Category: Ages 5–8
One of the bits of writing advice I absorbed during college was “Show, don’t tell.” Show me the character gnashing her teeth; don’t tell me she was angry. Show me the geriatric cat holding his […]
Summer is sometimes a pleasant unraveling: our schedule frays a bit by mid-June; by July the ends are loose and fuzzy; by August, what routine we have left is shapeless, a heap of thread unpicked […]
Back when we homeschooled on purpose, games were a big part of our time together. I quickly learned that it is one thing to read about a subject, another thing to discuss it, and still […]
This week, our middle two daughters competed in their first spelling bee: a circumscribed affair, thanks to COVID, of course. But leading up to the Bee, our dinner hour turned into Spelling Bee Practice, with […]
It takes a certain sort of magic to write a book that appeals to a whole family: preschooler to middle-schooler, adults as well. But The Fabled Stables, Jonathan Auxier’s newest book, has that magic. Auggie […]
I recently realized I’d been skimping on read-alouds by choosing books my eldest daughter had already read, or by rereading old favorites. There’s a place for that—of course there is. But I’d leaned on old […]
The Lord is our shepherd—but wait exactly does that mean to a child who lives miles from the nearest sheep? In Sammy and His Shepherd, Susan Hunt walks families through the twenty-third psalm one verse […]
The Christmas that J.R.R. Tolkien’s son was three, he found a letter addressed from the North Pole. In a shaky, spidery hand, the letter’s writer introduced himself as Father Christmas; he enclosed a self-portrait for […]
When a young girl is picked to play Mary in her class’s Christmas play, she believes her big break has come! She is the star of the show. But as she tries to act out […]
When I began this blog, one of the things that mattered most to me was consistency: I committed (seven years ago! Goodness gracious) to writing weekly posts, because the blogs I liked best were consistent, […]
