When I started this blog journey 8 years ago, I didn’t know anything about building a website, homeschooling, or honestly – parenting. I was a new mom who had always loved to write. I was sleep-deprived, nursing on demand, home by myself with a little baby for most of the day, and I felt like a shell of my former intellectual self.
I missed reading, and thinking, and having intelligent conversations with people. And so, I decided to start a blog. I had no idea what to write about. If you scroll back wayyyy back you can see some of my first posts and you can see…it has taken me a while to find my feet. But I think you’ll agree that I’ve grown as a writer and as a mom.
Perfectionism has never been my horcrux; I don’t have the time or the patience to be perfect. I’ve found grammatical or formatting errors to fix after publication (whoops!). But I have tried to make my blog worth reading, with excellent living book recommendations and ideas to bring home to your families. This week, I’m sharing some high quality kids picture books about excellence.
What is Excellence?
Excellence means doing your best at whatever you are doing in your life. It might mean you try your best on a math test, or you try your best to keep your bedroom clean, or you try your best at being a good friend. You are capable of so many things! In your life, there will be many things for you to try. Excellence means trying our best at everything we do. It means practicing to improve so that your best becomes even better. We are always growing and learning and we can always get better at something with practice. Excellence doesn’t mean perfect. Nobody is perfect and we may never achieve perfection, but we can always improve.
Nurturing Excellence Through Handicrafts
One way to practice excellence in your home is through handicrafts – projects like knitting, pottery, or sewing. It’s not that these hand-crafted objects have to be perfect but through handicrafts we can learn to go slowly and do it right, even if that means having to redo rushed or slipshod work. When we make a mistake sewing, we use the seam ripper to undo our work and try again. When we drop a stitch knitting, we take it back and try again. When our pottery goes wobbly, we mash it back into a lump and try again. We have more pride in our work when it is done right, to the best of our abilities, and with a care for excellence. It is good for us as human beings to feel proud of a beautiful useful item we have created.
The Living Books Virtues Project
If you’re just finding your way to my blog, this post is part of a larger series where I’ve found inspiration from the list of virtues in the Family Virtues Guide by Linda Kavelin Popov. This list of virtues is based on United Nations research of common virtues found cross-culturally, in many different belief systems, and around the world. I’ve been going through each virtue with my kids for over a year now, one per week (or sometimes every two weeks, because again, I’m not perfect). You can see the first post I wrote on this topic here.
Together, we’ve been reading excellent living picture books featuring characters or a plot that has something to do with the virtue of the week. These books are not top-down “let me teach you about kindness, children”, but rather the virtue shows up in some way in the story. Reading stories is a way for my kids and I to talk about each concept, and grouping them together each week we can compare different ways of seeing how the virtue played out in the story, or how the characters differed (some are the opposite of kind, for example).
Anyways, this week we looked at Excellence. Here are the books we read together.
Kids Books About Excellence
Lentil – Robert McCloskey
In this story, a little boy named Lentil loves music but can’t sing a tune. He learns to play the harmonica and steps up with his musical skills one day to bring the town together.
Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully
My daughter loves trying new things, and is pretty much unstoppable in her quest to achieve her vision. Just yesterday she decided she would set up an orange juice stand, and before I knew it she had picked, washed, and juiced oranges from our tree. I walked into the kitchen and found her on the step stool in my china cabinet pulling out a glass pitcher to pour the juice into so that it “looks pretty”. She’s 5 going on 35.
She loves Mirette on the High Wire. It is about a little girl who wants to learn to tight rope walk and who works hard at improving her technique until she can.
Here Come the Bridesmaids in Alfie and Annie Rose storybook by Shirley Hughes
This is a very sweet story of Alfie, who is asked to be a page in someone’s wedding. He practices and does the job with excellence on the day of the wedding.
Armstrong by Torben Kuhlmann
This is one of my son’s favourite books. It is about a mouse who wants to go to the moon. He tries many different designs for a space suit and a space ship, many of them failures – but he keeps trying in his pursuit of a lofty goal. The illustrations are stunning.
Counting on Katherine by Helaine Becker
In this true story, Katherine Johnson pursues her math education with excellence. Because of her accurate and quick calculations, Apollo 13 was able to get back on track to return the astronauts on board safely from space
I hope you enjoy these books with your family!
Warmly,
-Heather
Ps: This post contains Amazon-affiliate links and as an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. They are one small way to support my blog. Thank you for your support!
Enjoyed this post? Check out some of my other recent posts!
- Making Homeschooling Work During Home Remodeling
- Why Halloween is Important for Kids
- Kids Books about Trustworthiness
- Having a Pet Hamster for Families
- Kids Books About Compassion
Don’t want to miss a thing? Get my posts directly to your inbox when I publish by signing up for my mailing list. I post once a week, usually on a Saturday.
Discover more from Welcome to RinkydinkMum
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
