1,000 Facts About the Bible: National Geographic - A Book Review

My children love learning and enjoy so many resources from National Geographic so when I was asked to review their new book 1,000 Facts About the Bible I was excited to get my hands on it.  Just like the National Geographic Kids Magazine and their television shows and movies the graphics are fantastic!  In trying to explain 1,000 Biblical facts I was also very impressed with the way that the authors organized the book with different popular topics like Family, Angels, Animals, Laws & Commandments, Miracles, Prophets, Apostles and more. 

Our oldest child who is 5 years old loved the section on Lands of the Bible including People and Places from 20th Century B.C.E to 1st Century C.E. which includes a great map of important events of the time.  I enjoyed the 50 facts about Miracles and the 15 amazing facts about the Apostles which both included many of my favorite stories and facts about the Bible.

As a Catholic homeschooling parent I did have a few issues with some of the 1,000 facts from a Catholic viewpoint, but expected that from a secular company.  One of them being one of their facts that "Jesus had four brothers - James, Joseph, Judas and Simon", which Catholic Answers nicely disputed from the Catholic viewpoint HERE.  Also, they stated that the Bible includes "around" 66 books.   We know as Catholics that the Catholic Church has published 73 books in the Bible (EWTN appropriately discusses the difference in Protestant and Catholic Bibles HERE).

Overall, I see the benefit of National Geographic publishing this book because I think that it is important for all children to be exposed to the history of the Bible and I think this book will help with this cause.  Yet, I would recommend that Catholic parents always be certain to pre-screen what our children are reading and are being exposed to in order to be able to continue to teach the truth of the Catholic Faith and answer questions appropriately.

Almsgiving with Children

We have been focusing on Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving during Lent and finding ways to teach each aspect to our young children.  Almsgiving is truly a big part of what we want our children to understand and develop as they grow up.  Having both attended a Jesuit Catholic University my husband and I learned to be Men and Women For and With Others.  We spent a lot of our undergraduate years serving others and learning the importance of giving of ourselves, or time and our services.  Yet, now I ask myself how can I teach our young children the passion of giving to others?

The first thing that we decided that we needed to do was to teach our children about diversity and differences of others.  We think that it is really important for our children to understand that there are people who look different that we do, who are both more and less financially stable than we are, have better and worse physical health that we do, live in better and worse living situations, etc.  We started explaining words that they will hear like poor/rich, hungry, homeless, etc.  We have been reading the Boxcar Children series during our Read Aloud time in our homeschooling and it has been a great opportunity to talk about people who do not have a stable home, who need to work very hard to get a little bit of food and who do not have Dads and Moms to take care of them.

My husband and I had the opportunity to go out on a date night to see the movie The Drop Box in theaters a few weeks ago(they are showing an Encore Night TODAY March 16th if you can try to go).   It was eye opening to see children in need of love and support and beyond that what people GAIN when they give to others.  Even if we are not personally able to adopt or financially support others in the world around us, each one of these people also need our prayers which is a great way to give!

Next, we want our children to know that no matter how much we have or do not have that we want to give to others.  We talked about how we give money each week to our church and how we also give by donating our clothing, toys and food.  We took the opportunity with Fasting from Toys to take some of those toys and donate them to others.  During Lent our parish has opportunities to give canned and dry goods to a local homeless shelter that we participated with as well.

We found so many great activities to help learn about giving that we added to our homeschooling during Lent.  We loved both the Almsgiving Notebook Page and the Almsgiving Worksheet from Drawn2Bcreative.  These were such great basic activities to start getting our children to think about what they have that they can give to others and also how they can give of their love and prayers as well.  Our oldest son LOVED the worksheet of deciding what would be good things to give or not between things like nice clothing, an old banana peel, money, etc!

 

Scott Hahn says in his book Signs of Life, which I have been reading as part of my Lenten reading the following about Almsgiving:

 

"Almsgiving flows naturally and supernaturally from our prayer.  As we draw closer to Jesus, we see him as he is, and we wish to obey him; and he told his followers, in no uncertain terms to give alms (Lk 12:33; Mt 6:2-4).  What's more, as we draw closer to him, we want to be more like him; and he gave all that he had, till he had nothing left to give.  Almsgiving is itself a powerful form of prayer."

During this Lent we have learned so much by focusing on Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.  I hope that you and your family are also having a blessed Lent.  Stay tuned for what our family does during Holy Week, our Passion Week Peg Doll set, and some other fun posts coming soon!

Lent Check - In

We are halfway through Lent and it is a great time to check in and see how we are doing on commitments to give things up or take things on during Lent and if they are drawing us closer to God.  A dear friend and fellow blogger wrote a great piece talking about the fact that Abandoning Your Lenten Resolutions Doesn't Make You a Failure!  So how are you doing this Lent?  What are you doing that is bringing you closer to God and what are things that have maybe not worked for you?  Have you made a change in your Lenten promises or have you fallen off your plan completely and need to use this time to re-examine and focus for the last few weeks of Lent? 

Remember my Lenten ideas to give up and take on this year?  You can find them HERE!  This is how I / we are doing:

1. Individually:
1. Whole 30:  This was the one area where I really had to re-examine and change.  I tried starting the Whole 30 and it just did NOT work for me right now.  It was too big of a change in my diet to go from eating fast food, pancakes, cereal, ice cream and other goodies to go straight into the Whole 30 diet!  I think if I would gradually change into this I would be more successful. 
1. I did not want to give up this goal of eating healthy up completely so I just needed to make a different plan, a more realistic life style plan.  I realized that I need to work on healthy eating for our whole family, branching out with cooking new healthy recipes and also truly committing to adding exercise to my daily life.  I made Orange Curry Chicken last week for the first time and made 12 chicken tenderloins so we would hopefully have some leftovers for lunch!  Instead my husband and I ate 4 total and our 3 children ages 5 and under polished off the other 8!  I think we are going through some growth spurts in our house.  I found an AMAZING accountability group on-line, I started using Beachbody's program T25 for my workouts and I am sticking to a 1500-1800 calorie daily diet.  I have been doing this for almost 2 weeks now and I am already feeling much better. 
   
2. Spiritual Reading/Journaling:  By starting off my day reading the daily Scripture readings, journaling with my Blessed is She journal and doing some spiritual reading with Scott Hahn I have truly been blessed!  It is allowing me time to put God and my prayer life first and it helps me to be more aware of my vocations and virtues throughout the day. 
   
2. Couple:
1. My husband and I got the Symbolon series that we are switching out to watch and complete together instead of just sitting down to watch careless television at the end of the day.  So far we have completed 5 of the episodes (usually about 2 per week) and are really liking it.  I have always enjoyed the Bible Studies that I have done with a wonderful group of women who I am friends with and it is completely different doing a study with my husband.  It is so good for me to hear how his struggles and applications about the faith are different than mine.  As a stay at home homeschooling mom I have really been able to immerse myself and our children with a Catholic homeschooling co-op, wonderful families from our parish, etc.  My husband works with many people with different opinions and being an Emergency Room physician has many different opportunities to be mindful about his faith throughout each day with his co-workers and patients.  I am blessed to be able to learn more and discuss our faith with him and I know it is benefitting our marriage and our level of intimacy.  I already have my eye on the Beloved Series for us to complete next!
3. Family:
1. We are gaining so much from taking Friday's off as quiet electronic free days and also praying the Stations of the Cross together.  We did have one Friday where we were all sick that we did end up turning on the television for a while, but other than that we have been doing great.  Since realizing how much better we all do when we move away from electronics I find that we all use them a lot less throughout the week now.  I truly think that this will be a lifestyle change for our family.

So how about you?  I would love to hear from you!  What are you doing that is working great and that you might want to continue throughout the rest of the liturgical year?  What is not working for you and your family to evaluate and adjust?  How can we encourage each other, pray for each other and bring our focus to God these last few weeks of Lent?

Fasting with Children

During Lent as Catholics we focus on Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.  I discussed how we have been teaching our Children how to Pray and what we have added to our prayer life during Lent like praying the Stations of the Cross.  We also have been focusing on how to teach our children to learn about fasting! 

Although we are not required by the Catholic Church to fast until the age of 14 years old, we still think it is important for our children to participate on some level at a young age.  First we thought about what we want fasting to mean, even for our children.  We want fasting to be an act of repentance, a way to unite us with the suffering of Jesus, and also to help us learn more about ourselves.  Keeping these desires in mind we decided that there were a few areas that even our small children could participate in Fasting in including:

• Solemn/Quiet Fridays (Fasting from Electronics)
• Fasting from Meat on Fridays
• Fasting from TOYS

Solemn/Quiet Fridays (Fasting from Electronics)
On Quiet/Solemn Fridays we not only come together to pray the Stations of the Cross but we also shut off the television, computers, phones, I pads, etc for the entire day.  The first Friday was a bit of a wake up call for all of us!  We have always been mindful of what our children are watching on television or what games they are playing on an Ipad but we have not always been the best at monitoring the amount of time.  At first our children were WHINY and a little while later the best thing happened, they got BORED and had to find better ways to spend their time!  We have spent time reading, playing games, playing trains and baking!  Our oldest son is now calling Fridays "Sacrifice day"!  After only a few weeks we realized how much nicer our home runs without the television and electronics and have made a new family rule that we do not watch television before 3pm (or after naps).  It has been creating a much more peaceful environment for all of us.

With this I also learned that I need to be very mindful of the time that I am on the computer, my phone, on social media, etc.  On those Fridays when I am not checking my e-mail, blogging, checking Facebook I am so much more present and available to my family and everyone is happier (including myself).  I have learned that I need to be more aware of my behaviors and the need to find a happy balance. 

Fasting from Meat on Fridays
We are big fans of meat at our home, and a great example of that is that at only 5 years old our oldest son's favorite food is steak!  We introduced our young children to fish and they now are calling Fridays "Fish Day"!  Although they are now really liking fish so eating fish by itself is not too much of a sacrifice, I do know that they acknowledge that it is something different on Fridays and gives us a time to talk about the sacrifice that Jesus gave to us by dying on the cross.

Fasting from Toys
We have a LOT of toys in our house!  As I am sure any parent with multiple children knows toys and things accumulate quickly.  At the beginning of this year I felt like by the end of the morning we were drowning in toys, that clean ups (although the children help) were becoming a big ordeal and there was a lot of fighting occurring.  A few weeks before Lent I went through and packed up 12 huge garbage bags of toys!  TWELEVE!  The craziest thing about it was that when cleaned up our house doesn't seem to be overtaken by toys (maybe that means I just really like organizing things!) 

Anyway, I put all of these bags in a locked storage room in our basement and left them for a few weeks.  Guess what, NO ONE NOTICED THEY WERE GONE!!  I had taken away 90% of toys that made any kind of noise, toys with little plastic pieces, baby toys, etc.  We left puzzles, books, art supplies, religious toys, dress up clothes, Legos, Wooden Toys, a few cars (we had over 80 matchbox cars!!), trains, sports equipment, musical toys, and games.  The boys started playing with toys that they have had but haven't touched in months, they started playing with old toys in different ways and they started playing better together!  It was like magic!

 

After a few weeks I went back through all of the bags that I stored away and made a few piles:

• Toys to Donate (this was most of them)
• Baby Toys or Toys to Rotate out to Keep (I sorted and labeled these into 2 plastic bins)
• Toys to bring back out (this was maybe only 3-5 toys that after a few weeks our kids were asking about by the end of the few weeks).

Also, people have asked if our children have toys in their rooms.  Our oldest two sons (ages 5 & 3) who share a room have a big wooden firehouse in their room with a few wooden people and a wooden fire truck, ambulance and police car.  We like that they can play with this quietly in their room.  Then they have lots of books!  We trust even our little kids with paper back books and they do well with them.  We teach from an early age how to respect books and read them together often so it is modeled to them.  Sometimes our children like to take a wooden train or matchbox car to bed as well and if they pick 2-3 of those we also allow those.  I feel like this helps distinguish their rooms as a place to sleep and also helps avoid any added clutter. 

Reflecting on Fasting with Children:
Overall we are realizing that it is good to find ways to FAST, to slow down, dial into personal time with our family and even to sacrifice with change of behaviors.  We have been using our Sacrifice beans to praise moments of sacrificing for each other and are finding many more opportunities to do so when we have our Quiet Fridays and Limit Toys.  Because that is what fasting is really about, right?  Sacrificing.  Sacrificing our "regular" meals, or our "regular" behaviors to unify our suffering and thoughts with Jesus.

What do you do with your children and family to Fast?  What goals and activities have you applied to your lives this Lent that might help you to make more of a lifestyle change as the liturgical year continues?  What can we do to help bring our children to understanding the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross?

Stations of the Cross with Children

 

 

I know that during Lent and the Easter season that the main thing that I want our children to learn and understand is that God loves us so much that he sent his one and only son Jesus to live in this sinful world and that he then died on the cross for each and every one of us!  In order to understand this, we choose to share the Passion of Jesus with our children (even at a young age) and answer honestly what questions they have. 

 

Most Catholic Churches during Lent pray the Stations of the Cross every Friday remembering the Passion of Christ.  Usually these services are held in the late evening which means we are not able to go as a family due to little ones bedtime.  We think it is very important for our children to learn the Stations of the Cross and hear the story so we are making opportunities for our children to learn in other ways including:

• Praying at Home
• Teaching with Engaging Resources
• Praying within the Community

 

Praying at Home

How can you learn about and pray the Stations of the Cross with your family even if you cannot go to the scheduled time at church?  How can you make time and space for your family for this special meditation during Lent? 

 

We first started meditating on the Stations of the Cross in Our Little Oratory at home every Friday of Lent (and our children have enjoyed it so much that they have been asking for it on other days as well!)  I got 8x10 images of the Stations of the Cross from Leaflet Missal to display in our space.  The visual images are very important for all of us, especially the children to focus on and follow the story.  We also have little flip books on a ring from Feast and Feria that follow the images of the Stations of the Cross as well.  We sit together and take the time as a family to learn about and pray about the Stations of the Cross.

 

 

Teach with Fun Resources

Our favorite Stations of the Cross resources are from Holy Heroes.  We have been using their Rosary CD's for about 6 months now in our daily prayer time and love them so much, and this is the first year we are using the Stations of the Cross CD.  The Stations of the Cross CD is by far our favorite CD yet from Holy Heroes.  The music is beautiful, the sound effects really help bring you into the story of the Passion of Christ and running about 30 minutes long it is the perfect amount of time to hold little children's attention.  We have been listening to it before bedtime so the room is dark and the pictures of the Stations of Cross are illuminated by candlelight.  Adding this tradition to our home has truly been one of our favorite Lenten activities.  There are so many great resources out there, what are some of your favorite ones for the Stations of the Cross?

 

Pray Within the Community

 

Go into your parish church or look around your community to see if they have any additional resources for the Stations of the Cross or opportunities for prayer and learning!  We are blessed with beautiful churches in our town and surrounding areas that have remarkable Stations of the Cross. Even if we do not go to the specific prayer services we like to bring our young children to see the Stations of the Cross in other outlets outside of our home as well.  We live near the Holy Family Shrine in Gretna, NE which is a beautiful church on top of a hillside.  We loved going one afternoon to study the images of the Stations of the Cross and pray. 

Our children's favorite resource in the community is the outdoor Stations of the Cross at our parish Church St Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church.  We have gone once so far this Lent and hope to go back at least one more time in the next few weeks.  We brought our Stations of the Cross prayer book from Holy Heroes and had a short meditation on each mystery and then prayed the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be and end with "Lord, by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world".  I love that it is outside so we can get some fresh air, our energetic boys have some space to get their "wiggles" out as we learn and we still have the opportunity to focus in prayer!

 

Lord, by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

 

I:  Jesus is Condemned to Death

II:  Jesus is Made to Carry the Cross

III:  Jesus Falls for the First Time

IV:  Jesus Meets His Blessed Mother

V:  Simon Helps Jesus Carry the Cross

VI:  Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

VII:  Jesus Falls for the Second Time

VIII:  Jesus Comforts the Holy Women

IX:  Jesus Falls for the Third Time

X:  Jesus is Stripped of His Garments

XI:  Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

XII:  Jesus Dies on the Cross

XIII:  Jesus is Taken Down From the Cross

XIV:  Jesus is Laid in the Tomb

Reflection:
It is hard sometimes to focus on the pain and suffering of Jesus on the cross.  We need to trust in God that through the pain and suffering there is the Resurrection!  What suffering and pain do we have in our lives that we need to hand over to Jesus at the foot of the cross?  What struggle as a wife, as a mother, as a friend can we ask for help with?  What one thing can we do to help our children learn about suffering, one thing to bring them closer to God?

God's Easter Gifts - A Book Review

If you are looking for a great book to add to your child's Easter basket this year, God's Easter Gifts is it!  Written by Brenda Castro this book creatively has your children join siblings Bella and Pablo on their Easter egg hunt after Easter mass.  The children were so excited to find candy, toys and goodies and instead found gifts much greater! 

 

In their Easter egg hunt the children found the gifts of Strength, Nature, Friendship, Food, Faith, Family, and most importantly the gift of Life.  This adorable book helps bring the true meaning of Easter to your family in such a pure and beautiful way.  Our children loved the illustrations including some from their favorite Bible stories of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, the Last Supper and of the Holy Family.  As a parent my favorite part of this book is the questions that accompany at the end of the page with each different gift.  These questions truly allow for great discussion with your children to grow in their faith and understand God's love for each of us.

 

As we celebrate Easter we want our children to celebrate all of the gifts that God has given to us, especially the gift of His Son, Jesus.  The book God's Easter Gifts is the perfect way to bring this understanding of God's gifts into our homes! 

Teaching Our Children to Pray

During Lent we are taking time as a part of our homeschooling to focus on the three areas of Lenten focus:  Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.  The first area that we have been focusing on is PRAYER!

 

First of all, at the beginning of Lent we all learned The Lent Song from Catholic Icing.  We love it because it was easy to learn and explains the meaning of Lent in easy ways for kids to understand!

 

"Prayer, Fasting, and Alms Giving,

We are meant, to repent.

40 days of sacrifice,

Being super, extra nice,

This is Lent.  This is Lent."

 

(Sung to the tune of Frere Jacques)

 

Our Regular Prayer Schedule is woven within our homeschool and daily schedule.  It usually looks like this:

• Morning:
• Mom:  Daily Readings, Spiritual Reading and Journaling (Usually about 30 minutes, hopefully before the kids wake up!)
• Family:  Morning Offering and Learning about the Saint of the Day (usually at the breakfast table)
• Afternoon:
• Angelus at Lunch Time
• Decade of the Rosary with Holy Heroes CD's after Homeschool and Nap Time
• Meal Times:
• Prayer Before and After meals
• Evening/Bedtime:
• Our Father/Hail Mary/Glory Be
• Prayers of Intention
• We are also adding the Daily Examen and Learning the Act of Contrition

Rosary Time:

We usually use our Little Oratory to say our family Decade of the Rosary with the Holy Heroes CD's.  We try to have the children sit on the church pew that we have in the space to help them learn how to sit still, practicing for Mass.  Our oldest son, who is 5 years old is getting very good at praying the Rosary including leading prayers.  Our little children 3 1/2 years and 1 1/2 years will most of the time hold their rosaries and our 3 year old knows all of his prayers as well.  The little ones are allowed to also use our Busy Bible during this time. 

 

 

We have been loving the Lacing Rosaries from Catholic Inspired which were just released!  They are so fantastic in helping keep little hands busy and also help them learn the mysteries of the Rosary.  There are different options to use all of the mysteries together and on that one I put different colors of string starting at the Our Father for each decade so they can follow along easier "Now we start with the Yellow string with the Second Decade, etc".  During Lent we have been focusing on really learning and meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries as well.

 

 

We also use the Sacred Art Series Rosary Flip Book to help meditate on the different Mysteries of the Rosary.  I feel like it really helps for our children to have a visual image to look at as they are listening to and praying the Rosary. 

This week we also did this wonderful activity learning how to pray the Examen, recommended to us by a friend from the 40 ideas for 40 Days.  This was a great way to add a new prayer with our little children!

Praying the Daily Examen:

For this activity you take a DVD and start a movie keeping the sound muted.  Then you ask your children to PAUSE, REWIND, FAST FORWARD and STOP the DVD to learn about what these actions mean.  Then we talk about how all of these actions can apply to our prayer lives.

• We need to PAUSE to remember God's presence in our lives
• We need to REWIND and FAST FORWARD to recall what has taken place in our day and what is to come.
• Then we need to STOP to do the Daily Examen and ask for help with what lies ahead. 

To do the Daily Examen you:

• Sit quietly with the lights dim and possibly candles lit (We did this activity in Our Little Oratory)
• Ask the Holy Spirit to help them PAUSE and be still
• Help them REWIND to go back over their day and be thankful for God's blessing in their lives
• FAST FORWARD through their day and recall the moments of blessings, moments of joy and moments of sadness, difficulty or possible sin.
• Ask for forgiveness in any moments of fault.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to help them STOP and look forward to the rest of the day and new day to come tomorrow.
• Finish with the Lord's Prayer.

Find the entire activity and a PDF print-out HERE!

Stations of the Cross

We also added praying the Stations of the Cross on Fridays during Lent in our home and our children have LOVED it so much that they have been asking to listen to the Holy Heroes CD on other nights before bedtime as well!  Stay tuned for an entire post on how our Lenten intentions are going and praying Stations of the Cross with children! 

Stations of the Cross in Our Little Oratory

Tips for Adding Prayers to Daily Life with Little Ones:

• We say a LOT of our prayers at the kitchen table; the Morning Offering & story of the Saint of the Day at breakfast, the Angelus at Lunch, the prayers Before & After Meals.  We find that when the children are sitting at the table and have food it is much easier to keep their attention at a young age.
• Create a prayer space or a Little Oratory.  Our children know that our Little Oratory is a quiet place and a place for prayer. They know that when they enter what the expectations are and it is easier to control behavior.  Even if it is a corner of a room, etc it helps to define space for prayer.  Read this book to learn more about The Little Oratory and lots of great ideas of how to incorporate prayer into your home!
• Light a candle!  Kids LOVE candles and they really help keep their attention and make prayer time a special time!  Also, little kids love to blow out candles!  Sometimes we light and then blow out candles before and after each prayer.
• Start small and add a little at a time.  Do not expect your children to sit through an entire Rosary on your first attempt!  Make small goals and do not be afraid by set backs!  God is so pleased by each small step.
• Pray for your children and let them see you take time to pray during your day!  Children learn by example.

Reflection:

Dear God, Thank you for our children.  May we love them and teach them about your love through prayer.  Watch over us as parents and help to guide and strengthen us each day with patience and love and guide the hearts and minds of our children.  Amen.

One of my favorite verses about prayer is the following:

Philippians 4:6-7

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.