Money Saving e-book SALE!

Penny Pinchin' Mama Half Price Sale!

Is your shopping list bigger than your wallet? Are you overwhelmed with debt and don't know what to do?

Learn to get more out of your money! In the Penny Pinchin' Mama e-book, Jill Cooper, who raised two teenagers alone while making only $500 per month, shares practical hints and strategies she used to make the most out of every dollar.

"I was wondering how I was going to make it on our reduced income... Well, now I know I can do it and how to do it-- Your book has inspired me!" -Cynthia

Get it for half price THIS WEEK ONLY! Learn More at Penny Pinchin' Mama!

Heritage Builders Podcast

Passing along a heritage of Christian faith to your family is a parent's highest calling.
Heritage Builders' goal is to encourage and empower you in this great mission with
practical resources and inspiring ideas that really work and help your children develop a lasting love for God. We exist to equip, train and motivate parents to become intentional about building a strong spiritual heritage.

By providing tools that help equip and train parents, Heritage Builders is a successful ministry that reaches around the world. Check out the free podcast family seminar! Also download a free Family Night pack, start building your family's spiritual heritage.

Heritage Builders was founded in 1995 by six parents with a passion for helping others be intentional about passing on a Godly heritage to their children. From 1996-2006, Focus on the Family developed the ministry expanding its resources and presence. Our resources have been featured and offered by Family Life, Promise Keepers, and the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. In 2007, Heritage Builders was spun off to focus on its primary calling of training and equipping parents to pass the faith to the next generation. The ministry not only works with parents but also with and through churches to educate, equip and encourage parents in the spiritual formation process at home.

Scraping History

We have used History Scribe- for elementary and Jr High

And I have History Scholar for High School

Both on sale very inexpensively right now. Each one has areas to draw and to write about the topic. The History Scholar includes a time line on each double page spread, with smaller areas for a notable figure in history, an important event, or whatever student might want to write about. Think of it as scrapbooking history. There are also fairly deep essay questions that can be skipped if you so desire.

In the Kitchen

I got my love of cookbooks from my mother, both of us have way more cookbooks than a person can use, but we love them.
2 years ago I asked for Dining on a Dime for Christmas. My dear husband got it for me. What a great gift!

Lots of down home recipes using real food for real families!
This is a great cookbook to use for beginning cooks. Not only are there recipes, and money saving tips, but also fun kid recipes for face paint, bubbles,and soap crayons. Plus "gifts in a jar" and gift basket suggestions.

Fall into Hot Chocolate

Fall is my favorite season, and with the cooler weather we love to cozy up with a hot chocolate.
Here is a homemade Hot Chocolate mix that my family has used since I was a little girl.


One large Chocolate milk mix powder
One large ( 16 oz) Dry coffee creamer
One box (8 qt size) dry milk powder
One cup sugar

mix together and store in a large Tupperware container. Use 1/3 cup mix and 1 cup hot water.

With the flavored coffee creamers out, you can have hazelnut hot chocolate, vanilla hot chocolate, or amarretto hot chocolate.

A Great Giveaway!

Penny Raine is giving away a $50 gift certificate for her products!
Click HERE to enter!

For Sale

Learning At Home Kindergarten by Ann Ward

A Christian parent's guide with day by day lesson plans using the library as a resource. Subject areas covered- Bible, Reading, Math readiness, God's World (science, geography, community), Character building, Health, Manners and Safety, Art, Music, Physical Education, memory skills, stories and field trip suggestions. Recommended by Cathy Duffy, Mary Pride, and Gregg Harris.

I have this 1990 edition spiral-bound book for sale. It retails for around $45.00 and I am selling it for $15.00. It is from a non-smoking home and is in good/fair condition.
I accept Paypal or prompt Money Orders
please email/post is interested,
ekocmom@aol.com

SOLD, excellent condition, non smoking pet free home.
Learning Adventures Volume II, A New World of Adventure.

A New World of Adventure is the second volume in the Learning Adventures series. It includes 180 days of lesson plans (1485 pages) for grades 4-8. This curriculum guide consists of three history-based units that include all subjects but math. Each of the three units includes 60 days of lesson plans, and each corresponds to one of the following historical periods:

Unit One - Into a New Land
Unit Two - Life in the Colonies
Unit Three - Revolution and Beyond

Includes a great study of the US Constitution.
Uses library books and the Bible!

SOLD

Fun Freebies!

Currclick is having a treasure hunt for homeschool curriculum freebies until September 22

I have found 19 of them
Starting on the home page:

1. Pirate banner (top of page)
2. Bottom of page
3. Top 100 products (right side of page)
4. Free Stuff (left side of page)
5. Follow your favorites (click notices on left side of page)
6. About CurrClick
7. Quick Start Guide/ FAQ's
8. Troubleshooting
9. Contact us
10. Privacy Policy


Starting in Account:

11. View or change account settings
12. View or change my billing address
13. Change my account password
14. View the orders I have made (also same as show all orders on top of page)
15. View all products I've purchased with download links
16. View all products updated since my last download
17. View all products awaiting my review
18. Select how I wish to be contacted by publishers
19. Wishlist (which is currently not working for some strange reason)

Have fun on your treasure hunt!

Science in Creation Week

In my quest to find a science program for Bella this year I’ve had several ideas, from THIS to THIS. THIS is another very professional free option. But I didn’t really want to print all that out and Office Depot is expensive to print and bind stuff.

I found in my files this chart of the areas of Science that correspond with the days of creation. So I went through and plugged in resources I already had to the areas of science. There are 12 areas which we can spend 3 weeks on each. Some areas I had a lot of resources others not so much. So sometimes we will spend time every day and others only 3 times a week. So THIS is what I have so far.

The I Want to Know More About... series is a set of books I bought at a library sale. I sell Usborne books, (mostly to myself) so I have lots of them. Magic School Bus books would work great too. I only have 1 personally but the library has many and one can use the Dvds. I’m also using any free School Express unit worksheets that coordinate with the topics, but I've not added them to my outline yet.

If you want to use this planning worksheet for your own books HERE it is both in pdf and Word.

Cake of Education

Okay, even though we started last week we didn't get a lot of actual curriculum work done.
Mostly it was organizing and figuring out what Emilie wanted to do and transferring all that to
a chart. So this week we are ready to begin the stuff she picked out.

I think I was getting way crazy about all the points. It was really stressing me. Once I saw that reading books about the historical period and biographies was listed I had a light bulb moment and said "HEY, I can do this more Charlotte Mason style like I wanted and still have some projects too."

We are doing Apologia Biology, High Way to English for grammar ( diagramming the book of Romans, i'm so excited) and Math separate. But Emilie marked a few things of interest in science and math so I said "That's just extra frosting on the cake of education." Emilie liked that, thought it was funny. I think she added it to her favorite quotes on Facebook LOL.

Anyway, I don't think she is spending as much time on each subject as she needs to finish in the time allotted. We are doing 4 units; 9 weeks on each unit. I want to finish American History in chronological order. Then next year go back and start at unit 1.
So now I just have to encourage her to spend more time going deep and narrow rather than wide and shallow.

About time

We started school last week. We didn't accomplish a whole lot but at least we got things rolling.
Emilie will be doing Far Above Rubies, starting in Unit 6 to complete American History.
Olivia will be doing this Narnia Unit . Bella will be doing Sonlight that I was able to borrow.

I had thought about doing this with Bella for science. But all of those topics are covered in Learning Adventures and that is what we will be doing next. So it is back to the drawing board.

All girls are taking a Beginning Speech class this year. Bella will be starting piano lessons given by a great young lady we have known for 11 years. I think the older girls will be participating in a movie making club, and teen game nights. Plus we have Faithgirls twice a month.

AWANA starts this week. We dropped the Trek and Journeys and will just have "Youth Group".

~Menu for the week~
Shredded Beef sandwiches
oven fried chicken
burgers
chicken something
pork chops
pizza

Book Review- The Secret of Indigo Moon.

The Secret of Indigo Moon by G. P. Taylor is a graphic novel about 3 orphans living in an unbearable orphanage. The is book 2 in a series, Book one which is referenced often in The Secret of Indigo Moon. Because I have not read book one I had a hard time getting into the plot, getting to know the characters and even liking them. Erik is the only character who is likable. I usually do like youth fiction, Redwall, Harry Potter, and Charlie Bone are some of my favorites, but I did not enjoy The Secret of Indigo Moon. Maybe it was the graphic novel concept that didn't appeal to me. None of my daughters ( ages 15, 12, and 9) were even interested enough to read it either. Maybe it is more of a boy's book?
Thank you Tyndale for this review copy.

What's the word?

My friend Abbie wrote this wonderful post about the word nevertheless.

If you want to be touch by God's love today go read Abbie's post.

blog troubles

I've had to go to all white for now. The new blogger template designer has messed up my blog and you couldn't see the text/links very well. The new designer wouldn't let me change it at all.

It looks so plain and sad now. A moment of silence if you please........

Blog Tour- What's in the Bible?

What's In the Bible?

I received the 3rd DVD in this new series by Phil Vischer, creator of Veggie Tales. This series takes kids and parents on a fun filled journey through the Bible! DVD #3 Wandering' in the Desert is all about the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

This is way better than Veggie Tales in my opinion. Think Sesame Street meets Sunday School.

Phil Vischer is our leader, with a colorful cast of characters; Buck Denver the Newscaster, Sunday School Teacher with her pointer and flannel board, plus several more. Like Veggie Tales there's singing catchy tunes with each episode.

I was asked by Tyndale if I would use this in our homeschool and I have to say that this is a great tool to introduce many topics to K-3 maybe even 4th grade.

I personally love to plan lessons so I took some time to write out some topics of interest with some available lapbooks, worksheets, and websites.

Part 1- Book of Leviticus

Vocabulary-Holy, ethical laws, ritual laws

Leviticus Lapbook-

10 Commandments Lapbook-

Obedience lapbook Discussion questions-What are the rules at your house about obedience? Why is obedience important? What is the consequence for disobedience? What is God's consequence for us when we disobey?

Archaeology

Mapwork-route from Egypt to Canaan Exodus Route

Family Tree-

Part 2- Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy

Vocab-covenant, Holy God, Pentateuch, Bemidbar

Numbers Lapbook

Deuteronomy Lapbook

~Character-

Trust, Trust

Complaining, Complaining

~Social Studies/Geography

Census

~Science

Deserts

Energy, Energy, Sun, Sun

Fire Safety, Fire Safety, Fire Safety

Snakes

As you can see there are lots of topics in each show that are great stepping off points to incorporate in your school day.

Don't forget the great bonus sections!

Robot and Rabbit-lessons here include Gentleness/meekness, respect for people and property, bullying, Eph 4:2

Universe- take off on a study of Christian Scientist using Men of Science, Men of God and learning about DNA

I received this DVD from Tyndale House Publishers in exchange for my honest review.

Book Give away

My friend Abbie is hosting a book give-away on her blog....The book is GLAEN...

Here are the rules:

1. Stop by

2. Post a comment stating why you'd like a copy of this book

3. Be sure to include your email!!!

Two will be chosen, contest ends last week of July!

Good Luck

www.abbiereviews.blogspot.com

Mini Trip

Thursday, June 17 we went to Fort Worth. Lindy ran in a track meet, and did well. The weather was just great! We went swimming at the hotel. Woke up Friday and headed down to Austin.

I called my mom when we got to Waco and surprise! She had forgotten that we were coming down. So Friday afternoon-evening we hung out and relaxed at mom's. Bella and mom really had fun with the chickens.

Saturday morning we took off for the zoo. I really like zoos. Bella and I had a great time!

Then we ate lunch at a restaurant that the girls and I went too a couple months ago, and wanted to share it with Lindy. The restaurant is called "Which Wich" It is a fun cool little place.

Saturday evening we went swimming. I'm not sure I like boys "makin' eyes" at the "sisters."

Sunday we went to church, then mom, I and the girls went to look at model homes. This is something we all like to do. Later that evening Papa Robert gave the girls some money and took us to Half Priced books, and ice cream. The girls bought a couple books apiece.

The girls love to spend time at mom's. They love to explore and hike in the woods. Bella loves the dogs and the chickens.

It was a really nice trip!

Lindy running the 400m

On Saturday, June 19 we went to the Austin Zoo.

As soon we walked in the zoo we saw this interesting insect pulling a small tarantula.

We also saw a dung beetle rolling some dung, but nobody took a picture.

One of five tigers at the zoo

Black Bear

Black Bear

Leopard

Monkey in a car. Now that's not something you see everyday!

Shy little monkey

Peacocks and chickens had the run of the whole zoo.

At one time Olivia wanted a lizard for a pet.

Feeding the deer

Coming home (mom's house) we saw these little fawns across the road from her house.

I didn't realize that we didn't take any pictures of our family! I guess that's what I get for putting the kids in charge of the camera! I'll try harder to get more pics of the family.

The girls and I are going back to Austin in July.

Super cute organizing tool

Mom's Home Journal

So what's included in the journal? . . . so far:

beautiful cover & spines for each season
emergency & contact info pages
year at-a-glance, week-at-a-glance, and other "at-a-glance" planning pages
divider pages (could also be used as cover pages for individual journals - like a recipe book) for each season
calendars for July 2010 - June 2011 (eight styles for each month)
lists: shopping, gift planning, goal setting for each season
a variety of to-do list pages for each season
household forms for menu planning, housecleaning, & financial work for each season
pages to build and plan your routines for each season
a variety of journaling pages (some with "notebooking flair") for each season

Mini Trip

Had a mini trip to Austin over the weekend. Good Times.
Hope to post pictures soon.

Menu

Chicken Nachos
Grilled pork chops/fried apples/corn
grilled chicken
pizza
roast