.

This 35th anniversary edition includes an exclusive author interview and reader’s guide with book summary and discussion questions.

I am jealous of all of you who get to read it for the first time!

Brave Irene is one of my absolute favorite picture books of all time! I love how it shows the reverse of mother-bear chemistry, maybe we could call it “girl bear cub” chemistry? It’s the love that Irene has for her dear mother and her mother’s beautiful work that gets her up out of the snow to complete her quest through the raging storm, to complete the task her mother gave her. So sweet!

Wilma Rudolph was amazing!

These books above and below will take away any excuse you have for not hitting your goals!

from amazon:

Nobody could capture the Phantom. She was the wildest mare on Assateague Island. They said she was like the wind, that the white “map” on her shoulders was her mark of freedom.

Paul and Maureen Beebe had their hearts set on owning her. They were itching to buy and tame her, and worked hard to earn the money that she would cost. But the roundup men had tried to capture her and for two years she had escaped them….

Pony Penning Day holds a surprise for everyone, for Paul not only brings in the Phantom, but her newborn colt as well. Can Paul and Maureen possibly earn enough to buy them both?

People made a movie out of it in the 60s that I love to watch with the kiddos, about every two years, to remind them of the power of setting goals that involve money and working your heart out to achieve them. Hey, it’s time to watch it again!

again, from amazon.com:

After World War II there is little left in Katje’s town of Olst in Holland. Her family, like most Dutch families, must patch their old worn clothing and go without everyday things like soap and milk. Then one spring morning when the tulips bloom “thick and bright,” Postman Kleinhoonte pedals his bicycle down Katje’s street to deliver a mysterious box – a box from America! Full of soap, socks, and chocolate, the box has been sent by Rosie, an American girl from Mayfield, Indiana. Her package is part of a goodwill effort to help the people of Europe. What’s inside so delights Katje that she sends off a letter of thanks – beginning an exchange that swells with so many surprises that the girls, as well as their townspeople, will never be the same.

This inspiring story, with strikingly original art, is based on the author’s mother’s childhood and will show young readers that they, too, can make a difference.

 

Read about the above one here.