Works for Me Wednesday

My What Works for Me: That'll Teach Them is a little late. It's only Friday, after all!

I stumbled across a wonderful way to "remind" the kids that things like teasing are not acceptable. It's push-ups. Whenever the kids don't pay attention or something else in taekwondo, they do push-ups. So I'm copying. The boys have to do push-ups whenever they tease (a big problem in our home lately!) I'm not sure it's achieving the desired end as quickly as I had hoped, but I think it's working.

A nice side benefit for them is that they are building up their strength. They can do a lot more push ups than they used to do. (I am increasing how many push-ups they have to do for each infraction. Ten push-ups don't faze them anymore.) If they argue, we tag on 10 more each time they resist. Today, "Dragon" raised his by arguing to 50 and then finally realized it would be to his benefit to get it done! Smart boy! "Monkey" doesn't have to do push-ups nearly as often anymore, and he never argues about it.

Rachel & Leah, again

After I finished the book by Orson Scott Card (below), I went back to the book of Genesis in the Old Testament and reread the portion about Rachel and Leah. Can I just say that a lot of literary license was taken? Especially since not much is said about their handmaids in the scriptures, but the book fully develops their characters as well! Made sense for an author to do it, and he did it very well, but it did make me chuckle. Card certainly wasn't tied down to any scriptural requirements with them!

Another book will be coming soon. I've almost finished The Birth Order Book, by Dr. Kevin Leman and another one will be done in the next week called If You Want to be Rich & Happy, Don't Go to School, by Robert T. Kiyosaki. (Of course I like the title of that one! I homeschool!!!)

I didn't know this was the 6th in the series!

I just finished the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia, titled The Magician's Nephew, by C. S. Lewis. From Wikipedia, I learned that it was actually the 6th book written. By its "internal chronology", it is first. I totally enjoyed it. It set up The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe wonderfully and answered some questions I had while reading The Lion. . . .

The book raised another question though, like "What happened to the tree?" You'll have to read it to find out what tree! The answer is probably already there though. It is intimated that it will only last for a few hundred years to protect Narnia from evil. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe doesn't happen until quite a long time after The Magician's Nephew takes place.

More importantly, I discovered how to entice my sons into reading it. I put it on the coffee table after finishing it, exclaiming over it, and Dragon promptly picked it up. I think that book will stay very much in sight! Once he's done with it, I have no doubt my other son will be interested in it too. Right now, he is engrossed in the Tennis Shoes series.

P.S. I'm up to 36 books so far this year! Woot!