Book Week

OK, so it is technically a school week. But mentally I'm finishing Spring Break!  So we are having a relaxing week, with a theme: Book Week. 

The first part of Book Week is a project we started over a year ago--our Book of Months. Each girls is making a book that walks through each  month of the year, describing what is special about that month, our family traditions for events that month, etc. The books may end up in the heirloom category--certainly for the amount of time the girls are spending on each highly detailed page of illustration!  But now the annual county-wide Author's Fair is upon us, and even though we started this project about 16 months ago, the girls are FAR from being done. I'd say they are only 1/3 of the way through their illustrations, with even less of the writing done.  This is with the project getting at least 30 minutes of work almost every school week since!  I am so glad my girls are engaging with the project so fully, and that they are making such meaningful illustrations--but I refuse to let the project go on another year!  Esp. because they have grown as people and artists over the course of the time we have worked on the project, so that they have started being dissatisfied with the drawings they made earlier and have then discarded them and started over.  A fine artistic choice, but one that could well lead to this becoming a perpetual book project!  So, forcing my children to labor over their drawings for hours at a time is the first goal of Book Week.

Perhaps it is appropriate that we just finished learning about illuminated manuscripts and the monks that made them--the children can at least be thankful they have a warm room to work in, they don't have to grind up their own coloring agents, and they are allowed to speak while working. Heck, they can even suck on some Easter candy while they work. Whatever will keep them happily working on it!

The second part of Book Week is even more fun: reading, reading, reading!

We do not own many pieces of furniture (understandable in a house our size!) but we have two big cherry bookcases we bought when we first got married.  One faces the front door, and holds more "school-y" books.  (I'll have to show you in another post.) This one faces the living room, and holds mostly fiction, with some non-fiction picture books mixed in. 

Sunny asked a month ago if we could spend Spring Break reading through the bottom two shelves of this bookshelf--the favorite picture books she doesn't really get much chance to read anymore, but which still give so much pleasure.  I thought that was a great goal! 

These are the two shelves we are reading through this week--most of our picture book collection.

 

This is starting at the right of the top shelf, which has picture books geared to a slightly older child (or the taller books that don't fit on the bottom shelf). Normally I enjoy keeping the shelves somewhat organized first by genre, then by author, with size variables accounted for--I know, I know--but with the crazy reading going on this week, they are currently a happy, disheveled mess.

Favorite titles from this first pic:

Homeplace

The Biggest Bear

The Scrambled States of America

Small Beauties

A Child's Calendar

This version of Snow White

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Lion

Yes, I am such a book nerd that I am going to show you ALL the books. Some of them are special friends, which is why I'm introducing you by name.

The Tale of Three Trees

The Fourteen Bears Summer and Winter

The Long and Dangerous Journey

Moses

A Time to Keep

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch

Of course if you no longer have kids in this stage of life, you will be glazing over at this point. But if you love books, or memories of when your kids were young, or if you just want to snoop at my bookshelves just like you would if you came over sometime, here you go!

The Velveteen Rabbit (I'm not sure my edition is the best out there--so many versions of this story have gorgeous illustrations!--so I didn't link it)

This version of Little Red Riding Hood. I'm a fan of this author's work, and have quite a few on the shelf  by her.

This edition of Beauty and the Beast (alas, out of print and highly collectible--sounds like the affordable paperback is a shortened version)

The Maggie B

A Fairy Went a Marketing

Hiding over against the bookshelf wall to the right are the fragile antique books my mother has passed down to us from her own childhood. I keep them tucked away behind Stuart Little just so little hands don't grab them automatically. Out of sight, out of mind. ; )

The Kitchen Knight

The Water Hole

Now we get to the bottom shelf, with the books geared more for the earlier readers, and the books shorted in height.

George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends

This version of Mother Goose

Tuesday

The Giant Jam Sandwich

The Adventures of Mole & Troll

The Little House

Cookies: Bite-Sized Lessons

Norman the Doorman

Mama, Do You Love Me?

The Marble Cake Cat

As you can probably guess, a lot of these books are from my childhood.  : )

The Frog and Toad Treasury

Let's Look at the Jungle

The Fire Cat

The Best Loved Doll

Bears in the Night

The last books on the shelf to the right are not in the picture because they are large and have to lay on their sides--mainly Smiley's collection of Richard Scarry books. Those are favorites of mine just because they occupy him for good lengths of time while I'm helping his sisters with school. : )

Child of Faerie, Child of Earth

The Hat

Eloise Wilkins Treasury


Some of these books made me smile just reading the titles.  : )  I am only specifically mentioning my favorite favorite of those on the shelves.  But all the books on the shelves have to meet at least two out of my four criteria for what is worth the precious in-house real estate:

* The story has to be well-written.
* There should be something the child learns from the story, or it should broaden the child's mind, or ignite imagination in some specific way.  In other words, it has a greater meaning beyond the story itself.
* The illustrations should be exemplary.
* Or the book should be especially nostalgic for me, or someone special gave it to us.
* Bonus points if it makes me smile or cry every time I read it.

I have a loathing for pointless stories and silliness for silliness's sake.  I abhor twaddle.  It makes me so sad when an excellent story is printed with lame, uninspired artwork.  Yes, I'm a book snob.  But that does not mean I'm too picky--there are some books I love that have very silly elements (The Giant Jam Sandwich is a prime example)  but there is something about them that is clever and whimsical too. And condition does not bother me either, as long as pages are not falling out (and I can't just tape them back in) or the book is molding--what's inside the book is way more important than the outside. Often, the best books are no longer in print, so I am perfectly willing to put up with ragged old books if need be! 

There are a lot more excellent books on our shelves I'm not specifically mentioning because they are considered childhood classics (like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and Where the Wild Things Are, and Madeline's Rescue.)  I just wanted to share with you some of the titles that you might not be familiar with. 

I also have a LOT more books in bins under the house. Most of them are more educational in nature, so have been separated and stored according to subject.  But there are also just a lot of good books that were not *quite* worth the in-house shelf space, but which I can't quite part with.  And a bin of broken books that require serious mending, but which I am sorry to part with (or can't replace). And a box of books to take to add to our little homeschool library we are starting at church. And a box of books to eventually give away. Ahem.

Have I mentioned that I love good books?

Happy Reading everyone!

(And if you have a favorite favorite picture book you want to recommend, please share it in the comments!)

Holy Week--the Timeline Thought Through

Jessica over at Scottish Twins wrote this post last weekend, and it was so thought-provoking for me I asked her if I could share it over here.  I edited it just a little to take out personal references, but otherwise this is her thought process as it flows--which I found fascinating, and thought you might enjoy reading too. 

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Happy Palm Sunday, sisters!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!!

I spent yesterday morning preparing my homeschool curriculum for the coming week.  I decided it would be fun to make a book with the kids starting today, Palm Sunday, in which each page equals one day of the week.  They can fill it with Bible verses, pictures and other symbols that represent what happened that day in Jesus' life leading up to the Resurrection.

In doing my planning, I ran into the same stumbling block I find every year, but always find I am too busy to study in depth - the fact that Good Friday is not three days and three nights prior to the Resurrection, as Jesus said it would be (Matthew 12:40).  And since I know that the Bible cannot contradict itself, I knew there had to be a logical explanation for this and I wanted to figure it out before I started my lessons with the kids.

Before I get into this, I just want to say that none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things.  I mean, we celebrate Jesus' birth on a day that we all know is nowhere near the real date of His birth on our calendars.  The point of Christmas is that He WAS born and the point of Easter is that He DID die and WAS Risen!  The rest is just details, but it's still fun to study......at least for me, a total theology geek.

So, traditionally Holy Week goes like this - Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Resurrection Sunday, Maundy Thursday follows and celebrates the Last Supper/washing of the disciples' feet, Good Friday commemorates the death of Jesus, and Easter Sunday obviously celebrates the Resurrection.  Technically, Easter Sunday isn't a part of Holy Week for Catholics, but it is in our family :)

Here is what we know from the Bible:

1. In John 2:1, Jesus was in Bethany six days before the Jewish Passover and requested that His disciples fetch a donkey for the trip to Jerusalem (this would have been Friday night/Saturday morning according to the Jewish calendar).  That night, Saturday night, a dinner was given in His honor (John 12:2).
2. The next morning (during the daylight hours of Sunday), Jesus entered Jerusalem (John 12:12-15).
3. He was crucified and died just as the Jews' Passover lamb was being slaughtered (on 14 Nisan according to the Jewish calendar), which fulfilled Scripture.
4. Jesus said He would be inside the earth for three days and three nights following His death, just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for that long - another fulfillment of Scripture.
5. John 19:31 tells us that the Sabbath day following His death was a High Day - a Jewish Holiday (Passover).
6. Mary went to the tomb before the sun was up on the first day of the week (late Saturday night or early Sunday morning according to the Jewish calendar) and found that Jesus had Risen.

OK, so those are the clues that the Bible tells us about the timeline of Jesus' death.  Throughout history, the Church has assumed that Jesus had to have died on Friday, because He died the day before the Sabbath, and in fact, they were trying to rush the deaths by breaking legs so that it could be done by sun-down, when the Sabbath began.  Since the Jewish Sabbath takes place on Saturday, His death had to be on Friday, right?

There Were Two Sabbath Days in a Row

Jews also count their High Holy Days (mentioned above in John 19) as Sabbath days - days like Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and also the first and seventh days of Passover.  It just so happens that Jesus was crucified the day before Passover, on the day of preparation when the lamb is slaughtered.  The day following his death would have been Passover - a High Holy Day and Sabbath Day.  Both Friday and Saturday were Sabbath days that week.

The Lord's Supper was the Lord's Passover

The day before Passover, when Jesus died, is 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar (it is discussed in detail in Leviticus 23:5).  As with all Jewish days, it begins at sundown.  On 14 Nisan at sundown there is a special meal called the Lord's Passover, which commemorates the Exodus of the Jews.  This isn't a typical Passover seder, but rather a special meal consisting of only wine and unleaven bread.  THIS is the meal that we call the Last Supper, in which Jesus gave instructions for Communion to His disciples.  This meal was not a Passover seder, as many think.

Passover Couldn't Have Been on Saturday

If the day before Passover had been Friday, when most people think Jesus died, and Passover fell on Saturday, Jesus couldn't have arrived in Jerusalem on Sunday.  John 12:1 says that Jesus was in Bethany six days before Passover.  Instead, Passover had to have been on Friday, putting Jesus in Bethany on Saturday, when He requested His disciples to get a donkey so He could arrive in Jerusalem on Sunday.

The Real Timeline

On the year that Jesus died, 14 Nisan began on sundown Wednesday.  So, Jesus ate the Last Supper with His disciples on Wednesday night.  After the sun rose on Thursday, at 9:00 am, He was crucified, and at 3:00 pm He died (Matthew 27:46-50).  Once the sun went down on Thursday night, it became 15 Nisan on the Jewish calendar (the first day of Passover - a High Holy Day and Sabbath), at which time the Passover lamb that was slaughtered during Jesus' crucifixion was eaten.  The day following Passover was the Jews' normal weekly Sabbath.  This explains why no one went to the tomb earlier - it was another Sabbath.

14 Nisan = sundown Wednesday/sundown Thursday = Lord's Passover/Lord's Supper = day of preparations for Passover = Jesus crucified (9:00 am) and died (3:00 pm) Thursday = Day 1 of Jesus in the earth after death
15 Nisan = sundown Thursday/sundown Friday = PASSOVER = SABBATH DAY = Night 1 and Day 2 of Jesus in the earth after death
16 Nisan = sundown Friday/sundown Saturday = SABBATH DAY = Night 2 and Day 3 of Jesus in the earth after death
17 Nisan = sundown Saturday/sundown Sunday = RESURRECTION on Sunday morning before sunrise = Night 3 of Jesus in the earth after death

This is the only way I can make sense of the timeline without any contradictions in Scripture.  If Jesus died on Friday, He would not have been in the earth three days and three nights.  At the most it would have been two days and two nights.  If He DID die on Friday, than He would have had to have been Resurrected on Monday, which we know isn't true because the Bible says Mary visited the tomb on the first day of the week - Sunday.  And then if this is the case, the Last Supper couldn't have been on Thursday, because that was when Passover began, when the Jews would have been eating the Passover lamb, and the Bible tells us that Jesus was dead before the lamb was eaten.  Therefore, the Last Supper had to have been eaten on Wednesday night - the night of the Jews' Lord's Passover, which makes more sense symbolically and because that meal typically consists only of bread and wine - the two foods mentioned in the Bible.

Like I said, none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things, as all that really matters is that Jesus died and lives again.  I just thought it would be a fun thing to research so I could better explain it to my own children.  Good Friday NEVER made sense to me and I don't want my kids to have the same confusion.

I wonder how this confusion happened?  I wonder if it was ignorance to the Jewish calendar and a lack of understanding about how Jewish Holy days work.  Scholars have been saying that these dates are wrong for centuries, but the Catholic church holds firm to tradition.  And Protestant churches have established their own traditions based on the Catholic ones. 

I think that as new information surfaces - new historical texts and documents or better understandings and translations of original texts - we need to rethink these kinds of things.  So in our curriculum plan for this week I changed our Holy Week timeline for the kids.  Their books will have the Lord's Supper (Maundy Wednesday) on Wednesday night, Jesus' death and burial on Thursday afternoon (Good Thursday), and the Resurrection on Sunday.

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I had always thought the three days just meant Friday was counted because Jesus died before sundown, which was when Saturday technically began for the Jews, and then Sunday would have started at sundown the next day.  So three different days would have passed by the time he arose, just not 3 complete 24 hour days. But I thought Jessica's research was really helpful--and illuminating!

It feels weird to say, "Happy Good Friday!" to you all.  But may you have a renewed connection to God the Father, through communion with His Son, by the power of His Holy Spirit this day, and this weekend.

All Things Holy Week

I have started SO many posts in the past weeks of absence--and always get interrupted or run out of time to finish!  I'm going to sit here and type as quickly as I can now, just to get SOMETHING new here--to break the pattern! 

In other words, don't expect much. ; )

Life has been good, just busy.

But this week--AHHHHHHHHH. This week is Spring Break. And this year, we all get a REAL break--no need to keep plugging away at school projects, like too often happens.  Ok, so we will have some classes still this week--martial arts, etc. And they will still need to practice music for lessons next week.  But I am not assigning any school, and have some fun things planned, like a bracelet making party and a fancy hair party--using craft kits we have received as presents, but which we have never had a chance to really play with. But mostly this week is going to be about rest.

Perfect for Holy Week.

And I had already looked at the calendar and seen that we had nothing going on today, so I knew we would start our break with a pajama day. So at this moment, 6:52 p.m., DH and Smiley are the only ones who have clothes on. Smiley finally put some on around 4:30 so he could go outside and climb trees and be helpful to his daddy. 

I have not cooked a meal all day. (but I will need to get up and rustle up a late dinner in a minute.) The kids lounged in their room all morning, so skipped breakfast. They finally ate around 2 pm, at my urging. But they just foraged for fresh fruits and veggies in the fridge--no help from mommy required!  Which was good, since I was busy on youtube watching all the past Sing Off performances by Pentatonix, in order.

Today we've had pillow fights, and tickle fights (yes, even mommy & daddy), and LEGO building and making illuminated manuscripts and reading and Sunny & Merry acting out a story involving a man who traps a Selkie by stealing her seal skin.  (We just finished a unit on the time of the Celts to the spread of Christianity to Ireland, part of which was watching "The Secret of Roan Inish" together--one of my favorite movies, and one I used to teach in my college Intro to Lit class.)

In other words, a very relaxing day. With lots and lots of laughter and enjoying one another.

I'm looking forward to this week. I think the kids and I could use the relational boost a little slowing down will help foster. : )

And now, some random photos of our Spring so far:

From L to R: Brown Prince, Pink Princess, Green Prince, and Purple Princess

Vintage meets modern--Happy wearing her favorite pinafore (worn by my mother when she was 5) while doing math.

What my shower looked like after four kids and two friends played in the backyard one day last month.  This would be after the children were instructed by no less than three adults to not get muddy.  Yes, we had to mop the floor from the door to the shower too. Ah, the folly of children in Spring! ; )

Salamanders found in the backyard--the kind of little wonder that makes the mud mess bearable. 

I don't normally let kids stand on the footboard--but when I caught sight of Smiley's illegal acrobatics, they were so well-executed that I told him to do it again for the camera. 

 

 

(That's dress-up piled on the bed, not my own lazy mess. ; )

Sunny wearing a skirt made by my mother for herself waaaaaay back when--Mom, tell me more about the skirt in the comments. I love it on Sunny!

Random afternoon last week, swinging by the cliffs on the way home from something school-y.  If you are jealous, come visit us!

I hope you are all having good weeks, wherever you are!