Small Steps for Catholic Moms: Think. Pray. Act. Every Day.


Danielle Bean - 2010
    Now they've put their combined experience into a 365 devotional designed to encourage busy women to take small steps every day to grow their faith and put it into practice. A thought-provoking quote from a saint, a prayer to focus the day, and a simple action you can take... day-by-day, step-by-step.

Teach Ye Diligently


Boyd K. Packer - 1975
    This is the theme and focus of this newly redesigned edition of Teach Ye Diligently, which has been a premiere resource on gospel teaching since its publication 35 years ago. A teacher by profession, President Boyd K. Packer draws upon personal experiences and observations from the classroom and his won family to provide insightful interpretations of basic teaching principles. He shares suggestions about maintaining discipline, providing a climate conducive to learning, getting the attention of students, making difficult subjects more easily understood, and answering hard questions. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on teaching moral and spiritual values.About the AuthorPresident Boyd K. Packer has devoted much of his life to teaching. Currently the Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Packer became an Assistant to the Twelve in September 1961, and was ordained an apostle in April 1970. He holds a Ph.D. in educational administration and has been supervisor of seminaries and institutes of religion for the Church and president of the New England States Mission.

Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: Nurturing Our Children from Birth to Seven


Barbara J. Patterson - 2000
    Patterson, Pamela Bradley and Jean Riordan (Perfect Paperback - Jan 1, 2000)

Are My Kids on Track?: The 12 Emotional, Social, and Spiritual Milestones Your Child Needs to Reach


Sissy Goff - 2017
    But what about their hearts? After all, how our children develop emotionally, socially, and spiritually will determine who they become as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, friends and co-workers.Are My Kids on Track? helps you identify and measure 12 key emotional, social, and spiritual milestones in your children's lives. Moreover, you will discover practical ways to guide your kids through any stumbling blocks they might encounter and help them reach the appropriate landmarks. Along the way the authors pinpoint the different ways boys and girls develop, so you can help your child flourish in his or her own way.Filled with decades of experience from three practicing counselors, speakers, and writers, this book provides you with valuable, current research and user-friendly, hands-on practices to make supporting your kids' soul development a seamless part of family life. Don't just raise smart kids--raise courageous, compassionate, resilient, empathetic, and smart kids.

No More Perfect Moms: Learn to Love Your Real Life


Jill Savage - 2013
    We fall short of our own standard of excellence, and then we feel insecure about not being the perfect wife with the perfect kids, perfect husband, perfect home, perfect friends, perfect marriage, and perfect body…Jill speaks to the root of the insecurities mothers feel and points to a better way. No More Perfect Moms will help a mom:Change her unrealistic expectations to realistic hopesGive grace and love to her husband and children even during struggles, and discover the beauty of grace when she stops judging herself and othersFind freedom from disappointment when she embraces her real family, her real challenges, and her real, but imperfect, lifeWith refreshing honesty, Jill exposes some of her own parental shortcomings and helps mothers everywhere shelve their desires for perfection and embrace God’s beautiful grace. When moms do this, they can learn to love their real but imperfect lives.

The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education


Kevin Clark - 2013
    Instead, this booklet describes the liberal arts as a central part of a larger and more robust paradigm of classical education that should consist of piety, gymnastic, music, liberal arts, philosophy, and theology. The booklet also recovers the means by which classical educators developed more than just intellectual virtue (by means of the seven liberal arts) but holistically cultivated the mind, body, will, and affections. A must-read for educators wanting to take a second big step toward recovering the tradition of classical education.

Radical Unschooling: A Revolution Has Begun


Dayna Martin - 2009
    It is different from homeschooling in that children are not forced to follow curriculum lessons and tests. Radical Unschooling philosophy focuses on trust of a child's innate ability to learn without coercion and invites children to explore their passions. The parent's role is to facilitate their interests and curiosity. The book focuses also on the evolutionary aspect of parenting and human consciousness. We are parenting and educating our children today to succeed in a joyful, productive life by following their passions, not someone else's agenda.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder


Richard Louv - 2005
    Never before in history have children been so plugged in—and so out of touch with the natural world. In this groundbreaking new work, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as rises in obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and depression. Some startling facts: By the 1990s the radius around the home where children were allowed to roam on their own had shrunk to a ninth of what it had been in 1970. Today, average eight-year-olds are better able to identify cartoon characters than native species, such as beetles and oak trees, in their own community. The rate at which doctors prescribe antidepressants to children has doubled in the last five years, and recent studies show that too much computer use spells trouble for the developing mind. Nature-deficit disorder is not a medical condition; it is a description of the human costs of alienation from nature. This alienation damages children and shapes adults, families, and communities. There are solutions, though, and they're right in our own backyards. Last child in the Woods is the first book to bring together cutting-edge research showing that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development—physical, emotional, and spiritual. What's more, nature is a potent therapy for depression, obesity, and ADD. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Even creativity is stimulated by childhood experiences in nature. Yet sending kids outside to play is increasingly difficult. Computers, television, and video games compete for their time, of course, but it's also our fears of traffic, strangers, even virus-carrying mosquitoes—fears the media exploit—that keep children indoors. Meanwhile, schools assign more and more homework, and there is less and less access to natural areas. Parents have the power to ensure that their daughter or son will not be the "last child in the woods," and this book is the first step toward that nature-child reunion.

Getting Past Perfect: How to Find Joy and Grace in the Messiness of Motherhood


Kate Wicker - 2017
    If you have ever felt that you were not enough as a wife or mom, or if you're someone who struggles to do it all, Getting Past Perfect offers a realistic and reassuring portrait of Catholic womanhood, placing motherhood in the context of every woman's primary role as a child of God. Kate Wicker journalist, popular speaker, and author of the highly-acclaimed Weightless shares how she shook off doubt and negative self-perception, finding self-acceptance as a mom and the desire to stop controlling everyone around her. Getting Past Perfect invites you to make this same journey as you learn to embrace the primacy of your role as a daughter of God, even amidst the daily chaos of raising children. Each chapter is designed to debunk the lies and expectations that moms often face, replacing negative self-perceptions with the truths of a woman's true calling. Wicker, a recovering perfectionist, helps you realize:It is perfectly normal to feel like you're in over your head sometimes.You can stop obsessing about what other people think and start focusing on loving yourself and your kids just as you are.Your primary jobs are to let God love you and to love him back. Nurture your prayer life and make time to remember that you are first a daughter of God.It s important to practice self-care no matter your stage in life.Wicker openly shares how she unwittingly transferred her preoccupation with having the perfect body to being the perfect parent. By honestly sharing her mistakes and triumphs in the trenches of motherhood, Wicker reveals several common falsehoods mothers tell themselves in different seasons of their lives and how speaking the truth can liberate women to become better parents and the truest versions of themselves. Whether you're dealing with endless "why?" questions, unexpected potty emergencies, or even the unanticipated change of a new pregnancy, Getting Past Perfect will help you learn how to lean into God's abiding grace. By closing each chapter with a simple reflection question and prayer, this book provides the tools you need to embrace the messy realities of family life and to emerge from feeling overwhelmed to knowing that you are first and foremost a daughter of God."

The Write Start: A Guide to Nurturing Writing at Every Stage, from Scribbling to Forming Letters and Writing Stories


Jennifer Hallissy - 2010
    In this book, she shares the secrets for supporting young writers, from the smallest of scribblers to middle-schoolers mastering script. You play an important role in nurturing your child's writing development. You are your child's first writing teacher, and their most important writing role model. From teaching your child how to hold a pencil and form the letters of the alphabet, to creating writing spaces and meaningful writing rituals at home, this book gives you all of the information and inspiration you need to raise a confident writer. Fifty-two playful activities are presented as ways to invite your child to write. Each activity offers specific suggestions to meet the needs of Scribblers (pre-writers), Spellers (emerging writers), Storytellers (beginner writers), and Scholars (more experienced young writers)—providing the just-right combination of fun and functional skill development. The Write Start is a treasure trove of irresistible ideas that will help you introduce your child to the wonderful world of writing, now, and for years to come.

Helicopters, Drill Sergeants and Consultants


Jim Fay - 1994
    Enjoy being a parent again!

Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry


Lenore Skenazy - 2009
    Parent groups argued about it, bloggers, blogged, spouses became uncivil with each other, and the media jumped all over it. A lot of parents today, Skenazy says, see no difference between letting their kids walk to school and letting them walk through a firing range. Any risk is seen as too much risk. But if you try to prevent every possible danger or difficult in your child's everyday life, that child never gets a chance to grow up. We parents have to realize that the greatest risk of all just might be trying to raise a child who never encounters choice or independence.

Hints on Child Training: A Book That's Been Helping Parents Like Your...for More Than 100 Years


Henry Clay Trumbull - 1893
    He shares very frankly from his lifetime experiences with teaching children and raising eight of his own. These are working principles, written with warmth, love, and wisdom, not untried theories. This book has been called "the best single volume on the subject of child training ever written" and is a refreshing change from today's psychological approach to discipline.

The Lucky Few: Finding God's Best in the Most Unlikely Places


Heather Avis - 2017
    That's what adoptive mom Heather Avis learned, and that's the invitation of this book.As the mother of three adopted children - two with Down syndrome - Heather Avis has learned that it's truly the lucky few who get to live a life like hers, who actually recognize that God's plans are best, even when they seem so radically different from the plans we have for ourselves.When Heather started her journey into parenthood she never thought it would look like this, never planned to have three adopted children, and certainly never imagined that two of them would have Down syndrome. But like most things God does, once she stepped into the craziness and confusion that comes with the unknown and the unplanned, she realized that they were indeed among the lucky few.Discover in this book what 70,000+ followers of Heather's hit Instagram account @macymakesmyday already know: the power of faith and family can help us stay strong in the toughest times. This book will also be especially touching to those with adopted family members or children with Down syndrome in their lives.

The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction


Meghan Cox Gurdon - 2019
    Grounded in the latest neuroscience and behavioral research, and drawing widely from literature, The Enchanted Hour explains the dazzling cognitive and social-emotional benefits that await children, whatever their class, nationality or family background. But it’s not just about bedtime stories for little kids: Reading aloud consoles, uplifts and invigorates at every age, deepening the intellectual lives and emotional well-being of teenagers and adults, too.Meghan Cox Gurdon argues that this ancient practice is a fast-working antidote to the fractured attention spans, atomized families and unfulfilling ephemera of the tech era, helping to replenish what our devices are leaching away. For everyone, reading aloud engages the mind in complex narratives; for children, it’s an irreplaceable gift that builds vocabulary, fosters imagination, and kindles a lifelong appreciation of language, stories and pictures.Bringing together the latest scientific research, practical tips, and reading recommendations, The Enchanted Hour will both charm and galvanize, inspiring readers to share this invaluable, life-altering tradition with the people they love most.