I am not even four hours late! Since it appears that our “new and improved” internet service isn’t really quite that (on and off all day) I am not going to promise to be on at 11:00. But I will be on!
As for today’s broadcast–Tea and Tongue Taming and John Adams (plus other good things, like low-cost and low stress tea parties), here you go, and please remember to pass it on, subscribe, like, and rave about it to anyone who might enjoy it:
Thanks!
I’m doing a homeschooling article for American Essence magazine, and it’s developing into something about making homeschooling marvelous, enchanting, enthralling, exciting, even magical. Can you help? I have such great experiences and resources, but I’d like thoughts from currently homeschooling parents who realize that it’s really about so much more than academics, and that a facsimile of the traditional/public school classroom is not optimal, to put it mildly.
If you would like to add your thoughts, or know of someone who might, can you let me know?
Here’s my number, if you’d like to call: 970-556-2785.
Thanks!
“You appear to have absconded with my keys, Mother,” my daughter said. “Oh, no! I’m so sorry.” And I was sorry about it, even as I was delighted in a child who says, “You appear to have absconded,” rather than, “Hey! You took my keys!”
It pays to homeschool, especially when you have a literary approach. That is, approach the teaching of spelling, speaking, writing, and thinking via literature. Put excellent books in every nook and cranny. Read to them and with them. Read books they recommend. Talk about it: What was your favorite part? Do you agree with the author’s worldview? Are there plot holes? If you re-wrote the story, what would you change? If this book were to be a movie, who would you cast as the villian?
DO NOT read below their level. One of the best parts of any book is a new word. Beatrix Potter’s use of “soporific” is a great example. Don’t go into Mr McGregor’s garden: your father had an accident there, he was put into a pie by Mrs McGregor. It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is ‘soporific‘.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been absconding with other people’s property, eh?
Phyllis McGinley, in the treasure of a book, Sixpence in Her Shoe, wrote, “If I had time and courage enough, I’d write a children’s book stuck plum-pudding rich with great jawbreakers of words,” and, “I am certain that children, left to themselves, would prefer a rattling good story . . . to the handsomest volume in the world which brings no glory to their dreams or quickening to their pulses.” She continues, “They are a braver generation than we suppose. So they deserve brave books. They deserve the best that men and women of wit and talent can write for them.”
And they deserve parents who will read to and with them. Books with big stories, big wonders, big ideas, big words.
Today on the Home Front Show we’re gonna rant happy, give God glory, get in the face (gently) of those “Christian” conservatives who can only see the negative, who give what Satan’s up to way more facetime than the new mercies of God in this new day!
We’ll begin with Helen Keller’s assertion that, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing,” then discuss the adventure of home schooling, and end with John Parker’s thoughts on the adventure of turning what Satan intends for evil to good via instantaneous, weapons-grade forgiveness.
And of course, much more, like the Domestic Bliss of becoming a Fermentista, and the Three P’s of Power, and a really tough Challenge of the Week for us all.
Make a plan and call a friend – and be blessed.
Go to: 1360am.co and click on “Live Radio”
2:00 PM Mountain Time, Friday, May 19!
First: Tune in tomorrow, Friday, April 28 at 2:00 p.m. Mountain Time to:
1360am.co
Next: Wait for the page to load.
Finally: Click on the “Live Radio” button
and, voila! You are listening to Bev and John and who knows who else on The Home Front Radio Show!
Threaded through topics such as conversation skills, creative decorating solutions, prayer that builds faith, the Founder’s Bible and the founding fathers, and wise men and brave women, will be tomorrow’s theme: Boldly taking dominion, and with charm and grace!
Thanks for being there!
Just as I predicted, with the election of Donald Trump, the American economy is exploding. And I believe that will mean fewer marriages ravaged by financial stress, more opportunities on all fronts, and most of all, I hope it means more moms will be able to be at home. Homemakers, homekeepers, hearthtenders.
I not only hope, I earnestly and diligently pray that we are about to, once again, become a society where people are nurtured in the most excellent place of all – home. And by the most blessed and privileged of all people – homemakers.
I wasn’t so privileged when I got the “education”, bought the Italian pumps and sported the chic haircut. I had a fancy office all my own and a degree – a piece of paper – to prove I was somebody.
But now I have “medals”. “You and John have medals,” a lady at church recently said to me after we stood together as a family before the congregation. The pastor had asked our oldest son to come forward for prayer, along with John and me, before leaving for officer training in Fort Benning, Georgia. Our other three joined us as well. The pastor prayed, John prayed, and I managed to pray through the tears of an utterly full heart.
There were other words spoken and joys shared and then those words from a lady I didn’t know. “You and John have medals.” She paused and I waited as she gazed at our children. “Your children are medals.”
Indeed. And we fought for them. We fought financial fears when I chucked that fancy job to stay home with Benjamin. “It’s an opportunity to trust,” I said to John when the doctor said if I didn’t abort Hannah I would not survive. Told I would miscarry Rebekah, again we donned the full armor of God and we fought. Recovering from the C-section that brought us Seth, I battled for my health and vitality, and John prayed me through those wearying days.
Attempting to hear God and not our own insecurities or preferences, or the opinions of others, we stood our ground when we decided to home school. John prayed as I sought self-discipline, self-control and patience.
Always, we suited up for battle with the Word of God in our mouths, saying what He said about our children, rather than what we wanted to spew out of our mouths. This child is impossibly strong-willed, stubborn, willful, and I am at my wit’s end with her! was the thought. The words were prayers and positive scriptural confessions: “This child is my great and glorious gift, fearfully and wonderfully made for God’s purposes and she will live in the light and bring blessings all the days of her life.”
And so on. Through the years I have made the most powerful and eternally profitable investment a woman ever has the privilege to make: I have raised my children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have been a homemaker.
For John, the husband who supported my determination to do whatever it took to raise my children (for a time we took all four of them with us on our trim and tile jobs) I am grateful beyond all measure.
Because I raised my older children as a single mother, or rather they were raised by the daycare center and the public school system, I know the immeasurably high cost of a “real” job, of a society-sanctioned career. I know the ever-diminishing returns on that kind of investment – investment in the world’s ways.
“I simply can’t go through that again,” I said to John when we talked about my returning to work and finding childcare for Benjamin. It wasn’t just about my baby, it was about me, and my peace of mind. It was about that deepest of needs in my heart, the need to make a home for my family, to be a homemaker.
A homemaker who is also a homeschooler has it made in the shade, especially if she has a strong and good husband. Her life in no way resembles the stereotype of the harried and frantic chicken-with-her-head-cut-off mommy. Rather, if she seeks the impartation of wisdom freely given via simply asking the Holy Spirit and reading God’s Word each and every single morning, she grows ever more skillful in battle, ever more confident and in full receipt of her rewards. Her life is lived in rhythms of grace, rather than in sorrow and regret.
If I had it to do over in what I call my “first life” I would have cleaned houses and taken my babies with me, or lived in a tent by the river, or moved in with family. But I would not have sacrificed my children on the altar of career, I would not have bought the line that I “couldn’t afford” to do otherwise.
I would have said, “What I can’t afford is the breaking of the little hearts and spirits of my children by leaving them in the care of, at best, indifferent workers while I go and chase the almighty dollar.
I am eternally grateful for this second chance, but regarding my older children, there are no overs. I urge and exhort you, if you have young children being raised by others as your heart yearns for them, pray and believe God for the highest of callings and privileges, that He will make the way, that He will be the author and the finisher of your parenting, your marriage, your family. Your home.
Then say joyously to all who ask who you are and what you do: I AM A HOMEMAKER.
” . . . there is no place in the world where the amenities of courtesy should be so carefully maintained as in the home. There are no hearts that hunger so for the expressions of affection as the hearts of which we are most sure. There is no love that so needs its daily bread as the love that is strongest and holiest. There is no place where rudeness or incivility is so unpardonable as inside our own doors and toward our best beloved.” – Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. in Home-Making
Rude and disrespectful children were not taught at home the example of kindness and consideration. They were not shown by their parents the value of respecting the hearts of others.
From the time our kids were small we praised them for their kindnesses to others, and actively taught them how to bring light to the lives of others via small kindnesses. And it began at home.
“Your sister is a gift from God, one that you will always have. When you’re a very old man and have a sad day you will call her and tell her your troubles and she will pray for you and tell you she loves you,” we told the boys more than once.
“Some girls don’t have brothers,” I remember telling one of the girls. “Your brother will grow up to be a good, strong, kind man just like your dad, and he will always care about you and always help you and always love you.”
And so forth. And then, we would tell them to spend just a little time alone to pray (it’s never too early to teach a child to take their burdens to Jesus) and later they were required to give each other hugs and say, “I love you.”
To this day we have four kids who love each other and show it. They are kind and courteous almost all of the time. And if they slip up we are quick to check them. As I said to our oldest son not long ago, “You will never have a truer friend, you will never know a more quality person, than your brother. He’s a 17-year-old male right now, and if you’ll think back to when you were a 17-year-old male . . .”
He got the point: Courtesy begins at home.
“The tenderer the love and the truer, the more it craves the thousand little attentions and kindnesses which so satisfy the heart.” – Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D. in Home-Making
Tomorrow on the Home Front Show (1360 am radio in Johnstown, Colorado) I have about three hours of material to fit into one.
I’m going to share from The Founder’s Bible excerpts entitled Saturate Yourself in God’s Word and A Most Interesting Act of Kindness. I’ll be discussing how the Bible doesn’t talk about New Year’s Resolutions – rather, we are shown by example to make New Day’s Resolutions.
Resolutions in January? January, rather than being fit for get-up-and-go activities, is much more suited to hibernation, fireside chats, and thick socks and sweaters. And even if you live where it’s 80 degrees, just think of January as a lovely time for recovering from the holidays, for thoughtfully and prayerfully and gently easing yourself into the new year.
But back to the Home Front Show (Friday, Jan 6 at 2:00 p.m. Mountain Time): I’m going to call on the written words of wise women tomorrow, regarding marriage and homemaking. I’ll be sharing marriage thoughts from my own book, The Maker’s Marriage, as well as choice words from Dr. Laura’s The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. Time permitting Edith Schaeffer will be quoted, and I’m going to rock a few boats with thoughts from Bringing up Bebe.
As almost always there will be a plug for Home Schooling. Bringing Up Bebe is actually a book I recommend for moms who can’t wait until their kids are old enough to send to school, and another author who probably never thought she’d be used for this purpose is Jane Brocket. I’ll be suggesting that Jane’s books might be almost all you need for a fabulously fun and productive home school curriculum for girls.
The show will go on – to other topics, in particular that of personal identity, and protection from “identity theft.” In December I started talking about identity theft in our society, but didn’t get very far due to time constraints. So, January’s shows (every Friday at 2:00 p.m. MT) will all at least touch on this, with a special and eloquent speaker on the subject joining us for the final January show.
The Home Front Show is all about building your home through building your faith. So, as I always say on the broadcast (or something to this effect), “Do you have a friend who could use a boost? Call her or him and say, ‘Tune in to the Home Front Show!'”
A child in the direst of circumstances, experiencing the darkest of childhood horrors, can learn of, and be programmed to seek, better worlds via the reading of good books.
But what is a good book? One of sacrificial love, heroic acts, and a victorious ending. One reflecting what and who we are – created in the very image of God to create new worlds, to overcome old evils, and most of all, to love forevermore. Such a book, if we’re very lucky as adults, will be full of beautiful description, and if we’re children or reading along with children (yay!) will grant us the privilege of gazing upon anointed artwork.
Escape from “reality”? Not so much as adventurous travel to a higher and more honest “reality.” That’s because a good book, perhaps especially the most amazingly fantastical of them (think Tolkein, Lewis, Rowling) draws us into and takes us along with people becoming more than they ever dreamed or imagined they could be. And that is what we really want in a book – humans being who we truly are, doing what we’re truly capable of doing. More than conquerors.
Enough of such reading and a child will decide that the paltry, dingy, and the defeated is the fantasy, and that he/she is going to live on a higher plane, just like that hero and that heroine in that most excellent of gifts – a good book.
Toward the end of promoting your and your child’s literary delights, I have, with the assistance of my children (now more or less grown-ups) compiled an abbreviated list of excellent reading. Many of these books are endorsed by not only all four of our (my and husband John’s) children, but by John and me as well.
So, here goes, more or less ordered from early read-aloud picture books, to adult literature.
IF I HAD A LITTLE TRAIN by Larry DiFiori
GOODNIGHT GORILLA by Peggy Rathmann
BARNYARD DANCE by Sandra Boynton
GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU by Sam McBratney
TIMOTHY TATTERCOAT by Maryel Cheney THIS IF ONE OF MY FAVORITE READALOUDS
HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON by Crockett Johnson
FROG AND TOAD (ALL OF THEM!) by Arnold Lobel ANOTHER FAVORITE READALOUD FOR MOM
LITTLE CRITTER (ALL OF THEM) JOHN’S FAVORITE READALOUDS
THE COMPLETE PETER RABBIT by Beatrix Potter
STELLA LUNA by Janell Canon
THE LADY AND THE LION by Jacqueline K. Ogburn and Laurel Long (marvelous illustrator)
FIVE DOLLS AND THEIR FRIENDS by Helen Clare
THE LITTLE WHITE HORSE by Elizabeth Goudge
BALLET SHOES by Noel Streatfeild
PIPPI LONGSTOCKING by Astrid Lindgren
MRS. PIGGLE WIGGLE by Betty MacDonald
THE MIRACULOUS JOURNEY OF EDWARD TULANE by Kate DiCamillo
MARY POPPINS by P. L. Travers
HANK THE COWDOG and all other books by John R. Erickson
BLACK BEAUTY by Anna Sewell
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA by C. S. Lewis
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER AND HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain
A LITTLE PRINCESS and THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett
LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS, ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, and THE LONG WINTER by Laura Ingalls Wilder
LITTLE WOMEN and LITTLE MEN by Louisa May Alcott
A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L’Engle
TARZAN OF THE APES by Edgar Rice Burroughs
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L. M. Montgomery
KIDNAPPED and TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson
THE GOOSE GIRL TRILOGY by Shannon Hale
HANS BRINKER AND THE SILVER SKATES by Mary Mapes Dodge
THE LEGEND OF HOLLY CLAUS by Brittney Ryan and Laurel Long
THE BLACK STALLION by Walter Farley
UNDERSTOOD BETSY by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST by Richard Henry Dana
LOVE, RUBY LAVENDER by Deborah Wiles
THE NICKEL PLATED BEAUTY by Patricia Beatty
THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON by Johann David Wyss
PRINCE ACROSS THE WATER and THE ROGUES by Jane Yolen
THE PERILOUS GARD and THE SHERWOOD RING by Elizabeth Marie Pope
RASCAL by Sterling North
THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND by Elizabeth George Speare
MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN by Jean Craighead George
CROWN DUEL by Sherwood Smith
THE STORY OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS by Howard Pyle
CHARLOTTE’S WEB by E. B. White and Garth Williams
ROBINSON CRUSOE by Daniel Defoe
OLD YELLER by Fred Gipson
THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY by Trenton Lee Stewart
BEAUTY by Robin McKinley
BY THE GREAT HORN SPOON and anything else by Sid Fleischman
THE MUSHROOM PLANET SERIES by Eleanor Cameron
A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST and FRECKLES by Jean Stratton Porter
RIFLES FOR WATIE by Harold Keith
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS by Scott O’dell
DRAGON CODEX SERIES by R. D. Henham
THE HARRY POTTER SERIES by J. K. Rowling
JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte
JUBAL SACKETT and THE LAST OF THE BREED by Louis L’Amour
THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY by J. R. R. Tolkein
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen
DADDY LONGLEGS and DEAR ENEMY by Jean Webster – ALL TIME BEV FAVORITES
BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens
STRANGER AT WILDINGS by Madeleine Brent (ANYTHING BY MADELEINE BRENT!!!)
THE P. G. WODEHOUSE COLLECTION by P. G. Wodehouse
ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL by James Herriot
WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte
These are a few books that at least two of us agree to be exceptional books. Obviously this list could be much, much longer and include more of your favorites as well. But I hope that you find something there you’d forgotten about and want to read again, as well as something you always meant to read, and something you never even heard of, such as Daddy Longlegs, or By the Great Horn Spoon. Happy Reading Adventures!
John and I recently had the blessing of seeing our son Benjamin receive his Bachelor’s Degree and become a commissioned officer in the United States Army. We are blessed and highly favored by our awesome God, through faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.
I have tons more pictures, but I’ll stop now.
P.S. John and I will be on the radio tomorrow, Friday June 24 at 2:00 Mountain Time, talking about our trip to the Pacific Northwest (for Benjamin’s graduation), about taking dominion in this life, about friendship in marriage, and more.
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