Tea Time with Annie Kate Rotating Header Image

Review: The Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief

Nov 28th, 2017
by Annie Kate.
No comments yet

People who go to the Mayo Clinic Pain Center are often at their wits’ end.  Nothing else has worked, they are in great pain, and their lives have narrowed down to focus mostly on pain and health issues.  Yet, with treatment, guidance, and pain management plans, many of them are able to feel better, reduce or eliminate their medications, and ‘get their lives back’, although what they can do is often different than before the disease or injury.

Accessing pain clinics often involves long waiting times and/or considerable expense, although pain clinics that cater to teens are more accessible, in our area at least.  The Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief, an online course from The Great Courses Plus, can help.

In this video course Dr. Barbara Bruce, together with other Mayo Clinic experts, first explains pain and discusses medication’s pros and cons.  Then she moves on to things that sufferers can do to address their pain as she:

  • discusses healing sensitized nerves and spinal cords,
  • encourages movement that increases general health, reduces disability, and reduces secondary pain,
  • explains stress and gives tools to reduce it,
  • encourages social interaction, explains its value, and provides care for caregivers,
  • explores the relationship between pain and sleep with practical advice for better sleep,
  • demonstrates how chronic pain can lead to grief,  anxiety, and depression and  gives tips on how to manage these,
  • explains how to build your own pain management team by showing how pain rehabilitation centers work to help sufferers and their families,
  • teaches how to create a personalized pain management plan with SMART goals and ways to keep track of them; how to make time available for this;  and how to plan for bad days.

The course finishes with

  • a set of simple range of motion exercises, strength training (upper body, core), and aerobics options, all with detailed instructions for how and when to progress and how to record progression, and
  • a sample guided meditation practice to help calm the autonomic nervous system (i.e. reduce pain, sensitization, and so on).

Throughout the course the emphasis is on empowering people with chronic pain, and the goal is to help them ‘get their lives back’ both by reducing the pain they feel and by increasing their strength and resiliency.  Anyone who takes the course and follows the instructions will have the beginnings of a pain management plan by the end of it, and will have learned enough to be able to begin to feel better.

Is this course for you?  The answer is ‘yes’

  • if you suffer from chronic pain
  • if pain has become or is becoming a major focus of your life,
  • if pain is interfering with everyday activities—work, school, relationships,
  • if you wish to reduce or eliminate your pain medication,
  • if you care for a person with chronic pain, or
  • if a family member experiences chronic pain.

With respect to the last two points, the Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief can be very helpful for caregivers, especially when the person who suffers is unwilling or unable to take it.  It helps caregivers and families understand pain, know what to encourage (e.g. socialization) and what to minimize (e.g. overdoing it), and gives them tools to thrive while supporting the person with pain.

Although I personally do not suffer pain (as long as I do what my doctor says), I do experience severe physical limitations due to very low exercise tolerance, and this course is proving helpful in dealing with that as well.  However, I took it because one of my favorite people is in constant pain and I wanted to learn to help her.  I think this pain course has given me both knowledge and tools to do a better job.  If you or a loved one experience chronic pain, I highly recommend it.

—

Note that nowhere in the Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief are faith, trust, prayer, sin, guilt, repentance, forgiveness, grace, comfort, or Christian hope spoken of.  That is, of course, a huge gap in addressing the experience of a Christian undergoing pain.  Soon I will post a review of Embodied Hope:  A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering, a wise and powerful guide to understanding physical pain biblically.  Kelly Kapic, a pastor whose wife suffers chronic pain, reminds us that it is vital to remember that God is powerful, wise, caring, and good, and that he has given us other believers to encourage us.  Kapic sensitively addresses the issue of how to live as a Christian in the midst of pain, your own or that of a loved one.

The Mayo Clinic Guide to Pain Relief, composed of 12 half hour sessions, is available from The Great Courses Plus (currently they are offering a free month) and can also be bought from Amazon.  Because the video aspect of the course contains relevant diagrams and notes, I do not recommend using an audio version.

—

If you enjoyed this review, you might want to follow me on Google+ where I often mention helpful or interesting ideas, or connect with me on GoodReads where I (eventually) share what I read.

This article may be linked to Raising Homemakers.

Disclosure: I took this course using a free trial from The Great Courses Plus and am not compensated for sharing my honest opinion.

Posted in: Health, Life, Reviews, Reviews: Nonfiction.
Tagged: · · ·

Review: Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung

Nov 21st, 2017
by Annie Kate.
No comments yet

We all have a lot of decisions to make and, according to DeYoung, our evangelical culture does not promote wise decision-making.  Part of the problem is that we have so many choices to make, but much of the time we are swayed by incorrect theology.  This dramatically reduces our effectiveness, both in our personal life and our Christian witness.

As a foundation to his whole book, DeYoung carefully explains the three ways we use the phrase ‘the will of God’.

  • First of all he talks about God’s sovereign will, in which God plans things and makes them happen.
  • Then he talks about how God wants us to live according to the moral laws that he has given us in the Bible, which he calls God’s will of decree.
  • Finally he explains what some Christians tend to mean when they talk about God’s will, which he calls ‘God’s will of direction.’

Many Christians will find his discussion of the latter illuminating.  He asks, “Does God have a secret will of direction that he expects us to figure out before we do anything?”  The answer?  Yes, God does have a specific plan for our lives, but, no, we do not need to play guessing games with God to figure out what that plan is.  In other words, though there may be significant reasons why we desperately want to find out God’s plan for our lives, he does not give us access to that knowledge in any detail.  What we do know is that his plan for us is that we become more like Jesus and that we obey his will of decree, i.e. his moral laws.

Rather than guessing God’s will for vital but non-moral issues such as career choices, marriage partners, and where to live, we need to learn wisdom from the Bible, other Christians, and prayer, so that our minds will be transformed and we will be able to make God-honoring decisions.  Provocatively, DeYoung states that we need to ‘grow up in faith’ rather than ‘letting go and letting God’.

I am grateful that this is the approach to decision making that I was taught as I grew up.  Yes, growing in wisdom and being transformed by the renewal of our minds is tough.  Yes, there are mistakes, and, no, we don’t want to be responsible for them.   Yes, we may want someone else to take responsibility.  I, too, have longed for the fleece approach at times because it seems so much easier, but DeYoung is right.  Usually God expects us to just bravely make a decision rather than spiritualizing indecision and cowardice.

To sum up, God does have a detailed plan for our lives, but we are not meant to have access to it.  Instead, God uses the Bible to tell us, among other things, how to live and how to learn the wisdom we need to make decisions.  Related to this, he nowhere guarantees us an easy life; instead the Bible often speaks of suffering.  So, just because a choice leads to difficult times does not mean we should have guessed God’s secret plan better.   It does not mean that we made a bad choice, although if it was immoral, against the Bible, or selfish, it was bad by definition, regardless of the consequences.  Difficulties do not mean that we need to second-guess ourselves.  They just mean that God’s secret plan (which we have no way of knowing nor need to know) involves suffering for us at that time.  We also know that our loving God has everything under his control so, in some mysterious way we do not understand at this point, it’s all good.

De Young’s final advice will startle some:  “Live for God. Obey the Scriptures.  Think of others before yourself.  Be holy.  Love Jesus.  And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.”

To understand where this bold statement comes from and how to make it work practically in your own life, I recommend you read this book.  I also recommend it for all young people.

This slim volume is ideal for young people who face some of the most far-reaching decisions of their lives.  It is highly recommended for homeschools and could be part of a high school course in Bible, guidance, or careers.  The study guide also makes it suitable for a group study.  And, of course, it’s a good reminder to all adults as well.

Since some people do not enjoy reading, here is an even briefer explanation of similar ideas in a sermon on ‘Your will be done’ based on Matthew 26:36-46 and Lord’s Day 49 of the Heidelberg Catechism.  

—

If you enjoyed this review, you might want to follow me on Google+ where I often mention helpful or interesting ideas, or connect with me on GoodReads where I (eventually) share what I read. 

—

This is yet another book in the in the 2017 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge and is also linked to Saturday Reviews, Booknificent Thursdays, Literacy Musings Monday, Raising Homemakers. and The Book Nook. 

Disclosure: I received this book as a gift from my sister, and am buying her another copy to share with her houseful of children.

Posted in: 52 Books in 52 Weeks, Devotional, High School, Life, Planning, Reviews, Reviews: Nonfiction, Reviews: Reformed.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · ·

Fundamentals of Literature: A Study Guide

Nov 17th, 2017
by Annie Kate.
4 comments

Although there are many ways of studying literature in the homeschool, all of them should, to some extent, involve discussions of fundamental concepts such as conflict, character, theme, structure, point of view, and moral tone.  Whether one uses a textbook, reads novels, stories, and poems, or focuses on writing, understanding these fundamentals is essential to understanding literature.

The most thorough discussion of these topics that I have found for teens is in the Bob Jones University Press (BJUP)  literature texts, which we have used off and on throughout the years.  Currently one of my girls is using them and the other has just asked to switch to Omnibus, an excellent series of guides to world thought that assumes much of this basic knowledge.

To help us review the basics of Fundamentals of Literature* I prepared this study guide. Of course, it is possible to use the study guide either with or without this text.  In either case, I hope it will help your teen study a wide range of literature, learn to read with discernment, and prepare for the SAT, college, or university.

Conflict

There are three main types (although more than one can be occurring at a time)

  1. Man versus man
  2. Man versus himself
  3. Man versus a power greater than himself (nature, God)

The protagonist is the leading character in a story

The antagonist is the character, group of characters, or concept that opposes the protagonist

Literature can provide a resolution for man’s struggles, echoing the Bible, or not, echoing man’s despair without God.

Character

Types of characters:

  1. Round, i.e. multifaceted
  2. Flat, i.e. one-dimensional
  3. Dynamic, i.e. changing throughout the story
  4. Static, i.e. unchanging

Character is revealed through

  1. what the person says,
  2. what others say about him/her, and
  3. what he/she does

This information can be presented either directly by exposition, description, or dialogue, or indirectly through action.

Theme

Understanding theme is the main goal of literary interpretation.

A moral is a simple statement that teaches a simple truth.

A theme is a recurring idea or central insight that is mirrored in the story’s conflict and characters, i.e. a one or two sentence summary supported by the conflict, characters, and resolution of the story.

A theme can be revealed

  1. explicitly by stating it outright,
  2. implicitly by subtly weaving it into the elements of the story, or
  3. by a combination of the two.

Structure

Careful structure allows the message to be communicated effectively, with clarity and intensity.

Structure of narratives

The plot is a series of events arranged to produce a sense of movement toward a specific goal and is often composed of the following elements.

  1. Exposition—introduces setting, characters, and situation
  2. Inciting moment—event that sets the conflict in motion
  3. Rising action—complications are introduced, events are foreshadowed, and suspense is built up
  4. Crisis—moment of greatest suspense, the turning point of the story
  5. Falling action—details of the story come together
  6. Final moment of suspense before the denouement when all the complications are unravelled (in a tragedy people often die, in a comedy misconceptions can be resolved, in a romance the couple gets together)

Structure of poetry (see also Matt Whitling’s Grammar of Poetry for grades 5 and up)

Meter—regular arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables

Verse forms

  1. Rhymed verse that has both rhyme and regular meter
  2. Blank verse—no rhyme, and each line has the same rhythm, usually iambic pentameter (five sets of unstressed, then stressed syllables)
  3. Free verse—neither regular rhythm nor rhyme

Stanza forms, a division of a poem based on thought, meter, or rhyme

  • Couplet (2 lines long)
  • Triplet (3 lines long)
  • Quatrain (4 lines long)
  • Quintet (5 lines long)
  • Sestet (6 lines long)
  • Septet (7 lines long)
  • Octave (8 lines long)

Heroic couplet—a rhyming couplet (2 lines) expressing a complete thought in iambic pentameter rhythm

Ballad—a narrative poem originally meant to be performed, often written in quatrains (4 line stanzas) with two sets of rhymes per stanza

Sonnet—a 14 line lyric (i.e. expressing personal emotions in first person form) poem

  • Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, composed of an octave (8 line) and a sestet (6 line) stanza
    • Octave is a distinct unit of thought with rhyme scheme, abbaabba
    • Sestet is another unit of thought with two possible rhyme schemes, cdecde or cdcdcd
  • English or Shakespearean sonnet, composed of one thought presented in three quatrains (4 lines stanzas) and a concluding couplet with rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg

Limerick—strictly structured form used for humorous poetry

  • five lines (quintet)
    • Lines 1, 2, 5 have 3 feet
    • Lines 3, 4 have 2 feet
  • anapestic meter (i.e. each foot includes 2 unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one)

Haiku—Japanese form of poetry used to present a vivid picture for heart or mind, usually serious or solemn

  • Three lines (triplet)
    • Lines 1, 3 have 5 syllables
    • Line 2 has 7 syllables

In shape poetry the words are arranged on the page to form a specific picture related to the meaning of the poem

Point of View

—viewpoint from which the author tells his story

  1. Omniscient—the story is told in the third person (he, she), and the narrator knows all about everything in the story, including each character’s thoughts.
  2. Limited omniscient—the story is told in the third person (he, she), but the narrator knows the thoughts of only one character.
  3. First person—the story is told in the first person (I, me) and the narrator speaks as one of the characters, without any knowledge of what others think.

Moral Tone

—the overriding philosophy of a work, involving all its elements, that makes it an influence for good or evil in our lives.  Without a positive moral tone, a work can be harmful even if it has literary merit.

Note that a work can present evil without being evil, and a work can present good while still being evil.  In fact, G. K. Chesterton believed that if a book does not have a wicked character in it, then it is a wicked book (Omnibus 1, ix).

Positive moral tone involves evil being presented as evil and good as good, wisdom as wisdom and foolishness as foolishness, virtue as virtue and vice as vice.  To determine moral tone it is helpful to answer these questions:

  1. Are the characters that we sympathize with noble? Conversely, are we led to dislike the evil characters or to admire them?
  2. Does the story cause us to desire virtue and reject vice?
  3. Does the story’s resolution reward goodness or wisdom and punish evil or foolishness?
  4. Does the theme or message agree or conflict with God’s truth? If it conflicts, how does it, and where is its flaw?

Identifying the moral tone protects us from absorbing harmful ideas, which is a significant danger when people read the brilliant but ungodly thinkers of the world.   This also points to a duty and opportunity for parents, especially homeschooling parents, and I have found Nancy Wilson’s Reading with Purpose to be helpful.

T.S. Eliot sums it all up in these words, “It is our business as readers of literature to know what we like.  It is our business, as Christians, as well as readers of literature, to know what we ought to like.” from “Religion and Literature” in Essays Ancient and Modern.

—

*This study guide is based on BJUP’s Fundamentals of Literature, 2002 edition, nominally a grade 9 text, though similar concepts are taught in most other basic literature texts.  To understand the concepts thoroughly from the point of view of the text, I recommend you read the introduction to each chapter.  If you are looking for direct applications of these concepts, Fundamentals of Literature applies them carefully, from a Christian point of view, to a wide range of interesting works of literature. Of course, our study guide can be useful whether or not you use BJUP’s Fundamentals of Literature; you can find explanations and applications of these concepts in any other literature text or online.

—

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to follow me on Google+ where I often mention helpful or interesting ideas, or connect with me on GoodReads where I share what I read.

This article may be linked to Saturday Reviews, Booknificent Thursdays, Literacy Musings Monday, and The Book Nook, Finishing Strong ,Raising Homemakers.

Posted in: High School, Omnibus.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Review: Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins

Nov 14th, 2017
by Annie Kate.
5 comments

I wrote and scheduled this review a while ago.  Since then another one of my children has moved out.  Growing up and becoming independent are good and necessary things, but even under the most ideal circumstances they cause turmoil for us mothers.  And when are circumstances ever ideal in this broken world?  So I reread this review with deep sadness, but I am encouraged by it as well.  May it bless and encourage you, too, wherever you are in your mothering journey.

It is rare that a wise older woman lets you into her life, but in Mere Motherhood Cindy Rollins, a mother of nine who started homeschooling thirty years ago, shares essential wisdom with us.  At first her writing seems very low key, with bits of humor slipped in here and there, and then suddenly there is a golden page that puts my vague thoughts into words.  And then another, and another, until I am near tears.  “So, you too?” I ask the book, in C.S. Lewis’s definition of friendship.

Stating unequivocally that motherhood is sanctification, Cindy shows what that means in her own life, through good times and very difficult ones—but, no, there are no awkward confessions here;   we do not need to know any details, because we can fill them in from our own lives.

Cindy’s theme is something that will cause many mothers to slow down and ponder:

One of the biggest dangers homeschooling moms face is letting their relationships become idols of the heart.  It is easy for this idolatry to lay dormant and festering for years and years, undiscovered, causing damage.  In fact, we often misdiagnose it as righteousness. (p 3)

She discusses marriage, children growing up, and helpful books.  She states something my husband puts into different words: to fight the culture is to lose hearts.  It is not that we cannot or should not have a Christian culture, but we should not plant our flag on issues that are not fundamental.  We need to tether our children to the past so they are not adrift in the universe—their own past, our family’s past, and our culture’s past.  Of course, Christianity undergirds everything, and Cindy naturally assumes that the Bible is included in this.

As befits a veteran homeschooler, she talks about reading, narration, memorization, and more.  Especially narration, instead of all the other things that schools spend time on.  ‘What we don’t do may be the real key to success,’ she points out, explaining how powerful this simple technique is.

Mere Motherhood ranges from discussions of poetry readings and sentence diagramming to Cindy’s explanation of daily nature study at her house and how one child produced a ‘daily drawing of a snake wrapped around a pole’.

Full of the wisdom of experience, her stories ring true.  So does her advice.  And so does her wry comment about discouraged homeschooling mothers, ‘Traditional school sometimes looks like the place where everything is not her fault.’

Even so, she reminds us, ‘Your success or failure doesn’t rest on your perfection, just your faithfulness. Your family is going to be a mess sometimes….  You could cure this, of course, by not having a family at all, which is the modern choice.’

But how does the everyday life of a homeschooling mother lead to sanctification?  In many ways, of course, but also in this, ‘learning to trust God with our children’.

God has entrusted us with a great treasure.  It is our life lesson to hand it back. To let it go.  Our children must not become ‘Our Precious’.  In the end, we are merely mothers.  Mothers who are also children of our Father.  Let us run into His arms with great joy, knowing that when we see Him face to face, we will not be standing alone. (p 161)

Finally, one last word from the very beginning of the book, where Cindy sums up her conclusions so we do not think, while reading, that her life is a fairy tale:  Seek your validation in Christ; no one and nothing else will satisfy.  This, in different words, is what my father tried to explain to me when I was a teen.   I had not lived enough, then, to understand, but now I am beginning to see, and Mere Motherhood has helped.

This is a complex book, full of ideas, wisdom, and deep humor, of opinions and faith.  It is a book to read and reread, to argue with and to learn from.  And then, recognizing our thoughts in Cindy’s words, we can link arms with other Christian moms and move forward, together.

Mere Motherhood is important reading for all Christian mothers, and essential for homeschoolers.  I highly recommend it.

—

If you enjoyed this review, you might want to follow me on Google+ where I often mention helpful or interesting ideas, or connect with me on GoodReads where I share what I read. 

—

This is yet another book in the in the 2017 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge and may also be linked to Saturday Reviews, Booknificent Thursdays, Literacy Musings Monday, and The Book Nook, Finishing Strong ,Raising Homemakers.

Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from our public library.

Posted in: 52 Books in 52 Weeks, Homeschool, Life, Reviews, Reviews: Nonfiction.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · ·

September and October at our House

Nov 10th, 2017
by Annie Kate.
No comments yet

Our lives are filled with miracles, the ones that recur every day and seem almost normal, like sunrise, electricity, digestion, relationships, and forgiveness, and the ones we pray and give special thanks for like impossible cures, unexpected successes, and mind-blowing coincidences.  When these happen, we need to be grateful, not proud; we need to see our hard work as a blessing from God, not a sole cause of the result.

This is a good reminder for us homeschooling moms.  I learned similar things from Mere Motherhood (to be reviewed early next week).  Yet, because it can be such a temptation to take credit, here it is again, “When things go well, we need to give thanks instead of becoming proud.”  The converse, of course, is that when things go poorly, we need to pray instead of becoming discouraged.

Yes, we had a successful beginning to the year’s schoolwork.  The girls learned a lot and did a lot, and progress is steady, though slow.  I am so grateful for progress!

We are working on Bible reports, Apologia’s Biology, math review in preparation for switching to Saxon (something I would never have imagined!), BJUP literature, Canadian history, Dutch and French, grammar (Rod and Staff as well as Jensen),  logic (James Madison) and accounting (Professor in a Box).  As well, we have catechism, work, animals, and volunteering.  For various reasons our homeschool focus on the Reformation in church history had to be postponed.  We also are reviewing a decade of poetry reading and learning before we move into this year’s poetry—what a trip down memory lane that is!

We also harvested our garden, travelled an enormous distance through snow north of Lake Superior to visit family (beautiful but nerve-wracking), started all our fall activities, and planted hundreds of crocus bulbs.  Miss 15’s fluffy chicks have grown up enough to lay eggs, which is always a miracle.  We have eaten so much delicious food from our garden!  The best crop this year was undoubtedly the orange cherry tomatoes, hundreds of mouthfuls of tangy sweetness, but the leeks were also amazing and the rutabagas are unusually tender and sweet.

I finished a surprising number of books these months, and dipped into a few others.

Embodied Hope by Kelly Kapic, a theological meditation on physical pain.  Insightful and helpful.

Selections from various books of nature poetry by Mary Oliver—beautiful, beautiful!

I was a Spy by Marthe McKenna, Exciting, startling, true, and recommended by Winston Churchill, this World War 1 tale is one of the best.

All Saints by Spurlock and Windle, Modern church history miracles.

Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins wisdom, humility and humor from a mom who’s been there.

Luther by Those who Knew Him by Charles, a delightful devotional look at Luther in novel form.

Katharina, Katharina by Christine Farenhorst, a peak into Luther’s days through a fictionalized account of the girl who married Strasbourg’s first reformer.

No Christian Silence on Science by Margaret Helder, a splendid little book about science and Christianity (to be reviewed on the Curriculum Choice in a few months).

I skimmed through many of the wonderful church history books I’d read years ago, while compiling a resource list about Luther and the Reformation.     That was my big project this fall, and I encourage you to see if any of these books might be helpful for your family.

I also skimmed through Mistakes Were Made But Not by Me by Tavris and Aronson, a book about the psychology and practice of self-justification.  I think this book’s concepts will prove invaluable in apologetics, conflict resolution, and marriage counselling.  There is a good reason, besides simple kindness, not to back others into a corner in arguments or to discuss conflict unnecessarily:  once something has been said—and especially defended— we tend to want to justify it.

We’ve also read the Bible regularly, as usual; with the girls I just started Jeremiah, on days when one of them is away we go through Psalms, when my husband is home we are reading in Genesis again, and on my own I’m continuing to meander through the epistles and Psalms, repeating sections over and over and pondering.

In my blogging life I have done something almost crazy.  I bought the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit.  After blogging for almost 10 years and as my teens near the end of high school, I’m exploring the idea of maybe, perhaps, becoming a serious blogger.  No commitment yet—there are many other options—but blogging combines writing, being at home, part-time work, and flexibility, all of which are important to me.  One side effect of all this is that I’m thinking of setting up a Facebook page for my blog.  Although I’ve muddled around a bit with Facebook in everyday life, it’s not really how most of my family and friends connect so there’s a steep learning curve.

As for my resolutions for 2017,

  • I am not at all walking 10,000 steps a day but have added some other simple exercises to my life. Once the garden is completely harvested and I’m no longer coping with the energy management that requires, I plan to increase my daily steps in a systematic way.
  • I am keeping up with most of the notes I write but my desk is a disaster anyhow because so much else ends up on it. This is not good.
  • I took some time off in the summer but am again working on memorizing Romans, although I spend a lot of time on other parts of the Bible as well. There’s something very powerful about trying to memorize Bible passages, and I think it’s related to what is discussed in this article about biblical meditation from the Puritans.  (Mind you, I cannot recommend this article whole-heartedly—it really seems to over-emphasize spirituality and downplay the everyday world that God has placed us in, following the age-old problem of separating the physical from the spiritual, described carefully by Nancy Pearcey and her mentor Francis Schaeffer.)

Now winter is on its way and our fire is roaring.  This is a good time for the girls to focus on schoolwork before the holidays arrive.  I’m having to work hard, too, since we are switching a few aspects of our curriculum.  Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, things change.

How was fall at your house?  Are you pleased with your homeschooling progress so far this year?

—

If you enjoyed this article, you might want to follow me on Google+ where I often mention helpful or interesting ideas, or connect with me on GoodReads where I share what I read.

Posted in: 52 Books in 52 Weeks, Garden, High School, Homeschool, Life, Simple Joys, Weekly Wrap Up.

← Earlier Posts Newer Posts →