The Warren & the World Vol 5, Issue 12

The Warren & the World is Story Warren’s weekly newsletter, providing a round-up of our favorite things from around the web as well as a review of what was on our site over the past week. We’re glad you’re here!

Around the Web

Series Books that Will Turn Your Struggling Reader into a Voracious Reader

Sarah Mackenzie has some great book recommendations for us.

Not all of our kids become voracious readers on their own. In fact, if your child is a struggling reader who hasn’t yet gained fluency, reading is likely far down the list of things he’d like to do with his free time.
We have to remember that those early days of learning to read are difficult. Reading still isn’t easy or enjoyable for a child who has to sound out every third or fourth word, so it’s no wonder they don’t love it.

A Toddler Needs Boundaries – No Walk in the Park

Janet Lansbury explores the value of boundaries for young children.

When an infant approaches the end of his first year, parents begin to struggle with boundaries. Soft-hearted parents allow a child to climb all over them in my parent/infant class. The child is searching for limits and boundaries for his behavior. But moms and dads are often afraid to say, “I don’t want you to climb on me. You can sit with me. If you need to climb, there is a climbing structure over there.”
The sooner a caregiver can establish those limits, the easier it will be for the child to relinquish ‘testing’ and return to playing. Parents sometimes fear they will crush a child’s spirit if they are firm and consistent about rules. Truthfully, it is the other way around. A child does not feel free unless boundaries are clearly established.

Why Social Media is NOT Smart for Middle School Kids

We know the kids in your families range in age, so from the very small, we now head up a few years to the tweens–Victoria Dunkley looks at what happens in a tween’s brain with social media.

I really love middle school kids. I have two of them! If you have been through middle-school parenting, you many have noticed what I see. Crazy things seem to happen to a tween’s brain the first day they walk into middle school.

Tim Keller on Why You Should Catechize Your Children

The Gospel Coalition has a video of Tim Keller discussing the value of catechism with your children today.

“Just like early Protestants, we have every incentive to catechize our children today.”
Tim Keller—senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and TGC vice president—discusses in this new video why Christians should catechize our children in the 21st century.

Around the Warren

Whatever is Pure and Lovely

Théa Rosenburg examines the need to not only banish our worries, but to turn our minds to the pure and lovely.

At 9:30, my daughter comes downstairs—she can’t sleep. She’ll be seven next month and the world is expanding around her, I can see it. She’s more aware of other people now, more aware of adult conversation, more aware, in this instance, of volcanoes.
“Volcanoes?” I repeat, settling down next to her on the couch. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’m just worried about them. I read about them in class today and I . . . “. I know that she sees it clearly, whatever she read that day, as real to her as I am. A definite fear shapes the set of her mouth and she gives into it for a moment before drawing away and finishing lamely, “I’m just worried about them.”

Glow Has Moments of Brilliance

Loren Eaton reviews John Palmer Gregg’s new YA novel, Glow.

Evangelicals like to say they love the Inklings, that group of Oxford-associated authors who produced lots of narrative-friendly prose during the 1940s. But do something for me, would you? Name as many of them as you can. I suspect that most can readily recall C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and probably a few will cite G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers (even though those two were only loosely associated). Hardly anyone, though, knows much about Owen Barfield and Hugo Dyson, Robert Havard and Adam Fox, all far more regular members of the group. And then there’s Charles Williams, the Inkling who played William Blake to Lewis’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In other words, he was … a bit different.

Little Orpheus

Once in a while we have the chance to share an original Story Warren short. This week, it’s Isabel Chenot’s “Little Orpheus,” accompanied by Jamin Still’s illustration–including a download of the painting as a free wallpaper.

All that his unquelled grief bestowed,
and love, that doubles grief
-Boethius
In a tower, in a village, in a kingdom by the sea, was a lyre unlike any other.

Something to Do with Your Kids

Sometimes family night needs a little spicing up. This list of 50 family night ideas that will make your kids forget about the TV might be a good place to start.

And Something to Watch

The Global Space Education Foundation has a project called Story Time from Space, which is exactly what it sounds like–astronauts reading stories! In this case, it’s Kate Rubins reading the picture book Rosie Revere, Engineer.