Our Lady of Guadalupe

Dec. 12, 2007
Today is one of those good days of homeschooling - so far. To finish Latin, math, religion and history before lunch is always good. But to enjoy doing it is even better. I am reading to the kids This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall, an older history of the United States that is written in an adventurous and articulate style. They enjoy the wild stories of early colonists and learn words like fetters and gibbet.
With the freedom of schooling at home, I am able to teach them the story of Our Lady of Gu adalupe and then give them a picture of her, free from chcweb.com, to color. They are practicing saying the Act of Contrition and Joey is learning many verses in his copybook, where he also draws illustrations.
We are 3/5 of the way through Prima Latina and are reviewing for the unit 3 test. I am so proud of their progress in learning all of the vocabulary and three whole Latin prayers. Better still, the lessons in Prima Latina support what they are learning in First Language Lessons -- all those parts of speech.
During free time, Joey made about 20 paper "bullets" for his homemade slingshot and Olivia drew a complete picture of Santa's Workshop, even though she has learned the truth about Santa this year.
So now we have some reading aloud to do and our grammer lesson. I hope to take them to Tinker Creek so that we can do more observation of our water environment. We are making a little scrapbook about it as we learn about water. They also have piano lessons today.
All of this sounds great, yet I still worry they are missing things like being in the school Christmas play and meeting lots and lots of friends. We have friends here but don't see them every day because that isn't how it works when you homeschool. Ah, well, to enjoy the beauty of the day you have - that is one of the keys to a happy life, I'm sure.
What follows is a prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe, which I pray for the special intention of my sister who is awaiting a pathology report following thyroid surgery. My prayer is that she is cancer-free.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, we find you among the poor, the small, those the world counts for nothing. You remind us of how precious each of us is to you and to your Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. You comfort us in our suffering. You challenge us to use our strengths. You call us to do whatever He tells us (John 2:5).
May we heed your message given us at Guadalupe: to acknowledge God's love, to protect the innocent, to replace our fear with trust, to keep our priorities in order. We ask this through the mercy and grace of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.