Books No house can have enough books. Make sure your house has a representation of great Fiction Books and non-fiction books. A mix of two is very important.

Most homes have a deficit of non-fiction books, so make sure your home is filled with Science, History and Art books. Children need to learn to read and appreciate non-fiction books in order to do well in research when they reach higher levels of study.

Felt Boards Children love to tell stories with felt. You'll need a felt board to start. You can make your own board from a sheet of felt or purchase a board from one of suppliers below.

Once you have board, let fun begin. I personally use both options with my children.

StoryTeller has a great line of products -- felt sets, felt books, and so much more. The quality of their products is excellent. Visit their site to get a sample and feel thick felt yourself. Be sure to check out dolls with felt clothing that sticks to them!

Go to a craft or fabric store and buy sheets of felt in all colors. Then, cut out shapes in all colors and sizes. (You'll be amazed at how quickly a child will make an alien, ship, house, or person out of nothing but a few circles, rectangles, and triangles.)

Blocks and Legos Children can play for hours building towers, bridges, cities, creatures, and more with these toys that inspire creativity, patience, and small-motor skills. When masterpiece is finished, have your child pretend to be a giant and smash through blocks -- or grab a few small cars and drive around new city! Be sure to name city and have your child tell you all about it.

I sure do. Back in those days, most churches had at least one revival each summer, usually in either July or August. We’re not talking just one night revivals, either - some of these revivals ran for at least three or four nights, and sometimes even longer.

The preachers who did these revivals were typically from some of other churches in area. Doing these services gave them a chance to preach at other locations, and it also gave them chance to experience new congregations. Sometimes churches would be so impressed with a revival preacher that they’d ultimately ask him to become their pastor. I think, for preachers, revivals were a great thing.

For those of us in congregation, revivals were a mixed blessing. First, they had them for at least three or four consecutive nights, and you had to attend each night. That meant three or more consecutive nights of church services that lasted two to three hours each night. No matter how you look at it, that’s an awful lot, even for most devout among us. Compound that with fact that it was summer, typically eighty plus degrees outside, and you were miserable. And don’t even ask me about mosquitoes and gnats. With all perfume and aftershave that we had wafting around in church, we might as well have put up signs for them and announced that open season had been declared. I came home with so many red splotches sometimes that I resembled a human pimple.

The most memorable revival for me was one I attended back around ‘65. It was held at Juliette Methodist Church, and preacher was a guy out of Griffin named Reverend Sam Krate, or something like that. I remember sitting next to Tommy Cochran, and Tommy called him, “the Reverend Sour Kraut.” I thought that was pretty funny, so that’s how I remember him to this day.

The Reverend Kraut was a good preacher, and he could talk a blue streak. The only problem was, more crowd reaction he got, longer he talked. On this particular night he’d gone for a good two hours, and still hadn’t finished. I was gettin’ pretty frustrated.