Becket Gets Wet!

Becket will be baptized on Sunday morning. I'm excited! There is also a certain level of relief I feel knowing my child will have the grace of God.

Part of our homeschooling this week has been spent focusing on Becket's baptism, the other children's baptisms, and what it means to us, as Catholics, to be baptized. Fortunately, several months ago, I received a set of children's books for review from the Catholic Company.


The set is called "It's in the Bag!" In the bag (a very cute little canvas bag) are seven books, each focusing on one of the seven sacraments. What I love about these books is that they aren't given plain titles such as "Baptism" or "Marriage." They're given very cute, even witty titles:

• Noah Gets Wet! A Story Celebrating Baptism
• John's Special Sunday! A Story Celebrating Holy Communion
• Betty Says, "I'm Sorry!" A Story Celebrating Reconciliation
• Cousin Kim's Big Day! A Story Celebrating Confirmation
• Nana and Papa's Special Promise: A Story Celebrating Matrimony
• The Boy's Special Dinner Guest! A Story Celebrating Holy Orders
• Grandpa Gets Oily! A Story Celebrating Anointing of the Sick

All of the books were written by Doug Brummel and illustrated by Jennifer Brummel & the Brummel Kids. The books can be purchased for either gender - you can get the Three Sisters or the Three Brothers; I received a mix of both.

Also in the bag is a Go Fish! card game featuring the Sacraments and a prayer card.

I love this set - as do the children! And, we're all looking forward to Becket getting wet on Sunday!

New Website: Rosary.com

A new website was launched a couple of weeks ago. Rosary.com. From a HUGE selection of rosaries, books and chaplets, to rosary resources - how to pray the rosary, mysteries of the rosary, and the history of the rosary - this website is a wonderful resource for all things... well, rosary!

Check out the new site!
Powered by the Catholic Company.

REVIEW: The Heavens Proclaim

The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican, edited by Guy Consolmagno, S.J.

I've been given the opportunity by The Catholic Company to review The Heavens Proclaim.

I was so excited to see this book on the reviewer list - our family has been studying Astronomy for the past couple of months and was looking forward to integrating this book into our study. This is a beautiful book loaded with color pictures and information - both about astronomy and the Vatican Observatory. It has been a useful book to refer to, especially when reconciling the Big Bang Theory with Divine Creation, which the book covers (at least on the surface) in 9 pages.

For me, there were a few disappointments with the book, however. While there is a table of contents, there is no index, which would have come in handy on several occasions. The quality of the photos is not what I would have hoped. Finally, this is a book about the Vatican Observatory, however, many of the heavenly bodies photographed were taken by other observatories or by the Hubble telescope. For such a beautiful and powerful observatory, I had hoped for more pictures from the Vatican Observatory.

I would, despite my disappointments, recommend the book for anyone (especially Catholics) looking for biblical references and the Christian perspective on space study.

Curriculum Try Outs!

We've been using some of our new curriculum for several weeks now - and some sources we just started using today. I thought I would give a brief review of what we've been using so far.

Saxon Math 2
Casey just started this one today. I'm a bit disappointed with it after just one lesson. I realize it is important for her to review what she's already learned, but after doing lesson one then flipping through the book, it appears that she won't be learning much that is new. Math is already a tedious subject for both of us; I feel as though I'm looking down the barrel at 131 remaining lessons of review that may prove to be extremely boring for both of us. On the bright side, I do like the Saxon 2 Meeting Book, so there's something to look forward to, I suppose.

Rod & Staff English 2
I love it. Casey hates it. She hates it so much that she wants to do it before Phonics (which has always been the last thing we do). I think it's all of the writing she's not fond of. She didn't complain too much today, but there have been times that I've feared tears. Fortunately, she's never shed a tear about doing home school work, but I think we've come close with English. I like the layout of the book - although I (in all honesty) get tired of the repeated references that "God made the sentence to ____________." It's a very bland, colorless book - even the cover of the book is brown, but I like the detail and constant review of concepts held within. Casey will just have to suffer.

Rod & Staff Phonics 2
Casey's next least favorite subject, but I like it because she can work independently on this while I work with Will on his reading. Each lesson has two worksheets to be completed - very picture-intensive and relatively self-explanatory. While I have the teacher's manual, I rarely use it.

Rod & Staff Spelling 2
I made the switch from Seton Spelling (used last year) to R&S. I'm glad I did. The teacher's book is a fabulous reference for ideas to engage the child with the words for each lesson. There are exercises, drills and practice tests to do before the week's spelling test is administered. Seton was pretty and I do miss the full-color religious artwork, but R&S is far more practical for the purpose of teaching spelling.

Faith & Life - Jesus Our Life (for Grade 2)
Again, another switch from Seton and another switch I'm glad to have made. While a bit more costly than the Seton Religious Education series, each year of Faith & Life provides a Teacher's Manual (loaded with discussion points, prayer suggestions, answer keys, quizzes and tests, and teacher-only insight to the material), a Student Book and an Activity Book. Casey loves the Activity Book and tends to work beyond a given day's lesson. I do our religion lesson while we're eating lunch - all of the children are attentive during meal times, so Will and Tricky also participate in the discussion of the material. We're all very happy with learning more about Catholicism.

New American Cursive
I researched over a dozen cursive instruction guides and I chose the NAC method. I like the overall simplicity of most of the letters - for example, the capital cursive F looks like an F rather than being virtually identical to the capital cursive T (something that caused me great frustration as a child). Casey is exciting to be learning a new way to write - pretty, curly writing.

Story of the World 2
We're doing SOTW again this year, but I'm using this along with another history book for the same time period, that being the Middle Ages and the Reformation. Being Catholic, I wanted to be careful about the onesidedness (that being a slant toward the Protestant side) I've seen in a lot of history texts including SOTW2. So, I chose...

Story of the Middle Ages by Christine Miller
SOMA, while perhaps being a bit better suited for the Logic Stage learner, provides the information I feel is missing from SOTW2. The focus is more on the history on the British Isles (where most of the meatier happenings of the Middle Ages took place, IMHO) than on the worldwide range of SOTW2. The children have enjoyed the narrative of SOMA, especially the stories of the saints. Both sources used together are providing the history that I want to teach the kids.

Classic Worktexts
So far, Casey has read Little Women and The Prince and the Pauper. Each worktext conodenses and subdivides each classic into ten chapters. With each chapter there is a vocabulary list (with definitions and use examples), a picture, a page of reading, multiple choice questions, and a page of puzzles and exercises for the vocabulary learned.

REVIEW: Fascinating Creatures by Frances England

Casey and I walked over to her art teacher's home last week to pick up her spring artwork portfolio. During our visit, Ms. Jan gave Casey a CD. The CD is a compilation of children's songs written and performed by Frances England. It seems as though Ms. England is a former student of Ms. Jan's. Ms. Jan enjoyed the CD, but since she doesn't have children, she thought she would give the CD to a child who would listen to it often.

In my usual fashion, Casey had to remind me we had the CD a few days later. I popped it in the CD player and was amazed at what I heard. Catchy, child-friendly music, that I was genuinely enjoying as well. Even better, Richard listened to it tonight - I turned it on for "cleaning music" for the kids - and he liked the music as well!

Fun and upbeat, refreshing without being too perky, England's lovely voice and acoustic guitar combine to perform original children's songs that kid will love and parents won't mind (and will probably wind up singing along to like I did) playing in the car or the house.

Check out Frances England's website here.
For a great video sample of one of the songs, Tricycle, from the Fascinating Creatures album, go here.

I'm excited to hear Family Tree by Frances England, released two years after Fascinating Creatures.

By the way, I hope Ms. Jan is proud of Frances England - the album art on Fascinating Creatures was created by her former student!

The Faith Database

I received the Faith Database CD a few months ago... and I LOVE IT!

What an amazing resource chock full of a huge variety of Catholic material - several Bible translations, artwork, Papal encyclicals, writings by Chesterton, early church documents, the catechism, and much, much more.

Of course, with this much information, the search function is an asset. You can search the entire database or narrow your searches by selecting various criteria.

But my very favorite feature? The Apologetics Test. I love tests!

While the database is very easy to use, a helpful tutorial is included.

A wonderful resource for students, teachers, religious, and laymen alike, I highly recommend spending the $40 for the Faith Database available at The Catholic Company.

The Red Lemon by Bob Staake

About 3 years ago, while looking for a few interesting children's books to check out from the local library, I ran across The Red Lemon by Bob Staake. More than anything, the illustrations caught my eye. I checked it out, took it home, read it to the children, and it was an instant hit! Three years later, it's a family favorite.



This morning, I read it again. I've got most of it memorized - from the sing-song rhymes to the beautiful pictures. We even have a special way of reading some of the lines and the children know all of those parts by heart.

After the thousandth or so reading this morning, I decided to do some research: Are there more books by the author? What else has he done? Does he have a website?

Yes! There are more books:

The Donut Chef (written and illustrated; published last month)
Mary Had a Little Lamp (illustrations)
This is NOT a Pumpkin (written and illustrated)
Little Golden Picture Dictionary (illustrated) [We have this one, too!]

And even more!

I also found Bob Staake's website. Available on the site is a link to print a cute cut-out house which is Staake's studio. Here's what the finished product will look like:


I also found Staake's email address and dropped him a quick line to say, "Thanks for writing such a great book." You know what? Within 20 minutes, he wrote back. Neat!

At the end of every year, I buy 10-15 copies of a book to give as presents the following year. I've decided our 2009 gift book will be The Red Lemon!


Edited to add: Richard and I were further exploring The Red Lemon site I linked above. There are games, views of the book, and red lemon recipes at the website. DH made red lemonade: