I loved this wonderful clip of Tommy dePaola talking about reading.  Enjoy!  It’s a treasure!

Bicycles

Old Trucks

Buff Orpington Chickens

Old Fashioned Card Catalogues

Old books

Umbrellas

Doors

Birds

Nests

This week’s excerpt from For the Children’s Sake is short but profound.

“Look well at the child on your knee.  In whatever condition, you find him, look with reverence.  We can only love and serve him and be his friend.  We cannot own him.  He is not ours.”

And the winner of her very own copy of For the Children’s Sake is…

Eloise!

Eloise, please email me your mailing address at simplecraftAThotmailDOTcom, and I will put it in the mail to you!  Congratulations!

Since Christmas, we realized that we had been eating too many sweets.  WAY too many sweets.  No one felt good.

So we implemented the “dessert once a week” rule.  We mostly eat homemade treats, so if I’m going to make something sweet, it’s only on that one day.  If we have occasion to have a treat at another time (such as a social event), that is fine, and we eat lots of fruit and all fruit smoothies, but we aren’t eating dessert daily.  The kids like it because they have something to look forward to, and I like it because I know when it’s coming up and I can plan, plus, everyone acts nicer when they are not eating sugar all the time.

Anyway, it’s a tiny little tip, but I bet I am not the only one who struggles with a crazy amount of sweets and how it affects the kiddos.  The only downside?  They are eating more at meals, so I have to make sure I prepare enough!

Leave a comment here for a chance to win a copy of this wonderful book!

Wow, I wish I’d had this information BEFORE all my babies were born and big!  Hope this helps some of you new mamas!

Well, there is not really much to update, except that it is so helpful to have those words to focus on.  And.  An observation.  Relationships and habits take A LOT of time!  But it’s worth it!

I can’t promise that this will be a regular feature, but I love it when bloggers link to other people on the weekend.  Here are a few reads I’ve found encouraging lately.

Remembering Insecurity  from Debra at As I See it Now.  I have read and loved Debra’s blog for years.  She is such a voice of down to earth wisdom and grace.

10 Steps to Having a Quiet Time (Not) by Alyssa at Resolved2Worship.  Again, grace-filled.  Alyssa has 8 kids (and she is my age, eek!) and totally gets that Mama quiet times won’t look like a quiet time “should” but that it’s about relationship.  So encouraging.

Each Friday, I post an inspiring passage from For the Children’s Sake, a book by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay about the Charlotte Mason method of education and childrearing.

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Try a simple experiment.  Take a small child on your knee.  Respect him.  Do not see him as something to be prune, form, or mold.  This is an individual who thinks, acts, and feels.  He is a separate human being whose strength lies in who he is, not who he will become.  If his choices made now and in the future are to be good ones, this person must understand reality and see the framework of truth.  In the shorthand of language we call this “knowing.”  The child is a person who needs to grow in knowledge.

You have some of that knowledge.  Not because you are an adult and adults are supposed to be wonderfully clever; the Bible is very clear in its teaching that there is a sense in which we must ourselves become like this little child on our knee if we are to inherit the kingdom of God.  But we have knowledge because we have lived in God’s world as persons, adn that knwledge can be shared.  Christians have the added perspective of God’s Word from which to explain their experience and understanding of life.

We are told my many in our generation that this small child is a cog in a machine, or even that he is a possession, like a pet animal.  Many adults now “have” a child, in the same way that they “have” a washing machine or a collie dog.

We must answer: No.  You are holding a person on your knee.  And that is wonderful.

~Chapter 2, Children are Born Persons

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NOW ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY!!!

I was recently given a gently used copy of For the Children’s Sake, and I would love to pass it on to one of you!  If you would like to enter the giveaway, please just leave a comment.  And if you blog, tweet, or facebook about it, feel free to add an additional comment for each thing you do, so that you will be entered multiple times.  Giveaway is open until next Friday when I will draw a winner.

Feel free to grab a button!  Two sizes, big and small!