Pooped from Planning, Good Link for Tweens, Mom's Summer Reading

I read all of these when I was very young, and I remember them not at all as books but as things that happened to me.
-- John Steinbeck, Steinbeck's Ghost

I love to read. I love to turn to the back of a book and scan the end notes, peruse the bibliography and enjoy the look of the paper and printing. I fear reading a lost art and activity. It does not gratify instantly. To immerse oneself in a good narrative takes one away from oneself. Our oldest child has experienced this in her reading. The other two love to read as well. Yet, with all the seduction of many technologies surrounding them all, I see the potential for them entering the "dumbest generation". So much of what is wrong with our country currently relies on an illiterate, pagan populace so immersed in pop culture that they cannot think themselves out of the coming tyranny. (There is alot, at present, right with the country too...)

This year we are joining forces with other homeschooling parents and becoming involved in a hybrid school. The school, which meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, is dedicated to one of the best educators ever to walk the planet, St. John Bosco. One big hope I bring to the upcoming year is that we will be more engaged by our curriculum. I am pooped from planning. Not that that will keep me from planning and keeping up with what the children are studying. This past year saw fits and starts, and a few short courses of good reading, good discussion and drawing and writing. I think it was more like sprinting. In the upcoming year, I'd like to see our academics as marathon training.

Our children are at pivotal years in their academic development -- 8, 11 and 13. Here is a wonderful link I found that reviews books for tween; the above quote is taken from the blog, Treasure Chest for Tweens.

Some of Mom's Summer reading:

To Kill A Mockingbird
Conchita
Theology of the Body for Teens
Aquinas's Shorter Summa
Minimus: Starting Out in Latin
Kentucky: A Pictorial History
Around Atlanta with Children
Chesterton's Heretics
Kon-Tiki

Faith and Mountains

We have lots going on, the most notable of which is that our house in Roswell is on the market and has a serious buyer! I have had such a time letting go and still get emotional about our move. (Not that we do not love the new neighborhood and the new house, but we lived in SRidge for over 15years, so all the memories and all the dear friends we have there just makes me well with tears.) So faith is believing in things hoped for and knowing that much of reality is unseen. Our beautiful, faith-filled daughter went to the Christian Music Fest at Stone Mountain Park. We capped off our day yesterday hoping to hike our little Sawnee Mountain here in Cumming as a family soon. Dad and son did so at a homeschool father-son hike a few weeks ago.