Monday, September 15, 2014

Make-Up Days Already?!




Yes, folks, we're already playing catch up. We're weeks behind on art lessons, about a week behind on history and science, and who knows how far behind in Latin! And you know what? It doesn't even matter. It's only annoying because we're not evenly behind, so I'm jumping between lesson plans doing what I'd planned for this week in Spelling but last week's History. 

I know a lot of people get bent out of shape if they can't check everything off their to-do list each day and they "fall behind". But behind what? What kids in public schools are doing? Who cares what kids in public schools are doing! Most of them don't even get to learn half the awesome stuff we do and they never finish their textbooks at the end of the year anyway! Behind our own expectations then? Well maybe that's a sign we need to adjust our expectations. It's easy as homeschoolers to try to do too much. And isn't one of the wonderful things about homeschooling the flexibility? We make our own schedule. We piece together our own course of study. We decide which days we school and which days we laze around like unproductive pajama people (which we've been doing quite a lot lately).  So let's be flexible. Let's cut ourselves some slack. We'll get around to everything, it may just be a little slower than we'd planned. And lately I've apparently really needed a break because we've only been doing half days.

So today, to at least get my lessons closer to being all on the same page of the planner, we had a make-up day. We worked on reading a writing, but instead of all our various other subjects we spent the rest of the day working primarily on science and history, which are typically our favorite subjects around here anyway! 

We decorated our salt dough volcano. (Side note: it's really hard to get three wiggly, excited kids all in the frame and facing the camera at the same time!)



We erupted our volcano! That Lego house never stood a chance. Then we watched a YouTube video of lava oozing out of a volcano in Hawaii.



We reviewed our prayers and poems we've been trying to memorize but have been neglecting.

We read about mountains, rivers, and glaciers, did some journaling, and placed a block of ice on a wire shelf in the freezer with a brick on top to see how ice flows. (Hint: it supposedly will seep down between the bars of the wire rack. We'll see tomorrow!)

We read about the Ajanta caves in India and the Buddhist monks who carved out their monasteries and filled them with beautiful frescoes and carvings. We looked at photos of them online. Then we colored pictures for us to touch every day this week to see the effect of many people touching a piece of art over and over and how it can damage the artwork.

Then we planted broccoli in the garden and observed the ants digging out their tunnels after the rain and carrying hundreds of bits of fallen leaf to their hill's opening to carry inside later. Those ants can really carry some huge (well, for an ant!) clumps of dirt!



Then we found some mushrooms, took a walk around the back yard looking for more, talked about how they have gills underneath that make spores, and about where they live. We even found a whole huge colony of small mushrooms and Felix picked a "family" of them, big daddy mushrooms, smaller mommy mushrooms, and tiny baby mushrooms. Then of course we washed our hands very well because I am no backyard forager and don't know if our mushrooms are edible or deadly! 



It was probably the most pleasant, fun, and productive school day we've had in a long time. We're still a little "behind" what I had planned, especially in art. Does that bother me? Not at all. I'm not going to stress about it. We'll adjust and get to it eventually. And sometimes a "make-up day" can be just the energizing, motivating kick in the pants we needed!

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Today's Project: Quill Pens



Hail, fair reader! Sorry for the long absence, my budding medievalists and I have been throwing ourselves into our studies and trying to get the hang of juggling multiple students and a third who wants us to stop and play with him.

This week we're taking a short break from our beloved Story of the World to study Arthurian legend. I really felt it was important for them to be as familiar with these stories as with Beowulf or Robin Hood because they're referenced in popular culture at least as often. Everyone knows about Merlin, Arthur, and the doomed love between Guinevere and Lancelot! And really, who doesn't love stories of chivalry and battling fearsome dragons or ignoble churls who have done something wicked? 

We've read Merlin and the Dragons by Jane Yolen, The Kitchen Knight by Margaret Hodges, The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla, and are working through the books in Sterne and Lindsay's King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, which I would highly recommend! 

But a kid can't just sit and listen peacefully! They need to get the wiggles out! They need something to keep their hands busy while they listen! So today we made quill pens and practiced writing. 

Whoa now! Before you claim you're not capable of this, you're not crafty enough, or you have no clue what you're doing, just hear me out! It's way easier than you think, I swear! In fact the only thing you need that might not be in your house are the feathers. 


You want to use the large size ones, the ones with tips that look thick and pretty hollow to start with. I got a pack of five in assorted colors from the craft store for about $1. Plenty for all of us!


You'll also need something to trim the ends at an angle. You could use a very sharp pocket knife, a pair of scissors, or if you have a pair of little jewelry wire cutters like I did those work brilliantly. Then you'll need a straight pin or medium or large sized safety pin to hollow out the tip.


So. Step 1: trim the tip at an angle with your instrument of choice.
Step 2: take your pin and pull some of that white stuff out to make a small hollow at the end to draw the ink up into the quill. 
Step 3: you're done! Try it out!

Instead of using store-bought liquid ink or making our own out of ground walnut shells or soot (because that's way more labor intensive), we grabbed the darkest liquid in the pantry - balsamic vinegar. It doesn't dry very dark, but it works well enough to get a feel for it. My kids certainly thought it was cool pretending to be medieval scribes!



Tuesday, August 5, 2014

All Its First Day Glory



Well, it finally arrived, the day that has been quickly approaching ever since summer break began - the first day of a new school year. I have to admit I've been a bit frantic this past week trying to make sure we were all prepared. Since I did most of my curriculum shopping and big picture planning work in March (I know, crazy, right?)I thought surely I'd have plenty of time. But it turns out that with extra time comes procrastination (who knew???). There were actually quite a lot of things that, in March, made me think to myself "it's way too soon to worry with that! Better save it for summer." Then summer came and went and it was almost New School Year's Eve! And I had not yet compiled a list of copy work! Or purchased supplies for all those great history projects I planned to do with the kids (or - gasp! - even put together a shopping list for them!), or realized we really did need markers for some things. So...let's just say I've been busy...

One tradition we're starting this year (that I wish I'd been doing all along and not just picking up two years later) is a first day "All About Me" page from Thirty Handmade Days


These are adorable and were so much fun! They're designed for traditional school kids, but we just filled in "mom" for teacher and went on. They cover the basic stats and current favorites, as well as "when I grow up I want to..." I was half expecting one of the boys to finish that sentence with "explode stuff and live off candy", but nope. They opted for "be a race car driver" and "be a fireman". Go figure. Anyway, I thought it would be a great handwriting sample for the ones who were old enough to write, and a great snapshot of them through the years. There's even a place for you to attach a picture of them on their first day, so we snapped some pictures after lunch (good practice for me since I've been learning to use my camera on manual instead of full auto).

Snaggle-toothed little Miss Teflon herself

Cy the Guy with the Big Blue Eyes

My mischief maker, Felix

Hmm...definitely seeing a family resemblance!

I have to admit, besides the mad scramble for last minute readiness, I've been dreading the First Day for another reason. You see, it's my first year teaching more than one kid and I've been more than a little nervous about how this whole "teaching two kids while a third runs amok" thing would go. Last year was challenging enough, what with our oldest's microscopic attention span and superhuman ability to fall out of any seat (Just call her Teflon Girl! Able to slide off a chair without even noticing! Able to hit the floor with more force than the laws of physics allow!). Okay, so it wasn't that bad (in fact it was pretty great), but she is quite the wiggle worm and Ms. Social Butterfly has trouble tuning out her overly exuberant little brothers during lessons because, well, it's more fun to talk to them. So adding a kindergartener to the mix was something I was secretly kind of dreading. How on earth was I going to get them both to stay on task at the same time?!

Turns out I shouldn't have worried. I should have known better. It went great! Everybody had a great day! Of course they did! My kids are awesome! Gwennie has figured this school thing out and Cy has better powers of concentrations than most grown men (that's his super power). AND we were done by 1:30! I can't remember the last time we were done by 1:30 even with one student! Amazing. So with that little ego boost I'm now feeling like I might have this homeschooling thing down! Until Felix starts Kindergarten and I have a Kinder, a 2nd grader, and a 4th grader at least... Dun dun duuuuun!!! 

Now just to maintain that level of fantasticness for 179 more days...


~ Krystal

Sunday, July 27, 2014

My Very First Freebie - A Back to School History Freebie



Today I'm really excited to bring you something I've been working on for a long time - almost a year, in fact, off and on. And, in the spirit of homeschool mommy solidarity, I'm offering it totally free! It's my great big giant master reading list to accompany all four volumes of Story of the World, designed for Grammar Stage grades 1-4. This is something I keep in my curriculum planner for quick reference when I need to know what books to pull from for nightly read-alouds or writing exercises, what it bring to the library with me for reference, and what I check every time I get ready to make a book purchase. It's quick, it's easy, and it's (fairly) thorough. 


Download it here.

Last year, because it was our first year homeschooling, I had not yet discovered the Story of the World Activity Book and all the awesome resources it contained. Published by Peace Hill Press to supplement the study of the Story of the World series by Susan Wise Bauer (author of The Well Trained Mind), the Activity Books contain discussion questions, map work exercises, coloring pages, hands on projects, and loads of extra reading suggestions, all broken down by chapter to make your life easier. It's wonderful and really helps round out our history studies.

But I had not yet discovered that. So last year I did it all myself. All our reading and projects came primarily from other lists I found online, such as Classical House of Learning, IrishMum's excellent resource list on Airskull, and all the various rabbit holes Amazon has to offer. I also pulled from various Pinterest boards and good old fashioned Google searches, as well as projects I had done over the years in school or Girl Scouts, or just came up with on my own. It was a fantastic year and history has been our favorite subject, but it was also a lot of work! A whole lot of work. And keeping up with what books I should hunt down and in what order and from where became a challenge, because I was drawing from so many sources. 

And so my mega-checklist was born, complete with check mark columns for books we already have and books the library already has, so I don't purchase things I can already access. And when I took the plunge and acquired a copy of the Story of the World Activity Books this spring the list grew even bigger! Now it contains suggestions for every single chapter of all four volumes, geared toward Grammar Stage students in grades 1-4. The Activity Books themselves contain more suggested reading than I chose to include because I tried to pare it down to just what would be useful to my kids, who are all 7 and younger. If you're looking for resources for an older child you really must pick up the Activity Book, it is truly an invaluable resource!

I'd recommend only printing the pages for the volume you're currently using and printing it double-sided. For example, we're starting Volume 2 this year, which covers the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and printing on both sides of the page means there are only 4 pages taking up space in my planner or library bag. Far more compact than lugging the whole Story of the World Activity Book to the library with me! And if anyone would prefer an editable spreadsheet version that you can actually check off, just hit the "Contact Me" button and let me know! I'd be happy to email you a copy of the file! 

And a note of caution to the overwhelmed or overachievers: this is NOT intended to be a list to be completed! This is not a "to do" list. Think of it, as one mom said, as a buffet. Pick and choose what looks good to you, what your kids may like, what your library has available, and what you actually have time to read. It's a compilation of sources you can check when you have the time and want to delve deeper. Did we read everything on the a Ancients list last year? Not by a long shot! Did we even read half? Hah! We read maybe 10-15%, and that not even dispersed very evenly. We read most of the suggestions for the Greek chapters, but only a story here or there for Babylon or Assyria. Some chapters I around Christmas I was exhausted and we just read Story of the World and nothing else! Do I feel bad we didn't get through more material? Not even for a moment! So use this as a starting point, a springboard for helping your students really immerse themselves in the world and times you're learning about. Relax and enjoy your homeschool year!

***UPDATE!***

I completely forgot to mention that I decided to add a unit on King Arthur and Arthurian legend between chapters 3 and 4 of SOTW vol. 2! So if you spot the books for chapter 3.5 in the Medieval & Renaissance section, that's where my kids will be studying Arthur. You can do the same, scatter those books in throughout the year, or skip them entirely - it's up to you! But for us, pausing to study Arthur and his knights seemed like a good idea, since SOTW doesn't even mention him. The imagery of the egalitarian Round Table, the sword in the stone, Merlin in all his bearded mystery and power locked away by the sorceress Nimue, the Lady of the Lake holding Excalibur aloft over the waters, and Arthur slain and being carried on the magical barge to Avalon...these are part of the fabric of the Western imagination and something with which I want our kids to be familiar. They're as important (or perhaps even more important) to our culture as Beowulf and Robin Hood.




~ Krystal

Friday, July 25, 2014

Finally! A Music Plan!

As some of my internet acquaintances are aware (because I was pestering them to death with questions earlier this spring about music appreciation resources, curricula, and plans), I have been searching for just the right music curriculum. Or lesson plan. Or even broad outline with notes... Anything, really, so long as it met a few criteria:
  1. I wanted something that covered more than just the classical composers. Yes, I like Beethoven as much as the next person, and as a Catholic mama I have a soft spot for Bach's masses, but I feel they would be so much more impressive and interesting in a larger historical context.
  2. It had to be chronological. What's the point of covering more than the classical composers if you don't do it in order? That's sort of the point, but a point it seems most music curricula completely ignore.
  3. I'd prefer it be something I could align to our 4-year history cycle of Ancient, Medieval & Renaissance, Early Modern, and Modern. Though since we're starting year two it's less important to me that we cover anything before the Middle Ages. When we get back around to the ancients we can always use that year to study instruments, the set up of the orchestra, musical notation, or whatever comes our way.
Want to know what I've found so far? What the dozens of wonderful ladies online scoured the internet and suggested? Did i find anything wonderful???



What did I find? A whole lot of nothing that met those criteria. I was bummed. I felt let down by the educational community. Surely, I thought, if I'm interested in something like the then some homeschool mom out there had gotten fed up and created it already! The need is there! Somebody get on that!

Oh there are tons of great resources. Wonderful CD and MP3 collections (some even with accompanying picture books of works like Peter and the Wolf), beautiful biographies that bring the composers to life, even some excellent coloring books of composers! There's also plenty of information on the instruments and arrangement of the orchestra, lessons in reading musical notation and the like. But most formal curricula or lesson plans I found seemed to focus only on the great composers, big names like Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, even Chopin. Harmony Fine Arts has some wonderful art and music plans that supposedly align to the 4-year classical history cycle, and while the art portion does, the Medieval and Renaissance level starts with Vivaldi. Vivaldi, who wasn't born until the 1670s. In the Medieval and Renaissance book. 



Many others just sort of jumped around, unit study style, between musical notation, composers, and types of instruments in a way I found incoherent. It just wasn't what I wanted. Nothing fit. I could not find a single curriculum that laid out the history of music, from at least the Middle Ages onward, in one chronological, continuous set of lessons. Forget breaking it up into four years, I couldn't even find any plans for teaching music appreciation that way at all, not even crammed into one year! 

Until now! 


Today I happened across a post by Valerie over at Seven Times the Fun where she shared exactly that - a set of chronological, comprehensive lesson plans covering Medieval through Modern music, as well as details of the orchestra. She lists pieces to listen to, books to read, video clips to watch (who doesn't love the What's Opera, Doc? episode of Looney Tunes?! Something's wrong with you!), coloring books to utilize, projects to work on, websites to visit, the whole shebang! She even has options for all three stages of the classical education: Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric (roughly corresponding to elementary, middle school, and high school students). It's set up as a one year, 35 week set of lessons. And do you know what's even more amazing? She's offering the plans totally free! How unbelievably generous! I. Am. So. Excited! I knew I couldn't be the only homeschool mom out there that's been searching for something like this! 

In all honesty, I'm still considering breaking it up over multiple years for our kids. We already have a much heavier course load planned this year than last and I'm also taking on my first year attempting to juggle multiple students, as our middle child starts kindergarten work. Our plate is pretty full and I'm a bit concerned I may be biting off more than I can chew already. So I'm considering stretching out the first twelve weeks of material, which covers the orchestra, Medieval, and Renaissance music, to spread it out across a whole year. It would mean just a few minutes here and there reading, coloring, and discussing things on our "Art Day" each Friday, and maybe looking up more pieces to listen to on YouTube. I'm betting we can handle that. Sometimes taking it slowly is the way to go! Finally, I feel like we're nearing that Holy Grail of a "well rounded" education!

Check out Valerie's Multi-Level Music a Plans over at Seven Times the Fun!

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Still Recovering From Post-Vacation Exhaustion!

Whew! It's been two weeks and I'm finally back from our trip to San Antonio! Actually we've been back a week, but after packing every day of our trip full of things to see and do it took me a week at home to recover! So who's ready for some vacation photos??? (**crickets chirping**) Well I'm posting a few anyway, enjoy them!

The first day we went to Sea World (I know, I know, they're evil and horrible and should be shut down, and we're evil, horrible people for funding them with our ticket money, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you take issue with it then you get to explain to these tiny tyrants in my house why they can't go to Sea World anymore.) We saw a bunch of amazing shows, ate a lot of junk food, rode all the rides the kids were tall enough to ride, and spent at least half an hour at the splash pad. The kids claim they had the most fun ever and I've listened to them beg to go back for almost two weeks straight now!


To recover from our Sea World adventures we spent the next day at the cabin where we were staying at Canyon Lake, up near New Braunfels. We played at the lake all morning; my little fish child was in heaven! It was hard to even get them to come ashore to get some lunch! We did get royally sunburned, but I don't think anyone minded much. Part of the price you pay for vacation fun.




After a day if sun and surf fun we were ready to hit the road again and see some more amazing this, so we headed to Natural Bridge Caverns. The kids had never seen a real live cave before and were fascinated. Felix asked if Batman lived there. Then he freaked out a little when the guide explained why they named one particularly dark and muddy room Grendle's Cavern. If I were a tiny person I might freak out a little about Grendel too! He was a scary dude! But all the amazing cave formations made up for it and Grendle was quickly forgotten.


They even had a spot set up at the end of the tour to have your photo taken as a group! I thought that was nice, since we went with my grandparents and usually it's either them and the kids in the pictures or me and the kids; you never get a photo with all the adults at one time!


They also apparently have a large orange dinosaur statue by the parking lot. I guess it's something of a mascot and of course the children insisted they just had to get their picture taken with the "colorsaurus". So we did.


After the caverns we headed next door to Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, one of those drive through safari places. The kids thought it was amazing! Most of the animals just hung out next to the drive munching their hay, but the kudu would come right up to your window and lick the feed pellets right out of your hand! The kids' little fingers were totally covered in kudu slobber very quickly (don't. Worry, they washed - with soap - before lunch!). 


There was also one zebra who stuck his face right in my window, opened his mouth wide, and just waited for my to throw food in there! Then he'd smack his lips and open up for more, it was hilarious! I wish I'd gotten a picture, but it slipped my mind when he snuffled and sneezed zebra ick all over me. I squealed like a little girl and the kids were rolling with laughter in their seats!

The next day we finally hit downtown San Antonio. First up, the Alamo. I've alluded to my feelings about the Alamo in my previous post on teaching sacrifice, but having grown up in Texas it really is a place of pilgrimage for me. The chapel is now referred to as "The Alamo Shrine", and it's an apt name. It's a Thermopolae, a place of patriotic sacrifice and courage in the face of death, and seeing the bullet holes in the doors and walls and the artifacts housed their is always moving to me. I'm glad I could share that with the children. 


They also had a little fifteen minute film produced by The History Channel which they play for visitors over in the old barracks. I think seeing the history in a visual format really helped our older two to understand what happened a little better and was good review of what we'd read before visiting. But to the family sitting directly in front of us, I'm so sorry! Felix talked through the entire fifteen minutes. The whole thing. I'm sure the man in front of us did not find his tiny-voiced commentary as entertaining as I did! At one point, Fe turned to me and said "you and daddy are Americans, you didn't fight this war. But grandma and grandpa are Texans, they fought dat war a looooooong time ago." I about fell out laughing! I had no idea my grandpa was quite that old! Good thing Felix is here to tell me things like that!

After the Alamo we wandered over to the Riverwalk and had lunch at Rainforest Cafe. I'm not normally a fan of chain restaurants (and the food left a lot to be desired that day) but seeing the look on the kids' faces the first time they had an indoor "thunderstorm" and all the animatronic animals started moving was priceless! And the Riverwalk is always a nice place to wander around, sit and relax and people watch. The kids enjoyed seeing the boats go by and we took the boat tour a little later as well. It was nice. 


Finally our trip came to a close, we had to pack up and start the long trek home to our sun-parched garden and mountains of laundry. But the kids are still talking about all he fun we had and I expect will be talking about it for a long time to come. Hopefully we'll be able to do another week somewhere in a year or two. It's one thing to read about the world, but it's another thing entirely to go out and see it.

~ Krystal


Friday, July 4, 2014

Teaching Sacrifice



This time of year, everyone is excited for the 4th of July. Fireworks, maybe some barbecue or grilling, a few beers with friends over dinner while the kidlets play in the warm evening sunshine, tumbling over one another like a litter of puppies and trying to catch fireflies as the sun goes down... It's like a Norman Rockwell dream. Quintessential summer. 


While the little Stars and Stripes banners going up along main street, our family has been getting ready for a vacation next week to San Antonio. The kids are so excited they can barely sit still (wait...can they ever sit still?) and we've been reading What in the World Was the Alamo? so they'll have a little context when we visit. Growing up in Texas, the Alamo holds a lot of meaning for me. It's our Thermopolae, where a brave few lay down their lives to hold off an army so that the rest of Texas could regroup and finally throw off the shackles of a tyrant. Does my 3.5 yr old quite grasp that? Not yet. He doesn't even know where Mexico is yet. But that doesn't stop me from explaining it. 

You see, this time of year, while the stores are advertising "Independence Day Blowouts!" with a guy in a bad Uncle Sam costume, the party supply stores are decked in red, white, and blue foil crap, and most of the morning talk shows are sharing grilling tips, the men and women of our military are going about their every day life. (Stay with me here, it's not quite the non sequitur you may think.) For some, it's going to be one more holiday they miss because they're "stuck in the sandbox". It's been like that for a decade now and despite what's said on the news it isn't likely to change. 


These guys are out there, dusty, smelly, hot, and unbelievably bored most of the time. When they're not bored, it's usually because all hell has broken loose and their adrenaline is pumping, helping to hold down the terror while they do what needs to be done to get the situation under control again. But most of the time they're bored. When a holiday like Independence Day comes around they may fantasize about sitting by the pool with a cold beer, condensation rolling down the side of the bottle as they soak up the sunshine and the sharp smell of mustard mingled with the grease of burgars hot off the grill. But thoughts of home often turn toward the reason they're missing yet another holiday (again), toward the men and women who went into battle before them and the ones who didn't come home. They're thinking about freedom too, but they're thinking of what it cost. 

You see, with military life comes the life-altering realization that every warrior before you, from OIF and OEF all the way back to the Trojan War and beyond, was once in your shoes. They thought like you. They felt like you. They were cold. They were hot. They were bored. They were scared. They wished they were at home. When they were finally home they wished they were back with their friends, their comrades in arms, because they seemed to be the only people who understood all this and the weight of the warrior legacy. Every military man in history started exactly where our men and women in uniform are today. Even the heroes. Even George Washington. Even Sam Bowie and William Travis in their Alamo. The ones who made it home and the ones who didn't. And you may not come home, either. It happened to some of them, and it could happen to you.

When every military man and woman in history suddenly seems like a real, relatable person and not some abstract "hero" in a textbook that means they may as well have been you. You may as well have been them. You are somehow equal now, in a way, and it's easy to imagine the myriad little things they must have given up to fight their wars because you've given them up too. Even if no harm comes to you, you make a lot of sacrifices by the time your service has ended. Missed holidays, missed birthday parties, apartments too tiny and in a bad neighborhood because you had to move and didn't have time to really look for a new home... Stress and worry and bureaucracy and loneliness... Pulling up roots. Looking for enemy in every crowd. And it's suddenly all too easy to mourn the ones who didn't make it back because they made the same sacrifices you do, and then some. They lived this life too, or one as close as it could get for their time. You can imagine being I'm their shoe. And this is not a burden carried by our service men and women alone, but also by their spouses and families back home. The same thoughts go through their minds, at some point. I know, because that was me.


See? Proud Marine Corps wife, circa 2007. And with the knowledge that my husband might someday be asked to lay down his life to protect his brothers came also the realization that every wife of a fallen soldier, sailor, marine, or airman, every wife of a fallen warrior through all time, had at one point been exactly where I was standing. They felt as I felt. Women wept for these men as I would weep for mine if the worst were to happen. It's as hard now to read the Iliad without weeping for poor doomed Hector and his baby boy, or grieving with Achilles over the body of brave Patroclus, as it is to read the reports of the latest casualties. I imagine the grief of the wives and families and friends back home, and it hurts.


And I want our kids to feel that too. As difficult as it is to bear at times because every loss is painful, even those that happened a hundred years ago, or a thousand, I want them to feel that loss all the way down to their core, every single time. I want them to know the hurt that the families of those slain at the Alamo or in the Revolutionary War must have felt. These men weren't superheroes. They were just like me and you, with families at home just like ours who ached for the loss of fathers and husbands and sons and brothers just as many do today. It could have been my kids' father. It may as well have been our family. And those men weren't immune to fear when enemy fire whizzed by their cheek, so close they could feel the breath of it. They were as terrified as you or I would be, in their place, because we are all human. Yet they managed to stamp it down and keep fighting in the hope that their lives would buy something valuable and noble for future generations: freedom. Independence. Liberty. I want our children to understand, at the very core of their being, exactly what that meant to these men and their families, so that my children will value those freedoms so dearly bought by this blood. And I want them to realize that if all of these outrageous heroes who achieved so much are just normal people like them, then they can achieve just as much. They have it in them to be courageous and noble too.

Do the kids understand this right now, at age 3 and 5 and 7 years old? No. Right now they're just excited about fireworks and a vacation coming up. They're busy chasing butterflies and playing in the sunshine. But they will grow to understand it in time because as they grow up I will never let them forget the sacrifices made, both great and small, that bought for us this life. As we study the tales of Hector and Achilles, King Arthur and Beowulf, the defenders of the Alamo and the patriots of Valley Forge, and hear the stories of our ancestors at Brannockburn and Manassas and those shot down by nazis over Austria, along with the battle stories of our friends at Fallujah and Kandahar, it will begin to sink in. These men and women, deep down, were all the same, despite the great march of time, and their lives were as dear to them a thousand years ago as they are to those fighting today, and as dear as our own. They were normal people doing extraordinary things and sacrificing what was most precious for something greater. No death is little, and that makes the freedom we hold that much more precious. I hope my children grow up in that truth.