More About Missey

This post from Missey‘s blog, written in December, cut straight to my heart, and I wanted to share it with those of you who did not know her either in real life or from homeschooling discussion lists.

“Life has been so laid-back and relaxed that I don’t know how we’ll ever get back on track come January, but I’m not going to think about that right now. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, I’m enjoying making memories with my family and letting all the worries and stresses roll right off my back. They’ll be there for another day. But for today I’m going to get my Love Bank filled back up with kisses and hugs and quiet conversations (while making those same kinds of deposits into each of my loved one’s Love Banks) and regain the strength to face all those worries and stresses that will still be waiting for me come January. I think that by then they won’t seem so big anymore anyway.”

I need to go hug my children now.


Tributes to Missey: here and here.

PSA for Sonlight Forum Users

Recent abrupt and bizarrely executed changes at the Sonlight forum have left a great many longtime forum users stranded and cut off from communicating with one another. An open-access alternative temporarily named “Sonlight Refugees” has been created by the kindhearted Bryce. Just doing my bit to pass the word along.

Of course, the Real Learning message boards are another warm and wonderful place to find homeschooling encouragement, ideas, and advice!

Read-Aloud Spotlight: A Lion to Guard Us

006440333501_aa_scmzzzzzzz_ A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla. This short middle-grade nove has scored high on the “Please, Mommy, just one more chapter” meter for Rose (7 1/2) and Beanie (5). (Jane read it herself a couple of years ago.) It’s the story of three very young English children whose father is far away in Jamestown, making a home for the family in the New World. Their mother dies, leaving them penniless, stranded, and desperately anxious to make their way across the sea to join their father. The suspenseful account of their adventures, told in Bulla’s typically spare and straightforward prose, has kept my younguns trembling on the edge of their seats. (Okay, “on the arm of the couch” or “the precarious edge of the windowsill” would be more accurate, especially for Beanie.) Excellent living book for early American history studies, or (as is the case with us) just for fun.