Mary Moments

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Remember the beautiful Loveliness of Rosaries Fair that Sarah hosted in May? She wove individual reflections of devotion to the Blessed Mother into a lovely virtual rosary meditation. I thought it an extraordinary post. That's why I was delighted when Sarah told me that an in-real-life adventure conversation with Heidi Saxton had yielded very sweet fruit. The first official Mary Moments Carnival will be at the Behold Your Mother blog on August 15. Thetheme is "Great Books about Mary." Submit by August 10, using the online submission form (or, if that won't work for you, email Sarah at peerybingle-at-gmail-dot-com).

Mary Moments is going to be our chance to sit down together with a cup of tea and reflect on and with our Blessed Mother. You don't have to be Catholic to participate, and you don't even have to have a blog - if you have a post you'd like to submit and you don't have a blog, Sarah would be happy to post it over at just another day of Catholic pondering and link to it at the Carnival.

If you have any questions, feel free to email Sarah at peerybingle-at-gmail-dot-com.

And while we wait for that first Mary Moments Carnival, you can bet I'll be clicking around Behold Your Mother. There's some wonderful inspiration there.

Serendipity Q and A

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Molly writes:

How far in advance will you be putting out plans?

The history plans for the first twelve weeks are already written. They're plans we've used (and in some cases published) before. I just took the plan and re-formatted it to better reflect what works now. I last used them six years ago. I'm also adding new resources. So...it's going to be easy to put them up early for you to use:-).

You basically have the first week's plans already in the previews on Serendipity. We're going to add a few things, but they won't affect your ability to get supplies or to plan. You can expect to see the second week's plans in all topics on August 29th. Then, you can expect to see plans once a week on Fridays, for the first eight weeks. It's all pre-programmed. That will be all of the Colonial America plans.

Then it's Wiggle Week.

"Wiggle Week" is a built-in week at the end of each time period to give you (and us) time to catch up or do special projects or delve more deeply into something of interest. This way, there's no reason to panic if you feel like life is preventing you from following along. There will be a full week to adjust and regroup at the end of each segment.  After Colonial America, we're going to study the Louisiana Purchase for 4 weeks and then the War of 1812. Then a Wiggle Week. That will take us to Advent. Advent will be devoted to preparing for the Baby (and in my case, the baby). We're kicking around the idea of some art, music, and poetry studies for the Christmas season, but we plan to be fully immersed in the season and the schedules will reflect that.

Another note: if it's moving too fast, you can always drop a segment. Just don't do the Louisiana Purchase and spend 12 weeks on Colonial America. Or briefly touch on the War of 1812 because you meandered much longer with Louis and Clark. It's a very breathable plan if you let it be.

We'll pick up the regular pace again in January with Pioneers, followed by Native Americans.

By the way, the Teaching Company course is on sale right now.

That's a great tip, Molly. The only way I can afford those courses are the sales and the used market. Fortunately, they run sales quite often and they are pretty easy to find used..