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Bright-Kids
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Vol. 5, No. 32 - August 11th, 2008
http://hometown.aol.com/brightkidsrus
mailto: debi@simplemom.com
Copyright 2008 Deborah Taylor-Hough
ISSN: 1536-0466 All Rights Reserved
________________________________

Subscribe: join-bright-kids@hub.thedollarstretcher.com
***: leave-bright-kids@hub.thedollarstretcher.com
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IN THIS ISSUE:
-- "Dear Readers": Order of the Narnia Books
-- Quote-able
-- The Way of the Will and Reason
-- "Real Life" Narrations
-- Reader Tips
-- Assorted Information (resources, archives, etc.)
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< < O U R . S P O N S O R > >

PIANO IS EASY FOR KIDS!

Start piano at home with your child
Book and numbered stickers. Free DVD.
Come see all the fun songs you can play.

http://www.pianoiseasy2.com
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Dear Readers,

I think because of the new Narnia movies that have been
coming out the past few years, people frequently ask me
in what order C.S. Lewis intended people to read his series,
The Chronicles of Narnia.

Recent publishers have changed the order of the series,
and I'm hearing from mothers that their children aren't as
happy with the new reading experience. The books are now
ordered chronologically rather than in the order they were
written by Lewis. By reading The Magician's Nephew first
(as the new ordering systems requires), it seems to spoil
the entire effect of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
which was the book Lewis intended to be the reader's first
entrance into the world of Narnia.

The Original Book Order: (how Lewis wrote them)

1) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2) Prince Caspian
3) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4) The Silver Chair
5) The Horse and His Boy
6) The Magician's Nephew
7) The Last Battle

The "New" Order: (chronological)

1) The Magician's Nephew
2) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3) The Horse and His Boy
4) Prince Caspian
5) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6) The Silver Chair
7) The Last Battle


A couple of mothers I've spoken with had read the books
aloud in the new chronological order to their first-born
children before the mother had discovered the book order
had been changed in recent editions.

Later on, they read the books in the original order to their
younger children. They all reported the reading experience
of the later group (the original book order) was much more
enjoyable for everyone -- including Mom -- than the reading
from the new chronological ordering.


The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0064471195/simplepleasuresp/


Simply Yours,

--Debi
(Deborah Taylor-Hough)
Editor, Bright-Kids Email Newsletter
--Author of the popular 'Frozen Assets' cookbook series, 'A Simple
Choice,' and 'Frugal Living For Dummies(r)'
--Editor, Simple Times and Bright-Kids email newsletters

http://brightkids.wordpress.com
http://thesimplemom.wordpress.com
http://snurl.com/DebiTupperware
http://dsimple.wordpress.com
________________________________

QUOTABLE

"If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be
enthusiasm."

--Bruce Barton
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THE WAY OF THE WILL AND REASON
by Charlotte Mason
Public Domain


There are also two secrets of moral and intellectual self-management
which should be offered to children; these we may call the Way of the
Will and the Way of the Reason.


THE WAY OF THE WILL

Children should be taught --

(a) To distinguish between 'I want' and 'I will.'

(b) That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that
which we desire but do not will.

(c) That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some
quite different thing, entertaining or interesting.

(d) That, after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work
with new vigour. (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion,
whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may
'will, again with added power. The use of suggestion -- even self-
suggestion -- as an aid to the will, is to be deprecated, as tending to
stultify and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a
condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of
failure as well as of success).


THE WAY OF THE REASON

We should teach children, too, not to 'lean' (too confidently) 'unto
their own understanding,' because the function of reason is, to give
logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth; and (b) of an initial
idea, accepted by the will. In the former case reason is, perhaps,
an infallible guide, but in the second it is not always a safe one; for
whether that initial idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by
irrefragable proofs.


Therefore children should be taught, as they become mature
enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility
which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of
initial ideas. To help them in this choice we should give them
principles of conduct and a wide range of the knowledge fitted for
them.


These three principles should save children from some of the loose
thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a
lower level than we need.


EXCERPTED FROM: The educational writings of Charlotte Mason
--From the preface to Charlotte Mason's six-volume set, often
referred to as The Original Home Schooling Series. Her entire
work is now in the Public Domain and can be reprinted and
distributed freely, much to the benefit and delight of today's
parents and educators.

Charlotte Mason's Original Homeschooling Series (six volume set)
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1889209007/simplepleasuresp/
________________________________

< < O U R . S P O N S O R > >

"I SAVED $24,000 ON MY GROCERY BILL!"

"I used to spend $700 per month on groceries and other
food-related expenses for our family of five, but now I spend
around $300. By saving $400 a month, it multiplied out to
an overwhelming figure when I did the math!
--Mom of 3, Washington State

The successful money-saving trick was cooking the family's
regular meals ahead for the freezer. For complete info, go to:

Cook for a Day, Eat for a Month
http://snurl.com/3f507 [www_amazon_com]

________________________________

"REAL LIFE" NARRATIONS
Copyright Deborah Taylor-Hough
Used with permission. All rights reserved.
http://simplemom.wordpress.com


Every now and then, life throws something really exciting
across our path that's worth remembering in vivid detail.
Children have a wonderful capacity to remember large volumes
of information -- especially about things they've experienced
personally. But as the years go by, those events sometimes
fade or get confused amid a lifetime of other memories.

One way to help your child cement these events in their mind
is to have them narrate to you (or "tell back") about what they
experienced. Several years ago, life threw one of those "earth-
shaking" events into our day ... a literal earthquake centered
just a few miles from our home!

Pulling out a small tape recorder the next day, I had my son
give an oral narration about the day the earth shook. When he
finished telling me about his experience, I replayed the tape
and typed up his narration. He'll add it to one of his notebooks
for future reference.

Just the process of retelling an event soon afterward can help
improve long-term memory. And when my son looks back at
this narration years from now, he'll not only remember the
earthquake itself, but also the fact that the earthquake happened
the same year he took dance classes, he was in Kids Club at
church, and his Grandpa was in the nursing home recovering
from a broken hip and surgery.

Here's an exact transcript of my son's narration the day after
the big quake:
--------------------------------
Earthquake! (on February 28th, 2001)
Narration: 10-year-old boy
Washington State, USA

We were sitting down to watch The Lion King. Mommy
thought it was a truck coming by, but it wasn't a truck. It
was the earthquake! We ran down the hallway and went
into a doorframe and we saw the cats running all over the
house. We heard Daddy say, 'Are you all right?' It was
scary. It felt like a roller coaster. We heard things falling.

Mommy and I went for a drive and we saw a hill that fell
apart close to a 7-Eleven and a Jack-in-the-Box and I think
there was a hotel nearby. It was a mess. There were these
big bricks that had fallen that were under the dirt. You could
tell that it just fell over. It made a big mess in the street. There
were three or four pipes showing that you could see. A bridge
was closed because the bridge railings fell. It was the bridge
that we normally take to church. There was a big crack in the
capitol building. We drove by but we couldn't see it. When we
were downtown, there was a building that had part of it fallen
off from the earthquake. Bricks and tiles were fallen. They had
a couple streets closed.

On TV, Bill Gates was teaching in Seattle and then the earthquake
started and then light bulbs and stuff from the ceiling were falling.

At Kids Club at church, the teachers wanted to know some of
the things that happened. One of the people said that at first
they had a fire drill at school, and then they had an earthquake.
They had a fire drill before the earthquake. They thought, 'Is
there anything else that's going to happen today that will be
a problem?' At Kids Club, we did things differently because of
the earthquake. The pastor didn't know if there would be very
many people there. And even if there were, they would probably
want to get home. So they shortened it to be about 20 minutes
shorter. They had the fourth grade and the second and third
grade together. The fifth and sixth grade class was upstairs
and we stayed in one room the whole time. We played Dodge
Ball.

Ballet was closed because of the earthquake. We drove to
ballet and because ballet was closed, we went downtown. Then
we went to make sure Kids Club was open. We went to visit
Grandpa in the nursing home, and then we went to visit Grandma.

Everyone was okay!
-----------------------

For further information on the practical how-to's of applying the
narration technique in your home, go to:

"Narration" by Catherine Levison
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/beeme1/page2.html


SUBMITTED BY:
--Deborah Taylor-Hough, editor of the Bright-Kids ezine (with
a little help from a small and eager ten-year-old narrator ...
although he's not ten anymore ... where does the time go?!).
http://thesimplemom.wordpress.com/

________________________________

READER TIPS
Submitted by Bright-Kids' readers.


== Making Perfect Burgers for the Kids ==
One more tip for making homemade burgers. I read this in a
recipe book and it works. To avoid having homemade burgers
shrink up like a golf ball, make your burgers and then freeze
them. When you're ready for cooking, put them, frozen, on the
grill. They will shrink up very little and be very tasty!
--Linda B. in Michigan


* * Your Tips? * *
Do you have some great family fun, educational, or parenting
tips/ideas you'd love to share with other parents and caregivers?
Just send your tips and ideas to Debi at Bright-Kids:
DSimple@aol.com
______________________________

READ-ALOUD BOOKS FOR FAMILIES:

http://snurl.com/reading4kids

Recommended books for children and families
(This is a great list to print out and hand to your kids'
grandparents for suggestions at gift-giving times!)
_______________________________

A special thanks to Gary Foreman and the friendly folks at
The Dollar Stretcher for making this mailing list possible! :-)
http://www.stretcher.com/
_______________________________

< < B E . O U R . S P O N S O R > >

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DEBI'S RESOURCES:

Personal Blog: http://dsimple.wordpress.com
Nature Study Books: http://astore.amazon.com/naturestudy-20/
Frugality/Simplicity: http://thesimplemom.wordpress.com
Cooking Ahead: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/frozen-assets
Bright-Kids: http://brightkids.wordpress.com
Tupperware(r): http://my.tupperware.com/debihough
Personal Webpage: http://simplemom.com
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