Broad Horizons

TOS Crew Review: Kinderbach

2012-01-27T09:54:00.000-05:00

Last spring we were excited to have the opportunity to review Kinderbach, and the twins enjoyed it, but Kinderbach's age range is 3-7 and reviewing it right around their 8th birthday, it was clear that Kinderbach's suggested ages are accurate.

So when I was asked to review Kinderbach again this year, I decided to see how accurate the LOWER limit of their age range is, and try it with not-quite-three-year-old, Little Bit! She turns 3 at the end of March, so she's younger than the suggested age range, but she is LOVING it! Kinderbach calls itself a "piano introduction for young beginners". I think it's important to realize that at least in the first several weeks, the emphasis is on rhythm and loud/soft and things like that. This is why it works for an almost 3 year old who could never focus enough for "piano lessons". Kinderbach is available as DVDs or online. You do need a piano or keyboard for this program. We recieved a subscription to the online program. Kinderbach consists of 6 levels. Each level consists of 10 weeks, and each week has 4 Lessons. Each lesson is a short video that encourages the child to do things along with the video. Most days there are also printables that go with the video lesson. I love that they keep the lessons nice and short for these little ones! But I must admit that most days Little Bit wants to "do another one". Other days she doesn't want to "watch Dodie" (the donkey) at all so we are going at our own speed but I'm going to guess that we end up watching Dodie 2-3 times a week, but we usually do 2-3 lessons each time so it all averages out.

I do think the age range stated (3-7) is very accurate. My older girls were too old for it at their 8th birthday and certainly haven't had any interest (except in trying to "help" Little Bit, sigh) this year (at almost 9). Little Bit has been enjoying it, but she would get more out of it in 6 months or so, when she's actually 3.

This is very hands-on and could work with any learning/teaching style. It's designed to be used in a structured way, using it for a few minutes each day, 4 days a week. But we've found it works fine to use it on the days that Little Bit is interested, and skip it the days she's not. And it works fine to do 2 or 3 lessons at a time if she wants to keep going. While the lessons definitely build on themselves, there is plenty of repetition so Little Bit has been able to remember things fine even if we go several days between lessons.

One thing I've noticed with this program is a definite down-side to video-learning. . . there's no way, in a video format, to move at the child's speed. I had to laugh the other day when the video was moving slower than Little Bit needed. The woman on the video was making loud or soft sounds and had asked the children to color a gumball in the appropriate gumball machine (on a printable) to indicate loud or soft. But she, naturally, gave plenty of time after each sound for the children to think about their answer and color it in. This is certainly a necessary part of things, but Little Bit was pretty quick at this one. So the woman had made a sound, and Little Bit had colored in her answer, then the woman said a second time to "color the right gumball" and Little Bit said in the cutest, exasperated voice "I ALREADY DID!". I don't see a solution to this in a video format. And obviously it is also a factor in classroom settings, but it did remind me of how much I appreciate being able to move things along at each child's speed with most of what we do.

If you're looking for an affordable, hands-on "introduction to music" type program for your preschoolers. This is a great option for you. You can choose an online subscription for $95.88 per year or $19.99 per month. Or, you can purchase the DVDs. There are a variety of packages for the DVDs, you can see them here.

Kinderbach also offers a variety of song books, coloring books etc. We were able to look at some of these. I think these would be great for older preschoolers. Little Bit is generally content with plain paper to color on, so I didn't print off the coloring books, but if your child enjoys coloring books, these are nice, affordable, and a good way to reinforce what they are learning in the videos. I was also able to see a sample song from several of the songbooks. Little Bit isn't ready for the songbooks, it would require going quite a ways through the program to learn all the notes included in the song. But it's a great option to keep in mind. I know one of MiniMe's frustrations last year was she wanted to PLAY SONGS, so having one of these and showing her that if she kept going through the program to learn the notes included, she WOULD be able to play some songs would have been encouraging for her.

I also wanted to mention that Kinderbach is working on a Level 7. I was able to see a preview of it and was impressed. It's different from the early levels. It requires more parent participation as, at least at this time, it's not video-based and definitely geared for an older child. But seems like it would be a good, solid "next step" from the current lessons.

AND Kinderbach is reformatting their videos to be available on iPads and iPhones. I don't have these devices, but did try opening a video on my android phone. It's a small screen for something like this, but the video does format fine on it. I can see it being a more viable option on an iPad though. I don't think Little Bit would be able to get as much out of it on as small a screen as a phone.

Be sure to check out the free online trial to make sure it's a good fit for your family. Also notice that right now, if you sign up for their newsletter, you can get a coupon code for 40% off, definitely worth looking into!!!

Go visit the TOS Crew blog to see what my fellow crew mates and their children thought of this product!

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. For Your Kids - Chapter 2

2012-01-26T08:28:00.001-05:00

This week over at The Pelsers, we're talking about Chapter 2 of How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. For Your Kids.

Chapter 2 is the "E" of H.E.A.R.T. and stands for Enrich Your Marriage

Here are some of the quotes that spoke to me in this chapter:

Do you live like you actually love your spouse, or even like him? pg 64
Too often we are willing to do the easy thing and hope it's enough. pg 65
We need to stop criticizing others and begin looking inward and clean up ourselves. pg 66
It is from our marriages that [our kids] learn grace. pg 67
What if we started living out God's original intent for marriage - oneness? What if we were willing and excited about sacrificing ourselves for our marriage? What if we sought God first and honored Him in our marriage by seeking to serve? . . .

My thoughts:

Interestingly, while I certainly needed, and took to heart, the reminders about loving my husband and showing that love. The thing that really jumped out at me was the reminder about doing thing and hoping it's enough. Not only in my marriage, but in other areas too.

I'm struggling with some things right now, in a holding pattern until I have more information, but still mulling it all over . . . and literally RIGHT before I read this chapter I'd been thinking, "you know, I really hope that this plays out so that I don't have to do anything". And then I read that quote . . . and it kind of hit me over the head and reminded me that sometimes the easy way isn't good enough. I'm STILL in a holding pattern. I STILL don't know how it will play out, but this was a good reminder to accept, without grumbling, however it does play out and trust God to work things out according to His will, even if that's not "the easy way".

Hanukkah Fairies (abit late)

2012-01-24T11:43:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a friend and realized I'd never blogged about our Hanukkah Fairies (I planned to right after Hanukkah but it slipped my mind). So I'm going to go ahead and do so now. . . In December, a parenting forum I am was talking about Elf Magic. I thought it was a fun idea but I told myself I was NOT going to take that on this year along with everything else we had going on. But then, someone pointed out that they also had Hanukkah Elves on the site. And that got my wheels turning (see how I justify things to break my own rules . . . LOL). Since it was our first year celebrating Hanukkah, it would be kind of fun to introduce this as a fun, silly, part of Hanukkah. BUT they were sold out of the girl Hanukkah elf, and their elves were abit out of my price range anyway. So I started hunting online for a blue elf of somesort that WAS in my price range (and available). . . I didn't come up with much, but my search on etsy.com did bring up several blue fairies! I remembered from when we did a waldorf preschool curriculum with the big girls, that fairies are pretty easy to make and so I started modifying things . . . coming up with ideas that would work for Hanukkah, and made 3 blue "Hanukkah Fairies".

My PLAN was, the night before the first day of Hanukkah I'd set them all up, but then I got dates confused and thought Hanukkah started a day later than it did, so all of a sudden it was the first day of Hanukkah and I hadn't set things up the night before. So that day before we left to run errands I told the big girls to take Little Bit out to the car while I got the last things together and then once they were out in the car, I very quickly set up the fairies by our menorah, so they'd be waiting for us when we got home from errands. I got home & realized I'd forgotten to take a picture, so I literally got my phone ready and snapped the picture as I walked by so the girls wouldn't notice. All things considered, the picture didn't come out too bad LOL. I set up the fairies on/around the menorah along with their "introductory note" tied with a blue ribbon, and a little tiny jar of blue glitter (magic fairy dust). The note said they are the Hanukkah Fairies and they love to visit families during Hanukkah and learn more about Hanukkah along with the family. Also that at night the girls were to leave them a snack of fairy cookies and milk, and sprinkle them with the magic fairy dust, so the fairies could "come alive" during the night.

After the girls went to bed each night I set up the fairies to be "caught" doing something the next morning. I didn't get pictures of all of them, but here is some of their fun anyway. The first night I left some miniature dreidels and the wrappers from some chocolate coins next to the fairies' milk "bowl". And then the fairies were all tangled up in yarn and some knitting needles with a note saying they were trying to knit themselves sleeping bags but hadn't had much luck. So that day the girls made them sleeping bags.

Another night, they were scattered abit. One was reading a library book (Hanukkah at Valley Forge, very cool book!) on the bench.

The second fairy was in the dining room on the table, reading a new book the fairies brought us, Alexandra's Scroll.

And the final fairy (MiniMe's) took them awhile to find. She was climbing on our bookcases, looking for a book to read, hee hee.

Since Hanukkah and Christmas overlapped this year, on Christmas morning the girls found the fairies visiting Baby Jesus in our nativity set.

One of my favorites, was their snowball fight! They used the tree blocks (that live in the lower drawer) to build steps up to the drawer of regular wood blocks and then set up their "forts" out of blocks. The "snowballs" are Gobstoppers, there were "snowball" ones available at Christmas time this year, that were white, green, and red. So I just pulled out the white ones for the snowball fight. Cotton balls or mini marshmallows would also work.

Another "new book day", they were all sitting on Little Bit's rocking chair reading the Hanukkah section (of course) of Walk With Y'Shua Through the Jewish Year, which we continue to enjoy as we move through this new year, learning about the various Jewish Holidays.

And another favorite, their star-gazing camp-out. The fairies brought their sleeping bags (Sassy knitted the white one, MiniMe made a red felt one for her fairy, and Little Bit used the blanket from a small doll she already had) to a windowsill (that actually looks outside, they "lived" on a windowsill, but that window looks out on the (covered) porch, so no stars to be seen from that window), and had some (new) constellation cards to help identify the stars and were roasting marshmallows (using straight pins) over a tealight candle.

There were a couple other nights that I didn't get pictures of. And then the morning after the last night of Hanukkah the fairies were gone but had left a craft to do, the "magic fairy dust" (to save for when we come back), and a note saying they'd had a lovely time and might be back during the year to celebrate some of the other holidays.

I plan to bring them back every once in awhile, not necessarily every holiday, to keep things fun.

As with "Santa", we've never tried to make our children think any of it is "real" but, with the knowledge that it's all in fun, they still think it's great fun to get into the fun of it all. And this definitely fell into that category. They were well aware that the fairies don't "really" come to life (and incidentally, one of my reasons for doing the "magic fairy dust" was to give myself a way to make sure the GIRLS found all the fairies each evening and had them in one place where it woudl be quick and easy for me to grab them and set up the "adventure" after the girls were in bed. As it was, they didn't carry the fairies around much, but from reading about people doing the elves, I knew that some children, like to play with their elf during the day and I could see Little Bit, especially wanting to do that, so this took care of that possibility :)

We had alot of fun with it, and the girls LOVED it! I was usually still upstairs (having my Bible time, or getting dressed) when they would come down as soon as they got up each morning to find their fairies. It was so fun to hear them giggling about it :)

Weekly Wrap-Up - January 22

2012-01-22T14:03:00.000-05:00

Our main fun this week was on Thursday, when we went to Independence Hall, and surrounding area. Sassy and MiniMe earned their Junior Ranger and we visited the Liberty bell, Independence Hall, The Congress Building, Second Bank Art Gallery, including the really cool (I thought) solid brick vaults in the basement (didn't get pictures of those though, now that I think about it), and the building that houses the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and a 3rd document that escapes me at the moment. We discovered that this is pretty much the PERFECT time to visit that area as long as your schedule is flexible enough to be able to choose a day that isn't too terribly cold (or snowy or windy or otherwise weather you don't want to be out in). Thursday was cold, but little or no wind, so in the sun it was pretty nice and even in the shade it was fine as long as we didn't sit in one place for too long.

The crowds were non-existent! We only saw one tour group (adults), and they tended to move quickly through areas so even if they came into an area while we were there, they usually kept on moving. No school groups. The rangers seemed thrilled to answer the girls' questions and have someone to interact with. It was lovely!

I was thankful that my parents were able to come with us, Little Bit did well, but understandably was restless with how long we spent at each place, talking to the rangers. Mom spent a good part of her day following Little Bit around. She made several trips up and down the steps in the congress building. Took several laps through all the galleries of the Second Bank Art Gallery, and found a stick that the wind had blown in and marched around the "Documents building" over-and-over holding her "sword" (much to the amusement of the ranger in that building LOL).

Little Bit did do a good job of being quietly not too active during the main floor part of the tour of Independence Hall (and would probably have had a blast on the second floor, dancing to the harpsichord music, but their security regulations didn't allow us to leave the stroller parked outside the building, and I didn't feel like carrying it up the million and one stairs, so mom took the stroller and Little Bit back outside while I took the big girls upstairs.

The National Park at Independence Hall also has a "trading card" program, where children can earn "trading cards" about various Revolutionary War people, places, and things, by talking to the rangers, answering and asking questions. So the girls each got a set of those while we were there.

We were disappointed that the Benjamin Franklin underground museum is currently closed for renovations, so we'll plan to go back down once it's open again. There's also another site, Thaddeus Kosciuszko Monument in that area that we didn't have time to go to either, so we'll probably try to combine it with the Benjamin Franklin stuff.

Other fun we had this week includes a play date with our friends, E and J, and their mommy. Everyone had fun playing together. Little Bit was very excited that "my friends" were coming over to play with her.

The other days we had our normal school. We are wrapping up our Revolutionary War stuff for history, we watched a LOT of "Liberty's Kids" and finally finished listening to the Johnny Tremain audiobook in the car.

Our week ended with a very snowy Sabbath! The snow started during the night Friday night, so we woke up Sabbath morning to a world of white. And the snow was still coming down. Needless to say, we declared it a snow day and didn't even attempt to go to church. We enjoyed time together and watching some Veggie Tales videos (as if I didn't have a sufficient collection of my own, we discovered that netflix online has most of them available, so now we have lots of variety, woo-hoo!) All 3 girls went out to play in the snow for awhile. Little Bit wasn't so sure about the whole sledding thing, but she seemed to enjoy just throwing snow in the air and such while her sisters sledded. Once she was sufficiently frozen, I brought her inside and the big girls stayed out awhile longer. Then they went out AGAIN during Little Bit's nap and stayed out until dark.

And one final picture from this week. We needed new toner cartridges for the printer (that's what most of the boxes cluttering the background are), Little Bit claimed the box they came in as her own personal toy. She LOVES to sit in the box and close 2 of the flaps, then put a book on them to hold them down. So silly!

So, we had a good week all around!

How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. For Your Kids Chapter 1

2012-01-18T11:06:00.000-05:00

This week we are blogging about Chapter 1 of How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. For Your Kids at The Pelsers.

Chapter 1 focuses on the H - Have a Heart for the Things of God
Some quotes I liked from Chapter 1 include:

In order to reach the hearts of your kids, you must first have a heart for the things of God.
As intentional parents, we do not panic, we pray. We do not give sermons; we give scripture.
. . . Then someone is rude to someone or grabs or yells or something, and I pray because I'm in danger of slipping back into my old habit of sermonizing. At a time like this, God wants me to seek Him, ask Him for insight, and wait for Him to touch my child's heart.
Our praise should be complete, total, unashamed, and enthusiastic.
Have a heart for God and don't be afraid to show it! Praise Him out loud. Pray and lift him up!

This chapter is a combination of showing how ME having a heart for God is SOO important in having a heart for my children! That they are going to learn about God, not from what I say, but what they see in me. That is something that is somehow so easy to forget, at least for me.

The other thing that stood out to me in this chapter was that we need to be "loud" for God. I'm not sure how I feel about that. . . the examples given were how we loudly and unashamedly cheer for our favorite sports team but keep quiet about God. The thing is, I don't cheer loudly for favorite teams and such either, it's just not me. . . so that has me pondering . . . I get what she's saying, if we're willing to speak up about other things but not our God then what's that say about who's most important to us? But on the other hand, I would feel awkward yelling and screaming and jumping up and down about a sporting team too, so if it's just not something that's part of my personality, does God really ask me to be loud and enthusiastic about Him? Because I just don't think there's any way around the fact that it would seem (and feel, and be) fake and forced and put-on, and that's not a good witness for God either.

That said, I do think the underlying point is valid. We need to truly love God and not be ashamed of Him, in front of our children and the world! I just think How we are "unashamed" will look different in different people depending on our personalities.

Go over to The Pelsers to see what others thought of this chapter.

TOS Crew Review: We Choose Virtues

2012-01-16T18:06:00.002-05:00

While for the most part I try to follow my children's interests in our schooling, the one area where I tend to be more "dictatorial" is character training. In this area, while I still try to make it fun and interesting and such, I tend to focus on areas that need reinforcement and more work. Sometimes my children don't appreciate that, but generally once we move beyond the "heat of the moment", they are on-board along with me. So, when I saw my name on the list to get to review a product from We Choose Virtues, I was excited! What better way to sneak some extra character training into our days then to "have" to use the product because we're reviewing it :)

We Choose Virtues was created to provide a fun, simple way to teach virtues to children, ages 3-18 in either a home, church or school setting. For review purposes we were sent a set of the Virtue Clues Cards ($5.99) as well as links to download the Teacher's Handbook ($4.99), Coloring book ($3.00), Family Character Assessment (free), and Kids Memory Verses, Bible Heroes and Truths (free). I have to admit, I struggled abit trying to figure out how to utilize the virtue clue cards and coloring pages on their own. Finally, after reading through the Teacher's Handbook, and going back and re-reading it some, while I'm still not completely clear on how the cards would be used with the full curriculum, I was able to come up with a plan that is working well for us. Here's what we're doing.

The program as a whole is designed around 3 simple family (or classroom) "rules": Be Obedient, Be Kind, and Be Helpful. The twelve virtues listed in this program are designed to further expound on, and define these 3 rules (4 under each rule). I decided we would spend a week on each rule, and then probably cycle back around through them. Since I don't have the Parenting Cards that give detailed suggestions for each virtue, or the Posters, that help present each virtue to the children, I improvised.

I began by introducing the 3 rules and talking about how all the family rules we've had in the past can fall under those 3 rules. I listed the 3 rules (with space in between) down one side of our white board.

Next I introduced that week's virtue. I wrote the saying from the front of the Virtue Clue Card on the white board and passed out the coloring page for that virtue. Then while we colored our pictures (I colored one too, to have one to put on the board (w/o fighting over whose was on the board), plus I LIKE to color, and these are fun coloring pages!!) we read the saying together and discussed it. Next I wrote that virtue's Memory Verse (from the free download) on the board under the saying. Again we read it together and discussed it. Next I read the Bible story (also listed on the free download) and we discussed this as it relates to the virtue we're discussing. I also had the older girls each choose one aspect of the "Virtue Card" saying that they specifically needed to focus on that week. For example, for the week we focused on "I am Obedient", MiniMe agreed that she needs to work on the "I am not slow" piece of it, so she put extra effort that week into doing what she was asked promptly.

The rest of the week we continued with our regular Bible and just repeated the saying and memory verse at the beginning of our Bible time and took a few seconds to discuss how they were doing on their chosen areas of focus. At the end of the week, I list that virtue under the relevant rule, so that by the end we'll have all 12 virtues listed under their respective rules on the side of our board.

So far it has been going well. We've had some rough discussions in areas where the girls don't like to admit how poorly they are following the particular virtue being discussed, but that isn't all bad. I definitely plan to continue through all 12, and probably cycle back through at least once more. Then may let it rest before revisiting it again.

Would I recommend the product? Hmmm . . . the cards I received, I don't really see as a stand alone product. Looking at the company as a whole, yes, I think this is a fun, colorful way of reinforcing positive virtues in your family. Homeschoolers can incorporate it into their school day, non-homeschoolers could use it as a quick morning devotional at breakfast or a part of evening devotions at night. This could also be incorporated into a church children's class, perhaps focusing on one virtue each month. Additionally, note that products are available in both faith-based and non-faith-based versions so this could be used during a morning family time for non-religious families as well. As far as WHAT to buy, spend some time browsing the site, then my recommendation would be to spend the $4.99 for the Teacher's Guide, reading through it will show how all the products are intended to be used and give you a pretty good feel for which products will work best for your family. Alternately, if you're pretty sure you'll want "the whole package" you can save some money by purchasing a kit like this one. Personally, for our family, the kit includes several items that I wouldn't utilize enough to be worth spending the money, so I'd prefer to just get what I need. If it were me, I'd probably choose the parents cards, coloring book, and teacher's guide. If money is extremely tight, you can put together a nice program with the items I received for the review: Teacher's Guide, Virtue Clues, and free download Kids Memory Verses, Bible Heroes and Truth. For just over $10 plus shipping, you'll have the basics you need.

When I asked the girls what they thought, the initial reaction was speaking to the strong feelings that our current week's virtue (accountability) has raised. Let's just say this is an area that needs quite abit of work and they aren't real happy about having that . . . emphasized this week. Once we moved beyond that and I asked specifically what they think of the coloring book and sayings on the cards, they agreed that they like that, so I'm going to interpret this as a thumbs up from them.

Be sure to check out what my fellow crew mates thought of this product, and how they chose to use it, on the TOS Crew Blog.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Weekly Wrap-Up - January 15

2012-01-15T20:30:00.000-05:00

Another week of nothing out of the ordinary (I was going to say normality but ummm . . . there's never been anything normal about me). I could get used to this. I'd rather NOT get used to the fact that dh has been having to work a ton extra lately, sigh . . . he tells me it should let up soon. I hope so! One night this week we dropped supper by the office for him since he was working late. The girls were excited to find, when we got there, that one of his co-workers had her dog at work with her. All 3 girls had a great time loving on Queenie, and Queenie gobbled up the attention. But then when it was time for us to go home, as we walked out the door and dh said "goodbye", Little Bit was HEARTBROKEN that Daddy wasn't coming home with us, poor baby :( The rest of that evening, any little bump she heard (and with umpteen cats residing on our porch there are lots of little bumps) she said "I think Daddy is home!" She was VERY excited when he finally DID come home!

I've been taking advantage of our time at home to do some decluttering of closets and such around here. It feels good to get some "junk" out of here. MiniMe (my pack rat extraordinaire) is eyeing my Goodwill bags warily, fearing they have "treasures" in them, but it's not her stuff, regardless of her fears, and I think we'll all enjoy our snug little house better if we pare things down abit :)

We've had cold, but nice weather quite abit of the time. Little Bit loves to play outside with her big sisters, though some days it has to be short periods because it's cold!

In my decluttering I found a beanbag toss game that I'd gotten at a yardsale several years ago. So one of the too-cold-to-stay-outside-long days, I got it out. Had to laugh, I let Little Bit walk right up and drop her beanbags in but obviously the older girls stood back a ways. When Sassy missed the first time, Little Bit said "Here, let me help you. See you come closer, like this" as she picked up Sassy's beanbag and dropped it in a hole. It was SOOOO funny, she cracks me up! We threw in some math lessons with the beanbags and that lead to a discussion of division, in which we discovered that LockRobots work quite nicely as math manipulatives.

In history we've continued to focus on the American Revolution. We're thoroughly enjoying the Liberty's Kids DVDs. We're also enjoying listening to an audiobook of Johnny Tremain when we're in the car. The girls are also enjoying reading a variety of books on the topic. We're hoping to spend a day visiting the historic sites in Philadelphia this week, we shall see . . .

MiniMe and Sassy are continuing to progress through a cursive handwriting ebook at their own paces. And Little Bit is enjoying learning about music through with Kinderbach.

We've had some challenges as we work through the We Choose Virtues curriculum for Bible (watch for my review of it coming later this week), some of the definitions of the virtues are hitting abit close to home, and both girls have areas where they don't like to admit they need to work on things, so we've had some frustrations, but we're working through them, and growing as a result. We're also thoroughly enjoying a Hebrew Roots Family Devotional for Proverbs that Evonne from Read Hebrew Today is working on, and letting me have a sneak peak and offer some suggestions.

So that's been some of our school this week.

TOS Crew Review: Learn Our History

2012-01-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

Since we are learning about American History this year, I was excited to have a chance to review a DVD from Learn Our History. Providentially, the video we were sent to review is The Birth of a Revolution, which fit in PERFECTLY with our current studies on the American Revolution. We were also given online access to watch 9/11 & the War on Terror.

Learn Our History is a new company, started last year, with the mission of making American history fun through their animated videos. The videos we received were between 20 and 30 min long. When you purchase the videos from their website, or by phone, you will also receive access to streaming online video and other educational resources.

Since The Birth of a Revolution fit nicely into our current history curriculum the girls and I watched it together. Since 9/11 is a topic that I still struggle to explain to my children while they're so young, and we only had online access to that video(which meant clustering around a computer screen), I opted to watch it on my own. While I didn't have any big problems with it, I didn't feel it would provide enough additional information (beyond what we've already talked about as a family) to be worth clustering around the computer screen to watch it.

The videos follow a group of school students as they "time travel" to the various historic events and experience them for themselves.

Things I liked: the videos present as unbiased as possible a view of what happened during the historic events. The children travel to various locations to see what was happening from different points of view and in different locations. My girls enjoyed the video and wished it was longer, or that we had more. That's always a good endorsement LOL.

Things I, personally, wasn't fond of. As is true of many modern books and movies, there is an assumption that sibling rivalry is normal and acceptable. I prefer not to present this as acceptable in our family, so that is generally a "deal breaker" for me unless something has some extremely strong positives to make me overlook it (in which case, I will talk to the girls about the sibling rivalry presented, and how I feel about it). I also found the children in the video to be abit too "stereotyped" for my liking . . . "the brain", "the hick" (complete with overalls), the "valley girl", etc. I haven't seen how having these strong stereotypes add to the storyline in any appreciable way and I don't like encouraging stereotypical thinking.

The company says the videos are good for all ages, and I think, for the most part, that is accurate. Obviously my 2 year old wasn't too thrilled (it wasn't Dora, afterall), but I think we can safely assume that most people would interpret "all ages" to be those in school and on up. My 8 yr olds liked the videos. I can't speak to how older children would react to them.

Whether homeschoolers or not, if you are looking for videos to present some basic American History in short, easy-to-understand, fun, videos, this is a great product (and I believe that's the target, so they're doing well). If, on the other hand, you are a family of history lovers which has instilled that love in your children from a young age, and have children who beg to read "just one more chapter" of biographies, and love visiting national parks and doing junior ranger programs there, these videos probably won't provide a whole lot of new information. But regardless, check out the clips on the website to decide for yourself :)

As I understand it, at this time the videos are available as a "video a month" type subscription. Each video is available for $9.95 + $3.95 shipping. Then each month they make another video available (at the same price) and you have the option to have them send it, or say not. Be sure to check the website for their current offers, there are typically some freebies included with the first order. Currently there are 5 videos available with another 9 ,listed as coming over the next several months. You can see all of the videos listed here.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product(s) in return for writing an unbiased review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. for Your Kids - Introduction

2012-01-12T13:29:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned last week, I decided to join an online "book club" reading How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. for Your Kids by Rachael Carman. This week on Monday we were supposed to post our blog post about the Introduction, but Amazon was slower than usual in shipping my book to me, so I didn't receive it until a couple days ago. So I'm running a few days late :)

The introduction is, for the most part, Rachael's "history" of how she and her husband decided to homeschool. Or perhaps more accurately, how God dragged them into homeschooling, kicking and screaming :) While I can't relate to her original aversion to homeschooling, I did relate to many things in her introduction. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

homeschool is more than an educational choice -- it's a lifestyle.
Relax and read to your kids.
I had a plan for [my children] to make me look good, but I had not considered what God's plan might be for their lives.

I have to admit that I often (almost always) skip the introduction when I read books, or at best, skim it. I'm glad I took the time to read this one, it has me chomping at the bit to jump into the first chapter (which I plan to do during Little Bit's nap this afternoon, or perhaps before I go to bed tonight, we shall see how things pan out. . . fitting reading time in can be challenging, since I suspect it is very much NOT having a H.E.A.R.T. for my children if I were to tell them, go fend for yourselves, Mommy wants to read!!

Book Review: Close Enough to Hear God Breathe by Greg Paul

2012-01-11T20:42:00.000-05:00

In Close Enough to Hear God Breathe, Greg Paul encourages us to rest our head on God's chest, to move close enough to God to hear Him breathe. Mr. Paul uses every day anecdotes from his life and others to show how God can be our constant companion if we move close to Him.

I have to admit, I struggled to get into this book. I don't really know why, I agree with, and like, the ideas presented, and it was well-written, but it just didn't keep my attention like I had hoped it would. So I'm not sure whether to recommend it, because in theory, I do think it's a great book. Or not, because I couldn't get into it. I guess I'll leave it up to you to decide for yourself :)

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Weekly Wrap-Up: January 9

2012-01-09T11:14:00.002-05:00

~~The~~ One of the downsides of being as busy as we are so much of the time is that when we have a "normal" week, I sit down and think . . .now what do I write about? Sigh . . .

So some mundane-ness that is our normal life.

Bedtime stories: We have been reading the Chronicles of Narnia for bedtime stories. I read them as a teenager, and then took a literature class on C.S. Lewis in college (one of my favorite classes, weird as it is for an accounting major to take a 400 level lit class for gen ed credit. See, I've always been weird, it's not a new thing!) We are all enjoying them (well, not Little Bit . . . Mommy are you DONE reading YET?!?! I want Wonder Pets). It's been interesting for me to see the symbolisms that children see, and don't see, in the books. We finished The Last Battle yesterday, so now we're on to other things, but it's been quite enjoyable! Now I've added unit studies on The Chronicles of Narnia to my "do sometime for school" list LOL.

Sabbath School Lessons: Over all I've been happy with the lessons that our church uses for the older girls. In fact, when I wasn't happy with the . . . lack of lessons . . . being used for Little Bit's class, I recommended, and finally kind of took over and implemented, using the same company's program for the littles. However, this is the girls' second time through the same rotation since our church combines Kindergarten (ages 4-6) and Primary (ages 7-9), and they were becoming abit too . . . rote. 2011 had an "extra Sabbath" and the way this particular curriculum dealt with that "53rd week" was with a lesson that I wasn't happy with (not enough Bible-basis). So we took the stated topic (angels) but did our own study on it, using biblegateway.com's topical index. The girls loved it, and it triggered in my mind that we might be ready to move beyond reading "stories" for our lesson study and go straight to the Bible. So that's what we did last week. At the end of each week's lesson it lists the Bible texts, and other resources, that that week's story is based on. So instead of reading the daily readings, we've been reading the listed Bible texts from a variety of Bible versions and discussing it. It's helping us all remember to go straight to the Bible.

Character Building and Virtues: We are reviewing a "virtue" curriculum right now. We received it before Christmas but I didn't introduce it until last week (we were already busy with Christmas and Hanukkah and I didn't want to bog us all down with adding more things, so now we're scrambling abit to get reviewing done by deadlines after taking some "time off" from reviewing). It's a good reminder for all of us to focus on our hearts and let that show in our actions.

Little Bit School: Another current review product we're using is Kinderbach. The older girls reviewed it last year so when we were asked to review it again, I decided it was Little Bit's turn (she's a tad young, the older girls are a tad old). The first day she balked at the idea of it, but since then she has gotten into it. I have no illusions that she will "learn to play piano" but she's having fun and run to get "her piano" (the keyboard) and happily shows me "Dodie's House" (D on the piano keyboard). So it's all good. The girls struggle with the fact that Kinderbach is LITTLE BIT's school time and they need to continue with their independent school work and not distract her by asking her what she's doing every 30 seconds.

Independent Schoolwork: Which leads us to independent schoolwork for the big girls. Bible notebooking has been independent work for awhile now. They listen to the days' chapters on the audio Bible on my phone and then choose a verse to illustrate and/or write as copywork. We've also been working on handwriting recently. We are using the Joy of Handwriting Cursive program and it is working well for the girls. I simply printed it out and added it to their school notebooks. They do one page each day. It builds nicely on itself so is giving them practice so they don't forget the earlier letters and is quick enough to not be tedious. Last week they finished learning the last of the lower case letters and are now starting on the upper case. I've been very pleased with how much neater their cursive handwriting looks already compared to their printing and have been encouraging them to use cursive for more of their writing. While I reserve the right to change my mind (multiple times), at this point I'm leaning toward going with the "old fashioned" approach and teaching cursive first when Little Bit is old enough to write. That said, Sassy was teaching Little Bit to write (manuscript) Ls last week, so I might already be too late LOL.

History: This is another area where we're moving into more independent work - reading, in this case. We're kind of stalled on the American Revolution, partially because it's an era that I personally enjoy and the girls seem to as well, so breezing through it in a couple weeks just didn't seem to do it justice. We kicked things off with our visit to Mount Vernon last month and I'm hoping to schedule a trip to Philadelphia in the next couple of weeks as a kind of wrap-up. I've had the girls read several books on their own, both those recommended in the curriculum but also some Christmas presents: Sassy's currently reading the Childhood of Famous Americans book on Martha Washington and MiniMe is reading the Sisters in Time book on the Revolution (Lizzie and the Redcoats is the title, I think). Thanks to our county library's decent selection of audiobooks we've also been able to listen to several audiobooks on the topic and, in fact, there's one waiting at the library for me to pick it up today.

Chores: December brought with it a need to do some MAJOR cleaning in preparation for a house full of people on Christmas. I am bound and determined to keep things moving FORWARD in this regard now that we made some progress. Murphy's Law is, as always, doing it's best to thwart me, the last several days I've woken up with a very stiff neck, not sure why, have decided to just deal with it, it seems to work itself out as the day goes on. ANYWAY . . . as a part of getting us all back in the "doing chores" mode, and to get the house ready for Christmas, I set up an account at cozi.com and in addition to using it for MY to do list, calendar, and shopping lists (all of which I can access on my phone as well as my computer), i also set it up so Sassy and MiniMe can access THEIR chore charts on Cozi, both on their computers and on their iPods. So far it's working relatively well, I still have to remind them every few minutes that they need to be doing their chores, but we're making progress. Rodney was also able to sync his work calendar into Cozi so now I don't ask him every day where he's going to be the next day :)

So those are some highlights from our "normal" week.

TOS Crew Review: Maestro Classics Swan Lake

2012-01-06T10:40:00.002-05:00

Last year we had the opportunity to review Maestro Classics Peter and the Wolf and enjoyed it. I have to admit, music is an area that I'm not very good at incorporating into our homeschool and it's not something the girls generally seek out so I was excited to get another chance to learn about music in a fun way.

This year we got to review Swan Lake. What better musical piece for our house full of girls than a ballet about a fairytale-esque prince?!?!

One thing I realized as we listened to this, is that, at least for my girls (and myself, for that matter), ballet is visual. Knowing that it was a ballet didn't help when we couldn't SEE it. We did go on You Tube and find some videos of various ballets doing parts of it, which was pretty cool, but ideally I'd love to combine the excellent narration from Maestro Classics with the visual of the actual performance. I know, I ask alot LOL.

Still, we had fun with it. The CD starts with the complete ballet, but with narration added, so that we HEAR the whole story that's built into the music, interspersed through the music itself, followed by several shorter tracks that include history and other fun things (see this page for the contents of the CD *and* previews of each track)

After we'd listened to the CD, I headed on over to the Maestro Classics site and checked out their educational resources how fun!! The homeschool section is an amazing resource! If we weren't currently rather immersed in a very different era of history (American Revolution) I would love to use this as a bouncing off point for a fun unit on medieval history! And who knows, perhaps next year we just might do that!! We did use our math time to check out some of the castle math games linked there, and found some of them pretty addictive, hee hee.

I also noticed that in addition to the CDs, the website now also offers instant download of mp3s! That's a great option for someone like me who is often planning things last minute . . . suddenly find out you're going to the ballet and your children (and you?) need to understand the story abit before you go, you can download it and be listening to it asap! It also means no keeping track of the CD and is, of course, less expensive as well ($16.98 for the CDs, $9.98 for the download). That said, the CD comes with a booklet that includes information about the composer, etc, and also some fun activities (maze, crossword puzzle, etc) so that is an advantage of purchasing the physical CD as well as being able to grab it and take it along in the car.

Maestro Classics offers 9 different CDs/downloads as well as a few different bundle options. You can see all their products listed here. You can also "like" their facebook page.

Be sure to check out what my fellow Crewmates think of Maestro Classics here.

Book Review and GIVEAWAY!!!! Cooper & Me and the Winter Adventure

2012-01-03T13:06:00.003-05:00

We love reading books together all year long, but somehow for me, part of Christmas is the fun of snuggling together reading stories, it helps us to slow down and reconnect in the midst of the busyness of it all.

This year Little Bit and I enjoyed reading Cooper and Me and the Winter Adventure by Monique and Alexa Peters.

This is a cute rhyming story about 2 dogs, Cooper and Bella who get lost in the snow and their friend helps them find their way home. Little Bit enjoyed the pictures and the story kept her attention as well as most stories do, she's more of a "look at pictures" kind of reader right now.

The back of the book includes some learning questions that are abit too much like the many reading comprehension quizzes I took in school for me to be a fan, but if someone is looking for a way to open discussion about the book they might be a helpful resource. Little Bit had more fun counting the pawprints that were used instead of bullet points on that page LOL.

I also like knowing that $1 of every Winter Adventure book sold will go to advance research & treatment of pancreatic cancer, via the Lustgarten Foundation. It's always nice to know that we can help others while purchasing quality items for our family.

For Little Bit, this was a fun book with pictures she liked. As she gets older, we'll be able to discuss the plot abit more and then it will also be a useful, non-scary way to talk about getting lost and how to be safe if you do.

And now the fun part, I get to give away a copy of this book to one of my readers!!!

To enter (mandatory) just leave a comment here telling me if you have a dog, or want a dog, or something about a dog :)

For additional entries:

Visit the Cooper & Me website and tell me something you liked.

Like Cooper & Me on facebook

Follow Cooper & Me on Twitter

Follow my blog on Google Friend Connect or Networked Blogs (or both, for 2 entries)

Like my page on facebook

The rules: Giveaway will end on January 10, 2012. Giveaway open to those with a US address. Please make sure you have included a way to contact you (e-mail or blog), if I can't easily contact you, I will choose a different winner. Winners have 2 days to respond to my e-mail, or a new winner will be chosen.

“Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or
services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it
on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally
and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance
with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the
Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Book Club

2012-01-02T22:10:00.001-05:00

A couple of months ago some members of the TOS Crew got to review the book How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. for Your Kids. I wasn't one of the lucky ones who was chosen for the review, but when I read some of their reviews I immediately added it to my Amazon wish list.

Today I noticed on facebook that there's an online bookclub discussing this book starting this month so I used an amazon giftcard I'd gotten with my swagbucks credit to order the book. As soon as it gets here I'll be joining in and, unless I get too busy and forget, blogging about it. I'd love to have my friends and readers join me!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Happy 2012!!!!

2012-01-01T18:26:00.001-05:00

I suppose this is the time of year when I'm supposed to write some lovely insightful, philosophical post about a fresh new start and all that, but I'm not so into New Years so . . . I'll just say "Happy New Years!!" and leave it at that LOL. When we were at Mt Vernon last month one of the "interpreters" there was talking about how New Years as a holiday didn't really exist yet in George Washington's time because America had just recently switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. On the Julian calendar the new year started in the spring, with the new growth and all that and it really hit me how much more LOGICAL that would be than to start a new year in the dead of winter, so maybe that's why I don't like New Years, but anyway . . .

We had a good week last week. Of course we began the week with Christmas. Then we had our last couple of days of Hanukkah. It was nice to be able to focus on Hanukkah those last couple of days instead of it kind of getting lost in the preparations for and then celebration of, Christmas. Next year Hanukkah falls earlier in December and I think I'll like that better.

But anyway, Hanukkah was fun. We made latkes one night, they weren't as hard as I thought they might be, and the girls LOVED them, so I think we'll have them more often.

We've been enjoying learning about the Revolutionary War this week, I have to admit, there are SOO many great books, that we'll be spending a few weeks on it, just so we can read all the books I want us to read. Plus, some of the books the girls got for Christmas are longer chapter books from this period in history so we are taking time to let them read those too.

Little Bit started her very own Kinderbach lessons this week too. The big girls and I reviewed it last year, but this year it's Little Bit's turn, so far she is LOVING it. I have no illusions that she'll "learn piano" from it, but she's having fun.

The weather has been amazingly sporatic, in the 20's one day and near 50 the next, but thankfully the precipitation has coincided with the warmer days so we've avoided snow. Yesterday was one of the warmer days AND rain free so we grabbed the chance and went to ZooAmerica. It was soo fun! Little Bit was really into it this time, and the big girls still enjoy learning more about animals.

I have to admit I was a bad mommy and didn't even tell the girls that last night was New Years Eve, I really had no interest in staying up till midnight, much less dealing with hyper children who thought they should get to stay up but were much too tired to really stay up, and then grouchy, overtired children today. So we didn't do anything to "celebrate" new years. The girls did complain this morning when they realized they'd missed "seeing the ball drop" but they got over it pretty quickly.

And now, on to 2012 . . .

TOS Crew Review: R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish

2011-12-30T12:13:00.001-05:00

We've been dabbling at learning Spanish for about 2 years now. This all came about at the girls' request however, they tend to get frustrated with it and not want to put effort into it. I don't feel the need to drag them kicking and screaming through an elective of their own choosing so we keep trying different things looking for a good fit. . . for the past year we've basically just added a new vocabulary word every couple of days, continuing to review the old words and that has worked relatively well for learning vocabulary, as long as we keep with it BUT they weren't at all getting the concept of putting that vocabulary to use. They could go through the vocabulary flash cards flawlessly but then if I gave them a sentence using those same words they couldn't translate it without breaking it into the individual words, sigh . . . so a couple months ago I began searching for a new option to move them into more useage . . . and as happens so often, the Crew came through with perfect timing!

R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish (R.E.A.L. stands for Relax, Enjoy, Aspire and Learn), is designed for homeschoolers to integrate Spanish into homeschooling. It is designed to be used with multiple ages of children in a homeschool or co-op setting.

We received it right before the holidays, so have gotten a slow start with it, but so far, it's working well for us. As with so many products, whether designed for classrooms or homeschools, we end up adapting it for our more relaxed type of schooling. The activity book is too workbookish for us, though we use some of the pages together orally.

Even Little Bit is loving the suggested puppet shows. By far the hit so far has been the suggestion to make their OWN board game. They had a BLAST making it and as I write they are voluntarily clearing all the other school clutter off the table so they can play their game!

The book is divided into units. With each unit divided into smaller sections. The introductory information indicated that you can either spend however many weeks on one unit, or go through each unit, learning some of the words, then go back through all. I thought that approach would work better for my girls, spending one week on each section, but found that the activities and puppet dialogues build on themselves too much for that to actually work, so we went back to the first unit and are finishing it up this week then we'll move forward again, learning all words in each unit as we go.

So, we've fallen into a pattern (that I think we'll continue), where we begin the week with a puppet show to introduce the new vocabulary. The next day the girls make their own flash cards. The rest of the week, depending on time we do suggested activities for that unit or the girls review their flash cards on their own.

This program is available as an instant download (what we received) for $49.95 or hardcopy for $89.95. The age of your children will affect how quickly you will move through this book. The book suggests that high school students might use it for a single school year, but that younger children will likely take longer. I think this will take us 2-3 years, schooling year round, so that breaks down to a very reasonable price per year.

In addition to the main teacher's book, which includes vocabulary, the dialogue/phrases that we use for our puppet shows, and tips/suggestions for each unit, we also received the Activity Book (workbook type activities) and audio files to go with each of these so we can hear how things are supposed to be pronounced. There is also a Daily Curriculum Guide available for an additional $9.95. This gives suggested daily lesson plans and teach prep work at the beginning of each week. Someone taking a more structured approach might find this very helpful.

Don't forget to check out what my fellow crewmates have to say about this product on the TOS Crew blog.

Weekly Wrap-Up - The Holiday Edition

2011-12-26T13:25:00.000-05:00

This past week was pretty much all about cleaning and Christmas and Hanukkah (in a perfect world, our first year celebrating Hanukkah would have been a year when it falls at the BEGINNING of December instead of overlapping Christmas, but oh well . . .).

So, the cleaning's boring but the fun stuff:

Christmas:

We definitely enjoyed using Jotham's Journey for our Advent reading this year. I think we'll use Bartholomew's Passage next year.
Our other Advent "thing" this year was I used an advent calendar that has a little drawer for each day and put 2 slips of paper in each drawer (starting once we got back from my parents' house so it wasn't the full 25 days). One slip of paper had a family member or friend to pray for that day and the other had an activity to do that day. They included little things like "Let's have hot chocolate and marshmallows" and silly things like "Let's have an indoor snowball fight" (we used big marshmallows, they LOVED it! Little Bit especially thought it was the best thing EVER!!!), "giving" things like hiding dollar bills in the toy section at the dollar store for other children to find (they LOVED LOVED LOVED this one!) and putting money in the Salvation army bucket . . . it was a big hit! We've decided we'll make a jar (or something) of similar slips of paper and each Sunday we'll draw one slip of paper that is something we'll try to do sometime that week. We talked about the fact that sometimes we might have to "re-draw" (if we choose "let's go wade in the creek" in Feb. it's not gonna happen!) and there might be some weeks when other things are going on that I just have to say "not this week", but overall I think it will be a good way to "force" me to make time for fun stuff that I always think sounds great, but never remember to actually DO it.
Wednesday was cookie-making day. Rodney ended up needing to work, so it was just "us girls" so we scaled back the original plans, but we did make 3 kinds of cookies and had fun doing it.
Christmas eve continues to be a favorite tradition-filled evening at our house. We open a few, very specific, presents: Mama makes Christmas nightgowns for all 3 girls each year and sends them home with me ahead of time so we have them for Christmas eve (originally, when the big girls were little, I'd just buy them Christmas pajamas, but a few . . .3, I think?. . . years ago I asked Mom if she wanted to make them nightgowns that year (it's impossible to BUY children's nightgowns that aren't made of icky synthetic fabrics and soaked in nasty chemicals, I wanted nice, comfy, non-chemical-soaked, flannel, so that meant handmade) the girls LOVED LOVED LOVED having nightgowns, so that piece of the tradition has continued as well. I also get them some Christmas- themed DVDs, books, or games that they open on Christmas eve. So we had a nice evening watching movies, and reading books.

Hanukkah:

This is our first year celebrating Hanukkah. I was excited to find a menorah AND candles for it and also a dreidel at Goodwill, so we were all set. Hanukkah started at sundown on Tuesday, so starting Tuesday evening we lit the menorah. Biblical Holidays includes suggested readings for each night that include a few Bible verses and then commentary on those verses. In the interest of short attention spans, especially from Little Bit, and general busyness, We opted to just read the Bible verses this year. We also read the Hanukkah story (about the Macabees) a couple times during the week. We weren't able to do as much with traditional foods as the girls would have liked, when I'm madly cleaning for Christmas and making way too many cookies and such, I don't have time to attempt latkes from scratch for the first time LOL. But we did try to have some-what traditional foods. I decided perogies were a good option since we like to make them with sauteed onions in the frying pan rather than boiling them. And we got frozen latkes and made them one night. We also had jelly donuts (store-bought, I didn't try making them) a couple times. Now that Christmas is over, I think we might try the latkes from scratch since we have tonight and tomorrow night still.

The game of Dreidel has been a big hit. Even Little Bit is enjoying it. The first night we used a small bag of chocolate coins we have, but then we decided on Hershey Kisses instead, they're more fun to eat later LOL. Especially since we got the cherry ones and dark chocolate mint ones. So we've played Dreidel for at least a little while most evenings.

So those were some highlights from our week. I'll do a separate post about Christmas, I think dh has the pictures on his computer.

Weekly Wrap-up - December 18

2011-12-19T11:26:00.002-05:00

Look, I'm actually writing the wrap-up on Sunday like I'm supposed to (or starting it anyway, I make no promises that I'll FINISH it tonight!).

Highlights this past week include:

Enjoying a nice lunch and celebrating Christmas with our neighbor and adopted grandma, Miss Judy. We celebrated early before she left for Hawaii for a month (yes, we're all jealous!). I have to brag on my kids for just a minute, it's my blog, I'm allowed! We got there at lunch time so ate lunch first. The older girls were chomping at the bit to get to presents (nothing unusual there) BUT they were most anxious to give Miss Judy the things they/we made for her, not to get things. They were, however, very happy with the gifts they received. Now they keep begging me to help them put together the weather station, and are pouring over their herb book planning the herb garden they want to plant next spring :)

Little Bit spends a part of each day being a butterfly with the butterfly/fairy wings dress-up she received :) I'd take pictures, but she's generally a nakey butterfly LOL.

We also enjoyed playing with our friends E & J a couple times this week. We stopped by their house one evening to drop something else and stayed a little while so the big girls could play a game with E and Little Bit and J could chase balloons around the house. Another day, E & J came and played at our house while their mom had a doctor's appointment. It was tooo cute, Little Bit was still taking her nap when they got here, but it was time she could wake up whenever. J (just passed 2) kept asking to "me go wake [Little Bit] up" so finally I let him go upstairs, and sent MiniMe along to make sure things went ok. A few minutes later they all came back down and Little Bit was laughing and told me "J woke me up from my nap, that's SOOO SILLY!!"

We wrapped up our week by enjoying a nice evening with friends Sat. afternoon/evening. We enjoyed a yummy Indian meal picnic style and then the kids all had a blast building and decorating gingerbread houses, and eating their weight (and then some) in candy, in the process. The pictures of that are on dh's phone, I'll have to bug him to send them to me.

TOS Crew Review: The World's Greatest Stories

2011-12-14T19:14:00.000-05:00

I have to admit, I'd never even heard of The World's Greatest Stories when the review came up, but it only took about 30 seconds of reading what it was for me to say SIGN ME UP!!! This is the greatest concept I've heard in a long time!! Actor, George W. Sarris reads stories directly from the Bible (available in either KJV or NIV, we chose KJV), but does it with so much expression, and some sound effects in the background, that it is a fun story that keeps children's (and adults') attention.

We were sent Volume 1: The Prophets, to review. I didn't tell the girls anything about it beyond, "Here's a CD of Bible stories for us to review". After we'd listened to it, I told them it was word-for-word from the Bible and they REFUSED to believe me!! We had to re-listen to it with the Bible in front of them, for them to see that it really WAS word for word! (I have to admit, I wanted to "check it" myself, it's amazingly well done!). Another bit of "trivia" that I found fascinating, is that Mr. Sarris MEMORIZIES the Bible passages he performs!

When I asked the girls what they thought of it, after they'd confirmed that the website wasn't "lying" and it really was straight from the Bible, they said they liked it, but would rather hear their favorite Bible stories. So I think a couple other volumes will be on our shopping list in the near future (really, when my child asks to hear the Bible, and the CDs are only $7.95 each, how can I refuse?!?!).

While obviously this can be used as a part of Bible class in homeschooling, this is a great product for all families!!! We have been listening to it in the car as we do errands and such. It would also be a great choice for family worship or for a younger, non-reading child to use for their personal Bible time (for that matter, an older child could use it that way as well, just because a child CAN read doesn't mean s/he has to every time).

The website suggests these stories are for children age 4 and up. I would argue that they are most definitely NOT just for children! I have to admit that, since we have been in the car alot and having an audiobook of some sort on helps to keep the big girls quietly entertained while Little Bit naps, we listened to this CD during her naps, so I can't say for sure what a 2 year old would think of them. But I do think that, one story at a time (to not exceed her attention span), she would enjoy these stories too. So, while perhaps not something I'd purchase for a 2 year old, I do think it's something the whole family, including the littles, can enjoy together.

Be sure to check out the website, where you can listen to audioclips for yourself.

Also check out the TOS Crew blog for other reviews of these products!

Weekly Wrap-Up - December 13

2011-12-13T11:52:00.002-05:00

I'm a couple days late, but close enough . . . last week was a BUSY week!!! The big girls were at Mama & Papa's all week, Mama & Papa picked them up on Friday and took them home with them. So Little Bit and I were on our own while Daddy was at work the first part of the week. We enjoyed more relaxed mornings without school for the big girls, though I greatly missed being able to say "watch Little Bit while I go put the laundry in" since I don't like taking Little Bit down our steep concrete basement steps. And afternoons getting some shopping done that I wanted to do without the big girls around.

Meanwhile the big girls

Got their C&O Canal Junior Ranger
Did a bunch of biking
Went to the Baltimore B&O Railroad Museum and saw their Christmas Hobby Train display
Went to our favorite Chinese restaurant
Went to Ford Theatre and did that Jr. Ranger program
Went to their favorite frozen yogurt place (I think, I know they were planning to)
Saw the National Christmas Tree and state trees
Helped Papa on the playhouse
Did Christmas crafts
Probably other things I'm forgetting, or didn't hear about

Wednesday Little Bit and I headed to Mama and Papa's to join the big girls for more fun.

While we were all there we:

Went to Mt Vernon. In addition to the normal mansion tour and viewing the grounds we got to:

Met Aladdin the Christmas camel (apparently one year Washington rented a camel for the entertainment of his guests)
Saw how 18th century chocolate was made, and tasted 18th century drinking chocolate (since the girls had it in Williamsburg last year and have learned my love of very dark chocolate, they disappointed the people handing it out, by loving it instead of making funny faces like most kids do)
Toured the 3rd floor of the mansion, only open for tours at Christmas time
Met with an "in character" gentleman who talked about Christmas in the 1700s as if he lived in the 1700s, he gave the girls a hard time about how silly it sounded to cut down a tree and drag it in the house LOL.
Went on an "Adventure Map" tour of the grounds, answering the questions.
Enjoyed the new Education Center/Museum, including a video about the war, but we didn't have NEARLY long enough there to see it all.

We also enjoyed the blacksmith apprentice who was more than happy to answer the girls' countless questions and seemed to be truly enjoying himself in doing it. As we left he proclaimed them "the most inquisitive guests I've met today" hee hee.

Drove through the Seneca Creek Park light display. The big girls didn't remember it (we went every year when we lived closer, but it's been a couple years) and Little Bit had never been, so they all enjoyed that.

Went to Monocacy Battlefield and the girls did the Junior Ranger program there and we enjoyed that museum. The girls were able to try on a soldier's coat and hat, and try to lift his pack, although it didn't have any kind of a strap, not sure if it would have been a backpack or what, but I'm pretty sure they didn't just carry them in their arms, so that frustrated the girls abit. There's also an interactive map of the battle, which was a great visual way to understand what happened there (kind of like what they used to have at Gettysburg (I haven't been to Gettysburg since all the renovations, so not sure if it's still there) only smaller.

While we were at the battlefield, the girls also got the "Civil War trading cards" that the civil war related national parks are giving out right now in honor of the 150th anniversary of the war. The park volunteer who gave them to the girls was great and discussed each card with them in detail, they got a pretty good summary of the civil war from him, and he was good with their many questions as well.

Visited a C&O Lockhouse that has been renovated to be like it was during the Civil War, and is currently decorated for Christmas. The girls met a 19th Century Santa and Mrs. Claus, played with period toys, decorated Christmas cookies, played checkers, and tested out a rope bed, and a trundle bed.

Went to the Museum of Civil War Medicine. While there, in addition to the normal exhibits, we met a Civil War era Santa, played with period toys, made cards for (current) wounded soldiers, talked to a lovely lady who had her collection of Civil War era nursing supplies there and was dressed in period dress. She patiently answered the girls' questions, not only about each and every thing she had on display, but her clothes, and many other aspects of life in that era. The girls LOVED it, and she seemed to enjoy answering their questions.

So, needless to say, it was a BUSY week. I'm going to try to get the pictures I took into a Picaso album soon, and will post when I do. I forgot to get dad's off his camera so those will have to wait until I see him again at Christmas.

TOS Crew Review: Vintage Remedies For Kids

2011-12-12T20:57:00.001-05:00

Long term readers of my blog might remember that we were using Vintage Remedies for Girls to learn about nutrition last spring. We LOVED it (and I keep wanting to continue with it, we stopped when another review product overlapped it, and haven't gotten back into it, we need to). So when I saw that Vintage Remedies was a potential review product on the TOS Crew I was thrilled!! I was hoping that since their book for younger children is a new offering, it would be the review product, but figured it was more likely they'd be reviewing the "for girls" book we already have.

But guess what, they gave us OPTIONS!! We were able to choose between "for Girls", "for Guys" (which I'm sure is lovely, but we're abit short on "guys" (of school-age) in this house, hee hee), and the one I was hoping for, Vintage Remedies for Kids, woo-hoo!!! I was so excited!!!

Vintage Remedies for Kids teaches about healthy living for younger children, the recommended age range is 2-6, so since Little Bit is almost 3, and loves to do things like her big sisters, I figured this would be fun. I was right!! Just this weekend she was proudly telling my mom that "I made pizza and ice cream" (the 2 projects we've done so far). The text is still over her head, and too long for her attention span, but I think would be great for 4-6 year olds. With her, I skim/summarize and then we move on to the fun part, COOKING!! The first lesson talked about healthy food choices and then the project was to make individual pizzas. I set the older girls to work making the dough (a nice healthy, easy recipe that we'll be using regularly now!) and prepping the toppings and then once that was ready I spread the sauce on and let Little Bit put on the rest of the toppings. She was sooo excited to ask each of us what we wanted, and make each of our pizzas accordingly. Another thing I LOVED about this recipe is that it only bakes for 10 minutes. My normal pizza recipe bakes longer, which is fine normally, but I think it was BRILLIANT of them to have such a short bake time on a recipe for little kids!! I tried to take pictures, but since she still thinks that clothes are only for when we leave the house, she was, as usually au naturale when we were ready to cook, and somehow telling her to put clothes ON for a potentially messy project seemed counter productive, nice as pictures would have been.

I did manage some so-so pictures of her making "ice cream" (I'd call it a berry smoothie, but the book called it ice cream, and she was all about that LOL). So, the review. For an oldest child, I would say hold off until they're 4+ (I can see my friend's 4 yr old really enjoying this), however if, like me, you have a younger preschooler who desperately wants to "do school" like the big kids, then I'd agree that 2+ works. The projects are easy enough for them to feel like they are doing them (I had to giggle at Little Bit though, she has a hatred of anything "noisy" so "she" made the "ice cream" by putting the berries, etc. in the blender, but then she ran to the family room to be "safe" from the noise while I ran the blender LOL.

This curriculum, like the "for Girls" curriculum (and I assume the "for Guys" is similar, but haven't seen it), focuses on real whole foods, avoiding chemicals and processed foods. Later in the book it also talks about health & wellness, with chapters on herbal medicines, natural care of scrapes and bruises, etc. As well staying clean, avoiding germs, and things like that..

I would recommend this to anyone looking to help their children learn to make good choices about health and wellness. While the "for Girls" book is much more in depth, and I'm glad we have it for the older girls, and for Little Bit when she's older, I do think that children in the 7-10 range could still enjoy the "for Kids" book, especially if you have younger children as well and want them to all be able to learn together. One thing to note is that the "for Kids" book is a much smaller book, so not only is it written in simpler terms, with less detail, but it also doesn't have nearly as much in it. This would make it a great option if you're wanting to do a quick summer unit or if your children are in school but you'd like them to learn real nutrition at home, this book is short enough that you could do a lesson per week or work through it in a couple weeks in the summer. This book is also very reasonably priced, at $25.

Be sure to check out the TOS Crew blog for more reviews on all three of these curriculum options. Also check out the Vintage Remedies site for classes and books on herbal medicines for grown-ups as well as kits to make your own herbal medicines and such.

(Almost) Monthly Wrap-Up

2011-12-04T22:47:00.001-05:00

Wow, my last weekly wrap-up was on November 12, I've been slacking . . . let's see, what have we been up to?

A never-ending cold. I had the longest-lasting cold I have EVER had! It took forever to get back on top of things, and I had to make sure to not push too hard or I'd get to coughing and not be able to stop, and then get a headache. So, we slowed down on things like read-alouds for school, and non-"essential" chores.

Thanksgiving - we had a lovely, quiet (as quiet as it can be with our 3 ~~chatter-boxes~~ daughters) Thanksgiving that was "just us". The big girls were on the schedule to tell children's story at church that week and we decided it made more sense to just enjoy our immediate family than have a rushed trip to visit extended family and rush back for church. The big girls asked to be in charge of Thanksgiving dinner, and made us a lovely meal of angel hair pasta with red sauce and alfredo, raw veggies and dip, sweet potato fries, probably something else I'm forgetting . . . and homemade chocolate orange ice cream for dessert. It was a nice day. I got an inexpensive tablecloth and had it on the table that day and after we ate I passed out Sharpies and we each wrote something we're thankful for, and the date, I plan to use it every year (if not ON Thanksgiving, near Thanksgiving, for those years when we do travel to visit family on Thanksgiving) and keep adding to it.

Decorating for Christmas - when we lived in MD, I always used the weekend after Thanksgiving to do my Christmas decorating, but it's been abit more sporatic since moving to PA, since we sometimes are gone for Thanksgiving (in MD all the relatives lived close enough that we just went to whoever's house for Thanksgiving dinner, not the whole weekend). But this year since we stayed home, we got to decorate on the weekend after Thanksgiving again. The girls had decided that this year they wanted a small, simple tree with just lights and I found a nice inexpensive live potted plant/tree that I can hopefully keep alive as a plant after xmas, we shall see . . . I like how it looks though. I gave the girls the choice of Advent wreath or Jesse tree and they chose Advent wreath this year. They inherited my love of candles, I think I'll have to figure out a way to incorporate candles into a Jesse Tree display to convince them to do that again another year LOL. We're reading Jotham's Journey, and loving it!

School - we're reviewing a Spanish program, Little Bit and I are reviewing a preschool nutrition program, our slowness going through history so far worked out nicely to have us studying the Pilgrims near Thanksgiving, so that, combined with me not feeling good, meant I slowed things down abit more and spread the Pilgrims out over 2-3 weeks to take us right up to Thanksgiving. We thoroughly enjoyed an audiobook about the Pilgrims that gave alot more detail into their lives than I ever remember hearing. It conveniently gave us a great children's story for the girls to tell on the Sabbath after Thanksgiving too :) Now we're moving on into Benjamin Franklin and such.

We've had some lovely warm weather for lots of outdoor play, this time of year I try to make sure they soak up any good outdoor time we get to store up for when it's cold and icky!

Dh's office Christmas Party. The big girls were quite proud of themselves. They chose to participate in the $5 gift-exchange game (everyone brings a wrapped, unmarked $5 gift, they put them all in the middle, everyone gets a number, and when your number is called you can either choose a gift from the middle and open it or steal someone's already-opened gift. If someone takes your gift, you get to steal from someone else or get one from the middle). Sassy happened to choose a box of chocolates from the middle, and when someone took MiniMe's original gift, she stole another box of chocolates (both were Witman's samplers) from someone else. So they were now both happily sitting there with "twin" boxes of chocolate. But then someone took MiniMe's from her. There's a rule you can't re-steal the gift that was just taken from you but it took the 2 of them about a split-second (and slight nudge from Daddy) to get around that rule. MiniMe took Sassy's box of chocolates, which left Sassy free to legally steal "MiniMe's" chocolates from the guy who had taken them from MiniMe. Everyone thought it was hillarious, and the girls were quite proud of themselves.

This past weekend dh and I celebrated our 14th (!!!!) anniversary! As usual, the big girls got to spend the weekend (plus . . .) at Mama and Papa's. I tried to convince my parents that in the interest of "fairness" they had to take Little Bit too, since the first year they took the big girls was when they were the age that Little Bit is now (nevermind that she still nurses to sleep (they didn't), she still sleeps with us (they didn't), and she often wakes up during the night (they didn't). AND mom & dad just kept them for one night that year, whereas now they keep the big girls for a weekend or beyond, so it wouldn't work well to keep Little Bit one night. It was still fun to give them a hard time about it LOL). So we've had Little Bit with us, but our neighbors/adopted grandparents did babysit her one evening so we could go out to dinner on our own. It's been a nice weekend. My "anniversary present" was that dh finally replaced the LCD screen on the coffee maker, so now I can actually read what the machine is telling me instead of guessing what the random lines mean LOL.

Meanwhile, the big girls have been riding bikes and doing junior ranger programs and I don't know what all else at Mama and Papa's. Little Bit & I will go down later this week to join in the fun and then bring the big girls home.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the fun stuff we've been doing, but in the interest of actually getting this posted, I'm going to leave it at that for now.

TOS Crew Review: Artistic Pursuits

2011-11-30T09:26:00.000-05:00

My girls love all things art and craft related, so I knew they'd be thrilled when they found out we were going to review Artistic Pursuits. And I was right.

We received Grades K-3 Book One to review. Because this is an art curriculum, it is necessary to purchase art supplies to use with the curriculum. The company was really on top of things, they sent me a letter ahead of the book with a list of the necessary supplies, and those needed for the first few lessons highlighted, so that I could get the supplies and be ready to start when we got the book. You can order the supplies along with your book, here, or click through to the supply pack for your book to see a list of supplies needed and get them yourself locally. If you scroll to the bottom of the art supply page you'll also find links to purchase the supplies at a discount from Blick Art. Because we were travelling when we received the letter, I didn't have time to order the supplies online, so I just went to our local craft store to get the supplies for the first few lessons. I found that if I get the rest of the supplies over time, using the store's discount coupons for the larger items, it will work out to be about the same price as ordering the pack from Blick. Additionally that allows me to pick and choose which things we need per child (a pencil, paint brush, etc) and which things they can share (the watercolor crayons).

The website says that these books require no teacher preparation, but I've found that's not quite accurate. Perhaps in a well-stocked art classroom that would be true, but some of the lessons say things like "your teacher has a variety of pictures for you to look at" that ummmm . . . I don't have magically available :) In that case, there was the option of looking at the pictures or going outside and finding things in nature and conveniently the weather was nice that day so I just sent them outside, but it showed me that I *do* need to read over the lessons ahead of time. Overall, however, there is very LITTLE teacher prep required, as long as you have the listed art supplies on hand.

The curriculum combines teaching about art, art appreciation, and hands-on projects so that it is a complete art curriculum. Each book includes 32 lessons so it will cover a whole year of art (one lesson per week).

Each lesson talks about some aspect of art, examines a famous piece of artwork (a color picture of the art is included in the book so you don't have to have art prints on hand), and then has an assignment for the children to do using the techniques or whatever that were discussed in that day's lesson. Today's lesson talks about how artists use photographs to give them ideas and allow them to paint things that wouldn't sit still to be painted or whatever. Then the assignment is to find a photograph they like, and use it as the basis for a picture they draw with watercolor crayons, then paint over.

The book we are reviewing is designed for a grades K-3, I'd say that's accurate. Little Bit wants to "do art" with her sisters, but I usually just give her water colors or something. I don't think much younger than 5 would understand the techniques and concepts presented, though they might enjoy drawing/painting/etc along with older siblings. Older children who haven't had a ton of art would probably enjoy doing this along with younger siblings. I'm enjoying learning along with my children. Artistic Pursuits also has a Preschool book for ages 3-5, and books for older children (Grades 4-6, Junior High, and High School) so unless you're wanting to do art all together, it's easy to get a book that's the right "fit" for your child's age.

Maybe it's just my children, but hands-on art seems to be a winner with all learning styles. This provides the structure that more structured teaching styles would appreciate, but the lessons are short enough, and the children are eager enough to "do art" that it's fit nicely into our eclectic-leaning-toward-unschooling approach as well. A visual learner could read the text themselves, my auditory learners are happy to let me read it to them, and of course getting to try each lesson's techniques out for themselves appeals to the kinesthetic in everyone.

I'm sure creative, artistic mamas (or papas) could do something similar without a book, but for those of us who are art-challenged, this series is a great option. And $42 for a full year's art curriculum, that can be used with as many children as you have, it's a great value!

The girls have been enjoying this book immensely, and I plan to continue using it the rest of the year (though during the review period we've often done 2-3 lessons per week, and now we'll probably cut back to one every week or two, just to free up time for other things we're working on). Sassy loves everything about it. MiniMe loves the idea of it all, but her perfectionist tendencies are getting in the way. I finally told her that she wasn't going to be allowed to continue if she kept thinking she had to produce PERFECT, photograph-like paintings and drawings.

I love that the lessons are short and require very little prep-work. I like that a variety of mediums and techniques are presented. I like that I'll be able to use this same product in a few years with Little Bit. One of the main products that have been used so far are watercolor crayons and I have to say, I'm not a fan of them. My children just aren't understanding how they are supposed to work, even when I've showed them. They hear "draw a picture" and so they draw a picture, with the detail typical in a drawing, then they are supposed to go over that picture with a wet paint brush to get the water-color effect and it smears all their detail. They're slowly getting it, but I think at this age, it would have been better to either just let them draw with crayons, markers or colored pencils, and not have "paintings" or let them actually paint. I wanted to use the product "as suggested" first to get a feel for things, but I think going forward when water color crayons are suggested I'll give my children the choice to use them, or another medium (either one we've learned about, or regular water colors, or the typical children's art supplies that we usually use).

Be sure to check out the Crew Blog to see what my fellow crew mates thought of the Artistic Pursuit books (we all chose which book to review, so you'll also get information about the other books.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Biblical (Jewish) Holidays

2011-11-12T20:48:00.001-05:00

I've mentioned several times over the last few months that we've started celebrating the Biblical (Jewish) Holidays. I thought I'd share a little more about that, and some of the resources that have led us on our journey.

As I think is the case for most Christians, I was raised with the understanding that Jesus fulfilled the Jewish holidays so they no longer needed to be observed. The one exception being, as a Seventh-day Adventist, we still keep Sabbath since it's commanded in the 10 Commandments and is a memorial of creation, which wasn't fulfilled.

Then a few years ago I happened to be reading something written by someone who DOES keep the Biblical holidays as a Christian (I don't remember who) and mention was made of the fact that the spring holidays pointed to Jesus' first coming and the fall holidays point to His Second Coming. That threw me. If the fall holidays point to his SECOND COMING, why aren't we still celebrating them? It has been on my "to study" list ever since, but never made it to the top of the list. I DID, at some point when it was on sale, purchase the ebook version of Biblical Holidays, but never found time to read it.

Over the past year or so I *have* done more studying/reading/thinking about Sabbath, and how God intends it to be celebrated (not just kept). As a part of that journey, I discovered a wonderful company called Wholesome Learning. Their products are available from both Currclick and the TOS Store. One thing to note, for some reason, the mp3 files from Currclick have a kind of strange sounding voice saying something about "this file was purchased from currclick.com" that takes some getting used to. The TOS mp3s don't have this (or anything like it, obviously it wouldn't say it was purchased from currclick). So, if the price is the same, I prefer to purchase the audio files from TOS for this reason.

So anyway, I discovered Wholesome Learning, and purchased their mp3 Let's Celebrate the Feast of Shabbat. At that point, the girls and I listened to it. They liked the idea of having a special meal, but not the blessings and such. So we started small. We decided that soup would be a good Shabbat (Friday night) meal and accordingly we went to TJ Maxx and found some pretty bowls and "fancy" glasses. We started lighting candles and setting the table nicely on Friday night. And I started getting Challah bread sometimes. For a long time that's all the girls wanted to do with it, and that was fine. . .

Meanwhile, this fall, someone on a message board I'm on mentioned that Rosh Hashanah was coming up in about a week. I had my typical "oh yeah, I need to research the fall feasts" thought, followed by the (also typical), but it's coming up so soon, I don't have time to study it properly to celebrate them this year . . . and then I thought back to what I'd been learning/realizing about Shabbat. Regardless of whether or not any of this is "required", it's a chance to celebrate God! As I've told the girls several times, to God, it makes no more sense to say "we have to keep Sabbath" than it would to them for me to say "we have to celebrate Christmas" (that was a real ah-ha moment for them LOL). And what I realized this year is, I don't HAVE to have all the answers, my children LOVE any chance to have a party and whether the feast days are required or were done away with or whatever, there's certainly nothing WRONG with celebrating God's leading. So we decided to just "jump in". I dug out my Biblical Holidays book and started reading about Rosh Hashanah, but I also remembered Wholesome Learning and went looking. Sure enough they have an mp3 called Children, Let's Celebrate Rosh Hashanah! and also a Rosh Hashanah Scavenger Hunt. The Children, Let's Celebrate was a great way to introduce Rosh Hashanah to my girls. It gave us a starting point, then I was able to read them bits & pieces from Biblical Holidays to help them understand more about it. We had great fun, I talk about it a little bit in this post. I should note that the weather didn't cooperate for us to use the scavenger hunt, so I filed it away to use next year, it looks like great fun!

And so began our journey into the world of Biblical Holidays. The girls are LOVING it! What child wouldn't jump at the chance to have extra PARTIES!! We've continued to use the Wholesome Learning mp3s as a great intro and then supplement with information from the Biblical Holidays book and various online sources. While the individual workshops are wonderfully affordable, you can also get a"bundle" product to learn about all the (or at least most of the) feasts.

Jumping back to our Shabbat celebration, once we began learning about, and celebrating, the other Biblical holidays our girls were ready to add to our Shabbat celebration. One Friday evening they decided they wanted to wear scarves on their heads. With their renewed interest we relistened to the workshop about Shabbat again and added more pieces. Now they were interested in learning the Hebrew blessings, so we're working on that (I found this little ebook helpful in teaching them the Hebrew blessing for the candles, I'd love it if they made more of these for the other blessings). We've also started making our own challah bread which is not only yummy, but cheaper and healthier than store-bought!

This has been such a fun journey for us. As we move through November we are already making plans to celebrate Hanukkah as well as Christmas next month. It's fun to see my children soo excited about what God has done!

Before I close I want to mention one other product-line I've been enjoying from Wholesome Learning. When I was reading the Dahveed series (GREAT BOOKS, by the way, I'm impatiently waiting for her to release book #4!!!) it really inspired me to learn at least a little bit of Hebrew, I don't have much time, or brain-power to try to learn it like an "adult" (giggle), but I noticed that Wholesome Learning has a "Read Hebrew Today" program. The price is reasonable, and it's geared for young children on up, so I decided to try it. I am LOVING it!! I won't be translating the Bible, or carrying on conversations in Hebrew anytime soon, but it's giving me a starting point that I can fit into little bits of time in the car or wherever and I'm having fun with it. I'd like to introduce it to my girls, but figure right now we need to stick with Spanish and not confusing things with a 3rd language. So for now it's just for me!

Disclaimer: I am an affiliate for Amazon, Currclick and the TOS Store. Items purchased through the links in this post will provide me with a small commission from these companies. I only recommend products that I believe in and all opinions are my own!

Weekly Wrap Up - November 12

2011-11-12T20:07:00.001-05:00

We had an extremely uneventful week, due mainly to the fact that I was sick all week (nasty cold, still hanging around, grumble grumble). The girls have been coughing some but nowhere near as sick as me. Which is good, but I'm struggling to be much of a mommy, sigh . . .

So, after last week a few baby steps toward getting caught up on housework, this past week has been another jump back. The girls have done quite abit of the meal prep, but I figured asking them to do too many chores on top of that, while I sat in the recliner and did nothing, was asking abit much. So hopefully I'll feel better soon (VERY soon, since I have a moms' group scheduled at MY house this Wednesday, sigh . . . I'm praying the weather will be as nice as it was a bunch of this past week and we can move it to the park, worst case, they'll see how we really live LOL) and we can get back on track.

So let's see. We had lovely weather most of the week so I bought myself a little bit of resting time by sending all 3 girls outside to play for spurts of time.

We've moved on to the "Pilgrims" unit for history, which is coinciding nicely close to Thanksgiving. My voice hasn't been up to much read-aloud-ing, so I had them read their independent reading books first, and finally started Squanto (our read aloud) on Friday.

Also to save my voice, we put the Christmas symbols lapbook on hold and have gone back to our regular Bible plan for this year. We fell into a lovely pattern where all 3 girls gather at the dining room table and play with playdough while listening to the Bible chapters. It keeps Little Bit much happier with things than when we tried to listen in the family room. Now she asks "is it time for school yet?" LOL.

Little Bit has also embraced our Spanish routine. She loves getting one-on-one time with each sister while the other is doing vocab with me. I let her choose who will go upstairs (or outside) and play with her first.

Our other main subject right now is Art. The girls are absolutely LOVING Artistic Pursuits (look for a review next month), and beg to do it every day. I've been aiming for 2-3 days per week right now, to get a good sampling of the lessons before the review period is over. I'm planning (and have warned the girls accordingly) to settle into a routine of doing Art once a week after the review period is over.

We need to get back into our Insect studies for nature/science, but for now I've let that slide to the back burner (to make time for art more days per week) and we're listening to Jonathan Park CDs whenever we're in the car and calling that science (they are AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME creation science stories. Click the link in my sidebar to check them out (and get me a slight commission if you purchase through the link).

And that has pretty much been our week. Nothing very exciting. A sick mommy will do that, sigh . . . but we keep moving along with things and that's what's supposed to happen :)

Weekly Wrap-up - November 6

2011-11-06T20:52:00.004-05:00

After our eventful weekend last weekend we had a quiet week.

AND after all our travelling in October, it was time to get back to chore packs and try to find our house under the clutter.

While Rodney was gone we had some fun trying recipes that I've had on my "to try" list but were things Rodney wouldn't like. The girls were excited to help cook these new dishes and overall they were a hit. Some of the recipes we tried (and liked) included:

Butternut squash mac & cheese (Sassy insisted she didn't like it, because she doesn't like squash, but I still don't think she'd have been able to tell there was squash in it if she hadn't known. For that matter, I'd love to see what Rodney thought of this, see if HE could tell the squash was in it).

Dutch Baby Apple Pancake (I LOVED it, the girls said it was too "eggy")

Easy Italian Pasta Bake (we all LOVED this one! It will definitely be a go-to recipe whenever Rodney's out of town (he doesn't like tomato sauce so he wouldn't like it).

Baked Apple Oatmeal (Sassy declared it "too oatmeally" but the rest of us liked it, and *I* generally do NOT like oatmeal, but this was yummy!)

Taco Corn Fritters (we all liked these too, and I love that they can be made ahead and frozen, will probably keep these in mind as a lunch option when we travel too)

Meltaway Cabbage over egg noodles (Sassy LOVED this one. MiniMe and I both ate it fine, though I'll admit it's not the best thing I've ever eaten. But if the kids like it, it's a healthy, inexpensive dish so I can go with it. Little Bit didn't like the cabbage but was happy to eat the plain egg noodles).

So those were our cooking adventures while Rodney was gone.

Otherwise we were doing school, and chores and such exciting things. The girls WERE excited to start our latest review product, Artistic Pursuits, anything art-related is a hit with them, and this has been no exception.

We were all happy to have Daddy come home mid-week. Little Bit especially was THRILLED to have Daddy home. She went RUNNING to him when he came in the door and would NOT let go of him all evening. The next morning instead of getting up and fussing about wanting to nurse (I was in the shower) or going and bothering her sisters, she headed straight downstairs to find Daddy and cuddle with him until he had to go to work.

Review and GIVEAWAY: Christmas Lodge

2011-11-04T19:06:00.000-04:00

Giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Laura Lane, our new winner!

I love Thomas Kinkade's artwork, and I love Christmas movies, so it was a no-brainer to say yes when I was given the chance to review Thomas Kinkade's "Christmas Lodge" DVD.

This morning while the girls and Rodney were visiting Grandmom I curled up with a pumpkin spice latte and some leftover apple dutch baby pancake and thoroughly enjoyed this movie!

Of course, I got impatient and STARTED watching the movie before the girls left, so as soon as they got home this evening they begged to finish watching the movie, so now we're watching it again, hee hee.

In a nutshell, this is a movie about a city girl who rediscovers Christmas Lodge, a mountain lodge her family used to visit when she was a little girl. Now it's falling apart, and she decides to help the current owner get the financing and help he needs to renovate it and re-open the lodge. In the process she brings her family closer together and falls in love.

It's a great, feel-good movie that I suspect will be a Christmas favorite in this house full of girls! One consideration, there are quite a few references to grandma being in heaven and "speaking" to her, etc. which goes against our belief, that those who have died are sleeping until Jesus comes to raise them again. But since the belief that the dead in Christ go straight to heaven is the belief of most Christians this isn't surprising and I'll gladly accept this in order to have a wholesome movie where unmarried couples get SEPARATE rooms when they go away for a weekend in the mountains, grace is said before meals, and prayer and God's will are prevalent throughout!

I highly recommend this movie!!!!

And now the fun part, I get to give a free copy of this DVD to one of my readers!!! If you'd like a chance at winning this video, leave a comment for each entry opportunity below, and make sure to include an e-mail address or other way for me to easily contact you:

Mandatory Entry: What's your favorite Christmas tradition?

Additional entries (leave a separate comment for each)

Follow my blog on Google Friend Connect (see side bar)
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And now the "fine print" giveaway open to US addresses only. You must be over 18 to enter. Giveaway closes on November 10 at 8pm Eastern. Winner will be notified and will have 2 days to reply or another winner will be chosen.

"Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services

mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I

only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255:

"Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

TOS Crew Review: The Person I Marry

2011-11-02T10:11:00.004-04:00

A couple years ago at a homeschool convention I happened to stop at a booth in the vendor hall that had absolutely GORGEOUS children's books. The artwork is beautiful paintings, not the silly drawings that are so often used for children's books. I didn't have the money to purchase any of the books, but I have to admit I wandered back by several times during the convention just to flip through them, and they stuck in my mind.

Fast forward to this year's crew, and we were give the opportunity to review The Person I Marry from Bower Books. As soon as I clicked through to their site on the review interest form, I recognized the books as the beautiful ones I'd seen in the vendor hall, and jumped at the chance to review it. I have to admit, I was disappointed to find out that, rather than a downloadable ebook, we received a link to an online version of the book. But at least we were able to read and enjoy this BEAUTIFUL book!

Since the twins are currently in a "we're too old for picture books" phase, I told them before we started that yes, this is a picture book, and yes, little kids would enjoy it, but it also has a message for older kids, kids their age, and even teenagers and young adults. I don't know if my comments "worked" or if they were as enthralled by the beautiful artwork and lovely text as I was, but they listened to it without any complaints.

The author did a good job of keeping the book applicable to boys AND girls. So my girls spent the whole book trying to decide "who" was talking, a boy or a girl LOL.

At the end of the book, when I asked the girls about it, they not only said they loved it, but decided they each need their own copy. The back page of the book is a lined page that the child can list his or her own list of traits to look for in a husband/wife, and that was the reason each girl wants her own. We talked about how they also wanted to be able to sit down with the book on their own and read through it more slowly, thinking about each trait that is mentioned and how it applies to their life. And so, this book is going on their Christmas lists this year. A copy for each of them, and possibly one for Little Bit as well, though I may wait a couple years to get her her own copy.

This book absolutely is NOT just for homeschoolers!! It's a lovely book that can be enjoyed by little children, tweens, and teens. Actually *I* enjoyed the book as well, did I mention I love the artwork? But obviously it's abit late for me to be considering the traits to look for in a husband ;-)

It's a nice flowing text to read aloud, and, as I mentioned, my girls, who love to be read to, specifically said THIS book was one they wanted to be able to hold and read on their own as well.

The Person I Marry is available on the Bower Book website for $11.99. Be sure to take some time to look at all the other beautiful books available, with topics ranging from Heaven to friendship to adoption.

Also stop by the TOS Crew blog to see what my fellow crew mates have to say about this lovely book.

Disclaimer: I received access to an online version of this book in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Weekly Wrap Up - Snow Edition

2011-11-02T00:05:00.001-04:00

So I actually have an excuse for being late with this week' wrap-up! We had a snow storm this weekend!!! From Saturday afternoon until Sunday afternoon we didn't have power and then when the power came back on we didn't have internet until today (Tuesday, but it might be Wednesday by the time I get this posted). So . . . I'm just not dedicated enough to try to write a blog post on my phone, sorry!

Ok, so back-tracking to the beginning of last week. . .

Sunday and Monday were just normal days.

Tuesday afternoon we left with Rodney to go to the Scranton area. Honestly, the hotel's indoor pool, and of course, time with Daddy, were the main draw. We were at Steamtown not too long ago, and there's an admission charge if we go without my parents (who have the "old people national park pass" that gets them, and their "party" in free). The coal mine tour sounded kind of cool until I saw the admission prices, they're not outrageous, but I decided it was more than I wanted to pay to wrangle Little Bit in a coal mine.

As we were going out to the car to go to supper that evening I grabbed some brochures in the hotel lobby and jokingly told Rodney that there was a big antique store nearby. The big girls latched on to that and REALLY wanted to go, so that became our plan for Wednesday. Needless to say, they also wanted to swim, and of course an antique store isn't an all-day excursion for 8 year olds (and certainly not for a 2 year old). When we dropped Rodney off at the treasurer's house, I saw that the antique store was near her house. So I told the girls we'd go back to the hotel, swim and do school that morning, then go out for lunch (the hotel website hadn't mentioned a microwave or fridge so we opted to just eat out this trip, turned out we DID have a microwave and fridge but for 2 nights I decided it wasn't worth finding a grocery store and getting food for in the room when I hadn't brought dishes or anything with us), then drive to the antique store while Little Bit fell asleep, let her nap in the car till she woke up and then we could go to the antique store, then go pick Daddy up. Turns out, he got done sooner than expected and texted me to come pick him up just as Little Bit was waking up. So we coerced Daddy into going to the antique store with us after we picked him up. He wasn't real excited, but it worked alot better for me because he was able to take Little Bit outside while I stayed with the big girls in the store. They were enthralled by it all, and we ended up finding a cool candle holder that holds 8 small candles. Not an official Menorah, but it will work nicely as one and the girls thought it was cool to get something at the antique store.

That evening we went to Uno's for supper. The girls didn't remember ever going to an Uno's, the one near us closed a couple years ago. A "new" thing, or perhaps just that store's thing, was that when we were seated the guy who seated us gave each of the girls a ball of raw pizza dough that they could shape however they wanted and then the waitress took it back to the kitchen where they sprinkled the dough with cinnamon sugar and baked it, then brought it back out to us. So the girls thought that was really cool and it kept them well entertained while we waited for our food.

Thursday we came back home, and Rodney happened to see on facebook that they were calling for SNOW on Sabbath. So I altered plans slightly to make sure to get all grocery shopping and such done on Friday. Rodney left Friday afternoon to visit a friend in Florida for the weekend (great timing, huh?).

Sabbath morning it was still rain, but the forecast still said we'd be getting snow, starting mid-morning so, since I'm a wimp when it comes to driving in snow, and Rodney was gone, the girls and I chose to have a "home church" day. We sang songs from Little Bit's Sabbath School program and discussed various topics the big girls wanted to talk about, it was nice. Then just after I'd gone in the kitchen to start fixing lunch the power went out. It had blinked several times that morning, but this time it stayed out. We ate apples and cheese for lunch, then I put Little Bit down for her nap and read to the big girls while she slept.

The power came back on late afternoon so I cranked the heat up, knowing it could go out again (it was still snowing) I wanted to "store" as much heat as possible while we had it. We went outside to see how things were (I wouldn't let the girls go outside while the power was out, since we didn't have a way to get warmed up if they got cold). When we went outside and I saw how many BIG branches had fallen, I told them that even with power they couldn't be outside, too many big trees near our house! We went back in and cooked supper and the power went off again right after we finished cooking supper, and stayed off until noonish on Sunday. We ate our supper, lit candles, and talked, played guessing games and sang songs until bedtime. At bedtime I decided since the power was out, that it would be better if we all slept on the living room floor. For one thing, our main floor has 18" thick stone (I think, it's covered with stucco, but the interior walls in the basement are stone so I assume that's what's inside our main floor walls too) walls which do a pretty good job of keeping heat (or cool in summer) in, but upstairs are normal thin walls and not real-well insulated, so I knew it would get alot colder upstairs than downstairs. Also I figured if it got really cold, we could all share body heat if we were all sleeping together. We have 2 small LED lanterns but one is tempermental about turning on/off so if we were all together we could have the one working lantern easily accessible for anyone who needed to go to the bathroom or whatever, although the moon on the snow provided pretty good light. And my final reason, that I didn't mention to the girls, was my fear of trees falling on the house. I figured if one of the big trees near the house DID fall, or a big enough branch to come through the roof, the main floor was a safer place to be than upstairs (again, those thicker walls, plus farther from the roof). So since MiniMe's normal bed is a king size feather mattress topper folded in half, we brought it down and laid it out flat for us to all sleep on (not a super cushy bed, but as soft as when the girls sleep on the floor in hotels. I knew I wasn't likely to get much sleep no matter what) then they each had their own twin down comforter (Little Bit and I shared hers) and I spread my queen down comforter over all of us, though that ended up being too warm. Once we were quiet and in bed the snow/ice/branches falling off the trees and landing on our roof was constant, and loud, enough that even from downstairs it sounded like someone was walking around upstairs. So that was Sat night.

Sunday morning it was chilly, but still in the high 50's according to the thermostat in the living room, so not too horrible. Still no power. Our "emergency plan" for heating food when we don't have power is to use the grill on the front porch, which would work well if dh was here, but I have to admit I've never used the grill AND Little Bit was being really clingy/fussy. So I knew if I tried to go out there and cook breakfast (and heat water for coffee and hot chocolate) it would mean either taking her out with me (and at least one big girl to watch her so I could focus on figuring out the grill) so we'd ALL have to be out in the cold, or have her literally standing at the door screaming for me the whole time and I didn't like either option. We don't keep cold cereal in the house (after this experience I've decided I should at least make sure to keep a batch of granola in the freezer for "emergencies") since the girls don't like it, and it's not a healthy or economical choice anyway. And did I mention I wanted coffee? So, as I looked out the window, I was pretty sure I could make it up the driveway (it had been plowed on Sat. afternoon and, in retrospect, I'm thinking the plow must have come back through during the night, though I didn't hear him) and if the driveway was that clear, roads probably were ok, and we could go to Starbucks! Regardless, by that point I needed to recharge my phone (had been texting to dh pretty regularly to keep him informed about our status, plus it was my source for weather and stuff), which I figured I could do in the car. So I told the girls we were all going to go out to the car. Little Bit could watch the DVD player in the car and my phone could charge. IF I could make it up the driveway and the roads were ok we'd go to Starbucks. If not, at least we could warm up, Little Bit could watch the tv she kept asking for, and my phone could charge. The big girls were great help at cleaning the car off and shoveling the little area between the back of the car and the plowed part (and Little Bit was perfectly happy to sit in the car and watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while we worked). Once we got the car cleared off, we were able to get up the driveway easily enough, and our road was clear, though LOTS of branches down along the sides, or pushed off to the side. The main roads were snow-free and trees had, again, been moved to the side. The stoplights for the first while were out and a road not very far from us was closed and we could see a HUGE tree completely blocking it. But Starbucks was open (and doing a brisk business LOL).

After breakfast we went home, hopeful that our power would be back on, but we were disappointed. It was still out, but we went ahead and did some school and around noon the power came on, but the cable and internet were completely dead.

The girls and I both decided we appreciate heat and electricity more after living without it for a little while, and are very thankful that we were only without power for one day.

The girls also mentioned that it was kind of fun to spend an evening just talking and playing games and stuff instead of all doing our own things, so we agreed that we'd have an evening like that (but with light and heat LOL) on a regular basis.

So that's what our week last week, and the first day or so of this week, were all about. The snow was pretty, but sure did alot of damage!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Catch-up Edition

2011-10-25T13:08:00.001-04:00

I seem to be doing well with the "week and a half" thing, sigh . . . so let's see, where did I leave off?

A week ago Friday . . . that was just a day of packing and getting things done.

Sabbath (Oct 15) - after church we headed to Pittsburgh. When Little Bit woke up from her nap she was REALLY grouchy (not sure why, it's not like her). So when we stopped at a rest area soon after that, I decided it was time to turn her carseat forward-facing. She's not at the max weight for rear-facing in her carseat yet, and up until now she'd been content so we went with it. But the thought of 3 hours of the big girls having to keep a grouchy toddler entertained when I've gotten lazy about planning car activities because usually she's such a good traveler, just made me head hurt. Turning her forward facing means now we can utilize the minivan's built in DVD player to help keep her entertained. We really haven't been using the DVD player at all with the big girls, but thankfully I HAD brought along a couple DVDs. One was a Magic Schoolbus video on bugs to go along with our current nature study on bees. I'd figured the big girls could watch it during Little Bit's nap sometime. And then for some reason I through in the Theo video we reviewed awhile back. So, while I took the girls in for a potty break at the rest area, Rodney turned the carseat around. Needless to say, Little Bit was pretty excited to be able to "sit like sisters" and was amazed to discover we have a TV in our car LOL. Thankfully, she enjoyed the Magic Schoolbus videos, even asking for them sometime even later in the trip (on Sunday I went to Kmart and got a couple DVDs of some of her favorite tv shows).

Sunday was a day of swimming and such at the hotel, we originally considered going to a museum, until we went to breakfast at the hotel and realized, based on the fact that we were literally the ONLY people in the breakfast area NOT wearing Steelers clothes, that there was a Steelers game that day. Since both museums are pretty close to the stadium we opted to stay far away from that area on a game day.

Monday we went to Carnegie Science Center. The big girls were thrilled to have the sports building pretty much to themselves. Their big accomplishment was to climb to the top of the climbing wall (shudder).

Little Bit enjoyed the "little kid" area.

Tuesday we went to the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. As always the art studio was a big hit. Little Bit got into the action more this time. Her favorite was the clay, she spent hours (more or less) playing with clay while her sisters did recycled sculpture projects. They were doing some remodeling and were between special exhibits so there wasn't as much else to do, but Little Bit enjoyed the "nursery" (little kid area) for awhile and the big girls had fun with an electricity exhibit, figuring out how circuits and stuff work.

Wednesday Rodney needed to go to Erie for the day, and since it was supposed to rain, the girls and I opted to stay at the hotel. If it wasn't rainy we would have gone to the Erie Zoo, but I wasn't as confident about keeping them entertained all day on a rainy day. So we did school, and played in the pool and such.

Thursday morning Rodney had one last appointment and then we were leaving around noon. So while he went to that the girls and I packed and snuck in a final trip to the pool. One of the highlights of Pittsburgh trips for Little Bit is the "sparkley tunnels" her name for the white tile walls and florescent lights in the tunnels on the trip out, and between our hotel and downtown Pittsburgh. On the trip home she napped for the first however long and then coincidentally (seriously, none of us made any noise or anything) woke up while we were IN the first tunnel of the trip home. She was SOO excited to wake up in a sparkley tunnel, it was cute.

I should also note that most of our trip fell during Sukkot. We had talked about making a "tent" over the desk in the hotel room but the girls didn't remember while we were there and I must admit I didn't remind them, 5 of us in a rather small hotel room is chaotic enough. We had also talked about them making a dollhouse size sukkah to have in the hotel room but we got there and I couldn't find the doll house dolls and other supplies that the girls had planned to bring, so I figured we'd forgotten them. I did find them, tucked in the corner, as we were packing to leave on Thurs morning, oops. So, not alot of celebrating. We DID read about and discuss the various symbolisms of the holiday each morning for Bible.

So that was our fun, trip. Friday was naturally a day of laundry and groceries and such.

I should also mention the changes we've made to our Friday night "Shabbat" celebration. Awhile back we had talked some about the traditional things Jews do to welcome Shabbat, but the girls weren't really interested. For the last year or so, when possible, we've used special dishes (we went to TJMaxx and found pretty soup bowls and some simple, inexpensive stemware), we have soup and challah bread and light candles. A few weeks ago, when Sassy asked to light the candles she remembered that one of the things we learned about the Jewish celebration is that the women wear scarves or other head coverings. So she went and found a scarf to wear when she lit the candles. Then last week (a week ago), I thought I'd surprise the girls and have grape juice instead of water to drink. And the girls remembered that another part of the Jewish celebration was passing around a special cup and saying a blessing on the grape juice (this, incidentally, is most likely what Jesus would have said/done when he "took the wine and blessed it" at the last supper). So they wanted to do that but I'm not organized to be able to lay my hands on the wording (in English or Hebrew) for the blessing at the last minute, so we just made up our own for that night.

Fast forward to Thursday while we were doing school and waiting for Rodney to get back from his morning appointment. I found the mp3 about Shabbat and we listened to it again. The girls wanted to learn the blessings, in English AND Hebrew. So we started with the blessing that's typically said while lighting the Shabbat candles. They quickly learned it in English,and now we're slowly working on learning the Hebrew version.

And I think that pretty much catches us up on what's been going on around here. I have some pictures, but those will have to wait till later.

Book Review: Educating the WholeHearted Child

2011-10-17T09:07:00.000-04:00

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to review the new edition of Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson. I've talked before about my love for this couple's writings, and last spring I reviewed their daughter, Sarah's, book Read for the Heart, so I had no doubt that I'd love this book as well. And I was not disappointed! When I received it, I was surprised at how big it is! I realized rather quickly after starting into it, that realistically, given my complete lack of "alone time" (Little Bit still doesn't know what sleep is, dh's work schedule has been insane . . .), and how MUCH information, the kind of real, good, informative information that you have to really "digest" not just skim over and go on, like I tend to do with alot of books I read, and did I mention that it's a BIG book! That it wasn't realistic to try to read the whole book in the time I had before I needed to write this review. I chose to READ it, the way I need to read it to get anything out of it, underlining, writing comments in the margin, stopping to absorb what I was reading, and I'm no where near done, but that's ok. I don't need to finish reading this book to say absolutely, without a doubt, you NEED this book!!! This is an amazing resource for any homschooling family! From great general parenting advice to things to consider in setting up your home, to how to work with your child(ren)'s personality(ies), to living books . . . and that's just the first halfof the book that I've actually made it through!!

This is not a book that you read once and then forget about, this is a book that I'm going to revisit regularly, as a resource and a source of general reminders on how to be the parent (and homeschool mom) that I want to be, and that God wants me to be!

I highly recommend this book to any Christian homeschool parent, whether you're considering homeschooling, just starting out, or have been homeschooling for years! There's so much information in this book, it will be helpful to you wherever you're at in your homeschooling journey!

You can get your own copy of Educating the Whole Hearted Child from Apologia for $22. While you're there be sure to check out their other great books, including Read for the Heart (mentioned above), and another book that the Crew reviewed (but I didn't get to) earlier this year, How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. for Your Child, which, after reading the Crew reviews, is now near the top of my wish list, and many more. Also don't forget to read what my fellow crewmates thought of this book, by going to the TOS Crew blog here.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Week and a Half Wrap-Up

2011-10-13T19:51:00.002-04:00

Obviously, I'm behind again, sigh . . . oh well, such is life!

Last week's highlights:

Apple picking at Hopewell Furnace. The apples were about gone, but we had fun anyway. Sassy and MiniMe thought it was great fun to use the big long apple picker contraptions to pick the apples, and Little Bit enjoyed getting the apples out of the picker contraption once one of the big girls picked one. Then Little Bit and I examined it, and if it had "holes in it" she got to throw it down the hill.
To make sure our apple picking adventure was educational, the ranger who sold us the apples we picked gave the girls a quick math lesson, it went something like this . . .

Ranger: You get a free apple for coming, so if you came every day all year, how many free apples would you get?
MiniMe: (looking abit disgusted) You don't HAVE apples all year, just during apple season, so how could you give me one every day?
Ranger: Ok, so IF we had apples every day, how many apples would you get if you came every day all year?
MiniMe: I don't know
Ranger: 365, there are 365 days in the year. So, if you came every OTHER day, and we had apples, how many apples would you get?
MiniMe & Sassy spent a few minutes talking it out, but did come up with the correct answer. Ranger expressed approval at how well they figured out how to arrive at the number (divided 300 in half, then 60, then 5)

Extra baking and cooking to put in the freezer to get us ready for the busy month we have planned. There were more math lessons hidden in all that measuring and doubling recipes :-)
We've been learning about Van Gogh, for art, so we spent time discussing some of his paintings, the girls each chose a painting to "copy", and did a pretty good job, all things considered. They also added the Van Gogh stuff to their Famous Painters lapbook.
We wrapped up our ladybug study by making apple ladybugs for lunch one day.
This past Sabbath was Yom Kippur, so we learned about Yom Kippur, and discussed how Jesus was the Atonement for our sins. Since we weren't home on Sabbath, we weren't able to have a candle burning all day. We did listen to the story of Jonah (which, I have to admit, I didn't figure out WHY, but one thing I read said that traditionally the story of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur) as we were driving.

Which brings us to this week . . .

The girls and I left after church on Sabbath to go to Mama & Papa's house for a few days. The girls were thrilled to see the progress Papa has made on their playhouse. He has the roof on all of it and is beginning to put siding on it. He also set one of the windows while we were there.

Sunday was jam-packed! the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore was having Steam Days AND a Civil War encampment, so we headed down there for the day. But on our way down we stopped at Monocacy Battle Field to get the Junior Ranger book for the girls to work on as they had time. It's an awesome little Visitor Center and the ranger was super informative, we'll definitely be heading back there when we're learning about the Civil War next spring.

Once we got to the train museum we headed straight for the steam train. We rode the steam train out to a mock Civil War Encampment, where we saw the oldest running steam engine in the United States (there's one a year older in . . . I think he said somewhere in Europe) they were driving it back and forth on a side-rail. Pretty cool. The girls also found some of the reinactors who were willing to answer questions and proceeded to learn about what a soldier would have carried, what he wore, what the letter on his hat meant, and a brief history of photography, including the tax on photography. The "benefits" of steam days also meant that Mount Clare Mansion was open without it's normal additional fee. So we also got to tour it.

After riding the steam train back to the railroad museum we saw a blacksmith's demonstration, and MiniMe got to try her hand at making a "hippo" using clay instead of heated iron.

When we got home from the railroad museum we quickly loaded up the motorhome and headed out again, this time to Fort Frederick for a couple days of camping. The fort isn't completely open during the week this time of year, so we'll have to visit again sometime when we can see inside the barracks, and visit the CCC museum, but we still had a good time.

Little Bit loved the playground with lots of slides.
The naturalist had the nature center open on Monday, and I'm not sure who had more fun, the girls asking their thousands of questions, or him, having such a willing and interested audience LOL.
The girls learned abit about fire-building
We were excited to see a trail marked "beaver trail" but couldn't find any real evidence of beavers, at least not that we recognized as such. And while there were several numbered markers along the trail, we never managed to find where one would get something telling us what the numbers represented. It was still a nice walk and on our way back we collected some sticks to use for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows.
Papa taught the girls how to whittle points on the tips of their roasting sticks.
During Little Bit's nap on Monday, everyone else rode their bikes 11 miles (give or take) on the rail trail and C&O Canal. Originally MiniMe was hesitant about riding on the canal, with the canal on one side of the toe path and the river on the other side, but she did it.

So all and all our first trip in the new motorhome was a total success.

Tuesday we went back to Mama & Papa's house and Mama finished making the "Williamsburg dresses" she promised the girls at their birthday, the girls helped Papa gather fire wood, rode their bikes, helped put siding on the playhouse, etc.

Wednesday we headed home, and today we've been playing catch up on laundry, errands, etc.

Today is also the first day of Sukkot. Bad weather and all our traveling means we don't have a sukkah built or anything, but we read about the holiday today, and will read more about it throughout the next week. The girls decided they want to build a sukkah for their dollhouse people. We also got some artificial branches/leaves at AC Moore today to make our own lulav. So we're continuing to enjoy learning about the Jewish Holidays in the midst of all our busyness.

So that's what's been going on around here. Most of the pictures of our adventures are on my dad's camera, which I forgot to get before we headed home, so pictures will come eventually.

Homeschool Review: Always Ice Cream

2011-10-12T16:36:00.000-04:00

As part of the TOS Crew we were given lifetime access to Always Ice Cream, A fun, educational website community for girls age 7-12. This site allows girls to interact with one another in a safe, monitored, ad-free environment.

When I set up my parents' account, I received a nice welcome message, it was short, to the point, and informative, just the way I like it!

I then got the girls going on it. I asked that they share the access, which they did with surprisingly few squabbles.

The site includes fun stuff, like setting up a virtual "house", taking care of virtual "pets" and designing items to sell in your virtual "store". This is the part of the site that my girls have enjoyed most.

It also includes educational games and quizzes. The girls have happily done several of these to earn "$coops" to use in the virtual world, but they are abit too "quiz-like" for my unschooled children.

One thing I noticed that I'm not real fond of, for my children, is that other girls can apparently send bulk e-mails to the whole site. Soon after we signed up there was a whole string of e-mails accusing other girls of cheating and stealing ideas and such. It was disconcerting to my children whose personal e-mail accounts are kept strictly for close friends and family, so the concept of receiving an e-mail that doesn't apply directly to them is a new one.

I feel that, for my girls, I would want them to be older before spending very much time on this site, because of the dynamic of interacting with children I don't know. While it's great that these interactions are monitored, and that addresses the larger safety concern of internet predators, this monitoring isn't going to keep my children from being exposed to topics and behavior that are out of keeping with our family's beliefs, or are "typical" pre-teen behaviors that I prefer to avoid. They had fun playing with it when we first set it up, but, as generally happens with computer games for them, they kind of forgot about it, and I have chosen not to remind them.

I want to emphasize that my "concerns" aren't a criticism of the site, simply why it wasn't a fit for our family. I am fully aware that many of our family choices are counter-cultural, and we're ok with that. For a girl of this age who attends school, or other group activities without a parent present, the interactions of the site would be similar to, and probably more closely monitored, than the in-real-life interactions she would be involved with. It's a great concept that keeps the girls safer than facebook or other un-monitored online experiences.

You can see the pricing for joining this site here. Memberships start at $4.99 for a monthly subscription, but the first month is only $0.99 so you can try it out and see for yourself how it works for your family.

Also be sure to check out what my fellow crew mates thought, I know many of them found it to be a great resource for their families! So check out their reviews here.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Review: Baltic Amber Necklace

2011-10-04T11:33:00.000-04:00

I first heard about "teething necklaces", as amber necklaces are often called, when my older girls were just past the teething stage. When Little Bit was born, I considered a teething necklace, but decided to play it by ear, and she never was really bothered by teething (neither were the older girls). So while I've been intrigued by amber for several years, I never had an "excuse" to get an amber necklace.

Teething necklaces are made from amber beads. Amber, while it looks like any other stone bead, is actually fossilized tree resin. When baltic amber is worn against the skin, your body heat warms the beads and releases trace amounts of healing oils from the amber. These oils are natural pain relievers. So, when a baby or toddler wears an amber teething necklace, the oils help to relieve the pain from teething.

Then I read about someone wearing an amber necklace to prevent, or relieve headaches. While I don't get headaches often, when I *do* get them, they are severe, and I have been unsuccessful in finding a natural way to at least dull the pain enough to function as a mommy when I have a headache. Sometimes advil will help enough so that I can function, but sometimes I have to call my husband and ask him to come home. Now that the older girls are older, I can usually just ask them to take over the care of Little Bit while I doze in the recliner. Still, not ideal. So, I was very interested in the idea of wearing an amber necklace to prevent headaches! Inspired by Finn is a site that I've heard great things about ever since I first heard about teething necklaces, so that's where I went to see about getting a necklace for headaches.

As I read more about it, I learned that the unpolished, lighter colored amber contains higher levels of the succinic acid that provides the pain relieving properties. So, I chose an unpolished, light colored (lemonade) necklace.

I also learned that succinic acid, in addition to providing pain relief, will help improve our immune systems, a wonderful benefit as we go into cold and flu season!

Since I don't get headaches on a regular basis, it can be hard to determine if the necklace is "working" or not. However, the morning after I received it, and before I had put it on, I felt a headache coming on mid-morning. It was a full day so I couldn't risk JUST trying the necklace as a cure, typically, once I feel a headache coming on, nothing I do will get rid of it completely, but Advil will keep it to a level that I can function normally. So, I put the necklace on, and also took Advil. I didn't think too much about it, but realized a little while later that, instead of just being at a "manageable level" of pain, the headache was COMPLETELY GONE!! While I can't say with certainty, that it was the necklace, I do feel that was what moved the headache from "dull roar", as it typically is after Advil, to GONE. I've been wearing the necklace most days since then and despite a very busy couple of weeks, which is when headaches are most likely to show up, my body's way of forcing me to recharge no doubt, I haven't had any headaches. I'm sold!

Inspired by Finn's necklaces are knotted between each bead, unless otherwise noted, so that if the necklace does break, the beads don't all fall off, just the bead closest to the break. They fasten with a screw clasp. I had never used a screw clasp before and find I have a love-hate relationship with them. I find them "fiddly" to put on or take off, especially taking them off, because you have to "find" the clasp. But I love that I don't have to worry about the necklace shifting as I wear it, and needing to keep a clasp hidden at the back of my neck. So, for me, this works well. I typically only take it off/put it on in the morning when I take a shower, and I'm fine with the extra "fiddle" of the clasp then, to not have to worry about it during the day. I do question how I would like this with a wiggly baby or toddler however? Inspired by Finn also offers magnetic clasps, for those preferring to not have the screw clasp.

Be sure to check out the Inspired by Finn site for more information about baltic amber and it's benefits!

As a final note, Inspired by Finn has a great program for bloggers, that allowed me to obtain my necklace at a discount in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was received, and my opinions are all my own.

Bi-Weekly Wrap-Up - Oct 2

2011-10-02T14:09:00.002-04:00

I honestly have no idea why I didn't get a weekly wrap-up posted last week, I just didn't. So here I am, with two busy weeks to write about.

To stay chronological, LAST week started with a "fall festival" at the local church school. The girls had fun seeing animals at the petting zoo, playing games and winning an obnoxious whistle, and eating their weight (possibly more) in junk food. But it was to raise money for the school, so it was all for a good cause LOL.

Needless to say, cotton candy was a big hit!

My dad sent me an AIM message sometime near the beginning of that week and asked if we'd be around Wed. night, because they were thinking of going to Philadelphia on Thurs, and thought they might stop by to see us on their way up Wed evening. I said that MiniMe and I were going on our "date" that night but that Rodney and the other girls would be around and then we could see them when we got home from our date. Dad decided he'd have to admit that the REAL reason they were coming up this way was to pick up the motorhome they had purchased, and then to come show it to us. So, we switched MiniMe's date to Thurs night (conveniently, she's so used to Daddy's work schedule being unpredictable that she didn't even ask why we were changing it, just assumed it was because something came up that Daddy needed to work late on Wed), so that we'd all be home to check out the new motorhome on Wed.

Wed. afternoon we went to Miss Judy's house to visit her. While we were there was one of our few rain-free moments this month, so we went outside. Little Bit decided I needed to take her picture, and then actually stood still long enough for me to take it.

That evening mom & dad got here and parked out of sight of our house without the girls seeing them, then just "showed up" at our door. Needless to say, the girls were very excited to see them. And then Papa suggested a "walk in the rain" and surprised them with the new motorhome. It's MUCH bigger than the old one and comes complete with bunkbeds for the big girls (though I've warned them that when Little Bit gets big enough they'll have to rotate so that she gets a turn on the bunkbeds too. The big girls spent the night in the motorhome with Mama and Papa, and then they rode with Papa (while Mama and Little Bit rode with me) to an overstock grocery store near us before Mama and Papa left for home.

Thursday evening was, as mentioned, MiniMe's date. We had a nice meal together at Panera, and then, since she's my little "shopper", we went to Ross's together and had fun shopping together without the distraction of keeping track of Little Bit before we headed home.

Sabbath was perhaps the busiest (and least "restful") Sabbath I've had in a long time. I was in charge of craft time for the big girls' class, and then, their teacher wanted the Cradle Roll leader to help him that morning, so I ended up leading in Cradle Roll. The Sabbath School Superintendent had asked all the children's divisions to sing for the adult Sabbath School classes, so we cut our Sabbath School short and went to the sanctuary for that. The Cradle Roll children were too young to really know what was going on, but they stood up there during parts of songs at least. Little Bit was happy to stand with sissies. The lighting wasn't good, but at least you can see all 3 girls standing together.

After all the children sang a few songs, the leader had Sassy and MiniMe sing some songs they've been working on (they're the only children their age who attend consistently enough to have learned them). They sang (acapella no less) "The Books of the Old Testament", "The Books of the New Testament" and "The Beatitudes".

As if that weren't enough, MiniMe and Sassy were also scheduled to tell Children's Story in church that week. So they had lots of up front time that day.

Sabbath was also communion, and we were on the schedule to help with the visitors dinner after church, so it was a busy day all around.

So that was last week. This past week was equally busy. We had Sassy date (she decided MiniMe's date sounded fun, so chose the same thing, Panera's and then shopping, I think I can get used to "dates" like that LOL).

The big girls came with me to the church on Tuesday to help set up the Cradle Roll room for the new quarter. We're doing a forest theme this quarter, so the girls had fun helping to figure out where to put all the trees and such. They're definitely feeling ownership, they made sure to come in after their class this morning to see how it went LOL.

Wednesday morning we had a playdate at a friend's house. The girls all had fun playing cars and balloons with their friends E & J. And we all enjoyed lunch together before we headed home. After Little Bit's nap Wed. Miss Judy came down to visit us.

We also decided to celebrate Rosh Hashanah this year. For several years now I've been toying with the idea, ever since reading that the Jewish Fall Feasts point, not just to the Messiah, but also to Jesus' second coming. It seems to me, if this is the case, that they haven't been fulfilled and should still be observed. So every year I say I'm going to study into it more to decide, and every year I get busy and don't. So this year I decided to skip the studying part. I don't believe there is any command to NOT keep the feasts so, since the girls are happy for any excuse to celebrate, I decided we'd just start learning about them, and celebrating them as we get to them and not worry about whether or not we "have to". The girls were all over that idea! So, on Tuesday we made challah bread, but added raisins and formed it into a circle instead of the typical braid. Wed. night the girls made "shofars" (rams horns) by covering party horns with construction paper, and of course blew them as often as I'd allow it (it IS the "Feast of Trumpets" afterall). And for supper we decorated the table with a centerpiece of fruit and "cakes" (we used cookies, we like them better LOL). In addition to the challah bread we included apples dipped in honey (yum!) with our meal. And of course ate some of hte cookies from the centerpiece (we also had baked potatoes). At the end of our meal, we read Bible verses, both from Numbers (the original command to keep the Feast of Trumpets) and from the New Testament, where it talks about Jesus coming again with the blowing of trumpets.

Thursday we continued our Rosh Hashana celebration with more trumpet blowing, we made applesauce honey cake for breakfast (I think it will become a regular breakfast option around here). Then for Bible class I read to them some of the history, and current symbolism of the holiday. For lunch, we had pomegranate apple salad (it was yummy too!), and then after Little Bit's nap we went up to the pond and "cast our sins [bread crumbs] on the water".

I think the girls really enjoyed it, and so did I, just wish it hadn't been in the midst of such a busy week.

Friday we went to Grandmom's house to visit her, and Rodney's sister and her husband came too. It was a joint birthday celebration for me (Aug), and Rodney & his sister (both Sept). Sassy is trying to teach Grandmom to knit, and MiniMe is teaching Aunt Lynette to make handsewn felt pouches, so they were busy with that for quite awhile. And it was finally a non-rainy day, so they played outside some too. Little Bit is a BIG fan of Grandmom's "big gween swide" (big green slide for the rest of us).

This Sabbath was a much calmer day. Little Bit was cute, when we walked into her Sabbath School room, she stopped, looked around and said "wow! Something different!". I think the forest program is going to be a hit, she & her friend, J (the only kids there today) had great fun gathering pinecones, going on a walk, and building a beaver dam amongst other things.

And that was our last couple of weeks. This coming week is hopefully going to be a little big slower, we shall see . . .

Lest you fear that no "school" is happening, we have managed to fit in learning about Leif Erickson, and later, Columbus, discovering America (though we did skip most of the "craft" things for these weeks, since the girls were helping me by making the props we needed for the forest program, they are now experts at cutting fish and clouds out of felt, making rattle snake rattles, a pretty cool leaf with a spider that dangles from it, and a mosquito jar. . . and probably more things that I forgot.), began our study of Van Gogh for art, and continued learning about ladybugs for nature/science. The housecleaning, on the other hand, has pretty much fallen by the wayside these last couple weeks LOL.

Book Review and GIVEAWAY!!! "What is He Thinking?"

2011-10-02T08:00:00.002-04:00

When I was given the opportunity to review Rebecca St James' book "What Is He Thinking??", I figured it would be a good chance to get a feel for current Christian thoughts on dating and such, in preparation for the rapidly approaching time when my little girls are ready to date. It's hard to believe I need to be thinking of such things, but they ARE 8 1/2, so it won't be long, sigh . . .

What Is He Thinking?? is the results of Christian singer, Rebecca St. James surveying a variety of young men, and some older men, mostly unmarried, a few married, to get their take on the Christian dating scene.

She asks these men what they look for in a girl, how they feel about modesty, relationships with God, etc. Then shares their answers, as well as her own thoughts, with her readers.

You can see a sampling of the book for yourself, here.

I think this book is a good resource for young women today. It helps these young women re-think the messages the world sends about what to look for in a guy as well as what guys are looking for in a woman.

And now the best part, I've been given permission to giveaway a copy of this book to one of my readers! If you're interested in winning this, do any or all of the following, then fill out this form, to enter.

Visit Rebecca St James' site and tell me something you learned or like. (mandatory)

Follow my site on Google Friend Connect (see sidebar)

Follow my site on Networked Blogs (see sidebar)

Follow Rebecca St James on facebook.

Follow What Is He Thinking?? on facebook.

Follow my blog on facebook.

Follow Rebecca St James on twitter.

Follow me on twitter.

Giveaway open to US residents. Giveaway will end at 8pm EDT on Thursday, October 6, 2011. Winner will be announced on Friday, October 7. Winner will have 2 days to respond, or a new winner will be chosen. ONLY ENTRIES MADE THROUGH THE FORM will count NOT entries in the COMMENTS!

Book Review: Smack Dab in the Middle of God's Love by Manning and Blase

2011-09-19T15:50:00.001-04:00

Smack Dab in the Middle of God's Love, by Brennan Manning and John Blase is a cute children's story about Willie Juan and Ana, who couldn't have children of their own, but are favorites with the neighborhood's children. As they pass out sopapillas and hugs, they also teach the children about God's love.

My children and I enjoyed this book, it uses colorful pictures, and a fun story to remind children everywhere just how much God loves each and every one of them.

Disclaimer: I received this book free of charge from Thomas Nelson Publishing, through Booksneeze.com in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Review and GIVEAWAY: The Shunning DVD

2011-09-19T14:41:00.003-04:00

This giveaway is now closed! Congratulations to Sarah, our winner! Sarah graciously asked that we choose another winner since she has already won a blog giveaway for this DVD, so Congratulations to our NEW Winner, Lisa!!!

While I don't have much time for reading these days, and rarely choose to use that reading time on fiction, I've been a fan of Beverly Lewis's novels, set in Amish country, for years. So when I was given the opportunity to review a Hallmark DVD based on Beverly Lewis's book The Shunning, I jumped at the chance.

In a nutshell, this is a story of a young Amish woman searching to discover who she really is, complicated by the fact that she learns that she was adopted from a "fancy" (not Amish) woman, as a baby.

You can learn more about the movie here. And view the trailer here.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, perhaps my biggest complaint was that it "left me hanging" it does not end at "the end of the story" but then I realized that this movie is based on a book that is the first in the series "The Heritage of Lancaster County". So now I've requested book 2 in the trilogy from my library, and am anxious to find out "what happens next". If you're a fan of Beverly Lewis's books, or the Amish genre of fiction in general, I'd recommend this as a great movie (and, I assume, book).

GIVEAWAY:
And now the fun part, the marketing company that sent me this movie to review has another copy of it to give to one of my readers.

Mandatory entry: Leave a comment telling me what your favorite movie is.

Additional entries Please leave a separate comment for each entry:

Like "The Shunning" on Facebook here.
Follow my blog on Google Friend Connect (see sidebar)
Follow my blog on Networked Blogs (see sidebar)
Like my blog on facebook here
Follow me on Twitter.
Post about this giveaway on facebook, twitter, and/or your blog (one entry per method).

This giveaway will close a week from tomorrow, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 and the winner will be chosen on Wednesday, September 28, 2011. Please make sure I have a way to contact you. If I do not hear back from you within 2 days, a new winner will be chosen.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."

Weekly Wrap-Up - September 18

2011-09-18T17:45:00.000-04:00

I realized I never did a weekly wrap-up last week because I was busy doing the specific posts from our "field trips".

So, last week we were at my parents' house. I already told you about going to Assateague and our busy day visiting national parks. Those were the highlights of our week but here are a few other things:

As usual, we took many walks to Grandma's house and back. And the girls helped pick tomatoes, corn, and blackberries in the the garden.

One day all 3 girls were playing together and decided to play "family", complete with costumes. Sassy was the "daddy" (apparently he works construction . . . or something . . . hence, the hardhat), MiniMe was the mommy, and Little Bit was the "baby". She wanted a costume too, so they used a newborn drawstring gown that they found in the doll clothes (conveniently it was from long enough ago that it had an actual drawstring rather than the elastic that current ones have) and put it on her. It was a kind of mini-dress thing on her, but she was happy LOL.

The big girls continued to help Papa on the playhouse. In this picture Papa is standing on the floor of the 2nd story and MiniMe is on the roof of the one-story part.

We did fit in a little bit of the "school" we do at home. We did a fun art project using chalk pastels and paint on black cardstock as a part of our Inuit study for history. We also did soap carving but I didn't get any pictures of that.

While the big girls were doing the pastel chalk painting, Mama found a paint with water book for Little Bit so she wouldn't feel left out.

And Little Bit's accomplishment of the trip was to master climbing the wall at Mama & Papa's house. They have a clear story in their dining room with a carpeted wall with climbing holes in it to access the platform. The big girls were probably 4, maybe 5 before they were brave enough to even attempt climbing the wall. But of course Little Bit sees sisters doing it and wants to join in. Until this trip she could only manage to get hands and feet on the lowest holes but couldn't figure out how to move UP the wall. I was pretty happy with that arrangement but this trip, with some guidance from a sister or two (I think), she figured out the actual going-up part, sigh . . . she hasn't figured out the going DOWN part, however, so she climbs up and then yells for someone to come get her. (like my high-tech way of making the "nakey baby on the wall" picture not quite so . . . nakey LOL).

So that was last week. We came home on Sunday. This past week has, of course, been filled with laundry, and generally settling back into our home routines (if I could figure out a way to not need to transition back into those home routines after every trip, it would sure make all our traveling easier). I had several reviews to write, as you, no doubt, noticed LOL.

We slipped back into our normal at-home school routines, and finally wrapped up the "Native American" part of our history curriculum, and began reading about Leif the Lucky (love this series!) as the beginning of the explorers.

It seems like we had a busy week, but I'm drawing a blank on anything noteworthy that we did.

Perhaps my favorite thing this week was the weather finally cooling down, ahhhh . . . I'm loving having the windows open and snuggling under blankets at night and am anticipating pulling out the long-sleeved clothes . . . I'm never satisfied, in the winter I'm chomping at the bit for it to warm up, but by August I'm counting the days till cool weather LOL. And on that note, I think I'll go unpack some sweaters or something.

Homeschool Review: Math Solve It!

2011-09-17T07:58:00.002-04:00

One of the subjects that we are very "unschoolish" about is math. I feel like we learn lots of basic math skills through life, and that learning practical math makes it "stick" better than just memorizing drills. But when I had an option to review one of several math or science products from AIMS Educational Foundation, I decided the Solve It! 3rd math book sounded like a good hands-on way to introduce a little formal math into the girls' curriculum, at least once in awhile.

I actually chose it, figuring that 3rd grade level math problem solving would be a challenge for the girls (who are "officially" considered 2nd graders this year, though we don't pay a whole lot of attention to grade level around here), and I wanted to see if they could step up to that challenge.

We received the Solve It! 3rd Problem Solving Strategies book, including a CD-ROM of printables. As a parent of multiple children I love that this is a resource to be used with multiple children, not a single-use workbook. The book is essentially a "teacher's edition" with teaching tips, etc. And then the "workbook" pages for the students can either be photocopied out of the book or printed from the included CD-ROM. The book gives permission for making up to 200 copies of each page within the same school, which should be plenty for our homeschool LOL. When you consider that it can be used for all of your children, the price of $24.95 is a great value!

This book is not intended to be a complete math curriculum, rather, it is a "supplement" to teach problem solving skills in a more hands-on way. It includes 3-4 activities in each of the following categories:

Use Manipulatives
Write a Number Sentence
Draw Out the Problem
Guess and Check
Organize the Information
Look for Patterns
Use Logical Thinking
Work Backwards
Wish for an Easier Problem

We have jumped around to get a feel for several of these strategies, and all that we've tried have been well within my children's ability, and in most cases they have declared them "easy". Since we don't try to follow "grade levels" per se, I can't evaluate how accurate the 3rd grade recommendation is, some activities could be adapted up or down to some extent, but in general, this is a product that you're going to want to use for the recommended skill-level. That said, if you have a younger child who wants to be involved, in many cases you could probably come up with a related activity using the same manipulatives.

One thing to note is that, because this book was designed for classroom use, many of the activities are designed to be done in small groups and such. We found it easy enough to adapt for our use, usually doing it individually, sometimes forming our own "group" of 3 (Sassy, MiniMe and me). It should also be noted that the book assumes basic math classroom equipment. In some cases a paper alternative is provided in the printables, or described (for example, pattern blocks), but in some cases, additional equipment is needed. An example of that would be a balance scale. If you look near the bottom of the page for purchasing the book, you can see the "Related Products" to get an idea of what other items you might need to purchase.

I would consider this more "school-like" than most of what we choose to do, but it's hands-on enough that the girls have been enjoying it. The amount of writing required is less than ideal for kinesthetic and auditory learners, but can be easily adapted by discussing rather than having them write out their answers. The hands-on approach is ideal for kinesthetics, but can be beneficial for all learning styles.

While we've enjoyed the activities, I think this product would be more beneficial for someone with a more "school at home" approach, who is looking to add something more interactive to supplement their math curriculum. In my experience, unschoolers and others toward that end of the spectrum, have generally figured out the whole "problem solving" thing on their own so probably wouldn't feel the need for this product as much.

In addition to the book we reviewed, AIMS Educational Foundation offers a wide variety of math and science products. Check out the TOS Crew Blog to see other reviews of this and other products that AIMS Educational Foundation offers.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

TOS Crew Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop

2011-09-15T09:15:00.000-04:00

The TOS Crew is doing a blog hop, and the topic is "Not-back-to-school". Because, you know, everyone's talking about going back to school but us homeschoolers aren't sending our kids back to school . . . so, in honor of the not-back-to-school theme, I thought I'd share a few things that we get to enjoy doing this time of year that would be hard to do if the children were in school:

Going to the beach
Spending a gorgeous, not too hot, not too cold day at the playground with friends
Helping Papa build the playhouse
Picking tomatoes in Grandma's garden
Time to read for the fun of reading . . . right now they are both reading Louisa May Alcott (ok, to be fair, I have to confess that I found TONS of time to read when I was at school, but still . . .)
Junior Ranger programs
Apple picking is on the agenda if it ever stops raining
Teaching Little Bit to swing on the big kid swing
Vacations when everyone else is stuck in school, none in the works this year (except the above mentioned beach trip), but if we go to Williamsburg or Disney or wherever else sounds fun, we tend to do it late fall or early spring. Less crowds, nice weather, it's lovely!
Traveling with Daddy, and otherwise adapting to his schedule - this is a HUGE one IMO, dh loves his job but it requires lots of travel and lots of working evenings and weekends. If our children were in school, there would be days, weeks, sometimes it seems like MONTHS when they'd barely see him. Since we homeschool we can go with him when he travels, and we can spend time with him on a weekday morning if that works better for his schedule.
Selfishly, I love that *I* get to do all the fun stuff with them, instead of a teacher getting all the fun.
We can work WITH their natural learning styles instead of them having to learn to work around them.

And that's just what I can come up with off the top of my head. We love homeschooling, we love getting to learn together as a family, and we love that this time of year is not "back to school" time for our family!

Be sture to go here, to see what others have to say about not-back-to-school! And if you'd like to join in on the fun, here are the rules of this blog hop.

Homeschool Review: Before Five In a Row

2011-09-14T22:48:00.001-04:00

We've reviewed lots of great products over the past year (plus a little more) for the TOS Crew, and almost all of them have been for Sassy and MiniMe. Which, of course, makes sense, since they are the ones who are "school age". So, when the opportunity came up to review a product for 2-4 year olds, and one I'd heard lots of great things about, at that, I decided it would be fun to let Little Bit have a turn.

Before Five in a Row is a $35 book that provides ideas for 23 mini-units based on outstanding children's books. For each unit, there is the recommended book and a variety of activities to do with the child as you re-read the book to the child or in conjunction with reading the book. Be aware that you will need to buy or borrow the children's books recommended. I was able to find most of the books at our county's library.

Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) is a member of the Five in a Row family. In addition to BFIAR, for the 2-4 year olds, Five in a Row also has 4 volumes of Five in a Row for age 5 and 6, Beyond Five in a Row, which uses chapter books, and will take 2-3 years to complete, and Above and Beyond Five in a Row for ages 12 and up.

Those who've read my blog for awhile probably realize I don't necessarily advocate "school" for toddlers and preschoolers. HOWEVER, I'm finding when there are older children doing school, the little ones like to be a part of things, and this is a way to have "school" for Little Bit too. I have been doing one "unit" per week, and we do "Little Bit's school" while the big girls are doing independent work. The only problem with this approach is that the big girls tend to stop what they're doing and listen to the story LOL.

As I mentioned most of the books used in this curriculum are available from our library. There are a couple books that our library doesn't have. When I looked to purchase them used, I couldn't find any in my price range, so we'll just skip those books. The activities listed for each book can generally be done in any order, so that it's easy to pick and choose what I think Little Bit will enjoy, and understand (since she's only 2, some things are still beyond her). She's enjoyed having the scheduled reading time with Mommy, and doing things like playing with paper dolls, playing ball, etc. Though to date her favorite activity has been one not specifically mentioned in BFIAR, but that I found online to go along with the book. It was a printable that just let her glue stuff on paper and she LOVED it! I have since found various other gluing activities for her, she loves them all. I can see re-visiting these units several times while a child is in the 2-4 year old range, using different activities depending on where they are developmentally.

I've been happy to see that the recommended activities are varied enough to appeal to all learning styles, including active things for the kinesthetic learners that most little ones are, even if they settle into other learning styles as they get older. In most cases, the advanced prep has been minimal. At the beginning of each week I read through the ideas for that week's book, and choose which ones I think Little Bit is ready for, and pull together any supplies we need. Once I've done that, my prep is done.

While I understand that they don't want to assign "ages" to the activities since different children develop at different paces, I wish there was some sort of "rating" that would let me know which the "youngest" activities were. Perhaps some sort of "star" system to indicate which are the easiest and hardest?

I would mainly recommend this to those who are wanting to have some structured time for their little ones, and are struggling to come up with things to do with little ones. While we've enjoyed the books and activities suggested in this book, we could do the same thing using books we already have or books from the library that friends recommend or whatever. It just comes down to whether you need some recommendations of good picture books, and/or recommendations of early learning activities to use with books. If you're struggling with this, and need the extra help of having it all laid out for you, this is a great option! And I think, in addition to providing you with a "curriculum" that you could probably just keep rotating through for the whole age 2-4 range, it will also help you to see how you can expand your own favorite picture books (or you child's) into a similar mini-unit, or just add extra bits of learning to their bedtime stories, etc. If you're like us and own tons of great picture books already, and can come up with supplemental activities on the fly, or don't mind hunting online for suggestions on blogs, etc. Then this probably isn't a book that you need.

Be sure to check out the Crew blog to see what other Crew members thought of this product!

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an honest review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

Review and Giveaway: Theo Presents DVD

2011-09-13T17:18:00.006-04:00

Giveaway is closed! Congratulations to our winners are #24 - HillaryM and #13-Heather !!!!

I'm always on the lookout for great Christian children's videos, so when I was contacted about reviewing a new DVD series of Christian cartoons, I was thrilled. We were sent a sampler DVD with 2 episodes of the new Theo Presents series.

These are cute videos that teach Bible truths through short Bible stories. When I asked my girls what they thought of it their only complaint was that they were "too short", and asked if there were more available. I'd say that's a pretty good sign.

You can view clips from the videos on their website, and decide for yourself what you think. There's also a free iPhone and iPad app, available on the website (or, I assume, the app store). I don't have an iPhone or iPad, so I'm not sure what the app does, but hey, free apps are always fun to check out right?

If you work with children's ministries or a children's outreach at your church, you might also want to look into their church curriculum.

Something I think is really awesome, is the dedication taking the message to the world. For every Theo Presents DVD purchased, Whitestone Media and Child Evangelism Fellowship® will send a child in need their own copy of Theo. After you purchase the DVD you can log in at the website and select the region of the world you'd like the donated copy to be sent. So, while you're getting a quality Christian video for your child, or as a gift for a grandchild or friend, you are also helping to take the message to the whole world.
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Buy it:

Win it:
In addition to sending me the DVD to review, I've also been authorized to give away 2 more copies of this DVD. This giveaway is open for one week to people in the United States.

Mandatory Entry: Visit the Theo website and tell me which episode you'd most like to buy.

Additional Entries, please leave a separate comment for each entry:

Follow Broad Horizons on Google Friend Connect (see side bar), or tell me if you already do
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Promote this giveaway on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog (one entry for each of the ways you promote the giveaway)
Like Theo Presents on facebook here.
Follow Theo Presents on Twitter.

Giveaway will close at midnight EDT on Tuesday, September 20, 2011. Winner will be contacted and announced on Wednesday, September 21, 2011, and will have 2 days to reply with their information or I will choose another winner. Please make sure I have an easily identifiable way to contact you or I will have to choose a different winner.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services
mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I
only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.
I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255:
"Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

A Day of Houses and Carousels

2011-09-12T19:44:00.003-04:00

After getting back from the beach, and before heading home, the girls and I spent a fun day "National Parking" with my parents. First on the agenda was to visit the C&O Canal, Lock House #10. The National Park Service is working on restoring/renovating the lock houses along the C&O Canal, so people can rent them and stay in them. The newly renovated one is at Lock #10. In honor of getting it finished, the park service did an "open house" where people could go through it and see what it's like, so we went to see that. This particular lock house has been decorated in a depression era style, complete with reproduction kitchen appliances, CCC logos, etc. It was very nicely done and the girls enjoyed seeing things "like when Kit lived". You can see more pictures from the canal, and lock house (and the rest of our day, and the rest of this month), here.

After we left the canal, we went to the Clara Barton House. We were lucky enough to be the only ones there for the tour that hour, so we got our own personal tour. The ranger who gave the tour was excellent! She was easy to understand, and encouraged the girls' to ask questions, but didn't "dumb it down" for them like some people do for children. After the tour, the girls did the Junior Ranger book for the Clara Barton House (picture is of them being "sworn in" as Junior Rangers).

Glen Echo Park is right next to the Clara Barton House, and it's Junior Ranger requirements are in the same book as the Clara Barton ones, so when we finished at the Clara Barton House, we headed on over to Glen Echo Park to do that Junior Ranger book. When the girls were done with it, we went to the ranger station to get their badges, and the rangers there gave them HATS too! They even gave Little Bit her own, she was very excited, though she insists is a cowboy hat LOL.

After they finished their junior ranger requirements, we went for a ride on the vintage carousel that's there. The rangers said that the carousel goes about 7 mph now, and that was, IMO, PLENTY fast! I was standing beside Little Bit's horse and between going around and her, and all the other animals around me, going up and down, and the mirrors, it about made me dizzy, and I generally don't have a problem with motion, or spinning. BUT the rangers also said when the carousel was first made, in the 1920s, I think, it went 15 mph!! That would have been a FAST carousel!

When we left Glen Echo park we stopped at Baja Fresh for a late lunch/early supper, and then headed on home. It was a busy day, but we had fun, and had perfect weather for it, despite the predictions of rain.

Camping With the Horses

2011-09-12T09:55:00.000-04:00

Last Tuesday, the girls and I piled into my parents' motorhome with them in the pouring rain and headed to Assateague Island. We drove through rain all day and just as we were getting into Berlin, the town closest to the Maryland end of the island, it stopped raining. It rained during the night at least one of the nights, but didn't rain during the day the whole time we were there. Then soon after we'd left the islands to head toward home it started raining again, and rained most of the way home. Once we got back to my parents' house we found out that during all of that there had been significant flooding near our house and in the Maryland/DC area. We were so blessed with beautiful weather for our beach trip!

We stopped at the visitor center and picked up Junior Ranger books for the big girls. There was a touch tank with horseshoe crabs, and some other fish tanks to look at. And there was a cool wall with an "ocean" scene painted on it. We tried to get a picture of the girls in front of the wall but it didn't work quite as planned . . .

We DID just ask her to sit with her sisters, we didn't specifically SAY to sit facing FORWARD!

Peek! Here me are!!!!

We headed on over to the island, got parked in our camping spot, and headed to the beach.

You can see more beach pictures here.

The mosquitoes were HORRIBLE and I hadn't thought to bring bug spray. They weren't so bad right ON the ocean where it was windy, but as soon as we went back over the dunes to our campsite, they were out with a vengeance. As we were going into the motorhome I saw on on Little Bit's cheek!! It sat there long enough for me to kill it (gently, so I wasn't smacking her across the face LOL) and I knew she was going to have a HUGE bug bite there, sigh . . . it was a SMALL bug bite on her cheek a few months ago that ended up being a huge deal because she scratched it open and then kept picking at it and the bandaids, even latex free ones, irritated her skin so the skin AROUND the bug bite became inflamed . . . it was horrible! So, I was NOT happy to see that we were going to be dealing with a bug bite on her face again. As soon as possible I pulled out my Naturokit and dosed all of us with the homeopathics for bug bites. As long as I repeated dosing for each new bug bite, they did a great job of keeping the itching away AND the one on Little Bit's face (and the rest, but that's the one that I was most concerned about, and one that would have been a big, nasty one if left alone), dried right up and is already gone! I'm so thrilled with my Naturokit, even the "big" kit is small enough that I carry it in my purse and I have turned to it SO many times!! (no, they didn't pay me to say that LOL). I DID mix up some bug spray that evening, with the essential oils that I always carry when we travel (another thing I highly recommend doing!).

Wednesday we pretty much spent all day at the beach. It was sunny and not too hot or too cold and perfect!!!

Thursday morning we packed up and left the Maryland Assateague beach where we'd camped. We stopped by the visitor center to finish up the girls' Junior Ranger stuff and get their badges. They had a "mini junior ranger" program for Little Bit too, she got a temporary tattoo. Then we drove down the mainland to Chincoteague Island and the Virginia end of Assateague. The touch tank at that visitor center had hermit crabs and welks, which the girls found less intimidating than the horseshoe crabs, so they had great fun with that while Papa got his passport stamp. While we were at that visitor center, the rangers said a storm was coming in, so we decided not to go out to that beach (they said the mosquitoes were really bad there too, which was another deterrent), but headed toward home.

It was a great trip! Perfect weather. Little Bit did really well travelling in the motorhome and the big girls thought it was great to be able to sit at the table and play games and things while we drove (there are seatbelts on the table benches but we hadn't traveled in the motorhome since they were out of carseats.

Fearlessly Feminine Week

2011-09-09T20:02:00.002-04:00

I had great intentions about doing at least quick picture posts each week for the Fearlessly Feminine Challenge over at Swinging on Small Hinges. But between being at my parents' and then going camping on Assateage Island (we had a FABULOUS time, I'll post about that soon!), it didn't happen . . . so here's a wrap-up of sorts now that the week is almost over.

First of all I should mention that I wear skirts/dresses (but mostly skirts since Little Bit still nurses and I'm too ~~cheap~~ frugal to spend lots of money on nursing dresses) all the time, so this wasn't really a "challenge" for me, but I thought I'd join in and share a few pictures and such.

Sunday:

I wore one of my favorite denim skirts and a green t-shirt. The skirt is a little bit flared and has pockets like a pair of jeans would have. Pockets were the thing I missed the most when I switched from jeans to skirts/dresses, so that was a huge selling point for me on this skirt. As you can see, I didn't remember to have someone take a picture of me, but DID remember, as I was getting ready for bed, so snapped a quick picture of the clothes at least.

My girls are all skirts/dresses only as well. I don't "require" it of my older girls, but did have them wear skirts/dresses when they were younger, and now they choose to as well. We've talked about modesty and such, and they are aware of being modest (a year or so ago, they played in a creek and got wet/muddy, so needed something dry to wear on the ride home. I didn't have 2 complete outfits in the trunk, but did have one of my wrap skirts I fashioned it into a long "halter" dress for Sassy and even just to drive home in it, she was uncomfortable with the "immodest" top of the dress. It was a huge lesson for ME on the importance of starting modest dress while children are young, and it will carry over effortlessly as they get older. Which isn't to say we'll never have disagreements on dress as they are older, but I think it at least helps. On Sunday, Sassy was wearing a pink flowered dress, MiniMe is wearing a striped 3/4 length sleeve shirt and a long skirt, probably purple, but I don't remember. And Little Bit is wearing a little cotton "patchwork" pull-over dress.

I don't think I got any pictures on Monday. I wore a green button-down shirt and plain denim A-line skirt. I don't remember what the girls were wearing.

Tuesday we left for Assateague Island. We got there and headed straight for the beach. I was wearing a plain denim skirt and purple t-shirt. Little Bit's wearing one of her favorite dresses this summer, her "sunshine dress" (there's the outline of a sunshine stitched onto the front of the dress).MiniMe is wearing a purple shirt and a dark pink "floaty" skirt. Sassy's wearing a Gymboree playdress. All 3 girls proceeded to play in the edge of the ocean and the dig in the sand. Their clothes got wet and sandy, but dresses work great for such things. Bonus, quick and easy to pull off at the door of the motorhome.

Wednesday we were at the beach pretty much all day, so we just dressed the children in their swimsuits. All 3 girls have "rash guard" type shirts. Last fall I found a skirt on clearance at Walmart in Little Bit's size that is a "sports mesh" type material with built in shorts made out of a swimsuit type material. So it cost a couple dollars and is a great swim skirt for her. The big girls had rash guard type capri-length pants but asked to have a swim skirt like me (I have a wonderful swimsuit from Sewn By Di that I LOVE!!!), so my mom got some black (that's faded to gray) swimsuit fabric and stitched skirts onto the waistbands of their capri pants. An easy, inexpensive way to make swim skirts! So that's what the girls wore all day. I didn't get a picture taken of me. Since I wasn't planning to "swim" per se, I just wore an older broomstick skirt with a t-shirt. Comfortable and dries quickly if it DOES get wet, which it did, when I took Little Bit wading into the ocean and then a bigger wave came along and soaked me to my knees and her to her chest LOL.

Thursday we were heading home, but we had Papa snap a quick picture of the girls and I at the visitor center before we left. I was wearing another t-shirt and denim skirt, great camping clothes! Little Bit and MiniMe were my "twins" also wearing tshirts and denim a-line skirts. Sassy is my "dress girl" so she's wearing another Gymboree play dress (play dresses were easy to find up through size 6x, but are less common now that she's wearing an 8 or 10, we hit a good end of season sale at the Gymboree outlet last fall and got her a couple play dresses that she has worn constantly this summer).

Today we've been back at Mama and Papa's house. I didn't get around to taking pictures of the girls, but you get the idea of the types of clothes they wear. Although Little Bit has spent a good part of the day "dressed up" as a "baby", wearing a newborn drawstring bottom gown from the doll clothes bin (old enough to still have an actual drawstring, or it wouldn't work at all. It makes a sort of "minidress" on her LOL. I had MiniMe snap a quick picture of me, and it came out a tad blurry, but you get the idea. A purple cowl neck top and a denim tiered skirt.

Since I probably won't remember to take another picture and do another post tomorrow, I'll be wearing either the same tiered skirt I wore today or the flared denim skirt from the beginning of the week with an aqua ribbed t-shirt type shirt.

So, as you can see, denim skirts are my standby. I do sometimes wear broomstick skirts and in the winter time I have a "sweat shirt" fabric skirt that I like to wear because it's cozy and warm. I have a couple of dressier skirts and dresses for church as well. If you'd told me 10 years ago that I'd be wearing skirts every day I would have thought you were insane. But once I started to wear skirts for everyday I fell in love with it. They're cooler than pants in the summer, but somehow trap the body-heat and are warmer than pants in the winter. They're comfortable and I like the way they look. I'm surprised at how often when we're out shopping, older ladies will compliment me on dressing my girls "like little girls", it's nice to know someone notices and appreciates our modest, feminine style.

Weekly Wrap-Up - September 4

2011-09-04T10:56:00.000-04:00

We had a nice week this week. We were continuing to dodge painters, but at least we could get in and out of our house at will most of the time, so we survived.

Tuesday was my birthday. The "tables have turned", now instead of Daddy having to try to give the girls ideas of things to get me, the girls tell him in no uncertain terms what they are getting me AND what he should get me LOL. This year that was chocolate from Daddy and Little Bit (that Sassy chose, she's figured out the secret . . . look at the percentage on the dark chocolate and get me the HIGHEST percentage you can find, YUM!!) and the new Duggar book, A Love that Multiplies from Sassy and MiniMe (I think they had an ulterior motive in all of this though, Little Bit has definitely "helped" me eat the chocolate, and the big girls are chomping at the bit for me to finish the book so THEY can read it LOL. We also went to visit our neighbor, Judy, on Tuesday and she had a small cake for me. It was DELICIOUS!!! Equal parts cake and frosting which is just how I like it, hee hee.

My parents came up at the end of the week and in addition to taking our recycling in for us (thanks Dad!), we were able to get some bulky items moved out of here and thrown into the dumpster that the landlord has on the property right now (and said we could put stuff in). So I have at least a few extra square feet of uncluttered space in my house now, woo-hoo! Mom had made a cake to bring up and the girls helped her decorate it once she got it here. Since they couldn't find the candles, they took Little Bit's little wood caterpillar toy and then folded a piece of paper to look like a book. They wrote "Happy Birthday" on one side and "book worm" on the other, and it was my book worm cake. Isn't that cute? And original!!! I love seeing what my children come up with!!! :)

Our other fun this week was going to Steamtown. Amtrak had their 40th anniversary train there, so we saw that, as well as going on a caboose ride, and another train ride, looking through the museum there. AND there was a Lego exhibit there, so that was fun to see too.

So that was our week. It was a good week, and a good birthday!

Homeschool Review: Nature Nuts

2011-09-02T10:03:00.000-04:00

It seems like I was just writing my last review for the TOS Crew for last year, but then I blinked and now it's time to write my first review for this year's crew. And it's shaping up to be such a fun year on the crew! Our first review product this year was a fun nature game from Griddly Games. We received the Nature Nuts Travel Game and Extension Pack

This is such a versatile nature trivia game. It can be used on it's own, either at home or on the go. There's no game board to make it more compact to take along. In addition, if you have the Wise Alec Family Trivia Game, the Nature Nuts game can be used as to add more questions to that game. The Nature Nuts game says it's for 2-4 players, but when used on it's own, it really could be used with as many players as you want. There are no game pieces or anything, just the question cards and a die. Each player keeps track of points to determine the winner. We don't own the main Wise Alec game, so that may be where the limit of 4 players comes in? The stated age range is 8+. My 8 year olds definitely find it challenging, and even dh and I don't always know the answers. There are a LOT of cards too, and 2 questions per card, so it would take a long time to memorize all the answers. I think, while Little Bit may end up playing with us when she's younger than 8, so far we've played it during her nap or when she's otherwise occupied, I wouldn't purchase it specifically for anyone younger than 8. It does suggest, when playing with a wide age range to set different "winner" levels for different ages, so families with younger children who want to play with their older siblings, that would be an option. Wise Alec, Nature Nuts retails for around $14.99. You can view a list of retailers here (note that this is a list of retailers for Griddly Games products in general, of the online retailers I checked (not all of them) amazon was the only retailer that carried Nature Nuts specifically.

I already mentioned that the Nature Nuts game can be used as an extension pack for the Wise Alec Family Trivia Game. There is also a history extension, and a sports extension. You can see some of my fellow crew mates' reviews of the history extension on the TOS Crew blog Linky. Griddly Games also provides a variety of other games for the family.

We have really enjoyed this game, and I forsee us pulling it out to play often, though, as mentioned, Little Bit is too young, so we tend to reach for it when she has something else to keep her occupied. We all learn more about nature when we play it, and it's easy to take with us when we travel. My girls most enjoy the "Wise Alec" cards, that can be anything from a (generally) easier nature question (name 3 breeds of dogs), to lose a turn (boo!), to fun things like "stand on one leg for 30 seconds" or "make your silliest face". I would highly recommend this game to families that enjoy trivia-type games, whether they homeschool or just want something fun to do on the weekends.

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for writing an unbiased review. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

31 Days of Clean Challenge

2011-09-01T00:08:00.000-04:00

A couple months ago I purchased the 31 Days to Clean Kindle book, and glanced through it. I loved (and still love) the idea of combining building better habits of time with God right along with building better cleaning habits. The problem I had with it was that the daily challenges seemed to assume my house was already clean and ummmm . . . it's not! Doing deep cleaning in a kitchen where I can't find the countertops seemed . . . overwhelming. So I set it aside for maybe another month. . .

Apparently I wasn't the only one who had that problem, because the author has since added a second set of challenges, available on a "member only" type part of her site, for those who own the book. These challenges focus on building routines of daily home maintenance that I can actually wrap my mind around where I'm at now.

So, fast forward to a new month. And The 31 Days of Clean site is having a September challenge! Now, on the one hand, it's a silly time for me to join, because I'm going to be gone for a week or more this month, BUT the reality of my life is, we travel, often. So, I decided to go ahead & join the challenge anyway. I won't be able to do the cleaning part of the challenge when I'm gone, and looking through the list of daily challenges, there are some days when what is asked is ummm . . . unreasonable, given the state of my house, so some days' "next thing" will have to spread out over multiple days, but it's all good. It's laid out in a way that I can tweak it as needed, I likely won't complete the "31 days" in . . . 31 days, but that's ok too.

Fun with Worksheets

2011-08-31T19:59:00.000-04:00

Last year one of the products I had the privilege of reviewing, was the KBTeacher site (you can see my review here). They generously gave us a full YEAR of access to their premium site. As we're falling into our fall routine, I wanted to share a few of the things I've found recently to use with my children.

As a part of another review I'm currently working on, I discovered that Little Bit LOVES to glue! One of KB Teacher's current categories is their fall theme. I found a fun activity to glue leaves (with letters on them, but that aspect is still abit beyond Little Bit) to a tree. I'm thinking she'll have great fun with that!

I also took time to check out their craft category. I found a fun winter craft that I've printed off so I don't forget it. It uses chalk and paint on black paper to create a nighttime snow scene, sounds like a fun change from our normal craft projects.

Finally, just in time for our current insect studies, I found directions for making wire bugs, fun stuff!!

Disclaimer: I wrote this post as part of a contest to win a Starbucks gift card. The requirement was simply to write a blog post about the KBTeacher site. All opinions are my own!

Weekly Wrap-Up - August 28

2011-08-28T18:35:00.000-04:00

What a week! The landlord decided our house needed to be painted, so we've had days when we couldn't even get in and out of our house because they were spraying paint or pressure washing. And we never knew from day to day WHAT they'd be doing, so it's been rather . . . chaotic. Here are a few highlights of what we've done this week.

For our art study this week we continued to learn about Picasso. Sassy and MiniMe each chose a painting to copy. So of course, Little Bit had to paint too (I forgot to take a picture of Sassy painting, they had to take turns since they each needed the book). I should have taken pictures of their "paintings", they were great!

History continues to study various Native American tribes, this week with the Indians of the Northwest. We had fun making paper models of the cedar houses the Indians in that area built, but will have to finish up with these Indians this coming week, since we weren't home some days.

While not included in the curriculum we're using, since so many of the Native American tribes used lunar calendars, we decided to detour abit and talk about the phases of the moon. Ok, so really, I just wanted an excuse to do this fun illustration, where we used oreos to represent the various phases of the moon. I started out trying to cut the top cookie (after removing it) to the right size and the put it back, but that was challenging, so after the first few I gave up on that and just scraped away the frosting for the part that needed to be black. Doesn't look quite as good, but was much easier. Needless to say, once we were done with our lesson, we ate it :)

One of the days when we couldn't be home, was PERFECT weather, so we spent all morning at the playground. In addition to plenty of playing on their own, we did our Spanish vocab while they were on the swings, great for my kinesthetic learners! And, since the day before, they'd each gotten a new watch that includes a stopwatch, they took turns timing each other on obstacle courses that I made up. So we had great fun with that.

Another side-effect of the painting, much to Little Bit's dismay, we had to take down her toddler swing (since it hangs on the porch) AND their normal outdoor play area is the patio that's attached to the porch, so was too close to the painters. So one of the days we did stay home, I suggested that, while I hung laundry, the big girls should take Little Bit up by their swing (in a tree up the hill from our house) to play, since it was shady and away from the painters. So, they proceeded to teach her to swing on a "big swing". She still opted for the toddler swings at the park, I suspect the flexible seat of the big kid swings there was abit more . . . daunting . . .than the solid wood of the swing here at home, but she did fine on the big kid swing here at home. She was funny, she kept saying "me no fall in the muuuud!" drawing out the word mud in the funniest way (while not muddy under the swing (well, today, after Irene's visit last night, I'm sure it is, but it wasn't that day), since it's shady and the grass has been rubbed away, it does tend to be a hardpacked dirt that looks kind of like mud. She also decided to ride on the tire swing with her sisters at the playground. It's the typical playground type, that's attached to a spinning thing at the top, and then the tire lays flat so people can sit around it, so each of the 3 girls sat on one "section" and held onto the chains closest to her while I spun them. She loved it!

Friday Daddy took all 3 girls to Grandmom's house for the day, which is always a treat. Little Bit was funny when they got home, she wanted to nurse right away, of course, but kept stopping to tell me things . . . me go potty at restaurant (they stopped at Wendy's so she could go to the bathroom on the way home), and other momentous happenings in the life of a 2 year old LOL.

Sabbath after church, we stayed for a potluck meal at the church, and enjoyed visiting with friends during that. The girls had great fun playing a "hide the magnet" game that Miss P came up with for all the children to play :)

And then we came home and battened down the hatches for Hurricane Irene's arrival. All we got was wind and rain, though our power was out for a few hours during the night. Nothing like having the power out to realize how truly DARK it is at night LOL (we typically leave a low light on in the bathroom, and another one over the kitchen sink).

Also, a couple pictures I forgot to include last week, from our fun playdough playdate :)

Miss P helping Little Bit, and her friend, J use the playdough "spaghetti factory"

The big girls had fun with the playdough too

The "Spaghetti dinner" MiniMe made (in case you can't identify it all, there's the fork, laying on the napkin. Spaghetti with red sauce and 3 (vegetarian) meatballs on a blue plate. Then the knife and spoon. And also a glass (goblet) with . . . cherry juice, I think she said. In it. The rest of the stuff in the picture was just other stuff that happened to be sitting nearby. So that was our playdough fun from the week before.

Weekly Wrap-Up - August 21

2011-08-21T18:09:00.000-04:00

We had a quieter week this week, aaaahhhhhh (I had fun last week, but I'm still a homebody at heart LOL).

We've been having fun with our history, still learning about various Native American tribes. This week we were learning about the Nez Perce, otherwise known as "Kaya's tribe" for fans of the American Girl Kaya books. Since I knew it was coming up, and figured the girls would enjoy reading the whole series, I brought it along on our Pittsburgh trip a few weeks ago, and they've been reading in their free time since then as well, so they finished the series up this week. Then we got to read "Welcome to Kaya's World" for history this week, which was an interesting "wrap-up" after reading the series.

We're also enjoying learning about Picasso for art.

I've been going through Before Five in a Row (watch for a review next month) with Little Bit and she is LOVING her "school". One of the activities I did with her this week was gluing, and she REALLY liked that. The next day she asked "me glue Jesse's food again?" so, of course, we had to do it again LOL.

MiniMe and I had our monthly "date" this week. It's always fun to get to talk one-on-one with one of my girls, I love hearing the things that they come up with. And bonus, she was thrilled to go to Goodwill with me after we ate! We had fun shopping together without having to keep track of Little Bit, yay! When we got home, Little Bit said "My friends are here now! Yay!!!" So glad to know that she considers MiniMe and me to be her friends LOL.

One day this week the girls decided they wanted a "covered wagon" so they put the dining room chairs together and draped a blanket over them. Little Bit was not to be left out, she jumped right into the game with them. Sassy was "Pa", MiniMe was "Ma", and Little Bit and some dolls were the children. She did quite well at following the game, considering she has never seen anything resembling a covered wagon LOL. At one point Sassy was "making her bed" and used one of Little Bit's fleecy blankets and Little Bit came running over to me crying that "Mommy, Pa too my blanket!" So she was very much "in character" LOL.

As you can tell, Little Bit is an absolute riot these days!! Last night when I was reading her Sabbath school lesson, it was talking about the widow's mite and said that when we give our offering at church we are giving our money to Jesus and she said "my offering is giving money to Jesus? Dat make me SO happy!" awwwwww!!!

Weekly Wrap-Up - August 14 (a couple days late)

2011-08-16T22:05:00.000-04:00

Not sure why I'm so late with this wrap-up, just other (boring, day-to-day) stuff kept bumping it down the to do list I guess. You've heard most of the news from last week anyway. . . in our field trip posts.

Other than all the fun field trips . . . not a whole lot happened.

I did remember to snap a picture of Little Bit sleeping in the "girls' room" one of the days that we were home for naptime. Her bed is a down comforter folded to fit the space between MiniMe's bed and the bookcase. Add her "blues clues pillow" and her favorite striped blanket, and she's set. She now naps in their room whenever we're home for nap. The night time transition is going to be more challenging since it will mean changing her bedtime too. Currently she stays up until 10:30 or so, but . . . that means I still get a decent length nap out of her during the day and time to get a couple things done before she wakes up most mornings, so for now, I'd rather have her up later at night than sacrifice sleep somewhere else. . .

We didn't do much school last week, other than field trips. But we did continue moving forward with spanish. Little Bit has started answering some of the flash cards, the girls have declared it "not fair" that she gets to learn Spanish "without trying" LOL.

We also did history on Friday. Which put us back "on track" to match up with the weeks in the lesson plan. Not a huge deal, but my personal sense of "order" likes to have one topic per week instead of splitting them mid-week since that's the way the curriculum is set up.

Friday evening Sassy and MiniMe were complaining that they didn't have anything to do during church, and I commented on how nice it had been of Sassy, the week before, to help one of the younger children with a puzzle (Little Bit has a book of 6 piece Bible puzzles that I sometimes bring for her, a visiting little girl asked to play with it, but was having a hard time with the puzzles, so Sassy did a very nice job of helping her without taking over), and that gave them the idea to bring their own bag of activities and help keep the younger children quietly busy so the parents could listen better. It was a mixed success . . . it was a challenging group of children this week, so nothing short of a miracle (or duct tape LOL) would have kept that particular mix quiet enough for the adults to really hear, but I think the children enjoyed it, and Sassy and MiniMe certainly were NOT bored in church LOL.

And that was our week.

2011-08-12T10:47:00.000-04:00

Yay! The Home Keeper's Journal is back this week!

In my kitchen this week ……….I've been gone most of the week with our field trips (see the last 2 posts), but on Sunday I finally tackled the project I've been thinking about for awhile now. I cleared off the "fireplace counter" that is SUCH a hot spot for me, mainly because it's not a very usable counter for me, and moved all my small appliances (and the not-so-small dehydrator) over there. It's what I've felt would work best there ever since we moved here, BUT there's no electricity on that wall. I gave up on trying to figure out a "pretty" solution to that and just ran a heavy extension cord from the closest outlet, across a small walkway (taped down to the floor so we don't trip over it) and onto that counter, then plugged a power strip into that so everything can be plugged in. I've warned the girls (and hubby) to NOT try to run them all at once since this puts them all on one breaker, but I think we'll be ok with that, and it makes it SOO much easier to access them then having them all tucked away in cupboards and corners AND having to put whatever appliance I need to use on the only other counter space in the kitchen. So I'm happy with it. The other use of this counter (when/if I can keep it cleared off) is that the lower height works for the girls to stand at, and I think there's enough space in front of the appliances for it to still work for that. Here's the picture (our Berkey water filter sits there as well):

Around the house …….our project this week was getting the girls' loft play area. It was a project, but so nice to get it done. We've also officially set up a "bed" on the floor in the girls' room for Little Bit. So far she only sleeps in there for naps, but it's a start.

The family ….. Hubby has been travelling this week. He's been home at night, but been busy all week long. The girls and I were busy with our field trips, and playing with their friend, L, when they were home. Little Bit and I enjoyed some of the activities from Before Five in a Row (review coming next month) while the big girls were busy playing.

New projects …… more baking and making things from scratch, hopefully, now that the appliances are more accessible. Continuing to declutter and organize things around here, though I guess that's not a "new" project, I'm always hoping to work on that . . .

Ideas …… I'm really hoping to do regular field trips this year. There are so many fun-sounding things to do in this area, I want to try to get into a routine of doing a field trip once a week or once every other week or whatever.

Light Bulb Moments …… I must have dim lightbulbs, I'm drawing a blank on this LOL.

Our Week of Field Trips - The Rest of the Week

2011-08-11T20:56:00.000-04:00

I already told you about Valley Forge on Monday. On Tuesday we didn't go anywhere, just let the girls all play together for the day.

Wednesday we visited "America's Oldest Pretzel Bakery", Sturgis Pretzels. It was such a fun tour!! They started it by lining us all up at the rolling table and giving us each a piece of dough and showing us how to form a pretzel, while telling the story of why pretzels are shaped the way they are.

Then they took us on the rest of the tour, telling us how there came to be a pretzel bakery, and also showing us how the Sturgis family made pretzels there in the 1800s. They also briefly told us how pretzels are made today. It was a fun, informative little tour.

After that we headed over to Wilbur Chocolates, to see that museum/tour, but it was more just a few things sitting around the store. We indulged in buying ourselves some chocolate and headed out.

Today we went to Hopewell Furnace. What an awesome national park! The rangers and volunteers renewed my faith in the Junior Ranger program LOL. They didn't have the fancy, professionally printed, book that Valley Forge has, but as soon as we walked in a ranger called the girls over to a counter low enough for them to see, and showed them the photocopied page, talked them through how it worked, and everything. Not only did they give one to each of the big girls, but he gave me one for Little Bit too, and said "you can help her, but she'll have fun with it". She didn't really get the "scavenger hunt" concept of it, but she had SOO much fun having a "map" like the big girls. Every time they stopped to mark something off, she'd ask for her "map" and pencil and would draw little scribbles somewhere on her page, it was great! And throughout the park, the rangers and volunteers offered to help with the junior ranger page, asked if they were having trouble finding anything, etc. It's amazing what a difference caring people can make!

We had a blast!! The visitor center had a fun "touch table" with all kinds of things to touch and figure out. They also had an interesting short video about the history of Hopewell Furnace. The water wheel is amazing! Then we headed over to the barn where we saw the chickens and sheep and then got to visit with the horse. He's the perfect personality for being at a place like that, calm, but friendly. The girls had fun feeding him grass and asking the ranger questions about him.

The house was abit of a disappointment, you can only see a couple rooms, nothing upstairs, and not even all of the main floor, but oh well. Next we stopped by the store (I need to go back sometime when I have money to spend LOL, such cool handmade things, many of them made by the volunteers right there at Hopewell Furnace!) the lady who was tending the store was doing cross stitch while she waited, so MiniMe peppered her with questions. Just recently, MiniMe had noticed embroidery hoops at the craft store and asked me about them, and I'd told her that some people use them to do cross-stitch and similar but I personally don't like using them, and couldn't really tell her why they used them. So she was quick to ask the lady at the store why she was using one, and then just kind of branched out from there with her questions. Then the lady took them into the store and had a selection of old fashioned toys to play with (and then, of course, the same types of toys were for sale). The girls had fun with that, and then she called over another volunteer (her son, I think) and he was better able to demonstrate some of the toys. The girls had alot of fun with that.

Next we headed to the cast house to learn about how they actually cast the iron.

First they showed us how they would make the sand molds to cast the pieces in. They let all the children help pound the sand down. Little Bit was nursing, so I couldn't get great pictures, and they were pounding so fast that you can't even see the hammer things, but it was pretty fun.

After the mold was done, they told us about how the furnace worked, and such. Pretty amazing stuff.

He also mentioned that, while the blacksmiths usually are only there on weekends, there was one in the blacksmith shop today, he didn't say why. So, when we left the cast house we went over to the blacksmith shop. The blacksmith was GREAT! Sassy and MiniMe had a million and one questions, and he patiently answered ALL of them. He'd answer a question and then ask if they (or anyone else, but they were pretty much the only ones asking questions) had any more questions. Until they finally ran out of questions. It was great! Judy joked that they should hire Sassy & MiniMe to just stand there, and other places, and ask questions, since it provided information for all of us, in a more interesting format than if the blacksmith had just "lectured" about what he does LOL.

Our final stop was the charcoal makers. Those volunteers were less . . . talkative, so it wasn't as interesting a stop, but such is life.

We headed back to the visitor center to get the girls' Junior Ranger badges and then enjoyed a picnic in the nice picnic area there.

On the way back, we decided to drive through French Creek State Park since it's right there. As I expected, Little Bit fell asleep pretty much right away, so when we came to a play ground in the state park, we stopped and the big girls played on the playground while Judy & I visited and Little Bit slept (the weather was GORGEOUS today, so it worked well). Once Little Bit woke up we let her play for a little while too, then headed home.

And that ends our week of field trips. I certainly wouldn't want to do that much "running" every week, but it was alot of fun, the girls learned a ton, and a good time was had by all!

Our Week of Fieldtrips . . . Valley Forge

2011-08-10T22:58:00.000-04:00

This week our neighbor, Judy, is watching a friend's daughter, L. Since L and my girls are friends, Judy suggested that we plan fun things to do together this week, and so, our week of Field Trips was born . . .

We started the week, by going to Valley Forge National Park Monday.

We spent some time at the museum, then worked on the Junior Ranger books. While we were still working on them, they announced a video starting in a few minutes and the girls wanted to go to that, so we did that.

When we left the "theater", an employee stopped us and asked if we wanted to hear a story (silly question for a group of children LOL). So he motioned us over to a bench with some other people and proceeded to tell us a story about a spy during the war. Even got the girls involved in the story, so it was fun.

After the story, we got in the car and began our driving tour. Last time we were there, with my parents, we'd gotten a CD that is a driving tour of the park. It is AWESOME!! I enjoyed it just as much this time as I did the first time (except this time I was driving so had to pay attention to where I was supposed to go. Last time Dad was driving LOL). It was a HOT day!! (but not rainy like predicted, though there were points when I would have happily accepted rain to cool us down) But we had a good time.

The cabin we could go in to see what it was like was rather claustrophobic. The top bunk was one thing, but the middle and bottom bunks were SOO close together. See Little Bit sitting on the middle bunk in the picture? Sassy laid on the bottom bunk at one point for a picture but I couldn't get everyone to actually STAY STILL enough to get that one without it being blurry. It was dark in the cabin which made it harder too since my phone doesn't have a flash, but it showed how tight they were.

The other "tight quarters" that struck us was when we went through the house that George Washington actually stayed in while at Valley Forge. It's a nice enough house, until you consider there were TWENTY FIVE people staying in that house. Then the walls just REALLY close in LOL. But still, always one of my favorite things, to see how people lived back then. The guy who was in the summer kitchen to tell us about it, said that some HUGE percentage (40% sticks in my mind, but I could be remembering wrong) of women's deaths in that time period were because of burns from fires, mainly cooking fires. He said sparks would catch their skirts on fire and such, and then they didn't have the germ theory and such enough to keep the burns clean so they became infected.

And one final picture. L decided to teach Little Bit to salute LOL. Sassy was shocked that Little Bit actually did what L said, hee hee.

After we finished our fun at Valley Forge, and stopped back by the Visitor Center to turn in the girls' Junior Ranger books and get their badges, we had a yummy lunch at Baja Fresh before heading home. A fun day all around. And we've been having more fun the rest of the week, I'll get it all blogged eventually, but all this fun doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging LOL.

Not Back-to-School Blog Hop 2011 - School Room Week

2011-08-08T17:40:00.070-04:00

This week is the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop's "School Room" week at Heart of the Matter. We don't have " schoolroom" per se. We do school here, there and everywhere. So I thought I'd share some examples.

The basic "storage" of our stuff is pretty much the same as last year (but we're not using felts for anything right now so the girls don't get to tear the sofa apart each day). I have added a couple random baskets tucked into corners of the dining room and living room. One has the books we're currently using for history. Another has up-coming books for history (most are from the library but I wanted to keep the non-library books in one place so I can find them when we need them). Another has our Bible resources. We're reading the Bible and notebooking it this year, so I have a basket with a couple different illustrated Bible dictionaries and some other "reference" books. The girls often go to that basket and use the books to see how to draw things we've read about or to get more information about things. The "people" part of our school room is abit more varied . . .

Lately alot of our school has been in the family room, where we can sit on the sofa . . .

. . . or on the floor

For messier projects we move to the table.

We end up doing alot of "school" in the car too. Either on our way to fun field trips, or just using our time when running errands. The girls often bring reading, coloring, etc. to do in the car, and we also often listen to science and history stories on CD or mp3 while we drive. Especially if Little Bit is asleep. When she's awake she likes music right now, so we often listen to memory verse songs like Hide Them in Your Heart by Steve Green, and the ABC Bible Memory Verse Songs which helps us all to learn Bible verses without even trying.

This is my "car basket". Right now it has some cloth grocery bags in it hiding everything else, and a bag of library books behind it, but it carries all kinds of things. I put it on the passenger seat beside me and can put anything that needs to go back in the house into it. Then when we get home I can put those things away and then it sits on a bench in the entryway & anything that I need to remember to bring with me to the car (like those empty cloth grocery bags), I can toss in the basket and just grab that basket and go when it's time to go. So, while not just for "school" it's very useful for all the library books and any CDs I want us to listen to in the car or whatever.

And finally, we have lots of other "school rooms". We have nature centers, and zoos, and museums and the woods behind our house and the pond and the creek and the yard and the garden . . . we truly do feel that the world is our classroom, and we love it!

Weekly Wrap-Up - August 7

2011-08-07T08:34:00.001-04:00

You've already heard about our cat explosion. Which was probably the most exciting thing (at least for the girls) this week, but here are a few more happenings from this week (and last weekend).

When we left Pittsburgh last Friday, we went to my parents' house for Grandpa's memorial service (Sabbath afternoon). It was a nice weekend of seeing family, and some old friends, and remembering Grandpa. I think Grandma really enjoyed hearing all the nice things people had to say about Grandpa at the memorial service.

I wasn't sure how the big girls would do at the memorial service. They've never been to a "funeral" of any sort, and are sometimes much to vocal (or non-verberally expressive, or both) about things being "boring" and such, and I was pretty sure Little Bit wouldn't be real into sitting quietly, so I opted to just go straight to the mothers' room. I'd planned to take all 3 girls with me and that way the big girls could help keep Little Bit entertained or quietly read or play on their ipods if they were bored. But they asked to sit with Mama & Papa instead, so they did, and Rodney & I took Little Bit to the mother's room. Turns out the girls loved all the stories about Grandpa. In addition to a life sketch, which is, of course, a story, the pastor's . . . hmmm, is it called a sermon? I don't remember, anyway, the sermon-like part, whatever it's called, was also mostly stories of the pastor's memories of Grandpa and such. And then they opened it up to let anyone share memories, which, again, ended up being mostly fun stories people had about Grandpa.So it all worked out fine. Sunday morning we spent some more time visiting with family and then headed home.

This week we've been getting back to school after our week of field trips. And catching up on fun stuff like laundry and cleaning and such.

It's been hot, but not so hot as to be unbearable, so the girls have spent quite abit of time outside trying to make friends with the cats.

They're enjoying the history, Little Bit loves that I read her stories now for "her school". She also thought it was pretty cool when I pulled out the watercolors for the big girls to do one of their crafts for history, and gave her a paint brush and paper too. I think she ended up soaking the paper till it fell apart, but she loved it.

We were excited to spend an afternoon with our "adopted grandma" and neighbor, Miss Judy. She'd been gone and then we'd been gone so it had been 2 or 3 weeks since we saw her. Was soo nice to see her again and get caught up. We also did some planning with her. She'll be watching the girls' friend, L, next week so we're planning all kinds of fun field trips with Miss Judy and L next week, should be a busy week.

I also introduced the art appreciation course I found for the girls. Wasn't sure what they'd think of it, they've never shown an interest in art appreciation per se, though I figured I could "sell" it by pointing out that some of the lessons include actually DOING art stuff, but didn't even have to. They enjoyed learning about Picasso and seeing some of his paintings and talking about them. I think Picasso was a good first painter for them, his stuff is SOO varied, that caught their attention :)

And I guess that was about it. It was a busy week, but mostly boring things like laundry and unpacking. We had fun with school but nothing of any great note.

A Mini Milestone

2011-08-05T22:22:00.000-04:00

Nothing huge, but thought I'd document it . . .

The background: Since Little Bit was old enough to take regular naps (as opposed to the newborn, nurse, sleep, change diaper, repeat thing), she's either slept in the car (I'm a huge fan of having my babies at least know how to nap in the car, it makes traveling so much easier when you can plan it so that a good part of it is while baby/toddler sleeps!), nursed to sleep & then slept/nurped on my lap, or I wait to take my shower until naptime and put her in the takealong swing in the bathroom while I shower. The sound lulls her to sleep & then I leave her in the swing with the fan going (to keep at least some white noise).

At campmeeting this summer I would nurse her to sleep on the bed, then could get up and read or do other quiet things in the motorhome while she slept on the bed. I've done that a few times at my parents' house too, and once, soon after campmeeting, here at home, she asked to take her nap on the bed and I laid down with her and nursed her to sleep, then got up. It worked great, but honestly, given the choice between laying down with her to nurse, or getting my shower done w/o worrying about where she is or what she's doing, I'm pretty happy with the swing/shower method. She knows the routine, and when she wakes up she just yells "Mommy, come get me" or "Mommy, me awake!"

Nighttime, she's still sleeping in our bed (which is a queen+twin, so plenty of room), I still usually nurse her to sleep downstairs then carry her up and go ahead & go to bed when she does (probably wouldn't have to, but she's a night owl, so I'm usually ready). I'm not desperate to get her out of our bed, or not nurse her to sleep, but have been thinking toward that eventuality. The big girls love the idea of having her sleep with them, and I certainly wouldn't complain if I could put her to bed with them and have a couple hours in the evening with all 3 children asleep. . . so, when I saw a good deal on babysteals.com for a little turtle that is a nightlight the child can turn on/off itself, carry around, etc. I decided to get it. Wasn't necessarily going to give it to her right away, but she saw me open teh box and she LOVED her turtle immediately. I told her that this turtle is for her to sleep with in "Sissies' room" and she was fine with that in theory, carried her turtle around all day, told Miss Judy it was for sleeping in Sissies' room, but bedtime came, and she wanted nothing with sleeping in their room, which is fine, and she was fine with not sleeping with the turtle since she wasn't in their room. We did set up her "bed" in their room so she could see where she would sleep. They sleep on the floor under their loft. Sassy sleeps on a regular mattress on the floor, but MiniMe has a King sized "feather bed" designed to go on top of a mattress, it's folded in half and she loves her "cloud". Since it's white, and I had an extra white down comforter, I folded it to fit in the space next to MiniMi's bed, and put Little Bit's pillow and favorite blanket there and that's her bed. So the last couple nights I've suggested it, she'll often lay down on her bed with her turtle while I tuck the big girls in, but then, even if I lay down with her, she won't stay laying down there and go to sleep. No biggie, she's getting used to teh idea, she'll do it when she's ready . . .

So, today at naptime I told her it was time to go upstairs for her nap, to find whatever baby/stuffed animal she wanted to "rock to sleep" (in the swing that no longer swings, but she likes the idea of rocking baby to sleep instead of it being about HER going to sleep). She picked up her turtle and I reminded her that her turtle "only sleeps in Sissies' room". She said "me sleep in Sissies' room" I fully expected her to change her mind when we got upstairs, but she didn't. She went potty, then went in and laid down on her "bed", I got her pillow and blanket and got her all settled in with her turtle. Turned on an Uncle Rick CD and told her she needed to stay laying down and go to sleep. Then I went and took my shower, fully expecting her to come in the bathroom after about 30 seconds and want to get in her swing. But she didn't . . .

I took a short shower, then left the water running when I got out (in case she was almost asleep and turning the water off woke her back up), peaked around into the girls' room and she was laying on her bed, but still awake. Gave her a few more minutes, peaked again, and she was sitting up, so I told her to lay down, which she did, but was still fiddling with things, not going to sleep. So I went in and laid down beside her and every time she opened her eyes I'd quietly say "close your eyes and go to sleep", in all of maybe 3 minutes, she was out. And she slept there for a normal length nap (didn't pay attention to times but it was all in the normal range)!!! We were all very "excited" that she'd slept in Sissies' room like a big girl! We shall see if it continues . . . but it's another step toward growing up :)

Cat Explosion!

2011-08-05T13:47:00.000-04:00

Background: Last spring, my brother's girlfriend's cat had kittens and we took 2 of them (my brother assured me they were litter trained, apparently they were good at doing what mama cat did, but not so good without mama cat around to keep them in line). Socks & Moccasin came to live at our house but when they refused to figure out the litter box thing, they became outdoor cats last fall, and loved it. They're both great hunters and living where we do, there's plenty to hunt. And since one of my reasons for agreeing to cats was to keep the mice away, having good hunters living on our porch has been effective. As they got bigger they began to roam, and last spring Socks was gone for a few weeks, then reappeared, loving as ever. We decided we'd better get them neutered to keep them closer to home, and away from the feral females that live on the property. Took them for their check-up, made the appointment, and literally the day that we were taking them in (the evening before surgery), Socks took off again & we haven't seen him since (but several neighbors have, so he's around, just not at our house anymore. Based on where neighbors have seen him, I'm wondering if the rehab hospital that's up the hill from us, has "adopted" him, which he would love, and he'd be good for the patients because he's a cuddler (HE probably would have preferred to stay an indoor cat, or at least come and go, but HE was the one who flat out refused to use the litter box, sigh . . . ). So, we were essentially down to one cat.

There's a feral cat that the girls named Sneakers who lived in the chicken coop near our house last winter and has been eating out cat food sever since. This spring we discovered she'd had kittens when they were only a couple days old, but us finding them apparently spooked her and she abandoned them (bit it told us she was a female LOL). Also last winter, this spring, there was a yellow feral cat, that the girls named sandals, but this spring I saw it dead along the side of the road (didn't tell the girls, since it was during one of Socks' absences and I figured realizing that cats can get hit by cars wouldn't sit well with Sassy (Socks was Sassy's cat, Moc is MiniMe's). Hubby was going to go move it into the bushes, but someone else did.

A couple neighbors, and hubby, had mentioned recently seeing a small yellow cat/yellow kitten, though I haven't seen it, and I don't think the girls have. Guessing it's another feral cat that just stays out of sight more than Sneakers does and Sandals did.

So that's where things stood when we went to Pittsburgh. A neighbor agreed to come feed Moc and whatever strays chose to eat our food, she saw, and cuddled, Socks while we were gone (see, he just stays out of OUR sight, I think Moc told him what happened to him, and Socks wants nothing to do with that LOL). And then the day we were coming home (last Sunday), she called and said that when she was getting the food, a black cat suddenly jumped out of a cardboard box on our porch and scared her half to death. Stayed out of her reach but didn't completely run off.

So we came home, as we drove in we saw a black cat take off toward the barn, so figured that was the cat Denise saw. Later that evening MiniMe went out and came running back in, telling us that she'd seen the black cat going toward the barn again but this time it had 2 black kittens with it (she described them as being about the size Socks & Moc were when we got them, so around 8 weeks, give or take). Still later that evening, she went out again and said she thought Socks was under our car. We'd parked the car on the grass to unload it, so it was closer to the house. I came out and looked, and we determined that it wasn't Socks, it was a black & white kitten.

The next day we got a better look and realized the black & white "kitten" is much bigger than the 2 black kittens . . . as the week has progressed, we've determined that the "new" cats include:

A black male (this is the one that jumped out of the box and startled Denise)
A smaller black female, mama to the 2 little kittens
a young black & white cat (we think female, based on glimpses of it's butt, but perhaps it's just too young to be "noticably male"?)
a young (or at least smaller) cat that is striped like Moc (male), perhaps a sibling to the black & white one?
The 2 little black kittens

I simply canNOT fathom that these cats have been living on the property and suddenly decided to come to our house after never seeing them before. I'm convinced someone must have dumped them.

They're skittish but not truly wild. The black male, "Moccasin Jrc", and the black and white young one all let us pet them while they eat. "Moccasin Jr" will even seek out attention, rubbing against us, or at one point, Sassy had been sitting next to him, petting him while he ate and then I called her to come eat, and he jumped off the wall and was meowing, the only possible reason we could think of was that he wanted her to come back and pet him/keep him company LOL.

This morning, we were finally able to hold one of the little kittens. It came and was eating cat food with the big cats, and I was able to pet it and then a little bit later, pick it up and cuddle it. It was NOT relaxed, but it didn't fight me. Later MiniMe was able to pick it up (she tried yesterday but it scratched her) and she and Sassy took turns holding it for quite awhile. I even let them take my phone outside and listen to their morning Bible reading on the porch so they could keep holding the kitten.

So . . . now what to do. I need to call the Humane Society and see what their policy is on spaying & neutering feral cats. I don't mind having several cats around, but I don't want there to keep being more & more . . . at least we shouldn't have a problem with mice LOL.

A Lifestyle of Learning

2011-08-04T17:42:00.001-04:00

This is the time of year when everyone's talking about "back to school". Even though every homeschool family is different, this is the time of year when homeschool forums and lists tend to ask the question "when does your school year start?". One of the groups I'm on asked this, and when I replied that we school year round, I mentioned that we have a "lifestyle of learning". I honestly don't know where I learned that terminology, or if I made it up, but it fits our family beautifully. Someone asked what I meant by that, and how we accomplish that, and I answered her, but off-list (because it was too long an answer for the format of that list). And then someone else asked if I'd write it up as a blog post so she could see it too, and so . . . here I am . . . I didn't really want to clean the kitchen this afternoon anyway LOL . . .

So, what is a lifestyle of learning? How does it look in our family? And how did we get here?

(I'd suggest getting yourself a nice big glass of sweet tea (or your beverage of choice) and settling in, because I can pretty much guarantee this is going to be a book . . . you know me!)

When we first made the tentative decision to homeschool, back when Sassy & MiniMe were about the age that Little Bit is now, I honestly didn't realize that homeschool could be anything other than "school at home". I looked into the future and saw us getting cute little desks for the girls, setting up the spare room like a "school room", or us all gathered around the dining room table doing workbooks and reading textbooks. I expected us to have set "school hours" and . . . the whole nine yards. And then I started researching homeschooling, and a whole new world was opened up to me . . . gradually, I came to realize that homeschool didn't have to mean sitting at desks (or the table) doing workbooks. And I began to realize that we were ALREADY homeschooling our children, and could do more by just shifting our thinking a little bit. I started listening to my children's questions, and trying to really answer them . . . when they asked "why", if I knew the answer, I told them, in terms a preschooler could understand. If I didn't know, sometimes, if we were home, we'd go look it up. Somewhere in there, they also learned that their Papa (my dad) is a treasure trove of information, especially about mechanical things and how things work. MiniMe is my "how does it work?" child (that part is NOT "MiniME", it's "MiniPAPA") and by the time she was 3 or 4, she'd ask me how something worked, I'd tell her I didn't know, and she'd say "I'll ask Papa" . . .

Learning to HEAR your child's questions, and help them to learn the answers is a huge step toward developing a lifestyle of learning.

Something that goes hand-in-hand with this is developing (or maintaining, because young children are born with this) a natural curiosity in your child. I'll never forget when a friend of mine took her son to "get your child ready for kindergarten" parents' meeting at their local public school. It was a wealthy area, and I guess it was not uncommon for a few children each year to have attended a Montessori preschool prior to going to the public school for kindergarten. As a part of the meeting, this came up and the school personnel "jokingly" (I think?) said that they could always tell which children had attended a Montessori preschool because they were the ones wandering around the room touching everything and asking questions, "but we cure them of that" ha ha . . . when my friend related this to me, I was appalled! Why would you want to CURE children of that natural curiosity and love of learning?!?!?!? On one level, I DO understand that in a classroom setting there's a need for order and quiet and . . . sameness, but still, it's so sad . . . GOD gave our children a love of learning. A curiosity to learn and know and figure things out, and the way we, as a society, for the last howevermany generations, "do school" SQUELCHES that! How sad!!!

And so, if your child is still young, and has the curiosity, ENCOURAGE it!! Take time to answer his millions of questions on a side note, I found, as my children were in the 4-5 age range, that they would ask questions over and over again, sometimes, if I thought they knew the answer, or if I didn't know the answer, or if there wasn't ONE answer, I'd push the questions back at them, "Why do YOU think it does that?" or "You tell me." when they'd ask a question. Often they'd know the answer, or think about it and come up with a good answer, if there was a right/wrong answer and they were wrong, we'd discuss it further and I'd answer it. Sometimes we'd still end up looking things up if we didn't know the answer.

So, how does this work for "school"? Now that they are older, we do "do school" to some extent. I wrote yesterday about our curriculum choices for this year, so right now our mornings are mostly spent doing Bible, History, Spanish, etc. Some days we sit at the dining room table, some days we sit around the family room. Some days (not right now when it's a gazillion degrees outside, or rainy like it is today) we go out on the patio. . . But I also recognize that learning happens other times. It happens when we are at the grocery store and I let them figure out whether it's cheaper to buy the prepackaged lettuce or a head of lettuce, or, alternately, which brand of tomato sauce is healthier. It happens when we drive and listen to Jonathan Park or Your Story Hour. It happens when we have dinner with an old friend who mentions that she recently started keeping bees, and the girls proceed to bombard her with questions about beekeeping . . .

But another aspect of a lifestyle of learning is to recognize that, since learning happens all the time, it's ok to NOT do the "schoolwork" part of our day sometimes. If I only counted the things I listed in my curriculum post as "school" then we didn't do much school last week when we were in Pittsburgh. But as you can probably tell from my blog posts about the trip, we DID do alot of learning. Since we don't take a "summer break" from the schoolwork part of our day, it gives us freedom to skip it when we have better things to do. In the spring and fall when the weather is gorgeous I'll often send the girls outside for the whole day. In the winter when we have a perfect sledding snow, or snowman snow, they play in the snow. But last winter when the snow was here forever and icy and no fun to play in, we certainly didn't take "snow days" just to be taking snow days, we did school then, and took "sunshine days" when the sun came back. When it's a gazillion degrees outside we stay inside in the air conditioning and do our schoolwork. When we get a chance to go fun places and do fun things, we jump at them, that's all learning too.

One thing that the question of "how do you have a lifestyle of learning" made me think about is how the girls take advantage of opportunities to learn. At Erie Zoo, when there was a zoo employee with some "props" near the Zebras, the girls went over and got to feel a zebra pelt, learn about how the stripes on different types of zebras are different. See a model of a zebra skull and learn how they use their teeth and tongue and stuff. The girls actively asked questions about each item, and even though this particular employee didn't seem real thrilled to be there, the girls got alot of good information out of her. In most cases, we've found that employees/volunteers at zoos, museums, national parks, etc. are thrilled to meet children who are interested in whatever the topic is. One of the employees at Williamsburg last time we were there, commented that she loved homeschool week because the homeschool children ask so many great questions. There's always the few employees who are just there for a paycheck and try to brush off the questions, and sometimes I've stepped in and moved the girls along (sometimes I do that because there are other people waiting to ask questions too, although there have been some times when I've started to move them along and the (adults) waiting to ask questions have stopped me, they're enjoying listening to the girls' questions and the answers to those questions and are happy to keep listening. So it's just a matter of being aware and figuring out what needs to happen each time).

A lifestyle of learning really boils down to adjusting your mindset. View life as a learning adventure, open your eyes to the learning that is taking place all around us. If your state requires it, DOCUMENT that learning that's taking place everywhere (if not, just notice it and enjoy it, unless you want to document it for your own records). When your children are making up a story about when they're grown up and ask you "Mommy, when I'm 25, how old will Little Bit be?" don't just absentmindedly say, 19. Stop and ask them "how old were you when she was born? So What's 25 minus 6?" and help THEM figure it out. Not only will it save you, later that day, telling them how old she'll be when they are 30 and 40 and 50, it will also be a math lesson that is much more acceptable to a child than sitting down and doing a page of math drills. And occasionally, as needed, remind yourself that the school system does things the way they do, not because it's the best learning environment, but because it's the easiest way to keep a large number of children from creating total chaos given the adult/child ratios that exist there. Since you have a much smaller adult/child ratio (unless you're the Duggars LOL. And Even then, since several of the older children are now "adults" they're still better off than the average classroom), you don't have to do things in the same way. You don't have to have your child do a worksheet to "prove" that they read a book, you can just ask them, "so what did you think of that book?" chances are they'll give you an ear-ful and you'll certainly know if they read it or not, and probably if they understood it or not. It would be hard for a teacher to do that with each of the children in the classroom, and a "group discussion" allows the child who didn't read to just sit quietly and the teacher might never notice. But you only have one, or a few, children who read the book, so just ask what they thought.

Similarly, I see no point in "reading books" beyond the "learn to read" stage. I make sure we have plenty of interesting looking books around and keep an eye on when/if/how much they're reading. There's no "assignment" to read, and they're learning to love reading, which is the whole point. If we're going in the car I'll often suggest they bring a book along. Or if we'll be somewhere that they'll need to wait quietly for awhile. I can tell that their reading is improving by noting the difficulty of the books they read (not by using "reading books" just being aware. When Sassy recently read Eight Cousins with only minor questions about what words were or what they meant, I figure she's doing fine for an 8 yr old. I'll also sometimes have them read Bible texts and such aloud as part of Bible or their Sabbath School lesson, which also helps me gauge how they're doing in reading.

So hopefully somewhere in all my babbling you learned abit about how to have a lifestyle of learning, whether you choose to send your children to public school or private school, or do school at home, or be as eclectic as us, you can still have a lifestyle of learning and help your children love learning now and for a lifetime.

Not Back-to-School Blog Hop 2011 - Curriculum Week

2011-08-03T14:01:00.000-04:00

It's time for the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop at Heart of the Matter! And this week is Curriculum Week. I've talked about our curriculum choices some already, but for the fun of joining the blog hop, we'll revisit the topic.

We have 8 yr old twin girls, Sassy & MiniMe, and a 2 yr old whirlwind (of the female variety), Little Bit.

Here's what we're doing:

Bible: The older girls each have personal Bible time first thing in the morning. One of the big girls or I also reads a Bible story to Little Bit during our morning "Quiet Times". We begin our "school time" by reading through the Bible together, chronologically. I've discovered that the You Version app for my Android phone, not only has a chronological reading plan, but will "read it" to us, so I can just set it up and it reads it to us. Saves my voice :) After we listen to the day's reading, Sassy & MiniMe each choose something from the day's reading to make a notebooking page for. They can choose to write the verse, draw a picture illustrating the verse, or both.

History: We're using this as a guide. We used it 3 years ago, just as a guide to read alouds and fun craft projects. This year we're using some of the more in depth read alouds (but still skipping the "workbooks" and "textbooks" that are recommended, as well as having the girls read some of the books themselves. Still loving the crafts and other hands-on things. Since we live in such a history-rich area (Pennsylvania) we're hoping to include quite a few field trips as well.

Science: This will be abit of a hodgepodge. This summer Sassy asked if we could learn about "bugs" this year, so we're starting with that. I'm using bits and pieces of some ebooks I already had. We'll be making a lapbook of all the types of insect we look at, but rather than using a pre-made one, I'm just looking at ebooks I already have, and free lapbooks online to pull one or two mini-books for each type of bug we learn about. Right now we're learning about ants. After reading some general information about ants, and the book Are You an Ant?, now they are working on their minibook for ants. I found one that has a page for each of several kinds of ants. I'm having them look up each kind of ant in our "bug book" and fill in the information. I'll figure out the specifics of other bugs as we get to them. Once we finish "bugs", MiniMe has asked to learn about trees and edible plants. And if we get through ALL of those and have time left, this year, we'll go back to my original plan for science/nature, which was to use the Character Sketches series.

Spanish: We have a calendar with a word or phrase each day and we review that word and the words we've already learned.

Health: We began using Vintage Remedies for Girls last year and then put it on hold to review a different health program. As we have time this year, I'd like to continue with Vintage Remedies, perhaps once a week.

Art: We get art in our history curriculum (it includes Draw Write Now plus lots of craft projects), and also the drawing for Bible. But if we have time (another one we'll probably do once a week), I'd like to use this to give them some "art appreciation" type art.

PE: For the most part, we get this by playing outside and such, but we have started using Brain Gym each morning (at least when I remember) to do a few simple exercises to help us all focus better on our academics.

In addition to all that, I'm on the TOS Crew again this year, to review products, so our "curriculum" will vary throughout the year depending on what we're reviewing. Right now, we're waiting (anxiously LOL), to receive Nature Nuts Game, so that will be some additional science/nature stuff.

I also just received Before Five in a Row to review with Little Bit. She's on the young side of it, but I think we'll have fun reading stories together and doing fun activities, including some "PE" that I think the big girls will enjoy too.

So I think that's it. I'm a firm believer that math and language arts are best learned through other things, rather than drilling, so unless we review language arts or math drill type programs, we won't be doing formal "curriculum" for those items (oh, except we do still have our subscription to Wordy Qwerty from last year's review, so as they have time the girls will continue to play with that).

Pittsburgh Trip 2011 - Part 4

2011-08-02T19:12:00.000-04:00

Our last day in Pittsburgh we went to Carnegie Science Center. Little Bit loved the little kid area. There were sorting toys and puzzles to play with.

Building toys to build with.

And her favorite, a huge water table area that had a bunch of ping pong balls in it. She had great fun scooping and pouring the water AND ping pong balls, and would have happily stayed there all day!

Meanwhile the big girls were doing all kinds of things, most of which I didn't get pictures of. I DID get a picture of them working together to build an "earthquake-safe structure". You build it and then pushed a button and the platform it's sitting on shakes like an earthquake.

They also had fun with the huge "operation" game. Though they got frustrated when other kids came and "helped", especially ones who thought the point was to make the nose beep, and messed up their concentration.

Things I didn't get pictures of included riding a simulated roller coaster, jumping on, and doing flips on a trampoline, enjoying the big model train display. "Doing surgery". Learning about electrical currents. Learning about animation. Making a fish craft. Touching a hissing cockroach and a lizard of some sort (they could probably tell me what kind if I asked. . . and probably other things I'm forgetting. They also got to see an Imax-type film on tornadoes, which they thought was pretty cool. Even MiniMe who is TERRIFIED of storms, liked the movie about them.

That evening we enjoyed having dinner with the Pittsburgh pastor and his family. Somehow Pastor Austin mentioned that he'd been a student missionary in Thailand, which led to the girls "drilling" him on Thai words, and asking about life in Thailand. So we had an extra little language/culture lesson with dinner.

And that wraps up our Pittsburgh Trip!

Book Review: Rumors of God by Darren Whitehead and Jon Tyson

2011-08-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

Rumors of God by Darren Whitehead and Jon Tyson examines modern "religion" and what faith in God should really look like. The authors compare the mediocrity and worldliness of the modern day Christian church to what can happen when people truly step out in faith and take God at His word.

I wanted to like this book, I like the premise of this book, I like the message of this book. I agree with the authors. But somehow, I found the book difficult to get into. I really can't pinpoint what it was about the writing style that I didn't like, but I found myself forcing myself to keep reading it because I had to finish it to write this review.

That said, this could very well just be me. I have a limited amount of reading time and so I am jealous of my reading time, because this book didn't have me begging for more, I wanted to move on and use that valuable time for a book that DID have me begging for more.

I wanted to hear what *I* can do right now, not what corporate churches should be doing different or what we all, as churches and as individuals, are doing wrong. I think that's what it boiled down to for me, I wanted a more "practical" book. I already know that the American Christian church as a whole is lukewarm, I didn't need to hear that restated numerous ways, I need to know what I can do write now, besides pray Habakkuk's prayer, to change that.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”