Titanic notebooking pages--Homeschool Sanity Brag Thursday Link-Up

Did you know that this year is the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic?

Did you also know there are much better movies about the sinking than the most modern one, which is flaky, to say the least! Our favorite is Titanic--which stars Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, and Robert Wagner. The end of the film is the best--with sacrificial love and the turning of all hearts to the Lord as the ship was sinking through the singing of hymns.

We found two really nifty books at the thrift store and gave them to the children for Christmas; Titanic: The Ship of Dreams, and The Titanic: The Extraordinary Story of the "Unsinkable" Ship. Sarah (13) was so interested that she decided that she and her sister, Olivia (10), should do a notebooking project on the subject. Here is the result:

Sarah cut each piece from regular construction paper, and then she and her brother, Ryan, embellished the pieces with acrylic paints.

One of Sarah's pages--the photo is of the captain of the ship.

One of Olivia's pages.

Have you been having a lot of fun with some good, old books, or have a notebooking page to share?  Just fill out the form below and let us share in your joy!

*Please be kind and either link in the body of your post or place this blog button somewhere on the post:

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Linky love

Here are just a few links you might enjoy:

Thinking Like a Christian; What Does the Bible Say About Public School, pt. 1
Thinking Like a Christian; What Does the Bible Say About Public School, pt.2
 Humanism: The Self-Destructing Religion Affecting Christians

Help!

It's mid-winter where most of us live. The skies are bleak, the ground is frozen. Our thoughts can become as bare as the trees.

Then there are the children--the lovely, lively ones who delight us.

But we worry.

"Will I get all of this educating done? Are we doing enough? How can I keep this dirty house together without neglecting their education? How can I love on my babies without letting the older children suffer? Where can I find the strength to face all of this responsibility?"

Don't look around you, look up! He is a help in time of trouble--cry out to Him! 

This will be your answer:

"I will help him, saith the Lord," (Isaiah 41:14)

"It is but a small thing for Me, thy God, to help thee. consider what I have done already. What! not help thee? Why, I bought thee with my blood. What! not help thee? I have died for thee; and if I have done the greater, will I not do the less? Help thee! It is the least thing I will ever do for thee; I have done more, and will do more. Before the world began I chose thee. I made a covenant for thee. I laid aside My glory and became a man for thee; I gave My life for thee; and if I did all this, I will surely help thee now. In helping thee, I am giving thee what I have bought for thee already. If thou hadst need of a thousand times as much help, I would give it thee; thou requirest little compared with what I am ready to give.  'Tis much for thee to need, but it is nothing for me to bestow. 'Help thee?' Fear not! If there were an ant at the door of thy granary asking for help, it would not ruin thee to give him a handful of thy wheat; and thou art nothing but a tiny insect at the door of My all-sufficiency. 'I will help thee.'" (Charles Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, January 16)

Not everything in our lives is meant to be "perfect", just made perfect by His will and intentions for us.

Yes, everyone has a challenging child, or a challenging day, or challenging circumstances. It is all about learning to rest and abide in Christ.

"Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age..."

Do you sleep?

Does a mother need to be told she needs sleep?--sometimes we all do. Especially when we get a real case of "do-itis".

I found this wonderful sage advice while printing out the 4th reader of the Alternate McGuffey readers from Dollar Homeschool.

Lesson 43--Necessity of Sleep

If you are to work well, you must sleep well. If you are to keep your health, and strength, and youth--to carry your powers of work with you to the last--you must sedulously pay court to your pillow. It will commonly be found that the men who carry their years lightly are men who possess the faculty of sleeping at will.

If you have much work to do, you must not account time spent in sleep to be time lost. It is time gained. It is an essential part of the duty of the day. I had once and old servant who used to say, "Well, I have done my work--now I'll get my sleeping done." Sleeping was, in her philosophy, a thing to be done--not in a passive state, but as an active part of her duty.

And every workman should so consider it. Let him sleep in his bed, if he can, at proper hours of the night; if not, let him sleep at any odd time, when nature invites him to rest himself. If we do not play tricks with ourselves, if we work hard without overworking ourselves, sleep will rarely be coy to us; we can sleep in almost any place. 

As a general rule, it may be said that busy men are better sleepers than idlers, and that mental labor contributes more to sound sleep than bodily fatigue. I believe that only mere novices in work are kept awake by the thought of it. 

Experienced workmen acquire a habit of shaking off its thoughts when they will. If there is one thing in life for which I am profoundly thankful to the Giver of all good, it is for the gift of sleep. 

I have found this advice to be so very true! I have developed a habit over the last 25 years of taking a rest in the afternoons. This is so very important when dealing with the sorts things I must in my home, raising my 15 children. I am to be on call at any moment throughout the day--whether from my dear husband or from an infant child. This means constant alertness and diligence. Rarely do I allow my guard to be down--even on weekends or during times of vacation.

My race is one more one of the marathon--I must space my energy out in order to last and finish. This is why a daily time is necessary where I can put it all out of my mind--just as the writer above suggests.

I wasn't able to block out all of the other thoughts when I first began, but I also incorporated a daily Bible reading just before I went to sleep, and this caused me to gaze upward and place my cares on God, so that my rest was peaceful and I fell asleep quickly afterwards.

I have found that even 30 minutes of this sort of sleep will cause me to be cheerful and life-giving to my family until I go to bed at night--and then, even though my sleep may be interrupted due to various needs on the part of my children, I am still able to feel rested and on top of things.

During those months just after bringing home a newborn infant, I have also learned to sleep pretty much anywhere, at any time, in any position. This ability has been such a great help to me. In those times, whenever the baby is nursing and contented at my breast, and the children are all safely engaged in front of me, I have often snatched a few winks--this was to keep my sanity.

Afraid to take an afternoon nap because of all that has to be done? Consider these words:

"Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep." (Psalm 127:1-2)

Taking back learning from ''education"

Our compulsory school laws do not promise children will be "educated".

It doesn't matter how many tests are administered, there is just no way to measure how much a person is learning, or at least comprehending.

Compulsory laws can guarantee only one thing; that a child is tethered to a desk for so many hours a day, for so many days a year.

Attendance is not the same thing as learning. We take tests all of the time and then conveniently forget the content unless it is relevant or necessary for our lives.

And in this we have the advantage. We can throw out the "scope-and-sequence" and serve up whole meals of the soul-satisfying, delicious variety, instead of bland, dull  institutional fare.

As this new year begins, let us forge ahead with confidence that we are not hampering or harming our children by keeping them home, but by our sacrifice and willingness to suffer loss and sanction, we are blessing them and allowing them the most extravagant and richest opportunities possible!