This winner will receive a copy of each of the three recently published books for their kids.

Congratulations are in order to……….

Linda Jackson!!!

Hurray, Linda!! I hope your children will love these books.

To read more about each of these 3 books, see my full review here.

***Disclaimer: When you purchase through Amazon links on my website, I do collect advertising fees.***

And here is a link to each of these 3 darlin’ newly published books on Amazon:

Your kids will love these.

Lincoln’s Big Adventure is also available free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

EXTRA big thank you to the authors of these three books for supplying our giveaway!

We closed April off on a happy note here at our house too. My oldest son is playing basketball, and they came in second place in this weekend’s tournament. That was exciting.

Plus, Alan took the boys to bring-your-kids-to work day this past week, and that was a hit.

And now my nine-year-old is here, and he wants me to get him registered for football, so I will stop here. I wish you all a wonderful May!

And be sure to check out my first successful YouTube video ever. ha! Yes, I’ve made many YouTube videos before to use on my blogs, but this is the first one to ever have over 1,300 views.

It is all about how to keep your clothes organized and decluttered when you have a small closet. My system will also make sure you vary your wardrobe and don’t get stuck wearing the same five shirts over and over again while the others just sit there.

Have a great week, y’all!! Congratulations again to our giveaway winner, Linda!

The post Let’s Start May with a Sprinkle of Joy: Announcing the Giveaway Winner! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today I have the honor of writing this article, 2 Must-Read Character Building Fiction Books for Tweens, over at LikeMindedMusings.com, as part of Lee Felix’s 30 Days of Tween Parenting Encouragement!

For each day of May, Lee is featuring another blogging mom of tweens on her site to talk about this phase of parenting. There’s so much information out there for the years of parenting babies and toddlers, and then it feels like the older your kids get, the less people want to talk about it.

Here’s a snippet of my post. Be sure to check out the other 30 days as well!

“Farmer Boy was an easy sell for my boys. (I don’t have any girls.) They were definitely not excited about this next one, Secret in the Maple Tree, by Matilda Nordtvedt.

They protested at first, but then they grew to love it.

Yes, in this book, the main character is a girl. Her name is Hilda, and she is one of the most real, relatable characters you will ever read. Almanzo in Farmer Boy was naturally a very well-behaved boy. Hilda has to work much harder at it. This character is based on the author’s mother-in-law, Mrs Ebertina Erickson Nordtvedt, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, who migrated in the late 1800s.

Also, I have more good news.”

Click here to read the rest.

The post 2 Must Read Character Building Fiction Books for Tweens appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I recently finished reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The funny thing is that I chose this book because I was confused. I was mixing Bonhoeffer up with Niemoller. I was so excited to learn more about the man who said this:

I took that photo on our 2012 trip to Boston.

Bonhoeffer had a lot in common with Niemoller, except he was executed about 2 weeks before Hitler killed himself.

Hitler personally selected Bonhoeffer to be killed because Bonhoeffer was part of a large conspiracy of German aristocrats to assassinate Hitler.

In fact, they tried to kill Hitler and failed several times without Hitler even knowing it, until that last time when the bomb actually did explode, right at Hitler’s feet, and the evil murderous man didn’t die.

You’ve heard of the Gestapo, but have you heard of the Abwehr? That was another German government intelligence agency. The Abwehr was full of guys who wanted to kill Hitler in order to save millions of lives and to save Germany. It was dissolved by the Nazis in 1945 when they realized it was full of conspirators.

Bonhoeffer was a part of that group. Niemoller was not. Niemoller had already been in prison since the beginning of the war.

Don’t let Niemoller fool you. He was humble. He spoke out so boldly against the Nazis, from his pulpit, as a Lutheran pastor, that he spent pretty much all of World War II locked in a German prison cell.

His support for Hitler was extremely short-lived. When Hitler first rose to power, some people just thought “Yay! Not Communist!” It didn’t take too long for the gloves to come off.

Did you know that when Alan went to Iraq he learned that their whole middle eastern society was indoctrinated to believe that the Holocaust never happened? They all believe it was a giant myth. They say it was propaganda put out by the Jews, because there is such a strong hatred of Jews over there.

History tells the true story. There are survivor stories, photos, videos, piles of their hair, remaining buildings of their death camps, and first-hand journal accounts of what happened to the Jews and to anyone else who stood in the way of the Nazis.

Niemoller and Bonhoeffer did know each other long before either of them were imprisoned. There was mutual respect there. They ran in the same circles, knew many of the same people, and lead the Confessing Church movement. The Confessing Church Movement pulled away from the German Church, blatantly disagreeing with Nazi policies.

It was so interesting to learn about WWII from more of a viewpoint on what was happening inside Germany.

No quote in the Bonhoeffer book beat Niemoller’s quote on apathy.

There’s a reason that quote is so famous, but here are a few quotes from the book on Bonhoeffer that I found interesting.

I loved what Bonhoeffer wrote in his Advent letter of 1938 to Confessing Church leaders. I love it because the fact is that good is not always winning. Sometimes evil is winning, but that doesn’t mean you should not do the right thing:

“And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful”: and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.”  (Bonhoeffer, p. 318)

Not every nation’s churches folded under the pressure of the government as Germany’s did.  Germany occupied Norway from 1940-1945, and their church leaders fought back, even if their government didn’t.

“In March Quisling overreached again, establishing a Norwegian version of the Hitler Youth. A thousand teachers immediately struck in protest……On Maundy Thursday, Bishop Berggrav, the heroic leader of the pastors’ resistance, was put under house arrest. So on Easter, April 5, every pastor in Norway did what their bishops did six weeks earlier and what Bonhoeffer had begged the German pastors to do in July 1933: they went on strike.”  (Metaxas, p. 395)

A different 9/11.

In Europe, they write dates with the day followed by the month and then the year, so 9/11 is November 9th. Germany’s 9/11 was in 1938. It is called Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. The Nazis beat up and killed Jews, destroyed their businesses, burned their synagogues, and destroyed and looted their homes. Broken glass was everywhere. The result thereof was only more terror.

Here is a little bit of what Bonhoeffer wrote in response to it. He read Psalm 74, the 2nd half of which reads “They burn all of God’s houses in the land.”

“This was when Bonhoeffer most clearly saw the connection: to lift one’s hand against the Jews was to lift one’s hand against God himself. The Nazis were attacking God by attacking his people. The Jews in Germany were not only not God’s enemies; they were his beloved children.” (Metaxas, p. 316)

Whether you agree with Bonhoeffer or not, he was a fascinating man who walked very closely with God. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more not only about him but about WWII Germany.

If you can hang with the first half of the Bonhoeffer book, which is slower, you will be richly rewarded by the second half.

 

And for my next book, I have decided to read something quicker. I’m going with a Christian fiction novel involving some espionage and action. Excited to get into this one too.

What have you read lately that’s good? Leave me a note in the comments.

The post The Bonhoeffer Book & That Famous Niemoller Quote appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

There is a time of day that is my absolute favorite. It’s the hour at the end of the day when I read to the big boys. The children love it too because it means spending time with Mom. Do you think Joshua and Caleb would ever, in a million billion years, have chosen to read the entire Little House on the Prairie series?

They LIVE outdoors, so actually they have plenty in common with little Laura Ingalls.

This is a series of books that takes the time to describe the common things that little girls did every day in the late 1800s. There are chapters in which Laura describes their dresses, the color of their hair, and how to make maple sugar.

No, never, ever would my boys have chosen these books.

 But you know what? We LOVED them. They groaned a little through the first one, but once the Ingalls started having run-ins with bears or wolves, I had them hooked. We are now almost finished with The Little Town on the Prairie, which means there’s only one book left, and we are Sadness.

I cannot tell you how much the boys have learned from listening to this series. We have learned how they built the railroad, how they plowed fields, and how children were (and still should be) expected to behave. We’ve learned about blizzards that lasted for days, grasshoppers that destroyed people’s livelihoods, prairie chickens, and literary societies! We’ve learned from Almanzo a better work ethic and from Laura that sometimes it is so very hard to be good, but it’s worth it to help others.

Their vocabularies have expanded. They understand the western expansion period of American history in a way that you can only get from a first-person account.

Oh! And the morals! You know I adore the high moral value of these books.

The boys’ favorite part, though, is always the wolves or bears. Anytime wolves or bears show up, we are tickled pink. They also despise Nellie Olsen and delight in seeing Laura get the upper hand.

The Little House books have been my favorite part of home schooling, by far.

You can see why I so badly want to try a cross-country road trip, and squeeze in a visit to a Little House museum.

Here are a few other books that are also fantastic, most of which the boys actually did pick out.

To say that Caleb likes this book would be a gross understatement. Caleb LOVES this book, mostly because there are two pages about Megalodon, an enormous extinct shark that he’s sort of obsessed with. Like seriously. Lately most of his artwork is shark art.

The boys would much rather focus on science reading than history, especially Joshua. He is supposed to be “Writing through Ancient History” with his writing class, but writing lessons have improved 100% for us, since I started letting him write on science or sports topics rather than history.

This is Joshua’s current favorite. It’s highly educational, but even the photos on the cover are so gross that Caleb makes him place the book facedown on the table. Of course, grossing us out is what makes it fun, so Joshua keeps taking this book to Classical Conversations and using different sections from it for his presentations.

This one both Joshua and Caleb like. I have also learned a lot from it. Who am I kidding? I’m always learning just as much as they are!

This next book has been my greatest purchase of the year, for Caleb:

I have no idea what brought it on, but Caleb suddenly decided that he wants to keep a diary, and he wanted it to be like Greg Heffley’s. Oh my goodness, I’ve never ordered something so quickly. See, what you don’t realize is that I’m actually just as “thrifty” as Alan. Alan saves money by working sales. I save money by trying to never buy things. (I can just see my mom reading this with scrunched eyebrows. Okay. Yes, this does not apply to clothes. No one can ever purchase too much clothing.)

Caleb has been diligently writing and illustrating in his new journal. He even has it divided up into chapters. It is serious business, and all of this with no begging, like I usually have to do to get him to write! So I’m beyond excited. (Did he already have a perfectly good spiral notebook to write in? Yes, he has several, but whatever inspires him, I guess!)

We also still read Elephant and Piggy. For kids ages preschool-2nd grade, I’m telling you, you can’t go wrong with Mo Willems.

 These are also helpful for young readers. They are called Pathway Readers:

Whether you are a homeschool family or not, give these history stories a try!! They are in chronological order, and I promise you will learn just as much as your children. The stories are all short and interesting and packed with little-known historical facts. I read them out loud, but the big kids could read them too. We also have them on audio book. Joshua hates the audio book version, but Caleb actually asks to listen to them in the car!

There are even worksheets you can buy to go along with it, but I confess that we never get around to the worksheets or the color sheets. I figure they’re getting enough with the stories and the copious amount of map drawing and labeling that we do in CC.

I could talk books all day long, but the Dan Man is here asking me for milk.

What are your kids’ favorite books??

The post Our Favorite Books from Homeschool Year 2 appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I held my breath (okay not really, but it felt like it) as I asked the question, “So did it show any seizures???”

{An EEG is a test designed to measure brain waves. Caleb wore electrodes all over his head for 24 hours to get a better idea of what is going on in his brain. Caleb has a history of seizures.}

She (the neurologist) said, “It was an abnormal EEG. Are his seizures on his right side, because the activity is happening on the left side of his brain, which controls the right side of the body.”

Sigh. Suspicions confirmed. Drat. Keppra treatment lives on.

I’ve never noticed if seizures were happening more on one side than the other. We had this EEG because he continues to jerk around in his sleep, and we weren’t sure if what we’re seeing is seizure-related or not.

She started to explain it, but the she said it would be easier to explain if she could show it to us, so she took us back to the testing room and pulled up several different photos of brain waves. She pointed to each place where the left, posterior portion of his brain is having spikes.

Dr. La Garda also asked if Caleb is still seizure free, so I was confused.

“We saw him jerking during this EEG, so were those seizures?” I asked her.

“No. Those weren’t seizures, just abnormal activity,” she answered.

“Are they related to seizures? How many people have this? Would this happen in a normal brain?” I asked. I can’t believe I was actually able to think of the right questions to ask. It seems like doctors never explain enough, and yet, I never seem to think of the right questions.

She said that about 6% of the population would show this sort of activity. She said she almost called it a normal EEG result, “but then he did this,” and she showed me another page and pointed to more spikes. She explained it, but I didn’t understand or memorize it well enough to regurgitate that information.

She also said that some jerking in your sleep is perfectly normal. That’s good to know!

http://www.biomedresearches.com/root/pages/researches/epilepsy/eeg.html

I asked her about the portion of his brain where this is happening. She said it’s the visual area. On the map above, she showed me that his activity was between T3 and P3. She asked if Caleb is doing okay in school.

“Yes, except he has had a struggle with reading, from the very beginning.”
“Oh, yes,” the doc said, “That comes from this area. Dyslexia is also associated with this area not functioning properly. It looks like the brain could be healing here. The brain heals in sleep. Perhaps he is getting better. He has been seizure free for two years. I think he has a 50-70% chance of growing out of it. We’ll need to re-test and re-visit all of this when he hits puberty.”

“Oh. Puberty. What happens then?”

“Well, the seizures will either disappear altogether, there will be no change, or it will get worse.”

Great. Basically, no one knows.

Caleb enjoyed kayaking with Alan today. He looked forward to that all week. They saw a jellyfish and lots of seals and sea otters.

She filled out his sports physical, and we left. She said he’s fine for soccer, basketball, and baseball. She said he can even ride rides at amusement parks. (I asked because I’ve always wondered. Caleb loves the rides.) She said no to scuba diving (pressure) and fighting sports like wrestling and boxing. He doesn’t need to deal with head injuries.

He will continue to have follow-ups every 6 months, and his Keppra dose will stay the same.

I’m thankful there were no full-on seizures, and I’m thankful we don’t have to increase the Keppra. I don’t like that he has to continue to take a brain medication, but it is what it is.

Now I’m just hoping to read more on the visual portion of the brain, and I’m going to focus on patience with Caleb when doing reading and writing activities. The difference between he and Joshua is a massive gulf, but when it comes to math, Caleb is soaring high. This explains a lot.

Caleb, Xavier, and Joshua, all reading together

Caleb is just a smidgen behind in reading. He seems to be gradually catching up. He passed his reading exams this year, so on paper it looks like he’s fine, but if you listen to him read, you see that he reads slowly and monotone. If he’s reading to someone who makes him nervous, it gets much worse. If Caleb reads to you, please be very quiet and patient. Pleasing others is important to him. He thrives under encouragement.

I also hope to pray more for Caleb.

I talk about prayer, and I pray off and on all day long, but there are so many things that I just plum FORGET to pray about. Because Caleb always seems fine, and we haven’t seen a seizure in two years, I forget to pray about it very often. This is why it’s important to keep a prayer list out and updated. It’s so rewarding, too, as you see those prayers get answered.

Thanks for taking the time to read and learn about Caleb and his epilepsy. For more of Caleb’s story, you can read my past articles on epilepsy here: Caleb and Epilepsy, Keppra Caleb and Epilepsy, Changing My Expectations.

The post EEG Results: I finally have answers to my questions about Caleb’s epilepsy. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Some days it’s best to wear your pants a different way.

I stepped outside to take out the recycling. Joshua, Caleb, Daniel, and a neighborhood friend were all playing in and around the trees on the hill behind our house.

I heard Caleb ask, “Master Joshua, how much longer do we have to train?”

Gracious.

Two new seven-year-old boys have moved onto our street in the past few weeks. Joshua and Caleb’s world keeps getting happier and happier.

********

Right now it’s recess time at “Yawn City Elementary School.”

Daniel keeps running in my room, holding the Batmobile, giggling, “Save me, Mom! Save me!” with Caleb, half-heartedly chasing him, holding a Skylander statue. These two make such adorable playmates.

Joshua is still downstairs finishing up his seat work. He had a day dreaming problem this morning. He has three new books arriving in the mail in the next few days, and that is all he can think about. Joshua is an obsessor, another fine quality inherited from his mother. (Sorry, kids.)

I warned him this morning, “Joshua, you will not go to recess until you finish that seat work. It’s not my fault that you’re sitting there daydreaming about books.”

“What did you say I’m daydreaming about?”

I figured that meant that he thought I was wrong, so I back-tracked, “Well, whatever you are daydreaming about. You need to do your math paper.”

“But what did you say before?”

“Your books..”

“Oh, yeah, you were right. I’m daydreaming about my books.”

We love books around here. At least I handed down ONE good quality!!  You’re welcome, dear world.

That has been one thing I have loved about our A Beka language arts curriculum. They include such quality novels and stories. Granted, Joshua hated Swiss Family Robinson and Pilgrim Boy,  but all of the reading material has been chock full of great stories, almost all of them with morals that are hard to find just anywhere. Many of the stories in the third grade curriculum are from centuries ago. They have points I had never even thought of.

Our favorite was this one:

This story of Hilda is relatable, funny, and many of the values in this book are things that we often forget about in our modern age. I’m talking about things like removing distractions from our lives because they prevent us from remembering to pray, not because the distractions are harmful in themselves, but simply because they keep us from what’s best. We never want to accept something that’s kind of good, at the cost of experiencing what is best.

Joshua would probably not admit that he enjoyed this book, but he did, and I did too. He also learned a lot about smallpox and obedience!

Now some of you may wonder why Joshua did not enjoy The Swiss Family Robinson. Oh my goodness. I didn’t blame him. That book really was “boring.com.” If you only saw the movie, you can’t understand. The movie was solid family fun! The book……talks about survival. The book tells you that the treehouse was actually not sustainable all year long. They had to build a house out of a cave for monsoon season.  Okay, that still sounds interesting, but see, the book tells you, in agonizing detail, how they MADE things, how they survived.

Yes, some of you will love it. If you are like Joshua and me, and don’t care how they made the things….it’s a boring book. I really just wanted to read about the animal adventures, meeting the girl, and the shipwreck incident.

Our book love doesn’t stop with Joshua. Caleb was my VOW.

Victory Of the Week!!!

I downloaded a lengthy 2nd grade formal reading assessment from the Ohio State Department of Education, and ……Caleb passed it with flying colors!

I was so excited. That was reason #1 I wanted to home school Caleb: to give him a boost in reading skills. The other formal reading assessments I’d used on Caleb were only lists of words to read, but this Ohio one had the whole nine yards: word recognition and multiple stories, of all different types, to read with comprehension questions.

Here’s a link for anyone else that is interested:

http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Diagnostic-Assessments/New-Diagnostic-Assessments-List#FAQ1413

Caleb is enjoying reading too. He has always loved being read to, but now he finally has the confidence to read on his own.

Henry and Mudge is my absolute favorite series for encouraging youngsters to read. All four boys enjoy those books. They are sweet, relatable stories about a boy and his dog.

But yes, my boys are still terrified of dogs. Someday, when they are much older, we will get them a dog of their own, and I figure that will take care of that. For now, there is no way on earth that I am taking care of a dog.

Every morning, Caleb and Joshua do a math paper and work in their “seat work notebook”, during the first hour of school. The seat work notebook has varying tasks, but it always includes spelling work and a writing assignment. The other assignments vary, which keeps it interesting. Caleb asked me today, “Mom, when are you going to put ‘Read a book,’ in my seat work again?”  That made me smile. I’m so glad he’s finally enjoying reading.

Here’s what I did to help Caleb enjoy reading more:

1. I ordered A Beka 1st grade readers. Last semester, Caleb read the 2nd grade readers, but A Beka is an advanced curriculum, and those readers were too much work for Caleb. I learned a valuable lesson from Joshua’s teacher, Mrs. DeSatnick, last year. She told us, at Open House, “With young readers, you want them to read material that is just right for their level, or easy for their level. Reading books that are above their level actually hinder their learning.”

Best reading advice ever, and Joshua flourished in reading in her class. He still reads several years above grade level, but he didn’t get there by reading books that were too hard for him.

2. I kept taking Caleb to the library and letting him pick out whatever he wants to read. Yes, he reads Garfield and Ninjago more than Frog and Toad. I am no book snob. There is only one kind of book that does not enter our house:

Captain Underpants:  ew, ew , ew.  Parents, do yourself a favor, and everyone that has to talk to your children a favor, and avoid those books. “Poopy” and ‘stupid’ are about the only adjectives you will find in those books.

Don’t confuse Capt. Underpants with Capt. Awesome. They are two very different series.

We LOVE Captain Awesome.

3. I started letting Caleb do more ‘silent reading.’ I think reading to me makes him nervous because I correct him a lot.

4. I gave incentives. Read 30 books, get a Lego set. Obviously, that was a hit.

I could talk books all day long, but the natives are getting restless, so I’d better run. This will be a big weekend for us. Friday night I’m hosting the moms from my home school group, so I really should be getting ready for that!

Have a great weekend!

The post My Victory of the Week at Yawn City Elementary appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I mentioned in my last home schooling post that my first grader is struggling a little with reading. I also mentioned that he started off really well, but now he’s crumbling. In fact, he pretends like he’s going to sleep when he is reading to me from his “reading book”.

What changed?

Well, the first week of school, you have the excitement factor going for you, so there’s that. However, I think it’s more than that here. Caleb doesn’t enjoy reading yet because he doesn’t think he’s good at it. Therefore, reading four pages about making hot dogs was just killing him. It really was. (Believe me, I was hanging on for dear life too.) Therefore, we have retired both  A Handbook for Reading  and The Story Tree, both 2nd grade readers from the A Beka curriculum. Those are just the introductory readers. There is a whole year’s worth of reading books.

These books actually were not too hard for Caleb. They were too boring for me to survive listening to Caleb.

Meanwhile, at least I know he is reading out loud at school every single day. Surely great progress is being made!

I took him to the library and MADE him pick out books, rather than sit and play blocks, like he usually does. We usually come home with a few Mo Willems books for Caleb and then random, sweet books that I have picked. That’s not cutting it. He has read every Mo Willems book there is, I think, so we needed some more material.

We came home with Frog and Toad (Yes!) and a whole lot of Star Wars and Angry Birds. We also happened upon another favorite author of his:  Doreen Cronin, and Caleb read every one of her books that the library had as well.

It isn’t that Caleb can’t read. He can read.

It isn’t that Caleb hates reading. He likes reading what he considers to be good books.

It’s just that he loathes reading anything “boring” or “too hard.” Tonight I plan to peruse the second grade reader that comes after Story Tree, to see if it is any more interesting. Joshua’s third grade readers are full of excellent literature, historical stories, and admirable poems. If only Caleb’s book could be so interesting!!!

What brought about all these new thoughts on Caleb?  Well, we were at the library, and I heard a 1st grader struggling through trying to read a page of one of Caleb’s favorite books: I Will Surprise My Friend. That’s when I realized, “Maybe I’m selling Caleb short. He does sound way better than an entering 1st grader.”

He’s kind of a lazy reader, if that makes any sense. He doesn’t ever want to be bothered with sounding things out. That’s kind of hard to work with.

Today I replaced his usual reading with a book about the Disney Planes movie, and it was much smoother sailing. He didn’t pretend to fall asleep, throw up his hands and quit, or whine once.

Meanwhile, there were other issues in our little school house today, and my nerves are so frazzled right now, I’m using this blog as therapy and to keep from doing housework. The house work seems to be building up an Army to defeat me entirely.

**********

But not so fast!!!  I may win yet!!!  Alan built the trampoline, as soon as it arrived,  last night!!  Things are looking up, ya’ll!!!

The post New 1st/2nd Grade Reading Plan appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.