"Parables from Nature" by Margaret Scott Gatty utilizes the Charlotte Mason method of instruction, which is preferred by many homeschooling families. "Parables from Nature" weaves interesting facts from nature and science into the stories. The collection includes all 29 stories from the first, second, third, and fourth series, originally published in separate volumes.The stories in "Parables from Nature" are challenging, rich and complex, as they seek to uncover God's craftsmanship in the natural world, how the seen teaches us about the unseen. This is a great book to glean ideas from and stretch the intellect, imagination and understanding. This is newly laid out with clear print and a readable font (not like the hard-to-read facsimile editions provided by some other publishers).

Margaret Roach has been harvesting thirty years of backyard parables-deceptively simple, instructive stories from a life spent digging ever deeper-and has distilled them in this memoir along with her best tips for garden making, discouraging all manner of animal and insect opponents, at-home pickling, and more. After ruminating on the bigger picture in her memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, Margaret Roach has returned to the garden, insisting as ever that we must garden with both our head and heart, or as she expresses it, with "horticultural how-to and woo-woo." In The Backyard Parables, Roach uses her fundamental understanding of the natural world, philosophy, and life to explore the ways that gardening saved and instructed her, and meditates on the science and spirituality of nature, reminding her readers and herself to keep on digging.

Isabella Lilias Trotter (1853-1928) was an artist and a missionary for over 38 years to the Muslims of Algeria. John Ruskin, the famous art critic, didn't believe that ladies could paint before he met Lilias. He changed his mind after he met her and believed that if she would give her life to painting she could become the greatest painter of the nineteenth century. Ruskin believed that if she would devote herself to art "she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal. " He was unhappy that she was spending so much time on the streets of London, helping with the YWCA, when he thought she ought to be painting. Lilias, however, decided to give up her career in art in order to serve God. She always remained a good friend of Ruskin's though, and they wrote many letters when she was in Algeria. She also wrote several books - beautifully illustrated by herself, including: Parables of the Cross (1894), Parables of the Christ-Life (1899), and a book for Sufi Muslims, The Way of the Sevenfold Secret.

A collection of sermons about the (bird) characters belonging to the First Birderian Church of Wington, aimed at stimulating the interest of young people in the worship services of the church.

In eight retellings, Mary Hoffman shows how Jesus used simple parables to convey essential truths to his listeners. The parables include The Lost Sheep, The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son, and The House on the Rock.

Seeing Nature is a series of true stories or parables that offer tools for understanding relationships in the natural world. Many of the stories take the reader to wild landscapes, including canyons, tundra, and mountain ridges, while others contemplate the human-made world: water-diversion trenches and supermarket check-out lines. At one point, Krafel discovers a world in a one-inch-square patch of ordinary ground. Inspiring for parents and teachers seeking to encourage excitement about the positive role of people in nature, Krafel's work harkens to St. Exupery's The Little Prince, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Jean Giono's The Man Who Planted Trees. As Barbara Damrosch has noted: [This book] is a gift.... With curiosity, wit, and a spare and graceful style, Krafel notes why birds in flocks land as they do, how islands can move upstream in a river, how kelp forests, swaying gently, break the force of the sea's power, how tundra plants create whole ecosystems on bare rock from mere specks of life. Yet there are no long-winded sermons about the woods, or cute anthropomorphizations of animals. The book's economical, unsentimental style is part of its originality. Paul Krafel's years as a park ranger afforded him time to walk and think--his job was to observe the world around him. He is now a teacher, creating a curriculum for young people that is built on a startlingly simple truth: The world around us is an extended conversation between "upward spirals"--nature in regenerative, procreative modes--and downward spirals toward entropy and disintegration. As nature refreshes and rebuilds, the downward spirals are overcome. Nature's process becomes the process of replenishing hope.

I Wonder--Could God be like a rock?--or like a light?--or like the wind? It isn't easy for a child to understand the nature of a complex God. But through His creation, the invisible God makes Himself known. Boys and girls can begin to understand the mystery of God by looking at the wonderful world He made. Rock, light, and wind reveal amazing secrets about who God is. These three parables will open young minds and help boys and girls make their own first discoveries about God's rocklike steadfastness and faithfulness, the light of His love in Jesus, and the windlike power of His Spirit.