Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Weekly Wrap-Up: Cat on a {Hot Tin} Roof

2012-02-10T17:39:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for the weekend. It’s been a good week, but somehow the laundry has reproduced and is threatening to overtake the house. I plan on – as much as I dislike it – spending some focused time this weekend on cleaning house and catching up the laundry.

Now, lest my “I’m ready for the weekend” statement make it sound like I’m actually looking forward to my weekend plans, let me assure you that I am not. I’m merely thankful to have an opportunity to slow down, catch my breath a bit, and have time to catch up.

Brianna has had play practice two nights this week. It seems like it’s gone pretty well and she’s enjoying it.

Josh, Megan and I wrapped up their first unit with Trail Guide to Learning. Each unit lasts six weeks and, let me tell you, I’m a fan of week six! Each sixth week is a wrap up of of the previous unit – it includes lots of review and recapping, a book review, character studies of the kids’ favorite characters, and a unit presentation to the family.

The kids haven’t done their presentations yet. I thought they could do them for the family after dinner. I enjoyed the fact that a lot of the stuff they did this week they could do independently. I hope that makes me sound more like a mom who enjoyed a bit of a break from the day-to-day and less of a lazy mom, but it was nice.

The only photo I took this week. {ahem} My new digital jump rope.

I stayed in the vicinity to answer any questions they might have, but I had some time to do little things while they were working – like unloading the dishwasher, washing some dishes, checking and responding to email…and maybe, possibly making one or two moves in Words with Friends.

The big excitement for the week occurred yesterday when I stepped out onto the small, uncovered deck off the master bedroom to call Josh and Megan inside. Gus (the cat) slipped out behind me and, before I could stop him, he jumped through the slats and onto the roof!

The poor new neighbor behind us, who was out raking his leaves, probably now thinks he’s living next door to an insane family as he watched the kids and I spend the next 30 minutes or so trying to figure out how to get the cat off the roof!

While Josh and I struggled to put our fold-up ladder together, Gus finally managed to make his own way down. Crazy cat. Oh, and our roof isn’t tin. It probably wasn’t hot either, since it was awfully cold outside.

Today was Megan’s first American Girls book club meeting of the year. She was excited to get back and see her friends. Tonight she’s spending the night with her cousin, so it’s been a good day for her. I guess we’ll have to do something nice for the other two.

I love easy, simple meals on Friday nights (which is why we have them at Chick-Fil-A as often as we can!). Tonight I’m fixing these ham and cheese sliders. Yum! A lady at our life group fixed them last week and they were delicious! Maybe not so healthy, but very tasty.

So, are you having anything good for dinner tonight?

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Review: My Son

2012-02-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of historical fiction, both for school-related books and pleasure reading. When I heard about My Son, the story of Jesus’ birth and early ministry as told through the eyes of His mother, Mary, I knew I had to read it.

Beginning with Mary’s notice of 12-year-old Jesus’ absence on the return trip to Nazareth and then backtracking as Mary remembers what has transpired over the last nearly 13 years, My Son covers Jesus’ birth through his first year of ministry. There is a second book planned that covers the subsequent years of His ministry.

Author, Jim Baumgardner (author of Sarah’s Wish) has done extensive research into the history and culture of the Jewish nation, as well as the history and culture of the Roman-led area of Jesus’ homeland. Like a good historical fiction does, it seamlessly weaves in details that give the reader a better understanding of daily life during the time when Jesus walked the earth.

I imagine that it must be difficult to fill in conversations, relationships and personalities that were not specifically addressed in the Bible when you’re writing about not just any person in history, but Jesus Christ himself. The author does an admirable job, however.

While I didn’t find My Son to be a riveting page-turner – mostly, I’d say, because the story is so familiar that I wasn’t reading in the usual “I have to find out what happens” way – it definitely gave me greater insight in Jesus’ life. Where the Bible is, on most accounts, more of a historical record, My Son brought the historical facts to life.

My Son was one of those books that you could put aside when needed and pick up again, as time allowed, and get right back into the action of the familiar story. It helped me make connections, with regards to relationships, that I couldn’t always remember from my Bible reading. I think that was probably due to the story-quality of the book versus the historical record style of the Bible.

My Son is available from the author’s website for $9.99.

I received this product free for the purpose of reviewing it. I received no other compensation for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are my personal, honest opinions. Your experience may vary. Please read my full disclosure policy for more details.

February Sponsor Shout-Out

2012-02-08T14:55:00.001-05:00

I just wanted to take a second to thank all the great Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers sponsors for February.

First of all, a great big “thank you” to the fine folks at Geography Matters, whose Trail Guide curriculum has made my younger two kids and I so incredibly happy. School is such a joy these days! (By popular demand, be looking for a full review by the end of the month!)

Chautona Havig, author of the Annals of Wynnewood series has been a long-time WUHS sponsor. She writes wonderful, God-honoring books for both adults and children. Visit her site to view her collection of fantasy and inspirational fiction books.

It’s almost spring homeschool convention time! Great Homeschool Conventions offers incredible speakers and tons of great homeschool vendors. Check out the Great Homeschool Conventions website to see if they’re coming to a city near you.

Signazon offers custom banners, yard signs, vinyl lettering, and even car magnets. Visit them for any custom banner or advertising needs you may have.

If you’re going to be attending any blogging or homeschooling conferences (like The 2:1 Conference, coming up in April), you’re going to want business cards to exchange with the bloggers and homeschooling moms that you meet. Vista Print offers business card, personalized calendars, and more.

Mindy’s Bookworms offers interactive, self-paced reading comprehension practice. With standardized testing time right around the corner for many of us, this could be a great time to have your child brush up on his comprehension skills.

Want to celebrate your homeschool mom superpowers? You need one of the great t-shirts, tote bags, or coffee mugs from The Homeschool Chick!

Thanks for supporting our sponsors who so generously support WUHS!

Moving On

2012-02-08T06:00:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it last week, I’ve decided – as more of a personal accountability factor than anything else – to share my thoughts from my personal Bible study once a week. This is just a means of holding myself accountable to my daily Bible study and possibly opening up some good discussion. It’s not meant as a teaching tool of any means, as I am far from an expert theologian.

If any of you would be interested in joining in, let me know. I’d be happy to host a weekly link-up, if there is interest. I am using the SOAP method for my personal study.

photo credit

Scripture: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 3:13-14

Observation: Paul had made his share of mistakes in his life – big ones. He had persecuted and killed Christians in the name of his faith. Now, as a Christian himself, Paul has realized his mistakes.

While many people would wallow in their guilt and shame, Paul refuses to let his sin and past mistakes hinder his relationship with Christ or derail his ministry. He realizes that he can’t change the past; all he can do is live fully for Christ in the present.

Application: We all have a past. We all have sin in our lives that haunts and shames us. Too often, Satan tries to trap me in his lies and tell me that my sin has created an impossible chasm between Christ and I and that Christ surely can’t forgive my willful sins.

However, if I dwell on the sin and let it keep me from a deep and meaningful relationship with Christ or allow it to prevent me from serving Him and fully living for Him, sin has won.

Christ didn’t die on the cross for me just so I would turn around and let sin have victory over my life. He died to give me victory over sin. Whatever my past, God doesn’t see me through the veil of my sin or judge me on my own efforts or merits, which could never be enough.

He sees me through the veil of the blood of Christ. He sees me as a spotless, new creation and He loves me as a dearly loved child. So does Christ and that’s Who I should live for. That relationship is more important that my sins – past, present, or future. That relationship is more important that my shortcomings and self-doubt. That relationship is the prize for which I should strive.

Prayer: Lord, help me to let go of any past or present sin that keeps me from You. Convict me of sin from which I need to repent, then, after I have asked Your forgiveness and have repented, help me to let it go. Don’t allow Satan to keep me tangled up and ensnared in sin that You have already forgotten.

Help me to remember that my relationship with You is the prize for which I should always be striving. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

What is Christ teaching you this week?

6 Benefits of a Built-in Catch-up Day

2012-02-07T06:00:00.000-05:00

As I have discovered in the last month while using Trail Guide to Learning (Paths of Settlement), there are many benefits to having a built-in catch-up day in your homeschool lesson plans.

I know a lot of families do a four-day school week. I would love to do that in our home, but it doesn’t work well with our overall yearly schedule. I also know that I could have worked out a built-in catch-up day in our lesson plans when I was writing them myself, but I don’t think I really had a grasp on how to effectively do so until I saw it planned out in the Trail Guide text.

The key factor for me, in what makes it work so well, is that there are activities planned for review and further exploration if you don’t need to catch anything up. So, productive learning is going on whether you’re catching up in areas in which you got behind or you stayed completely caught up and are ready for business as usual.

So, what benefits have I seen in having a built-in catch-up day?

1. Less stress. When you know that you have already factored in time to catch up, it relieves the stress when the inevitable happens. Have a kid that wakes up sick? Maybe there’s an unexpected errand mid-week or a doctor’s appointment.

Maybe, you just involved in a really fun project and spent more time on it than you’d allotted or your kids enjoyed a particular lesson so much that you got off on some rabbit trails.

It makes the week so much less stressful when you know you can simply move whatever doesn’t get done on a given day to the following day and push other things back to your catch-up day. You do what you can and the rest can wait.

2. Less guilt. In the past, in order to make up time when we’ve gotten behind, we may have skipped some of the fun stuff, like a hands-on project or some art time. I’d feel guilty, but I often let the pressure of keeping up with the “core” work take precedence over the fun stuff when pressed for time.

With a built-in catch-up/review day, I don’t have to do that. We can either save the fun, hands-on stuff for our lighter day or just shift some of the core work, knowing that we have the time factored in to make it up.

On the flip side, if we stay caught up, there is still plenty in our lesson plans to do, so I don’t feel the guilt of thinking that Fridays are a throw-off day where nothing productive gets done. If we’re not behind, we still have plenty of quality learning happening on Friday.

3. More review. Most weeks, since we started using Trail Guide, we’ve stayed caught up. This means that we get to use Fridays to spend some time doing some fun review, such as games, crossword puzzles, or word searches. Having a review day helps the kids retain more by recapping the highlights while they’re still fresh in their minds.

4. More exploration. Another aspect of our “caught-up” Fridays that we enjoy is expanding our topic knowledge by exploring things related to our current studies, but not part of our core curriculum.

For example, we’re currently studying the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, so we’ve read some short, related biographies of people like Paul Revere and Thomas Paine, even though they aren’t part of our main text currently. There are also other related fictional books suggested for extra reading enjoyment on Fridays.

These related studies give us a chance to explore, in a low-key way, more of the people, places and events related to this period in history.

5. More sanity. I feel so much calmer heading into the end of the week now. There is such a feeling of cooperation on Fridays. The kids know that they still have work to get done, but it’s a lighter, more relaxed day, which is reflected in everyone’s attitudes, even when we do have work to catch up and the day may not be as light as it is on the weeks when we haven’t gotten behind.

Calmer, cooperative, relaxed kids equals a calmer, more relaxed mom.

6. Time for extracurricular activities. You know all those things that you plan to do, but don’t always have time for? You know what I’m talking about – the fun stuff that you never quite seem to get to because you’re so busy doing all the stuff you feel like you have to do.

Or maybe that’s just me.

All I know is that now we have time for things that are part of a well-rounded education without all the stress of worrying about how to fit them in – things like drum lessons, book clubs (we did this before, but those weeks weren’t always stress-free), and sewing lessons.

Since we started enjoying the benefits of a built-in catch-up/review day, I’ve had a few of those idyllic homeschool days that I used to daydream about.

Like I said, I’m sure I could have planned a built-in catch-up day back in the days when my lesson planning consisted of more than hitting the print button three times and hole-punching about 40 or so papers (have I mentioned how much I’m loving not having to write lesson plans??), but I really wasn’t sure how such a day would work until I saw it in action.

If you’re not using Trail Guide to Learning or another curriculum with ready-made lesson plans, I’ll offer you my tips on planning your own catch-up day based on what I’ve learned with Trail Guide:

1. Plan for fun review. Plan some games that can be done if you have time, but won’t stress you if they don’t. You might take a look at some of the types of review games our family has done in the past.

You could even ask topic-related questions Jeopardy-style or, as we’ve done in the past, football-style, with the field drawn off on a dry erase board. Players move the ball by answering questions correctly.

You can even make your own crossword or word search puzzles.

2. Plan for related studies. A built-in catch-up day is a great day to do something related to your study that you might not do otherwise. Read a biography of a secondary figure in your history studies. Read the historical fiction book that would have been your second choice. Listen to music from that time period. Study a composer. Do a related art project. Cook a meal related to your topic.

3. Make time for extracurricular activities. Schedule in some time for those things that you envision when you think of a perfect homeschool day. Do some nature study. Teach your kids how to sew (or learn together!). Cook a meal with your kids. Sign them up for music lessons. Meet some friends for a park day (Socialization 101). Teach your kids (or learn together) a handicraft, such as needlepoint, cross-stitch, knitting, or crochet.

Do a completely unrelated art project. Plan for an artist study. Do a Bible study together. Do a state study. Learn about a different country.

So, what are you waiting for? Doesn’t a built-in catch-up day sound heavenly? Do you already plan days like this? What do you do?

This post contains affiliate links.

Homeschool Showcase #88

2012-02-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the February 6, 2011 edition of Homeschool Showcase, where we spotlight all the encouraging, inspiring and just plain fun ways that homeschooling families live and learn together.

I can’t believe that it’s February already! The year is already flying by. I hope it’s going great in your homeschool. I’ve never felt better, at this time of year, than I do now. Gotta love the new curriculum high.

Before I get into this week’s Homeschool Showcase, I want to remind you all of the two giveaways I’m running – one here on WUHS and one on my fitness blog, Eclipsed. You can enter to win a Bible study book here and the complementing cookbook on Eclipsed. Today is the last day to enter!

Now, onto the Showcase…

Misty offers the first in a series of ideas on How to Get your Kids to do Their School – Part 1 – The White Board posted at Homeschool Bytes. She says, “We've had success using our white board to help the kids work on their own and keep track of their progress.” I thought it was a great idea!

Amy Townsend recounts her family’s recent field trip in words and photos. Be sure to read WeatherFest posted at By His Design 5 to vicariously enjoy what looked like a fantastic weather-related field trip opportunity. I wish we could do something like that since we’ve been studying the weather for the last month.

Amy @ Hope Is the Word hosts a weekly read aloud link-up. You can read about some of the musically-themed books her family enjoyed recently in her post, Read Aloud Thursday - Music Edition posted at Hope Is the Word.

Charla Pearen presents a tutorial for creating an Interactive Learning Wall for Kids: Snowman, a fun way to let young kids practice concepts such as color recognition, counting, ordinal numbers, size comparison and more. Visit High Park Home Daycare for the details.

photo by charla

If your kids are going to be learning about DNA anytime soon, be sure to visit Life's Adventures, where Anna-Marie shares some fantastic ideas for Teaching DNA and fun experiments.

Kelly @ The Homeschool Co-op is exploring a variety of homeschooling methods. She offers her thoughts on and some examples of the Montessori method in her post, Homeschooling Methods - Exploring Montessori Activities posted at The Homeschool Co-op.

Nicole Taulman and her son learned about the fermentation process by making some delicious Amish friendship bread (reading the post made me want some). She shares their experience in her post, Science Sunday ~ Yummy Fermentation posted at Journey to Excellence, saying, “You don't have to make your own wine to learn about Fermentation! Some warm, baked bread will do the trick!”

Turn the contents of your recycling bin into fun playthings for your kids with these tips from Bethany in her post, Recycle Challenge: Make a Playhouse and furniture. She encourages you to create your own masterpieces and show them off. Visit Little Homeschool Blessings to get a dose of inspiration.

Jamerrill Stewart shares her thoughts on a common argument against homeschooling as she contends that Public School is Not a Child's Ministry, posted at Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling | Living the Life of Faith, saying, “Should Christian kids be sent to minister in public schools? Resources for Christian families: videos, articles, books and more.”

Traci Best offers a tip for creating customized Flashcards! for your homeschool. Get the details at Mom2ThreeAdoptedSibs.

photo by traci

lesley sharpe shares a huge list of early play: ART IDEAS posted at early play. If you’re ever at a loss for some fun, easy ways to get creative with young kids, you’ll want to keep this list handy.

Pamela Jorrick advocates Looking Back Before Looking Ahead posted at Blah, Blah, Blog. This year, she spent some time looking back on the year just passed before jumping into the year ahead.

Paige Hudson shares a Picasso Artist Study posted at Elemental Blogging.

Amanda Pelser, The Pelsers, uses the same scripture memory system we’ve used and loved for years. It really is an awesome system that I highly recommend. Read her post, Kids in the Word Wednesday – How to Make a Scripture Memory Box to get details on how to make your box and get free printable dividers for your box.

Nancy Kelly explains what a commonplace book is and offers tips on how to keep one in her post, Silva Rerum - Commonplacing as a Habit which can be found on her blog, Sage Parnassus.

photo by nancy

Rebecca Rassi answers what must be the number one question people ask about homeschooling in her post, Charlie Brown Wasn't Homeschooled, so WHY do I? posted at Charlie Brown's Teacher.

Dave Roller offers his tips on Election Year Coverage posted at Home School Dad, sharing how he’s teaching his kids about the presidents.

Annette’s post, Skating and more shares some facts and resources that she and her son used to explore spiders, posted at A Net in Time.

I wish the kids and I could just load up and go to Barb-Harmony Art Mom’s house for art and nature study. I love her families latest Modern Art Projects: Playing With Acrylics posted at Harmony Art Mom.

photo by barb

Jennifer Moore shares what’s been going on in her family’s homeschool in her post, Cotton Gins, Charles Dickens, and Cleaning Up Faster than Barney posted at Frolicking Flamingo.

Jenn Collins presents Homeschool Journal, Week One: The Letter A and Lots of Moos posted at Monkey Butt Junction.

Read Aloud Dad shares the secret of How To Raise A Lifelong Reader In Just 3 Minutes A Day posted at Read Aloud Dad.

Mrs. White reflects on evening family time in her post, Family Comfort in the Evening Hours posted at The Legacy of Home.

That concludes this edition of Homeschool Showcase. Submit your blog article to the next edition, scheduled for Monday, February 20, by using our carnival submission form. Post submissions are due by Friday, February 17, at 6:00 PM (EST). If you're new to Homeschool Showcase please read the guidelines before submitting your post. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Want to help spread the word? Tweet the following:

Creative #homeschool ideas and more in the Homeschool Showcase hosted by @Kris_WUHSmom - http://bit.ly/nhEsui #hsblogger

Weekly Wrap-Up

2012-02-03T16:43:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday! I hope this week’s wrap-up finds you celebrating the conclusion of a wonderful week. I know that, for some of you, it won’t. For you, I’m hoping that next week is better and that the weekend rejuvenates you.

It’s been a good, busy, productive week around the WUHS house. I’m trying to remember what happened Monday, but that is a distant blur in my memory now. Tuesday, Brianna had her first cast meeting for her first-ever play. She’ll be playing an Oompa-Loompa in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Some kids might be disappointed in a relatively small role, but Brianna is thrilled. It gives her a chance to see what it’s like to be in a play without the stress of a speaking part. There is dancing, though. Yes, the little Oompa-Loompas will have choreographed dance parts.

We had Megan convinced to let me email the play director and see if Megan could be an Oompa-Loompa, too, since some of the kids apparently decided they didn’t want that role and dropped out. Turns out, though, that Brianna wants this to be her thing without the interference of a little sister. I can understand that. The next play is fair game for either of them, though.

Today, Josh turned the hook that my birdfeeder hangs on so that we can see both sides from the dining room window since the birds always want to sit on the far side. We were watching them – a couple of cardinals and a chickadee – when I commented that I needed to work on the feeder so that it was angled so that I could see both sides.

“That’s easy,” Josh piped up. “Just turn the hook.”

Well, duh. That’s why I keep him around – he’s a great problem-solver. That and the fact that he makes me laugh. Okay, I keep him around for lots of reasons, but he really does frequently see solutions to things that I’ve missed – things more complicated than turned birdfeeder hooks.

I think I’ve probably said this before, but I am loving Trail Guide’s built-in catch-up day! It’s made Fridays such a relaxing day. And, no, that doesn’t mean that we’re sitting around doing nothing. It does mean that we can plan extracurricular activities and not feel stressed and rushed trying to get everything else done.

Yes, I know I could have done that before, with my own planning, and I tried, but I never did quite pull it off in a way that felt like Fridays do now. Today, we had some things to catch-up because of an appointment Wednesday afternoon. We were able to get those things done, along with the things from Trail Guide that we typically do on Fridays and math and still not feel rushed and stressed.

Josh was supposed to have another drum lesson today, but his friend – whose dad is giving him the lessons – called to say that his grandpa had a stroke. They don’t know, yet, how severe it is, but I know the family would appreciate your prayers for his recovery.

Josh took this one of the lazy cat asleep in my lap.

I got in one of those cleaning fits today after waking up early. I managed to clean out the kitchen cabinets, the fridge, and the “pantry” in the garage. I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned the downstairs bathroom, and vacuumed! I wish those moods would hit more often. My house would be a lot cleaner.

I have also claimed the Mom-of-the Month award (because I know the excitement won’t last for a full year) today when the mail arrived. There were three packages – it was a fun mail day! One was a new game for our family game nights – Guesstures – the second was something for me and the third was what won me the award.

Megan has been looking for The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary for weeks in order to complete her Diary of a Wimpy Kid collection and hasn’t been able to find it. I had some Amazon credit and Swag Bucks, so I ordered it for her. She was watching me open the packages. I opened that one and said, “Well, I don’t know why they sent me this book. I won’t read that.”

She was so excited! I love being able to do stuff like that for my kids sometimes. It makes me feel as good as it does them.

In case you missed it, I’m currently running two giveaways – one here and one on my fitness blog. The one here is for a Bible study about health and nutrition from a Biblical standpoint and the one on my fitness blog is for a healthy cooking cookbook. Be sure to enter both!

This post contains affiliate links.

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Review and Giveaway: Treasures of Healthy Living Bible Study

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know that, in the last two years I have lost 90 pounds. As part of that process, there has been a definite shift toward healthier eating for my family.

For that reason, I was excited when I was approached to review Treasures of Healthy Living, a Bible study, with accompanying homeschool curriculum, that focuses on ferreting out what the Bible has to say about food, nutrition, and healthy living.

Born out of the author’s desire for and successful achievement of better health for her own family, Treasures of Healthy Living is a 12-week Bible study that covers topics such as:

Beverages
Grains
Fruits and vegetables
Proteins and meats
Fasting and self-control
Exercise
Environment and toxins

Each topic is covered in what has become a very familiar format in Bible studies – five days of study with scripture references, lines for notes and fill-in-the-blanks, and room for the reader to write down her thoughts and reactions to each day’s lessons.

The optional homeschool curriculum breaks each lesson down into what is supposed to be more manageable chunks, spending two weeks on each week’s worth of lessons from the main text.

Each lesson in the homeschool curriculum contains material for both older and younger students, as well as opportunities for your family to prepare foods together and serve others. The foods prepared in these lessons come from the Healthy Treasures Cookbook, which I am reviewing today on my fitness blog, Eclipsed.

The homeschool curriculum is designed to be a stand-alone Bible study when used in conjunction with the Treasures of Healthy Living adult study guide, but you will need the Healthy Treasures Cookbook to prepare the meals referenced in the study. There is also an optional DVD series, which I did not review, and the book, Treasures of Health Nutrition Manual is also referenced in both the curriculum and the adult Bible study.

I found that I preferred to look at Treasures of Healthy Living as a course in nutrition and healthy eating from a Christian worldview, rather than a Bible study, since it, for me, was more about gaining a better view of nutrition from a Biblical perspective, than drawing closer to Christ or gaining a better understanding of His word, in general.

Don’t misunderstand, I did enjoy some of the things I learned and we’ve even begun to make further changes in our diet based on some of the facts that were brought out by this study. However, I did not necessarily agree with all the spiritual applications that the author was trying to draw.

I think the homeschool curriculum has the potential to make a good choice for a health/home economics course, particularly for high school credit. However, the time frame for the lessons was really long – most were estimated to take about two-and-a-half hours. That’s a really long time a daily Bible study – for any subject, really.

Even the “short” lessons were designed to take an hour. Thirty minutes would have been more appropriate unless you were setting aside one day a week for each lesson. At the pace we’d need to go for our homeschool, this curriculum would last a lot longer than 24 weeks. With my younger two kids, 20-30 minutes a day would be the most I’d expect to spent on a Bible study. I might bump that up to 45 minutes, if it were doubling as a high school level health/home economics credit.

At only $9.99 for the digital download, the homeschool curriculum might be worth tweaking for time to fit your family’s needs for a Biblically-based nutrition study. It does contain a lot of games and fun extras for the kids to make learning about nutrition enjoyable for a variety of ages.

I spent about 20-30 minutes a day on the adult Bible study. Most days I was able to finish the full day’s work, but even some days in the adult study required two sittings to finish with the time that I had available to spend on it.

You can purchase the adult Bible study material from the Designed for Healthy Living site for $21.99, though it’s currently on sale for $18.99. The Nutrition Manual is regularly priced at $21.99, as well, but is currently on sale for $18.99. You can also visit the site for some of their favorite healthy recipes.

Be sure to visit my fitness blog to read my review of Healthy Treasures Cookbook.

I’m giving away a copy of both the cookbook and the Bible study – one Bible study here on WUHS and one cookbook on my fitness blog, so be sure to enter both!

**This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to commenter #3!**

How to enter:

Visit Designed Healthy Living’s Nuts About Nutrition page, then, come back and leave a comment on this post telling me one thing that you learned. (Mandatory entry)

For a bonus entries (optional):

Share about this giveaway on your blog, Facebook, or Twitter. (Please include @Kris_WUHSMom in your tweet to make sure I see it.)

Rules: Leave a comment for each entry (up to two separate entries). This giveaway is open to United States residents, ages 18 years and older only. Giveaway ends on February 6. The winner will be selected at random using Random.org.

The winner will notified via email and given 72 hours to respond. In the event that the winner cannot be contacted by email or does not respond within 72 hours, the prize will be forfeited and and alternate winner selected.

Click to read the complete rules. By entering this giveaway, you indicate that you have read and agreed to abide by these rules.

I received this product free for the purpose of reviewing it. I also received monetary compensation for the time invested in writing the review. The opinions expressed are my personal, honest opinions. Your experience may vary. Please read my full disclosure policy for more details.

Created to Do Good Works

2012-02-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

I don’t know about you, but I could use some accountability in my personal Bible study time. So, I thought I’d start sharing with y’all some thoughts and reflections from what I’m studying. Wednesday seemed like as good a day as any.

I’m studying scripture using the SOAP method, an idea from Amy at Mom’s Toolbox. The thoughts I share here will be those that I have written down in my Bible study journal. I may doctor them up a bit for the blog post as a manner of solidifying my own thoughts, or they may be typed out here just exactly as they are in my journal.

Whichever method I choose – and it may vary from week to week – these will just be my personal thoughts. They aren’t meant to be a form of teaching, just what I’ve got rolling around in my head.

I wondered if this might be something others might be interested in doing – kind of an online Bible study group, but with everyone just doing their own personal studies, sharing your thoughts on your blog and linking up so that we can learn from each other.

If there is enough interest, I’d be glad to host the link-up. We could even decide to do something more structured in the future – perhaps doing an actual Bible study book together. Just let me know, in the comments, what you think.

One of my studies that really stood out to me this week was the reading of Ephesians 2-3.

Scripture: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Ephesians 2:10

Observation: This verse says that God created us to do good works. It doesn’t say that He created us so that we might do good works or that He created some of us to do good works. It says we were created to do good works.

It goes on to say that these works were prepared in advance for us to do. It doesn’t say that they were created for someone else to do or some of us to do, or for pastors and teachers to do. It says that they were created for us – those of us saved by grace – to do. That means of each of us. That means me.

Paul goes on to say, in chapter 3, verse 20, “…according to the power that is at work within us.” Christ’s power is at work in all of us who have accepted Him as Savior. He’s not expecting us to do good works through our own strength and power, but through His, which is at work in all of His people who have been saved by grace.

Application: I need to be doing the work of Christ – whatever work it is that He has created me to do because He has created me to do it.

Maybe I’m already doing it, but perhaps I’m not doing it to the standard of Christ because I haven’t acknowledged that it’s His work and I’m not calling on His strength to do it. Perhaps I’m not doing His work because I haven’t sought His will to know what that work is.

I need to pray and seek His will to know what good works it is that I was created to do and then to them to God’s glory through Christ’s strength. If I don’t, I’m not living up to the full potential for which I was created. God placed me where I am today, in this moment and time, for a specific purpose (Acts 17:26). I need to live out what I was called to do.

Prayer: Father God, reveal Your truth to me. Show me the good works that You have prepared in advance for me to do. Help me to acknowledge them and call on Your strength that is at work in me to do these good works to Your glory. In Christ’s name I pray, amen.

What has God been showing you, lately?

God’s Presents

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000-05:00

There have been too many deaths lately. I know death is all around us and people die every day, but there are some deaths that pull you up short. There are those that send your own mortality colliding right into your comfort zone.

My friend, Christina’s death was like that because I realized that it could have just as easily been me. It was difficult for my kids because they’re friends with Christina’s kids and they realized it could have just as easily been their mom.

Then, there was the local kid who was killed in a car accident Friday afternoon. I didn’t know him personally, but I don’t think that matters. Once you become a parent, you can’t help but be touched by a child’s death. You can’t help but have your heart break for the family who is living your worst nightmare.

This kid’s death was on everyone’s lips this weekend. He attended a fairly small private Christian school that a bunch of kids from church attend. His dad has been a pediatrician in the area for nearly two decades, so many of my friends and their children were acquainted with the family.

Still, even total strangers were heartbroken for this family who lost their 18 year old child so unexpectedly.

One of my friends on Facebook posted that she prayed that God’s “presents” would surround the family. I know it was a typo – or maybe her helpful computer or phone filled in the wrong word for her, as they have a habit of doing. I couldn’t help thinking about that this weekend, though.

God’s presents do surround us. Daily. And, so often, we take them for granted. Our spouses are God’s gift to us. He uses them to encourage, support, and refine us. He uses them to show His love to us.

Our children are a gift from God.

“Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.” – Psalm 127:3

Them, too, we take for granted when the days seems so long, while the years are so short. Wouldn’t it put things into perspective if we knew that we were barreling ahead to the day they would be taken from us? I can’t imagine how short the days would seem with that perspective.

The indwelling and guidance of the Holy Spirit is a gift from God.

“Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” – Acts 2:38

Even enjoying our lives and our professions and finding opportunities to do good is a gift from God.

“I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.” – Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

God’s greatest gift, however, is the gift of salvation. I know that Christina’s family and this young boy’s family have found comfort in knowing that their loved one is now with their Savior.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 6:23

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8

Have you accepted Christ’s gift of salvation? That is God’s greatest gift to you – the one that enhances the enjoyment of all the others. If you’ve never accepted Christ, I’d love to talk to you about how you can. I don’t have all the answers and I’m not gifted at sharing the truth of God’s word, but I’m willing to let Him work through me. Email me if you want to talk.

If you’ve already accepted Christ, I encourage you today (and this goes for me, too, because I’m just as guilty as the next person) to take time today to fully enjoy God’s presents – His gifts to you. Hug your children and your spouse. Invest in time with them.

Make every moment count because we’re not guaranteed tomorrow. Life could be over in the blink of an eye. Let’s make sure we’re living it to its fullest.

And, if you think about it today, say a prayer for the Baughman family – the mom, dad, younger brother and sister – and all the friends and family who will be laying this young man to rest today and grieving their loss while celebrating his life. Pray that God’s presence will surround and comfort them.

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the New Book

2012-01-27T17:38:00.001-05:00

Check it out! It’s the last Friday of January. We’ve survived our whole first month back to school after Christmas break. I read on someone’s blog this week that they look at the start of January something like the beginning of a new school year after that long Christmas break.

That’s really how it’s felt for us, especially this year since we started a totally new curriculum when we resumed in January. And it’s been a great “new” school year!

Today has been really fun. We managed to stay caught up, so it was to be a light school day for us. That’s good because Josh’s best friend’s dad, from whom we bought the drums for Christmas, came over to give Josh his first semi-official drum lesson.

Then, later, one of my closest friends came over to help Brianna sew a cloak she’s been wanting to make for weeks. She bought the material with her Christmas money, but I know nothing – nothing – about sewing.

So, we’ve had music lessons and home ec today. It’s been electives day. It’s really been great. It feels like just the sort of relaxed, following-their-interests kind of homeschooling day that I often envision, but which doesn’t – at least at my house – always come to pass.

You may notice the lack of photos in today’s post. {sigh} I have completely fallen off the Project 365 wagon this week. I have felt so uninspired. I’m not giving up, though. I guess it’s really not a true Project 365, but I’m going to endeavor to do better next week.

My lack of interest in photography may be directly related to the fact that I have been totally engrossed in a new book that came in the mail on Tuesday. I reviewed (and loved) the first book, Fairer Than Morning, by author Roslynn Elliott, so I jumped at the chance to review the sequel, Sweeter Than Birdsong.

I loved it! I read it in three days…it would have been two if I could have held my eyes open a little longer last night. I’ll post the review soon, but if you don’t want to wait, I highly recommend it.

Those are the highlights of my week. How was your week? Be sure to post about it and sign up with MckLinky. If this is your first time to join us, be sure to read the Weekly Wrap-Up guidelines. You can also follow the guidelines link to grab the banner code.

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Review: Four Letter Words

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were being called upon to defend your faith, but found yourself tongue-tied and unsure of how to do so? I imagine, if you’ve been a Christian longer than about 24 hours, you probably have.

Four Letter Words, by Bill Giovannetti addresses many of today’s cultural arguments against the Christian faith and offers suggestions on how to combat them with the truth of God’s Word.

“Thou shalt tolerate every opinion... except the Christian's. Today's postmodern ‘prime directive’ leaves many followers of Jesus tongue-tied. In the global village, isn't it unreasonable, and even dangerous, to suggest that the Bible has a monopoly on truth?

The church needs a new breed of Christ-follower. We need Christ-followers who are alert to today's touchy ideas, the truths that fire up more heat than light. We need Christ-followers who can make a clear case for the Bible's worldview; who are ready to help our friends think through their beliefs; who can recognize inconsistencies and challenge them; and who can do all of this with humility, confidence, humor, and love.

Four Letter Words looks at such topics as:

The inerrant truth of the Bible
Science vs. the Bible
Why is there pain and suffering in the world?
Should Christians be so judgmental?
Is Hell real?
Sexuality and purity in today’s culture

Containing a discussion guide, Four Letter Words is billed as being a great choice for small groups, personal study, college and campus groups, and youth groups.

Because of this, I thought it might make a great read for my sixteen-year-old daughter. However, I found it often difficult to read and follow the author’s thought process, so I know she would struggle with comprehension, as well. It wasn’t as conversational a writing style as I would have hoped.

I think it would probably be good for an adult study group and especially good for college-aged groups since that seems to be an age that thrives on ferreting out their own personal belief system and enjoying a healthy debate.

The fact that the book is interactive and QR enabled (if you don’t know what that means, you’re as behind-the-times as I am and probably don’t have a smart phone…ask your teenager), will no doubt make it even more appealing to college-age readers.

About the author: Dr. Bill Giovannetti is a professor at A.W. Tozer Theological Seminary and the senior pastor of Neighborhood Church of Redding. An experienced speaker and author, Bill informs the mind in ways that touch the heart. He enjoys life with his wife and two kids in northern California. For more information about Bill and his other books, visit http://maxgrace.wordpress.com and http://fourletterwords.org.

Bill is celebrating the new Kindle edition of Four Letter Words (for only $4.99)! He’ll be traveling coast to coast over the next few weeks on this virtual book tour and he's celebrating by hosting a great giveaway!

Click here to find out how you can win two gift certificates to Amazon (in the amount of $50 and $25) and free downloads of his yet-to-be-released title, Recession-Proof: Living a God-Blessed Life in a Messed Up World. Or click to get the whole scoop.

Read what other reviewers are saying.

I received this product free for the purpose of reviewing it. This post also contains affiliate links. The thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. Your experience may vary. Please read my full disclosure policy for more details.

Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about keeping toddlers and preschoolers occupied because that’s not my season of life anymore. However, it’s still a question I hear frequently in homeschooling circles, though the quandary isn’t unique to homeschoolers.

In fact, the question came up recently on the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers Facebook page. There were several suggestions offered, including what used to be my go-to page for preschool and toddler activities, Paula’s Archives’ Preschool Activities page.

I offered some learning activity suggestions back when my niece was joining us for school, but sometimes you just want something fun and productive that your little one can do fairly independently. Here are some suggestions:

Pipe cleaners and a strainer. (Follow the link for four other toddler-friendly activities)

Poking pom-poms into a milk jug. This used to be a favorite activity among the kids in the home daycare Brianna attended as a toddler. The daycare mom would cut flaps into the sides of the milk jug so that pom-poms were easy to remove.

Create an I Spy bottle. (Maureen, from Spell Outloud has tons of other great ideas on her blog.)

Create a rice (or bean) box. (These are also known as “sensory tubs.” Follow the link for a wealth of photos for the visual-learners like me.) These can be really messy – but so much fun! – so be sure you’ve got a spot for it that can be easily swept. It can be even more fun if you color the rice.

Host a busy bag swap. I so love this idea! I wish I’d heard about it when my kids were younger. It would make a great moms group activity and it’s a great way to save money putting the bags together since things tend to be cheaper when you buy in bulk.

Lacing Cards. Remember the little heavy cardboard, shaped cards you used to play with as a kid? They had the shoestring that you laced in and out of the holes? It’s easy to make your own lacing cards with some heavy cardboard and a hole punch or an awl.

Play-doh is always popular with toddlers. It’s relatively inexpensive, but it can still be fun to make your own.

Cutting straws is a fun activity for preschoolers and good fine-motor skills practice. It probably doesn’t make a good independent activity, though, if you like the length of your child’s hair.

Fishing with homemade magnet fishing poles was always a huge hit with my kids. Just get some dowel rods and attach round magnets to them with twine. Then, provide metal items for which to fish – this can be as elaborate as fish shapes with paper clips attached or just a plastic bucket with some metal items and some plastic ones. The latter is a fun opportunity for preschoolers to explore what sticks to magnets and what doesn’t.

Finger painting. Some fun mediums include pudding, baking soda, and shaving cream. It can also be fun to make a colored gel, double-bagged in a gallon size zip-lock bag – just use a little hair gel and food coloring.

Clothes pins can be used for dropping into a wide-mouth jar (such as a milk jug with part of the top cut away), clipping onto a cardboard box or even as an alphabet matching game for older preschoolers.

String beads or cereal. Another great fine-motor skill activity, kids always seems to enjoy stringing beads or cereal and, of course, if you use cereal, this provides a convenient snack, as well.

Stacking boxes. Old cereal boxes or oatmeal containers work well for this. They don’t even have to be old or empty, if you don’t mind re-shelving them when your child is through playing.

Some other great places for ideas for keeping toddlers and preschoolers productively busy include:

Toddler’s Busy Book by Trish Kuffner
Keeping Your Preschooler Occupied

What are some of your favorite resources for keeping little one happily occupied?

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The Homeschool Showcase and Stuff

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Did you stop by expecting to see the Homeschool Showcase today. Um, yeah. Um, oops. So, apparently, I failed to update the listing after the last Homeschool Showcase edition and no one was able to submit their posts.

Yeah, oops.

I guess since that’s the first time I’ve ever done that, I can be forgiven, right? Unfortunately, it’s been such a busy weekend, that I didn’t even realize what I’d done until I sat down to put this week’s Showcase together late Sunday night – way too late to do anything about it.

So…please submit your posts for the next Homeschool Showcase, which will be back on its regular week, February 6. Showcase submissions will be due by 6 PM EST, on Friday, February 3.

photo credit

In the meantime, I’m writing at a couple of different places around the web today and I’d love to have you visit me. You can find me at The Homeschool Classroom today giving you lots of do-it-yourself lunch ideas for your kids. This is something that became a part of our school week this past summer and has continued to work well for us into the school year.

I’m also sharing tips for setting up a home management binder at In a Nutshell. Stop by and weigh-in on some of your favorite additions to your own home management binder, if you use one, or find out how to easily set one up, if you don’t.

And, finally, be sure and pray for me today that I don’t lose my ability to find my way to the bathroom within the next ten years. *sigh*

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One With All the Weather Stuff

2012-01-20T17:50:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday! We’ve had another great week here. Although school has gone smoothly, I am looking forward to the weekend. I’m ready for some downtime…and there is the little matter of a small mountain of laundry that needs to be caught up.

It’s been another enjoyable week with our much-loved new homeschool curriculum. We finished our first read aloud, The Courage of Sarah Noble, and have moved on to the next one, The Mathclock Gun. We just started it today, so the jury is still out on it, but we enjoyed The Courage of Sarah Noble.

Day 14 – P365 (Megan bought the dogs this huge dog bed at Costco last weekend. They love it! Penny has only removed her lazy butt from it long enough to eat and go out since last weekend.)

Today we got to try out Trail Guide’s built-in Friday catch up day for the first time. The girls and I got our hair cut on Thursday and I got mine highlighted. I should post pictures, but that will have to wait until a day when I’m wearing make-up. Other than race pictures, when the pride of running overcomes the vanity of needing make-up, I don’t feel a strong need to post naked-face pictures for the whole Internet.

Day 15 – P365 (Gus, on the other hand, prefers to sleep hugged up on the stairs. I think he thinks he’s in a tree or something.)

So, anyway, we got a bit behind on Thursday, so we played catch-up today. It worked out great. We did the important Friday stuff and skipped the “if you have time” stuff, so that we could complete the work from Thursday. We got everything done, with no complaining, in time for me to get my grocery-shopping done before supper.

Nice.

Day 16 – P365 (Labeling a map of the colonies, by ethnic group.)

The science focus for this unit is weather. This week, we made a whole weather lab – well, an anemometer and a weather vane, at least. I’ve got to get the clay needed to fix our barometer and we’ll be all set. Now, in addition to temperature, rainfall, and clouds, we can measure wind speed and direction.

You may recall that we tried an anemometer before with the science curriculum we were using (and enjoying), but didn’t have much success. The one we made this week works great! It’s built more like a pinwheel, so it catches the wind and spins easier. I love that Trail Guide to Learning includes photos of each step of its projects, along with detailed directions. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am a very visual learner.

Day 17 – P365 (Anemometer…made from a Honey-Nut Cheerios box in lieu of the required paper plate. Very colorful, no?)

Although there was a slight breeze today, there wasn’t enough wind to spin the anemometer. We didn’t think that there would be enough for our weather vane to work either, but there was. Thanks for our really cool weather equipment, we know that there was a slight breeze blowing from the south today.

In other news, I knew that I missed one day of Project 365 – I just wasn’t feeling inspired that day and didn’t want to take a photo just to be taking one. I didn’t realize that I’d missed two days, though. Oops! I’m still going to keep plugging away, though. I figure, even if I miss a day now and then, I’ll still have more photos at the end of the year than I will if I quit, right?

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Change

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-05:00

This time of year there’s always a lot of talk around the blogosphere about having a word of the year. In case you’ve missed it, the idea is that, instead of resolutions that probably won’t last, people are focusing on a word, or theme, for the year.

Some people have chosen words like faith or live. I’d toyed with some words. I thought about self or selfless or Christ-centered to encompass my goal of working toward being more Christ-centered and less self-centered, but nothing really grabbed me.

Then, we went to church Sunday and heard the second message in a phenomenal new series our church is doing about the home. The general idea is that Biblical teaching is supposed to begin at home. The body of the church should be centered in the home.

Our faith should be taught and shared in our homes (and not just with our families, but by opening our homes to others), rather than having Christian families show up at a building on Sunday mornings and expect to be fed, then going on about their way for the other six days of the week.

The emphasis is that our homes should reflect our deep and abiding love for Christ, rather than simply reflecting our favorite hobbies, sports teams or interests. Our pastor has challenged us to look closely at ourselves and our homes step up to make the changes that God reveals to us.

Change.

Change can be hard. We often feel that we’re too old, it’s too late, we’re too set in our ways, our kids are almost grown, it’s too hard.

No, it’s not. We’re not. They’re not. It’s never too late to change.

I’m 41 years old and I’ve lost 90 pounds. It wasn’t too late to change that. I sincerely hope that I’ve still got half my life to live. I may have wasted the first 41 years being self-centered, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live the next 41 years being Christ-centered.

My husband wants to lead our family in devotions on the nights that we’re all home together. We haven’t done that, consistently, very often in our children’s lives. Does that mean that we can’t or shouldn’t commit to doing that for the rest of the years that they’re living at home? Of course not!

I want our home to be a house of prayer. Our family hasn’t consistently prayed together other than at meals, the bedtime prayers that have tapered off as the kids have gotten older and put themselves to bed, after our morning devotional time to start school, and crisis prayers. Does that mean that we should just write off the possibility of changing that? Nope!

Change.

That’s my word for the year. Brian wants to change our lack of family Bible study. I want to change our weakness in corporate prayer. I want to change my self-centeredness.

I have encouraged each of the children to pray about what God would have them change this year. In the last two days, I’ve seen a definite change in the kids’ attitudes toward each other (for the positive).

Change. Ourselves. Our family. Our world.

That’s our word for this year.

Has your family chosen a word for the year? It’s not too late to change that if you haven’t.

January Sponsor Shout-Out

2012-01-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

Can you believe it’s the middle of January already? I’m in big trouble if the whole year goes by this quickly! Maybe that saying, “time flies when you’re having fun” is true, though, because we sure have been having a lot of fun lately.

You might be missing out on just how much fun if you’re not following Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers on Facebook. I tend to share some of the craziness of my days over there – like this status update from last week:

“Just said to my youngest (and got away with it), ‘Since I let you bathe the dog, why don't you dust the living room.’ Guess I'm in trouble when it's no longer a treat to bathe the dog.”

I’m tellin’ ya, it’s fun times over there on Facebook. Have you pulled anything good over on your kids lately?

I wanted to take a minute to say a special thank-you to some very special folks. First of all, to y’all, the readers. Without you, I’d just get accused of talking to myself. (Because I don’t do that. Really. Maybe).

Second, I want to thank the WUHS sponsors for January. I appreciate each of the following for partnering with me this month:

Mindy’s Bookworms is a self-guided, interactive website that helps children in grades 2-12 to understand a wide variety of reading comprehension questions and offers practice to improve their skills for reading comprehension tests.

Alpha-Omega Publications is well-known for its high-quality, affordable Christian homeschool curriculum. Featuring everything from Lifepacs and Horizons workbooks to both online (Monarch) and off-line (Switched on Schoolhouse) computer-based curriculum and even a full unit study curriculum (The Weaver), AOP has something for everyone.

Looking for a great homeschool convention to attend? Great Homeschool Conventions offers incredible speakers and tons of great homeschool vendors. Check out the Great Homeschool Conventions website to see if they’re coming to a city near you.

Signazon offers custom banners, yard signs, vinyl lettering, and even car magnets. Visit them for any custom banner or advertising needs you may have.

If you’re going to be attending any blogging or homeschooling conferences (like The 2:1 Conference for which I’m giving away a ticket), you’re going to want business cards to exchange with the bloggers and homeschooling moms that you meet. Vista Print offers business card, personalized calendars, and more.

Once again, thank YOU for reading and I thank our sponsors for partnering!

Win A Ticket to the 2:1 Conference!

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

What are you doing April 27-29? I’ll be speaking at The 2:1 Conference and I’d love to meet you there! The 2:1 Conference is for homeschool bloggers with a heart for God.

It’s a chance to meet some of your online friends in person, hear some of your favorite bloggers and homeschool speakers, be encouraged in your role as a homeschool mom, and learn to grow your blog and your social media reach! What more could you ask for?

Tickets are $199, which includes:

admission
entry to general and break out sessions, as well as group activities
all meals (Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast, lunch and dinner and Sunday breakfast and lunch) and snacks

The speaker line-up includes folks like:

Rebecca Ingram Powell (author of Season of Change and blogger at Mom Seriously)
Jolanthe Erb (Homeschool Creations)
Amy Roberts (Raising Arrows)
Angie Kauffman (Many Little Blessings and editor of The Homeschool Classroom)
Carisa Hinson (1+1+1=1 and Totally Tots)
Toni Anderson (The Happy Housewife)

You can visit The 2:1 Conference site to see the full list of keynote and breakout speakers, as well as the session schedules and topics.

In addition to the reasonably-priced ticket fee, the accommodation rates have been deeply discounted at just $75/night.

Of course, even with such discounted prices, I know how difficult it can be to afford to leave your family for a conference. It often falls under the category of “something I would love to do, but just can’t cost justify right now.”

I hope I can help!

The 2:1 Conference has provided me with one conference ticket to give away! You’ll be responsible for your travel and accommodation fees, but your meals and entry to sessions will be covered.

**This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Mary, entrant #16!!**

How to enter: It’s easy! Just blog about why you want to attend The 2:1 Conference. Then, come back and link up your post. The winner will be selected at random using Random.org.

This giveaway is open to United States residents, ages 18 years and older only. Giveaway ends on Friday, January 20. The winner will notified via email and given 72 hours to respond. If I can’t reach you via email through your blog, please make sure that you leave a comment with an email contact.

In the event that the winner cannot be contacted by email or does not respond within 72 hours, the prize will be forfeited and and alternate winner selected.

Click to read the complete rules. By entering this giveaway, you indicate that you have read and agreed to abide by these rules.

I hope to meet some of you in April!

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Turkeys

2012-01-13T17:28:00.001-05:00

Welcome to this week’s Weekly Wrap-Up! I hope you’ve had a wonderful week. We have. Either we’re still in the honeymoon phase or, after long last, we’ve finally found the curriculum that is the perfect fit for us. Even the boy admitted today that he enjoys it.

Yes, there are things he really doesn’t like – such as copywork and the book he’s reading (Ambush in the Wilderness…not a commentary on the book; he’s just not a fan of fiction). Overall, however, even he admits that it’s good stuff.

So, I’ve already missed a day on Project 365, but it wasn’t intentional. I completely forgot about it last Saturday. Just like with weight-loss, though, I’m not going to let one setback derail me. I picked right back up on Sunday and I’ll just keep going.

Day 8 – P365 (I spent part of last Sunday night impulsively cleaning out the junk drawer. I got the medicine cabinet a little later and I hope to get the filing cabinet tonight.)

Speaking of weight-loss, I hit two huge milestones this week. First, I finally hit 90 pounds lost! I’m so excited to finally be able to say that I’ve lost 90 pounds. I never thought I’d get there when I started out.

Second, I’m in the 120’s for the first time in I-can’t-even-tell-you how long. Probably the first couple of years of marriage. I gained after that, then, lost quite a bit before I got pregnant with Brianna, but I didn’t even get into the 120’s that time. I’m less than 5 pounds from my goal weight!

Day 9 – P365 (Lazy cat!)

The younger kids and I are still studying the early colonial days of America, so Monday we played a type of ring-toss game called quoits. We were supposed to make the rings out of rope, but we cheated a bit and just used plastic swimming pool rings. Both kids loved it.

As part of science, we attempted to make a barometer. The directions said that one part of it – getting the water up into the straw and sealing it before the liquid leaked back out would be tricky. It was. We finally gave up, but we’ll probably try again when we figure out something a little better than Play-Doh to seal it with. When they said “modeling clay,” I guess they really meant modeling clay. Oh, well.

That’s one of the big things I love about Trail Guide to Learning – that not only is history covered using great books, but it also includes fun, relevant, hands-on activities each week. Not only that, but it contains detailed instructions. It’s exactly the kind of curriculum I would have designed myself if I were that organized.

Day 10 – P365 (Thanks to a friend who loaned me her book, the addiction is complete. I finished this one in about 24 hours.)

You know how some men can brighten their wives’ days by bringing them a bouquet of flowers? Mine could make me happy by surprising me with a new 3-hole punch. I’d think that was odd, but I know I’m talking to a bunch of homeschool moms. (Sunflowers would make me smile, too, though.)

I was going to buy one myself while I was out yesterday, but I had too many other things that had to come out of my grocery budget, so I’ll have to wait until next week. Unless my husband decides to surprise me. Tell me it’s not just me.

Day 11 – P365 (Doesn’t every school cabinet need a cat? He climbed in by himself and was even more content when we shut the door.)

My sister sent me a text on Thursday. She said she was headed to pick my niece up from school when she saw seven wild turkeys walking up her street. We live in a subdivision, so that’s not a common occurrence. Not common as in, it’s not something I’ve ever seen in the collective thirty-ish years I’ve lived here.

I asked her if she got a picture. She said no, but that they’d probably be up my way soon. We live just a couple of streets over, so I didn’t really expect to see them since there are so many other places they could go.

Lo and behold, about 20 minutes later, I looked out the window, and there were seven turkeys strolling down our street! I’m so glad there wasn’t a film crew around because I jumped up, hollering, “The turkeys are here! The turkeys are here! Don’t scare them off before I get my camera!”

Day 12 – P365 (The wild turkeys.)

Yeah, sometimes, it’s the little things.

The local schools were on a 2-hour delay today, so I decided we’d take a 2-hour delay, too. As a few people – my mom included (Hi, Mom!) – pointed out, we’re on a 2-hour delay every day.

True, but it sounded fun and I thought the kids shouldn’t miss out on some of the perks of public school, like when the schools go on delay in anticipation of inclement weather and the weather is just fine. Besides, we’d stayed caught up all week, so we had a light day ahead of us anyway.

The kids enjoyed getting to sleep in a bit and eating lunch before starting school. We did some review stuff and Brianna, who had also stayed caught up, quickly finished her work for the week.

We wound up the week with the younger kids’ new favorite school-related activity, watercolor. Today, they got to splatter paint and drop pools of paint onto the paper so they could blow them with straws and make designs. It turned out pretty cool.

Day 13 – P365 (Watercolor fun.)

Since my school planning now consists of getting any needed supplies from the store (done), hitting the print button three times, and hole-punching about 40 papers, I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend at home. I’m sure there will be some laundry and some blogging stuff, but I don’t mind that when everything else is basically caught up.

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10 Great Ideas from Pintrest

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-05:00

I avoided Pintrest for a really long time. I heard all the buzz, but I plugged my ears. It wasn’t that I had anything against Pintrest, but I knew I didn’t need one more think encouraging me to spend anymore time online. Between blogging, Twitter, Facebook and Words with Friends, I didn’t need any help in the “spend more time online department.”

I gave in last week, though, and I’m really glad I did. I’ve already found such cool things! Here are some of my favorites:

1. The Phases of the Moon…with Oreo cookies! Such a great visual and both fun and tasty to make. I definitely want to do this one with the kids this year.

2. DNA with Licorice and Mini-Marshmallows. Another great science project and, if you visit the original source you can get a great PDF file to go with it. The file contains some background information as well as a colorful, step-by-step guide to making the model.

photo credit

3. Chip Clips. A great way to use those plastic clip clothes hangers from the store – the ones I usually throw away.

4. Paper Organizer. This adorable paper organizer is made of recycled cereal boxes. That’s a lot more fun than just tossing them in the recycle bin. FamilyFun is the original source for this great idea.

photo credit

5. 10 Tips for a Great Quiet Time. I need to put these tips into practice now. My quiet time could use some improvement. Visit Terri Lynne Underwood to read the full post. (Yes, you can get there from Pintrest, but I know just a week ago I wasn’t 100% sure how all that worked.)

6. 25 Rules for Mothers of Sons. Inspiring. Encouraging. Convicting. Head to Team Studer to read the whole 25 Rules for Mothers of Sons post.

7. Stuffed Cabbage Casserole. I love stuffed cabbage. My family doesn’t love it as much as I do, but they all enjoyed this recipe. I loved it! I’m having the leftovers for lunch today.

8. Cinnamon Roll Waffles. Oh. My. Word. These fall under the category of “things I shouldn’t try, but probably will.” Maybe I’ll take them to our small group meeting the next time we do breakfast foods. At least that way I’ll have someone to help me eat them. Click for the cinnamon roll waffles recipe.

9. Crochet Yarn Bag. This one didn’t link to the original source, so I’ll have to do some searching for the pattern when I get to the point that I feel brave enough to try it.

photo credit

10. Crochet Owls. There’s no pattern for this one either. *sigh* Maybe once I know what I’m doing, I’ll be able to figure it out. They sure are cute!

Have you given in to Pintrest yet? If so, leave me your link and I’ll follow you.

Homeschool Showcase #87

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the January 9, 2012 edition of Homeschool Showcase, where we spotlight all the encouraging, inspiring and just plain fun ways that homeschooling families live and learn together.

Welcome back! Our Christmas break was a much-needed time of rest and rejuvenation. While I missed you, my Homeschool Showcase friends, it was nice to step back from the online world for a bit and just relax. That being said, it’s good to be back in the swing of things!

Just a note: The Blog Carnival site has been having issues for several weeks now. I’m not getting email notification of Homeschool Showcase post submissions. I can still go to the site and get your submissions, but I’m not getting the email notification that provides me with your email address.

That means that I can’t send you a message letting you know that Homeschool Showcase is posted unless I have your email address from previous submissions. It also makes it really difficult to reply to personal comments you may have left me in your post submission. That means that, despite what it may seem, I am not purposely ignoring you.

Hopefully, the Blog Carnival site will be functioning at 100% soon.

Now that that’s of the way, on to this week’s Homeschool Showcase.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom, of Handbook of Nature Study, is the person who got me into nature study. I may not always be consistent with it, but her enthusiasm is contagious. Don’t miss her post, Handbook of Nature Study - November Bird List. With it’s gorgeous photos and helpful resource links, don’t be surprised to find yourself wanting to create a backyard oasis for the birds in your area.

photo by barb

Mrs. White encourages as she relates her own struggles, short-comings, and a desperate need for hope in her post, The Legacy of Home: Mother's Hope posted at The Legacy of Home. I love the idea of a binder of hope – reminders about and prayers for our children.

Kelly @ The Homeschool Co-op shares her Interview with Nicole of Once a Small Seed posted at The Homeschool Co-op.

Pamela Jorrick tells us about a super-cool sounding resources available at many museums around the country…and she made me laugh…in her post, Hands On Chaos posted at Blah, Blah, Blog. Be sure to check it out. You may want to see if any of your local museums offers the kits Pamela mentions.

photo by pamela jorrick

Laura Grace Weldon encourages us to live in the moment in her inspiring post, Let The Youngest Teach You Mindfulness posted at Laura Grace Weldon. She says, “Living at a child's pace helps us stay in the present moment. That's something even the youngest child can teach us, if we're ready to learn.”

Jamerrill Stewart shares her thoughts on The Cost of Having Children at her blog, Holy Spirit-led Homeschooling | Living the Life of Faith.

Susan Kilbride offers a free PDF file, Free Atoms & Molecules Unit Study for Ages 8-13 from Funtastic Unit Studies!, saying, “This free unit study on Atoms & Molecules is taken from the book Science Unit Studies for Homeschoolers and Teachers, which was written by a homeschooling mom and is designed to make learning science fun for kids and easy to teach for parents.”

Nicole Taulman and her family recently had the opportunity to visit life-sized replicas of Columbus’s ships, the Nina and the Pinta. We’ve done that before, too, and I highly recommend it. See photos and catch Nicole’s excitement in her post, Study America Saturday ~ The Five Senses of American History posted at Journey to Excellence.

photo by nicole taulman

I want to do this next one! How fun! Paige Hudson posts a recipe and instructions for creating your own crystal snowflake in her post, Science Corner: Winter Science Fun! presented at Elemental Blogging.

Studying hurricanes anytime soon? Be sure to visit Little Homeschool Blessings for Bethany’s post, Extreme Weather: Hurricanes. It includes lots of great facts, a video and tips for hands-on learning fun.

With cold and flu season in full swing, Melanie Grant’s suggestions for Health Care for Homeschooling Moms couldn’t be more timely. Read more at Mel's Mouthful on Mothering.

Randy Pope presents The Augustinian view of history, A Study in Providence posted at Christian Worldview of History and Culture, saying, “This is one of a series of 4 articles on different philosophical views of history.”

Amy Dumas’s Winter Guest is a beautiful little male house finch. I love when homeschooling provides real-life learning opportunities right in your front yard. Visit Ambling to see photos and read more.

photo by amy dumas

Read Aloud Dad shares some of his kids’ favorite dinosaur books in his post, Dinosaur Cove: Attack of the Readaloudsaurus posted at Read Aloud Dad.

Amy Broadmoore shares the first of 60 Not-to-be-Missed Picture Books posted at Delightful Children's Books, saying, “These 60 books are books I hope my children will read repeatedly and remember fondly as part of their childhood. Readers are invited to read through this list with me” It includes one of my favorites, perfect for this time of year, The Snowy Day.

Annette, of A Net in Time, is Back to Homeschooling saying, “Starting out the new year with plans to be more organized was a resounding success.”

That concludes this edition of Homeschool Showcase. Submit your blog article to the next edition, scheduled for Monday, January 23, by using our carnival submission form. Post submissions are due by Friday, January 20, at 6:00 PM (EST). If you're new to Homeschool Showcase please read the guidelines before submitting your post. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Want to help spread the word? Tweet the following:

Creative #homeschool ideas and more in the Homeschool Showcase hosted by @Kris_WUHSmom - http://bit.ly/nhEsui #hsblogger

Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Brand-Spanking-New Curriculum

2012-01-06T16:43:00.000-05:00

Happy Friday!! I know I say that a lot, but I am so feeling it this week! The sun is shining, it’s 65 degrees in January, and we have had an awesome school week. I’m looking forward to the weekend, but I don’t feel like I’ve dragged myself to it by my fingernails this week.

Day 3 – P365 (Notice the cross?)

What’s got me so pumped? I’d have to say it’s our new curriculum. Now this is just our first week and I know there’s that honeymoon phase and all, so my real, official, in-depth review won’t happen for a couple of months or so – to really give us time to use it thoroughly – but my first impression is, I’m loving it!

We’re using Trail Guide to Learning (Paths of Settlement) from Geography Matters. I have never, ever, the entire time we’ve homeschooled, ever used a full, pre-packaged curriculum. Trail Guide covers everything except math and every single book it requires is included.

Oh, my word.

P365 – Day 4 (Brianna’s hand at age 4 – the same hand that drew the award-winning Canada goose at age 11.)

There was nothing that we did this week that I didn’t have all the supplies for. There were no books that I forgot to get from the library or that we couldn’t get because they were checked out. And, there was no planning because all the planning is done for me.

Can I just say that, in this season of my life, that is pure bliss? And, so far, the curriculum, which is very unit-study-like (y’all know I like that, right?) is something just like what I would have planned myself, if I had the time…except, you know, a lot more thorough and well-thought-out.

P365 – Day 5 (First long run of 2012.)

The kids’ (Josh and Megan…Brianna is still using Switched-on-Schoolhouse) only complaint so far has been that there’s “a lot more work” than we usually do. They’re right. It is. And, I’m so okay with that.

See, before we finished our first semester, I was very much feeling like we weren’t doing enough. Not the “homeschool mom, self-doubt maybe we’re not doing enough,” but the real “no, really, we’re not doing enough.”

If you’ll recall, I talked a lot in the last few Weekly Wrap-Up posts of 2011 about spending some time over Christmas break tweaking. I knew we needed to beef things up.

P365 – Day 6 (Finally! Book 2! It’s been checked out at the library and sold out at the stores. Brianna bought it, but is letting me read it first. Love that kid!)

When the offer unexpectedly came up just before Christmas to try Trail Guide, I jumped at it. I got to enjoy my Christmas break instead of spending a lot of time tweaking and planning because everything is planned out for me. (Did I mention that already?)

Want to know something really cool? Remember that we were alternating history and science on M/W and T/Th with Friday as either a light or catch up day? Trail Guide is set up exactly that way!

We stayed caught up most of the week, so today, we just had three things to catch up and the rest was review and games. It was a fun, but not wasted day because the review and games were all productive and designed to cement what the kids have been learning.

There are also enrichment activities on Friday (or whatever your “Day 5” happens to be). These can be done by older students (TG is geared for 4th-6th grades), kids who want to go more in-depth, or as more Friday work if you’ve stayed caught up all week.

Oh, and the kids’ favorite part? Watercolor painting! It was only on the lesson plan for Monday, but we wound up painting on three different days. Even Josh enjoyed it.

So, what did we do this week? We read Abigail Adams, Ambush in the Wilderness, and The Courage of Sarah Nobel. (And, the kids – and I – love that TG’s reading plan is reasonable than mine tend to be.)

We used an atlas to make state notebooking pages for Massachusetts and Connecticut and state cards for those two states for a game later on.

We observed and recorded the weather. We were supposed to make a rain gauge, but we have a store-bought one, so we skipped that. The kids did a scavenger hunt through their readers to find sentences with the grammar rules they’re learning.

(Just an aside…in that sentence above, as I was proof-reading, I realized that I’d written, “…grammar rules their learning.” Um, glad I caught that. Wouldn’t have been a big vote of confidence for my grammar skills.)

We studied spelling and vocabulary words. We talked about the early settlers. We made cards about the different types of people who came to the New World (explorers, settlers, entrepreneurs, and soldiers) for the review game we played today.

We did interactive journaling (I wrote something for them to read about their birth with a question for them to answer). We did grammar and editing. We did narration, copywork, and critical thinking.

It was a fun week and I felt like the kids learned a lot…and there really wasn’t any complaining other than some general grumbling on the first day (expected) and a little grumbling a couple of afternoons when we weren’t finished as early as they’d like (also not unusual).

I’m looking forward to next week!

This post contains affiliate links.

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Another Day in the Life

2012-01-06T06:00:00.000-05:00

Want to take a peek into a day in my life? You can do it today at Simple Homeschool as part of the Day in the Life series.

And, if you want to see what this week has looked like for us – and hear how we’re liking our new curriculum – come back this afternoon for the first Weekly Wrap-Up of 2012.

Review: Mindy’s Bookworms

2012-01-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

Please join me in welcoming the newest WUHS sponsor: Mindy’s Bookworms! Mindy’s Bookworms is a self-guided, interactive website that helps children in grades 2-12 to understand a wide variety of reading comprehension questions and offers practice to improve their skills for reading comprehension tests.

Now, I know many of us homeschool folks don’t necessarily give reading comprehension tests, but understanding the concepts covered on Mindy’s Bookworms is an important part of reading comprehension, period, and we can all agree that having our children understand what they’re reading is the main goal in learning to read. Whether your child is reading for pleasure or for information, neither is going to be accomplished if he isn’t understanding what he’s reading.

Then, there is also the fact that, while you may not administer reading comprehension tests at home, there is probably going to come a time when your child is going to have to take that type of test – either for state-required standardized testing or for college entrance exams.

Mindy’s Bookworms allows your child to work independently and at his own pace through a series of passages that roughly equate to first (or maybe it’s second…there are 12 levels) through twelfth grade reading levels. Each of my kids, ages 16, 12, and 10, used Mindy’s Bookworms and I felt that the instruction was equally beneficial for each of their varying reading levels.

Most state tests are created using Lexile scores. Lexile scores measure the difficulty level of a passage by looking at sentence length and vocabulary. The passages on Mindy’s Bookworms begin at Level 1, 200L and end at Level 12 1390L. From the website:

“The Lexile Framework is used throughout the country as a way to accurately measure the difficulty of a piece of text. It takes into account sentence length and word frequency to create a numerical value. This numerical value can then be used to track a student’s reading progress and help them find appropriate reading materials.”

First, the student finds his reading level by reading through a few passages to find the one that he can read making three mistakes or less. Josh and Megan both preferred to read theirs aloud to me, but they could have done this step independently.

Once the child knows which level he’s on, he chooses one of 10 passages to read to himself. I let my kids choose any of the passages that sounded interesting to them within their reading level. It didn’t seem to matter if they went in any kind of order among the ten choices.

The student reads the passage then answers ten multiple choice questions that cover concepts such as:

Main idea
“Right there” (The answer is in the passage and the student just has to find it.)
Compare/contrast
Fact or opinion
Sequencing
Cause and effect

Once all ten questions have been answered, the student clicks the “submit” button to get her score for the questions. She can then go back through each question, one by one, to see which ones were right or wrong.

I loved that this step tells the student what type of question each of the ten was so that he can get better at recognizing the question type and knowing what to look for. Not only that, but there is also an explanation of what each question was looking for and suggestions on how the student should have gone about finding the answer.

Mindy’s Bookworms is a great tool for helping to improve reading comprehension (because they can learn what to look for in their own reading) and help a child gain a better understanding of how to successfully navigate a reading comprehension test.

The twelve levels provided enough challenge for each of my three kids and the feedback was a valuable learning experience.

Whether you’re looking to improve your child’s understanding of reading comprehension questions for his own personal improvement at home or to help him achieve a higher level of success on standardized tests, Mindy’s Bookworms provides a valuable learning tool. It’s something that I would find valuable for practice in the weeks prior to taking a standardized test, even if I didn’t choose to use it year ‘round.

The website is a subscription service with a monthly fee of $9.95, with the first seven days being free

2012 Goals

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I referred you to my article at About One about making New Year’s resolutions that really stick. While I don’t like to make the traditional New Years’ resolutions, it is, as I mentioned, really hard to ignore that clean slate feeling, so I do usually wind up taking a look at my personal goals around this time of year.

I posted about some of my fitness goals yesterday on my fitness blog. Today, I wanted to share a couple of the fun personal goals that I’ve set for myself this year.

First, I’m going to really try to stick with Project 365 this year – except, I guess it’s Project 366 this year since it’s Leap Year. Either that or I get one freebie day that I can miss. Um, yeah, because I’m sure I’ll only miss one day considering how well I stuck with it last year.

In keeping with my plan to set specific goals, I decided that one thing I really want to do with P365 this year is, rather than just taking random photos all the time, I’d like to work on learning more about my camera and all the nifty, but rarely used settings.

On Sunday, Day 1, I decided that since I’ve had my camera for over a year now, it’s high time I learned to use the self-timer feature.

P365 – Day 1

Not only does that mean you get to see this {ahem} lovely photo of me, but you also get to see my awesome new “warm fuzzy” pants that replaced my beloved warm fuzzy pants from my obese days. I do not miss being obese, but I sure did miss those pants.

My second goal came from thinking about a post from Tina Reale on having a theme for the year. After reflecting and praying on it a bit, I decided that I want my theme for the year to be “outward-focused.”

See, I tend to have a serious self-centeredness issue. Things tend to be about me a lot and anything that might inconvenience me or make me uncomfortable tends to go undone. I really want to focus on other people this year and shift to a Christ-centered mindset, rather than such a self-centered one.

Again, in keeping with the whole specific goals idea, I wanted to come up with a plan that would help me shift my focus each day. I came up with the not-new idea of performing a random act of kindness each day.

P365 – Day 2

I figured that if I wake up each day with the idea that I’m going to be on the lookout for some way that I can bless someone else each day, that’s going to go a long way toward taking the focus off me.

It doesn’t have to be a major thing, just some act of kindness toward someone else. For example, Sunday, I noticed that Josh was out of Kool-Aid, his drink of choice, and the girls were out of tea. Usually, I’d remind them that they needed to make their Kool-Aid or tea. Sunday, I did it for them, start to finish, early enough that the drinks would be cold in time for dinner.

It was a simple thing and I didn’t know – or care – if they would even notice, but I knew that I took time out of what I was doing to do something for them.

I’ve made myself a sticky note to put on my laptop – where I’m sure to see it every day – to remind myself about P365 and my ROAK (random act of kindness) until I get into the habit of doing them every day.

What about you? Have you set any goals for 2012?