The Hundred Chart is a simple tool that parents can use to help their children learn math. There are as many ways to use it as there are numbers on the chart, from teaching simple number recognition to learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and figuring out basic math patterns.

Recently I gave my friend Mellissa a few copies of The Hundred Chart along with a few suggestions for using it with her children’s homeschool math. A few days ago told me that she posted a copy at the breakfast table and now, after a couple weeks, her 6-year-old daughter is counting to 100. 

The chart looks like this:

You can make your own Hundred Chart on poster board to hang up in the kitchen or wherever your children do their home work. If you print this post, the entire chart will print out without being partially covered up by the index on the right. Make photocopies of it as is, or enlarge it for posting on the refrigerator. You’ll need many copies for different math activities.

Here are a few ways to use your chart, listed in order of difficulty:

Easy Math

 After children can accurately count concrete objects like blocks and stones, use the chart to count, first to 10, then 20, and eventually to 100.

Use it to help children recognize numbers. Which is 5? Which is 55?

 Make an extra large size copy, cut apart the number sections, and ask your child to make a train on the floor, arranging the numbers in correct order. Start with the numbers 1 to 10, then try 1 to 20. Work up eventually to 100, encouraging your child to wind his number line around furniture or down hallways to make it fit. (You can do the same activity by making numbers by hand on index cards.) Show your child how to sort these number cards by ones, 20’s, etc. This can be an activity all by itself. It also can be used to help children make the number train to 100 without becoming overwhelmed. If they sort the cards, it’s easier to make the train.

 What is one more than 7? What is 5 plus 2 more? Count forward to work out simple addition problems on the chart. (You can also do this and many other Hundred Chart activities on a home made number line constructed on adding machine tape.)

 What is one less than 8? What is 5 minus 3? Count backward to work out simple subtraction problems.

 Take turns with your children doing problems. Give them the easy ones they are ready for, like 3 plus 4. Let them give you hard problems, if they want, like 59 plus 6. Show them how you figure out the hard problems.

Advanced math

 Use white-out to make three or four number squares blank in each row. At a copy shop, make copies of the chart with blanks and tell your children to fill in the blanks.

Use the chart to count by 10’s, then by 5’s, then by 2’s.

Tell your child to count and color the chart by 3’s. Then post the chart where children can see it from the dining table, and tell everyone to count by 3’s in unison before they can start eating. Do 3’s one week, 4’s the next week, and so on. Counting number groups helps children learn their multiplication tables.

 Count by 10’s, but start on the 4 or the 7. Try starting on other numbers.

Count by any size number you can. Start with any number you want.

Count backwards from 100 by 10’s. Count backwards by 5’s or 2’s.

 Add 8 to 5. Add 8 to 15, then to 25, then to 35. This makes a bridge from one row of 10 to another. Try other bridging addition problems.

Nine is an interesting number to add because its position is one less than 10. Add 9 to different numbers and try to figure out a rule for adding 9. Then do the same things with 11.

Subtract 5 from 62, then from 52, 42, 32, 22, and 12. Try other subtraction problems with bridging.

 Use the hundred chart to figure out hard problems.

©Becky Cerling Powers 2009  Reprint with attribution only

www.beckycerlingpowers.wordpress.com

For eight years I wrote a short parenting tips column for The El Paso Scene. The column featured one tip for each day of the week, and I tried to give parents a balance of tips that would address their own priorities & attitudes as well as their children’s physical, social, intellectual and spiritual development. The column was formatted so that parents could easily cut out the column and keep it as a handy reminder through the month. Here is a sampler for the month of October

How to Be a Better Parent in October

On Sundays… Remember to take regular walks for health, perspective and renewal.

On Mondays…Try to avoid the mistake of assuming that anything that belongs to your child is really yours, so you can borrow it without permission or do whatever you please with it. Respect is a two way street. If you want children to learn to respect your property, you must respect theirs and insist that siblings respect it, too.

On Tuesdays… Remember that children need to practice reading aloud every day. So encourage older children to read to younger siblings, and let beginning readers read to anyone in the family with the patience to encourage them.

On Wednesdays… Remember the power of action. Although it’s a temptation to sit and yell “Don’t- don’t-don’t” at children, it only makes you frustrated and hoarse. Children consistently test their parents’ words. So discipline yourself to get up (now! after the first request) and match your words with action. When you are consistently firm without losing your temper, children learn to pay attention.

On Thursdays… Make a list of recipes your family likes, take a few minutes to refer to it each week, and plan a week’s meals before you go to the grocery store. Keep alert for recipes that can easily be made in the crock pot. These few minutes of planning will help keep everyone in the family healthy.

On Fridays…Remember that puppets invite creativity. They stimulate preschoolers’ natural acting ability and encourage older children to devise plots, produce sound effects, design scenery, and create special effects. A lot of household junk can be recycled into puppets.

On Saturdays… Cultivate contentment. It will move your family into a deeper level of gratitude than mere etiquette. Contentment involves recognizing what can and cannot be changed for the better. It means accepting what cannot be changed, changing what can be improved, and concentrating on whatever is positive in a situation.

Recently several people have asked me how I think Christians should respond to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) people coming to services in the church. My pastor asked. One of the moms in my Bible study struggles for wisdom to know how to respond to her son, who has come out as gay. Another Christian mom recently  asked me about her son, who was the one who got her going to church and now tells her that he has same sex desires. I think we will face this issue more and more because in the local high schools, being gay is the new cool. Since it has become popular, more kids will experiment and some will choose gayness simply because that’s the cool thing to be.

Behind the question, when Christians ask, is the idea that we should somehow straighten out gay people who attend services, that we should somehow try to make them change into heterosexuals. But that idea misses the point.

All kinds of people come into the church seeking God or seeking a community. There are many motives. Some want a community they can exploit, that they can get material things from or that they can get a sense of prestige and importance from. Many are weary and hurting. They honestly seek healing. Many are thirsty for God. They hope to find Him in church. Most of these needy, hurting, broken people are heterosexual. So obviously, heterosexuality by itself is not wholeness. Thus, changing broken GLBT people somehow into heterosexuals can’t magically make them whole. All humans need to be restored to their Creator. GLBT folk need the same thing heterosexuals need: restoration to God and participation in the kingdom of God.

 A dozen years ago, my relationship to my daughter became broken. She was angry with me – I didn’t know why – and she began living a life that grieved and alarmed me, a life that I couldn’t approve, doing things I couldn’t bless. I needed to stick by what I believed to be God’s standards, yet I also needed to try to keep and mend the broken relationship. During those years of estrangement, I learned that my response to my daughter had to be this: bless whatever I could bless. Look for anything that I could honestly affirm, and affirm it with love. Look for anything that I could honestly approve and express warm approval. Look for any positive direction and encourage it. Find ways to express love. Drop everything and greet her when she came to the house. Say “I love you” with every good-bye. I wasn’t always successful or consistent. But it’s what I realized I needed to do, and it’s what I tried to do.

 And that’s how I think believers need to respond to GLBT people coming into the church. Bless everything that we can bless. If we see artistic or musical or literary talent, encourage it. If we see kindness, affirm it. Say hello and good-bye. Make space for conversations. And pray. Pray the same prayers for wholeness that any broken person needs: that God will expose lies that keep them in a pit and reveal truths they need to see in order to walk in the way to wholeness. (And don’t assume you know what those are!!) Be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord: open the door into God’s presence and, if someone invites you to walk with them in their journey, walk with them, blessing whatever you can bless and explaining the hard parts gently when they ask you about them.

 Last night in our Bible study at my friend Lee’s house, we studied the first 20 verses of Luke 5, which describe how Jesus called Peter, James, and John to be his disciples. Jesus told Peter to take the boat they were in into deeper water and throw out his net. He told Jesus he had fished all night and caught nothing (in other words, I’m a fisherman, I know all about fish and if they’re going to swarm into the nets, they’ll do it at night, not midday), however since it was Jesus asking, he’d do it. Peter did it, and he caught so many fish, his nets started breaking. He had to call his partners to bring another boat, and the catch was so great, the two boats started to sink. Peter repented of his attitude, saw his sin…and then Jesus called him to be his disciple. At the beginning of the story, Peter’s identity was rooted in his career. He saw himself first and foremost as a fisherman. Jesus shook up that identity by using a miracle catch to demonstrate that He knew more about fish than Peter did. Then Jesus offered Peter a new identity rooted in a relationship with Him, Jesus Christ.

This is what Jesus does with all of us. If we’re going to grow, if we’re going to be changed so that we can live in eternity, we have to shed the identities that tie us to the earth. What are some of my identities? I am a wife, a mom, a grandmother, a caregiver to my mother-in-law. I am a writer. They are all important identities, yet any of them can be taken from me in a moment. Grandma can pass away, and I’m no longer her caregiver. My husband can die, and zap! I’m no longer a wife, I’m a widow. My children and grandchildren can be taken from me one by one or altogether. I can get Alzheimer’s and stop being able to write. All these identities are temporal. If I have an identity rooted in my relationship to Jesus, though, no power on earth, including the power of death, can take that away. So that must be my core. That must be my identity at the core because that is an eternal identity. And if that identity is the core of my loved one’s identities – husband, children, grandchildren – then I will have those relationships for eternity. I can’t make that happen. It has to be their choice.

 The writer of Hebrews says (12:26-28) that everything in heaven and earth is going to be shaken so that we can see what’s temporal and what lasts. Whatever can be shaken will be removed so that we can receive what remains – what can’t be shaken – the heritage that lasts for eternity.

So Jesus will always shake up our identities. He will always challenge our core identity if it is rooted in something temporal instead of Him. I’ve read that most GLBT people see their sexuality as their core identity, and my friend whose daughter is a lesbian says this, too. But, whether gay, hetero, bi, or trans, sexuality is not an eternal identity. Therefore, it is not my job to try to make GLBT people exchange one temporal identity for another temporal identity. My job is, like Peter’s, to allow Jesus to change my core identity, and then to invite others into a relationship with Jesus in which they allow Him to change their core identities. Jesus will address core identity issues as GLBT people walk with Him in the light. I don’t need to do it. He will do it.

But I can walk with them along that road as He does the same with me. It’s always hard for us to have our earthly identities shaken up, but that must happen in order for ANY of us to receive an eternal heritage.

(A good book to read on this issue is Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community by Andrew Marin)

This afternoon I ran across an old letter to my son Erik in my computer, written over a dozen years ago. Reading it reminded me how I wound up writing an article later based on that correspondence. Today I’d like to reprint the article to encourage any overwhelmed homeschool parents out there. Here it is:

Home schooling our children was such a rewarding experience that by the end of each school year, I was willing to do it another year. The beginning of each school year was a different story, though. Every year frustration took over as I faced the task of setting up the new school year. I felt overwhelmed, drowning in details — all those books to look through, subjects to plan, music lessons and sports activities to schedule, a house to manage, a home school support group to lead, and on and on…

Then one year, in the middle of the annual mess, I read the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. As I read, it struck me that Genesis 1 not only says God created the earth, it also describes the creative process. For in the beginning, God started with a giant massiveness that was “without form.”  It was empty and covered in darkness. That sounded just like what I faced at the beginning of each school year!

Then God spoke out His thoughts and began making separations. He created light, then separated light from darkness. He named things: He “called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness He called ‘night.’” The next day God created “the expanse.” He separated the water under the expanse from the water above it, calling the expanse “sky.” The next day God made another distinction: “land” and “sea.” And He did something with the land: He caused it to produce vegetation.

And so it went. God began with a formless void, then made separations and distinctions. He developed patterns. He established routines. He gave names and meaning to what He had created.

I realized that every process that people normally label “creative” involves these same activities. A composer selects certain rhythms and notes from a chaos of notes and rhythms (separating, distinguishing). With these he develops patterns – musical themes, harmony. An artist selects certain media and then creates form and pattern where once all was formless and meaningless – just a pile of tools and background materials like paper, tile or clay

What I was really facing at the beginning of each school year was an opportunity to fulfill my creative nature as someone made in God’s image. So, instead of getting frustrated with the formless void, I needed to rejoice. For this was the start of another adventure in creativity. I needed to work with the process and trust the God of the process. Then, as I worked alongside Him, that creative process would produce a kind of new world.

The school year would not remain a formless void. I would be able to make separations, to establish patterns and routines, to bring form to what was formless and meaning to what seemed meaningless. I would be able  to turn chaos into order, and even, God helping me, to cause life and growth within that new order.

So I’ve learned to start thanking God now whenever that familiar sense of frustration hits. Whatever project I’m working on, that’s My Clue that I am, once again, facing the adventure of creativity.

©1998 Becky Cerling Powers  Reprint with attribution only

www.beckycerlingpowers.wordpress.com

(This article is reprinted from My Roots Go Back to Loving, a collection of faith-based family stories originally published in the El Paso Times. To order send a check or money order for $5 per copy to 140 Hemley Road, Anthony, TX 79821.)

Last week I talked with a friend of mine who has an adult daughter with special needs. Some unsavory people took advantage of her daughter, who has been hospitalized. My friend is a Christian, and she was struggling with the ferocity of her rage. “I feel like a Mother Bear: ‘Don’t get near my cubs!’” she said. “I want to go and beat up people. I just want to get revenge on the people who have hurt my daughter. Is it wrong to be so angry?”

I told her that I believe it is right to be angry at the things that make God angry.

Our culture is offended at the idea of a God of wrath and judgment, especially a God who would become enraged at us. Yet at the same time, we all long for a God who will right the wrongs that upset us. That’s why we like Superman so much. He has power. He gets mad at injustice, and he does something about it. We really want God to get angry and do something about people who rape children. We want God to get mad and swoop in to rescue vulnerable people like my friend’s daughter. And the Bible says that the real God does this – in His own way, in His own time, and with incredible power. God gets angry.

This blog post could proceed at this point, I suppose, to discuss free will and original sin and why God doesn’t always swoop in like Superman, in the way and with the speed that we think He should. But I just want to talk about a mother’s pain and anger. Or anybody’s pain and anger. People do things that deeply hurt us or those we love. Things that may not necessarily be illegal, but things that are cruel and unfair. And we get angry. We want revenge. We want to get back. A lot of Christians think we’re not supposed to want those things – or feel that way. After all, “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord. “I will repay.” And didn’t Jesus say we are supposed to turn the other cheek?

So what does that mean? Pretend it didn’t happen? Swallow your rage?

We get really confused about our feelings, so confused that sometimes we just stuff them down and pretend they aren’t there. But they are there, and when we don’t admit them and deal with them in a healthy way, they turn toxic inside us and make us sick. They contaminate our relationships, too. The Bible tells us over and over to walk in the light, and this is part of what that means: as we make our way through each day, to look at what is, to face and deal with reality.

Part of that reality is this: God created our emotions, and He knows what to do with them when we do not. So we need to tell God how it is with us – express to God how we feel, what we want, what we need. We can do it through words, music, the visual arts…in many ways. He can help us express our emotions in ways appropriate to the specific way He made each one of us.

The book of Psalms shows us the way to do this. For there, mixed with the songs of awe, of thanksgiving, of joyous confidence, we find broken-heart cries of terror, anguish, despair, and fury – what musician and pastor Donn Charles Thomas calls the “Psalms of Disorientation.”

            How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever? 

            How long will you hide your face from me?

            How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Theologically speaking, God does not forget His children. And David knew that intellectually when he wrote these words in Psalm 13. But he felt forgotten and hopeless, so he said so. And in the process of crying out to God, expressing his true feelings and desires, he was able to get rid of the garbage in his soul and feel hopeful again. He could end the psalm in praise:

            But I trust in your unfailing love;

            My heart rejoices in your salvation.

            I will sing to the Lord,

            For he has been good to me.

Once David told God how abandoned and vulnerable he felt, he could remind himself that God was good to him in the past and God’s love is unfailing. So by the end of the psalm David is singing and rejoicing in faith because he trusts that God’s salvation is surely coming.           

 Today musicians use rap music to express the kind of raw emotion that David and other psalmists expressed, Thomas said at the Urbana Missionary Convention in 1993. “Rappers are trying to say, ‘We are hurting.’ Rap comes out of the ‘hood, but its challenge to reality made inroads into suburban areas so that most people buying the CDs and tapes come from the middle class. But the one thing rappers cannot and do not do, is address God with their problems. They talk to you about their problems, and most of you can’t help them.”

“The Psalms of Disorientation teach us how to worship God and still complain,” Thomas said. They give us a way to go to God in complete honesty and even express feelings that aren’t “nice,” feelings that a good Christian “shouldn’t” feel.

“David knew how to rap, how to use unguarded language to tell God how it is: ‘God, I’m hurting! God, I have enemies and these guys hate me. Kill them!!” Thomas said. “In a prayer of imprecation, using unguarded language, I’m hurting so bad I don’t have time to be religious or respectful: ‘Lord, this man has done so much against me, I want You to make his wife a widow and his children orphans!”

“Your being honest with God is not going to make God fall off His throne,” Thomas said. “Your being honest with God won’t cause God to not answer you.”

 The psalms of disorientation provide a kind of template to write your own cry to God in your own situation, Thomas explained. He described the elements in these psalms in this way:

1)     Address to God

2)     Plea

• Complaint (Example, Psalm 35: My enemies are repaying me evil for good.)
• Petition (Example, Psalm 51: I’m guilty. I need restoration. Psalm 35: Fight for me, vindicate me, don’t let  people gloat over me.)
• Motivation — explaining why God should help, giving Him motivation for granting the petition (Examples, Psalm 88: Lord, I’m valued by You as one who praises You, and if I die, I can’t praise You. Psalm 79: Your power, prestige, reputation are all at stake. If You don’t deliver me, they’re going to talk about You and say You’re not Almighty God.)
• Imprecation – using unguarded language to express anguish (Example, Psalm 109:”May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”)

3)     Praise

So this is what I suggested to my friend that she do: read through some of the psalms of disorientation listed below and let God help her use these elements (complaint, petition, motivation, possibly imprecation, praise) to express her anguish in her own prayer to God, to bring her into God’s healing presence and help her move into doxology and praise.

Psalms of Disorientation

            Communal psalm (the whole community goes to God): 74

            Cry of an individual: 13, 35, 86, 109

            Combination (an individual with concerns for the community): 32, 51, 79, 80, 88, 137

For eight years I wrote a short parenting tips column for The El Paso Scene. The column featured one tip for each day of the week, and I tried to give parents a balance of tips that would address their own priorities & attitudes as well as their children’s physical, social, intellectual and spiritual development. The column was formatted so that parents could easily cut out the column and keep it as a handy reminder through the month. Here is a sampler for the month of September

How to Be a Better Parent in September:

On Sundays… remember that you are less likely to burn out as a parent if you replenish yourself by taking care of your own needs. Learn to recognize not only your physical needs (for exercise, rest and proper diet), but also your inner needs for solitude, prayer, time with friends, mental stimulation, spiritual growth and creative expression. Then build routine solutions for meeting these personal needs into the fabric of your week.

On Mondays… keep in mind that children need warm approval as much as food, and they will be influenced all their lives by the people who praised them in childhood. So make sure that your children know you are their biggest fan.

On Tuesdays… encourage silent reading. Some families give their school age children an early bedtime to allow them personal times for reading in bed.

On Wednesdays… be aware that teaching children to be thankful begins with simple etiquette – learning to say “please” and “thank you,” and to express appreciation by writing thank you notes and making thank you phone calls.

On Thursdays…discuss chores with your children for the up-and-out process on school mornings. Keep a chore chart in the kitchen with tasks and time limits clearly communicated. Then give your children a list of their morning chore assignments at night. Instead of nagging about each chore in the morning, simply ask, “Have you checked off everything on your chart?”

On Fridays… remember to encourage creativity by keeping a desk, table or other working surface available for projects. Then keep supplies (appropriate to your children’s ages) handy where they can get them. Children will be more apt to start projects if they don’t have to wait for someone to clear work space and get out supplies.

On Saturdays… be sure to take hold of your family’s heritage of faith by learning the words to hymns and spiritual songs. Sing them through the day, at bedtime, and in the car. Thinking about the words will help you change your mental focus when you are worried or upset. You’ll feel better, and your family will benefit from the change in atmosphere.

 © Becky Cerling Powers 2001  Reprint with attribution only.

Note: a shorter version of this post will be published in the September 2009 issue of the Southwest Homeschool Network newsletter

“My son has trouble with division,” a young mom told me once. “I think it’s because he hasn’t memorized his multiplication facts.”

She explained that her child had figured out his own method for getting the right answers to multiplication problems. He just kept adding the multiplied number mentally until he had added it enough times for a correct answer. His multiplication method was slow, but it gave him right answers. Division had him stumped though. He couldn’t figure out the problems.

Although it may not appear that way, this boy’s trouble with division was the same problem that 5-year-old Elias had with addition the day I asked him, “How many places should we set for lunch today?”

First Elias counted himself and me. Then we talked about the other people who would be eating lunch with us – my husband (who was working in the garage), Grandma (who lived in a mobile home on the back of our lot), and Daniel (who was asleep in the loft). This talking wasn’t enough. Elias still couldn’t figure out how many places to set. If all five people had been there in the room, he could have easily figured out the answer by counting them. But since he couldn’t see the people, he couldn’t count them.

I tried to help him by showing him how to count people in his head, using my fingers to represent each person : “You (thumb), me (index finger), Dennis (middle finger), Grandma (ring finger), Daniel (pinkie) – one-two-three-four-five – see?”

His face went completely blank. Obviously, to Elias, a finger did not represent a person. He could not count people by counting fingers.

This is a developmental characteristic.

 Adults use three ways of thinking about math: the manipulative mode, the mental mode, and the abstract mode. They can switch back and forth, using the abstract mode, for example, to figure using only symbols ($50 – $22.48 = $27.52), or the manipulative mode to do the same problem by counting correct change into a customer’s hand. Young children like Elias, on the other hand, can think only in the manipulative mode. They have to see and touch objects in order to understand math concepts like adding and subtracting.

 As children develop they progress into the mental mode. When Elias grew older, he was able to do math problems like this mentally – to count me and himself, then mentally image the other three people and count them, too. But at that time, my attempt to represent each person with one finger, and then count the fingers, required more mental imaging than Elias was capable of yet. We solved the problem by drawing a picture of each person.  When Elias counted the pictures, he knew how many places to set. Pictures of objects help children make the transition from the manipulative to the mental mode of thinking.

 This process was a slow way to get my lunch table set, but a good way to teach Elias essential math. Practicing addition with pictures and objects helps children develop a strong concept of what addition is. Hands-on math is the foundation on which all other kinds of mathematical understanding is built. Lots of hands-on math experiences prepare children to grow into the next two stages of thinking development.

When children are hurried too quickly through this manipulative thinking stage, they feel anxious and uncertain. “Failure (to teach children in the manipulative mode) is probably the greatest single cause of children’s arithmetic difficulties,” Beechick says. “It is why people grow up with Arithmetic Anxiety.”

Until children understand with their eyes and hands what addition is all about, there is no point in having them memorize addition facts. Meaningless memorization falls out of people’s brains. Children must develop a strong mental image of a particular math process, like addition or multiplication, before memorizing math facts has enough meaning to make the facts stick in their heads. Thus, the little boy who had trouble with division probably could not memorize multiplication tables because he lacked a strong mental image of what multiplication (and division) mean.

 A stack of index cards and some counters, like pennies or beads, could help him understand with some practice that 3 x 4 means that you have three groups with 4 things in each group. You take 3 cards, place four counters on each card, and count up the total. Making a group of four three times gives you 12. Children can draw pictures to demonstrate problems, too. For example, 3 x 4 could be drawn as 3 trees with 4 apples on each tree.

When children can demonstrate easily that they understand what multiplication means, then you can show them what division means. The problem 12 divided by 3 means that you have 12 things in a group, and then you separate those twelve things into three different, equal groups. So to demonstrate 12 divided by 3, count out 12 counters, lay out 3 cards, place one counter on each card, and then keep going round and round until all 12 counters are on cards, and each card has the same number of counters.

“When we say that a child doesn’t understand something (in math), we usually mean that he is not able to image it in his head,” said Ruth Beechick in The Three R’s. “The cure for that is to provide more manipulative experience.”

Using math manipulatives helps children to develop and strengthen the mental images they need for understanding math concepts. It also helps them to become able to do mental math (which they must learn before being able to do abstract math).

“Try showing something one way and a second way and a third way” said Beechick. “Wait awhile and teach it again next month. After sufficient manipulative experience, the child eventually will image the troublesome process in his head. He will understand it.”

 © Becky Cerling Powers 2009  Reprint with attribution only.

Related posts/articles on Story Power: How to Teach Games to Kids: http://beckycerlingpowers.wordpress.com/articles/how-to-teach-games-to-kids/ 

Related links: children’s mental development

             My sister phoned yesterday. In our conversation she mentioned that she is developing osteoporosis, and she warned me that her doctor said that women like us who need to take thyroid supplements are more likely to have problems with osteoporosis. We traded ideas for increasing our calcium absorption, like making sure we get enough vitamin D from the sun. I mentioned my practice of making bone broth, and she took notes.

            Now I’ll pass along the tip to you.

            It’s hard for the body to absorb calcium from supplements. Milk and milk products are much more easily absorbed, unless you are sensitive to milk, like me. I’m lactose intolerant. I only drink milk if I need a laxative. So my favorite source of easy-to-absorb calcium is the yummy soups and stews I make from homemade bone broth/soup stock.

            Whenever my family bakes, roasts, or broils a chicken or turkey, I make bone broth (also known as soup stock) from the carcass and bony parts. The basic idea is to extract as much minerals, flavor, and unrefined gelatin as possible out of the bones by boiling them in water. Here’s how:

            First, break the bones in pieces (to expose the marrow), cover them with lots of (filtered) water, then add a few tablespoons of vinegar (which makes the water slightly acid and helps break down the bones) and some salt (which helps draw out the nutrients). If you can toss in the chicken feet and/or the chicken head, that’s even better.

            Recently I’ve read that you should let your bones and veggies sit in cold water for half an hour or an hour to enhance the flavor. I’ve tried it, and that does seem to work. While you’re waiting around to start boiling your bones,  coarsely chop up vegetables and toss them into the pot for more flavor – for example, add whatever you have handy in the way of onion chunks and pieces of celery, carrot and/or potato. Bring the water to a boil and skim off the scum that rises to the surface. That gets rid of impurities and improves flavor. Let the broth simmer for 6 to 24 hours. The longer you simmer the stock, the more nutritious and flavorful it will be. Add water as needed so you don’t burn your bones.

            Ten minutes before you finish cooking, add chopped parsley if you have it (that adds more mineral ions.) When you’re ready, pour everything through a colander into a bowl. Place your broth in the refrigerator until the fat rises and congeals on top. Skim the fat. (You can use it in your other cooking if you want.) The broth should jell when it cools. If it doesn’t, you either didn’t boil the bones long enough, or you bought an inferior chicken. Jelled bone broth can have more calcium than milk.

            Some people say to strip the meat from the bones and use it for other meat meals, and other people say that all the nutrition and flavor will have been boiled out of the meat. So do as you please. Either pick out the meat for other meals, or give it to your dog (who will think it must have flavor if it smells good), or throw it out with the mushy, water-logged veggies.

     You can use this same method with any kind of bones—whatever your family likes. Examples: turkey, lamb, oxtail, beef bones. Be sure to look for ox feet or beef feet in the meat department and add them to the pot. They’ll add a lot of nutritious unrefined gelatin.

Bone broth freezes well. 

            You can use this broth as the basis for any of your favorite soups or to make gravy for stews. Or else use bone broth to make delicious soup with whatever you have handy in your garden, refrigerator, and/or pantry. Just remember that soup has four main parts:

1. Soup stock. This is the first secret to great homemade soup, and you just learned how to make it.
2. “Filler.” This gives the soup holding power. It is usually some form of grain or legume, like rice, noodles, dried peas or beans, lentils or barley. I call it “filler” because it’s whatever will fill up a teenager. It’s easy to modify this ingredient to tailor homemade soup to special diets. One of our sons had allergies to legumes, potatoes, wheat and rice. We used barley as a filler when he came home from college.
3. Vegetables. The second secret to great homemade soup is to preserve the flavor and vitamin content of vegetables by chopping, sautéing and adding them to the soup just before serving (instead of boiling them until they are limp and waterlogged and most of their vitamin content has been destroyed by overheating). The exceptions are potatoes, which should boil 15-20 minutes, and dried beans, which can be boiled with the bones.
4.  Seasonings. Salt, pepper, and whatever else your family likes. Look at soup and casserole recipes in cookbooks for ideas on combining seasonings.  

Sample Soup Recipe (easy enough for a trained teenager home alone):

1.  
   • Boil one cup of barley in three quarts of soup stock or two quarts stock and one quart of water.
   • Chop an onion, 3 celery stalks, 4 peeled carrots and a zucchini.
   • When the barley is tender (probably in about a half hour) sauté (or stir fry) the vegetables in a little butter and olive oil, stirring them in the hot oil for only two or three minutes, until they are coated and slightly tender. Add them to the soup. (If there isn’t room in the frying pan to sauté all these vegetables at once, sauté and add them in batches.) Season to taste with salt, pepper and Mrs. Dash. Serve with crackers or croutons (and salsa for the chili lovers to stir into their soup).

Nova Science Now aired a segment  July 28 that shows some just-for-the-curiosity-of-it research that my husband Dennis did in collaboration with some Utah profs. You can also see more of Dennis’ work at the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson, KS where the KUSM folks set up a special exhibit. The museum is definitely worth seeing if you’re in the area. You can find the Nova Science Now program here:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0405/02.html

This week I decided why the women in my church kiss the air instead of each other when they greet.

I attend Alfa y Omega, a Spanish language church in nearby Anthony, Texas, a small, working class town of 5-6,000 people, but growing. Rents are cheap. A lot of recent immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America, live here – not too many Anglos like me. Since the culture of people in my church is in many ways very different from the culture I grew up in, I’m always trying to figure out the customs and the why behind them.

When I walk into Alfa y Omega, even if I’m late and the service has started, people usually greet me. They stretch out their right hand as I pass their pew. “Dios la bendiga,” they say, “¿Como está?” (“God bless you. How are you?”) The men shake my hand. Women who don’t know me well also shake hands, but if a woman knows me a little better, she shakes my hand and leans her upper body forward. I do the same. Then she lays her right cheek flat against my right cheek, and we kiss the air.

I notice that when the men greet each other they shake hands and they often hug as well. And if a man is greeting a woman he knows well, he leans in and kisses her – her check, not the air. None of this Anglo “Hi, Mom!” stuff. When a man sees his mother or his sister in public, he gives her a big kiss. Smack on the cheek. But if a woman sees her mother or sister, they rub cheeks and kiss air.

One of the first things I learned when I started going to this church was the importance of acknowledging people’s presence, of greetings, of hellos and good-byes that pronounce a blessing with words and with touch. I grew up in the Midwest. I was raised to get things done. So when I first started going to this church, I walked in exuding purpose and direction. I had my goal: find a place to sit (hopefully next to someone who could translate), try to hear Spanish, immerse, learn the language. But my progress was impeded by all these gentle greetings, all this blessing and affirmation.

After the service, I’d leave the church intent on reaching my car, and two or three earnest people would follow after me to be sure they said “Dios la bendiga” and “Hasta luego” and I realized I was being rude. Surrounded by all these gentle, mannerly people, it dawned on me how abrupt and rough my Anglo ways can be. I had to learn not just new customs, but new ways. And get my tongue around “Dios la bendiga” for the women and “Dios lo bendiga” for the men.

 But back to kissing air.

The church is poor, the people are very poor. But they have a lot of dignity. The older ones dress for church, but not expensively, the way older people in, say, your typical Texas middle class Anglo Baptist church dress up. The older Latina women think it’s important to wear a dress or skirt. The older men wear dress pants and a nice shirt. The younger adults, like those in Anglo churches, often dress more casually, in clean jeans and a blouse or shirt. And almost all the women wear make-up. I became more aware of that when a Latina woman in my Bible study said that when she was growing up, her father insisted that she put on makeup whenever she left the house. A woman should look her best in public. Hence, I think, the practice of kissing air. If we all kissed each other’s cheeks instead of the air when we greeted each other, we’d be a smeary mess.

 *******

I love the people in the little Spanish language church I attend. But I am often uncomfortable there. I’ve tried to learn the words of the songs, but they aren’t posted on overhead. Half the time I don’t know what’s being sung or said or what’s going on. It’s really hard to become fluent in another language, and I’m trying to do this with a 60-plus-year-old brain. It took me a long time – a couple years – just to be able to begin to really hear separate words in the torrent coming out of people’s mouths. Now, after attending for four years, I no longer use a translator, and I can usually understand about half the words in the sermon. But I usually zone out about half way through it. My brain overloads.

Sometimes we have a church gathering when we all eat a meal together. I thought I liked Mexican food until the ladies enthusiastically gave me a huge bowl of menudo, which is a traditional, spicy soup made with, among other things, ground-up cow’s stomach. I finally learned to eat it when my friend Luz told me that she pushes aside the gristle and cartilage. (I was trying to chew it up.)

And then there’s the matter of my “place” in the church. I grew up in the white, English-speaking, primary culture church. I have lots of religious background, lots of Bible knowledge, lots of leadership training, lots of experience leading Christian ministries. I know the words, I know the ways, I know the needs, I know how to fit in. It would be easy to find a church in El Paso that would be glad to have me. I can speak, I can write, I can teach, I can lead, I can be up front. I could become a leader pretty quickly in a lot of local churches. And it’s so, so gratifying to be considered competent in any small community.

At Alfa y Omega, I can’t lead or teach. Well, I do teach Bible classes for the older kids because they learn English at school and can understand me. But there is usually a recent immigrant or two in every bunch of kids, so I either have to have another child translate for me, or I have to have a bilingual adult helping me. And there aren’t a lot of those to spare. So I do little things that come up, like writing letters in English for my pastor, or going online to obtain a teenager’s California birth certificate so he could get a job. (Since his parents are undocumented, they were afraid to approach the system to get their son’s necessary ticket to obtaining a valid Social Security number for work.)

One day I was talking with Luz, who grew up in a Spanish-speaking home, but has lived here all her life, speaks fluent everyday English, and has a high school diploma (one of the more educated people in the congregation). She is working up her courage to go to community college at age 40. She said she has trouble spelling words and writing correct English. I said, “You’re bilingual, though, and that’s a big advantage. I’m a professional writer. I know English grammar and spelling and I get paid to edit in English. But you can speak two languages. I’m a good speaker in English, but when I try to speak Spanish, I sound like I’m mentally retarded.”

“Well,” she agreed, “at least you’re the one who said it.”

Aaargh.

 *****

To repeat, it is so, so gratifying to be considered competent in any small community. In this community, I’m incompetent. And that feels uncomfortable. This is not my language. Not my culture. Not my food. Not my socio-economic status. All of that feels uncomfortable sometimes.

So why am I here?

When I ask myself that question, I remind myself of the circumstances and thinking that brought me to this place. (Perhaps that is a story for another blog.) I am where God has called me. I do believe that.

And I remind myself what I have in common with the people of Alfa y Omega: “one body, one Spirit, just as (we) were called in one hope of (our) calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in (us) all” (Eph 4:4-6).

Hours before Jesus was arrested, He took a towel and washed His disciples’ feet in order to teach them in a dramatic and memorable way what He wanted their relationship to each other to look like. He wanted them to serve each other without concern for position and status. He commanded them to love each other and said that it would be their love for each other that would show the world that they were His disciples. And He prayed out loud to the Heavenly Father, asking that all who followed Him would be brought to complete unity – the same unity enjoyed by Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I am thankful for the white American church, the dominant culture American Christian community in which I grew up. These are the people who led me to Jesus, who taught me to treasure and study the Bible, who modeled loving service and warm hospitality, whose prayers for my family multiplied blessings in our lives. It is also true that some people in the Christian community led me into side trails and false teaching, hurt me, shamed me, even betrayed me. I have scars. I recall Jesus’ parable, though, explaining the spiritual reality that Satan sows weeds in the same fields where God plants good seed on this rebel planet. So I accept that bad is mixed with good, that the roots of weeds are enmeshed with the roots of the wheat in Christian ministries.

I love Jesus, I love His people, and I want us to be what Christ wants us to be – the kingdom of God on earth. Unfortunately, we seem to be more concerned with our comfort than real unity in Him. We shop for a place to worship the way people look for just the right country club. We’ll drive many miles past many other churches to attend the one that most suits our tastes in pastor, music, programs, proximity to old friends, or a combination. How can we possibly develop and demonstrate practical unity across social barriers when we practice segregation along the lines of race, position, status, language and culture? We erect social barriers in the name of Christ instead of transcending them. This isn’t necessarily malicious or even conscious. The American culture values comfort and we pursue it, too, along with our neighbors. We lose sight of what it means to follow Jesus. We lose sight of who we are in Christ, and where we are supposed to be going. We forget St. John’s vision of heaven, where we will one day gather with people of every language, tribe, and subculture, all of us united in praising and serving the Lord.

 I don’t idealize the immigrant church I attend. I see many problems. I see leaders making mistakes. I see people being as delightful and deceitful, as wise and as foolish, as sacrificing and as selfish as people in any white congregation I’ve attended. And I know that one immigrant church’s welcome to one language-challenged white lady isn’t going to solve the problems of racial and socio-economic segregation in the churches of El Paso County or America. But it’s a little start at doing what we can, a little start here in Anthony, TX at being the cross-cultural kingdom of God on earth and getting ourselves ready for heaven.