You Did It to Me - Book 23

God is so good. Even in really tiny, insignificant ways.  It's amazing.  The last book I read was Happy Are You Poor, which left me feeling really troubled and paralyzed and guilt-ridden.  Right when I was at the peak of my turmoil I chanced to pick up this book, You Did It to Me, and it turned out to be the perfect follow up book.  I was running out the door to take Becky somewhere, and I knew I'd have to wait for her so I'd have time to read (I want to say it was for her voice lesson.  It's only 30 minutes and about 15-20 minutes away, so usually I just sit in the car and read. It's good reading time).  Anyway, I grabbed my Kindle but then realized it was almost out of charge.  I had about 30 seconds to come up with another book.  So I blindly grabbed for a book on my bedside table (which is covered in books) and took off.  I can't even remember how I got this book.  I must have bought it some time ago or maybe Will gave it to me a while ago.  Anyway, it was exactly what I needed to read.  Exactly.

Father Gaitley writes in a very different style than Father Dubay.  In a way he is less intellectual, though he is still intelligent!  But this book is about Mercy in Acton.  So Gaitley doesn't dwell on proving why Christians should be detached from material things, instead he pretty much sets out the premise that Jesus will judge us on what we do for the least of our brothers, so how can we, right now, orient our lives so that we are doing things for the least among us.  While Father Dubay is abstract and philosophical, Father Gaitley lays out a game plan and then coaches us through, so that we can really accomplish it.  It is so helpful!

Initially Father explains what mercy is and what the works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual are.  He talks about different ways to understand them.  Then he organizes his book into six categories:  1) giving food and drink to the hungry and thirsty; 2) welcoming the stranger; 3) clothing the naked; 4) visiting the sick; 5) visiting the imprisoned and finally, 6) almsgiving.  At the end of each section is a list of 'action items' to brainstorm through to see what action you can practically take in your life.  It could be something as simple as vowing to smile more at people, to pray more, to volunteer for something, to give money for a particular purpose.  The end of the book is a nuts and bolts plan to put all the preceding into action. The very end of the book has various important prayers.  Along the way, you get a lot of theology delivered in a very conservational and easy way.

The biggest disappointment in the book is that Father keeps referring the reader to MercyPages.org for ideas on how to help others, but the page doesn't really exist.  It is an empty page at the Marians of the Immaculate Conception website.  I guess Father thought that there would be an accompanying website but somehow it never got off the ground?  However, he still gives you enough ideas otherwise, that this really doesn't effect the overall helpfulness of the book in imagining and then putting into practice works of mercy in everyday life.

Towards the very end of the book, Father Gaitley takes on the idea expounded on by Father Dubay, that Christians are required to give from their own need and not just out of their surplus.  But being more interested in the practical, Father Gaitley zooms right in on pragmatic advice.  He says the usual expectation is tithing.  If you can give more, great!  Aside from tithing, he also advises starting small in personal practices.  He tells of a project he was involved in while at college.  He gave up sodas for a year, and he took the money he would have usually spent on soda and gave it to a crisis-pregnancy center.  Practices like this require some sacrifice and orient us to living out mercy in our lives.  He says do things like this and start a personal Mercy Fund, where you keep the savings from your regular sacrifices and then give to the needy.  And Father Gaitley doesn't disparage giving time and energy either.  He says another way to detach ourselves from our own comfort is to give of our time; his example is someone giving up a comfortable evening at home in front of the TV to teach catechism at their parish.

This is a great and practical book that I know I'll refer to time and again.  It was really just what I needed to read and it has inspired me greatly.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Showing Us How to Christian

Thank you, beautiful people of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, for showing us how to Christian.  Thank you for your generous love and the clarity of your vision.  You have your eyes on Christ and his glory is reflected in your amazing actions.  Turn the other cheek.  Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.  You have taken up your brutally painful cross and followed Christ.  You short circuited all the enraged would be exploiters of this tragedy, who would use it to fan the flames of hate and divisiveness.  You are a blessing to our country and our world!  May God keep you strong!  May the Holy Spirit continue to show you how to speak to us of his love.  May Jesus be with you night and day, ever at your side, loving you all the more for your faithfulness to his Word.  May those martyrs now in heaven look down on you and in gratitude watch you as you honor their legacy of devotion to Christ.

The video of the bond hearing

Peggy Noonan wrote a beautiful piece.

Horror and tragedy again

I woke up this morning feeling so suffocated by despair.  I guess I shouldn't have read a list of the Charleston church victims before I went to bed.  It crept into my sleep and made me feel so dark and so heavy.  Of course atrocities happen all the time anymore.  Beheadings, shootings, ISIS raping little girls, a woman carving another woman's baby out of her womb, that was especially gruesome. The same day apparently some Jewish extremists poured gasoline over a nun and priest and tried to light them on fire.  Somehow they got away, but perpetrators did manage to burn an ancient church.  What seems to add to the disturbing nature of this latest American horror for me is the racial hatred that underlies it.  This in the era where we elected an African American president.  My country!  One step forward, two steps back.  I guess in my mind it is one thing when it is police vs. suspects, even though that is complicated enough.   Unfortunately, there is police corruption and brutality.  That's a fact.  But then there is the other side.  My niece is married to a police officer and her stepson just became an officer.  They seem like good people and the stress of knowing that any day while in the line of duty of trying to keep order and protect innocent people, you could be killed, well that takes more courage than I've got.  I admire them for answering that call of service.

When I saw the photo of the boy-man who did this terrible shooting the first thing I thought was he looked like the shooter in Sandy Hook.  Another odd looking, young for his age loner.  His parents divorced.  His stupid parents letting him have a gun.  A history of trouble.

And right away of course you have the gun control issue whipped out.  One side saying if he didn't have a gun, he couldn't have done this and the other side saying, if someone in that church had a gun, they could have stopped him.  I am so tired of the same old political games.  Both sides, like the Washington Post and the National Review, both seemed especially vulgar and unseemly in their glee at using the incident to sling hatred and recriminations.  Really the Washington Post writers were practically peeing in their pants they were so excited.  The South!  White against black!

Why, oh why are people still racist?  It is the stupidest, ugliest thing.

The most handsome and noble thing was that a black man, someone who had recovered from a terrible gang shooting, went to the shooter's facebook page and posted the most beautiful Christian message on it.  Love wins.  What a saint that man must be.

I keep especially thinking of the oldest victim, 87 years old.  Who shoots an old southern church lady?  They are about the most charming creatures around.  I hope she is with Jesus in paradise right now.  I hope she is singing and whooping it up in a gospel choir with her Lord and Savior and all the angels.  I hope they all are.

Lord have mercy.

Pilgrim's Inn - Book 22

Last night when everyone had gathered for prayers, I announced that I had found the perfect name for our future riverside house.  This is our dream for our retirement.  We want to move out of this traffic-jammed, much too expensive area to a tranquil place with a river view.  I will look out at said view and birdwatch, when not working through my very high stack of tbr books.  Rick will boat and fish.  It'll be big enough that all our children will flock there to visit and maybe even live there.  I announced I wanted to name this future refuge "Herb of Grace."  They all gave me blank stares!  Obviously, they had not just finished reading Elizabeth Goudge's novel, Pilgrim's Inn (which was originally published in England under the title of Herb of Grace).

This is the second book in the Eliot Trilogy by Goudge.  I read the first book, The Bird in the Tree back in April.  It is now after the war but times are very hard in England.  Nadine is still trying to be a faithful wife to George while her love for David lingers painfully.  David has had a nervous breakdown from the horrors of the war.  Lovely, imperious Grandmother Lucille to the rescue!  She contrives to get George to buy the ancient Inn that is for sale near her estate of Damerosehay.  The family moves there and just as in so many other Goudge novels, the old building has a magical healing quality that slowly and lovingly leads everyone, especially those most troubled into a deeper understanding of life and love.

The book really is a like a large ensemble cast movie, where we get the perspective of many of the family members or people closely associated with the family.  We see things from Lucille's point of view, Nadine's, David's, Sally's, Tommy's, Annie-Laurie's etc.  But even so the main characters are really Nadine, David and Sally.  The theme is how hard fidelity is, but oh how much it is worth!

I swallowed The Bird in the Tree in one ecstatic gulp.  I took longer to read this one and I must say in the middle I found myself not quite as enchanted as usual.  I was having a hard time with the character of John Adair and his relationship with Nadine.  And when the book got rather dreamy and supernatural, I wasn't prepared for it and it took me a bit to embrace it.  But. . . . as I kept reading, it got more and more wonderful.  It has a very happy ending!

Goudge's books are all full of Christian imagery and Christian theology, so they are very satisfying on a spiritual level.  And this one worked especially well on that level.

Two thumbs up!  Next up (well at some point soon) the last book in the trilogy, The Heart of the Family.  

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

How to Be a Curriculum Minimalist

Homeschoolers love curriculum.  They love leafing through catalogues, talking, talking, talking about curriculum, checking out new curriculum, going to curriculum fairs.  A whole publishing industry has sprung up for homeschoolers and new ones come along all the time.  People even identify themselves by their curriculum.  Are you a Sonlight user?  A Seton homeschooler?  Konos?  A  Beka?  In Catholic circles we've got Seton, Mother of Divine Grace, Catholic Heritage Curriculum, Kolbe, Our Lady of Victory and more.    These curriculum providers have it all thought out for you, so you the mom only have to plunk the kid down at the table and make them move their pencil and voila!  Education!

I do think curriculum serves its purpose, but I think its purpose is pretty narrow.  I think a lot of times those curriculum providers are feeding into our anxieties and the 'need' to keep up with the Joneses.  We homeschoolers are always worried about whether the kids measure up to other kids.  We want them to excel.  We want to prove that we can do this home education thing.  We are gung ho about this project of ours.  We want to plan ahead.  Parents with kids who are two years old will ask questions about preschool curriculum.  It's like city people who have eaten factory produced food for so long, they forget that you can go and pluck an apple from a tree and eat it.  Or catch a fish in a stream and fry it up over a fire.  And that fresh food is probably far more nourishing than the boxed kind.  And it tastes better too!  But it isn't as convenient.  Or real.  Have you ever thought about how much trying to find the perfect curriculum is really a function of our consumerism?  If we buy something, it will make us happy.

So here is my first premise, you don't really need planned curriculum to learn.  People have been learning without planned curriculum for a long, long time.  Lesson plans and educational activities and that kind of stuff is made up and part and parcel of the factory learning approach to education that has dominated our landscape since the advent of public schools.

Curriculum can have its place, though.  But wouldn't it be better to see if you really needed it before you spend the money, instead of assuming you do?  What if your child picks up reading from being read to? What if your child is one of those natural spellers?  What if your child loves to write without any prompting?  What if your child loves to think mathematically?  Maybe, if you step back a bit and don't rush things, you'll see you don't need a pre-digested program.  Or maybe you'll realize that one beautiful curriculum that everyone is enthusing about will actually turn something that is a delight into a chore.  There is that danger.  So maybe curriculum should only be a response to your child's passion or inquiry or desire for a skill.

I recently re-watched a Ken Robinson youtube video.  I guess I had first seen it a couple or more years ago.  He talks about how modern public education is based on two concepts:  linearity and conformity.  That is what the scope and sequence in planned curriculum are based on too.  They expect children to learn in a linear fashion, which is not how 99% of learning takes place.  It does not move along in assembly line fashion.  It is, as he says in his talk, an organic thing.  We don't need a factory, we need a farm where we plant seeds and then create an environment where the seeds can grow and flourish.  We also don't want conformity.  Healthy societies depend on the diversity of talents that all its members have.  Not everyone should be white collar clerks.  We need all types of learners and workers.  The end goal of education is not college or test scores but a flourishing human being who thrives, loves and lives deeply whatever his passion or walk in life turns out to be.

Watch this video because he really says it so much better than I ever could.


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But then again, you will probably need something to help you along in particular subjects.  But even here curriculum isn't the only answer.   Instead of following some other person's scope and sequence, maybe you could just teach yourself how to teach reading or writing or arithmetic and then just pass that information along to your child when the time is right, like when it comes up in the real world or the child asks you about it or when it occurs to you, the mom, hey maybe it is time to learn such and such.  I am thinking here  of early childhood, before the high school level.

You know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide.  I bet you remember basic fractions, decimals and percents.  You might remember some basic geometry.  Anything you don't remember you can look up!  Higher math though I do think takes systematic study.  I think a good textbook works really well for Algebra and up.  But this doesn't mean that in pre-school you need to sit down with your child every day and 'do math' in order for the child to study Algebra when they are 14.

This is true for all the traditional skill subjects:

You know how to read.  If you don't remember any of your phonics rules you can rely on something like Phonics Pathways to steer you through.

You know how to write, by which I mean form letters.  You just need to read a brief handbook on how to form letters to get the pedagogy behind handwriting, then you can focus on copy work to teach penmanship (and spelling, vocabulary, literary devices, grammar and punctuation).

You know how to write, by which I mean put an idea into sentence form.  So much of this sort of writing is pushed on kids too early.  Better to wait until they have a little spelling and grammar via lots of reading and read alouds and actually have something they want to say, before making it a requirement to learn how to craft an essay.  You don't need to learn to write paragraphs in 2nd grade so you can be an eloquent writer when you are 18.  It simply isn't necessary and in fact often backfires.  There has been all this emphasis on early childhood education, basically stripping children of their natural childhood, ignoring their developmental needs, their own personal trajectory and talents, and it is wrong.  Don't buy into it!  Both intellectually and financially!

The heart of homeschooling is not curriculum  The heart of homeschooling is being in a family that encourages wonder and exploration within wholesome limits.  It is participating in family life which consists of conversations, read alouds, chores, projects, arts and crafts, living one's faith in a tangible way, interacting with the community.  And then you can add a little preplanned help now and again to this rich cultivated loam in the garden of your family.

Here are 12 resources that may help you in learning how to teach:

The Three R's by Ruth Beechick - Ruth Beechick is a Christian educator.  I don't subscribe to her brand of Christianity but she wrote this slender, brilliant book that gives you the simple nuts and bolts needed to educate your child in the 3 R's of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Phonics Pathways - this book is good for beginning phonics up through high school spelling.

Bob books - these are great beginning phonics readers.  You can just use these books to sit by your child and help them sound the letters out.

Games for Reading and any other Peggy Kaye books.  She's got one on math, one on writing and more.  These are resources you can just pick and choose from as you feel the call for your particular children.

Teach Me to Do It Myself or other Montessori guides for the home, like those by Elizabeth Hainstock, etc.  Incorporating Montessori type activities into your home life gives a creative outlet for your parental anxiousness to get this schooling thing going!  And it also gives your child the chance to learn through play in developmentally respectful ways.

Donna Young's Handwriting resources - Donna Young is a wonderful woman!  She created all these resources for other homeschoolers and then made most of them free on line.  God bless her!

Jim Trelease's The Read Aloud Handbook - read to your children!  They will learn so much!

Honey for a Child's Heart - this was the first book about books for children that I read.  There many other valuable book lists out there in internet land nowadays.  So this really is just one choice of many.

Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful - This book is written by a Montessori teacher who worked with emotionally troubled children.  However, it is so much more than that!  It is about respecting children, not rushing them, creating a place of safety so they can bloom and learn to manage their own emotions.  For me it served as an invaluable parenting book as a parent who tries to home educate.

Project Based Homeschooling - This book shows you how to let your children explore and learn through taking their projects seriously.  It hits just the right tone and is very practical.

Khan Academy - forget how to do long division?  Don't remember Newton's laws?  Sal Khan to the rescue!  God bless him too!

Teaching the Classics - How to read and discuss literature deeply.  Really helpful!

For the newbie:  once you get some wisdom and experience under your belt, you'll begin to feel more comfortable in the role of teacher and mentor.  It truly is just an extension of your parenthood.  All parents are teachers, but homeschooling parents are teachers of more subject matter.  That's the only difference.  So essentially, you already know how to do this thing!  You just need to build on what you already have.  It is all a beautiful process.  Keep joyful, keep it real, learning will happen, not in a linear way, but in an almost magical organic way that will have you looking back in amazement.

Happy Are You Poor - Book 21

Happy Are You Poor by the late Father Thomas Dubay, is the scariest book I've read in a while.  He makes a pretty airtight argument that the Gospel calls all Christians to poverty, to what Father Dubay calls a sparing-sharing lifestyle.  He distinguishes destitution from poverty.  Destitution is starvation and homelessness and that sort of thing.  Poverty is a real detachment from material things - not just one telling oneself that one isn't attached to their laptop or nice car or pretty jewelry, but deliberately living without these things.  So one should live frugally and simply and also give to the needy out of one's own need and not out of one's bounty.

I agree that the Gospel message says this, and I feel guilty in my own very comfortable circumstances.  But the problem I have with this book is that it raises the question but then doesn't provide guidance on how to deal with it in the reader's own life.  Father Dubay says that each person's situation is unique and he can't possibly counsel on specifics.  But this left me deeply frustrated because I really am at a loss at how to apply this to my own circumstances without watering down the radical message of this book.

Father Dubay condemns our tendency to rationalize our way out of this radical message.  He kept asserting this which seemed a little passive-aggressive me, in that it seemed to preclude any honest question or objection I might make as I read.  For instance, if everyone lived as frugally as they could, wouldn't this actually wind up decreasing the number of jobs?  Do poor people not want careers or to be self-sufficient?  Who redistributes all that wealth that we aren't spending on ourselves?  I think this can work in small intentional communities, but I don't think this translates well into whole economies.  What do I do as a non-working spouse who relies on my husband to provide financial support?  I felt after reading this book that the only way to really answer the call to Gospel poverty is to give up everything and go be a missionary to the poor.  But I do have a husband and children to think about!  So I wind up being very wimpy and really only giving out of what Father Dubay clearly disparages as rationalization:  giving from my time.

Another thing that bothered me about the book is Father's assertion that poor people are happier than rich people.  Now I've heard this before many times.  I think Mother Teresa said this too, that the poor have their priorities straight and so their attitude frees them from the deep depression that seems to plague first world people.  But I got the impression that Father Dubay romanticized a bit about this.  Honestly, at one point I thought, did he know any poor people?   The poor people I know have enormous stress in their lives.  They are poor because they come from broken homes, are immigrants who had to flee violence and now have to cope in a land where they can not speak the language and have no to little education.  They deal with gang violence and drug and alcohol addiction.  But then I thought, maybe Father would call these people destitute?

It sounds like I didn't like this book and in a way I didn't, because it made me so uncomfortable.  Clearly, I have a journey ahead of me to figure this out.  But actually I always enjoy Father's writing.  He writes so clearly and so succinctly.  His writing style is both simple and profound, so he is both an easy and challenging author.  I looked at the Amazon reviews for this book and it is obvious my own issues have clouded my thinking about the book.  Almost everyone gave it a 5 star review.  I wonder though how many people actually followed his call?  I do think this book speaks more practically to the clergy and religious folks who have already made a radical decision about their lives.  I think the book is less helpful to those of us who don't have that clarity of division between being in the world but not of it.

Father Dubay does give a little bit of guidance for married folks where he cites the good examples of married saints.   Those as I recall this usually wound up being giving up all their earthly goods and joining an order of some sort, usually after becoming a widow or widower.  At the end of the book there is a examen which I did appreciate as a help to figuring out how to apply this in my own life.

This is a good book that will leave you convicted and troubled.  For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

How To Be a Planning Minimalist

[Edited to correct numerous and unintentionally funny typos! I wrote this very quickly at 7 in the morning before dashing out to Mass.  I am becoming the typo queen.  Every year I get worse.  I need my own editor or pretty soon I won't be able to communicate at all!]

Over on Catholic Relaxed Homeschoolers, people are starting to ask about planners.  How do you plan?  What is your favorite planner?  That sort of thing.  I've also seen blog posts floating around about how to organize your homeschool with lovely photos of a perfect control center with every conceivable item one would supposedly desire to keep your homeschooling ship running like the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars!  (Can you tell what we've been studying lately?).

Well, I am here to tell you, your kids can learn tons and tons and you don't need any of that perfectionist vibe going on.  You really don't.  And in fact all that desire to have the perfect system is just 1) a way to beat yourself when you fall short. every. single. day  2) a way to sucker you into parting from your money.

Just as you don't really need all that curriculum that beckons to you with its illusionary siren song of happy children who will sit and do lessons for 4 hours at a pop with nary a whine or complaint, it is pretty delusional, if you ask me, you don't need elaborate plans or planners!  I know no one did ask me, but anyway. . . .

How to plan:

1)  Make a list of any outside obligations you are going to have for the year and the days of the week on which they will fall and the time they occur.  Do you have weekly physical therapy for one of the kids?  Do you have weekly piano lessons?  Do you go to the library every Thursday?  Do you go to daily mass every day?  Or once a week?  Are you part of a co-op that meets three times a month?  Are your teens in a homeschool science class?  Scout meetings?  Now plug all this into whatever calendar method you use, so you know what is going on each month, google Calendar, a wall calendar with pretty pictures of gardens (that's my favorite), one of those white board calendar things from an office supply store you can stick on the fridge, whatever system works best for you.

2)  Once you plug all this into a sample month, you can see where there are blocks of time for things that happen but aren't regular - like doctors appointments or other meetings.  You can see where you can plug in seasonal obligations, like if a kid is playing on a sports team and needs to show up for practice and games.  Section off those times in your mind, so you have some idea of when you are generally free to commit to other obligations as they come up.

3)  Try to have at least one day where you don't have outside commitments.  This day can be a rest day where you can stay in your pjs all day or it can be a day for field trips, a heavy errand day, a day devoted to blitz cleaning your house, etc.  Having one day free of outside obligations gives you flexibility and reduces stress.

4)  Don't overbook yourself.  For instance, If your kids are really into sports and that eats up lots of your time, you might not be able to participate in lots of other stuff.  Learn to say no.  You want a nice balance that suits your family's personality between being out and about and being at home.  I know so many exhausted moms who run themselves ragged because they are terrified of denying their children any opportunity.  Maybe it is where I live, but it is so competitive and leads to such a rushed, stress-filled life.  So show some self-discipline and say no if something is going to just be too much for your schedule.

5)  Plan the rhythm of your day.  Your day may not look like anybody else's day because your particular family situation requires different things.  Homeschooling is, by its very nature, customizable.  So many things figure into this.  Does mom work?  Are the parents on shift work?  Is mom not a morning person?  How many kids and what is the age range?  Are some kids attending school while some are at home?  So don't look to how others do it at first.  Just look at your own family's needs and routines and see what would work best for your particular situation.  If you have formal academic time at all, it might wind up being at night or in the afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. That's fine, if that works best for you.

6)  Since I am a curriculum minimalist (a recovering junkie) I just like to have general pockets of time set aside for particular purposes.  For instance, prayer time, read aloud time, screen time, housekeeping time, free time, one on one time, homework time (for teens with outside classes), quiet time.

7)  Instead of having set curriculum for everything, you can just plan to have a general theme going.  This can be inspired by a child's interest or something that has occurred to you is important to focus on.  For instance, you might want to focus on virtue via literature and history (studying admirable people from the past).  Or you might decide you want to focus on American history or Ancient cultures.  Maybe the big focus this year will be on the history of science.  Whatever it is, you can gather resources and list them somewhere (I usually do this in Word).  These resources can be websites, books to read aloud, books to strew for the child's reading pleasure, ideas for projects, games, worksheets, videos, etc.  I usually have a loose idea of what I want to read aloud over the course of a term or semester or year.

8)  Gather resources into one place so they are easily accessible.  For me, since the crux of my homeschooling was* always read alouds and copy work, I'd gather the read alouds I'd planned, plus any penmanship books or sources for copy work in an easily accessible place.  (*I say 'was' here because now I only have high schoolers, which looks very different from when I had lots of littles).

9)  Do the next thing.  This way of doing things worked much better than writing my plans down.  Inevitably I would start off gangbusters writing down everything I wanted the kids to do but this soon petered out.  For me, just doing the next thing worked the best and then dating the page so we'd know what we did when.  So if my kid was working through a penmanship book, we'd just do the next page each time we sat down to work on it.  If I was teaching some phonics to a beginning reader, I'd just write the date we'd worked on something at the top of the page.  If my 7th grader was working through Saxon 8/7, he'd just do the next lesson.  There was no need to write stuff down.  The trick is to keep all the books together for each student in a cubby or shelf or crate, so that you can easily go and look and see what's been going on.

10)  Journal what goes on each day.  This will help you feel on top of things and also reinforce the fact that even though you are relaxed, your kids are learning.

Example journal entry:

4 and 6 yo played with Montessori tray (match item to beginning sound on card), put together Moses floor puzzle, 6 yo worked in Kumon maze book, 4 yo played on Starfall, watched Magic School Bus, listened to Jim Weiss cd for quiet time. read picture books, played with play-doh.  played downstairs on scooters, put on puppet show.  9 yo played with Legos and read Bionicle book, showed him how to do long division and put up problem on white board, going through a Jazz Jackrabbit phase.  12 and 13 yo did lesson in math, read aloud - Count of Monte Cristo, 13 yo practiced dance, 12 yo read Bud, Not Buddy, helped with laundry, good conversation with dad about video game companies and how they work.  13 yo reading Tree Grows in Brooklyn, worked on essay for Little Flowers.  All:  copy work (Latin), saint of the day, geography read aloud unit plus colored in map.