wisdom – Page 31 – Home's Cool!

Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Health, Home School, Homemaking, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

How to Take Care of Your Eyes – Nutrition

Posted on June 1, 2011May 21, 2015 by Katharine

Since I’ve been seeing things, all SORTS of things besides what is really there to see, I have studied a bit about eye health and visited quite a few doctors. So much knowledge floats around in space, these days, and so many preventive and curative measures exist for boosting eye health, waiting for someone to take advantage of them.

Why isn’t this on billboards, nationwide?

Study the next few posts. Link to them. Copy-paste them for your fridge. Someone you know needs this information!

Nutrition for Your Eyes

We know our bodies have various nutritional needs and we know all the old wives tales about carrots, but listen to this: The eyes desperately need the right nutrients to work, and to last a long time.

If you are in charge of several children, though, you hold in your hands the keys to their continued excellent eye health. You are duty-bound to make good eye nutrition happen.

Vitamins: The eyes must have adequate A, C, and E. They simply must have them. Eat foods like carrots (yes!), strawberries, and wheat germ. Look up these vitamins and build your menus around foods that provide good eye health.

Minerals: Copper and zinc are good for eyes. Add beans and red meat.

Antioxidants: Try whole eggs, spinach, pumpkin, and . . . guess what . . . CARROTS! Your grandmother was SO RIGHT–they help prevent macular degeneration.

Sulfur, cysteine, and lecithin: These come from the onion and garlic family. They put the brakes on cataracts, among other health problems throughout the body.

Anthocyanins: Blueberries and grapes contain these and help night vision, according to WWII pilots, and much further research.

DHA: Sorry, all you catfish lovers, this one is found in cold-water fish like salmon and sardines. You’ll have to try grilled salmon, though–it is marvelous!

Water: While not exactly a nutrient, pure water is totally necessary for the eyes. And, yes, it is 8 glasses a day, and it should be filtered if you use it from the tap. Anything created as wet as an eye would obviously need water, right? Think of the eye as an under-water camera that doesn’t work without the water.

Coming tomorrow, Lord willing: Eye Exercises! Who’d have thought!

Okay, now comes the part we have to say in this lawsuit-happy world: This post is meant to inform and to satisfy curiosity, only, and is not a substitute for medical advice. Consult your doctor for information concerning your conditions. Much effort has been made to assure this information is accurate, however, medical research is always changing the facts, and new findings may supersede currently accepted data. I am NOT a doctor, only quoting several of them.

Home School, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Kinds of Babies

Posted on May 25, 2011May 22, 2015 by Katharine

Our firstborn son was bookish. From an early age, he could “read” himself to sleep. (They were pre-school picture books.) He loved lining toys in rows and dressing like and imitating his daddy. He was a visual learner.

My friend had two boys who disliked reading, although they loved a good story and she could hold them enthralled for hours if she read to them. Having difficulties with bookwork, they aced the hunter-education class, which was all lecture. They were auditory learners, picking up most input through the sense of hearing. Which explains why her sons could hear Mom calling for chores better than mine could?

Some children love to learn by touch. They love science experiments, lap books, and many other sorts of projects, whereas my kids cringed at them, resented the time they seemingly wasted. Math manipulatives greatly help tactile learners, even if it’s just Popsicle sticks. Coloring a picture of a horse can teach them more than hearing or reading a description of one, but riding a horse will teach even more.

I had one child who learned the most by talking about it. Oh, he could read okay, but until he reproduced what he had learned, his lesson was not done. He was one who also learned better when moving, so when he bogged down as an older child, he would slide over the piano and pound out some Rachmaninoff and then could study better. And then he proceeded to become a computer whizz.

What lesson do WE learn from these learners?

All of our children may look alike, but have extremely different insides.
Our daughters may look like us but have their dad’s personalities.
A perfectly excellent curriculum may not work for one child as well as it did for the others.
Einstein and Edison could both be immensely successful, although one was bookish and the other was not.
Institutionalized teaching of scores of children via the same methods will never work.

All of which statements are another good reason to homeschool.

Blessings of Habit, Home School, Homemaking, Inspiring, Sayings, Wisdom, Womanhood

ABC’s OF HOMESCHOOL

Posted on May 20, 2011May 8, 2014 by Katharine

Hello, Friends!

This week I must devote entirely to several speaking chores. So I thought you would enjoy viewing the introductions to my presentations. Here they are in their approximate final draft. Enjoy!

RNLI at Boat Race 2012 (Photo credit: Annie Mole)

Raising children is like a boat race:

You never feel ready
You always feel watched
It’s hard to change your mind
Disasters can happen

Too often, a bad beginning can cause a disastrous ending.

What can we do to ensure we are even in the right boat?

Since we are SO FAR from the shore, what are some boat safety rules?

A. We can examine our attitudes. Many begin this race badly, with a bad attitude when they board the good ship homeschool.

Sometimes people begin home schooling because of a bad teacher experience. Often these parents are angry and the thrust of their actions is intended as a javelin thrust into some teacher or educational system.

They just want to rock the boat . . . .

We all need to get used to the fact that the State Institutions are failing everywhere. It is not personal. It just is a cosmic failure, such as comes every time we build a cosmic house of cards.

Those who begin for this reason, alone, often stop just as dramatically as they began, when they, for some reason, decide putting their child in a State Institution is not really such a bad idea, after all.

Some parents begin because the child is failing. Whether he is unable to learn, or simply untaught where he is, the parent decides to take the plunge because of embarrassment or natural protective instincts toward the child. This reason also fails the parent quickly, because soon as the child homeschools, he does better.

Amazing!

The parents allow this progress to lull them into a false sense of security. They opt for State Institutionalization for their beloved child, after all, thinking the problems were a false alarm.

They change boats in the middle of the race, and slow the progress of both methods.

The third reason is more stable. These people do not become quitters as easily.

They are the ones who begin because they see the rightness, the necessity of it. They see God’s commands to teach our own children. They see the State Institutions growing constantly more hostile to morality.

They see ketchup as a vegetable and “two mommies” as a norm, or even a goal.

These frightening observations rivet them and they realize homeschooling as a part of being a family,
homeschooling as a part of the decision to have children,
homeschooling even as a part of the decision to marry.

It’s just the natural, normal result, for them, of being alive and desiring to succeed.

And they do.

Good ol' days, Homemaking, Inspiring, Wisdom, Womanhood

THE MONEY MOM

Posted on May 19, 2011December 13, 2014 by Katharine

Hello, Friends!

This week I must devote entirely to several speaking chores. So I thought you would enjoy viewing the introductions to my presentations. Here they are in their approximate final draft. Enjoy!

Managing Your Money

About sixty years ago, two sharecroppers laid their baby boy in a box that was really a dresser drawer, his first cradle. Nursed and blanketed carefully, he was as secure and warm in that box as in the finest crib.

They pumped all water by hand and heated it on a kitchen stove. Dishwater never went to waste. Once that water was hot, it did dishes, the stove, the countertops, the cabinet fronts, the tabletop, the chairs, and last, but not least, it did the floor.

Bathing happened once a week with “washing up” in cold water for other days.

Clothing, being almost all homemade, was divided and washed by use: undies, being all whites, went first, while the water was hot, with colored clothing next, followed by jeans and work clothing, all washed in the same water. Making soap, heating water, and hauling it away took too much time to waste a drop, so when all was done, the water proceeded to the garden, via siphon hose.

The soap was real, homemade, back then and not toxic.

And all had to dry on a line.

The baby boy grew and acquired a little sister. The two children played in the dirt at one end of the rows in a huge bean field, while the dad and mom walked the fields, pulling weeds for their living.

In time, their finances improved and they bought a farm. Almost all food for the next forty years came from the garden. Most was canned or pickled. Seldom was anything thrown away. Scraps went to the chickens. Children who did not like the food offered at the table still had to eat it. And no one got dessert until the plate was clean. The children grew up adaptable to almost any food.

Meanwhile, a city girl grew up only a bit more affluent, dressed in home-made clothing that was washed all in the same water and hung to dry. Climbing trees and building cities in the dust under them, she also had to clean her plate, no matter what, and it was garden food. Scraps went to her chickens, too.

Both families owned only one car, one small black and white T.V., and no computers. Both families mowed their own lawns with reel type mowers. The girls in both families went to bed in curlers and there was no hair dryer in either home, no beater bars on the vacuums, and no A.C.

When visitors came, someone slept on the floor. Soda pop happened once or twice a year.

The children grew up and wanted brand new store-bought clothing, so they got jobs and bought them. Only–the girls did the math and often bought patterns and fabric, instead.

When they went to college, the boy and the girl each recognized something about the other; he, her homemade clothing, and she, his homemade chessboard. They married and made two decisions:

Mom would stay home, and,
Everything would be homemade.

It was a simple step to move to home schooling.

That was about 28 years ago, and the little tree-climbing girl stands before you today to say:

It can be done. Go there.

Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom

Sunday Scriptures: Red

Posted on May 15, 2011May 14, 2011 by Katharine

In honor of the 400th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English, commissioned by King James of England in 1611, and originally published by Robert Barker, printer to the King, I will use this version for the rest of this year in these posts. Editing sure has changed since then! Hope we can enjoy the quaint differences we find here and appreciate all that went into it.

Come now and let vs reason together, saith the Lord: though your sinnes be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimsin, they shall be as wooll.
If yee be willing and obedient, yee shall eate the good of the land.
But if yee refuse and rebell, yee shal be deuoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Isaiah 1:18-20

Blessings of Habit, Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Wisdom

Weekly Photo Challenge: Wildlife

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Katharine

Not much to say, today, but wanted to show off one of my favorite photos. Surrounded by the safety in many uncles (the blue stripes and the adult finger belong to two of them) a young boy learns about which wildlife is to be trusted, a family tradition meant to instill wisdom and fearlessness:

: Boy and Bug

Tomorrow I’ll show you why this post was late.

See ya’.

Good ol' days, Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom

Sunday Scriptures: Wildlife

Posted on May 8, 2011May 7, 2011 by Katharine

In honor of the 400th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into English, commissioned by King James of England in 1611, and originally published by Robert Barker, printer to the King, I will use this version for the rest of this year in these posts. Hope we can enjoy the quaint differences we find here and appreciate all that went into it.

Job Chapter 39

Knowest thou the time when the wild goates of the rocke bring forth? or canst thou marke when the hindes doe calue?
Canst thou number the moneths that they fulfill? or knowest thou the time when they bring forth?
They bowe themselues, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrowes.
Their yong ones are in good liking, they grow vp with corne: they go forth, and returne not vnto them.
Who hath sent out the wild asse free? or who hath loosed the bands of the wild asse?
Whose house I haue made the wildernesse, and the barren lande his dwellings.
He scorneth the multitude of the citie, neither regardeth he the crying of the driuer.
The range of the mountaines is his pasture, and hee searcheth after euery greene thing.
Will the Vnicorne be willing to serue thee? or abide by thy cribbe?
Canst thou binde the Vnicorne with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleyes after thee?
Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great? or wilt thou leaue thy labour to him?
Wilt thou beleeue him that hee will bring home thy seed? and gather it into thy barne?
Gauest thou the goodly wings vnto the peacocks, or wings and feathers vnto the Ostrich?
Which leaueth her egges in the earth, and warmeth them in dust,
And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wilde beast may breake them.
She is hardened against her yong ones, as though they were not hers: her labour is in vaine without feare.
Because God hath depriued her of wisedome, neither hath he imparted to her vnderstanding.
What time she lifteth vp her selfe on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.
Hast thou giuen the horse strength? hast thou clothed his necke with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grashopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth in the valley, and reioyceth in his strength: hee goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at feare, and is not affrighted: neither turneth he backe from the sword.
The quiuer ratleth against him, the glittering speare and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fiercenesse and rage: neither beleeueth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha: and he smelleth the battaile afarre off, the thunder of the captaines, and the shouting.
Doeth the hawke flie by thy wisedome, and stretch her wings toward the South?
Doeth the Eagle mount vp at thy commaund? and make her nest on high?
She dwelleth and abideth on the rocke, vpon the cragge of the rocke, and the strong place.
From thence she seeketh the pray, and her eyes behold a farre off.
Her yong ones also suck vp blood: and where the slaine are, there is he.

P.S. I picked these for you, all you moms out there. Enjoy!