Reaching Beyond Our Family

Just For Fun, Parenting, Single Parents, Special Needs

 

By Sheila Campbell

 

I waved as they drove off and Jennifer waved back, with the excitement of spending the day at the corn maze bursting through her beaming smile. Through the van window I could see my boys eagerly looking ahead, already absorbed in the adventure of the day. I turned back with mixed emotions to see Justin, who sat quietly in his wheelchair, and I gently kissed his cheek. I loved my handicapped son and was grateful for a day to spend alone with him, and I was also grateful for homeschool friends who had offered to take my other children on a field trip organized by our homeschool support group, but my heart was torn—I wanted to enjoy the adventure of a corn maze with my kids, and I wished that Justin were capable of enjoying such an adventure too.

As the van drove away, I thought back to the day only a few weeks after my husband’s death, when our homeschool support group had changed the plans and location of our “end of school” party to help my family. Families arrived at our house armed with food and prepared to spend the day working. While the men built fence and completed some outside projects, the women provided food not only for their families and the men who were working but also enough to last our family several weeks. My heart warmed at the memory, and I once more thanked the Lord for the bountiful blessing of friends.

As I turned back to Justin and the quiet house, it was with a twinge of loneliness.   (more…)

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Echoing in Celebration: The Studying of Beauty and Harmony in Music

Classroom Help, Uncategorized

 

By Leigh Bortins

 

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands of itself as least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in a mysterious act of vengeance.

          The Glory of the Lord by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Quoted in Beauty for Truth’s Sake by Stratford Caldecott

Classical, Christian educators see the goals of education as a passionate pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Instruction in beauty must include instruction in music.

People in ancient times had a very different understanding of music than we do today. Music had a vital role in a classical education. In fact, the ancients regarded the study of music as a study of numbers. They divided education into seven liberal arts and subdivided them into three language arts—the Trivium—and four arts of number—the Quadrivium. The Trivium trained students in the arts of Grammar, Dialectic and Rhetoric, while the Quadrivium trained them in Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Harmony (music).

The ancients included music with the arts of number because they focused musical study on harmony. The Pythagoreans and later students studied the ratios between notes that were played together to form chords. Even more foreign to our modern minds is the fact that the ancients linked music to the virtues. In fact, Plato argued in The Republic that music is critical to the development of a rightly ordered, harmonious soul:    (more…)

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Fish Oil as Healing Brain Food

Informative, Parenting, Special Needs

 

By Dianne Craft, MA, CNHP

 

Sometimes a subject comes up that is so wide reaching in its impact that it can’t be ignored. As a special educator for over thirty years, and a nutritionist, I am always on the lookout for ways to relieve suffering in kids who are struggling with learning or behavior. It has come to the point that evidence of the impact of fish oil on the brain and nervous system of these struggling children is so large that I think it deserves its own article.

Recent Trends        

The incidence of children diagnosed with food allergies (notice all the gluten-free and dairy-free items in grocery stores as of late?), asthma, autism, Asperger’s, Sensory Processing Dysfunction, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia has increased greatly in the past five years. There is a disproportionate amount of boys in this increase. UCLA School of Medicine has found that boys have a three times higher need for DHAthan girls.1 Why is this occurring? Let’s explore this more.   (more…)

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