Sparking Everyday Discipleship

In this episode we look at the importance of helping our kids learn to listen and truly hear what people are saying. We also explore how to help them understand that we hear them and God hears them when they pray.

July Giveaway: Enter the drawing by commenting below "Books that Spark," Episode 1 on my website: https://terriehellardbrown.com/books-that-spark-episode-1-expectations/ Two winners drawn on July 31, 2020: 1st prize - Praying the Scriptures for Your Children: Discover How to Pray God's Purpose for Their Lives by Jodie Berndt The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones The Jesus Storybook Bible Coloring Book for Kids: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones

2nd prize - ICB, Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible from Thomas Nelson

Transcript:Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations leading to teachable moments with our kids. Thank you for joining me today.

I want to remind you that our giveaway is this Thursday, July 31st so, if you haven't already, please comment so I can enter you in the giveaway. You need to download the free course Parental Guidance Requested and comment. [Simply comment on my blog on my website for the first episode of Books that Spark to be entered into the drawing] That's it! Then, you'll be entered in the drawing.

We'll have two winners. First prize includes Praying the Scriptures for Your Children, The Jesus Storybook Bible, and The Jesus Storybook Bible Coloring Book. Second prize is The Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible. You can find more information on my blog or in the show notes below.

August on Books that Spark is going to be exciting! I have two interviews with two wonderful authors debuting new books. Deb Gruelle will be my guest on August 3rd and 10th. Jennifer Grant will be my guest on August 17th. You won't want to miss hearing about their new books and the stories behind them. The last two weeks of August, my husband and I will share with you about which Bible translations and Bible story books we recommend.

Be sure to check out my website for freebies and items for purchase to bless your home and church. In addition, if you sign up for my mailing list, you'll get two freebies that are only available to those on the mailing list. First is a choice of three different phoneme books you can print, and the second is a list I compiled of over 100 picture book and board books that are written from a Christian worldview or don't contradict the Christian worldview. All are books that I've vetted. They are excellent in their story and illustrations. It's a great resource for building your child's library or for knowing great books for gifts.

My goal is to help equip parents, teachers, and caregivers with the ability to have materials and have resources that will help us as we're discipling and teaching our children and as we're helping them to grow in their understanding of God and His purpose for their lives. And in addition to that, I also try to speak into your life as a parent, as a teacher, and as a caregiver. Because we need to be discipled too. So that is what I try to do with my website, my podcast, and my blog is to encourage you and help equip you so that you can help equip your children.

Scripture says, "Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry" in James 1:19, NLT. Today I want to share some books about listening and being heard. Part of the reason I'm so passionate about reading books together that spark conversations and questions is because we need to be communicating and sharing together with our families. Our children need to know that we value our relationship with them and respect them as people. We want to hear what they have to say and what they are thinking. We want them to be heard, and we want to be heard. As a part of parenting, children need to understand the importance of hearing and of really listening to what we're teaching them. It is part of being teachable and part of becoming life-long learners. If they do not learn how to listen, they are handicapping themselves. Through hearing each other, we show respect, we learn other perspectives, we learn how to reason and use critical thinking, and we aren't puffed up by our own self-importance. Listening and truly hearing what someone is saying is a huge skill we need to help our children master. And they need to see us model it as well.

The first book I want to share is a fun, very cute book called Lacey Walker, Non-Stop Talker by Christianne C. Jones and illustrated by Richard Watson. Lacey Walker is an owl who loves to talk. The book says, "Lacey Walker was quite the little talker. She liked to talk and talk and talk." Everyone throughout her day asks her to stop talking and do what she needs to do and to listen. But she just keeps talking. Then one day, horror of horrors, she wakes up with laryngitis, and she mopes through her day, but had time to finish breakfast, her homework, and realizes her friend is funny and she likes the same movie her brother does. When she gets her voice back, she can't wait to tell her family what she learned. She still likes to talk a lot, but she also takes time to eat and listen to her family and friends. The book ends with "Lacey Walker still liked to talk and talk and talk, but she liked to listen once in a while too."

I like this book because it is so cute, and it shows someone learning on her own by natural circumstances and consequences. I like it because it is also light-hearted about a subject that could be shaming if not handled well. So, it is just a very cute book, and I really recommend it for approaching this subject of someone who talks too much.

Another cute book is My Mouth Is A Volcano by Julia Cook and illustrated by Carrie Hartman. This one is funny and repetitive, which makes it fun to read aloud. It also puts the problem of blurting out whatever comes to mind into a concrete problem that can be understood easily. Plus, it helps children find a possible solution to the problem. I love that the main character Louis talks about his mouth erupting like a volcano instead of his talking interrupting. But you can tell by the way Cook wrote the text that it's like a child misunderstood the word interrupting and started saying erupting and then started imagining that their mouth is a volcano. It's really cute.

I like that Cook uses humor like in Lacey Walker to handle a touchy issue kids might feel frustration in dealing with. This story focuses mostly on interrupting people and tackles that issue specifically.

It says, "My name is Louis. People say I erupt a lot. I don't think I do…I have a lot to say, and all of my words are very important to me.

"When other people talk, words just pop into my head. Then they slide down onto my tongue. My tummy starts to rumble. And then it starts to grumble. My words begin to wiggle, and then they do the jiggle. My tongue pushes all of my important words up against my teeth, and then…I erupt! Words just explode out of my mouth. My mouth is a volcano!!!"

After erupting all day, he's so excited for show and tell at school. But as he's sharing, a friend interrupts him with his story, and then when he starts sharing again, another friend erupts with her story. He's so frustrated. Later, he interrupts his mom twice, and she gives him some advice on how to control himself better. He tries it, and he learns that he can control his words and that it is only appropriate to interrupt in an emergency. Part of his concern is that if he doesn't say things right when they come to his mind, he'll forget the words; he'll forget about it. His mom showed him that if he just takes a breath and waits and minute and listens to what the other person is saying, those words are still there, and he can share them then. I think it's a really cute way to help kids understand, that in an emergency yes, it's okay to interrupt. But we can hang onto our words and still listen to someone else and be able to share when it's our turn.

This book handles this topic very well and helps children learn they can control their words and learn to listen as well as appreciate when someone listens to them. I love that they brought that into it as well.

This next book is one of my favorites I found about listening. The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld is a wonderful book. Taylor is building a something special with his blocks. He's so excited, but then some birds fly by and knock it down. Then each of his animal friends come by and have their suggestion of what he should do. One says he should get really angry. One tries to get him to forget it and rebuild and go on like it never happened. Another says he should go knock down someone else's blocks. Then the rabbit comes up and sits next to Taylor and just listens as Taylor cried, gets angry, wants to knock down someone else's blocks, and then decides to rebuild. He needed someone to listen and let him feel what he felt without telling him how to feel or what to do.

I love this book so much. It teaches something important that we aren't often taught. We need to be heard. And we need to let people who are hurting talk and feel what they feel. It is terrible to tell a child or anyone how they can feel. We can help them learn how to deal with what they feel, but we feel what we feel. It's just the way it is. And when someone doesn't feel heard, it adds to the hurt and frustration. I think it even prolongs the pain. The power of feeling heard can make a person feel loved, valued, and respected. We can help children know they are heard by giving them our focused attention and by responding to what they've said with either a question or a restatement of what we heard to check for understanding, or just a nod or a hug to let them know we've heard them.

That brings me to another book: I Have a Little Problem, Said the Bear by Heinz Janisch and illustrated by Silke Leffler. In this book the bear goes through town and says, "I have a little problem." Well, he tries to. Some interrupt him and finish his sentence for him. But each friend he encounters thinks they know what he needs.

It starts out with:

"I have a little problem," said the bear, "You see, I…"

"Of course!" said the inventor. "I know exactly what you need. A heavy bear like you needs something to make him feel lighter. I have just the thing."

He got a pair of wings from his workshop and fastened them to the bear's shoulders.

"Hmmm," said the bear. Then he shrugged and went along, looking worried.

"I have a little problem," said the bear, "You see…"

"Indeed I do," said the tailor. "Your wings are very handsome, but you need a scarf." And he wound a long scarf around the bear's neck.

"Hmmm," said the bear. Then he shrugged and went along, looking worried.

Then, the story goes on until he goes back home. It says:

The bear unfastened his wings. He took off his hat and scarf. He took off his glasses and the pig on a chain. He kicked off his boots. He set his vitamins and honey on the ground. Then he sat down on the hill and sighed.

And just then a fly comes up, asks him what's wrong, listens to his problem, and is able to help him with his problem.

I love that a little fly solves his problem. It shows that someone who listens, no matter how big, small, young, or old, they may be able to help; but they'll never know if they don't listen first. This book shows the importance of hearing what someone is saying. I think sometimes it is tempting as parents to think we know what a child needs instead of hearing them out finding out what's really bothering him. It's hard sometimes when our children are slow to explain what's on their minds or don't quite have the words to describe their feelings, so we try to help them out, and sometimes we jump to conclusions. If your child has trouble with explaining their feelings or thoughts, we can use a tool to help them. I shared it in one of the mini lessons in Parental Guidance Requested: The Incredible Five-Point Scale by Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis and Buron also has a reusable 5-point scale poster we can have handy if a child is upset and having a hard time explaining what they are experiencing. So, these are some tools that you can use if your children if they do have trouble discussing their feelings and explaining what is going on.

But we need to have patience to listen, question, and respond rather than jump ahead or try to fix what we're sure is their problem. We also need to realize that, as much as we want to, it is not always our job to solve or fix our children's problems. Sometimes we just need to listen and be there. One of my goals has always been that our home would be their-my children's-haven, the safe place they could always come back to, no matter what happened in their day. I've tried to help my kids know that I may not always agree with their decisions, but we are still their safe place where they can talk and ask questions. Our kids should feel that. They should feel like they can come to us and they are going to be heard, and we are not going to jump to conclusions and try to fix everything.

Another part of this is helping our children understand that not only do we hear them, but God hears them. The Bible says in Psalm 116, "I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!" and in Lamentations 3:56, "You heard me when I cried, "Listen to my pleading! Hear my cry for help!"

Max Lucado has a cute book in the Hermie & Friends series called God Listens When I Pray. In the story, (he's a caterpillar) Hermie's ant friend has his foot stuck under a rock. Hermie tries to help him, but he can't move the rock. He runs everywhere trying to find help, but everyone is too busy to listen. Then, God talks to Hermie, and Hermie prays asking for God's help. He helps, and Hermie's friend gets unstuck.

The story is really cute and shows how listening is important, but the main point is that God always listens, and God answers prayer. In the end all his friends apologize for not listening. I like that they apologize. I like that Hermie does what he can. Even though he can't move the rock, he leads his friend to pray as well, and he gives his friend water to drink. It shows that he does what he can do to help. At the end, he gives glory to God, and everyone celebrates God. So, I love that too. But the main point is driven home that God always hears our prayers. Our kids really need to know that above all things that God hears their prayers and answers prayer.

One last book that is hard to find, but I like it because it lets children know they can ask God anything is called God, Can You Hear Me? by Justine Simmons and illustrated by Robert Papp. The only thing missing is the answer to the question. Throughout the book children pray and ask God questions on the left page, and on the right page, an answer is given to explain some things, but I wanted a last page that said, "No matter what you pray, God always hears your prayer." It's still a great book, and it does start out with saying that you can ask God anything. Some of the situations in the book deal with single parent families, stepfamilies, disabilities, loss, and feeling different from one's friends. It's a nice book that would be wonderful for opening up all kinds of conversations with children. It deals with some really difficult subjects. The illustrations are quite beautiful.

Several places in scripture God affirms that He hears us. I find that tremendously comforting. We need to definitely let our kids know that God hears them. I love what the writer David Augsburger said, "Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable." Isn't that good? Being heard is like being loved. I've seen it driven home so many times in our ministry and over the years as we have worked with people. They don't even have to see a change or someone do something. Just knowing that someone has heard them is so powerful. In our world today, it's like we've lost this. It's such a gift to someone, and we're withholding that gift so many times because of political differences or religious differences. We don't want to hear what someone else has to say. We want everyone to either agree with us or be quiet. I think if we can reason together and listen and be heard that it mends fences, it mends relationships and builds stronger relationships and is a powerful skill if we can teach our kids to do this. And especially when we are dealing with children dealing with ADHD or Autism, they have a hard time with listening and focusing on other people. They have a hard time even listening when they told us something and we're responding back to what they've said, they don't even always listen to that. But if we can teach them the skill to really hear people and to really care enough to listen, it's a tremendously powerful thing. And I've seen it happen. So, I want to encourage you today to really focus on how you can help your children learn this essential and amazing skill.

Thank you for joining us today for Books that Spark. I hope this discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Remember our drawing at the end of July. Enter before July 31st by downloading the 12 lessons and commenting on the first episode either here or on my blog. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of the podcast and my blog. My website is terriehellardbrown.com

Your Host: Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode we look at some great Family Devotions. Below I've included some additional information about how to choose a devotional book for your children and some recommendations.

Remember the drawing on July 31st. Be sure to download the Parental Guidance Requested course and comment on the first episode of Books that Spark to be entered in the drawing.

Bonus Information: Choosing a Devotional for Your Kids: What to Consider

1. Bible translation used Many English translations of the Bible are available, and then there are paraphrases too. For children, we usually want to go with a good translation that is easy to understand. We will be covering this in more detail on a podcast in August, but my favorite translation is the New Living Translation (NLT). The most common in Children's Bibles is the International Children's Bible (ICB), and the other one that we think is really a good translation for kids is the Easy Reader Version (ERV). Some devotionals offer choices for translations which is nice. But it is definitely something you want to consider.

2. Perspective of the writer I recommend checking out the author. Devotionals are one person's take on the verses being discussed. If the person is from a far different belief system from your own, it can be troubling. One of the most popular devotionals on the market today was originally written with "automatic writing." This is a mystical, trance-like state that many are not comfortable with and feel it is not from God. Yet, it has become very popular, and now there is a children's version. Of course, most of us are concerned with whether the writer is charismatic or non-charismatic or anti-charismatic in their theology.

3. Focus of the devotional This is one of my pet peeves. I know we want the devotional to connect with our children, but I always want to make sure the central focus is on God and not on the child. We want the child's faith and understanding of God to grow, not just read ego-boosting nice thoughts. Yes, God loves us so much and knew us before we were born. But if that's all the devotional teaches, we may want to keep shopping. Think about: Do the devotionals lead to a response of worshiping and honoring God? Do they suggest affirmations about self? Are the scriptures used in context and chosen to glorify God or the child?

4. Need of your child Some devotionals are geared toward a certain topic and are usually shorter (not a full year). If your child is dealing with fear, you may want to get one that is specific to that issue. As an adult, I loved getting Champagne for the Soul when I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil. It was just what I needed, and it was recommended by a friend who thought it would bless me during that time.

5. Time per devotional reading Most children's devotionals state clearly what age child they are written for. Some even state the time for each day's devotional such as the 3-Minute Devotional for Boys. We need to consider our children's attention spans and abilities to read so that their Quiet Time becomes a cherished time, not an obligation they need to finish.

6. Personal devotional or family devotional The devotionals I covered in this podcast are for family devotionals done together with the parents and kids. However, many devotionals are for children to read on their own.

A Few Recommended Individual Devotionals for Kids:Ages 6-10

Doodle Devotions for Kids by Nancy Taylor– for your artistic child who enjoys reading. Each devotional suggests reading about one-three chapters of scripture, and children use their own Bibles. Each devotional has a drawing suggestion. It's good for both girls and boys. She also has one that is specifically for girls. 60 devotions.

Indescribable by Louie Giglio – This devotional combines science and the Bible. This one is also good for boys or girls, but it only has minimal scripture for each devotional. I like that it inspires awe for God and His creation, and it would be good for a child who is resistant to reading. He also has one called How Great Is Our God along the same lines. Plus, he offers lunchbox cards that are based on each of the devotions. 100 devotions.

Grace for the Moment by Max Lucado – This devotional is dated for each day of the year. Lucado uses a lot of paraphrased verses, and each devotional is based on one verse, but he does have a section for reading the Bible and talks about the importance of reading the Bible. Each day's devotion ends with a suggestion of a response to the verse and devotional thought. He also has a version that is meant to be used for family devotions. 365 devotions.

Gratitude Journal and Devotional for Kids: A daily journal for kids that includes gratitude prompts, Bible verses and a prayer journal ALL IN ONE! by Jessica Lewis – The title pretty much says it all. It's mostly a journal with prompts for journaling and prayer in response to a Bible verse. I would recommend this one for a child who is a thinker and enjoys writing. I love that it focuses on gratitude and teaches kids the habit of reading the Bible, journaling, and prayer.

Amazing Stories for Young Believers by Dave Strehler – This devotional is for boys or girls ages 8-12. Each day has a verse but also suggests a longer Bible reading. It takes your child through the whole Bible in a year. It focuses on the people of the Bible and then applies the lesson to the child's life. Very practical for helping young believers grow in their faith. 366 devotions.

Enter the drawing by: 1. download the 12 mini lessons of the "Parental Guidance Requested Workshop" 2. Comment below "Books that Spark," Episode 1 that you downloaded them Two winners drawn on July 31, 2020: 1st prize -

Praying the Scriptures for Your Children: Discover How to Pray God's Purpose for Their Lives by Jodie Berndt The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones The Jesus Storybook Bible Coloring Book for Kids: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones

2nd prize - ICB, Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible from Thomas Nelson

Transcript:Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations leading to teachable moments with our kids. Thank you for joining me today.

I'm really excited. I've been able to interview two wonderful authors who have books debuting in August. The first writer we're going to talk to is Deb Gruelle, and we'll be introducing her newest book coming out in August. Second is Jennifer Grant who also has a book coming out. We are going to have her interview on the day her book debuts which is August 17th, so you won't want to miss Books that Spark in August when we have two very special guests share their books with us. Don't forget about our drawing for July. Remember our podcast comes out each Tuesday morning. And I'm so excited to tell you that if you sign up for my mailing list you get some freebies. I've created three different books of phonemes that you can you can choose from. One is a coloring book, and the other two are just picture books. And you can learn and practice and go through the phonemes of the English language with your children. I have a list when you sign up for free as well that is of over 100 picture books and board books that are excellent to read to your kids, really good stories with excellent illustrations that either are Christian in nature or do not go against the Christian worldview. I was very picky to create this list for you. I also tried to go with writers maybe you haven't heard of before. I hope this can be a resource that is beneficial for you and your family as your shopping for books in building your child's library. In addition to that, if you go to my new website, terriehellardbrown.com, you'll see that I have quite a few free things you can download there. I'm adding new things all the time. I've developed in one of the classes I did in Parental Guidance Requested and that I teach in my workshops I have a freebie that is a passport that you can download and make for your children and read different books from different countries, stories, fairy tales, and legends from different countries and learning to count in different languages and these kinds of things. So, I have that resource that will be available soon on my website. I'm also developing some other materials, some cost, some are free, but those are all available on my website. Please go take a look and download what you can use. And just send me a little note. Let me know if you do use the different items with your church or with your homeschooling group or whatever, and let me know how you used it. That would mean a lot to me. My goal is to help equip parents, teachers, and caregivers with the ability to have materials and have resources that will help us as we're discipling and teaching our children and helping them to grow in their understanding of God and His purpose for their lives. And in addition to that, I also try to speak into your life. Because we need to be discipled too. So that is what I try to do with my website, my podcast, and my blog is to encourage you and help equip you so that you can help equip your children.

Today I want to present a book to you. Actually, I have the Kindle version of it. It is a devotional book. It is The Very Best, Hands-On, Kind of Dangerous Family Devotions Book. It's for the family that is a more adventurous that wants to incorporate maybe some science experiments with their devotionals. It's very much a hands-on type of devotional. You might want to use it with your youth group, you might want to use it if you do a daily devotional with your family, then use this one once a week. If you only do devotionals with your family once a week as kind of family worship time, this would definitely put life into your devotional time. It's kind of object lesion meets devotional meets science project. So, it's that kind of a thing.

The intro to the book says, "Discipling, mentoring, and guiding our children toward a trusting, thriving, and loving relationship with God is a monumental, incredible, and essential task for Christian parents." Tim Shumaker is the writer of this. It says, "Tim's passion for seeing God's word passed on to future generations comes through as he provides parents with practical, hands-on, engaging, and easy-to-use family devotions. Who wouldn't like to have fire, food, money, darkrooms, flashlights, and light sticks while learning about what God I telling us in Scripture? This is a must-have for a parent's devotional library."

And I kind of agree.

"This has 52 activities in it that your kids will never forget."

And I agree with that as well.

They do tell you if they are a little bit dangerous and how to make them safe, which I appreciate very much, as you go through the different devotionals. So, that helps you a lot.

So, the first one is kind of funny because we are right now when this is being recorded, we are still on lockdown with the COVID-19 situation. And the first lesson is an object lesson using a TP blaster. So, you may not want to do this one right now while you're low on toilet paper, but you use a leaf blower and toilet paper to prove a point in this devotional.

They have one called elctro-pickle, Frankenstein factor. The names of these devotionals are very interesting. They give you the synopsis of each devotional in the table of contents. So, it's not just a list. It tells you a little bit about each devotional and what the theme is and what it's about so that you can see what would best fit with where you are in your discussions with your kids. And they have an exclamation point warning triangle when it's a little bit dangerous so you know up front what you're getting yourself into, and then you can go to the page number to actually read the devotionals. So, there's lots of different activities. And there is also one here called "House of the Dead" which is for 12 years and up. So that also helps you know that some are appropriate for the whole family and some you need to have older kids because you're dealing with a touchy subject. And this one in particular is dealing with the dangers of pornography.

Okay, so, let's take a look at lesson 13 "Catching Fire." This is one of those with the danger warning exclamation point sign. The theme is "burning for God with passion vs being passive in our faith." So, we're going to go to that page, and it says, "This lesson is designed to be done outdoors away from anything flammable." Then it lists all that you'll need for this project like a tube of toothpaste, a tube of diaper rash paste, and they use Desitin brand original formula, a tube of fire paste "You can pick this up online or in stores that have a decent camping department. The brand I used is Coghlan's. This stuff is amazing it squeezes out like petroleum jelly, and when you put a flame up to it, it catches fire and burns. It was designed to start campfires and fires in fireplaces. Aluminum foil to wrap each tube of paste so the kids cannot identify them. You need a 5-gallon bucket filled with water, 3 pieces of wood (he used 6X6 scrap plywood but other sizes work as long that will fit easily in the bucket), some kind of lighter, ideally some kind of fireproof gloves (they are often stocked in hardware stores by the grilling gear)." You can use an oven mitt as well but you won't have a lot of dexterity. Then it tells you what you need to prepare ahead of time. It is a very thorough book, and I appreciated that. Because you need to know what you need and what you need to prep ahead of time, so when you're ready to share the devotional, not only have you read the scriptures and read the story and devotional ahead of time showing your kids you value this time you have with them; you're not just winging it, that you know what you need to do and how much time it's going to take. So, he's done a great job. It's like a lesson plan. It's all outlined very well telling you exactly what you're going to be doing and how much time you need to prepare.

Then, you're going to squirt a dab of each of the pastes on a piece of wood and apply the flame to see if it burns. And only the fire paste should truly ignite. "When you're done, dunk the pieces of wood in the 5-gallon bucket of water and let them soak there long enough to be sure you've extinguished any smoldering flame. And then clean off all the pastes and leave the wood outside to dry. And you're all set."

So, then, running the activity: "Be sure the bucket is filled with water and is in close proximity." He says he keeps it right by his feet. "Have the kids make a 3 inch X on the each of the 3 pieces of wood, using a different paste each time, and keep the tube of paste by each wood sample so you can identify which paste had been used. Tell the kids you want to light the paste and you're looking to see which ignites and burns best." You put on your gloves and do this. Then you're teaching the lesson.

"The three pastes represent different kinds of Christians and how well they burn for Jesus. How intense they are for God. Some Christians never seem to ignite. Others sputter and spark but never really catch fire. And others catch fire and keep burning strong."

And then he reads the scripture from Matthew 13:3-9 and 18-23, the parable of the sower and the seed. "And Jesus talked about how some people never seem to grow and mature as Christians. They are distracted and lose focus. And then others like with the toothpaste and diaper rash paste wouldn't ignite. Was the problem with the flame or with the paste? And of course, the problem is with the paste. The fire, like the seed in the parable, is a constant. The paste, like the soil in Jesus' example, was the thing that changed."

Then they look at the other parts of the scripture, and then it ends with questions. "What kind of Christian do you want to be? How do you think you'll get there? Let's look at some starting points for being the type of Christian who burns with a steady dedication to God." So, I love that. He doesn't just leave it at, "Well, what do you want to do?" "Oh, I want to burn bright for Jesus." Or "I want to be a great strong Christian." Well, then let's talk about how to help our kids do that. We do such a disservice when we don't take that next step and say how do we do that. So, he does that. He talks David and the Psalms. He talks about our choice and the choices we make. When we ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and when we know the right thing to do but we don't do it, we're quenching the impact of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And when we quench the Spirit, we quench our own fire. Then he sums up with an ending part to the devotional.

He says, "If you choose to be a Christian who burns hot for God, I believe you'll never regret that. It's my prayer that you will have a heart that burns strong and steady for God, that you'll be passionate for God, not passive. It's my prayer that you'll ask God to give you a heart that desires Him enough to say no to compromise. I pray you'll choose to obey God and His word from your heart, not because you have to. I pray you'll never forget that He's chosen you; He's chosen to rescue you. And for that we should forever be grateful and dedicated to Him. May you always burn for Him."

I just feel like this is such a well-written little devotional book, and it has some great, fun ideas. If you have very active children who are more kinesthetic learners, maybe visual learners that want to do the hands-on and need to see something to really remember the lessons. These should do it. So, this is a great book for family devotionals if you want that kind of active participation and good object lessons for your kids. And then of course, with the STEM emphasis in our culture in our culture right now and how important that is, how awesome to bring that into our devotional time as well. So that's kind of cool when we're leading devotions. I highly recommend this devotional book.

Now for family devotions, if you're not into such an adventurous endeaver, I've also written a devotional book that is a hands-on, family, active devotional book on the life of David. It's the beginning of a series on Heroes of the Faith. And it involves like a home school curriculum if you choose to use it that way for your Bible class. Or you can use it just as a family devotional. It will be available on my website to download. You can find it there. And it is very reasonably price. You can print it out on your printer.

We use a lot of cooking, a lot of activities and games and puzzles. Not so much blowing things up or catching things on fire. But we still try to keep it kinesthetic, visual, and auditory all in one to really encourage and challenge our kids in their walk with God. For instance, the first lesson is about David's friendship with Jonathan. And in that one we talk a lot about what it means to be a friend, and we make friendship cookies. In the lesson where Samuel is anointing David, and God teaches him it is important to look at the heart—that God looks at the heart, man looks at the outside appearance, but God looks at the heart. Well, in that lesson, we make homemade pizza pockets, or if you choose you can make empanadas. If you know that recipe, that's even better. So, we do some cooking. We do some art. We do puzzles. I do try to include some active activities as well in each lesson. So, each lesson has several choices. It is not meant for you to do every single thing in the lesson unless you want it to be a home school lesson, then you might have time for that. You would pick and choose what is most appropriate for your family. With one lesson you may choose to do a cooking lesson, and the next one you may decide to do the team sport activity. In another, you may choose the do the community outreach activity. So, each one gives you that choice for what works best with your family. And then each lesson also has a family worship time, so you may just choose to do the family worship time where you talk about the lessons from the Scripture, and share them together as a family and have communion together as a family, kind of a Shabbat sort of Sabbath celebration. So, that's what I've written in my devotional book.

And then we also have some great devotional books for those who are even more mellow and want to just read together and pray together. And I will put the links for some of those below the podcast here. We have the Family Bible Devotional. And there are some others that are really helpful if you want to teach your kids the importance of a quiet time, of taking time each day to read God's word together, to pray together, and you don't want to make it anything fancy or anything big. You just want to share the Word of God and prayer with your kids each day. What I would recommend is really praying about what is best for you kids. Because you want it be captivating, and you want God's word to really get into their hearts and minds. I would highly recommend that you include memorization of Scripture in whatever devotional program you choose, and that you would use that to help hide God's word in their hearts because they will never leave them for the rest of their lives. We all know the scriptures we memorized as children, they're still there. I memorized some Scriptures in Spanish, and I still remember those. It's just fun when you've truly memorized Scripture, how it stays with you and God can bring it back to your memory. So, I would include that and include reading Scripture or a Bible story depending on the age of your children, and prayer. Find a creative way to keep a prayer list together as a family. It might be a special book that you have for your family. It might be something on the wall. It might be a visual prayer request list, especially if you have pre-readers in your family. So, you might have a picture to represent what you're praying for. Maybe it's Grandma or Grandpa or whomever, and so you put their picture on the prayer list or on the prayer board or whatever you decide to do, or your prayer book. So those are things you can do.

One of the things that we've done as a family as well, and you'll see this in the David Bible study because we include them, is we've written songs together. We have a lot of very easy, simple, sing-able songs you can teach your kids. If you're not musically inclined, they are easy to pick up. And they're free with the Bible study; you'll get the MP3's to go with those. We had a great time making up songs together. My daughter dealt a lot of fear. As I said, after she turned four and became autistic, she would deal with fear all the time. So, we made up a song, "I will never be afraid, God is by my side." We sang that all the time. We'd sing it loud; we'd sing I soft; we'd sing it in silly voices—but just to get those words into her mind that God is always with her; she is never alone.

I used to rock my kids and sing a version of "Rock-a-bye Baby" to them instead of the traditional words, I would say, "Rock-a-bye baby in Mommy's lap…" oh, now I can't remember. But anyway, it was special to them, and it would have their name in it. I would rock them, and they would just grin as they were falling asleep because they would hear that song that had a special meaning for them.

[I couldn't remember the words while recording, but here's what we used to sing: Rock-a-bye name, in Mommy's lap. When we get tired, we'll take a nap. We love to laugh, and we love to sing, but rocking with Mommy's our favorite thing].

We can have so much fun making up songs together. They don't have to be professional and wonderful. They're just special to our family, and we're creating memories with our family. Cooking together, camping together, writing songs together, praying together, reading God's word together, all of these things build memories, build relationships with our kids, and keep the doors open for communication and questioning and answering those questions and wrestling sometimes with those questions together. As my kids have gotten older, the questions have gotten harder to answer, and we've struggled through some of them sometimes, but we've struggled through them together instead of separately, and that's awesome.

Let me know what your favorite devotional has been to use with your children. I would love to know what you've used. Maybe you've just read the Bible together and haven't had a specially written devotional. But I would just love to hear what you've found to be helpful and beneficial to your family.

Thank you for joining us for Books that Spark. I hope this discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Remember our drawing at the end of July. Enter before July 31st by downloading the 12 lessons and commenting on the first episode either here or on my website blog. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of the podcast and my blog. My website is terriehellardbrown.com

Have a wonderful week. This is Books that Spark, a podcast celebrating books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussions.

Parental Guidance Requested Course--Available through July, 2020 Lesson 1-Reading Picture Books with Our Kids

Lesson 2-Praying with Our Kids

Lesson 3-Praying for Our Kids

Lesson 4-Overcoming the Overwhelm

Lesson 5-Discipling Our Kids

Lesson 6-Keeping Consistent Conversation with Our Kids

Lesson 7-Seize the Teachable Moments

Lesson 8-Creating a Safe, Soft Story Circle

Lesson 9-Building Character

Lesson 10-Leading Kids in the Way They Should Go

Lesson 11-Be Aware of Bias

Lesson 12-Making Room for Reading

Your Host: Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

In this episode we look at some books that spark wonder and joy in life to help our kids embrace joy, peace, and develop resilience.

July Giveaway: Enter the drawing by: 1. download the 12 mini lessons of the "Parental Guidance Requested Workshop" 2. Comment below "Books that Spark," Episode 1 that you downloaded them Two winners drawn on July 31, 2020: 1st prize - Praying the Scriptures for Your Children: Discover How to Pray God's Purpose for Their Lives by Jodie Berndt The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones The Jesus Storybook Bible Coloring Book for Kids: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones

2nd prize - ICB, Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible from Thomas Nelson

Transcript: Welcome to Books that Spark, a podcast for parents and caregivers where we review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations leading to teachable moments with our kids. Thank you for joining me today.

I wanted to let you know that coming up in August, I'm really excited. I've been able to interview two wonderful authors who have books debuting in August. The first writer we're going to talk to is Deb Gruelle, and we'll be introducing her newest book coming out in August. The second one is Jennifer Grant who also has a book coming out. We are actually going to have her interview on the day that her book debuts which is August 17th, so you won't want to miss Books that Spark in August when we have two very special guests share their books with us. We had a great time talking about their books and what sparked the stories that they wrote. So be sure to join us in August when we have these interviews. Don't forget about our drawing for July. Remember our podcast comes out each Tuesday morning. And I'm so excited to tell you that if you sign up for my mailing list you get some freebies. I've created three different books of phonemes that you can download. You can choose from the three different books. One is a coloring book, and the other two are just picture books. And you can learn and practice and go through the phonemes of the English language with your children. I have a list when you sign up for free as well that is of over 100 picture books and board books that are excellent to read to your kids, really good stories with excellent illustrations that are either Christian in nature or do not go against the Christian worldview. So I was very picky, overly picky sometimes to create this list for you. I also tried to go with writers maybe you haven't heard of before. I did not include Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, and I do note that in the intro on the list that those are excellent books and you can pretty much trust any of those. But the books that I did read may be books you've never heard of or writers that you've never heard of. I hope this can be beneficial for you and your family as your shopping for books in building your child's library. In addition to that, I've decided to make one of my stories available on my website. If you go to my new website, terriehellardbrown.com, you'll see that I have quite a few free things that you can download there. I'm adding new things all the time. I've developed in one of the classes I did in Parental Guidance Requested and that I teach in my workshops I have a freebie that is a passport you can download and make for your children and read different books from different countries, stories, fairy tales, and legends from different countries and learning to count in different languages and these kinds of things. So I have that resource that will be available soon on my website. I'm also developing some other materials, some cost, some are free, but those are all available on my website. Please go take a look and download what you can use. And just send me a little note. Let me know if you do use the different items with your church, with your homeschooling group or whatever, and let me know how you used it. That would mean a lot to me. Some of the things are plays, monologues, and dialogues that you can use in your church services or in your schools. My goal is to help equip parents, teachers, and caregivers with the ability to have materials and have resources that will help us as we're discipling and teaching our children and helping them to grow in their understanding of God and His purpose for their lives. And in addition to that, I also try to speak into your life as a parent, as a teacher, and as a caregiver. Because we need to be discipled too. So that is what I try to do with my website, my podcast, and my blog is to encourage you and help equip you so that you can help equip your children.

I want to share with you a feel-good story that I love. This book is called My Mama Had a Dancing Heart by Libba Moore Gray, illustrated by Raul Colon. This is one of those books you cherish and that you enjoy sharing again and again whether you're the parent or the child. It's such a beautiful story of a relationship between a mom and daughter. It's about a mom sharing her love for dance and her love for life. In addition, it has great onomatopoeia and imagery and other literary devices that make this book fun for teaching literary devices if you're a homeschooler. The pictures look like they were either painted or that the colon used pastels. Each picture is full of color.

The book takes us through the seasons of the year. The book says, "My mama had a dancing heart, and she shared that heart with me." She starts with spring. "Mama says, 'Bless the world, it feels like a tip-tapping, song-singing, finger-snapping kind of day. Let's celebrate!' and so we did."

For the summer she says, "When the waves would come plash-splashing on the shore, out we'd go into the red-orange morning with kites and balloons tied to our wrists. We'd do a seabird-flapping, dolphin-arching, hello summer ballet, with me following Mama, and the sand stuck between the toes of our up-and-down squish-squashing feet." Then Moore takes us through fall and winter. The books ends with "and now after satin-ribboning my feet and listening to the violins sing-swelling around me, onto the stage I go air-daring, leap-flying, wing-soaring, letting the spring rain, summer waves, autumn leaves, winter snow carry me along until the music slows and I feather-float down…down to the ground."

So at the end of the story, the girl has grown up and has become a professional ballerina because of the heart her mom had and experiences they shared together. She takes all that she gleaned from her relationship with her mom and puts her mom's passion into her own performances as a dancer.

So you can see why I love this book. I think it's really beautiful to see the relationship and the affect the mom had on the daughter. The conversations from books like this can be about how we influence each other in the family. Our kids may not think about their influence on others. It's a powerful thing to think about what we can do to bless and make a positive difference in this world and in our families. I think it's important to teach our kids that they have an effect on people and can bless and influence others.

We also need to think about the influence we have as parents. What legacy do we want to leave for our kids? We have so much influence in shaping who our children become especially while they are young. When our kids are grown, what have we done that is going to influence them to hold on to the wonder and joy of life? We want to deal with values, dignity, integrity, and choosing right over wrong, but we also want to instill joy and wonder in them as well. We want to build creativity and ingenuity in our kids as well as resilience. They watch how we react to and act in life. That will influence our kids more than anything we say. The time we spend together with our kids is going to forever affect our kids. So, we need to be careful not to always be so serious, but to help them see the joy and strength that joy brings in our lives. We need to go splish-splashing in the waves by the ocean. We need to go building sandcastles and swinging on tree swings and whatever gives our hearts delight and share that with our children.

Of course, we must teach our kids about safety and right and wrong, but we also need to teach the love of life. The bible tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength. Do they see us letting go of that strength or do they see us walking in it?

If all our kids see in us is negativity and defeat, that is what they will learn. If they see resilience and tenacity, that is what they will learn.

I want to share a couple more books with you, but I want to take just a moment to talk to you. For years I battled depression. Now, I'm not talking about clinical depression where we need medication. I have friends who are bipolar and who are dealing with other illnesses and need their medication. If you are dealing with post-partum depression, I suggest talking to your doctor. There are some times in life when we may need medical help. But what I'm talking about is the type of depression that we fall into and amplify by our own thoughts and attitudes. It's like when one bad thing happens in our day, we focus on that and our attitude is, "I've had a horrible day," when what we really had was a horrible few minutes with a really rude person or whatever.

I'm sharing this with you because we can teach our kids to live defeated, depressed lives if we aren't careful. Like I said, I've been there. I would have something bad happen that triggered my negativity, and I would spiral down into depression. I had a friend who struggles with this too, and she simply said, "It is not God's will for us to live like this." That frustration we were talking about and feeling at that moment got me to thinking about it. The bible tells us to take every thought captive under the authority of Christ. So, I started trying to do that. If I start feeling depressed, I think back to where it started. Usually it was something small that spiraled and grew bigger because of my response to it. The thoughts I had after that initial point are usually filled with lies about how useless I am as a human being, how God can never use my life, or about how I should just give up with whatever because I will never succeed…stuff like that. So, as I took each thought captive, I would think of God's truth in His word, and the lies became apparent. I rejected those lies and began to come out of the depression.

Sometimes I fall into that pit because I'm exhausted. If you haven't realized it yet, parenting can be exhausting. So, some days, I would just go to bed early deciding I would deal with whatever happened after a good night's sleep. It's funny how problems shrink when we sleep on them. Even big problems shrink some and become easier to tackle when we're rested.

The other thing I've learned through this process is that creativity goes out the window when we're stressed and exhausted. I want my kids to use their creativity and to value it. I want them to see that their dad and I are creative people too. I believe creativity is such a gift from God, and because of it, we can problem-solve and move through life with more grace and beauty in our lives.

So, if you're exhausted, battling depression, feeling defeated, find a way to get the help you need. If you need to talk to someone or have someone watch your kids so you can take a nap, or if you need to go see a doctor, please do it. I wish someone had talked to me about this when I was a young mom instead of having to battle this for so long alone. Victory is attainable. We do not have to stay stuck in defeat and depression or stay a victim to the lies of the Enemy.

Two last little points I learned along the way: Grief is a painful experience that we must walk through. Do not try to avoid that one. If we are grieving a loss, as painful as it is, we need to walk through it. Medication only delays it. It does not remove it. Second, all feelings are temporary. Mark Lowry, a Christian comedian and singer, says his favorite Bible verse is, "It came to pass." That's not really the whole verse in the Bible, but his point is that in all of life, whatever we're walking through, it's temporary. We can't give up, we need to walk through it.

A friend who lost someone to suicide always reminds people that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. All problems are temporary, no matter how terrible they are. We need to realize this, and we need to teach it to our kids.

I just felt I needed to share that today. Maybe someone listening is really struggling or maybe you're just losing hope in our world's current situation. This too shall pass.

I have a mentor who is wise beyond her years. This week's blog post will tell you a little more about this story, but when we were facing a really hard situation in ministry, I called her to lament and to ask for prayer. Her response was simply, "I wonder what God is going to do?" That sentence changed everything for me. I have tried to hold on to that since then no matter what we're facing because God is ALWAYS at work in and around us. There have been times when He literally fought the battle for us. We were all concerned about something awful that was going on, and the next thing we knew, within a few days, the whole situation had turned around and the problem evaporated. It's not always that way, but we have seen God work and help us walk through too many situations. With each one, trusting Him gets a little easier.

So, how can we help our kids live their lives in this way: with resilience, tenacity, and joy?

First, by us setting the example for them.

Second, by helping them know the truth of God's word and His presence with them always.

Third, by instilling a joy for life in them through the wonder and creativity in their lives and all around us.

I think that's one reason I enjoy poetic writing in picture books. That's why I like My Mama Had a Dancing Heart. That's also why I like Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color by Mary O'Neill, illustrated by John Wallner. This is a book of poems, but the illustrations and the imagery in the poems are amazing.

"The Colors live

Between black and white

In a land that we

Know best by sight.

But knowing best

Isn't everything,

For colors dance

And colors sing,

And colors laugh

And colors cry—

Turn off the light

And colors die,

And they make you feel

Every feeling there is

From the grumpiest grump

To the fizziest fizz.

And you and you and I

Know well

Each has a taste

And each has a smell

And each has a wonderful

Story to tell…."

And if you're homeschooling, this is a brilliant book for teaching imagery and personification.

Another book I've shared before is Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago. They also created the Bible story book and coloring book that I'm giving away in the drawing at the end of July. Remember to comment on the first episode of this podcast and to download the 12 lessons from Parental Guidance Requested to be entered in the drawing.

In this book, Jones takes a scripture and poetically described the meaning of it. It's not a picture book, but it is a fun book to share with anyone. The pictures are gorgeous. On page 59 she uses Colossians 3:15 which says, "Let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts." And she writes, "Let the sun in! When you open the windows, do you have to beg the fresh air to come in? Or when you open the curtains in the morning, do you have to argue with the sun to make it shine into your room? How silly! You just open the windows and the air flows in. You open the curtains and the sun shines in. The Bible says it's like that with God's peace. It will flow into our hearts, if we let it. Are you worried? Are you anxious? Is anything troubling you today? Don't try to work it all out by yourself. Let God's peace flow in—like sunshine into a dark room."

On page 69 she talks about 2 Corinthians 10:5, "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." She writes, "No Birds' Nests! Sometimes bad thoughts just land in your head from nowhere. Is having an awful thought a sin? When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Satan whispered awful thoughts and lies to Jesus to tempt him away from God. It's not the thoughts that count; it's what we do with those thoughts. Jesus didn't listen to those awful thoughts. He didn't believe them. He sent them away. An old proverb says, 'You can't help it if birds come and land on your head. But you don't have to let the build nests in your hair!'"

One more is called "Born to Fly!" on page 212 of the book. Jones writes, "Have you seen eagles teaching their babies to fly? Oh dear. Poor eagle babies. Imagine one minute you're all cozy in this warm, lovely nest and the next, you're being pushed out—BY YOUR OWN PARENTS! But the parents know what they're doing. As the babies plummet, they flap their wings in a panic—and grow stronger. The parents catch them on their wings and lift them back up, over and over, until at last the baby learns to do what it was born for—FLY! And the Bible says you were meant to fly as well—to soar in God's love, trusting him, loving him. You were born to fly!"

I like the way she describes the Christian life in this book. Her words are full of hope and faith and focus on God's plan and purposes.

The last book I want to share today is Quinn's Promise Rock by Christie Thomas and illustrated by Sydney Hanson. This book's subtitle is "No Matter Where, God Is Always There," and that is the message of this cute book. It's the story of a father owl and his daughter owl. As they are flying one night, Quinn, the daughter, suddenly becomes afraid thinking about what if she got lost. Her dad takes her several places and shows her the safety of those places and uses them as analogies for God's presence with her. He gives her a rock to remind her that God is always with her no matter where she goes.

I love this book because it describes many of the attributes of God. I also love the father/daughter relationship shown in the story. It's a very sweet story.

I hope you have a week filled with the knowledge of God's presence at work in your life and that our kids know He's with them as well.

Thank you for joining us for Books that Spark. I hope this discussion will spark meaningful conversations with the children in your life. Remember our drawing at the end of July. Enter before July 31st by downloading the 12 lessons and commenting on the first episode either here or on my website blog. You can sign up for my mailing list to get weekly reminders of the podcast and my blog. My website is terriehellardbrown.com

Free Course Through July--Parental Guidance Requested:

Lesson 1-Reading Picture Books with Our Kids

Lesson 2-Praying with Our Kids

Lesson 3-Praying for Our Kids

Lesson 4-Overcoming the Overwhelm

Lesson 5-Discipling Our Kids

Lesson 6-Keeping Consistent Conversation with Our Kids

Lesson 7-Seize the Teachable Moments

Lesson 8-Creating a Safe, Soft Story Circle

Lesson 9-Building Character

Lesson 10-Leading Kids in the Way They Should Go

Lesson 11-Be Aware of Bias

Lesson 12-Making Room for Reading

Your Host: Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

What is "Books that Spark" all about? We review books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and discussion creating teachable moments that lead to meaningful conversations with our children.

In this episode: How do we balance seeking to do our best and seeing goals met with perfectionism and unrealistic expectations? Experts often tell us that children rise to our high expectations. When does that go from being healthy motivation to pressure causing our children to be people-pleasers or to shut down and give up? One of the keys is recognizing who our children truly are and who God intended them to be.

Books Discussed: Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall

A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily P. Freeman

Other Links: https://www.terriehellardbrown.com/ Deuteronomy 11:18-21

Enter the drawing by: 1. download the 12 mini lessons of the "Parental Guidance Requested Workshop" 2. Comment below "Books that Spark," Episode 1 that you downloaded them

Two winners drawn on July 31, 2020: 1st prize - Praying the Scriptures for Your Children: Discover How to Pray God's Purpose for Their Lives by Jodie Berndt The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones The Jesus Storybook Bible Coloring Book for Kids: Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones

2nd prize - ICB, Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible from Thomas Nelson

Transcript:

Transcript: Hi, and welcome to Books that Spark. I'm Terrie Hellard-Brown, your host. I'm so glad you joined us today. This is my first episode of Books that Spark, and I have a treat for you. With this first podcast, I've also opened a 12 mini-lesson course called Parental Guidance Requested with parenting tips for getting the most out of your reading and discipleship time with your kids. If you download those 12 lessons and comment on this episode that you've got them, you will be entered into a drawing for some free resources. I'll have two winners. First prize is Praying the Scriptures for Your Children, The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Storybook Bible Coloring Book. Second prize is Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible. So, download the episodes today and comment before the end of July, 2020, and we'll enter you in the drawing. The drawing will be held on July 31st, 2020.

So, what is Books that Spark all about? It began as an idea while I was at a speaker's conference last year. I was talking about blogging and writing books, and I mentioned how I love talking about great picture books. One of the moms there begged me to create a list of the best picture books that I would recommend. Well, as I began to think and pray about that; the notion of starting a podcast kept coming to my mind. And pretty soon I couldn't shake the idea. I would think about it all the time and started developing ideas for episodes and just got really excited about the possibilities. So here I am jumping in and giving this a try. I hope you enjoy it and feel that it's beneficial to you and your family. I hope you discover some great books that maybe you hadn't heard of before as we go through the episodes in this podcast.

Sometimes this will just be me sharing with you from my heart like today, and other times I'll have guests. And I have a couple authors coming next month to share with you from their hearts and share with you about their books. So, it should be a good time and good information, and I hope you enjoy it. Sometimes I will just be sharing with you some very silly, funny books because there's a lot of excellent ones out there that can make your family laugh and have a great time together.

If you go to my website and sign up for my mailing list, you'll get notifications for this podcast as well as my blog. And when you do, you will be able to download for free a list of picture books and board books that I recommend to help build your child's library. There are over a hundred books on that list that you can check out and find out about through the list. (You will also get to choose from three free print-on-demand phoneme books you can make for your kids).

So, if you sign up today, you can find the link in the show notes below. Then you can receive that for free. Today I want to talk about giving ourselves grace and our kids' grace. We tend to be hard on ourselves as parents wanting to be perfect in all that we do, and we can fall into the trap of perfectionism. But I've found, as a recovering perfectionist, that in reality, perfectionism is me trying to be God in my own life because we know that the only one who is truly perfect as God and our attempts at it are not truly perfect; they're perfectionism. And we can also be hard on our kids trying to encourage them to do their best, but instead putting expectations on them as well. So, we have to figure out what is the balance there.

I'm a visual person, and I will never forget the most effective sermon I ever saw on expectations. It was done by Andy Stanley at North Point Community Church. And the introductory message for a series on relationships opened with him discussing hopes, dreams, and desires that we go into relationships and situations with all our hopes and dreams and desires. And he had a box with several items representing those hopes, dreams, and desires of a couple, getting ready to be married. And he puts these items into another box with the label of expectations. His point is that what we may think of as our hopes, dreams and desires become expectations for the other person in the relationship. And that that can be a heavy weight on their shoulders. And so we have to be aware of that, understand that we can be doing that to our children and to ourselves as well. We set the bar high at a certain level, and rather than hopes, dreams and desires, it becomes expectations and perfectionism.

Those are heavy weights to carry, and they will kill the joy in our relationships and in our life if we bow to them.

So how do we balance seeking to do our best, setting goals, and seeing those goals realized, with the temptation towards perfectionism and expectation, especially unrealistic expectations? We know that the experts often tell us that children rise to our high expectations, so we don't want to give them low expectations. So, when does that go from being healthy motivation to pressure causing our children to be people-pleasers or to just shut down and give up? I really think it boils down to grace. Because of grace, we can try without fear of failing, because if we fail, grace is there. This is the way God treats us, and this is the way we need to treat ourselves and treat our children to give abundant grace, but to encourage our kids to try. When our children know that we will show them grace, when they try and fail, they can become more self-confident and willing to try new things and to step outside their comfort zones.

If we have a rigid "do or die" attitude, even if it is just toward ourselves, our children can pick up on that and become unwilling to try new things. And the second thing besides grace is truly knowing who our children are and what they are capable of. That's so important because if we don't understand who they are, we can fall into the comparison trap with either comparing them to their siblings or to a friend's kids. Each child is so unique and so uniquely gifted. We need to look at the individual and see who God has created each person to be. When I was teaching school, I often thought we should develop an IEP Individual Education Plan for every student, not just those with special needs because every student has their own needs, their own strengths, and their own weaknesses. And as a teacher, we try very hard to meet each child's needs. If we had time to sit down and figure out how best to meet the needs of each child, what an effective school that would be.

With our own kids, hopefully we do have the time to do that, to sit down and to pray over and to examine and think about who our kids are and what their individual needs are and what their individual strengths and weaknesses are. When we know who our child truly is, we can set realistic goals and take some of the unrealistic expectations and pressures off of them.

Sometimes the world puts ridiculous expectations on our children that we know they can never meet, and we need to be there to help them navigate that and to understand they have their own strengths. I was very blessed as a child in that my parents always told me I could do anything I set my mind to. And I'm sure they were not right, because there were plenty of things I could not do no matter what, but I believed them and tried many things, even though I was horribly shy as a child. I grew very fast and I had very long legs and very long arms, and so I was a little bit clumsy for a while there. In fifth grade in PE class, the teacher said, "She tries harder than anybody in the class," but I couldn't do a cartwheel to save my life. I even taught my sister how to do cartwheels, but I could not do one ever, and I've never been able to. He [my teacher] would tell my mom, "She tries harder than anybody." And that was me; I always tried because I thought, you know, if I put my mind to it and tried hard enough, eventually I'd be able to do it. But unfortunately, cartwheels were not in that list. But my parents did hold me to a very high standard and sometimes they did push too hard, but usually they only emphasized that I should always do my best, whatever that might be. And as long as I had tried my best, they assured me that they would be happy. And that's what I've tried to do with my children as well. And I hope they've grasped that. I think they have.

When we can teach our kids, as long as they're doing their best, that's all we want from them, then they can try things and not be the best but just do their best.

I want to share a book with you today that speaks to expectations and doing what we can do. It's called Red, A Crayon Story by Michael Hall. Red is a crayon who is told by everyone that he is red. He's labeled red, and he came from the factory with that label. He tries very hard to color red, but in reality, he's not red; he's blue.

And so, one crayon tries to show him how to draw strawberries. He tries to draw strawberries, but they're blue. And they're just like, "Oh dear." And his teacher thinks he needs more practice, but he can't draw red no matter how hard he tries because he isn't really red. He's blue. Everyone comments on Red. Everybody has something to say, and some think he's lazy. Some say he needs to press harder. Others think he needs more time, and he'll catch on. But, of course, he can't. And then he has a new friend further on in the book. And this new friend says, can you make me a blue ocean for my boat? And he says, I can't, I'm red. I'm not blue. But the friend encourages him to try. And he draws a great blue ocean and his friends tell him that he did a great job, and his mom is proud of him, and everybody's cheering him on. He responds with thanking his friend and saying it was easy. When we're doing what we're created for, we find joy in what we're doing, and we find it's easy to do what we were meant to do.

I love that story because it shows that when we are living up to what God has called us to be and created us to be, the pressure and the burden of expectation isn't there. But the joy of just being who we were created to be makes even the hardest things we do seem easy and joy-filled because that's who we were created to be. So, I think this is a fantastic story and a great book to read with any child, but especially a child who's on any kind of a spectrum or has any kind of a challenge in their learning. If they have any learning difficulties, this book can really encourage them.

And one of the reasons I personally love this book is we have four children, and they all deal with expectations that people put on them. I mean, what child doesn't, right? But three of my four are on the autism spectrum. And even my daughter who is not on the spectrum gets so discouraged if she feels she's let someone down and hasn't met their expectations. And so, we deal with this all the time. My other three, no matter how hard they try, they do not live up to the world's expectations for them. They just never will. They aren't geared that way. They aren't created that way. And so, it's hard as a parent to watch them struggle so hard to try to meet those expectations. In the midst of all that, I don't know of a better way to help them understand and that they don't have to live up to other people's expectations than to read a book together and to open up a conversation with them about these kinds of topics.

And so, when we read with our kids, we can open up a conversation that might be hard to open up otherwise, and to help them see that not all expectations are from God and are God-given. As a parent, I put so much pressure on myself to try to help them succeed. At first, they were misdiagnosed, and I was doing all the wrong things for a child with autism. We lived overseas in Taiwan, and they were diagnosed with ADHD. I was homeschooling them using the tools we use with ADHD kids, and nothing was working. In fact, it all became extremely frustrating for all of us, as most days, my kids would just shut down. You see, when you're using different teaching techniques, the techniques we often use with ADHD kids are the exact opposite of what you do with an autistic kid. And so, the techniques I was using were just causing anxiety in my kids, and, you know, I can laugh about it now, but it really was horrible. And I felt like a really terrible parent when I realized what was going on. When they were correctly diagnosed, I realized what I was doing wrong and changed. But by then, I just felt like a failure. I didn't know enough to realize and recognize what I was seeing. I just knew what I was doing wasn't working.

So as parents, we put a lot of expectations on ourselves to understand everything, to know everything, to be perfect, and to just parent perfectly. And we frankly will never do that, and sometimes we fail miserably. But in spite of all of that, I'm so thankful that my kids have thrived and that God has been so good to help them find their place and their gifting in this world. So, in this process, especially in this situation, when I was homeschooling, I had to give myself grace and I had to give my kids grace.

And I asked God for a whole lot of grace and wisdom, and my kids have done really well. Now they're older and preparing for what God has for them in their lives. And it's very exciting to see them succeed because now they are on the right track of doing what God has called them to do. If we can succeed in understanding that we try our best, we respect people, we respect God, and we try to be who he's created us to be; then we can realize that we have succeeded because we are glorifying God with our lives.

I want to encourage you today to give yourself grace. There comes a time when we have to let go of the dream we had for our kids, the idea of perfection that we put on ourselves, and to realize God's plan is still at work in our hearts and lives even when we have messed up. We must let go of those plans we had before our children were born and seeing them as who they really are.

With my oldest daughter, this was especially important and difficult, but it was a very vivid lesson in our lives because when she was little, she was outgoing and never met a stranger. She was bubbly and funny and silly and was afraid of nothing. Then when she was about four years old, one day, it was like a switch flipped, and she changed practically overnight into this fear-filled child with all kinds of sensory issues who didn't trust anyone. She wouldn't eat foods she had liked before, even just a week or two before; she wouldn't eat them anymore. They would cause her to gag. she couldn't wear socks and pants that she had been wearing before because the textures bothered her so much she couldn't even think about anything but her socks or her waistband on her jeans.

And so, we had to change everything, and we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know what to think. And like I said, she was misdiagnosed for many years before we really found out what was going on. Back when this happened, you didn't have many cases of autism. It was really strange and very frightening for us. Letting go of who she had been for the past four years was important. It was really hard because we were still trying to understand and navigate this landscape that we were given and trying to help her cope with all these new feelings. It was just a real challenge, but it wouldn't have been fair to her to keep holding her to who she wasn't, but to learn to accept who she was. That's what we had to do. There were many days that we just grieved for the daughter we had grown to love who was no longer there.

Now, even today, if she's very relaxed and feeling really comfortable around people, we'll see a glimpse of that silly girl again. And it's just that her autism overshadows it most of the time. But we had to let go of who we thought she was going to be and accept who she is. What's interesting about that is the more we're able to do that, the more she has the freedom to let go of those anxious feelings and to try to be more who I believe God really wants her to be. So, we get to see that funny side of her a lot more these days, as she's becoming more comfortable with who she is.

But we really have to do this with all of our kids. We can't help it. As parents, often we will have a path in mind that we would like them to take. Or, even though we logically know they're not perfect before they're born, there's still a part of all parents I think that really hope our children are perfect. Then, when they're born, of course we know they're not. We have to let go of those ideals and those ideas and accept who our children are. Otherwise, we wind up putting a heavy burden on them.

Sometimes they just choose a different path than what we would have chosen for them. Like my younger daughter, who is not on the spectrum. She's called to missions, and she wants to live overseas. I mean, she grew up in Taiwan. So the first time she goes overseas, she doesn't go to Taiwan, she goes to Myanmar. We had to really let go and let her do what she knew God was calling her to do, even though it terrified me a whole lot to see her go to a country that is really much less safe than Taiwan.

She has faced a lot of crazy situations as a result of that, but God was with her through them all. My mom taught me with all of my adventures that she always said she knew as long as I was in the center of God's will, it was the safest place for me to be. Now, that didn't mean something bad wasn't going to happen, but she knew that's where I needed to be. And so, I've tried to apply that to my kids' lives as well, and especially to Annie's as she goes and climbs mountains and falls off mountains and goes to scary countries.

Now, a second book, I want to share with you that deals with these kinds of issues as well for you. It's not a picture book, it's a book for adults. And if you have older children, I highly recommend letting them read it as well. It is by Emily P. Freeman, and it's called A Million Little Ways. In this book, she talks about how, when we are doing what God has created us to do, that that becomes a work of art. These are the works that God planned for us before we were born it says in Ephesians 2:10. Perfectionism and comparison are not the answer to helping us find excellence, but rather seeking God's calling and gifting allows us to do exactly what we were created for. In that, we create art that blesses those around us and glorifies God. And in the book, she talks about how she saw (she'd gives several examples) this one girl singing, and she was so moved by the girls singing. She just said, it wasn't that she was the most beautiful singer she'd ever heard although her voice was beautiful. And it wasn't that the song was so profound, although it was beautiful as well. It was recognizing that she was doing exactly what God had gifted her to do and called her to do. And therefore, when she did it, there was a divine power behind it because God was in it. And so, it glorified him, honored him because she was doing what she was created to do.

She uses the example of even if you're a waitress waiting tables or a mailman delivering mail or whatever job or vocation or avocation you do, if these are activities that God has ordained for you to do, then you glorify him and you create art in doing them. I just love that whole notion. But the whole book is about finding who God has created you to be and to do those things, a million little ways of glorifying him in our daily walk with him.

As we close today, I ask you to think about some of the women in the Bible and how often they were so imperfect. But in spite of that, how God always was with them; he heard them, he saw them and he used their lives in spite of their weaknesses. We know that he meets us in our deepest needs, no matter what we're going through or how difficult life gets and the uncertainties we have in raising our kids, God sees us and is always with us.

So, take just a moment and think about Hagar in Genesis. She's in the wilderness, and she thinks she's going to die, and she thinks her son Ishmael is going to die. She puts him under a bush away from her because she just can't sit and watch her son die, but she has no water and doesn't know what else to do. And God saw her pain and her fear. And he gave her hope and guidance and gave her water and told her to take her son and that he would be the father of a great nation.

And Sarah, we look at her, I don't know about you, but I can relate to her trying to control everything and trying to solve problems herself. She basically winds up playing God in everybody's life and messing things up. But when we look at her story, we see that God blessed her in spite of herself and used her life to fulfill his plan.

Naomi who knew more grief than most of us will ever know: God sustained her and restored her life.

Leah in Genesis 29:31: God loved her, even though her husband didn't.

Hannah, who prayed for a child and who was ridiculed for not having children: God heard her prayer and blessed her.

Even Eve. Talk about making bad choices in your early life! She lost her home, but not her God. He forgave her. I know the Bible doesn't tell us that exactly, but we know Adam and Eve taught their children to make offerings to God and to know him. And the last words recorded of Eve are her glorifying God for giving her another son.

Just like these women, God sees you when you feel lost and afraid. He blesses you, even when you've tried to take control and have made bad decisions. And He sustains you when you face unbearable grief and pain. And he loves you, even when it feels like no one else does. He hears you even in the noise and busy-ness of raising a family. He forgives you no matter what you've done. If we will allow him into our day and into our expectations, into our perfectionism, he can do amazing things beyond anything we could ask for or think of.

Thank you for joining us today. Join us next week when we'll look at more books that spark imagination, emotion, questions, and conversations in our lives. Remember to download the 12 lessons today and to comment below that you got those so you can enter our drawing. These lessons will be available for free through this month only. So, take advantage of that today, and we'll have the drawing at the end of July. Have a blessed day.

Lesson 1-Reading Picture Books with Our Kids

Lesson 2-Praying with Our Kids

Lesson 3-Praying for Our Kids

Lesson 4-Overcoming the Overwhelm

Lesson 5-Discipling Our Kids

Lesson 6-Keeping Consistent Conversation with Our Kids

Lesson 7-Seize the Teachable Moments

Lesson 8-Creating a Safe, Soft Story Circle

Lesson 9-Building Character

Lesson 10-Leading Kids in the Way They Should Go

Lesson 11-Be Aware of Bias

Lesson 12-Making Room for Reading

Your Host: Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com

Research shows that reading aloud to children of all ages makes a difference in their lives.

Books recommended for parents and teachers: Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake Up Story Time and Get Kids Talking about What They See by Megan Dowd Lambert

Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook: Eighth Edition by Jim Trelease, Cyndi Giorgis

The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids by Sarah Mackenzie

Honey for a Child's Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life by Gladys Hunt

Quotes from the books shared in the class:

"As a reader, a mother, and a teacher, I know that we carry picture books about with us, not just as physical objects in our hands with pages that we turn, but as remembered experiences with stories and art, and with each other. I pick up a single picture book, and I recall not only the specific story and art on its pages but also the myriad insights that it provoked through Whole Book Approach readings that invited children to read words, pictures, and design along with me." (Lambert, xii)

"During Whole Book Approach story times, children's active participation in making meaning of all they see and hear during a picture book reading takes precedence over moving through the pages at the pace of the adult's oral reading of the text…the Whole Book Approach simply stresses inviting children to react to the whole book—its art, design, production, paratextual and textual elements—in ways that feel natural and enriching to them and to you as the adult reader." (Lambert, x)

"Children can read pictures." (dePaola, SCBWI Masterclass)

"...in fact, a truly great picture book could be wordless. So the pictures actually move the story along and move the narrative along…Once the child has had the story read to them, they can remember the story just by looking at the pictures." (dePaola, SCBWI Masterclass)

"A good book is a magic gateway into a wider world of wonder, beauty, delight, and adventure. Books are experiences that make us grow, that add something to our inner stature." (Hunt, p.

"I am frankly excited by the potential of books to build a whole, healthy, spiritually alert child who has the capacity to enjoy all the possibilities of life." (Hunt, p.

"Whenever I'm asked, 'Why should I read aloud to my child or my students.' (regardless of the child's age), it provides me with an opportunity to share why reading aloud is so important, for both reader and listener. The educational values of reading aloud are well documented: introducing vocabulary, modeling fluency, demonstrating expressive reading, developing comprehension, and assisting children in making connections. There is also the personal value of listening to a book read aloud. That experience may generate vivid memories of a story associated with a person, time, or place—a memory often remaining with us for years." (Trelease, p. 7)

"We read to children for all the same reasons we talk with them: to reassure, to entertain, to bond, to inform or explain, to arouse curiosity, and to inspire. But in reading aloud, we also build vocabulary, condition the child's brain to associate reading with pleasure, create background knowledge, provide a reading role model, and instill the desire to read." (Trelease, p. 14)

"Happily ever after is hardly a myth for those who believe in the promise of eternal joy in heaven." (McKenzie, p. 96)

"If we tell them enough stories, they will have encountered hard questions and practiced living through so many trials, hardships, and unexpected situations that, God willing, they will have what they need to become the heroes of their own stories." (McKenzie, p. 92)

"[Story] has been the vehicle for truth for as long as the human race can remember." (Katherine Paterson quoted by McKenzie, p. 93)

"Reading aloud with our kids is indeed the best use of our time and energy as parents. It's more important that just about anything else we can do." (McKenzie, p. 56)

Storytelling videos: https://youtu.be/q10UgcjGAyE

https://youtu.be/mOA8mUflH-Q

One of my favorite storytellers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQ3FvVFuGk

Learn more about Workshops and my Mailing List: terriehellardbrown.com

Other books mentioned in this episode:

Transcript:Welcome to parental guidance requested from books that spark. These 12 mini-lessons are based on a workshop I offer for parents and teachers who want to make Storytime and discipleship come alive for their children. Today, we will be discussing creative ways to use picture books with your children.

I want to discuss ways to read books with your children that will give variety and opportunities for learning together. We will be looking at a few important books that you may want to read that are about reading with your children. One is Reading Picture Books with Children: How to Shake up Storytime and Get Kids Talking About What They See by Megan Lambert. Another is Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook: Eighth Edition by Jim Trelease and Cyndi Giorgis. In addition, the third one is The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids by Sarah McKenzie. Finally, Honey For a Child's Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life by Gladys Hunt. These four books all bring different information to the table. They also have excellent information on how to make the most out of our reading time and why it is so important to have a read-aloud time with our kids.

In Reading Picture Books with Children, Lambert discusses, several ways we can approach sharing a picture book. She calls it the whole book approach. In addition, Lambert says as a reader, a mother, and a teacher I know that we carry picture books about with us. They are not just as physical objects in our hands with pages that we turn. They are as remembered experiences with stories and art and with each other. I pick up a single picture book, and I recall not only the specific story and art on its pages. I also recall the myriad insights that it provoked through whole book approach readings that invited children to read words, pictures, and design along with me. She points out that picture books are works of art. She treats the whole picture book as a work of art. In addition, she respects the illustrator and the writer equally, which we should do when we are talking about picture books especially. We should begin by asking children to think with their eyes.

She says during the Whole Book Approach story times, children's active participation in making meaning of all they see and hear during picture book reading will take precedence. It will take precedence over moving through the pages at the pace of the adults' oral reading of the text. The whole book approach simply stresses inviting children to react to the whole book, its art, design production, peritextual and textual elements. This is done in ways that feel natural and enriching to them and you as the adult reader. So I love this book, it opens up the whole notion of relishing, every part of a picture book, and enjoying it with our children. Moreover, she goes through in the chapters of her book in different ways. She takes it apart and deals with the different parts of the picture book and how we can look at each part as significant and able to give us more information to make the picture book a richer experience.

Therefore, when we start to read, we should stop and have a conversation about the book. This should be done before we begin reading. As a teacher, we usually do that to access prior knowledge. This is so that the child will connect with the lesson before we begin the teaching part of the lesson. They take ownership of the lesson, they are invested, and they are interested. Well, we do the same thing with picture books when we stop and we look at the cover, we look at the illustrations, we talk about who wrote it and who illustrated it. Then we bring the child into the experience from the very beginning. With picture books, we start with the cover. Picture books are one of those situations where we do judge a book by its cover. Pictures are just as much a part of the story as the words are in picture books and sometimes they're even more so a part of the story than the words. I have an old book called It's My Birthday by Heidi Geonnel that has 117 words in the entire book.

In addition, there is another by Tomie dePaola called The Knight and The Dragon that has quite a few pages throughout the story with no words at all. Moreover, Tomie dePaola said in a class once, children can read pictures. We know that we all learn to read pictures before we learned to read words. In addition, sometimes children will read something that we may miss because we are not in the habit of reading pictures as much as we did when we were young. So starting with the art will not only help the child to begin reading and understanding the story. It will also help the child to have an appreciation for art, and to develop a critical discerning eye and to be able to start reasoning. What is the story about? What is the emotion of this story? Is it scary? Is it happy? We can tell all of that from the cover art on a book.

We may even ask them what might come next as we are looking at different pictures and why something is in a picture and when we look at the cover art on a picture book, Lambert makes it very clear. We want to look at the whole cover the front, the back, and the spine. Sometimes the cover in its entirety is one big picture, one continuous picture. Sometimes it gives us very important information about the story. Therefore, we want to start there with picture books, and look at the front, look at the back, look at the spine and look inside the jacket. This is because sometimes even inside the jacket will be pictures that we need to look at to start the story reading process. Therefore, as we take time to start with the cover of a picture book, we are developing so much in our child's mind, and because the illustrators have taken the time to create these pictures. They have usually created important details. We do not want to skim over as we look at the book and start reading. Sometimes a side story may be happening in the pictures that do not have anything to do with the text and it adds this fun and this wonder to the reading of the book.

A really fun part of reading the book is seeing this little side story that is going on just in the illustrations. In addition, those illustrations often will begin with the cover or with the jacket. When we take time to look at the book as a whole, we are not dissecting it as we would a frog in science class, just assembling the parts and looking at each part, examining it. Rather we are adding to the experience of the book as a whole work of art. Moreover, we are enriching the experience for our child. Tommy dePaola said, in fact, a truly great picture book could be wordless. Therefore, the pictures actually move the story along and move the narrative along. Once a child has had the story read to them, they can remember the story just by looking at the pictures. In addition, I just love that he puts such importance on the words as much as the pictures and the illustrations in the story. We start with the cover. Who wrote it, who illustrated it? We see who else has contributed to the book. Maybe there is an introduction or a comment. How has the lettering on the cover contribute to the feeling of the story? Next, we look at the book jacket, if they have one. The original plan or original art artistic plan for the book is in that first hardcover copy of the book. There was one jacket for a book that I know of that was a poster to hang on the child's wall.

So sometimes, it is really somewhat important that we try if possible to get that original hardcover book. This is because it has the original plan that the artist had for the book. Sometimes the jacket has extra pictures, as I said, on the inside, as well as the outside. It is like a little treasure hunt with your child as you examine the cover, the jacket, and the endpapers too. For example, Lambert discusses in her book. This book called Hush Little Baby, which is based on the old song by the same name. You will see on the jacket in the endpapers of the book, the whole gist of the story. In addition, she is a college professor and she said she had a student write a disastrous essay on the book because she missed the part of the story on the jacket and endpapers. Therefore, she misinterpreted the whole story.

So sometimes, it is vital to understanding the story and enjoying the story to look at the jacket, the cover, and the endpapers. Sometimes the endpapers just add color, they carry that color throughout the book, and it helps bring your eye to certain things in the pictures that you want to notice. Another observation Lambert suggests is to guess why the picture book is in a portrait or landscape orientation. How does that add to the story? It is interesting to consider that most journey stories are in landscape orientation. Think about Polar Express and books that need a taller orientation like Madeline with the Eiffel tower in the picture needs that portrait orientation. It is interesting, one of my favorite books is called Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say, and it is portrait orientation, even though it is about a journey and I thought, well, why is that.

It made me stop and think they have the boat motif through the whole book. Yet the book is not in landscape orientation. I think it is because the story is about being in each place within the story. It is the experience of being a third culture kid. Therefore, it is not so much about the journey back and forth on the boat. However, it is about the journey that he experiences internally as he struggles to find his place and know what is truly home. Moreover, that is more the point of the story than the actual traveling. Therefore, I think that is why it has a portrait orientation. The other thing that is cool about Lambert's book is she gives us questions to ask in an appendix to her book. She calls it thinking with our eyes, and some of the questions are for us as parents and teachers, and some are for the children.

One of my favorite questions she includes is to ask as you have looked at the cover jacket and endpapers. What questions do you have after looking at these pictures? What a great question to ask our kids. What questions do they have after looking at this? Remember whatever questions you ask, you want open-ended questions so that the children will interact more so you can spark conversations with your kids. Then another great question she suggests is what is it that you learn about yourself as a reader and as a thinker when you reflect on your Story time experiences. In addition, we can ask ourselves that we can ask our kids that, what you learn about yourself as we finish reading this book. What did it teach you about yourself? Because picture books have universal themes and experiences, we can all relate. It helps us to relate to the story in some way but also helps us understand our own experiences in life even more.

Then another important point she makes is that we sometimes ask questions while we are reading to children, but we have a preconceived answer we want or expect from the child. When we use the whole book approach, we do not have an expected answer, but we allow the child to think about the question and we may be surprised by their answers. She said many times she's been surprised by the child's answer and they have thought of things she would have never thought about and she has learned from them. Therefore, we do not want to miss those wonderful opportunities. When our child may see something that we missed and help us to grasp even more of the story and make it an even richer experience for us as well. There are many ways that we can read a book to children.

We may tell the story a very animated way. Sometimes if we know the story very well, we almost move from reading to just telling you the story like a true storyteller would with voices and animation interaction with our audience. Moreover, this is truly fun and theatrical and is a wonderful experience for our kids. I will post a few YouTube videos in the show notes for you. This will be on storytelling. It will also be on how this art form can be mastered. You may not want to become a great storyteller, but we can gain some great pointers just from watching these videos and learning how to tell a more animated story. Therefore, I will post those in the show notes. Other times we have something that comes up in the middle of the story that we need to talk about. Therefore, we stopped to ask questions and take time for discussion and thinking, and some think, well, that is going to ruin the story because we are stopping right in the middle, but it really does not.

It enriches the experience. Whatever we do, we need to take the time to relish the books and the precious time we have with our kids. I encourage you to read aloud with your kids, whatever their age is. Our culture tries to make our kids grow up so fast and by reading books together, we can help them enjoy their childhood longer. My four kids are technically adults now, and I read picture books to them. When I find one, I just have to share. They seem to enjoy it just as much as they did when they were little. We do have more grownup discussions about it. We also take the time to read aloud together by reading other books together. We read a chapter or a section of a book and go through a book together as a family and it has been such a wonderful time. Also, in a time of enrichment, a time of sharing, a time when even though they are grown and getting their own lives we have that moment together.

Whether you do a devotional time with your family together, or just reading another book together, we usually combine the two and we read a Christian book together about living the Christian life and bring in the scripture to that and that's what our time together usually is. It is not always easy. We have many scheduling issues now that they are grown with their job schedules and school schedules and everything else, but those times are awesome. I do not care what age your child is. Reading aloud together, whether they are reading aloud to you or you are reading aloud to them is a precious time and cherishes it as much as you can. So sometimes when we are reading together, it is a performance and sometimes it is a co-constructive Story time with education and critical thinking. Also, maybe we have them acknowledge the foreshadowing by having them try to guess what comes next.

However, it is that we read a book together. We want it to be an experience. In addition, Gladys Hunt says in Honey for a Child's Heart, a good book is a magic gateway into a wider world of wonder, beauty, delight, and adventure. Books are experiences that make us grow. That adds something to our inner stature. She also says I am frankly excited by the potential of books to build a completely healthy, spiritually alert child who can enjoy all the possibilities of life. The book Honey for a Child's Heart gives the parents so many ideas for books from a child's early years to books to read, as they grow older. It is an excellent read and an excellent resource. Hunt shares such wisdom and gives information for exploring both sides of some controversial books and the different ones. Some people may say, do not read them as a Christian and others may say, oh, you should read them.

She gives you information from both sides. Therefore, I love that. Her book has, as I said, so much wisdom in it. It talks about how parents give their children milk and honey. Milk is the nurturing. That is the food, the clothing, the house, the necessities of life. However, honey is what we give them when we help them to learn, to experience life, to embrace life, to find joy in life. Therefore, when we read to our children, that's part of the honey part of life and I love that. Then Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook is on its eighth edition. It is a must-have for anyone wanting to look into reading aloud and how to do it right. Nevertheless, it also offers ideas for your children, as they grow older, this handbook outlines all kinds of it is a book's divided by the age, the appropriate time for the book.

Moreover, I love that Trelease emphasizes that everyone should read aloud to someone just like I was saying with my grown kids. He mentions that when he was growing up, he read to his parents, his pets, and his toys. Therefore, aunts, uncles, and friends can read aloud to our kids and our kids can read aloud to them. We can go to the library for story time, no matter who is reading aloud, and who is listening, it should always be an experience filled with joy and wonder and fun and something to be remembered. Trelease also writes whenever I am asked, why I should read aloud to my child or my students, regardless of the child's age, it provides me with an opportunity to share why reading aloud is so important for both reader and listener. The educational values of reading aloud are well-documented introducing vocabulary, modeling, and fluency, demonstrating expressive reading, developing comprehension, and assisting children and making connections.

There is also the personal value of listening to a book read aloud. That experience may generate vivid memories of a story associated with a person's time or place a memory often remaining with us for years. He also includes great research in his book that shows the undeniable value of reading aloud to our children. He adds we read to children for all the same reasons we talk with them to reassure, to entertain, to bond, to inform or explain to arouse curiosity and to inspire. However, in reading aloud, we also build vocabulary, condition the child's brain to associate reading with pleasure, create background knowledge, provide a reading role model, and instill the desire to read. Therefore, this book is so full of information for the parent and teachers. I highly recommend it. Then the fourth book I want to recommend today is The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids by Sarah McKenzie.

Moreover, it is more of a discussion about the importance of reading to our children. She includes research and lots of excellent information. She has a podcast also called Read-Aloud Revival and focuses on homeschoolers. Nevertheless, the podcast suggests quite a few books each time. It is an excellent podcast. I suggest checking it out. It is really good. It is a little longer than mine is. It is usually about 40 minutes long instead of 20, but it is a really good podcast that has been going on for quite a number of years. The Read-Aloud Family is also written from a Christian worldview. One of my favorite quotes from the book is happily ever after is hardly a myth for those who believe in the promise of eternal joy in heaven. Do you not love that? Is that not great? McKenzie also writes. If we tell them enough stories, they will have encountered hard questions and practiced living through so many trials, hardships, and unexpected situations that God willing. They will have what they need to become the heroes of their own stories.

She quotes Katherine Paterson. Katherine Paterson said the story has been the vehicle for truth for as long as the human race can remember. Moreover, it is a wonderful way to deliver truth by telling stories. When reading her book, I have trouble not highlighting the whole thing. There is so much information in there. That is just wonderful. It is such a good book about why reading to our kids is one of the most important things we can do to build a relationship with our kids. I will leave you with one final quote from McKenzie's book; reading aloud with our kids is indeed the best use of our time and energy as parents. It is more important than just about anything else we can do. I hope these facts and books encourage you as a parent and encourage you to take the time to read to and with your child. It is important and it is a gift you give them that they will never forget.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this lesson. If you would like to learn more about, parental guidance requested workshops for your church or school check it out on my website at terriehellardbrown.com for more information.

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Terrie Hellard-Brown writes and speaks to help children and adults find God's purpose and plan for their lives. She teaches workshops and writes devotional books, children's stories, and Christian education materials. Her podcast, Books that Spark, reviews children's books that spark imagination, emotion, and discussion. For more information, visit her website at terriehellardbrown.com