kids

Book Club: “The Lemonade War” Boys vs. Girls

May 13, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

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This month we broke all the book club rules and declared war: The Lemonade War (The Lemonade War Series)“>The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies, in which a brother and sister make a bet about who can earn the most money by holding lemonade stands during a five-day period. We took up the challenge.

The girls went first. They met in the morning to plan the details of their stand, including choosing a charity to which they could donate their profits. The girls chose St. Jude’s Research Hospital. They made posters, detailed plans for added value, good customer service, and how to make change. After that they ate a picnic lunch and packed up their gear.

We set up their stand at the local Tractor Supply store, where the generous manager had given permission for us to work outside. The girls stored their money in a toy cash register and traded jobs to experience all aspects of lemonade stand business.

The boys met this week. They followed the same routine as the girls, choosing Samaritan’s Purse/Nepal Earthquake Victims as their charity. The boys determined to raise more money than the girls – and just like in the book, the girls refused to divulge how much money they had.

The biggest difference between the two stands was the way that they handled themselves onsite. The girls were fairly reserved, while the boys were outgoing.

They even made posterboards and danced down the sidewalk with them.

In the end, the groups made more than $160 total for their charities – and I think they’ve learned a little bit about business and marketing, too.

Has your child ever run a lemonade stand?

For more business ideas, check out these great resources:

Fisher Bear Birthday Cake

May 5, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

My Little Man turned eight a few weeks ago. I’m still in shock over the whole thing, I think. Where did my baby go?

He’s not the slightest bit interested in anything sentimental about birthdays, though – he’s too excited about the birthday fun! Part of that is choosing a birthday cake.

Now, I *tried* as a young 4-Her to learn something about cake decorating, but one season of washing icing-covered beaters cured me of that dream quickly. I wish now that I had stuck with it, but ….so it goes. The kids don’t seem to my mind my lack of skill and just have fun laughing at the zany cakes we come up with.

After several years of choosing simple, easy cakes, this year My Little Man asked for a gummy bear fishing off of a dock in a lake. He wanted a basket of fish, too.

Seriously?

The best part of these wacky cakes is breaking out the candy and trying to fit things together.

We started with a simple sheet cake and covered it in blue and green icing. (My mom’s the expert birthday icing maker. I always mess it up somehow.) I bought generic icing/glue-in-a-can to hold pretzel logs together and carefully stacked a ‘dock.’ I found large cinnamon gummy bears at Target, and after tying some thread around a toothpick, I stabbed it in the general vicinity of his hand. The bottom of an ice cream cone became an out-of-proportionate fish basket, and Swedish fish were tossed in the basket and carefully poked out of the lake.

After all of that candy slicing and dicing, the cake still looked mournfully bare, so we went back to work. Some fruit leather became simple tent with gummies sleeping inside. Chocolate-covered raisins made a campfire ring, with more fruit leather for flames. Another cone covered in icing and rolled in green sanding sugar became a pine tree.

In no way is this any sort of expert cake – in fact, it’s so far from that that it’s laughable. What it is, though, is memorable – and fun. Our kids love dreaming up these crazy birthday cakes, and they get a kick out of seeing their plans turned into sugar and bright colors. I’m definitely no food artist, and by cake decorating time the birthday celebration has me lacking a LOT of sleep, but somehow that makes this creative process even more fun. I’m not good at it, but the kids think I am; they dream and I build and every year we reminisce of cakes gone by.

Remember the crab cake? His legs were so good!

Remember how Papa ran to the store just before it closed because the castle cake fell apart and we had to start all over – at midnight? Remember how hard we prayed that it would stay together until the party – and even though one tower slid, you never noticed?

Remember the gummies zip-lining across your cake the year that you first went to camp?

Any cake artist – probably anybody – could make a more professional and nicer looking cake. It’s definitely not my forte; but no fancy cake could give us the memories and the laughter and the fun that we’re storing away by stretching ourselves and doing it together.

So your kid wants a ____ cake? Break out the Gummies, the food coloring, the toothpicks and the candy stash. You’ve got this.

What are your family’s special birthday traditions?

Book Club, Boys’ Edition: “Callie’s Contest of Courage”

March 20, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

You know a kid likes something when he asks for more of it.

That’s how this month’s book club came about. My Little Man watched the girls have fun with Callie’s Contest of Courage (2)“>Callie’s Contest of Courage works well for boys. Callie may be a girl, but with a brother, boy cousins, and a good male friend in the picture, there are lots of male influences. With a dad serving in the military and a love of animals and adventure, Callie is a great character for any child to read.

Since My Little Man was so determined to do the same activities as the girls, we did – but with some important boy-friendly modifications. You can read about the girls’ event here and see which set might work best for you!

After summarizing and discussing the book, we talked about some basic photography techniques, like the Rule of Thirds and Perspective.

Then we set out to take some photos. The boys brought digital cameras along, and they were eager to find and capture their assignment: signs of spring. Since it was a warm and beautiful, sunny day, I thought they’d find many things to take pictures of, and they sure did!

Isn’t this cardinal feather beautiful?

They were especially fascinated by these frogs in the pond. There were at least three frogs, and maybe a snake. Whatever else it was, something had the frogs all worked up, and there was a lot of writhing and thrashing in the water. We stopped, watched, and took pictures for a long time!

Next we returned home for our pie-eating contest! The boys were all wound up about this and couldn’t wait to dig in. Although the girls chowed down in the kitchen, we decided to move this potential mess outside -and I was glad that I did!

I think My Little Man enjoyed wearing his pie more than eating it.

I think Check out these resources to get in the Callie mood!

Book Club, Boys’ Edition: “The 100 Year-Old Secret” by Tracy Barrett

February 25, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

This month our boys’ book club read the same one as the girls: The 100 Year-Old Secret” by Tracy Barrett. That doesn’t mean that this club meeting was a duplicate of the other, though.

In fact, this is about as close as we’ve ever come to doing the same thing, and yet the way that we did it was quite different.

We started out by discussing the book – by summarizing it and comparing the characters’ actions to how we thought we might handle the situation.

Then I sent the boys outside to find things in nature with texture – that were dead.

They totally loved that assignment.

The boys couldn’t focus on their texture assignment until they darted off some energy, and they did that speedily – all over my yard. They ran everywhere. I’m sure that nobody would ever have guessed that it had rained for several days prior!

Eventually they got back to it, and then they found all sorts of things – dried grasses, sweet gum balls, dead leaves, stems, sticks, etc., and happily carried them into my house.

There I added to their collections with dried pasta and string. We gave them plates of glue and wide picture frames and told them to create textured, sculpted, artistic frames like the one that the famous painting was hung in in Barrett’s story. They got really into it.

As they finished, I took their frames outside and spray-painted them metallic gold. The boys loved that paint – and the fact that it turned my grass gold, too.

Then we talked about facial proportion – about how the tops of your eyes line up with the tops of your ears, etc., and I sent them off to make portraits of each other. The boys did surprisingly well – they got really into it and did some great work. I was very impressed! They drew with pencils and shaded and sketched for quite a while.

When they were finished, they snacked on ‘biscuits,’ English-style, before dashing back outside.

The boys moved at the speed of light, but they had some great thoughts about this story, and I couldn’t believe how detailed and careful their artwork was. They really took their time and put some effort into it. Maybe one of their portraits will be in a fancy frame someday!

What are your kids reading now?

Xena and Xander Holmes have just discovered they’re related to Sherlock Holmes and have inherited his unsolved casebook! The siblings set out to solve the cases their famous ancestor couldn’t, starting with the mystery of a prized painting that vanished more than a hundred years ago. Can two smart twenty-first-century kids succeed where Sherlock Holmes could not?

Modern technology meets the classic detective story in this terrific new mystery series that will intrigue young sleuths everywhere!

10 Ways to Learn {Without a Textbook}

February 20, 2015 by Amy 1 Comment

When I was a kid we had a textbook for everything. Grammar, reading, math, science, etc., even in first grade.

But when I taught in our local schools, we had only a math book and a curriculum. I was on my own to teach everything else – and that’s when I realized just how many fun ways there are to learn the simplest information.

My absolute favorites, though, are when you leave the classroom – or the dining room table – behind and go out into the ‘real world’ to get your hands into the subject matter. Fortunately, there are many places that are welcoming to homeschoolers – and to children in general – and will go above and beyond to share with them.

**While I do love all of these options, we enrich as many of them as possible with books. Not textbooks, but storybooks. Non-fiction books. Also documentaries, Youtube videos, websites, and the like, mostly because these amazing community members get the kids so fired up that they can’t wait to find out more.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Classes offered by special-interest clubs, extension services, and community organizations. My Big Helper is taking a beekeeping class right now, and it’s intense! She’s learning a great deal about honeybees and their care, as well as the environment. With a college lecture-style format, she’s been busy taking and reviewing her notes, researching related topics online, and preparing to receive her bees. It’s been a fantastic opportunity – and not one that could be simulated with a textbook.
Library programs. Libraries often offer really neat classes, and they bring in cool experts. Check out what your library has to offer, and don’t be afraid to make suggestions.
Restaurant owners. Many restaurant owners, especially those of smaller, local businesses, are happy to share their expertise with you. It may mean coming in at an odd hour to suit their schedule, but the wealth of information they have to share is well worth it.
Small business owners. These people have a vested interest in the community and in your children. They want them to succeed and do well, and they want you to have a good opinion of their product. Most are happy for the chance to tell you exactly what makes their product or services so special, and in the process, your child can learn about research, development, marketing, and the work ethic behind running your own business.
Museums. Many museums run special programs just for kids, and these often allow them to get their hands dirty, so to speak.
Historical sites. This is one of my favorites. Historians love their craft and usually love to share it. They’ve got all the awesome info about how people used to live – all the nitty-gritty details that make history so exciting – and aren’t usually found in textbooks. They can give you the skinny on what mealtime might’ve smelled like when nobody had showered for 10 months and deodorant wasn’t invented yet. They can teach you to make brooms and candles and milk a cow. Fun stuff!
Sporting arenas. You might think that a baseball game is just that, but sports are big business, and it takes a lot of people – and a lot of work – to pull off these big events. Touring these spaces and speaking with representatives can teach you about the business behind what you might see on TV – and sometimes they have curriculum information to share, as well.
Authors, artists, and other experts. These people are professionals, and they know about a specific thing that many others don’t. Having them share is invaluable and inspiring.
Parks. Local, state, and national parks offer some really great programs. There is one near us that has orienteering classes each summer, as well as survival, wildlife identification, canoeing, and crafting classes each summer, and for a very nominal fee. Check around and see what might be offered in your own area. *I also read this morning that President Obama is giving all fourth-graders a free pass to all of our national parks for the next school year! Be sure to check that out in the coming months – it’s not quite live yet.
What would you add?

For more ideas, check out the Creative Learning tab above.

Bible Journaling with Kids: Going Deeper

February 17, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

Last week we talked about Getting Started with Bible Journaling with Kids. If this is something you’re considering, you may want to go back and read that post.

But looking forward, after you have some supplies in place, what do you do?

I think this can go one of two ways.

First, you could let your child go it alone. Let him/her see you reading and studying your Bible and branching out artistically from that time, but don’t do anything else. Let your example lead.

That has worked for us in multiple things, including creating a desire to read the Bible originally. Both of my kids wanted their own Bibles to read at young ages because they saw me reading mine.

If you have especially young children, this free rein approach could be great for encouraging art exploration and Bible expression.

If your child is old enough to learn how to study the Bible independently, however, a specific, joint journaling time could have the added benefit of teaching ways to study scripture.

There are great curriculums out there for this, as well as neat methods like SOAP and such; but here are some simple ideas that you can do with ordinary stuff to dig into scripture deeper – and enhance that Bible journaling experience:

Journal a story or series. Not sure what to study? Use stories of Bible heroes or major Biblical events, like the creation story or the story of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt. Plan to journal only a few verses at a time, and use some of the following ideas to take your journaling experience deeper.
Use a dictionary. Look up the definitions of words that seem important or that are standing out to you. Be sure to ask your child which word(s) that is for him/her. Discuss these words together. Put the definition of the word into the verse for clarification.
Map it. Most Bibles have historical maps in the back. Trace traveling routes on the maps. Figure out the distances traveled, length of time on the road, and maybe even research climate conditions. Would this have been a winter journal or a summer one? Hot or cold? Was it a safe one?
Read the footnotes. Study Bibles have all sorts of information at the bottom of the page. Read the notes out loud to your kids. Talk about what that additional information means. Often it can help put the scripture into the appropriate cultural and historical context.
Use the concordance. If your Bible has additional verses listed, look’em up. I recently had a great conversation with a group of kids about the ‘underwear of truth’ while we were learning about the ‘belt of truth’ discussed in Ephesians 6. You never know where it will lead you!
Use all your senses. Think about what it must have felt, looked, tasted, smelled, or sounded like. Remember that this was before running water, flush toilets, deodorant, or vaccinations! It might seem silly, but I’m betting that life had an earthier quality to it than most of us Americans can imagine, and thinking in those terms might help us see the scene more vividly.
Ask questions. Many Bible stories have elements that seem outlandish to me. Why was a plague of frogs thought to be so bad? Was Eve surprised when the serpent started talking? What would I have said if some angel popped out of nowhere and told me I was going to have a miracle baby? What would I have done if….? Encourage your child to ask questions, because their natural curiosity is in there churning them up. Then take them a step further: what can I do about it NOW? How can I help people shocked by disease? What can I do for that new mother at church? The Bible isn’t a dusty book whose only inspirational actions are past; it’s now. Allow those questions to spark discussions and journal pages about how to react to scripture and real life situations now – and then go and do.

Bible journaling is a fun and creative practice, but in the end it’s not about the art – it’s about the Bible and the One who inspired it.

What are your favorite ways to interact with scripture with your kids?

Do Ministry Leaders’ Kids Get Special Privileges?

February 13, 2015 by Amy 1 Comment

I co-lead a children’s program at church with a friend. We plan and lead events for the elementary children of the church, including opportunities for the kids to serve the community, invite people in, and do mission projects. Recently that friend received a complaint because another adult in the church saw one of our younger children accompanying us during a regular program night. She was upset because her too-young child couldn’t come to the event and was angry because another was there.

Basically, she was saying that the kids of the ministry’s leaders – our kids – were getting special privileges.

Is she right?

I can’t speak for my friend, but do my kids get special privileges at church because I help lead their youth group?

YES. THEY DO.

What are those privileges?

I can’t speak for other ministry leaders’ kids, and I can’t imagine what PK’s lives must be, but here are some ‘advantages’ my kids get because I volunteer at church:

They get to come to most events several hours early. No, there’s nobody at church to play with, and they’re not at home with their toys, and it’s often too cold to be outside, so they pack books or puzzles and hang out, when they don’t have to…
Help me move furniture. Somebody has to get equipment and materials set up, so that’s us. If I did it by myself, we’d have to come even earlier, so they help. They’ve become expert table- and chair-movers. They know where everything goes, including traffic ones.
They place and put away traffic cones. Because the parking lot is between the playground and the church, block off part of it with traffic cones for the kids’ safety, and that job usually falls to my kids.
They eat a packed dinner at church, alone, before the event starts. There’s no time to eat as a family when we have to be at the church to set up before the DH even gets off from work, so the kids get a packed dinner and they eat in the kitchen while I get materials ready. Usually this involves frozen burritos that I make in big batches ahead of time or sandwiches and fruit. There’s nothing wrong with it, and it’s a healthy meal, but I feel guilty leaving them to eat alone before each event.
They get assigned special jobs at most events. Church leaders always need greeters and door holders, and since my kids are always the first ones there, they usually get one of those jobs handed to them.
They (sometimes) know in advance what’s happening – and so the surprise is gone. Sure, they get ‘inside info,’ but they also don’t get the big surprise reveal that the other kids get.
Clean up afterwards. It’s not enough to set up, but we have to put everything away, too. That might include washing tables and chairs, moving furniture back, or running the sweeper. They help with whatever needs to be done.
They get to go home last. Of course, we can’t leave until everyone has come to pick up their kids, and for other moms and dads that’s a fun and social time. After that, then, we (see above) go to clean up the room, so we often head home about an hour after the event ended. Combine that with coming 1-2 hours early and an event lasting 1-2 hours, and you’re looking at 3-5 hours of being away. No, it’s not horrible, but it means later bedtimes, sleepy kids, and a schedule that must take all of this into account.

Are there real advantages to being the kid of a ministry leader? I hope so. I think that means that our kids know that we’re trying to be obedient to Jesus. That we’re willing to work hard to serve others. That sometimes we do those hard things even when we’re tired or other people aren’t nice. That people are important because Jesus loves them and wants us to love them, too.

In the end, it’s not always easy being the kid of a ministry leader. Please remember that they’re only kids, and in the case of my friend, he was a kid who was trying hard to behave during an activity that was geared for older kids. It wasn’t easy for him, and it’s often hard work.

Those are the privileges my kids get. Would you be jealous?

Book Club, Girls’ Edition: “The 100-Year-Old Secret”

February 11, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

I love book club days, and this group of girls is always fun. This month was no exception as we delved into Edison’s Gold“>Edison’s Gold, which we had a blast working with last summer, but while that book focused heavily on the exciting aspects of history and science, this one centered around art and relationships.

There is lots of meat for discussion with this book. What is theft? Who owns art? Can missing art be recovered after a long period of time? To what lengths is it okay to go to find stolen goods?

After hashing out the answers to those questions, we headed into the kitchen to make a British treat. The book does take place in London, after all, and Zena and Zander often mention their confusion at the differences between American and British food names. We chose to make cinnamon scones, and the girls worked together to prepare the dough and get them oven ready.

While they were baking, we moved on to our next project. Knowing that picture frames were, at some points in history, nearly as much of a work of art as the painting or drawing they contained, we decided to build our own gilded frames, like the ones holding the infamous “Girl with the Purple Hat.” I pre-cut large cardboard frames, leaving wide edges so they could hold lots of texture. I put ditalini, spaghetti noodles, and old yarn on the table, as well as dishes of Elmer’s glue. The kids dipped these objects into the glue and then positioned them on the frames in patterns to create different textures. When they were finished, I spray-painted them to achieve a solid color frame with a ‘carved’ look.

When their frames were gilded, the girls moved onto portrait work. We talked about proportion and scale in faces and body figures, and then the girls chose a friend to paint. We set up easels with big paper and palettes of paint, and after sketching out their people with some light-colored chalk, they set to work.

After creating some super colorful portraits, we headed back into the kitchen to eat our scones. They were a hit – just like this book.

What are your kids reading now?

Bible Journaling with Kids: Getting Started

February 10, 2015 by Amy 2 Comments

For a long, long time I’ve gotten pictures in my head when I read. I see scenes, characters, clothes, or whatever’s being described well – so when my dad took me to Bible study as a kid, one of the first pictures I ‘saw’ was of Pharaoh with a frog happily perched atop his head. For the past year or so, I’ve been drawing out those pictures. Sometimes it’s a complete picture, like the froggy and the Pharaoh, but more often than not it’s a mixture of words, colors, and letters. It’s enough to give me something creative to do with my hands while I ponder the scripture and pray through it. The kids have been watching this process, and now they’re interested in Bible journaling, too. We’ve done several things with it: we’ve talked about how to draw and highlight scripture in their Bibles so that they can interact with it while still keeping the text legible. We’ve also purchased simple sketchbooks so that they can make separate pieces of art in there. At first, we journaled together. We began during Advent and journaled our way through the Christmas story. After reading the scripture for the day, we read the notes in my study Bible, talked about what specific words meant, about relevant customs of the day, or anything else that popped up. Then we broke out our supplies and got to work. We still journal in this way at least once each week. We really enjoy the time spent together in scripture, and the artistic endeavor is relaxing. While we don’t stress about the ‘professionalism’ of the finished product, it is fun to pull out all sorts of art supplies and get colorful. Sometimes it’s all about the background, others it’s the lettering or a picture, but always it’s about the Bible. So what do we use? You don’t need anything special. You probably already have art supplies around the house that will do really cool things. It is fun, though, to have materials that do new-to-you, special, or unusual things. With that in mind, these are our very favorite supplies to share among us – and why. These simple Crayola Twistable Crayons – not the pencils – are hands-down my favorite new thing. I wish I had known about these years ago. They’re perfect for adults AND for kids for several reasons: they apply very smoothly to the paper. That makes them easy to blend to achieve a variety of shades easily. More importantly, though, you can get great color on the paper and still read the text behind it. That makes these Twistables perfect for drawing or highlighting in your Bible. You can sketch in a picture and still be able to read the scripture that inspired the art. Colored pencils are a basic thing, but you can do great things with them. My favorite is to color in words that I’ve bubbled or to add shadows or highlights to words. They’re not too expensive, easy to erase, and easy to sharpen. Now, to get a little fancier … I’ve always thought of Sharpies as indelible – and they might be, on your clothing or on plastic, but most Sharpies are not waterproof. This kind, though, IS. That means that you can use it to outline a drawing, do some creative lettering, and also use in the same piece of art …. Waterpaint. Waterpaints in the little tubes are a blast to use because you can control the shading and the amount of pigment much more easily than you can the little cakes of color in the plastic trays. Those will certainly work; but if you’re going to splurge on supplies, the tubes are very fun and they make kids feel as if their artwork and their thoughts are extra important. Gellyroll Glaze pens are new to use, but we’re having a lot of fun exploring with them. You can use these special, sparkly pens by themselves and enjoy the ink colors, or you can use them (again with the waterpaints) to make a resist. Basically, you write or draw whatever you want, and when it’s dry, you paint right over top of the whole thing. The glaze ink pushes the water out of the way, making the ink stand out. My kids consider this to be almost a ‘secret message’ kind of ink, and they love using it in their Bible art. (If you’re going to do resists, then white is the most fun color to have.) We keep all of these special supplies in a basket with our Bible and journals, so that we can easily grab it and get to work. Do you journal scripture with your kids? Want more? Hop over here to find Six Ways to Turn Scripture into Art. Shared at:

Bible Journaling with Kids: Getting Started @ A Nest in the Rocks

Why My Kids Read Books About Liars

February 3, 2015 by Amy 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, as I was discussing a book with a group of kids at book club, one older child pointed out something with concern. The kids in the book were liars – and they lied not once, but repeatedly throughout the book. Although the story was fun and exciting, why did I choose a book where the main character was such a poor role model?

This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question, and I doubt it will be the last. And, yes – I am very picky about what my kids read. We shoot for a variety of literature styles, and we prefer to read books of quality, but I recommended this book to my children, and I would do it again.

Why?

Several reasons:

We are not perfect. Nobody is. Reading books about characters who are perfect and have no character flaws can create harmful comparisons in our children’s minds. I don’t want them to assume that they need to be perfect like Suzy from the last book that they read. On the other hand, neither do I want them to read about people who carelessly and selfishly live only for themselves. We search for books in which the reader will learn something: culture from the setting, spiritual or emotional lessons from the character’s growth. If the character’s major flaw is the problem in the story, we discuss why it is a problem. We discuss how that person grew from the experiences in the book and which choices s/he could have made differently and why. If the main character is a liar, as in this book, then we talk about why that person lied and what the better decision would have been, as well as what the Bible has to say about honesty and truth.
The lie fit the book. The book in question was a modern fantasy. The plot is a bit outlandish because it’s meant to teach, not to be a realistic, contemporary emotional work. Because it was fantasy, the children found themselves in a completely un-realistic situation. They distance-traveled magically to another place. They lied to avoid detection and to blend in to their surroundings, which allows the plot to advance and the reader to continue to learn about the culture of that city. If the children had not lied, the police would have been called, the children discredited, and the story would’ve been over. The author had to allow the children to lie about their situation for the magical fantasy to continue. Will our children begin to lie because this character did? Since their pizza dinner won’t magically circumvent the space-time continuum and transport them to Italy, I don’t think so. In our club meeting, we discussed this, and so this lie not only moved the story along, but helped to teach our children about plot structure and writing strategies. Win-win.
The lie was not central to the story. In many chapter books for very young readers, they assume things. Like that people can fly or that putting on a cape makes you invisible. They assume that it’s normal for a moose to come to school or for dogs to grow bigger than houses. Small children don’t question these things, but see them only as fun. In the book in question, the same scenario was happening: the lie was only a small detail in a story that assumed that certain foods allowed you to travel the world magically. The lie confirmed the assumption that the scenario was magical and allowed the plot to continue.
Flawed characters teach us to evaluate people. From reading about these problematic people, we learn about how to look below the surface in the actions of the people around us. We learn look for their motives, for ways that we can be compassionate, for ways that we can help or ways to stay out of danger. We learn to discern between the good and the bad.
It stretches our imagination. If we only read books about people who were exactly like us, we wouldn’t know much about the world around us – or other people. Jesus didn’t socialize only with believers, but with all kinds of people. Children are still children, and we do need to protect them from negative influences, but I don’t think a lie in a story should automatically move it to the ‘don’t read’ list.
The world isn’t only black and white. Truth is black and white. God is black and white. How we follow those aren’t. My children can read about a lie and then discuss and evaluate it with me. It works for us. Maybe it doesn’t for you. We don’t all have to make the same choices when it comes to books and characters. The world would be pretty boring if we all read only the same few stories.

This book is fantastic. It made our children excited to cook and explore the world. They grew interested in trying new foods and experiment with flavor combinations. They wanted to learn about travel and European landmarks. They haven’t taken up lying.

The following books are all ones with lying characters – and great lessons to teach about survival, family relationships, and world culture. Do you allow your children to read any of these?