Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Gentle Learning: Yearly Rhythm

"The rhythm of the liturgical seasons reflects the rhythm of life - with its celebrations of anniversaries and its seasons of quiet growth and maturing." (Catholic Culture)

One of the most enjoyable ways of teaching religion in a Catholic family is to focus on the liturgical year. This provides many natural learning opportunities, allows the building of family memories and traditions, and helps to develop a sense of the sacred within daily life. The liturgical year is at the heart of what I am thinking of as yearly rhythm, though I would also include:

  • A focus on the seasons, with seasonal crafts, books, foods and decorations.
  • Traditional and secular celebrations such as Mothering Sunday and Bonfire Night
  • Jewish festivals (important for us as a Catholic-Jewish family)
The liturgical year is built on a framework of liturgical seasons - Advent reflective and a preparation for the celebration of Christmas, Lent a time of repentance and self-denial before the long, joyful season of Easter (not just one day, but fifty). Ordinary Time in between is punctuated with its own feasts and seasons - saints' days, Feasts of the Lord and of His Mother, reminders of the Church, the Trinity, the Eucharist, the angels, the Communion of Saints. The list goes on and on, and this richness can become a problem for celebrations at home - it is possible to become bogged down in a long list of saints and seasons one would like to celebrate and end up either overloaded or giving up. This is not rhythm!

For the year to have rhythm it takes a realistic approach, not an overambitious one. I have fallen into the trap of swinging between overambition and neglect too many times, and I hope I have now learned my lesson. With beautiful timing - just as I was thinking about this - Meredith of Sweetness and Light wrote about keeping the company of the saints. She gives a list of resources for celebrating the saints, reminds us to start small (that's right ... small, not overambitious!) and lists a series of baby steps to keeping the company of the saints:
  1. Identify Saints to be celebrated for each week and find a reading about them.
  2. Locate a holy card or image, statue of Saint and a candle (or several candles)
  3. Designate a prayer table or area in your home for setting up your display
  4. Plan one activity to start: Mass, cake, tea, craft, special meal or truly, any combination of these, for the Saints, the skies the limit, but remember to start small.
  5. Plan to say a prayer or begin a Novena to the Saint (or Mary) to be celebrated.
These baby steps could be used with any number of children of any age, from toddlers up. In the past I have tended to be quite successful at developing family traditions for the "big" seasons (Advent, Christmas, Lent and, with slightly less success, Easter - maybe I have shot my bolt by the end of Lent?), but have fallen apart in between. Meredith's simple framework will be a great starting point for filling in the gaps.

More on the practical working out of a yearly rhythm to come later.

PS. Credit to Meredith for finding the quote at the beginning of this post.

Monday, October 29, 2007

A Mother's Job

I always enjoy reading Melanie Bettinelli's blog, The Wine-Dark Sea. I find it particularly easy to picture her little daughter Isabella as she is just a couple of weeks older than my Little Cherub, but it is the combination of snippets about Isabella with truly thoughtful posts that mean I am always glad to see The Wine-Dark Sea highlighted on Bloglines.

In a recent post Melanie gets to the heart of a mother's true job ... not just to nurture our children, but to teach them the hope that is in us:

The world is a harsh place. It's a fallen world, a world of sin and thus of suffering. But my primary job as a mother is to teach my children the good news that sin and death have been conquered and human suffering has been redeemed. Although this world is a vale of tears, there is another world that awaits us: heaven. And we can participate in this other world here and now through our love and self-sacrifice and through God's grace in the sacraments, and most especially in the holy sacrifice of the mass which is heaven on earth.

I cannot fully protect Isabella from the harsh realities of living in a world marred by sin. Already I have learned that I cannot shelter her completely from bodily pain, from hunger and tiredness and from fear. But I can teach her love. I can hug her, kiss her, rock her, comfort her when she falls or when she gets a shot. I can teach her about Jesus and help her find hope in the dark times and help her to walk in God's paths so that one day we may both find our true home in the place where there is no pain, no suffering, no sin, only love and peace.
You can read the whole post here.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Gentle Learning: Enjoying Nature

I am not tackling the list from my gentle learning post in order, just going with whatever is uppermost in my mind ... which now happens to be nature, as I have just read the learning out-of-doors section of Charlotte Mason's Home Education.

Charlotte advocates spending as much time out of doors enjoying nature as is practically possible, so that children come to truly know its different aspects. I think in the past I have registered the list of things she recommends should be accomplished and skipped over the fact that these should be only mentioned lightly and occasionally, as a minor part of the time spent outdoors. The heart of her method is experiencing nature so that it becomes a part of the child.

Thinking back to my own childhood I can see just what she means. I grew up experiencing nature. My father was a farmer, so I naturally spent a large amount of time out of doors. There is so much that I knew without ever consciously learning. I knew how wheat grew from watching the first shoots to the ripe crop; I knew the feel of the ears and the taste of the individual grains. I knew a daisy from making daisy chains. I could still describe one from memory in detail - the look and feel of the petals and the stem, the way the stem could be pierced with a fingernail to thread a chain, the flower's evening sleeping habits. I knew hawthorn hedges and blackberry bushes, acorns and conkers, how to suck the nectar out of a dead nettle, and which nettles are dead and which sting. And as an adult I love nature. I am happy to recognise old friends and to make new discoveries. I enjoy keeping a nature notebook and learning more about nature.

Realistically, I can't give my own children the same experience. Spending hours outside just isn't going to happen. I'm too much of a fair weather person, a real limitation given our unpredictable and often damp climate. I also only have the use of the car a couple of days a week. The open spaces within walking distance are few and getting to other places by public transport is time consuming. Our garden is small and limited to grass and a hedge; I have black thumbs, and the few things I do manage to grow, Tevye - who is sometimes overly tidy-minded - digs up.

So how can Little Cherub and I enjoy nature together? How can I help her to experience it, rather than turn it into a lesson, given our limitations? This list of ideas is a beginning, that I hope to expand as time goes on.

  • Regular (weekly?) trips to our local country park, which combines ancient woodland, newer plantations, heathland, pasture, a lake and a pond with nature study area. Aim to stay for two or three hours, not just take a quick stroll round the lake!
  • Visit countryside and parks just to play outdoors - not always be tempted to gravitate to the playground and swing on the swings, or at least to make that only part of a trip out.
  • Start gardening projects and follow them through.
  • Turn my failed rockery into a wildflower garden. (Out of the mouths of babes: "Mummy, why are there a load of rocks dumped at the top of the drive?" "That's my rock garden." "No it's not, it's just an untidy heap of rocks.")
  • Replace my ancient unused bird feeder, and fill it.
  • Encourage Little Cherub to grow things (indoors and out).
  • Keep a seasonal nature table, Waldorf style
  • Modelling - make my own enjoyment of nature obvious; take out my own nature notebook again and work on it regularly.
  • Read picture books with nature themes, both fiction and non-fiction. (Does experiencing nature vicariously through books count? Yes, I think it does so long as it is an extension of real experience, not a replacement for it.)
  • Be aware of opportunities for outside time. For example, allow extra time when walking places so we can stop and smell the roses. Literally.
  • Cultivate "masterly inactivity". Gently pass on occasional nuggets of interesting information, but avoid falling into the mindset of cramming in "education". Smell the roses. Don't analyse them!

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Madame Tussauds

I took Star to London yesterday for a long promised trip to Madame Tussauds. We endured a packed train to get there, but once we arrived she became a pirate ...

And narrowly escaped the Incredible Hulk ...

She led the Tour de France ...

Made a public appearance with George Bush and Tony Blair ...

And even met Pope John Paul II ...

A couple of tips for anyone in the UK thinking of visiting. Using Tesco Clubcard vouchers counts as pre-paid entry and allows you to jump the queue. It also avoids having to pay a ludicrously large entrance fee. At mid-day during half-term the queue is long (they were estimating 2 hours when we arrived). Pushchairs are not allowed, but they will provide a baby carrier for a small deposit. Being practiced ring sling users we were fine and felt rather smug. And if, like me, you are a forty something ... it is all rather different to how it was when we were nine!

Thursday Thirteen #21: Favourite Authors

If I could only take books by thirteen authors to a desert island ... chosen in part for variety and with a leaning to more prolific writers (I wouldn't want to run out of books, now, would I?).

1. J. R. R. Tolkien
2. C. S. Lewis
3. Elizabeth Goudge
4. Peter Kreeft
5. George Weigel
6. Charlotte Mason
7. Winston Churchill
8. Bill Bryson
9. Michael Palin
10. Ellis Peters
11. Geoffrey Trease
12. J. K. Rowling
13. Elinor M. Brent Dyer

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

It's not a Cake Walk ...

... it's a Book Walk!

Cay Gibson at the Cajun Cottage is running a book walk tomorrow (Thursday 25th).

If you would like the chance to win an autographed copy of Cay's new book, Christmas Mosaic, pay a visit to her blog and find out how to play.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Gentle Learning

After reading up on Montessori, making a start on Charlotte Mason's Home Education, and learning a little about Waldorf education and watching the way it is taking shape in the creative hands of the authors of the Serendipity blog, I've come up with this list of things I want Little Cherub's early years to include:

  • gentle, nurturing atmosphere
  • emphasising the rhythm of the year
  • rhythmic days
  • child-led learning
  • picture books
  • fairy tales and imaginative stories
  • enjoying nature
  • lots of art and craft
  • learning about the world and its people
  • avoiding over-stimulation
Over the next few days (or weeks?) I'm planning to write a series of posts expanding on these individually. Please bear with me as I think out loud!

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Baby Sign

I am a convert to signing with babies. To find out why, visit The Lilting House where Lissa sets out the case for learning to sign far better than I could. She also details how their family have gradually immersed themselves sign language, and how it has benefited them all, not just her young son with hearing loss.

I had read enough by Lissa and other baby sign enthusiasts to know that I wanted to try signing with Little Cherub. What I didn't know, was how to tackle it with no experience of using sign language. The first decision to make was what sign language to teach. There were four choices:

  • Baby sign - simple signs developed for use with babies, but not based on the signs used by the deaf community.
  • American Sign Language (ASL) - tempting as there are family friendly resources available for use with young children such as the Signing Time DVDs many homeschoolers enthuse about.
  • British Sign Language (BSL) - the sign language used by the British deaf community, so obviously more appropriate for us than ASL, but with less resources available (or at least, less resources that I knew about!). ASL and BSL are completely different languages.
  • Makaton - a simplified version of BSL widely used with children and adults with language difficulties and learning disabilities. For babies and toddlers Makaton and BSL are very similar.
I opted for BSL, despite the temptation of those ASL resources (would it really matter if we used ASL in our family? would we really use BSL much, if at all, once Little Cherub was older?). Good decision. There is much more signing around than there was when Angel and Star were small, and everything I have seen has been BSL or Makaton. I browsed Amazon, took the plunge and bought a book - Let's Sign Early Years, by Cath Smith and Sandra Teasdale.


This turned out to be a good buy, with clear pictorial representations of the signs most likely to be useful with a toddler or pre-schooler. I can't pretend to have been particularly consistent with signing, but despite my shortcomings we have made some headway and it is definitely helping Little Cherub to communicate - she uses milk, all gone / finished, please and thank you signs consistently, which doesn't seem much. What is noticeable, though, is that although she does not yet speak more than a handful of words she is less frustrated by this than her sisters were at the same age, and she clearly sees her hands as a way of communicating. For example, she uses "all gone" a lot, very expressively and in many different situations - to point out that she has finished a meal, to accept that a toy is being put away, to say that someone has gone out, and so on. With Tevye's help she has evolved her own sign to show she wants to be put somewhere (on the sofa, on a lap, or whatever). It is obvious that the idea of signing has clicked in her brain, so if I can be more consistent about using sign I think the number she uses will explode.

If you are interested in using BSL with little ones, here are a few other resources I have found:
  • Something Special TV programmes (broadcast on CBeebies) - these are intended for young children with learning difficulties and use Makaton to support speech. Little Cherub isn't interested, but watching has helped me get a better feel for how sign works. The website includes demonstrations of basic signs.
  • Rhyme Time - a free monthly activity run by our local library, with songs and rhymes for babies and preschoolers. The librarian who leads it is obviously an enthusiast for baby signing and often adds signs to the songs.
  • Tiny Talk classes use BSL. As Angel and Star were still home last year these weren't a viable option for me, even though there is a local class. (Another UK baby signing programme is Sing and Sign, which is based on Makaton).
  • City University has a website on BSL early sign development which includes videos of early sign phrases and a basic vocabulary.
If anyone has any other BSL early years resources to recommend, I'd like to hear about them.

Heard on Holiday ...

Angel to Star: Wait ... I haven't seen you in your cupboard yet ...

Me to Star: Is it OK if Cherub plays with your brain?

Tevye to Star (crossly): You've got dalek slime all over the car!

Why is it always Star?

In case you are wondering, she had a Doctor Who magazine which included a rubbery green brain and a (leaky) tub of dalek slime as free gifts. We should have known better.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

There ... and back again

Yes, we did have a nice break. Short, but good.

Yes, I did take photos. When I remembered the camera.

No, I did not remember the camera when Little Cherub ventured onto a sandy beach for the first time. Fortunately Angel had her mobile phone and took photos for me.

No, I have not yet uploaded the photos. Neither has Angel.

Yes, thank you, I am very comfy on the sofa. Photos to follow when I overcome inertia.

Meanwhile, a picture of Little Cherub's bete noir. Giants in padded kangaroo suits are not her thing . They make her shriek. Very loudly.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Going away again ...

... to the same place we went to last year.

Back on Friday.

Light Fantastic

Our local metropolis has been holding a free Light Fantastic event over the last couple of days and Angel persuaded me to take her along last night. I was glad she did. We watched fireworks and lasers ...


This heliosphere - an illuminated giant balloon with a dangling acrobat, who bobbed up in the air and then down to touch the hands of the crowd below ...

And Transe Express, a very unusual ... display? I'm not sure what to call it. Whatever it was, it was spectacular. Picture torchlit entertainers ...

Eight percussion sets and three trapeze artists dangling from a giant rotating cage raised into the air by a crane to the music of bells and drums from said percussion sets ...


Which opened out like the petals of a flower as it was raised higher and higher into the air ...

What gets me, though, is who thought this up? What type of brain comes up with the concept of a human musical box, crossed with a child's mobile, dangling from a crane? And turns it into an hour's amazing entertainment?

October

What the Catholic toddler plays with in October ...


St. Therese and a Guardian Angel (not the one that managed to prevent her nose diving down the stairs on Friday)


Friday, October 12, 2007

Winnie-the-Pooh

I have loved Winnie-the-Pooh (the real one, not the poor Disney imitation) since I was not much older than Little Cherub, so it is no surprise that I have finally turned into him.


Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

HT: The Jacobite Rose

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Conkers

In response to public demand, the answer to the question "what are conkers?" ...

Conkers are nuts from the horse chestnut tree - not edible (unless you are a squirrel!) but beautifully shiny and satisfyingly round. Somehow it isn't possible to see a conker on the ground and not pick it up and stuff it into your pocket. Unless you have no soul, that is. Or are no longer still a child at heart. Horse chestnuts are one of our most common trees, so conkers are easy to find in the autumn.

When I was a child everyone used to play a game unimaginatively called conkers. You prepare your conkers by skewering a hole through them and threading them onto individual pieces of string. One player holds a conker still, dangling on its string; the other player then swings their conker at it, trying to break it. The players take turns until one conker breaks, leaving the intact conker the winner. The game of conkers seems to have gone out of fashion, but kids still collect them.

You can find more about conkers here and here.

Thursday Thirteen #20: 40 Reasons to Have Kids

Yes, forty is the new thirteen ... but after reading Karen's and Sarah's lists I couldn't resist adding my own selection. Here are forty rather more lighthearted reasons for having children (Karen set out the real reasons far better than I could do).

Why have children? When you have children you get to ...

1. Stuff your pockets full of conkers.
2. Ride rollercoasters
3. Eat more ice cream
4. Re-read beloved books from your childhood.
5. Find new beloved children's books.
6. Have tickling fights.
7. Play on the swings.
8. Whizz down slides.
9. Visit the zoo.
10. Watch fun movies.
11. Jump in puddles.
12. Enjoy sloppy kisses.
13. Cuddle a lot.
14. Play board games.
15. Tell stories.
16. Sing songs.
17. Listen to jokes.
18. Bake cakes.
19. Ride bikes.
20. Row boats.
21. Draw and paint.
22. Make scrapbooks.
23. Throw parties.
24. Take picnics to the woods.
25. Play on the beach.
26. Borrow your daughter's iPod.
27. Have your nails painted by your own personal manicurist.
28. Have your hair arranged by your own personal hairdresser.
29. Go clothes shopping with your own personal fashion adviser.
30. Kick balls.
31. Throw frisbees.
32. Fly kites.
33. Go swimming.
34. Pick blackberries.
35. Watch fireworks.
36. Play in the snow.
37. Visit Father Christmas.
38. Fill stockings.
39. Make new friends.
40. Laugh a lot.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Little Cherub's Book Choice ... Handa's Surprise

Little Cherub's new favourite is one of the books from my library book sale trawl: Handa's Surprise by Eileen Browne. I have had to read it to her three times already today, and it is only 9.30 in the morning. (Cherub is very specific about what she wants read and when ... she gets the book and bashes me on the knee with it until I oblige.)

Handa is an African girl who decides to take a gift of various fruits to her friend in the next village. Along the way, the fruits are stolen by various animals - the monkey, the elephant, the giraffe, and so on. Fortunately a goat accidentally provides Handa with a replacement gift before she arrives. The text is simple and pictures vivid, giving a sense of the brightness of colours under the African sun. Cherub loves fruit and is into learning the names of different animals, so I'm not surprised this book with its appealing pictures has caught her attention. I particularly like the one which shows Handa arriving at her friend's village, where what appear to be many children from the same family are playing outside their home, with one little one tied to her sister's back and a baby on his brother's lap. Little Cherub is very into babies, and loves to point these out!

I notice that the original picture book does not seem to be in print in the US, so I have linked to Amazon UK. The "read and share" version that is readily available from Amazon.com has larger print, but smaller pictures ... I think the original is nicer as the pictures are the heart of this book.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

40 Reasons to Have Kids

Don't miss Karen Edmisten's 40 reasons to have kids, written in response to a French psychologist (and mother!) who declares she regrets having children and has published a book detailing 40 reasons not to have them.

Time crunch

On Thursday Angel played in a tag rugby match ... on Friday she had two hours of ballet classes ... on Saturday she went here for a friend's birthday treat ... in the evening she played in a brass band concert ... she spent Sunday here with a another friend ... her geography book got accidentally left at school ... the maths homework she thought she had done was only half done ... she has tag rugby practice and two hours of dance classes after school on Mondays.

Add that lot together and what do you get? Somebody up until 10.30 last night doing homework that had to be handed in today.

Monday, October 08, 2007

She's done it! #2

Every now and again we find bribery the offer of an incentive to be a good parenting tactic. We had one those moments back in June when Angel got her braces. She was all geared up for them ... very positive ... until she got the wrong braces. She was expecting several months with a wire retainer, before getting fixed braces. What she got was twin blocks, a pair of nasty contraptions that the orthodontist admitted more than 25% of kids simply refuse to wear. It looked as though she was going to be one of them. She freaked.

A pep talk from the orthodontist and some major bribery incentivisation later, she managed to grit her teeth (ouch!), wear the dreaded things and face the world in them. At today's checkup she had made it half way - she has to get a 9mm overbite down to between 1 and 3mm, and has now reduced it by 4mm - so she gets her reward. I just ordered her an iPod.

She's done it!

Little Cherub - sixteen months old today - has finally hit the magic weight of 9kg (20lbs) and can move into a forward facing car seat. Admittedly part of the weight was shoes, and part was a soggy nappy, but it is the total that counts.

I am so glad I will no longer have to stuff a reluctant small toddler with locked legs into an infant carrier.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Library book sale

My haul of books from the library book sale ...







Angel Falls: a South American Journey, by Martin and Tania Jordan (in need of a some attention with book tape). I couldn't find a picture of this one.

These cost me a grand total of £2.30 (under $5).

Book Week

This past week has been Children's Book Week here in the UK, and all three girls have had a suitably bookish week.

For Angel and Star yesterday's school day was dedicated to books. They had a non-uniform day and were encouraged to dress up as a character from a "Book for Bedtime" - Angel and two friends were the three little pigs, and Star a solitary representative of Snow White's dwarves (this was a last minute change of plan!). Instead of the usual lessons the whole school was split up into small groups and each group spent the day writing and illustrating their own book. I'm not sure what Angel's group did. Star's came up with a complicated sounding fairy tale set in Poland, involving Medusa and an invented animal that was a cross between a bear and ... something - Star forgot what, but given that it was called a Fear it probably began with F!

On Thursday Little Cherub and I stumbled into a Bookstart event for preschoolers at the library, with stories and simple craft activities based on Elmer and the jungle. And I did a little shopping at the library book sale :).

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Appointments

It is one of those weeks ...

Sunday: Emergency dentist with Star who had raging toothache due to what turned out to be a nasty infection. He prescribed antibiotics in the form of a lemon flavoured medicine. Star hates lemon. Managed to get it changed for something "just a bit citrus-y" (as the pharmacist put it). Cue five days of moaning about said medicine.

Monday: Regular dentist with Star. Couldn't do anything until antibiotics had dealt with the infection.

Tuesday: Optician's appointment for Tevye. One of the cataracts he had removed three years ago is growing back. Needs laser treatment that will require another series of appoinments.

Thursday (Today): Optician with Star, who has lost her reading glasses. Mercifully the NHS allows for 9 year olds losing their glasses and she gets free replacement. Dentist with Star, who now has a temporary filling.

Saturday (hopefully): Optician with Star to collect new glasses.

Next Monday: Star to dentist to have two baby teeth removed. Angel to orthodontist (in a different town, naturally) to have braces adjusted.

Thursday Thirteen #19: Autumn

Thirteen reasons why autumn is my favourite season ...

1. Crisp, cool mornings with a hint of mist ("Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ...")
2. Golden brown leaves.
3. Walking through leaves crunchy with frost.
4. That optimistic new school (or homeschool) year feeling.
5. My birthday.
6. Comfort food for cold weather (soups, stews, apple crumbles)
7. Hot chocolate.
8. English apples
9. Bonfire Night (perhaps not the most appropriate holiday for a Catholic to enjoy, but I do love bonfires and fireworks).
10. Autumn feast days (Archangels, Guardian Angels, St.Therese, St.Francis, All Saints, All Souls)
11. Warm fluffy socks.
12. Snuggling under a cosy blanket.
13. Christmas just around the corner.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

A Movie Meme

I am so not a movie buff. And to prove it, here is a list of 100 great movies, with the pathetic 17 I have seen in bold. For the meme you are supposed to highlight the ones you loved in red, but that would leave me with only Star Wars and The Sound of Music, which is a sad fact I would prefer not to highlight!

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. Casablanca (1942)
3. The Godfather (1972)
4. Gone With The Wind (1939)
5. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
6. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
7. The Graduate (1967)
8. On The Waterfront (1954)
9. Schindler's List (1993)
10. Singin' In The Rain (1952)
11. It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
12. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
13. The Bridge On the River Kwai (1957)
14. Some Like It Hot (1959)
15. Star Wars (1977)
16. All About Eve (1950)
17. The African Queen (1951)
18. Psycho (1960)
19. Chinatown (1974)
20. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
21. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
23. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
24. Raging Bull (1980)
25. E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
26. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
27. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
28. Apocalypse Now (1979)
29. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
30. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
31. Annie Hall (1977)
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)
33. High Noon (1952)
34. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
35. It Happened One Night (1934)
36. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
37. The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
38. Double Indemnity (1944)
39. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
40. North By Northwest (1959)
41. West Side Story (1961)
42. Rear Window (1954)
43. King Kong (1933)
44. The Birth of a Nation (1915)
45. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
46. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
47. Taxi Driver (1976)
48. Jaws (1975)
49. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
50. Butch Cassidy and the Sunshine Kid (1969)
51. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
52. From Here To Eternity (1953)
53. Amadeus (1984)
54. All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
55. The Sound Of Music (1965)
56. M*A*S*H (1970)
57. The Third Man (1949)
58. Fantasia (1940)
59. Rebel Without A Cause (1955)
60. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
61. Vertigo (1958)
62. Tootsie (1982)
63. Stagecoach (1939)
64. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)
65. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
66. Network (1976)
67. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
68. An American In Paris (1951)
69. Shane (1953)
70. The French Connection (1971)
71. Forrest Gump (1994)
72. Ben-Hur (1959)
73. Wuthering Heights (1939)
74. The Gold Rush (1925)
75. Dances With Wolves (1990)
76. City Lights (1931)
77. American Graffiti (1973)
78. Rocky (1976)
79. The Deer Hunter (1978)
80. The Wild Bunch (1969)
81. Modern Times (1936)
82. Giant (1956)
83. Platoon (1986)
84. Fargo (1996)
85. Duck Soup (1933)
86. Mutiny On The Bounty (1935)
87. Frankenstein (1931)
88. Easy Rider (1969)
90. The Jazz Singer (1927)
91. My Fair Lady (1964)
92. A Place In The Sun (1951)
93. The Apartment (1960)
94. Goodfellas (1994)
95. Pulp Fiction (1994)
96. The Searchers (1956)
97. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
98. Unforgiven (1992)
99. Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967)
100. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

HT: Alicia at Studeo

Monday, October 01, 2007

Rosary arithmetic

After my arithmetical post yesterday I couldn't fail to notice this on Faith's blog, Dumb Ox Academy ...

Today, I happened to glance at my book, A Year with God. I was looking up anything that had to do with the rosary and found this little prayer:

“Dear Mother, may we through your Rosary ADD purity to the world, SUBTRACT evil from our lives, MULTIPLY good works for your Son, and DIVIDE your gifts and share them with others.”

We dedicated each decade we said this morning to either adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing as the above prayer mentions. For the last decade we prayed to be EQUAL to the tasks that God gives us.
How neat!