TUAR Follow These Links -- Part 1?

(I just noticed that Chari has a list of links in progress in our draft box, so maybe there will be a counterpart to this list today!  But these are some of the posts I read in the last few weeks  that I want to remember.)


Planning

Lesson Plans, Simplified from Jen at As Cozy as Spring.   This card system looks so pretty and elegant.  I love it.

Beyond the Basics: Making the Extras Work in Your Homeschool at Tea-Time with Annie Kate

I need this kind of simplification. 

Also from the same source, Monthly Goals.  

Fun Things

Artful Friday at Campfire and Cleats

I love this idea of reviewing the week's art and music on Fridays.


Birds Nest Cake Tutorial at Afterthoughts

My family doesn't have any spring birthdays, but this would be fun for Eastertide

The Musicology of the Novel
For the writer, but might be interesting way to approach novel study, too.

 
Education




The American Student, at Just Thomism

-Within the educational system, the nature of little boys is met with an urgency, severity and unrelenting violence that rivals any hagiographical story of a desert monk chastising his nature with penance and prayer.

Are the Great Books a Repository of Truth?  (Mortimer Adler quote)

  On all the fundamental subjects and ideas with which the great books deal, some truths will be found in them, but on these very same subjects and ideas, many more errors or falsities will be found there.

Faith

Balaam's Ass and Bodily Mortification at New Theological Movement

Following St. Francis de Sales, I submit that (for the laity) the diligent and cheerful fulfillment of one’s daily duties is worth more than fasting and mortifications. Indeed, a man’s work may profit him far more than any fast. The task of potty-training a toddler is often a greater mortification for a mother of five children than any hair shirt could be. 

From Eight Bad Thoughts to Seven Sins

I didn't agree with everything in this article, especially what I consider a false dichotomy between monastic and Magisterial thought,  but considered it was worth reading for its treatment of acedia, especially in respect to vocation (makes me think of homeschooling burnout!)

The concept of acedia has always been closely linked with that of vocation. Acedia was, and remains, the monk’s most dangerous temptation, as it makes the life he has vowed to undertake seem foolish, if not completely futile. As one scholar has stated, the monk struggling with acedia is “dealing with more than bad moods, psychic fluctuations, or moral defeats.
... Monastic people live with the tension of having to find meaning in a way of life that the world, for all the reverent lip service paid to “holy orders” considers largely anachronistic and useless. Artists can feel a similar disconnect, and many could no doubt identify with a caustic remark attributed to T. S. Eliot, to the effect that when all is said and done, the writer may realize that he has wasted his youth and wrecked his health for nothing.
Acedia has been observed in other areas in which the labor is long and the rewards are slow to appear, if they come at all. An article published in the 1960s, “Scientific Acedia” elaborates on the vice as “an occupational hazard among men of learning that takes the form of a general withdrawal of motivation for research and an increasing alienation from science.” Acedia is a danger to anyone whose work requires great concentration and discipline yet is considered by many to be of little practical value