Category: Ages 5–8
To Santa, or not to Santa—that was the question. We were new parents raised with Santa-rich holidays, and that first Christmas with our first baby, that decision sat before us, ours to make. But how? […]
It rained for days. Not the drizzly, misty rain we’re known for in the Pacific Northwest, but fat, cold, splashy drops that fell and fell and fell. We could hear them, hammering the roof. We […]
I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced such a profound sense of holding a classic, hot-of-the-press, as I did when I first opened this edition of Little Pilgrim’s Progress. True, the text of this book […]
That first week of September, I dropped all four of my children off at school and drove home in an empty minivan. Ordinarily, an empty minivan is a treat: a chance to put on a […]
Teaching kids to pray can be tricky. When we talk to other people, we take in all kinds of cues, from their posture to their facial expression to what they do with their hands. They […]
Last month we had to put a beloved cat to sleep. Her name was Captain Jack Sparrow, and she was one of two littermates my husband and I adopted early in our marriage when we […]
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 […]
