Mom of Many

Monday, May 4, 2015

Motivate Your Child Action Plan Giveaway!

I'm super excited to share this giveaway with you! You may remember I introduced you to Motivate Your Child, a book that I have reread several times already, just a few months ago. Motivate Your Child Action Plan is a new parenting resource from the authors Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller that takes all of the wisdom from the book and helps you create your own customized strategy for your family. This book will be a power tool in your hands when it comes to parenting the heart of your child!

Stay tuned, I'll be giving you a complete review of this awesome resource in upcoming weeks. But for now - I get to let you in on a Giveaway & Party you do not want to miss!

To celebrate the release of Motivate Your Child Action Plan, we are joining other members of the Launch Team in a wonderful giveaway filled with an iPod Touch, $50 iTunes Gift Card and several biblical parenting products! A value of nearly $350! Here's what you could win:

Apple iPod touch 16GB Black/Silver ($195 value)

In the Box - iPod Touch, Apple EarPods, Lightning to USB cable, QuickStart guide
Brilliant 4 Retina display with Multi-Touch IPS technology
Front-Facing FaceTime camera with 1.2MP photos & 720p HD video recording.
iOS 6 features - Siri, Apple Designed Maps, Integrated Facebook, Shared Photo Streams, Passbook & more

iTunes Gift Card ($50 value)

Because you'll need apps and music for that iPod Touch!

The Christian Parenting Handbook and Companion Guide ($56.95 value)

The Christian Parenting Handbook contains nuggets of parenting wisdom condensed into 50 short chapters, each one biblical, practical, and relevant for parents of children ages 2-18. Learn appropriate ways to correct, instruct, and set limits. Glean wisdom for dealing with emotions, conflict, and developing closeness in your family… and much more. These 50 strategies provide you with hands-on tools for parenting children of any age. The Companion Guide is a workbook of 50 lessons along with 50 audio tips to take you through The Christian Parenting Handbook step by step. Each lesson contains advice from Dr Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller in a 5 minute audio tip and then offers teaching, an assignment, a Bible verse, and a prayer to help you apply each idea or strategy in your family. The tips are available to you as MP3 downloads and access to them comes in the workbook.

Family Time Activities Book Bundle ($45 value)

Your kids will have fun learning about God's Word and how it applies to their lives. Science experiments, art activities, and games are all designed to reinforce spiritual truth. Each lesson is clear and simple, yet profound even for parents! You'll teach kids how exciting it is to learn about God and his ways. Your kids will love these books, but more importantly you'll build spiritual memories of Family Time in your home. Titles in this giveaway include: Seeing Is Believing Playing for Keeps Running the Race Enter the Giveaway using the Rafflecopter below! This giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY to those 18 years of age or older. Void where prohibited by law. a Rafflecopter giveaway Join us for the Action Plan Facebook Party on Wednesday, May 20 at 9:00PM ET. There will be even more prizes and giveaways there and the authors of Action Plan will be present to answer your questions! The winner of this giveaway will be announced at the Facebook party!

RSVP here for the Party!

Ready to Look GOOD?!

You can help Sam & I get to India this summer, and look good doing it. You won't want to miss these limited edition t-shirts! Thank you for showing us your support... we'd love to see some selfies of you in your new shirt :-)

Here's the details - you can order online by clicking on the links, shipped directly to you. (unless you are a MN peep - then, you can save shipping cost and pick it up)

All orders must be placed by 12:00pm on May 19th - Orders are scheduled to ship on May 29th

Shipping is $7.95 per order.

(If you are local to the Lakeville, MN area, save shipping costs by selecting "club pickup" as your shipping method during checkout. Your order will be available for pickup at Hosanna Lutheran Church from 6:30-8:00 on June 4th. )

Note: All Easy Tees'y products are sold as Pre-Orders. Orders will NOT ship out immediately.

from $20.00

Women's Soft Style T-Shirt - Simply Love - House of Hope

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Doing What They Do Best

My parents came to visit! We miss them terribly.

So glad that we decided to mostly hang around at home, doing what they do best...

Yep... they have a grandma who knows how to use a double mashoonga sword... and takes them on!

And I got a new outdoor ceiling fan in my "happy spot!" compliments of my favorite handy-men.

Can't come all the way to Texas and not go shopping for lawn ornaments.

Yes, this is a giant T-Rex with a chicken in it's teeth...only in Texas!

Non-stop knitting lessons, and plenty of catching up to do. We love having them here!

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

No Fear Biology!

Have you ever heard you "can't" teach high school sciences at home? Well, don't listen to them... it's more fun at home!

Dissections for example... with a couple of specimens and tools - you're ready to go. Plus, you don't have to share with lab partners, you get them all to yourself! No scalpel happy friends dicing it up before you're ready.

YouTube has plenty of excellent videos to guide you step by step through the process. And, you can pause when you want to.

Of course, my favorite part of HS science class was goofing off... and you can do that better at home too! However, hiding crayfish parts in siblings beds is "off limits" :-)

Home Science Tools sells great, affordable kits - you can dissect just about anything - we did a worm, fish, frog and crayfish. We got to see all the amazing internal structures, took our time exploring and cleaned it up fast.

I haven't had this much fun...ever! No more fear!!

Modern Milestones from Spelling You See : A TOS Crew Review

Modern Milestones from Spelling You See

~~Spel...Sepll...Speling~~...SPELLING! How many attempts does a homeschool teacher have to take at getting this correct? I'm at the end of my rope...

If you can relate, Bentz Test Laboratory has a lifeline for you - Spelling You See from Demme Learning (makers of Math U See) - will blow a brand new breath-of-fresh air on spelling instruction!

Many popular programs approach spelling with long lists of rules, or longer lists of words to memorize followed by a dreaded weekly spelling test. Not Spelling You See - This program is a one-of-a-kind, innovative and effective way to teach spelling IN CONTEXT. Plus - it's fun for your student, really.

By placing your child in a level that matches their language development (no grade levels here) your child will start learning spelling in a natural way, that appeals to many learning styles. The Bentz Test Laboratory tester was placed in the Modern Milestones (Level G). This is one of 2 newly designed levels. Levels are available for all stages in language development - you can check out a more detailed description of their Five Developmental Stages of Spelling as well as download some Readiness Guides to find the proper place for your student.

Modern Milestones is designed for students in the Word Extension stage of spelling. My tester was working with base words, suffixes & prefixes, nouns & plurals, Past tense, doubling final consonants , and the one-on-one rule during this review period. It goes on to work with word endings like -ous, -ation, -ion, science words and more with base words.

The Modern Milestones set includes: Instructor Guide, two Student Workbooks plus erasable colored pencils for marking. 36 Lessons feature passages used for copywork, dictation, and exercises that focus on interesting people like artists (Jan van Eyck, Botticelli) inventors (Gutenberg, Da Vinci), composers (Amati, Bach) , scientists (Bacon, Kepler), authors (Shakespeare, Crevantes) and many other fascinating characters who have influenced the world in modern time periods. It's a great companion to history studies too!

Designed to be completed in 5 short daily lessons, it is a full year of instruction.

My student, who is in 6th grade, was able to work completely independently, except for the weekly dictation from me. I must admit that teacher-intensive spelling programs are the death of spelling around here...who has time for that? Not me!

By using repetition and exposure to the written passage - this program makes spelling make sense. Spelling is developed in context, and much more naturally than memorizing rules and lists. The student carefully reads and marks the passage -called "chunking", copies the passage (great for your handwriting practice as well) and uses it in other activities (like fill-in-the-blank). Finally, they complete a dictation exercise to show what has been learned.

No weekly tests! My tester loved that instead of "# of errors", she was marked " # of words spelled correctly" - I love that this new level included a word count for me in the Instructor Guide as well.

This particular tester is truly a terrible speller. After many attempts with rules based programs, I had just about given up...determined she may just be "one of those people who can't spell". Spelling You See has really changed my mind! I am seeing HUGE leaps of improvement in her spelling AND in her writing skills. Spelling is a dreaded subject anymore. One of the easiest to use and most effective programs ever, it get two thumbs up!!

If you have had it with spelling, Please give Spelling You See a try...

Find Spelling You See on Social Media

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpellingYouSee
G+: https://plus.google.com/+SpellingYouSeePage/posts
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SpellingYouSee
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/SpellingYouSee/

Some other Crew Members reviewed - Ancient Achievements (level F).

See what other members of the Crew thought here

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Early Elementary K-3, Book 3: Modern Painting and Sculpture from ARTistic Pursuits : A TOS Crew Review

Early Elementary K-3, Book 3: Modern Painting and Sculpture from
ARTistic Pursuits

Art. Can you hear the hyperventilating of homeschool moms everywhere? This subject strikes fear and trembling into some of us... the idea of brushes, paper, and **gasping** PAINT can make the most devoted homeschool teacher cower in the corner!

Okay, maybe I'm being a tad overdramatic...but, ART is a subject that frequently makes me sweat. How am I going to teach something that I am so "personally challenged" in?

Thankfully, ARTistic Pursuits is here to rescue us. They produce full art curriculum for grades K-12 (start breathing again...) I am a LONG time fan of this company and have used many of their books over the years with the testers at Bentz Test Laboratory. They make it so easy to teach quality art, that even those of us in corner can come out and play :-)

Our newest art adventure is from Early Elementary K-3, Book 3: Modern Painting and Sculpture. This book covers 36 projects which will introduce the artists, styles and mediums from Impressionist to Modern Eras. Different mediums are practiced, including painting and sculpture . These books are thoughtfully designed to teach your child to observe, think critically, and create.

The lessons are clearly outlined with necessary materials & pictures to guide you through the process. One of my favorite parts of this curriculum is the information about the artist's time and perspective. Questions to help you guide your student into observing critically are included as well. My testers are much more likely to look at art in a deeper way after working in these books.

This books covers greats like Monet, Renoir, Cassat, Seurat, Van Gogh. After spending time with the Impressionists - they move on to more modern art movements like Cubism, Assemblage, Abstract, Realism and even Computer Art.

They recommend scheduling one lesson a week, and completing the full book over the course of one year. Throughout the book you will find children's book and video suggestions to add to your art studies.

I have found that just leaving this book in an available location can result in children getting interested in creating art on their own!

Here's a couple of projects we worked on... rather than opening and beginning with Lesson 1, I decided to let them pick a few projects that caught their fancy to start with.

First - we read some information and history on the artist. Then, I took a deep breath - and gave them paints...

It wasn't even that scary, and the book inspired me to "go off plan" and have them create a color wheel in the "points" style too! Hey, maybe this art thing's not that bad after all... plus, we're having fun!

Watch out Seraut, there's some new kids in town!

That went so well, we decided to try a new technique - Assemblage. With step-by-step instructions and some creativity - we were creating our own 3-D art. I love that many of the materials are common household "odds and ends" and not only expensive art supplies. You can buy supplies directly from Artistic Pursuits as well.

Giraffes, dinosaurs and A TEXAS Long-horn... of course!

Remember, I said if you left this book out... My middle schooler found it and decided to create on her own project, completely independently.

You don't need to be afraid of teaching art any longer. If we can do it (with the help of ARTistic Pursuits) you can too! We're all proud of what we created, and I even had fun :-)

Other great books from ARTistic Pursuits you may want to check out: