The Birthday Ball Discussion Questons

Last night, my daughter hosted a book group discussion about The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry.  I looked on the web for some questions, but couldn't find any, so I asked her to write her own list of questions.  She did (and I added on the last 3).  Here's her list in case anyone would like to use them for a literature unit or discussion group.

The Birthday Ball Discussion Questions

1.  When you first looked at this book, what did you think this book would be like?
2.  Would you want to be in the princess' shoes?  Why or why not?
3.  Which character are you most like?  Why?
4.  If you lived in the princess' country, would you want to be nobility or peasantry?  Why?
5.  If you could change anything in this book, what would you change?  Why?
6. The princess' parents are both unusual.  Can you name some strange things about them?  Compare them with your parents.  What are some differences between them?
8.  If you were the princess, would you have done what she did, in going to school?  What might you have done differently?
9.  What 5 words best describe the princess?  Can you think of words for any other characters?
10.  What do you think the moral of the story is?
11.  Every girl that watches Disney princess movies wants to be a princess.  Did you feel that way after you read this story?  How do you think the reader might have wanted you to feel after reading this story?
12.  How did you feel at the end of this book?
13.  This book doesn't end the way all princess stories do with the prince and princess getting married and living happily ever after.  --Do you like the ending of this book more or less?  Why?
--What do you think happened next--after the end of the book?

**These questions are reproducible for classroom, home school, and book group use.  Please do not use them in any resale materials without prior consent from the author of this blog.

Beauty from the eye of the beholder (Finding Peace of Heart, Part 1)

I have been wrestling with some deep questions and confronting legalistic ideas that have haunted me for several years.  These questions have lingered, but I've been able to fight them for the most part.

Warning! Rabbit trail ahead...

Last night, I followed the instructions I'd given my teenage photography students in the fall.  Put together you pictures in a portfolio so that you can look at your pictures easily.  You can look back and forth over time and remember what God has shown you.  I've been trying to figure out how to store enlargements that I order of my pictures and I think my husband and I've come upon a solution.  I've made the portfolio for my 8 x 10s and 5 x 7s.  I'm going to get two larger artist portfolios and a rack to store them in for my larger enlargements.

As I sorted through my pictures, I had to choose how to categorize them.  It was interesting to try and group my pictures.  One of the groups I formed was portraits, but I decided to make a separate tab for my family.  When I looked at them last night, I was singularly struck by something.  Beauty did not equal perfection.  Hair perfectly in place, clothes matching, perfect background that not's distracting...
In actuality, I beauty in my family's pictures are in their eyes and faces--in the imperfections--in the joy I see on their faces and the ways their eyes sparkle with life.

My family and what I see all around me is the greatest defense I have against the lingering questions in the back of my head.  One of the questions I'd been able to easily answer but the second question I've been facing is so intertwined that I couldn't put either question to rest until the Lord opened my eyes to as I was looking at my portfolio helped me articulate the answer to my second looming question.

And now I find myself compelled to articulate my questions and answers because the Lord has given me peace about these questions and I am so thankful to Him for helping me to see!

These are seemingly simple questions that one might think all Christians shouldn't question or wrestle to articulate answers to once they've been a Christian for twenty years.  But, I've found that when my foundation gets assailed, cracks can show and I need to fill them in so that the slab foundation will be strong again.  So, here are my questions and even more importantly, the filler...

The biggest questions I face are these:

Who is a Christian?  and... How must we live?

I cling to the verse that says this:

Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

The Lord saved me by his grace--not by anything I did.  This is my greatest defense against the false teaching that can creep in that I am saved in any way by something I might do.  I see groups and churches teach that we must do good works or that we must do "this" and "that" to be saved.

Romans 3:20
20 For by works of the law no human being[c] will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

But, does this excuse us and allow us to sin and yet be saved?  No.  That's not the answer.  Autumn has been asking me why we try to be good if we're saved by grace.  If our works are not what save us, why should we try to do good to others and seek to be like Christ?  She said out loud a question I needed to answer for her and for me. 

Romans 6:14-18 ESV

14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.  15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

We are not condemned.  (The Romans passage is one I will talk about more fully in the next post.)

Phillippians 1:6 (ESV)
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

God is continually working in us.  We seek to good to others out of a thankful heart to the Lord.  Because we love Him.

I realized yesterday that this next verse has been a cornerstone for me.  I do not cling to the law of the Old Testament, but rather to the Gospel of grace.  In the Gospel of Matthew 22, we find how the law is summed up:

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  Matthew 22:34-40 ESV

I love these verses that tell me all about how to love and succinctly tell me why it matters most.

I John 4:7-12 ESV
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

I Corinthians 13 ESV

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[ 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I have clung to the passage from I John for years about what it means to be a Christian.  It gives me the most important answer of how I am to live: I am to love God and to love others.  Why?  Because I love God and when I love others, God is working in me and His love is complete in me (NIV translation uses that phrasing).  

Continue on to part 2...

Putting together My music curriculum

My oldest daughter stopped taking piano lessons in October, so I realized yesterday that I needed to have a better plan for music for her for the rest of the year.  I sat down this morning and started forming  a plan.  My younger kids are going to do these lessons with her even though they are both currently studying instruments.

So, I'm putting together a plan.  First we're going to study the instruments in the orchestra.  Then, we're going to look at the periods of music history and then finally composers.  We're going to do a lesson every Friday am or every other Friday for 30-60 minutes.  I've found some awesome free resources online that have helped me put together a whole notebook.  Here's what I've found...

We are going to start with the Orchestra.  Here's our instrument pages:
http://www.tlsbooks.com/mymusicalinstrumentbookb.pdf  are the first pages.  I'm using the cover page and then the first page from here: https://www.atlantasymphony.org/aso/asoassets/downloadcenter/symstreetinserts.pdf 
and the orchestra seating charts from here:
http://www.dsokids.com/visit-the-symphony/orchestra-seating-chart
We are going to listen to the instruments on this page:
http://www.dsokids.com/listen/by-instrument/cello/.aspx
I am including only the modern one for this instrument study section.  I'm including the charts for all periods in our Music History study section.
I'm also including several of the instrument worksheets from here:
http://www.tlsbooks.com/musicworksheets.htm  (one for each instrument section)
If you want individual instrument pages:
http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/mmf-music-library-meet-the-orchestra-index.htm
I'm only using the one on the piano.
http://www.musicfun.net.au/pdf_files/instruments.pdf (for older children grades 4-6)
http://www.musicfun.net.au/pdf_files/instruments.pdf (pages 9, 11, 12, 26)


Then on to Music History:
http://colorinmypiano.com/wp-content/files/Music_History_Periods_Lapbook.pdf  plus the charts:
http://www.dsokids.com/visit-the-symphony/orchestra-seating-chart  for instrument charts that are printable.  Click on the arrow to go forward to the next period in history.
As we talk about each period, I'm going to play a sample piece from Classics for Kids
http://www.classicsforkids.com/shows/collections.asp  If you click on each period, you can click on a composer and piece.

Then, we're going to move on to Composer Study
I've printed off a timeline for each period of music (and handwritten a label at the top identifying the period).  Each time we start a new composer study we will place that person's name and life span on the timeline for the period they belong in.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/lessonplans/graphicorg/pdfs/timeline.pdf
I found this site with several sets of composer sheets for grades 4-6  http://www.musicfun.net.au/composers.htm
Another page with composer worksheets is: http://www.tlsbooks.com/musicworksheets.htm
And finally,
http://makingmusicfun.net/htm/mmf_music_library_meet_the_composer_index.htm
This site has a varying number of worksheets for each.
For the composers I want to study but don't have worksheets for, we are going to listen to one of the past Classics for Kids shows here:  http://www.classicsforkids.com/shows/past.asp
and use the notebooking sheets from this set: http://www.yearroundhomeschooling.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/February-Composer-Unit-Study-Handel_FINAL.pdf
pages 8,9,10,11, 12 (depending on child and needs)

So, that's my plan!  I think I got all of the things in there that I'm going to be using.

Fear

While on vacation, we went into Whole Foods one day.  My husband and I had not been to one in a long time.  I was shocked by the prices... 6 bakery hamburger buns for $6.  There were ten kinds of salt and maybe one of them was iodized.  It was interesting.  There was a full barista coffee bar in the center of the store.  

As we were standing waiting for our coffee next door at Dunkin Donuts, my husband made a comment to me that took me by surprise.  He said to me that he had realized while shopping at Whole Foods that the store and its shoppers were fueled by fear--fear of what their food would have in it if it wasn't pure--without iodine, preservatives, nonorganic... food.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing to eat food with less preservatives, with whole grains, less salt, without msg... they are all good things.  But, I know that fear can be consuming.  It can be masked by good intentions.  But, if it's at the root of why we're doing something--then that's not necessarily good.  

I read an eye opening idea in Christian Kids Explore Creation that pointed out that campaigns for recycling, reducing, and reusing are all fueled by the belief--the fear--that if we don't do all of these things then we will run out of resources and there won't be enough for me or for you.  The author of that book next quickly pointed out that God is in control and we don't have to be afraid of the world running out of resources, because we can trust God and trust that what He wants to be in the world will be there.  It is wise to recycle, reduce, and reuse because these practices are important to being good stewards of the earth and caring for it--as we are exhorted to do in Genesis.  But, doing these things out of fear shows a lack of trust in God.

I ran into a friend yesterday who I hadn't seen in over five year.  It was good to see her, but as I caught up with her, I realized that she is tackling a new part of life that I haven't gone through yet because her children are older than mine.  She is in a time of letting go of her children and trusting them to God--and again not letting fear rule her heart and checking the motives of her actions.  She shared with me that her husband reminded her that she needs to act out of trust and wisdom, but not out of fear.  

God is in control.  

Fear is dangerous.  It can be consuming.  Fear can fuel control issues in some people.  But, how do we fight fear?  

After I left my friend, I began thinking of the Sunday School lesson I taught last week and the key verse:

Philippians 4:5-6  NIV

5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

The lesson was about prayer.  Prayer is how we communicate with God and build our relationship with him.  How do we fight fear?  I think we pray and turn to Scripture.  We focus on trusting God, not ourselves and our own efforts to prevent what we are afraid of.  

I've come back to the title of a Joyce Meyer's book (which I've never read) that I think is such a wise phrase... "the Battlefield of the Mind".  The mind is a battlefield and we have to identify the battles and commit to fighting them.

Well, that's what I've been thinking about since my husband's unexpected comment...