All posts by RaisingAdmin

Wife to one. Mother and educator to five active boys and two sweet girls. After 20 years in the education field as Youth Minister, Master Catechist, DRE, Retreat Leader, Elementary Classroom Teacher, Testing Chairperson, and Reading Specialist, I began a beautiful journey into the life of a home educator for my own children. A journey that began in 2008, after the birth of our fourth child, and the our eldest began middle school....it was only going to test it out one year had turned to ten! We are just an ordinary Catholic family living a fun, crazy, but lovely extraordinary life, by the grace of God!

How to Get Your Kids to Listen – Your Family Today: Kid-friendly recipes, fun activities and expert advice on health and parenting.

Great article, seems like no brainers but sometimes I need reminders of these. I love Dr. Ray Guarendi, have read his books and watched his videos…but there are some weeks/months I need to re-watch those videos as reminders. This article reminds me of a nun I taught with many moons ago. She taught 4th grade and her kids were almost perfect in her classroom, they sat and raised their hands when they needed something, said please and thank you and never, ever did you hear too much noise from her classroom. Not sure if her beautiful FULL Carmelite habit and glowing angelic face had to do with it also, but Sister Emmaluz NEVER, EVER raised her voice above a whisper. She taught that way and spoke to the children that way. That impacted me the rest of my life as a teacher then and a mother now. Children immitate what we do to them and teach them by example. Go check this brief article out and come back and share what you think of this…on how to get your kids to listen.

Here’s the link: How to Get Your Kids to Listen – Your Family Today: Kid-friendly recipes, fun activities and expert advice on health and parenting.

Blessings,
Mama Erika

Raising & Teaching Little Saints

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Prepare for Pentecost: Holy Ghost Novena Day 3 “Piety”

Althought this shows you Day three of this Holy Spirit Novena, today is the actual day you might want to get started on it.  You would need to go to our last two posts:  Day One and Day 2 to get started.  Starting today will This will take you to the 11th of June, the Saturday before Pentecost.

Thanks for praying with us!

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Eco-friendly Housekeeping with Mama Kim

Want to learn how to make your own cleaning agents that are eco-friendly as well as kid friendly?  Want to learn how to do more home made things like canning fruits and veggies?  I do!  That is why we’ve invited Mama Kim to join us!

We are going to have a new contributor…she is going to blog about Homesteading, eco-friendly cleaning agents, canning…and lots more!  Can’t wait to introduce her to you all!  Coming soon….

Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn to do but just didn’t know how or want to see how others do it?  Please leave a comment here to start giving Kim some ideas of things you’d love for her to blog about!  🙂

Blessings,
Mama Erika

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Prepare for Pentecost: Holy Ghost Novena Day 1 “Spirit”

Pentecost Sunday is June 12th this year.  To prepare our family for this day, we always like to do the Novena to the Holy Ghost.  We won’t start it until the 3rd of June so that we end on 11th (the Saturday before Pentecost).  I wanted to post this early so that you have it available for your use.  Also this way if anyone needs to start ahead or needs to catch up, you have it available.  🙂

FYI:  The novena in honor of the Holy Spirit is the oldest of all novenas since it was first made at the direction of Our Lord Himself when He sent His apostles back to Jerusalem to await the coming of the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost. It is still the only novena officially prescribed by the Church. Addressed to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, it is a powerful plea for the light and strength and love so sorely needed by every Christian.

Since I’m a visual learner, I’m posting a video of it: 

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Catholic clergy clash over home schooling {Article link}

Have you seen Matt C. Abbott’s most recent column from May 28, 2011?  It’s entitled: Catholic clergy clash over home schooling…really, really good stuff.

Here’s how it starts:

“Although I wasn’t home-schooled, I fully support parents who are in a position to do so. Thus, I’m perplexed and disappointed in remarks made by Catholic author Father Peter M.J. Stravinskas in a recently-posted article on the website of Our Sunday Visitor . . . [Click for more]

Thank God for priests like Msgr. Barreiro-Carambula and Father Farfaglia!

                    

Tell me your thoughts on this and please keep these two priests and the one that wasn’t so charitable in your prayers!
Blessings,
Mama Erika

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Counting Your Blessings

DJ, our 13-month-old

As we finish this school year and feel totally burned out and ready for a break…You know the time when my children are getting my my nerves the most and I have the least amount of energy?  Then they amaze me!  Remember my post about feeling scared that I wasn’t doing a good job homeschooling?  and what a priest told me? You know the one about our kids being HB?  Well, my 13 month old just confirmed this!

How?  Well, we live less than 3 miles away from our parish, we can hear the bells ringing when it’s time for Mass or at Noon for the Angelus…so we go out of our way most days to pass by the church as we go run around doing errands.  Why?  Because we like to pass by and say “hi to Jesus!”  Yesterday in the evening, we drove away from our home almost opposite direction to the Church.  As we passed by the street were our Parish is located {no, you couldn’t see the Church}, our 13-month-old, says {in his best beginning speaker talk BUT clear as day}:  ” Bye, bye Jesus!”

You know I started crying!  Thank you Jesus for the gift of home educating my babies from birth!  I guess I am doing a good job and I’m certain that so are you dear friends!!  So don’t forget to count your blessings as you finish another year of home educating!  😉

Blessings,
Mama Erika

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Third Year Here We Come!

Isn’t our new logo beautiful?

Yesterday was our last day of homeschool for this school year.  We are super excited to start our summer vacation!!!  Anyone else finished (or about to) already?

Next year Cor Iesu Academy (Sacred Heart of Jesus in Latin) will have an 8th grader, a 1st grader, a kindergartner, a preschooler, and a tot-schooler!  Congratulations to my kiddos and thanks to my beloved, our principal, for making this all possible & for the beautiful logo you designed for our school this year!  🙂  Love you honey!

Now my mind can go on Curriculum Selection ONLY mode.  YAY!  Someone contacted me via our FB page that she is interested in homeschooling.  So I will take the next couple of weeks to post on steps to get to get your homeschool started.  This is the way we went along and “set up shop” and would love to hear how others did differently. 

If you look closely at our logo, we’ve included the name of our homeschool and the three virtuse we focus on…these aren’t the only ones we try to achive/attain but they are the main ones we would like our school to focus on.  We wanted our logo to reflect our reasons for homeschooling.  In the middle is the Sacred Heart since the name of our school is Cor Iesu.  We chose it in Latin over the vernacular since we are Latin Mass goers (when available and possible, but our parish doesn’t offer it).  In addition, it is the traditional language of the Church so we chose to go with it since we are more traditional than not.  Also, we’ve included the Papal Keys on each side because we follow and obey the Magisterium.  We selected our school colors to be red, black and white…red for sacrifice, white for purity, and black for surety. 

So we get to start Year Three with a new logo…we might just have to get uniforms =D
Blessings,
Erika

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