Whitefield Academy Blog
Top Coffee Table Books for Snowy Days
Each year, since my kids were babies, we have given them a special book or two for Christmas. Now Christmas isn’t the only time of year my kids receive books as gifts, but the books they are given at Christmas are unique from other books they get throughout the year. At the end of their childhood I want them to have an exceptional collection of books that represent not only quality children’s literature but works that are unique, creative, and inspiring. Books that they will want to return to time after time. Books that they will want to share with their own children someday. I call them coffee table books for kids. The following are a few of my favorites. Some you may have heard of, but hopefully there will be at least a few new ones for you to explore.
Why This Midwestern School Started a Rowing Team
We wore the 4:45am practice like a badge of honor when I was on the rowing team in college.
What Josh Groban Forgot: The Missing Verse
Whitefield Academy BlogThis Christmas, my robot servant, Alexa, has been hard at work playing Christmas songs. “Alexa?” Silence. “Alexa?” Silence. “ALEXA?!” “Beep boop.” “Play Josh Groban Christmas songs.” “Shuffling Christmas songs by Josh Groban.” What Child is...
Making Your IRA Work for You
Whitefield is blessed to have a strong community of families. These families are often multi-generational in their support of our school. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and all other loved ones; we are so appreciative of your support in making our school the best it can be.
Christmas Gifts You Won’t Regret 2019
Whitefield Academy BlogSometimes as parents we get excited about fulfilling a Christmas gift wish for our kids without a thought of what the aftermath will entail. Oh, these lights and sounds miiiight get annoying after awhile. Oh, I spent a whole bunch on this, and...
Gazing into Greek Tragedy
“Oh gods, what is she plotting? What vast new agony? What huge horror lurks in the House? What evil plotting? The family cannot bear it, there is no cure, and help is so far away” (Agamemnon, 1100-4, translated by Peter Meineck). Thus utters the ill-fated prophetess Cassandra in Aeschylus’ famous tragedy Agamemnon. Following the end of the Trojan War, Cassandra, a Trojan princess, has been taken back to Argos by Agamemnon as his war-won concubine. Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, welcomes both warmly, yet in spite of this, Cassandra senses that death awaits Agamemnon as well as herself. And sure enough, within three hundred lines the corpses of both are rolled out on stage with an exuberant Clytemnestra above them. “I stand where I struck” (Agamemnon, 1379), she tells the audience, blood soaking her clothes and a crimson-stained bathtub at her side.
Saturday Saunters
A month or two ago, Carol Nichols, our test coordinator, showed me a quote that so delighted me. The photo accompanying it looked like it might be a quote from George MacDonald, the writer who according to C.S. Lewis “baptized my imagination.” But it was not; rather it was a quote from John Muir, the noted naturalist.
The Reformation of Education
Today marks the quincentennial—that’s the five-hundredth anniversary—of Martin Luther’s protest against the Roman Catholic Church which started the Protestant Reformation. We usually think of Martin Luther’s reforming work as having to do with theology and worship, but Luther had a lot to say about the education of children as well. In fact, Luther saw the proper education of children as essential to the spread of the gospel, and so he sought to reform the schools as well as the church. Luther wrote that “If I had to give up preaching and my other duties, there is no office I would rather have than that of a school-teacher.”
Whitefield Alumni: Staying Connected
Whitefield Academy Blog With the holiday season quickly approaching, our family has started to prepare some of our traditions. We have some that are pretty universal like eating turkey on Thanksgiving and some that are a little more unique like celebrating Reformation...
Sugar Cube Pyramids: The Epic Project
My oldest daughter is a second grader this year, which means she’s starting to study history.
Daughter: “We’re starting to study history.”
Mom: “Oh yeah, what are you starting with?”
Daughter: *eye roll* “Adam and Eve.”