Narnia

I wish I had words to adequately describe what the Chronicles of Narnia have come to mean to me - specifically The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. As a Christian, I know I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to have a deep spiritual connection to this story. But, it’s influence has become intertwined with my testimony in a way that is difficult to express. In November 2019, just months before C-19 hit, my husband and I had one of the most powerful spiritual promptings that we needed to pull our twins out of public school. We had never even considered homeschooling so it was a pretty dramatic change for us and I know most of our family and friends didn’t see it coming. Right at that same time, I started waking in the middle of the night with rushing thoughts. (A friend later put a term to this and called it “downloading” or “downloads” which feels accurate.) These thoughts and feelings didn’t come out in order, but I started writing them down knowing in random places all over when they would come to me. It was almost as if I was trying to make sense of multiple spiritual experiences, yet, I could hardly figure it out. This happened regularly for 4 months. In early March, I remember so clearly because it was right at the time everything was shutting down, I called my sister and told her I had 20 pages of random writings and I explained I was trying to make sense of all these random experiences in my life that had been impressed upon my mind - most all of which had to do with my job path and interest in education and family life. She quickly responded and said, why don’t you re-write them in an episodic timeline and see if that helps? Within an hour, I had re-worked most of my writings and realized I could see a pattern! That all of my spiritual experiences I had been drawing upon had taken place over a number of years in entryways - an entryway of an elementary school, an entryway of a private Christian school, an entryway in a church building, the entryway of my own home. The Spirit had spoke to me in a series of events over a decade of time that were all held together by a common denominator - an entryway. It was such a powerful revelatory experience. As I began to organize my experiences I could see it so clearly and see so perfectly what the Spirit had been impressing upon my mind. Days later, our city shut down due and I knew with all my heart that the Lord had not only prepared us by calling us to homeschool just months before, but he had actually been preparing me for years for what was to unfold over the coming months…and possibly years following this pivotal experience for the world. I wrote a final draft of some of my experiences and shared it here on my site in March of 2020. You can read it here: Entryways to Christ.

A few months after this experience, I was asked to be on a homeschooling podcast (The Duet Podcast: Homeschooling Through Christ) which is no longer circulating. As we were prepping for the episode I sent the host, Meg Daines, my article and just said, it might be helpful for you to read over this so you know a bit more about my experience. I am not sure if Meg even responded, but as we were preparing to record the podcast she told me she doesn’t script anything because she likes the Spirit to be the one to lead the episode. Since Meg and I were in different states we recorded the podcast via phone - I sat in my car in a church parking lot - and before she clicked record - she offered a prayer for the Spirit to guide our call. And, that’s exactly what happened. We had such an amazing call and what was so interesting about it is Meg had just finished listening to Brad Wilcox’s audio on the spiritual symbolisms found in the Narnia series. On the call she pointed out to me how much my story mimicked parallels in the book - especially the symbolism of the wardrobe and entering into Narnia being likened to my spiritual experiences happening in doorways/entrways. And, I feel like ever since I made that connection I’ve been able to pin point that once we crossed that threshold into the homeschool world at that exact time Covid was beginning - it was much like the children walking into Narnia in that their lives would never be the same. It was almost like my own spiritual realm and dimension had changed and we would never be able to go back to once was. But, even despite the hardships that lay ahead of us, there would be “far, far better things ahead than any we (would) leave behind.”

UNIT PREP

That fall I decided to do a Narnia unit and read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for our Christmas school. I knew it was something the Lord wanted me to understand better. It easily was my favorite unit that we studied. We put math and LA aside and just did our Narnia every day through the month of December. To prepare, I first listened to Of Lions, Dragons and Turkish Delight: CS Lewis for Latter-day Saints This is the audio from Brad Wilcox that Meg had listened to and it was definitely my favorite of all the resources. I also read CS Lewis: Latter-day Truths in Narnia (Spiritual Context: LDS Perspectives). If I had to eliminate something, it’d probably be this. It was good, but the audio from Wilcox spoke to me more. Everyone is different though so you’ll have to look into it and see if it’s something you’d like. Last, A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths was so helpful and definitely a must-have. I thought we would use this with my girls and I was going to tie it in through out reading. But, since it was their first time through, I ended up just letting them listen and enjoy the magic of the story. When they discovered who Aslan represented seriously was the best day. They were full of so much joy and light and it was so fun to go back and talk about who everyone represented and all the symbolism of how it related to what we know of good and evil.

RESOURCES USED

We used the The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Family Learning Adventure by Hearth Magic. She did a great job with the curriculum. It is has a lot of art related projects which we utilized the most. We did some (not all) of the copywork - I think we did one or two recipes. And the frozen ice lantern was a lot of fun too. I’d say the curriculum would be great for about 6+ (my twins were 7 when we did it), but she does offer ideas for younger and older kids too. It’s a family style curriculum so lots of ideas for varying ages. I printed off the curriculum and made a teacher’s guide and then I printed the materials I thought we’d use from the curriculum and made a student guide. I added in blank sheets of water color paper for the artwork, but if I were to do it again I’d probably just use the notebooking method and record our work in an art notebook - but I wasn’t familiar with it when I did the unit.

To introduce the unit to my kids we read Finding Narnia: The Story of CS Lewis and His Brother. It is a BEAUTIFUL book and I’d highly recommend it. I had the book sitting out for them the day we started the unit (which I think was the Monday after Thanksgiving). At the end of the book I had a pretend letter from CS Lewis. This is a download of the letter which was written by Ashley from www.dearestfolk.com. It was so magical because the kids believed CS Lewis had written it just for them. When Ashley did this with her kids, she dressed up like CS Lewis and also did the discussion questions she has on there. We didn’t use them, but I loved this idea - especially for older children. Either way, definitely recommend utilizing the letter.

I keep this print of Lucy walking through the wardrobe on my desk year round now because it symbolizes so much for my personal spiritual journey and I think in some ways this has been tied to why I have felt prompted to share our experiences on IG and blog about it. All of this has become apart of who I am and in a way I believe the Lord has helped prepare me to be here and share what I can with others. So, here are a few others resources we used throughout the unit that may be helpful to you:

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe Video - we watched this and this is the YouTube link, but I have seen it available on other video streaming apps.

He is Building a Palace - 1 minute video on a quote from CS Lewis regarding the learning process and our experiences here on earth.

July 28, 2019 - Music & The Spoken Word (CS Lewis & The Course of Life)

We love playing Chronicles of Narnia | Winter Woods & Music Ambience while we did copy work and our art projects.

And here are four other articles I read that may be helpful to those of my faith: Divine Discontent, What CS Lewis Can Help Us Understand About Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith by LDS Living, BYU Forum: A deeper theme in The Chronicles of Narnia, He May as Well Be “Elder” CS Lewis - this is a compilation of CS Lewis quotes used in some General Conference talks.