Okay, my posting of these has gotten sketchy. 

But I couldn’t pass up this week.  Now, granted, it’s not exactly a children’s book in that it’s for children, so much as it’s a book for parents of children.  That still counts, right?  I never was so good at following rules.  Even my own.

Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School
Written by Rebecca Rupp

(I have to say, if you order this book through my site right here, I get a cut from it.  So, click away and we all win!)

I forgot about this book, y’all.  Matt surprised me with this a year or two ago (a book I would have never bought for myself) and I love to go back through it periodically.

I have not read it all the way through.  I use it strictly for a reference book.  Adding another chapter each year as my children grow.  And I always go back through the previous chapters to see if I’m on track.

I had let a friend borrow it, completely forgetting about it, and when I got it back it was like a sweet present all over again!  

While reading the preschool chapter I was blessed again by these words and a sweet friend came to mind as I was reading them.  I wanted to share them with her, but then more and more of you came to mind as I thought of the encouragement that would come from them.  So for your encouragement today:

“What to do with your preschoolers?  Cuddle them.  Talk to them.  Answer their questions.  Play games.  Read picture books.  Let them help bake bread, sort socks, and plant the garden.  Make play dough.  Sing silly songs.  Feed the birds.  Scribble with crayons and sidewalk chalks.  Experiment with finger paint.  And just watch:  Amazingly, as they grow from infants to toddlers, from age two to three to four, they will acquire an ever-expanding vocabulary and amass an astonishing fund of knowledge.  In comfortable everyday fashion, they’ll learn to count to ten, absorb the names of shapes and colors, memorize nursery rhymes, the words to ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ and the alphabet, and figure out how to pedal a tricycle, turn a somersault, and – at least in our experience – to disassemble the toilet, crib, and clock radio, operate the telephone answering machine, coffee grinder, and computer, write their names (both backward and forward) on the wallpaper, and drop the entire contents of the silverware drawer down the radiator.

Kids grow up fast.  Cherish these early years while you’ve got them.  Henry David Thoreau could have been speaking to the parents of small children when he touted the beauties of daily living and the importance of taking time to pay heed to the marvels taking place about you.  ‘It is a great art,’ Thoureau once wrote, ‘to saunter.’  Such is my advice for the preschool curriculum: Saunter.  Hold hands and giggle while you’re doing it, and bring some bread along to feed the ducks.”

Want to link anything at all with us?  We’ll come visit and all be blessed!