Month: January 2018

Worm-Savers

Squirmy Worms on a flooded morning = Worm-Savers to the rescue!

January 29, 2018

Worm-Savers

It had rained all Sunday evening and most of the early Monday morning to leave a cool, wet ground at college today.  As happens when water floods the grass, insects leave trying to find dry land.  On the way to the potty, (Lucas has started “Big Boy Pants” and when he says “I gotta go potty!” he means quickly!) Jaquline spied a worm wriggling on the parking lot and shrieked, “Mom! He’ll get run over!”

Jillian grabbed at it, “let’s save him!”

Mom watched for cars.

The girls and Lucas grabbed every soggy earthworm on the cement or asphalt on the way into the building and on the way back to the vehicle.  (It was periodically misting and the tables were all soaking wet so we had to do schoolwork in the dry van.)

“We’re worm-savers!” Jaquline announced, “every worm we save is helping plants grow strong.”

“I like squirmy worms!” Lucas added.

They are just little earthworms, but doing something small (saving worms) made them feel like they were doing something big!

“God put us here to save those worms, you know,” Jillian said.

AHA!  Teaching moment!  Yes, God puts us where He wants us even just to do something we see as small; like smile at someone.  Just like picking up an earthworm isn’t much to you (but it’s the entire world for that earthworm!) sometimes a genuine smile helps encourage people.  God will put you where He can use your joy to encourage others.  Don’t you feel happier when you see someone else happy?

“I’m happy being a worm-saver!” Jaquline giggled.  “Just like how Alena and Joseph save Tawny!  These worms won’t die now!” (She loves the newest  Devonians book: in “A Foundling Furball” the youngsters save an injured baby pup.)

In the few minutes of worm-saving, a few dozen squirming worms were in the grass (Lucas squealed each time one quickly disappeared into the dirt).  Their consideration for the tiny creatures and effort to save them certainly encouraged me.  God often uses my children to illustrate the simplest things that I try to make hard – today it was stop being so busy and help by doing what you can.

I needed to hear that.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

A New Spot for Adventures

Naming their school work spots! Today is at the Tortuga past the Black Spots and the Outer Rim…

January 23, 2018

A New Spot for Adventures!

Today we discovered the Tortuga!  Lucas and Jillian spied dozens of turtles from this vantage point.  We were also visited by a crane.  (Lucas screamed “Baby bird is cold!” because the crane folded his long neck up like Becky hiding in a blanket.)

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Here in the middle of a long walkway over a gentle pond, sits a pretty octagonal wooden pavilion with two benches.  Kimberly and Jaquline have been naming the locations where we do schoolwork and wait for Christina and Rebeccah to come out of class.

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Kimberly: “It looks like a turtle.”

Jaquline: “No, The Dead Marshings, because the water is black.”

Kimberly: “But it’s so fun.  This place should have a fun name.”

Jillian: “There’s bunches of turtles here!”

Kimberly: “What’s the name of the turtle in Wild Kratts?” (A favorite TV show about animal-loving brothers who turn into cartoons to save animals.)

Jillian: “Tortuga!”  She jumps around.  “Let’s call this place the Tortuga!  It looks just like it and we can see turtles.”

I tell them that Tortuga is Turtle in Spanish.

Kimberly: “Perfect!  It’s shaped like a turtle and we can see turtles from it!”

Jaquline: “So this is our Tortuga, the turtle ship to see turtles from.”  (Jaquline decided the benches on the outer ring overlooking the water would be the Outer Rim since they “needed a Star Wars spot.”)

Three more turtles rose to the surface.

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Lucas spied them, ran to the edge, and introduced himself to them.

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Jaquline and Jillian peeked between the floor planks to watch turtles swim underneath them as they created their sentences for Language.

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Lucas announced the arrival of every turtle, bird, crane, and bug.

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Kimberly took a break from arithmetic periodically to point out new sunning turtles on the edge of the pond.

So now they have the Stone Table, the Black Forest Table, the West Wing, (all of these are picnic tables), the Black Spots (we are reading Treasure Island right now and the black metal tables are round – so they are the Black Spots), the Tortuga, and the Outer Rim.  I wonder what other imaginary places the girls will find hidden on the college campus!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Meet Tawny

The backstory of the little dengee adopted by Alena in A Foundling Furball. Meet Tawny:

January 18, 2018

Meet Tawny

On Devonia, a world far from here, but more deserving of the name Earth’s Twin than Venus, a dengee (a strong, wolf-dog-like creature) female birthed a litter of pups.  One of those tiny, sightless, nearly deaf, fluffy balls was a tan-brown female with black rings on her tail and black markings.  Her first two days of life were normal for any dengee pup.  She shoved her way to her mother’s warm belly and warmed herself inside and out with her mother’s milk and thick soft fur.

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But then something unexpected happened.  She was too young to understand, but the lead pack male was forced out by a trio of incoming younger, stronger males.  In the dengee world, those males would then destroy all of the previous male’s young.  Although some of the mother dengees had been wounded while trying to fight them away alongside the pack male, others resigned themselves to their fate.  The new trio of males, one lead pack male and the other two his cohorts, hunted down and destroyed all the six dens with the old male’s pups.

What the pup knew was that mean teeth snapped at her and a rough angry paw tossed her out of the warm den and into the cold early morning where it was just as dark to those with open eyes as it was to her blind self.  Miraculously, the tiny female pup, now heavily injured, managed to elude her pursuer and slide into the edge of a frigid creek.  She called for her mother.  She cried will all her might.

Her new mother heard her cries.

Alena Summers, a human child fishing on the bank of the Ice Cube Creek that early afternoon, heard the pitiful calls of this lonely baby and followed the sound.  Joseph Taylor, another human child, swam into the cold water to rescue the blob of tangled fur from her prison in the bushes on the edge of the water, and there Tawny became a ward of the humans.

This little three-day-old dengee pup whose eyes had never seen her own kind was rescued from drowning by two children and warmed in her new mother’s soft apron.  Tawny’s life had already been so full of turmoil!  Even on the bank after being rescued, the other children considered tossing her back because dengees were deadly foes to the humans – attacking their livestock and more than once, even the humans themselves.  Thankfully, Alena wouldn’t have that; she took full charge of this tiny creature.

With slow, tender, loving care, Tawny’s wounds will heal.  Four days later, at only a week old, and without yet opening her tiny eyes, little Tawny will face another challenge as the council of elders on Devonia has to decide if Alena can keep this dangerous animal.  Of course, Alena and her friends will swear that this pup is nothing dangerous – but that remains to be seen.

For now, Tawny, the newest member of the Devonian settlement of Covenant, is resting with warm Brown-Sheep milk digesting in her belly laying on a soft rag-blanket-bed on straw in the Summers’ barn listening to the sounds of Alena’s pretty lullabies, Brown-Sheep ewes, and baby lambs and dreaming of new warm sun on her body and the soft, warm love of her human mother.

If you want to read about how Alena, Joseph, and their friends find and rescue Tawny, you can read A Foundling Furball!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

New Paperbacks!

Introducing the paperback versions of The Brown Sheep Prank and A Foundling Furball!

January 17, 2018

New Paperback Books!

Introducing the paperback versions of The Brown Sheep Prank and A Foundling Furball!  These two short chapter books are parts 2 and 3 in The Devonians (following #1, Daydreamer).

Christina Tart did the illustrations except for Rebeccah’s design of Tawny, the “foundling furball” in book 3.

The Devonians are space castaways who have made their own life on a new planet called “Devonia” in a village named “Covenant.”  Each book follows the adventures of some of the younger colonists.  Daydreamer introduced the Taylor family with their five boys and baby Rose.  The Brown Sheep Prank highlights on the Summers’ family farm because Alena’s family keeps the only herd of Brown-Sheep.  Alena Summers and Joseph Taylor are best friends.  Alena gives readers a tour of her snug little house and you get to see where Alena, her two sisters, and younger brother, Michael, sleep.  In A Foundling Furball, the older of the Taylor and Summers children find a strange orphan animal at their favorite fishing spot!  Matthew Taylor and Janine Summers have a fun way to catch fish using teamwork.   Mr. Summers, Alena’s dad, tells the children stories as he tries to decide what they have to do with this unexpected little creature.

Enter the world of Devonia and be ready for engaging stories of adventure and friendship.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

God Is Everywhere

Sometimes we seem to pick up on the neatest of hidden gems in movies. Just some thoughts from a discussion about a movie we watched!

January 10, 2018

God is Everywhere

We usually talk about movies after watching them.  The girls were discussing a movie while sitting at the “stone table” (what the little girls call the stone bench and table they get to do school at while waiting for the big girls at college) today.

The exchange from this movie being discussed goes generally like this:

“Don’t rob me of my hate…”

“…God has given us a second chance.  Don’t slap His hand away.”

“God? Can’t I ever get away from Him?”

“No.  God is everywhere, even in a kiss…”

And so this story that, as a novel, is a story of bitter vengeance and betrayal becomes morphed for the big screen into a story of forgiveness and God’s mercy.

Jaquline says, “I like how God is everywhere.  The Bible says He’s in the darkest valley and the tallest mountain.  Is God really in a kiss?”

“I think so,” Kimberly pipes up, “God also gives life and love.”

“So if God is in everything, do squirrels get married?” Jillian asked.  (She loves the Landmark Tribe squirrel stories, and in those, the squirrels are married.)

“God is in everything; He created everything,” Jaquline sighed, “but I don’t know if squirrels get married for real.  Dogs don’t but when we are feeling sad, God uses Prim’s and Sheba’s kisses to make us happier.” (Prim and Sheba are our dogs.)

“So God is even in doggie kisses!” laughed Jillian.

I smiled.  The sun that warms us, the air we breathe, the water, plants, animals; each spark of life is a gift from God.  “God is in everything” isn’t just a movie line; it’s real.  Sometimes we try to make God so distant when in reality He’s inside us, touching everything within and around us.  No, we can never get away from Him.  That’s the beauty and mystery of His love.  Why would the God who spoke the universe into existence want to “chase after” each of us?  God is in everything so that everything we see, feel, and love reflects His love for us.  In this way, all of creation sings God’s glory!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

A New Step

A New Step in our Educational Journey

January 8, 2018

A New Step

Saturday afternoon we got Christina back from her week-long Civil Air Patrol encampment.

Today, Kimberly, Jaquline, Jillian, and Lucas are doing school at a stone table on the beautiful grounds of our state college waiting for Christina and Rebeccah to finish with their first class.

My younglings are growing up too quickly for me!

The sweet lady in the college bookstore was very helpful and encouraging.  She handed the girls a copy of the eleventh edition of their Biology… I have the seventh at home (from when I went here only a few years ago).  Honestly, I’m so excited for the girls in this next step.  (But I won’t say that to them; I try to make this as normal as possible.  We’ve treated every step in their educational journey as simply another textbook to study.)  I’m very thankful for the awesome opportunities available to students in our county.  (This is a big difference from growing up when home schooling was illegal!)

I’m remembering them at the preschool level (Lucas: counting pinecones and creating stickmen from oak leaves and pine sticks), kindergarten level (Jillian: reading and doing her math problems), and working through book steps like Jaquline and Kimberly. (I “stair-step” arithmetic and language arts in a progression they move through and they get to pick one, two, or three “study books” from history, science, and other subjects.) Then they get through independent learning in preparation for college or vocation. (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, various social studies, upper level literature studies, etc.)  Now, Christina and Rebeccah are at the next step: dual enrollment (college credit classes!).

The nostalgic part of me wants time to slow down.

The logical part of me is thoroughly enjoying each new step each one of my children take.  I love the baby stage, but I get excited when the baby steps up to dress and feed themselves.  I love the learning-independence toddler stage, but I love it when they discover reading!  I love the everything-is-new discovery stage, (I try to keep that going as long as I can) but that is too quickly followed by the totally-independent-learning stage.  Yes, I get a little sad when they complete their lesson goals without my help, but I am proud and excited as they jump ahead of my goals by making and achieving their own personal goals.

I see the goal of my “teaching” job as helping my students learn how to teach themselves.  This means inspiring a lifelong love of learning, challenging them to reach higher and higher personal goals, and instilling core principles like academic integrity and determination.

I’m sure they will do well.  They love to learn and are thriving in their “adult” environment where their fellow students are all serious about their work.  I have to smile because I feel like I’ve accomplished my teaching goal – at least for these students – they are fully independent learners with their eyes on future careers and their lifelong pursuit of knowledge.

Of course, I will never truly stop teaching.  I’ll be asking, “so, how was school?” even when they call me from their university in years to come.  That thought makes me smile again.

“Jaquline,” says Kimberly, “why aren’t you writing?”

Jaquline is sitting at the stone picnic table, her paperwork on a clipboard, smiling and staring at the sky.  She sighs and says dreamily, “I’m doing my school at college!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

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