Another Plug for Holy Heroes

I want to make another plug for Holy Heroes . . . I think the family that runs it is offering such phenomenal products to us Catholic families!

Holy Heroes has launched a new featured called GloryStoriesFun. What most interests me is that each week there will be a short video providing that Sunday's Mass readings as told using a felt board. This morning my children watched it while I made their breakfast, which I hope helped them actually hear and take note of the readings during Mass. (I know it helped me!) Then they saw another click-to-play and asked me to play it, so I did: It was simply the praying of the fourth luminous mystery of the Rosary (just audio, no video), but it held the children in silent, rapt attention while they ate their toast. A double win!

Also on the website each week will be a deal of the week (a CD on sale), any free coloring pages, a fun quiz, a craft idea, and more.

BONUS READING: I am only beginning to officially home school Kindergarten in a week, yet I've been hearing people comment to me for years, "Wow, I could never home school! I don't have the patience! You must be a saint." This comment has really distressed me and the best reason I could come up with is that I am not a saint . . . but we're all called to become saints! No one is excused! A saint is merely someone who made it to heaven, and we don't get there without developing virtues. Keeping my children home with me has forced me to develop the virtue of patience to a degree that I would not have done otherwise, selfish sinner that I am. But when I have sometimes seen myself shouting at my children day in and day out, that causes me to realize that something is wrong: not with them, who are normal and overall well-behaved children, but with me. So then I should do whatever it takes to learn how not to lose self-control (in a way I never would in front of a visiting friend or another adult whom I respected): if that means I research what is age-appropriate behavior in order to educate myself, I learn how to structure our days, I give up my own spontaneous desires in order to keep us on the routine under which children thrive, I seek ideas for effective discipline that is calm and appropriate, I try to be proactive instead of reactive, and I even fall into a heap while crying and praying rather than be a horrible example of a Christian to my children, then that is what I need to do. (Do I always do it? No. Do I still shout? Yes. Am I working on it? Always.)

We are all called to develop the virtue of (heroic) patience and I, for one, am grateful to my little ones for giving me numerous opportunities to do so daily.

Well, I just came across another blogger who wrote an entire post on the virtue of patience and home schooling and I hope everyone will read it! She wrote so eloquently everything I've thought for years now! See here: "Busting the 'I Don't Have the Patience to Home School' Myth".