Sunday Devotional for Kids - Forgiveness

On Monday evenings I teach a GED class. Last week my husband had a meeting that evening so I planned for one of our babysitters to watch the kids that night. A couple days earlier, she called, in tears, to tell me something else had come up that she felt she needed to take care of and would it be possible for someone else to babysit. I have many wonderful women who I call on to babysit and I assured her it would be no problem to find someone else. Still, she was extremely upset. She had made a commitment to me and she hated to have to break it. Even after I repeatedly tried to convince that I wasn't upset and everything would be fine I could still hear her crying when we hung up.

Forgiveness can sometimes be like that. Forgiveness can sometimes be hard to receive.

God loves everyone...EVERYONE!! God even loves people who have done bad things. And God forgives people who have done bad things if they ask. Sometimes people believe that their sins are "too bad" for God to forgive and so they never come to God for forgiveness. But God isn't like that is he? He gave us Jesus to take away OUR sins, every ones sins! Not "good" people's sins or only grown up sins but EVERYONE..that includes you and me.

God will forgive us of anything if we ask. Have you ever done something wrong and felt bad about it? Have you ever asked for forgiveness and it has been given to you? But even after you were forgiven you still felt bad? I know I have. No matter who forgives you; God or your parents or a friend remember that you are loved and are forgiven. Now it is time to forgive yourself.

Colossians 3:13
Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Dear God, Thank you for your forgiveness. Help me today to forgive others who have done wrong. Help me to ask for forgiveness of what I have done wrong. Amen.

Ham, Potatoes and Green Beans

This is one of my favorite dishes to make for my family because it is simple, everyone enjoys it and there are always leftovers for lunch the next day. This is an especially good dish to prepare in the summer with fresh green beans from your garden or local farmers market.

I fill my Dutch oven (a large soup pot will work) with a quart of green beans, four or five diced potatoes and as much diced up ham as I have on hand. I've also made this dish with cooked ground sausage in place of the ham. Add enough water to cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, I turn the heat to low and season with salt and pepper and simmer for about 45 minutes until the potatoes are soft. Serve warm with bread and butter. If I am feeling particularly ambitious I make up some cornbread to serve with it!

I almost didn't post this recipe because it is so easy. Surely everone knows about this dish right? I mean, my mom fixed this all the time for our family growing up. However I've never known anyone else to make it! Is it just a farm family thing? How about you? Have you ever made this before? Or is this new to you?

Photo Thursday - Yip and Yahoo

"I hope he always loves his sister this much...even when she's tearing apart his bedroom."

MY GED Class - Whatever Wednesday

Something you don't know about me is that I teach a GED course part-time. Not exactly a position this former art teacher was looking for but something I sort of fell into. Our family had just moved to the area about 2 1/2 years ago. My boys had just turned 3 and I felt an itch to get back to teaching art. So I rounded up every school address in the area and sent out resumes. For good measure I even sent a resume to the local community college thinking maybe they would need a part time art instructor to teach a class or two. Luckily they got back with me about a position....teaching a GED class. What?

Well I agreed to meet for an interview and as the gentleman who was interviewing me was going over class materials and requirements it dawned on me that I wasn't being interviewed. He was merely explaining to me what would be expected of me to teach the class. I don't think he ever asked me one "interview" question.

Finally I felt the need to speak out, "I am an art teacher. You know that, right? I've never taught math or English."

His reply? "You made it through college didn't you?" Of course I had, and of course he knew that too.

So there I was. College educated and willing and breathing. And as far as I could gather those were the only requirements to teach a GED class. So I am a GED instructor and have been for about two years. Six months a year, two nights a week, two and half hours a night. Some days I absolutely hate it and other times it becomes a joy to teach someone who truly wants to learn. But boy have I learned a thing or two. Not just about math and English but about our culture and society and the mess it seems to be getting itself into.

Now I had a completely different draft for this section of the post and it was blooming into a big long rant on the failure of our society and the lack of ambition and work ethic among Americans....but I deleted it. I don't want to go there.

However, I do want to encourage any of you who are the parents or grandparents of a high school student or just know a high school student who may be contemplating dropping out of school to do all you can to get them through high school. I have a masters and bachelors degree in Art and I have always loved school. Embarrassingly, I admit, I never gave much thought to those who have dropped out of school until I started teaching this class.

I never realized just how difficult it was to get any job without a diploma. The thought of a high school dropout, a 18 year old kid came to mind. I had never thought about those who had dropped out twenty years ago and what they were doing now. In the words of one of my 50 year old students, "Kids who drop out of school have a rude awakening for them. You can't get a job anywhere without a diploma. It wasn't like that when I was a kid. It will get to a point when you have to have a college degree to get a job!"

Times they are a changing. Unfortunately it seems in education that these changing times are putting more responsibility on our children. Instead of half day kindergarten now it is full day. Teachers are expected to teach more content in less amount of time than ever before. Students are expected to start kindergarten already knowing their numbers, ABC's and colors. I didn't know ANYTHING when I started kindergarten!! No wonder our kids are stressed out by school and there is a "dropout crisis".

I don't think I have to stress the importance of education. But, I have never met one kid thinking of quitting school who had second thoughts at the time and I have never met one person who had quit school who didn't regret it. There are a vast number of reasons people have dropped out of school. Home life problems, bullies, loss of interest.

If you know of anyone thinking of quitting school, please, push, pull, drag them kicking and screaming to get that diploma. They will thank you later. As I have found in my GED class, sometimes those kids just need someone they can turn to for help. Someone to get on them to turn in homework. Someone who really cares about them and their future. Maybe it is your child or your child's friend or your neighbor. You can be the one to get them through.

Some of my readers have young children and you may think, "Why should I worry about this now?" If you have small children it is important to set a precedent early in their education of the importance of attendance, of turning in homework, of finishing what they start even if it isn't fun. Because these are the issues they will have to face in the teenage years but much more intensely. If your child (or your child's friends, or neighbor kids, etc.) knows you are there to help and will encourage no matter what there will be more chance they won't drop out. I know this is cliche, but our children are our future. Let's take care of it.

In Like a Lion and Out Like a Lamb - Constellations with Kids

Welcome to Marker Monday. (Okay, it's Tuesday but this post got bumped by yesterday's post.)

Have you ever wondered where the expression, "In like a lion and out like a lamb.", referring to the month of March, came from? I always assumed it referred to the weather from the beginning to the end of the month. But no, it has its basis in the stars. Rather than explain it to you I found this great cartoon, Stargazing with Jack Horkheimer, wasn't he on PBS? He explains it much better than I ever could. Enjoy!

From the cartoon at right:

If you go outside on March 1st at 8 pm, and look above the western horizon, you'll see the dim stars that make up Aries, the ram or lamb. But if you look almost opposite at about the same height above the horizon in the east, you'll see the constellation Leo, the lion. So, the lion is rising into the night sky at the beginning of March, which supports the fact that March usually begins with fiercer weather. One month later on March 31st at 8 pm, however, the lion will be almost overhead and the lamb will by smack-dab on the western horizon. Now, we all know that usually the weather at the end of march is milder than the weather at the beginning of March. So the lamb setting indicates that March is going out like a lamb! So perhaps long ago someone tied all this together and decided to poetically link both constellations to the weather coming up with that old phrase. Whatever, may you always have clear skies in March for viewing the lion and the lamb, which is easy if you remember to keep looking up!

















Of course I thought this would be a good time to introduce a bit of astronomy to the boys. Laying out tonight looking at the stars isn't an option unfortunately...too much snow. I found these illustrations and talked to the boys about how people long ago didn't have TV, (what a tragedy) so for entertainment they would use their imaginations (what a concept) and would connect the stars to make pictures (constellations).

We talked a little bit how the sun and stars stay put in the sky but the earth moves around the sun. For a hands on explanation we spread out in our kitchen representing something different in the sky. The boys were each a constellation, the baby in her high chair was the sun and I carried the globe around the sun as we talked about the seasons.The constellations will be in different parts of the sky according to the seasons.( The baby tried taking a picture of this but her photography skills have much to be desired.) This may have been a bit advanced for the boys and I'm not sure how much they understood but it's a start. After this I gave them each a star map and they connected the stars to make new constellations.






We were lucky to find this book later that day at the library. It does a nice job helping to visualize the personalities in the constellations as well as telling the story behind them.



Hopefully we can sleep under the stars in a few months and enjoy constellations first hand!

MARCH!!

I LOVE March!! Do you want to know why I love the month of March? Too bad I'm tellin' ya anyway :) March = St. Patrick's Day = Ireland Oh, Ireland...someday I will meet you face to face in all your lovely greenness and pubs.

Spring is on its way! Which means gardening..seeds..dirt!! Did you know Celtic believers call a garden a "thin place": a place where the membrane between our world and God seems particularly thin. I believe that.

These are all the things I love about Ireland and March.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People

Shamrocks

Smithwick's

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Scones

Denis Leary


Claddaugh Rings

Flogging Molly

my mother's large collection of Irish and Celtic books. I bet she has at least three dozen!

St. Patrick


my brother. Okay not from Ireland but he has the knack to find four leaf clovers. I once watched this kid riding the lawnmower, stop, get off, bend over and pick a four leaf clover. All in about the time it took me to type this sentence. Weird kid. I actually have four-four leaf clovers pressed in my Bible that he found that day. That was six years ago when he was 14 years old. And he's been able to do that since he was like 9! I used to think we just had mutant clover at our house and they all had four leaves but I never found one after hours of searching.

St. Brigid's cross (which I will be making with my boys later this month)

The color GREEN and the beginning of growing things coming back to life!

Gardens! Well, technically I'm not supposed to plant a garden in March because of our frost date but I always managed to sneak a few seeds into the ground.


potatoes..seriously, I could survive on just potatoes.

My Future as a Blogger

Today marks the one month anniversary of my little ol' blog! It has been fun and frustrating. There is still a lot I need to learn about blogging, (any advice is greatly appreciated!) but I'm confident this won't be a blog to wither away. Of course it's barely off the ground but I'm working on that too. And again any advice to get things going would be greatly appreciated!

To tell the truth I started this blog on a whim. One Sunday afternoon I was on the Internet and before I knew it...I was the proud parent of a blog! I wasn't sure what the theme of my blog would be or even the audience I was writing for. My only goal was to post everyday for a month. At the end of that month I would evaluate what I had done and make some decisions about the future of Prairie Mother. Today that month is up and I have two goals in mind for my blog and the beginning of a plan to achieve those goals.

First off, I don't claim to be any sort of wonderful writer. I was an art teacher! Art teachers don't write! We create in one big chaotic mess....and we LIKE it! I realize many of my posts aren't that well written, so one of my goals has become to improve my written communications skills by writing blog posts. Practice makes perfect!!

My next goal for this blog is to fill it with family friendly content. Posts that provide ideas, discussions and recipes helpful to moms, dads, kids, grandparents...anyone who deals with kids on a day to day basis. Being a parent is hard! I've learned in the last six-ish years of mommy hood there is much about parenting parents aren't qualified for. We need all the help we can get!

To improve the quality of this blog I have decided to cut down posts from everyday to five days a week. Each of the five days will be devoted to a different topic.

Sunday Devotions - Sunday's posts will provide a biblical story and/or principle to discuss with your children.

Marker Monday - Monday's posts will be some sort of activity to share with your kids. These won't be restricted to art, though I'd love to do so, but will cover a variety of subjects. One of the goals of parents is to raise well rounded children so here I'll try to include activities I've done with my own kids from science, math, games...just about anything YOU can do WITH your kids!

Whatever Wednesday - This will be the day of miscellaneous posts. I might post about good books or gardening or challenges I am facing as a parent. Whatever Wednesday will be a post, hopefully, many parents can relate to.

Photo Thursday - Thursday I will post a photo I've taken. Why? Because this is my blog and I want to. After starting this blog I have taken so many more photos. Maybe someday I'll get really good at photography but for now I'll just share a picture with you I like.

Foody Friday - Yummy! This will be the day I devote to new or long loved recipes or fun kid snacks. I try to feed my family healthy meals and hopefully I can share some recipes that are easy and popular with all ages. Having one day devoted entirely to food also gives me permission to play in my kitchen!!

Thank you all for reading, visiting, subscribing to, commenting on and telling others about my blog. Now that you have an idea what is in store here in the future I would love your input. Do you have a great recipe to share or game you play with your kids? Do you have a great parenting trick to share"? Is this blog just terrible and I am silly to think I can write one and I should quit? Hey, I need some honest feedback folks!! Let me know what you would like to see on this blog and please, let me know how I am doing!

Thanks for visiting and I hope to see you again soon.

God Bless,
Heather