7 Takes: From My Feed Reader to Yours

This week, after you pray for Allie & congratulate our hostess, I send you elsewhere.  I scrolled through all my recent +1’s in Google, and picked a few:

1.  People come here when they search on “Kolbe Academy”, and presumably when they do that, they also find Kolbe’s blog, Servant of Truth.  But in case you had a google-failure, here’s an answer to a question that gets asked a lot:  How to Change Pace in a Structured Curriculum.

2.  Brad Warthen is aggravated, here, about a homeschooling bumper sticker that he sees as a flagrant rejection of a whole community.  (He’s a Mr. Community kind of guy.  A Rotarian, no less.)  I concede in the combox that he is correct, it is indeed impossible to know what part of “the village” the hostile-homeschooler wants no part of.  But I’m going to guess it’s something like this.

3. FTR, I homeschool for the library books.  The village never even entered into it.  I just want to read.  A lot.  There aren’t many jobs let you do that.  (Also I like teaching my kids, like being with them, like playing outside, like traveling during the school year, and it’s the only Catholic school I’ll ever talk my husband into paying for . . . but it’s mostly for the books.)

4. NFP Apps.  I like a pen and a free-in-the-mail calendar myself.  (Helps if you don’t particularly need a graph or white baby stickers.  About once a year I break out the graph paper to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.  But most of the time, 4/10 of degree shows up real nice just looking at the numbers.)  But all you smart-device people can do NFP the Smart Way.

5. Can’t have too many religious education curricula.  Read about Healing the Culture’s new high school curriculum, and, completely separately, Loyola Press’s new adaptive sacramental prep program for students with special needs.

Also a Bleg: Anyone have an RCIA text you really love?  I’m dumb enough to try to make up an answer to that question, but someone who knows the field would be better suited to give the real scoop.

6. At Public Discourse: the obituary of an honest historian.  Beautiful story.  Especially if you’re the kind of person who reads a history book, and then rants towards your children about all the dumb ideas the book promotes without presenting any evidence whatsoever.

My kids say I complain a lot.  I reply that easily 10-if-not-15% of the time, it’s because there’s something worth complaining about.  The rest of the time, yeah, I’m just grumpy.  Probably the nicest grumpy person you know.

7. The reason bloggers blog is because we have something to say.  Abby Johnson doesn’t play around: If you want to be pro-life, get your act together and show up for work.

Have a great weekend!

(PS: The tiny tiger has persuaded SuperHusband not to haul her to the pet shelter just yet.  Cuteness is a powerful survival strategy.)