Train up a Child Publishing LLC

07/11/2024

What a great reminder!

08/09/2024

Yes!

08/09/2024

23/08/2024

Movement is such a helpful aid to learning retention!

A few ways to help kids remember sight words for reading...https://ilslearningcorner.com/2017-05-sight-words-how-to-anchor-sight-word-retention-with-movement-and-sensory-activities/

13/08/2024

Has your family read the Green Ember series? The best!

13/08/2024

What a mighty God we serve!

The Paris Olympics ended two days ago, and one wonders what happens as the athletes return home to their normal lives. Perhaps on tracks and fields, on courts, and in pools, bonds of a lifetime have formed…

The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were meant to showcase A***n superiority to the world, but the German planners had not anticipated one Jesse Owens, a young African American man from Oakville, Alabama. He brilliantly won four gold medals in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter, 4 X 100-meter relay, and the long jump.

Jesse’s closest competitor in the long jump was Luz Long, a young German, who would win the silver medal. He was the first to congratulate Jesse and walked around the stadium, arm-in-arm with him. Speaking of those moments, Owens wrote, “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have, and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hi**er must have gone crazy watching us embrace.”

These two young men were immortalized in the award ceremony photograph that day, one saluting the American flag, and the other raising the familiar Heil Hi**er. Ironically, however, Jesse Owens and Luz Long, so close physically on that podium and so far apart ideologically, would remain friends, writing letters to one another for the next seven years. The letters ended in 1943, when Luz, by then a German soldier, was killed in the Battle of St. Pietro. His last letter to Jesse reportedly reads as follows:

“I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse, I fear for my woman who is home, and my young son Karl, who has never really known his father.

My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war is done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we were not separated by war.

I am saying – tell him how things can
be between men on this earth. If you do this something for me, this thing that I need the most to know will be done, I do something for you, now. I tell you something I know you want to hear. And it is true.

That hour in Berlin when I first spoke to you, when you had your knee upon the ground, I knew that you were in prayer. Then I not know how I know. Now I do. I know it is never by chance that we come together. I come to you that hour in 1936 for purpose more than der Berliner Olympiade. And you, I believe, will read this letter, while it should not be possible to reach you ever, for purpose more even than our friendship.

I believe this shall come about because I think now that God will make it come about. This is what I have to tell you, Jesse. I think I might believe in God. And I pray to him that, even while it should not be possible for this to reach you ever, these words I write will still be read by you.
Your brother, Luz”

More than 30 years later, an elderly Jesse Owens fulfilled his friend’s dying wish. He traveled to Germany to sit with Karl Luz and talk of the dad he never knew, of those glory days in 1936, and of an eternal bond formed by two young gifted athletes in the midst of hatred and division.

12/08/2024

Ask your children after each day's read-aloud, ask questions like:
--Describe your favorite character and explain why he or she is your favorite.
--What hard choices do the characters have to make? What would you do?
--Describe how do the people in the story act toward each other?
--Who is your favorite character in the story and why?
--Who is your least favorite character in the story and why?

You can also use these questions as writing prompts!

10/08/2024

Gifting your children with a love of reading is a gift that keeps on giving throughout your kids' lives. Make sure to read to your children daily and start early. As your children grow to be more seasoned readers, include a variety of genres, including the ones below. I forgot to add fables and fairy tales to the list!