Homeschool Lite

Winter and Bird Feeders

2012-01-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, its been a while since I last updated on the blog here. My laptop finally died on me and so I don't have the luxury of cuddling up on my big recliner chair in the evening to type. I can only get the typing in when I can because we all share one computer now.

We had a wonderful Christmas and Marilyn was the wonderful recipient of an Ipod Touch by her grandparents. I'll tell you that not only Marilyn gets to enjoy it that's for sure. Our goal though is to save up for an Ipad. I love the Ipod, its small, portable and you can download tons of apps both just for fun, and educational. I love the educational apps though. They really reinforce things we've done for the day, or teach something I am really not good at teaching. Exactly the real reason I would love to get the Ipad because there are writing apps and worksheet apps. Something not made for the Ipod. Anyways we had a wonderful Christmas and now we are in the middle of winter.
I will say that winter really recently has just started in our neck of the woods. Really, really unusual for us in this neck of the woods. We usually start seeing snow in October and don't see the ground until March. Regardless though, its still January and still, the middle of winter which always seems relentless and never ending.

So today for some winter fun we thought we would make some bird feeders for the birds. Granted we don't have any trees next to our apartment building. We do have a picnic table. So the girls made two different types of bird feeders.

The first using orange juice cartons. They had tons of fun smearing peanut butter on them. I had Maggie use gloves because I'm not sure if she still has her peanut allergy. So its better to be safe than sorry that's for sure.

Once they were done smearing the peanut butter, they rolled their orange juice containers in the bird seed, which we just bought a cheap bag at Walmart. Nothing special.

What we got were bird feeders that look just like this!

The girls were very proud of their feeders they made today.

After that they were ready and waiting to take them outside. Now the waiting begins. To see if any birds come our way to feed off of them.

Little Reader's Chinese

2011-12-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone. Its been a while since I last wrote on the blog that's for sure.
I just wanted to hop on and share with everyone the next round of Brillkids educational products that we've enjoyed using.

Little Reader's Chinese program is brought to you by Little Reader, the program we've been using with Maggie since completing Your Baby Can Read a year ago.
I must say we were very excited to jump in and give the Chinese program a try, as I've always wanted to teach my girls a foreign language.

I grew up in a house where Polish was spoken by my father , but was only spoken when he was with his family. I am familiar with the language when I hear it but never learned to actually speak it. So to teach my daughters to learn to speak something other than English is exciting for sure.

Since Mandarin Chinese seems to be offered as a language course in the private high schools in our area I decided this may give Maggie and also my other girls some exposure so should they decide to learn to speak it later on it may come a bit easier to them.

Little Reader Chinese
In order to use Little Reader Chinese you first my own the Little Reader program. The Chinese program is set up pretty much the same as Little Reader in that you recieve up to 12 months worth of lessons , that cover 334 categories, containing 3576 words, 2768 images, 5232 pronunciation files, 1138 picture audio and sound effects, and over 520 video clips. Just like Little Reader, Little Reader Chinese lessons comes with 3 professionally recorded voices, 3-5 quality images, 2-4 picture audio (word commentaries or sound effects), videos to better illustrate certain categories, such as animals and action words, and stories.
Little Reader Chinese is set up in Mandarin and comes in both Tradional and Simplified Chinese. I'm still learning the differences between the two and really there isn't much difference other than location of where you would live in China.

The program is set up with three native speakers. It also contains a phonics component that teaches them how to read pinyin and how to listen to the different sounds.

Our experience with the Little Reader Chinese

My girls were definitely ready to dive in and give it a try. After all I've downloaded some of the slides of Chinese on Little Reader and they've always enjoyed it.
I will say that my daughter do enjoy hearing the language but picking it up is another story I guess. Because no one in our home speaks Mandarin Chinese and its not a language you hear everyday I'm finding Maggie isn't picking it up as fast as she learned how to read. With that said though I think we'll continue to press on because the more they hear it the more they learn. I know after watching multiple Dora the Explorer cartoons that Maggie has picked up Spanish words. Though she doesn't speak in Spanish , she is at least learning the words, making them familiar to her.

I did get a small clip video of Maggie listening in on the Chinese. Though she isn't saying much I'm hoping she is at least absorbing some of it in while she's quite.

I will definitely say it doesn't have anything to do with the product either. The program is top notch and the voices are clearn to hear. I think that for learning a different language to be successful I'm thinking they really need to hear it all of the time. I know the one thing about the program that has been tough for us is that even though they give us the word in Chinese, there is a picture and the reader gives a sentence and we have no idea other then then the word we just heard , what the voice is saying. If there were only some subtitles or something so we know what all the other words are. But then maybe as time goes on and we go through the program even more , maybe it will all blend in together and make sense.

I definitely recommend this program to anyone who wants to teach their children Chinese, or even just wants at least the exposure to the program. It is fun for a child that is very visual and likes to hear the sound of the language. Since Maggie enjoys the sound and it sometimes makes her giggle. I guess we'll press on further and see what happens. I'll have to update further down the road to see how we do with it.

As for now , Little Reader Chinese is being enjoyed. Even if we aren't understanding everything that is said in the slides. Even if Maggie and my other daughters learn a few words it will definitely be worth using.

Now with all of this said I'm not running a giveaway on the product. But did find a website with someone who is if your interested in giving Little Reader Chinese a try:
http://figur8.net/baby/2011/12/02/little-reader-chinese-review-and-giveaway/#

Brillkids Little Reader review and Giveaway

2011-09-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Brillkids, what can I say? This product really does produce, and does what it claims to do. I know that there are many out there who believe that teaching young children to read before school age (generally 5 or 6yrs of age) isn't a good thing, and this review isn't about debating this issue. What I do want to share is a really great product that truly produces results in teaching infants/toddlers and young children to read.

Our journey began when my youngest at the age of 3 saw a commercial for Your Baby Can Read. As any skeptical parent who never met a baby that could read I took the infomercial with a grain of salt. Thinking it was another money scam out on the market and I wasn't going to pay for that.
Fast forward to today. Last December (2010) we were shopping at Walmart and we found a lone Your Baby Can Read on the shelf and thought we'd give it a try, and we did. What I saw was nothing short than miraculous. My 4yr old was reading words that not even my 7yr old could read at the time and she loved every minute of it! Maggie blew through the program in little as almost 2 months and she wanted more. Of course Your Baby Can Read was a precursor, a starting point if you will, and in that time I learned my baby girl is very much a visual spatial learner. This is why she picked it up so well and so quickly.

After completing the Your Baby Can Read I went on a search to see if there was more, anything else I could use to continue on with what we started.
Sure enough there was! I found Brillkids, and all I can say is wow!
I wasn't sure if Maggie was going to enjoy the format of learning words off of a computer versus having first learned them off of the television. So I thought we'd give it a trial run with Brillkids trial of their Little Reader software.
Maggie enjoyed and continues to enjoy Brillkids.

We love the Powerpoint features of the program

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and even the extra add on of being able to download educational videos onto the Brillkids Little Reader and Maggie gets to sing along.

We love the printing out of the flashcards so we can practice words away from the computer as well.

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What have I learned using Brillkids Little Reader? That this is a great product for young children , babies and infants.Its marketed to those that have infants and toddlers but works just as well for families who have young children (ages 4 and up) wanting to learn to read but just aren't getting the concept of phonics down. This was one area Maggie had difficulty with. We were going through the notorious cccccc..aaaaaa...tttt? What does that say? Maggie: ccccccc.....aaaaa...ttt. Frustration set in. She just wasn't hearing what she was sounding out. Phonics does take a good deal of auditory learning and if your child isn't an auditory learner then this is where frustration with reading begins.
Once she was able to see and hear the words it made much more sense to her and she was able to see the phonics patterns so she started figuring out words herself.
Its a great product for young children ( I'm talking 4 and above) if they are visual learners. That, yes, they do include phonics ( for those phonics fanatics out there) but in a more visual way rather then the old fashion, " Let's sound out each letter way."
I definitely can't be happier with Brillkids Little Reader, and neither can Maggie. Little Reader gets a two thumbs up in our house. So what are you waiting for? Give it a try now!

Our end result ( a rare reading by Maggie Reed, of the Little Red Hen)

Okay, so are you ready to try out Little Reader Semester 1 for yourself?

To enter the Giveaway: 1 entry per post..(this will give you 6 entries)

1. Follow Homeschool Lite

2. Go to Brillkid's website and post one thing that you learned or liked on their website.

3. Post this Giveaway on Facebook ( leave your Facebook name)

4. Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter (leave your Twitter name)

5. Follow Homeschool Lite by email ( the bar is on the right hand side)

6. Share this Giveaway on your blog

This Giveaway will expire on October 14, 2011!!!!!

Brillkids has given me the product to try and use with my daughter. They in no way paid for my opinion, it is my own.

Terms and Conditions of the Giveaway:
The winner will have 48 hours to respond to email or another winner will be chosen.
Fulfillment is through another party. I am not liable for missing prizes._

Giveaway is now closed!!!
Congratulations to the McElwain Family for winning the 1st Semester Brillkids Giveaway!

A Rough Start

2011-09-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why some of your best laid plans go out the door? I know I do.
This year is not going the way I wished it would. As I sit here and read other blogs about happy families that have found exactly what they want and its working great. I'm finding that I'm drawing in air and taking a deep breath and sighing it all out.

I'm finding my days filled with a 5 yr old telling me that she doesn't want to be homeschooled, that its no fun, and she wants to be back at school with her friends. Why do Hannah and Katie get to go and not me? I get to hear everyday.
I try so hard to keep things light and fun for her. Today we made an awesome recipe of playdough that used jello in the recipe. It was by far the best recipe for playdough I've ever made by far. Definitely gives you that store bought playdough without it being store bought. I have to say that I found it on Pinterst by the way.

We've done lots of arts and crafts. So don't think that I'm pushing my 5yr old all on academics. That's not it at all.
Last week we made a fun rainbow out of fruit loops. Talked about the colors (even though she knows them already), but talked about the colors that were in the rainbow. She surprised me and already knew that. But it turned out really cute.

Tomorrow, if its not raining I plan on making some sidewalk paint.
So really we're doing fun stuff that is fun to do. But for some reason Maggie just isn't so happy about it. Maybe with some time things will change.
But I just can't seem to hit my stride yet with any of this.

Even getting Marilyn excited about learning has been tough. She's been doing her work but its been tough for me to keep track of what she's finishing and what she isn't. We're using Christian light for her for Math and Language Arts. Still using the Stories of the Saints which by the way really does have excellent stories in it. Just hard for me to keep track of what she's doing because she thinks she can blow through the comprehension questions and skip the activities , which can range from drawing illustrations of what she read in the story, to writing reports. She just isn't taking her time on any of it.

I'm beginning to wonder if my heart is in any of this. Maybe not having them all home at the same time is affecting me and the girls more than I know.
I just know that this year has not gotten off to a great start for me and I wish I could make it better.

Dolphin Tale Giveaway

2011-08-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

Its time for those giveaways again. They are so fun and you just never know if you might win something cool.

Dolphin Tales is opening up September 23 Nation wide and the mission is for everyone to get out and watch a good wholesome movie.
The neat part is that the two main characters are homeschooled. Finally, a movie about children who are homeschooled.

So check out the I Take Joy blog and enter for a cool giveaway package and get out, see a family oriented movie without violence, junk or twaddle.

Back to school

2011-08-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

I think sometimes my best laid plans don't always go as planned.
Even though I planned on having all of the girls at home this year it didn't quite happen that way.
At the last moment we were offered a 'good deal' at the school. So Katie and Hannah went back on Wednesday to St. Thomas. I'm not sure if I'm happy with this set up quite yet. But we're going to give it a try and see what happens with it.

A picture of Hannah and Katie on the first day of school ( August 24,2011). It was a really windy day that day.

So for now its Marilyn and Maggie at home. Marilyn is nursing a growth plate fracture that happened when she was walking Belle, her cousin's dog, at Grammy's house. It couldn't have happened at the most worst time because she signed up for cheerleading. The nice part is she's still able to participate by sitting and doing the arm motions to the cheers. Tim took her to get a boot so that it will help her be able to get around better. I'll post a picture of the broken ankle girl later on when she gets home.

As for Maggie. Maggie isn't quite understanding why she can't go to school like Katie and Hannah can. Its hard to explain to a 5yr old why. I really try to tell her that its because mommy wants to spend more time with her. I don't want or need to remind her that the real reason is because the school isn't equipt for Maggie. She doesn't need to be reminded she isn't like all the kids. So I'm trying to make our lemonade with the lemons we have and make this fun for her.

I will say next year though we just won't be going through all this hassle. The girls do fine no matter where I put them and honestly home is better for them anyways. It doesn't seem natural to me to send my kids away. It never felt natural to me when I worked in daycare all those many years ago when Marilyn and Katie were little. I used to take them with me but it just didn't feel right to me. It still doesn't.
Sometimes I wonder how I'll be when the girls are all grown up and gone off to college. Really, what will I do with myself? I've tried things like going out , doing stuff. But I have a very difficult time feeling good about it when I enjoy being around and being with my girls.

Anyways, thought I would end this blog with a picture of Maggie and her little spot I'm setting up. I'm not done with it. But its a start. Don't mind the table. Its old and needs to be sanded down and refinished again. I think this will be my next project before the snow flies around here.
We spent yesterday decorating a file box for her to stack her Christian Light Light Units (workbooks) in. She really loves her reading and Math. Amazingly enough even though she just turned 5 she is doing really well with the 1st grade (100) level work. Right now she is working on her Learning to Read, which she already knows how to read, so we kind of quickly work through that part But it has lots of other stuff in the workbooks that is very age appropriate for her. Like visual discrimination, making patterns on a dot grid, the phonics practice, and handwriting. So we just are going to work through it quickly and I'll let her lead the way as to what she is capable of. Maggie is a smart little peanut for sure.
If you'd like to share pictures of your school room. Leave a link in our comments. I love seeing other school room pictures. I'm always looking for good ideas.

The Grace Card Giveaway

2011-08-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

As you all know I enjoy a great giveaway. I'll admit though that I hadn't heard of this movie.
I read the review and it sounds like a really good movie. I always enjoy a good movie with a good message too.It reminds me of when I watched Fireproof with Kirk Cameron. The message was astounding in that movie. I'm sure its the same in this movie, the Grace Card.

You can hop on over to Day by Day in our World Blog and enter the giveaway that is being held from August 18th to the 30th.

Poor Man's Canvas and more art

2011-08-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

So what do you do when your low on cash and need a canvas to paint on? You create one yourself. It was mighty simple and I learned a few things along the way while creating one.

First, you need cardboard, or wood, an old white sheet or even a pillowcase will do. And a staple gun.

Next, either cut the sheet or slide the cardboard or wood into the pillowcase. I chose to use an old pillow cover that had a broken zipper on it. So no loss there.

Last, staple the sheet. Make sure you get it as straight as you possibly can. And Viola' a poor man's canvas.

Pretty simple huh? Marilyn decided to give her water color picture a try on this. She used masking tape to make the design.

What did we learn about the poor man's canvas we created? That using water color paints is pretty touch and go. It has a tendency to bleed under the tape. Something like tempra or acrylic would work even better on a sheet. But I will admit the bleeding did give it a little character.

Next we turned to more collage work. Marilyn really enjoyed making a collage so she tried a couple ideas that I found online.
The first was the 3D snow man. This was used by making snow paint. With a can of shaving cream and some glue its amazing what you can create. I used a couple cups of shaving cream to one cup of glue and the result was really cool and amazing. I will give you a hint that after stirring it , let it sit for a few minutes before using. Otherwise its really gooey and messy. To make our snow man we used measuring cups. We tried to gloop it on but it wasn't working. So we used a 1/2 cup for the bottom, a 1/3 cup for the middle and a 1/4 cup for the head. We did not fill the cups up all the way either. Filling half of them was plenty. We learned if you used to much it just ran down the paper and off it. Once it dries though its really neat to touch. Almost reminds you of the leather in new cars. At least that was the description my husband used.
Marilyn used some felt for the hat, eyes, mouth and scarf and then went outside and found a couple of sticks. She finished the bottom with some cotton balls that she spread out to make it look like snow. Brilliant!

After she was done with that she worked on her next collage. This one turned out pretty neat to. The night before we looked for an old book, and tore out a few pages. Granted it tore me in two to tear up a book, but it was for the sake of art so it had to happen. She pained the pictures all the colors we had except for black, and then let them dry overnight. In the morning she painted another sheet of white paper with a blue background and let that dry. Once the background was dry her mission was to cut the pages from the book she painted the night before into a landscape. It had to contain buildings, trees, grass sun, clouds, etc. And this was her end result after gluing it all on:

In the meantime we had a really nice surprise come to our doorstep. Once a year or so Cole's Foundation sends Maggie a really nice care package for her birthday. The last package we had gotten it was of a beautiful crocheted blanket and we've had it ever since. This time Maggie received a bunch of wonderful girl goodies like hair bands, and coloring books and crayons and a beautiful, beautiful blanket. Maggie carries it around with her wherever we go.

It was so nice to receive a package for Maggie that wasn't medically related.
Also that day the UPS man graced our doorstep with wonderful school supplies. I can't wait to get officially started with Marilyn and Maggie. There was a slight change of plans for Katie and Hannah at the moment. They will attend school this year. I'm not sure how this all is going to work out. But we'll give it a try. In the meantime I'm keeping their school stuff in the even this arrangement doesn't work out, or they can work on it when they have no homework , or on the weekends.
But it was like Christmas, well , at least for me. To see all this new stuff.

Maggie decided she wanted to get started right away. So we pulled out the Learning to Read. Most of this has been lots of review. But I think there is plenty she can glean from and learn from. Such as writing her letters, and the listening skills and so on. But she's doing really, really well with it and I think we'll be going through this program extremely quick. She is doing 2 lessons a day right now and just flying through it. Reading wise she's beyond the first two readers that I have right now. But it will help with fluency, and will be light for her at the moment. I'm hoping with that it will make her feel more comfortable with doing the school work and not so much pressure. Maggie just turned 5 so she's a young 5.
Marilyn on the other hand is trying to see how long we can push all this off before starting school. Isn't it like a 13 yr old to not want anything to do with school. Humph.

Water Colors,Oil Pastels, and Collages

2011-08-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, I hope that you all have something tasty to sip and drink while you read this post. It will be a long but fun post to read. Especially if your looking for some fun crafty ideas to do with your kiddos before school starts.

I'll admit it was a bit of a topsy turvy art day. I had four kids going doing different art mediums at different times since we would start and wait for some to dry. Or they were able to be done in a single setting. Once one person was done with an art project they wanted to jump to the next. It was a bit crazy but very nice to see the girls so gung ho with their art projects.

The first they tacked on was their collages. I'll just go ahead and post them all together even though they got them done at different times of the day. Hannah's collage was the sandwich collage which was posted in my last post.

Collage : French word for glue.

This first picture is of Maggie with her Stop signal collage. It was super easy to make. Paper cut into a thin background and three circles. Then she sat and ripped up the stop signal colors : Red for stop, Yellow for slow down, and Green for Go. She had tons of fun gluing on the construction paper and we talked about the colors.

This is Marilyn's collage. This is her landscape collage. We scoured the magazines we had for landscaping pictures, cut them out and laid them all on the table. Marilyn picked and chosed what she wanted to use and voila'. Of course Marilyn is going to try another collage tomorrow and she will pick which one she wants to enter into the fair.

Next, is Katie's collage. This is her water color collage. The background was painted in a solid water color. On another sheet of paper Katie drew shapes and lines and dots and then once it dried she ripped them (not cut them) out and placed them where she wanted them , then added some yarn to complete her picture.

Speaking of water colors. I decided to make my own. I had found an awesome recipe online for it. It was simple to make.With just 3 Tablespoons of Baking Soda, 3 Tbsp of Corn starch, 3 Tbsp of Vinegar and 1 1/2 tsp of light corn syrup. You too can create your own water colors and trust me its less expensive and the colors are just amazingly better then those cheapo water colors you get at the store. You mix the ingredients, then use food coloring to make your colors. I can say that if you use the pasty gel food coloring you will get brighter colors. I just poured the water color solution in my saline water bottle caps ( they were nice and round and big enough) and added the colors and mixed them there. You can use them as is when your done or let them sit for 24 hrs and then wet them and use.

The supplies you need.

The caps I used with the water color solution. You can use any type of cap. But these saline bottle caps that we get for Maggie were perfect.

Add your food coloring. You can use the regular or gel type food coloring. Regular food coloring will give you more of a pastel look and the gel will give you a thicker brighter look. Just a few drops in each cap will do you. The more you use the brighter the color. I just wouldn't go past 6 to 8 drops though. Anymore than that is to much (trust me).

This is the messy part of creating your water colors. I suggest wearing some rubber gloves while doing this. Unless you don't mind having your hands stained. You know, kind of like mine are now. Don't worry if you slop the color a little on the lid. Doing this let me know what some colors where. When they are wet some of the colors like the copper , orange and red look kind of the same. By slopping a little on the lid showed me what color each was. Sometimes the purple, and black looked the same while wet. So its kid of like a color code for grown ups and kids.

This is what they looked like dried 24 hours later.

After this adventure it was time to move on to our Oil Pastel portraits. These turned out really nice. The girls had lots of fun doing these.

This photo is of Marilyn's "Klee Portrait". This portrait is inspired from the artist Paul Klee who was into using geometric shapes in his drawings. Marilyn did a super job and she entitled it " The depressed guy".

Next up was Katie's abstract version of the"" Figure 5 in Gold. Except her picture is the "Figure 7 in Purple".

Hannah was the next in line to create an oil pastel. I wasn't sure if I would be able to find something easy enough for her to do that would be different than what her sisters were doing. But as luck found it I did find something that was different and simple enough for her to do all on her own. She did a super job on it too. This is Hannah's version of Kadinsky's abstract of " Abstract of Squares"

Last but not least was Maggie. I knew I had to find something simple enough for her to do too. So we decided on a Hands oil pastel. Now of course the hands are supposed to touch each other and meet but her little hands weren't big enough, but we made due. Plus I love how her four fingered hand added such power to her picture.One only Maggie can do. We entitle it : Diversity

The picture was tough for her to do as there was lots of coloring and Maggie's hands get tired quickly. So we broke the project up through out the day so she could start and stop when she wanted to. The finished product though was fantastic for a 5 year old.

Well there you go folks. We had a super day of art and I couldn't have done it all without the awesome website I found the other day: Art Projects for Kids
I'll admit when I first found the site I wasn't sure what it was. If it was an instructional website or a website that sold stuff. Well, its both. If you scroll down a little bit and look to the left you will see a bar that says " Labels". There you can click links by grade level, artist, or topic, and pictures and descriptions will pop up. This website is spectacular in teaching art by the Masters. Also giving children the opportunity to make their own "Master" paintings. I'm not sure how well they will go over at the fair , we'll see. But they are all 1st place creations to me.

Birthdays and Art

2011-08-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so your thinking to yourself what does art have to do with birthdays? Well, actually quite a bit.
Monday (August 8th) was my youngest daughter's birthday. She just turned 5. How time flies I'll tell ya. I wanted to do something special for Maggie's birthday so I decided instead of buying or slapping some frosting on a cake that I would actually tackle on making a cake myself. I'll admit the only cake making training I've ever had was watching my own mother make them. She was a pro. I would sit and watch her in the kitchen whenever she would painstakingly work on a cake for a client. My mom created cakes with such ease that she made it look easy. Well, its not exactly easy when you don't have much in the way of cake decorating materials. I just had the bags, the tips and one couplet(mental note, purchase more to make switching colors MUCH easier on yourself).
But what I did manage to do and create was short of a miracle. Granted we live about 45 miles away from any nearest craft store. I did manage to come up short with the brown color after asking Marilyn to grab the colors , Copper and Brown. According to her she thought the color was copper brown. Ugh, 13 yr olds. Anyways I substituted with some chocolate and a can of dark chocolate frosting for the hair.

Well, I think you'll be mighty impressed. Granted, once again I underestimated how much confectioner's sugar I needed for the butter cream frosting. But the Dora cake I created, turned out pretty darned good I should say.

I frosted the end with whatever frosting I had left and it gave the edge a tied died look.

Of course without art, or some semblance of artistic ability I don't think I would have been able to create the Dora cake. Strike that. I think my mother's cake making gene kicked in at the very last moment. Or maybe summoning the cake gods helped too. I don't know , either way Dora turned out to be a hit and it was so good the cake was gone by the very next day.

I will admit I do enjoy doing a little bit of food art. So last night when I was super bored I decided to go ahead and create some jello oranges. Yes, you read that right. The outsides were oranges and the insides were made of jello. So I went into the kitchen scoured through the cupboards because not to long ago I had so much jello in my cupboard I actually had to tell Tim to stop buying it. To find that we didn't have many left and the color I wanted was gone!! So I settled for some blue , yellow and green Jello. Mixed it all together in a jiggler recipe ( you need 4 3 oz boxes mind you) and had the joy of scooping out the oranges. I cut them in half, scooped them out ( all the while having the juice burn the cuts I had gotten the day before by trying to pull a glass that got sucked down our garbage disposal) and put all the insides of the orange inside a bowl. Once I did that I poured my jello concoction inside the orange and set them in the fridge overnight. What I woke up to was some jello inside an orange. So I cut them like I would any orange wedge and , Voila'. Jello Oranges.

The girls loved them and they had some for breakfast and ate the rest for lunch.

So that's all for the food art for now. Next we've been working on art for the Spartansburg fair. We've been quite creative lately and its been a great way to pass what little time of summer we have left. So here are some of our art projects we've done so far. First you'll be thinking I am the most creative person in the world for coming up with some of these ideas. Well, I'm not. I'll give the website Pinterest all of the credit. Its where I've gotten my ideas and we've spawned them off and made them our very own. I'll admit it took me a little while to figure out even what Pinterest was and its purpose. But I finally figured it out it was a place where I can find ideas, and pin them on my own board for future reference. Simple yet so convenient.

This 3D collage was created by Hannah. It turned out super cute and she had oodles of fun making it. We didn't have the wrinkly cardboard that comes from boxes, so we created our own with a cereal box cardboard, and just bending it so it was wrinkly for the bun. The plate was created with some scrapbook paper I had laying around and we used different types of medium. Construction paper, noodles, oatmeal, paper bags and whatever else we could find to make the sandwich.

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So while Hannah was working on her sandwich I gave Maggie a job to do. I printed out a fishbowl template and had her paint it so it could dry while we were gone to the Art Show down town. Every year the Art Guild holds an Art show at the park. It was super fun this year. We saw an Elvis impersonator , I mean who says the King is dead?

After he was finished singing , we went around the gazebo and they had a fun puppet show. The title was Aesop's fables. Maggie really enjoyed this because many of the stories she's read with the Brillkids Aesop's fables books.

While that was going on the art was being judged. Marilyn had entered a picture of hers that she drew this year. It turned out pretty good. In the end she received 2nd place for it. We're very proud of her. My girls really are very artistic.

At the end of the art show we had the pleasure of watching the Airforce Band of Flights, and all I can say is , "Wow!" It was better than watching any celebrity singer any day. Great singers and music plus our country's super heroes make awesome entertainment.

( Girls pictured with Senior Airman Kelly Perry. One of the singers of Systems Go Airforce Band of Flights)

(Maggie grooving to the music)

Once we came home Maggie's 'fish' bowl was all dried out and we were able to do the finishing touches by using mixed beans for the fish rocks , her hand for the fish and some Cheerios for the bubbles.

Isn't it amazing what you can do with food? But it sure did turn out pretty cute that's for sure.
The girls have been working really hard on the rest of their art work. My girls really enjoy working on different types of art. I will continue to record more of their art that they've been working on this week for the fair. So stay tuned!

Online Curriculum Sale

2011-08-04T11:24:00.001-07:00

After sifting throug all of my curriculum and reading about the Online Curriculum Sale that is being hosted by a blog I follow. I thought I'd jump at the chance to purge our shelves of items I am no longer using and are taking up space in our apartment to make way for the new stuff that should be coming in the next few weeks.

So here we go everyone. Shipping is extra and I will try and ship the least expensive way I can. Just email me at reedfamilypa@yahoo.com if your interested in anything. I do have Paypal and prefer it. But I will also take check and money orders as well. I will ship as soon as Paypal or check clears.
Also I'm sure I'll find more stuff but I'll post what I have pictures of right now.

Algebra 1/2 2nd edition with answer key. May have a little shelf wear with the answer key but otherwise in good condition. I'm asking $15 or Best Offer

Saxon Algebra 1/2 3rd edtion answer key. I had gotten the wrong answer key. This has a little bend in the cover of the book. Otherwise good to go. Asking $5

Saxon 6/5 2nd edition , textbook and tests.. asking $15 , has some shelf wear. Otherwise in useable condition.

Saxon 6/5 1st edition Answer Key. This does not go with the 2nd edition I have. Asking $2.50

Saxon 5/4 2nd edition. Textbook and answer key. Answer key cover is a bit bent and has a small chunk out the back. Inside in good condition,. Text in good condition. Asking $10

Saxon 1 teacher manual. Current. BIG Manual. I can see if I can ship it flat rate to save on expense. In good condition. It may possibly have some stray pencil marks but not sure, but still in very usable condition. Asking $15

Saxon K Teacher's Manual. Has one page from the back that was cut out for manipulatives. I still have it and will slide it in with the manual. Otherwise in good conditon. May possibly have some stray marks. Can ship flat rate to save on expense, big manual... asking $10

The Reading Lessons. the cover has some shelf wear and I had to tape a side. I've had it for 7yrs and now its time to pass it on. Asking $13 for the book

K12 Phonics Works Advanced Program. This program is sold for $249 on Christian books.com I barely used this at all. Most of it is still in shrink wrap. There were a couple of books that got bent. I think it happened when I put one of the tile folders in and didn't realize it. This kid comes with two tile kits, 30 readers, training DVD, dry erase pens, and board, and small dry erase board. Asking $180

How to Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book too has been well loved. This was the very first book I used with my oldest daughter when we first started homeschooling. The cover has been taped on but the inside is still in excellent condition. Asking $8

Your Baby Can Read. Are you wondering if you can teach babies and young children to read. Well look no further because it actually works! I wished I had known about it when my girls were actually babies. I didn't learn about Your Baby Can Read until my 4th child was 3 yrs old. I had never talked to anyone that had an early reader that used the program. I figured early readers were little geniuses and those weren't my girls. They never just one day woke up and started reading. So we purchased this program with little hopes and boy was I wrong. My 4yr old by far is my best reader out of my girls. This set has the Volumes 1-5 DVDs. Chunky Flashcards for Volumes 1-5. Books for Volumes 1-4. We had to purchase the Volume 5 seperately. It also has a Your Baby Can Learn ( which is now Your Baby Can Discover) book,,, everything is in good condition, Asking $100 for the entire set.

Abeka 3 Math Teacher's Manual. I had gotten this in hopes to actually buy the program, but it never happened. The book has some shelf wear but totally usable. Not sure if this is current or not. Asking $8 for it.

I know I have more stuff. I just need to go through it all. But I figured that this was a good start.

Curriculum Choice for 2011-2012 school year

2011-08-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

I think after wallowing through tons of catalogs, and spending time trying out samples of curriculum. We've boiled down our curriculum choices for this year.

Drum roll please.......

Marilyn

Christian Light 700 level Math , this is the start of their prealgebra level and I think she is really ready for it this year. I will do a little remedial work with the workbooks 601 and 701 before going full throttle into the 700 to make sure she is caught up with her math. She struggled with Saxon 7/6 last year but it mostly had to do with her not knowing her math facts very well, and not having as much geometry with the other math programs we used in the past.

Christian Light 700 Level Language Arts. We have some major remedial work ahead of us before she actually gets to this level. I learned recently that last year they didn't have grammar at school. More like vocabulary work. Which is not grammar. Needless to say my 13 yr old didn't know what an adverb was. So with that said I purchased the Christian Light Extra Practice Sheets for Grammar. We will be working on these until she gets caught up. I purchased 400-700 level workbooks. Depending on how motivated she is going to be this year will determine if we will actually start at the 700 level this year.

Spelling- I plan on purchasing the ACE Word Building for her for spelling. But for now I have a book from the library and I'm going to compile spelling lists for her to work on until then.

Handwriting - Pentime 3. This is a handwriting program sold by Christian Light and Rainbow Resource. It is in the style of cursive writing I am the most familiar with and grew up learning. I am not sure at the moment which style this is, but I've been looking for it for ages and I'm sure its existed all along. I'm starting her with the 3rd book , which is beginning cursive because Marilyn's handwriting is left to be desired.

Literature and Writing- Good books from lists from Sonlight, Veritas, Memoria Press, Ambleside Online... For Reading she'll be reading Stories of the Saints Volumes 1&2. I'm hoping there is enough writing assignments in the book to keep from having to purchase a seperate writing program. But if I must I will most likely get Writing Strands for her.

Science- Apologia Physical Science. Yes, she's a 7th grader but I think she can tackle this on just fine. We've used the Apologia Elementary series and so another year of general science she just can't take. She actually has her own goal to do Physical Science and Biology both this year. If she can accomplished both I'll be very proud of her. I'm not sure if we can manage 2 yrs of science in one year. Its sure worth a try though.

History- the jury is still out on this one. We've studied so much world history that I want to move on to American History now. Currently I have the Homeschool in the Woods CD's. We used the first one and had fun with it. I think if we continue on that it will work well. They are currently up to the Industrial Revolution, and I've heard word that their World War 2 series will be out eventually.
I've been looking at some other history programs but like I said in my first sentence The jury is still out at the moment.

Latin - Latina Christina 1

Art- we plan on reading about art, and plan to get together with another family for hands on drawing, and craft art.

Music- Marilyn is interested in learning how to play an instrument. She hasn't chosen yet.

Phys Ed- this will be a tough one because Marilyn is 13. Yes, you know the age where they don't want to do anything. So I will have to thrust upon her activities she doesn't want to do.

Katie

Christian Light Math 400. I feel comfortable starting her at this level. Generally this is the equivalent of Saxon 6/5 , and I think she'll do just fine.

Christian Light Grammar 400. I don't have to add spelling it will be right in the Grammar book.

Writing , I'm hoping there is enough writing for Katie with the CLE Grammar. If not I'll be purchasing Writing Strands.

Reading/Literature- Katie will be doing CLE's 5th grade reading since I already have it. After she is finished with that she will either go into the 6th grade Reading or Stories with the Saints (once her older sister is finished with it). Plus great literature from the Sonlight, Veritas Press, Ambleside, Mater Amabalis lists

Handwriting - Pentime 4. Katie has better handwriting than her older sister. So I feel very comfortable starting her with this level

Science - We'll be starting with the Apologia Astronomy and work her way through the series. That way next year she can start the Apologia General Science. Unless they come out with another Elementary Book. Somewhere I swore I read they were coming out with an elementary chemistry and physics. But I'm not sure.

History- I'll combine Katie and Marilyn with Homeschool in the Woods.

Latin - Latina Christiana 1

Art- reading about different types of art from our Come Look with Me series and our little group art class once a month. I'm looking at maybe the Thomas Kincade drawing program that Alpha Omega sells for drawing.

Music- Katie wants to start up an instrument , she think she might want to play a guitar but is thinking violin. Wants to check out her options first.

Phys Ed. - plans on joining the gymnastics team at the YMCA

Hannah 2/3rd grade.
I'm combining these two grades because Hannah was held back to first last year. Which really didn't do her any service. Granted she improved with her writing a bit. other then that she struggled with nothing and it ended up being a blow off year for her. Currently she is working through her 2nd grade stuff and wants to get into 3rd. I have faith she'll do it because Hannah is very independent and when she sets a goal for herself , she does it.

CLE Math finishing up the 200 level and wants to get into 300. I think she'll do fine since she blew through the first 4 workbooks since June.

Christian Light Grammar 200

Christian Light Reading , she is working on the 200 level. Plus books she wants to read from the library.

Writing - I plan on using Writing With Ease for with her, and will see how this goes.

Science, will do the Apologia Science with Katie

History, will sit and listen and or participate with the Homeschool in the Woods with her older sister. I might find something different for her if it proves to be to difficult. Or I may just start world history with her and do some lapbooking.

Latin- Prima Latina

Music - Hannah did start piano but she found it wasn't her forte right now. So wants to try something else.

Art- will read the Come Look with Me for art history and the once a month class with our friends.

Phys Ed - she to wants to be on the gymnastics team.

Maggie

Christian Light Math 100 , we've been slowly working through it. Some times she speeds up and some times we slow down. She's only 4, she'll be 5 in 5 more days,and its a 1st grade program. So I'm letting her lead the way.

Christian Light Learning to Read. well she already knows how to read. But I think that the work at this level is more manageable for her. I'll let her lead the way with this as well. LTR is a 1st grade program. She also reads her Bob Books, books from the library etc.

Christian Light Language arts 100. To practice her phonics skills. Sight reading is a good skill to have but phonics is as well. Again we'll slowly go through it as its a 1st grade program

I'll have to see how much practice there is with handwriting at this level. I think there maybe plenty but I want to make sure. If not I'll print out some handwriting sheets for her off the computer.

We'll cuddle up and read stories, play games, do some hands on things like playing with playdough and so on. Most people would think this is crazy doing this level of work with an almost 5yr old. But she wants to do it, she can do it, and if she couldn't we wouldn't be doing it. Maggie seems to be an accelerated learner. Which is good for her because she's spent most of her life with health problems. Something good has got to come out of it for her.

As for history and science she can sit in and listen if she wants. No pressure there. I think at her stage the only important things for her are Reading, Writing and Math.

Phys ed , she likes to swim, run, and go to tumbling toddlers class.

Final Thoughts: Well there you go everyone. Those are our curriculum choices this year. I chose to go with Christian Light because 1. Its academically sound, and 2 my daughters love workbooks. Well at least my youngest three. Another reason is that its a very independent curriculum. My older girls won't have to wait for me to get the teachers manual out and lecture them as to what they need to do if they just want to get started with things. Of course I'm not going to throw the workbooks at them. I always go over material to make sure they understand what it is they are doing. But if they can read the instruction in their workbook and understand it , and do it on their own while I am working with a younger one then that will definitely make my life so much easier. Plus my 3rd and 4ths are extremely independent so this will fit them just perfectly. My 2nd usually requires some kind of hand holding and my oldest, well, she doesn't like anything. After all she's 13.

So here's to a good school year. We'll see what works for us this year and what we've had to tweak. Over all I feel pretty confident about it all.

Monkisee Review: Action Words!

2011-07-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Monki See, monkey do, I can read so can you. Learning is so much fun to do. Monki See, Monkey Do.
Those are the famous words sung by my four year old as she watches her new Monki See video.

Children can watch as Olivia, Howie and Skip introduce words such as run, skip , walk , crawl, shake, wave, spin, dance,and swim to name a few. They also have the opportunity to do the action words right along with the children in the video making this a great video for all types of learners, using sight, hearing and kinesthetic learning.

Here are some of the things that Maggie really enjoyed :

She loved seeing a big kid on the video.
Generally reading videos like these are geared towards infants and young toddlers. Hence they show babies and young toddlers. Granted Maggie loves babies, but I think that older children want to see someone more like them having fun with learning just like they do.
She loves the movement. Maggie is a mover and a shaker. The more she moves around , the more she loves it. Out of all of the Monki See videos this by far is her favorite one at the moment.
I'll admit even my 7yr old enjoyed the funny song at the end of the video as well.

What I like about Action Words was :

It truly was an interactive video. Using puppets, people, and video. It reminded me of Sesame Street with the combination of them both. Its simple with not to much distraction yet just enough to keep a child's attention.

That it has them moving and shaking. With its catchy little song children can dance to the music while they are learning to read at the same time.

That the video combines the whole song on a different 'slide'. You can chose to watch the whole show or chose to just put the song on for your child.

Over all this is another great product by Monkisee that will definitely keep children's attention, and will motivate them to learn at the same time.

We give this video a two thumbs up in learning, enjoyment and entertainment.

Way to go Monki See for making another fun learning video that children can learn from and enjoy!

Disclaimer: We were not paid for our opinion of the program. Just given the DVD to view and give my own opinion.

If you've read this far here is a quick video of Maggie having fun dancing to the "We Run " Song..

A Tied Dyed Summer

2011-07-17T10:43:00.001-07:00

Okay, so what's a summer without making a tied dyed t-shirt, right?
I've had the dye here for some time and it had just been sitting on our shelf. While the girls were away at summer camp I had the opportunity to clean out their rooms( I'll spare the picture) and clean out their close drawers. I found some white shirts that we had that had some stains on them so I thought what a good way to salvage them but to do tie dye.

Tie dying is both fun and messy all at the same time. Its hard to give up the reigns to the little ones. I wanted it to be their shirt so trying not to help to much was tough because I just didn't want they dye all over the place.

Here are some fun pictures of Marilyn tie dying her shirt:

Marilyn soaking her shirt in the special stuff....

Marilyn dying her shirt

The finished product!

Before we completely finished our shirts they had to sit around a while so we went up to Grammy and Pumpkin's house to have a picnic with cousins Kora and Collin who are up visiting from North Carolina.

The kids had fun playing and towards the end we got a great picture of them all. Everyone is just growing up just way to fast for me.

We've had such an awesome summer so far. Its not finished yet. We still have our Waldemeer picnic left before school starts. Here's to our 2011 summer!

Change

2011-07-14T19:26:00.001-07:00

Boy, I must admit that this word has come up quite frequently this week. I'm finding the older I become the less I like change and the more traumatic it seems to be for me. I'm not sure why this is. You would think that God would install us with the opposite being an adult. I think growing up and growing older , we should be given the ability to change with everything and to learn to accept change. Instead of feeling like giving up on humanity and crawling up into a little ball. At least that's how I feel when change comes about. I'm sure most people have their own way of feeling and dealing with it. I'm not sure how I deal with change , but I know how I feel about it.

But its just not that way. I've yet to understand really why God does what he does and the plans he has. Yet it is what it is and to move forward and to progress we must change.

Some change is good: We had a wonderful week in Washington D.C. I can't put a price on what its like to go to the VACTERL Network Conference. I call it a super vacation. You have to pack in all you possibly can in two days. Talk and meet with everyone that you haven't seen in a few years in a matter of two days. Try to see as much sight seeing that you can, if you can, when you can in two days.
We did manage to go to the Pentagon Mall, see the Pentagon since we were only not very far across from it. I can say the view was stunning from the room we had the Meet and Greet and where the pool was.

Priceless is the time you get to talk with 'old' friends and meeting new ones.

We did get to see a few photos of us in Washington. It was extremely hot and we could only walk so far in one day. So we saw as much as we possibly could. We went to the Arlington Cemetary, saw JFK's burial along with a few others but we never made it over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as it just was all up hill and pushing a stroller was pretty tough in the heat. So we turned around and walked over to the Lincoln Memorial. Saw the Washington Monument and of course the Reflecting Pool had no water in it! LOL I wait all my life to go to Washington DC and there's no water in the Reflecting Pool.
After that we made it over to the Vietnam Wall and that was all we could take of the heat and our feet were ready to fall off. Even though we never made it to the Smithsonian or anything like that I was very grateful for what we did get to see that Sunday. WE did see the Capital building and saw the President come in on his helicopter when we were walking at the Lincoln Monument. We never did get up close because Maggie fell asleep. She slept right after we left the Arlington Cemetary, and didn't wake up until we were walking back to the van. But we have pictures and really it didn't matter because she won't remember it.

JFK's Burial Site

Women's Memorial Site

Arlington Cemetary

Lincoln Memorial

Marilyn and Daddy standing in front of the Reflecting Pool. See, no water! LOL

The Vietnam Wall

We have so many pictures that we possibly couldn't post them on here. But those are a few that we managed to take. Priceless. It was so nice to be able to take Maggie and Marilyn there. I hope that Marilyn always remembers our trip to DC. It was nice for her to go because she learned that there were so many others out there just like her sister. She told me she had no idea. So for those of you wondering how siblings feel.... well they feel just as alone in the world as their parents do. Alone meaning they feel they are the only ones with a sibling with VACTERL. But it was refreshing because Marilyn learned that these kids are just as fun as any other kid out there.

Next after we got home, we of course unpacked and began the process of settling back into home life when we were called by Pumpkin( Grandpa) and was asked if the older three wanted to go to Camp! How fun is that?? Of course the girls were up to that. Marilyn was a little nervous but Katie and Hannah were all for it. They had fun and enjoyed it so much. I mean who wouldn't have fun at a Wild West Camp for a week?

Marilyn and Katie's Cabin ( Marilyn slept on the left side and Katie on the right)

Hannah's Cabin , the whole camp town was like a set off a Wild West Movie. LOL

Hannah vaulting on a draft horse.. yes, Grandma just about had a cow! LOL

Great change there.

Our next change was a rough one. It was the loss of a very sweet little friend. Granted we never got to meet them in person we felt very connected to them. I guess its that VACTERL family connection. We are just all there for each other whenever we need advice, to vent or whatever.
Maggie felt very connected with her friend Eithene. I think it was because she knew Eithene was like her. She had to deal with tubes and medicines and hospitals and doctors. They just know.
But it was the very last day we had to pick up the girls , and our father in law's birthday that our sweet little Eithene passed away. She also had mitochondrial disease and it just shut down her poor little body. It was a happy day to pick up the girls but a sad, sad day for her family and a sad day for the VACTERL Community as if a family loses a loved one with VACTERL we all feel the pain.
We are glad she is in the sweet arms of Jesus and is free but its the families left behind that have to grieve that is the most painful.

Memorial to Miss Eithene

That was our first not so good change. We will miss you Miss Eithene and the updates your mommy sent out. You were a precious princess who was a great example to us all about life, love , and strength.

Next, Pumpkin( grandpa) had eye surgery and the surgeon who did his surgery totally botched it terribly. He is having a tough time seeing through his eye and Tim and I have been helping them while they can see if they can find another surgeon to fix his eye, if it can.

Our next change is that we'll be homeschooling once again. Its always a mixed bag of feelings for me. We aren't supported with homeschooling our children so traveling this less beaten path has always been very difficult when we haven't had the support we've needed. I love homeschooling the girls , but at the same time with my own health not being the way I wish it were, I just worry about my own energy levels. Yet we really don't have much of a choice in the matter, we will make lemonade with the few lemons I have so to speak.

If you've gotten this far we did meet up with a VACTERL family this past weekend. It was wonderful to be able to talk to someone that just gets it. We didn't have to explain ourselves to each other. We just knew.
We met at the zoo here by where we live and just had a great time seeing the animals and just visiting, visiting, visiting.

Braydon and Maggie

In the midst of that we had a not so great change. Our beloved priest Father Tom is going off to new territory. Meaning he's leaving the church and going to a new one. Fr. Tom is well loved by many in our community. I don't think there isn't a soul who knows him around here. He will definitely be missed by everyone in our community that's for sure. I had a wonderful time getting to know him this year.

With all of that up and down change this month I definitely can say we sure need another vacation on top of our summer vacation. I just never know what is going to happen from one day to the next. Only God knows that, but I guess in the meantime if all this change is going to happen. I think God could cushion the blow a little bit for us 'older' folks who resist it so much.

VACTERL Conference 2011 and Summer Vacation

2011-06-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

So sorry about the lack of blogging. Was of course having some technical difficulty with my blogger site. Thankfully I was able to figure it all out now and I should be up and ready to go.

We have been having a lazy laid back kind of summer. Not to much going on but enough to keep us slightly busy and not to bored. The girls have had fun with Vacation Bible School, the Corry Festival, being in a parade are some of the activities we've done so far.
But by far our ultimate activity will be on this Friday. We are going to the VACTERL Conference in Washington , DC! Can you say, Wow?! We've been going to the VACTERL Conference since Maggie was 9 months old. It is held every other year so this will be our 3rd conference. There we have met some wonderful families, all with their own stories and the whole experience is not something I can sum up into words. You have to be there to experience it and to know know what I am talking about. For those who usually can't make it they feel they are missing a party they can't come to.

They do a lot for the children while the parents sit back and listen and learn from speakers, who are usually doctors about various topics that many families with children with VACTERL deal with. But the fellowship with the other families is just completely and totally priceless. The friends that your child makes is priceless too. Its also really neat to see the kids at each stage of their life. Some families come with little babies , then toddlers, elementary age, teenagers and young and older adults with VACTERL. Its truly a humbling experience that you have to come and experience for yourself.
There still is a little time left to sign up to come. Just go to their website : www.vacterlnetwork.org and click on Events for all the info. If your near the area, stop by and say hello to everyone!

I know Tim is looking forward to seeing all the historical sites there. He is a true history /military buff. He was there when he was 16. As for me I've never been to Washington DC so this will be a new experience for me.
I'll admit one of the wonderful positives since having Maggie is that I've gotten out of my little world of Pennsylvania and out and about. I love it. I love to travel and love to go see new places. I really do. Marilyn is also looking forward to it too.
In 2009 we took Katie along, so this time its Marilyn's turn. I'm hoping for the next one we can take everyone. That's one of my goals, but if it doesn't happen we'll take Hannah with us in 2013.

Once we get back home I'll post all the pictures and I am looking forward to seeing old and new friends. I'm also excited that Maggie is old enough to start making some friends too.

Another Summer Giveaway

2011-06-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

Since summer is so much fun. So are giveaways that's for sure.
Here is another fun giveaway that you can enter on Miss Kindergarten's website.
Especially great if your a brick and mortar school teacher. Of course homeschoolers definitely could benefit from this cute kindergarten package too!

Good luck everyone!

Edited: P.S. Sorry about that everyone. Just click on the words Miss Kindergarten in my post and it should take you right to the site. I didn't realize I didn't include the link.

Education Cubes Giveaway

2011-06-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so am I the only one who feels like they wished they came up with this idea? It so ingenious. Granted I think I did a long while back but with dice that you print out and can write on. He, he.

Not quite like this. Who would of ever of thought of using fuzzy stuffed dice for educational purposes? Well Education Cubes did.
I haven't yet had a chance to try this out because I need to buy some of those cute fuzzy stuffed dice. But once I do I'd love to try out this idea with my girls since they love hands on learning. They think they're playing games but I know otherwise.

So Education Cubes is giving away a free membership daily on their blog. So jump on over to their blog , and follow the instructions for signing up for their giveaway and Good Luck!

Summer Vacation and Math Dribble

2011-06-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

All I can say is, "Phew". For anyone who thinks they are missing out by homeschooling their children and not putting them in school. Well let me just tell you to get that thought out of your head right now.
Though I loved St. Thomas this year I'll admit there were some pros and lots of cons to brick and mortar school. I'll start with the pros first:
1. We met so many wonderful families. The girls made some friends this year ( something that was almost impossible to do homeschooling in our area)
2. My girls had wonderful teachers that truly cared about them.
3. We, as a family are finally all belonging to one faith. This Easter we completed the rest of the Sacraments and become full fledged members of the Catholic church. For the past 16 years we never went to a church as a family. I went and bounced around to many Protestant churches and my husband was NOT interested in joining us. Though he did a few times. My husband was brought up Protestant, attended Catholic schools all his life and was a Catholic at heart. I was baptized Catholic, then my parents converted to Protestantism sometime in my young life and I was brought up Protestant. I attended both Private and Public schools and was familiar with the Catholic faith but never had the chance to receive all of the Sacraments. So this Easter I was able to receive Communion, Reconciliation and Confirmation. My two youngest were never baptized because I could never settle down and find the right Protestant faith. So Hannah and Maggie were baptized this year.
4. My girls did learn a lot. I was impressed at times with what they did learn. They did improve in some areas that I had a difficult time getting them to do here at home. Especially in the area of writing. Not so much Marilyn but she did improve a tiny bit. And Katie and Hannah's handwriting improved as well.
5. The girls really did have a good time. Father Tom is a super priest. He loves the kids and they love him just as if he were a grandpa to them. And we can't forget Deacon Bill who loves pirates ( good pirates of course :>) Fr. Tom loves John Deer tractor and if you gave him a reason to use it , he would. So there has been hay rides for the kids , riding on the floats at the parades in town. The teachers had fun with the kids too.

6. Marilyn graduated with her class of friends. It was a day of being proud and lots of tears around.

There were some cons for my family though. I wish there wasn't but there's always cons to everything.

1. Getting up early. I admit. I am NOT a morning person. Never will be. Neither is my 11yr old. and 4yr old. It was like trying to get up the living dead.

2. The scrambling in the morning. I'll admit school is 9 months long. Well we never did get a good morning down. Ever.

3. Not knowing what they were learning. Aside from Katie's teacher , I had no clue as to what they did in school, what they were learning and most times wasn't notified of problems with learning concepts until they became a real problem. I did try my hardest to match up what I had here at home but my curriculum I have from homeschooling and their curriculum was totally different.

4. The attitudes. Those started surfacing up.

5. Dealing with Maggie's health problems. She was way more sick than I would have liked her to be. Going to the school made me a prisoner of my own home as I would have to go to the school twice a day. We did hire a nurse but I was still back up when she couldn't be there and every time I left the house the school was calling because , a. Maggie had an accident (either poop or diaper didn't hold the pee) or b. the nurse was sick or she had to be somewhere for something else.

6. Having teachers not meet eye to eye with me. I agreed that Katie needed to be placed in the 4th grade. Katie struggles with school. But I didn't agree with the 1st grade placement with Hannah. I really felt she would have done fine going on to 2nd grade this year. There were times I felt Hannah could be challenged and should have moved up in things but her teacher didn't seem to agree with me. I'm not sure if my children weren't showing their potential at school or what. But I know they are WAY more capable of what their teachers thought they could do. There were also times I wished they didn't move on with a certain topic because they struggled with it and really needed a little more time to understand and digest whatever it was they were having difficulty with.

7.That the school decided to end at the 6th grade. This was Marilyn's first and last year at St. Thomas school. So back to homeschooling we go. Out of all 4 of my girls, honestly, Marilyn is the hardest to deal with when it comes to getting her to do her work. But I refuse, just whole heartedly refuse to put her at the public high school here. Its a despicable place that I don't want her at 6 hrs a day. She may want to play sports or do some extracurricular things there. But she is not going to spend 6 hrs a day there to be teased, tortured, bodily harmed and well, to be dumbed down in the name of wanting to be where her friends are. We can find other ways for her to keep in touch with friends.

I'll admit this was a big year for us with everything and I'm most glad that summer is here and I can get a break. To be honest I am finally feeling a little more relaxed today and feeling a little better than I have all year since the girls are home now. With all that said , Katie and Hannah want one more year. So I say fine. Not thrilled but fine. The school only goes to 6th. Marilyn will be home, and Maggie maybe too. Its still a question mark because I'm really pondering about whether I want to do that all over again. To be honest I don't.

All I know is that summer is finally here and for that I am so glad.

So in the spirit of summer my girls haven't quite got the memo that its summer vacation. They are still in the mood of doing school work so I'll take that. I've decided we'll do school lite during the summer. Just keeping up with reading, math and maybe some writing skills thrown in here and there. Of course with lots of physical activities to round out the fun.
Maggie has decided that she loves 'dribble'. Now I know your wondering what the heck 'dribble' is. Dribble is actually math drill. I'm not sure how she heard dribble when I would ask Hannah to sit and do her math drill. But 'dribble' it is.

Maggie doing her math 'dribble'

We're also going to Washington D.C. for this year's VACTERL Conference. We're really looking forward to it as its the only time we're around anyone who knows exactly what we deal with everyday with our children. Its nice to meet so many wonderful families. Its actually a very humbling experience. Plus its nice to see the kids as they are all in different stages of their lives. It helps us learn what to expect as our children grow up. I truly need this conference this year, I think more than I ever have. I've always have been thankful to go to the conferences, but this year has been such a struggle and such a challenge dealing with school stuff that I really whole heartedly need a good vacation. I need to see these families, talk with them, and glean from their experience.

So here's to summer and all its glory!

Gearing up for Summer Time and the Sneaky Squirrel Giveaway

2011-05-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

Wow. I guess I've been a little lazy updating my blog here. Maybe it has to do with the fact we no longer have snow on the ground. We see that bright orange orb in the sky called the sun, and its warm.
Actually today its a little to warm for Maggie. As soon as we stepped outside her face would go into full red. This is because she is on a medicine called Ditropan and it causes her body to retain heat and she can't sweat due to that. So all that heat just builds up and she overheats. Thank goodness for the air conditioner. With out it we would be be in such a huge pickle.

Right now the older three are finishing up school. Tomorrow they have a field day so we'll be having hot dogs and fun. Maggie on the other hand really enjoyed her first day of summer with her mommy. She of course in true fashion needed to do some of her Touch Math. A day isn't complete for her if she hasn't done her Touch math.

Well this really wasn't THE Touch Math. But its math. He, he

Then we followed the rest of the day with just some cuddling, reading stories, watching t.v and I'll admit. It was nice not to have to time my day to the minute because I had to go over to the school to catherize Maggie. Today was just a day to relax , and enjoy.
I'm looking forward to our summer. We don't have to go to Cincinnati until next May. So we are clear to enjoy our summer as far as urology goes. We do need to get to Pittsburgh to check Maggie's spine and get to cardiology to make sure all is well with her heart so that she can have her Malone/Mitrofanoff/kidney removal surgery done.

Sneaky Squirrel Giveaway..
Okay , so in my true Tracy fashion I want to let everyone know about the Sneaky Squirrel Giveaway on the Confessions of a Homeschooler website. It looks to be a very cute game. Jump on over and follow the directions to sign up for the giveway. Good luck to everyone!

Montessori Buddy Giveaway

2011-05-18T06:23:00.001-07:00

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Just wanted to type a quick post on another great Giveaway! Can you tell I like Giveaways?
Check out the Montessori Buddy today and see what amazing software this is.
Jump on over to Living Montessori Now and sign up for your chance to win a $50 Giftcard to Amazon.com.

Good luck everyone!

Upper Grades Touch Math Multiplication and Divison Review..

2011-05-13T12:00:00.001-07:00

What's faster than Superman, and easier than regular math? Touch Math of course!
Touch Math uses a multisensory approach to teaching children easy and difficult math concepts. By using the Touch Math TouchPoints children can easily begin to start adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing in a matter of minutes rather then days or weeks or months. One of the many great things about this curriculum is that you can use this to supplement any program you are currently using, or you can use it as a stand alone program and you will see great results ,and confident kids in math.

The Touch Math program definitely has grown since I had first encountered it a few years ago. I came upon Touch Math when I was doing a search to find a math program that would help my 2nd daughter with math. What I saw from the program was great, and I began using the method of the program to help my daughter along. That was about three years ago.

Today Touch Math has grown, and really has so much to offer with their extensive line of products. They now offer worksheets that you can download, curriculum packages, software packages , and hands on manipulatives to help that visual kinestetic learner you may have.

With that little plug in on the Touch Math company we were very excited to be able to use and review the Touch Math Upper Grades Multiplication and Divison 1&2. I was really happy when we recieved this as my oldest two were having some difficulty with double digit multiplication and double digit division at the time. So it couldn't have come to our home at a better time. The really nice part was that I was able to customize this to their current math that they are using (Saxon math) without having to stop and start a new program.

The Upper Grade Level Multiplication focuses on children in grades Three and up. The manuals are very nicely laid out and the only thing that was required of me to put it together was to take the shrink wrap off and put them in the binder. Everything is nicely laid out and included pages with binder labels on them to divide the contents of the lessons and teaching aid materials. Also included in the binder were multiplication and division flashcards to use for review.

The first manual contained all different types of worksheets for beginning multiplication and divison concepts, four hundred and seventy one to be exact.
The concepts taught in the 1st level are basic multiplication from 0-5 and division from 1-5. They teach children to multiple both horizontally and vertically. It also includes teaching dividing without remainders , fact families and also some fractions as well.

Here Katie and Maggie were practicing skip counting. Maggie was a little camera shy because there was a thunderstorm going on when I took the picture.

Here Katie was working on a new concept that she's never learned before. The way Touch Math presented it made it so very easy for her to learn that she flew through it like butter, and got them all right!

Another picture of Katie learning a new concept. After she was finished she said " Wow, mom, that wasn't hard to do at all!"

The second manual you begin to take all those concepts that you learned in the first manual and begin to put it all together to solve more advanced concepts. Just like the first manual , it includes all of the worksheets you need, binder dividers, and teaching aid materials to help teach certain concepts.
The 2nd manual contains 420 worksheets to work on concepts from multipying from 0-9, multiplying multiple digits ,to dividing double digit division problems. It also included multiplication and division flashcards just like the first manual did.

Picture of Marilyn working on double digit division in the Multiplication and Division 2 Manual.

Picture of Marilyn working on double digit division. She couldn't believe how easy it actually was. To be honest I didn't either. All these years I'd sit there and multiply many problems before I came to the write number to divide. Here all you had to do was estimate!

One thing I particularly like about Touch Math is they don't just have you continue to teach concepts without knowing whether your student has mastered the material or not. They include 'chapter' assessments for the concepts taught. The student takes the assessment test and you will instantly know whether you need to work on a concept more before moving on, or whether your student is ready for the next concept. Or like my Katie likes to say, " The next level."

Here Katie takes the assessment for the 2 times tables. She was so proud of herself and said to me " Mom, I'm ready for level 3!" ( meaning she was ready for the 3 times tables)

Over all this was a great math program to use. My daughters liked the fact that math wasn't such a foreign language to them anymore. It made those really difficult math concepts so much easier to solve and jump started their confidence in math quite a bit. Since using the Upper Grades Multiplication and Division with my older two I have noticed an improvement with their math as well.
Another thing they liked about the program was that it didn't have to many math problems on one page. This is a huge plus for children that panic when they see 30 math probelms on one page which is quite common in math books. Their favorite part were the reminders on how to solve the problems too. They felt like it was having me right there with them helping out and they didn't have to ask me to help.
I liked the way the math was presented. The presentation of the worksheets made it very easy for us to work together , or even have them work on it independently. I'm one of those types of people that like to have everything all laid out for me and I all I have to do is take it out and go.
I like how Touch Math included advanced topics in their multiplication and divison product. A very nice addition if you have a student that is advanced or if you have an older student that needs to work on those topics.

There were a couple of minor cons that I did find, but they were so minor that it almost didn't matter to me.
First , there are lots and lots of worksheets. This is fine if you work at a brick and mortar school and have unlimited access to all the ink and paper you want. But I was able to easily remedy this problem quickly with some sheet protectors and dry erase markers. This worked wonderfully and I no longer will need to go broke buying printer ink and paper. Now we can use the worksheets over and over again, guilt free.
Second , the flashcards were a very nice addition to have. In fact they are very important when memorizing math facts. The thing I found with these flashcards were that they are set up for a teacher and student and not so much for using them independently. Sadly, I've yet to figure out how to clone myself between teaching my younger and older daughters. So independent work at times is a very important thing to us.
With that said there weren't any answers on the flascards. Again, I was able to remedy that with writting the answers on the back. The fronts had multiplication problems so I wrote the answer on the back, and the back had division so I wrote the answer to those on the front. That way my two older daughters could work and quiz each other at the times I couldn't sit with them myself and work with them.

Other then that Touch Math is a permanent math program here at our home.We were 100% happy with it.
I no longer need to search for another math program to help teach my daughters difficult math concepts.
Its right here , right in front of our nose. Thank you Touch Math for making such a great product!

: I was provided with the manuals in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not paid for nor was I required to write a positive review.

This review is linked to Homeschool Curriculum Review Round Up

Mother's Day , and a Website Giveaway...

2011-05-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

Wow! I'll admit every year I've always had a wonderful Mother's Day. But this one has been the best of the best. Not because I had recieved anything but because my daughters were able to recieve something.

This year my two oldest Katie and Marilyn were able to partake in Communion. Marilyn had her first Communion on April 23rd and Katie had her First Communion on Mother's Day. It was truely beautiful and I wished I would have taken my video camera.

We had so much to do that it escaped my mind to bring a video camera but we did bring the camera and did get a little 'video' on it.
None the less everything turned out perfectly and it made for a wonderful mother's day to remember.

Shortly after communion we had a small reception with some cake and punch , and the girls recieved their certificates and a beautiful gift of holy water and a cute little angle receptacle to put their holy water in.

After all this we went up to our inlaws for the first cook out of the year. Our weather has been horrible, terrible this year. Tons of snow in the winter and now lots of rain. This was the first nice day we had were there was sun all day.

Next, onto business here. There is an awesome giveaway from Educational Insights. Its for a $100 gift card for educational toys. I mean, who wouldn't want $100 worth of educational toys? I know I would. I love toys that teach. Makes learning effortless for everyone involved and the fun, well, need I say more?
So the homeschool website Confessions of a Homeschooler is having a giveaway for the $100 giftcard as their thank you for following their blog. So jump on over now and sign up!!!

Welcome to Homeschool Lite

2011-04-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

Okay. So in my boredom I decided to go ahead and change the name of our blog. Its mostly about our educational endeavors so in the spirit of it all I decided to go ahead and give it a fun , educational type name.

I decided on Homeschool Lite and for these reasons:

1) Even though we are not homeschooling right now, we still homeschool. Does that make any sense? My girls attended private school this year but in the beauty of brick and mortar school is I'm basically paying people to educate my children so they can come home and I can actually educate them at home. Ugh. Talk about a 'good' use of money, right? Not really.

2) The Lite came from the fact that I am lightly homeschooling them. I mean the poor little oafs go to school for 6hrs a day. So there is only so much opportunity I have once they get home to challenge them a little more than what they get in school. Granted my girls aren't geniuses but they really do need some challenges in certain areas, and my two older girls need remedial work in math. Maggie is like a little sponge who actually asks me to give her homework even after she's been in school all day. I just let her do as much as she wants. I don't push it , she does.

3) They eventually will all return home. Homeschooling really is a part of who we are as a family. Regardless of what my 13yr old wants to think. The school this year is not having their 7th and 8th grades due to lack of enrollment. So home they will come. We really did and still do have fun as a family and since God gave us one life to live. Why not do live it the way that makes us all happy? I think the only thing I would wish differently is that homeschoolers in our area would actually walk of their houses and start doing some fun things together as families and quit being such hermits. We really do need activities to do for our children, friendships to be made. Until homeschoolers in our area quit being antisocial homeschooling will just not be looked upon in a good light. I've even noticed some families coming in to the girls' schools that are homeschoolers right now. Their BIG complaint? No real social outlet for their children. We really need to open our eyes and so something about it.

If you've noticed on the side right at the very top. I slaved over making a button for my blog too. I am not that technologically educated. I've always been comfortable with the basics of computer stuff. Finding what I need on the internet by Googling, typing on a blog, using Facebook. I'm slowly learning but not as fast as I wish. There are lots of things I wish I could do with my blog to make it more neat looking like some of the other blogs I've seen. I'm sure I'll figure that out. But in the meantime this is what my blog will look like until I get it figured out.

Interlox Giveaway

2011-04-21T05:24:00.001-07:00

If you haven't noticed lately. Not to much is going on in the Reed family household.
Other than getting ready for Baptisms and Communion. Its Easter time alright.

So I've been keeping myself busy letting others know about some awesome giveaways that I come upon. Either finding out by my favorite forum Brillkids, or by email, or heck even by Facebook.
I mean who really doesn't like a giveaway? I know I love to enter even though I've yet to win even one. But its the idea of learning about something new that is really enjoyable for me. There is just so much out there that it would be impossible to know everything that is out there. That is why there are those lucky few that get to try them out and then let everyone know about it.

So this morning I click on my email to Confessions of a Homeschool mom and learn about something new. That would be Interlox. Its better than blocks, more stable than blocks and most similar to legos but without all those bumps. I mean what self respecting Barbie would lay on Lego blocks when you've got Interlox?
They do look pretty neat though. The great part? Is there is another giveaway. So jump on over to Along the Way and sign up with their giveaway and learn something new today.

Spin USA Giveaway

2011-04-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

North, South , East and West,

Spin USA is the best!

Here is a fun packed geography game to teach the kiddos their states and capitals.
Check out Confessions of a Homeschooler blog for more details on the Giveaway and Good Luck!!!

Speekee Giveaway

2011-04-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you there is just so much out there and so little time to look at it all. So when I learned of Speekee from another blogger I thought I'd share it all with you.

I am still learning about this program but it is an early learning Spanish program for young children all the way to age 10. Heck it looks so promising that it maybe can teach a 34 yr old Spanish. Which would be very helpful by the way since we just had a Spanish family join our parish just recently.

So here is the link. Maybe I can do a giveaway of this program once I give it a try myself.

http://domanandaba.blogspot.com/2011/04/speekee-tv-review-and-giveaway.html

Phonics vs. Sight Words

2011-04-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

Every morning I get up. Get the girls ready for school and then come home have breakfast and read blogs and facebook.
Sadly, this has become to routine and honestly can't remember the time of what I did before I ever had a computer. Happily, though I've met so many people I would have never of met otherwise. I've met homeschoolers, families with children like my MaggiePie, and just people whom I actually have things in common with.

Which leads me to the blog Down's Syndrome Up Up and Away. I was reading this morning a post the author had written about the phonics vs. sight words debate.
I honestly have to agree with her that there really should and doesn't need to be a debate. Why? Both methods get people reading.
According to the Live Science blog some 14 percent of Americans do not have the ability to read. Which means 1 in 7 people are illiterate. That even shouldn't be in this country, but it is. Even more there are some estimates that there are at least 774 ( or maybe more ) million people on the planet that do not have the ablitity to read.
With all of that said, why should methods even be debated at all? If we can get people confident and reading instead of frustrated to no end and quitting and giving up on reading all together. Then again, why even debate?

In my 8yrs of homeschooling my daughters the one thing I've learned is that there are different learners. Some children will do best with one method over another and no two children are the same. My oldest is very bright. Has a memory of an elephant yet at the age of 13 sometimes doesn't utilize that to her full potential. When she was young she learned everything and anything that came her way. So naturally as I started in with my homeschooling journey I confired to the 'experts' when it came to what to use, what not to use etc. The one thing that I found where there was such hard , staunch supporters of phonics only. Sight word reading was treated as the evil that it was.
I also didn't realize that yes, young children could learn to read, heck babies can too. My oldest was 3 at the time and you would think that it would have clued me in but for some reason I was lead to believe that she was just memorizing things. Besides I knew of no one that had a young child reading.
So for years I taught, I mean tortured my oldest with phonics only. Because as I was being told, that's the better way, that's the ONLY way to learn to read. So I bought into it and it took us a long time to really get Marilyn up and reading. She finally wasn't reading fluently until at least the age of 9! Yes, this little girl who was happy, and taking in the world totally shut down with phonics until the age of 9. I was happily told by other homeschool moms to put the book away, read to her and it would come with time. This was partly true. Of course I love reading to my daughters. That in itself teaches children to love reading. To this day I still read outloud to my daughters. But the actual act of teaching reading with phonics was such a struggle for her. I wished I had picked up on the fact that she had an awesome memory and that sight reading at first would have been the best for her. Granted she's reading now but the whole process could have been WAYYYYYY better.

Next came my 2nd daughter. She is 11 now and reads about the same level as her oldest sister who struggled. Katie was the total opposite of Mare. She literally wanted to learn to read. At first I thought to myself that this was going to be even tougher than the oldest child. After all Katie had speech difficulties and naturally I had specialists telling me that children with speech difficulties were harder to teach. Oh how fun! Anyways, Katie turned out to be my easiest child to actually teach. Phonics clicked with her like it was her native language and by the time she was 5 she was reading at a 1st grade level! We literally skipped kindergarden. Because she did kindergarden at home even though she was going to preschool. She wanted to so I let her lead the way. She made teaching reading so easy that I thought I was maybe doing something wrong. I didn't have to put the 100 EZ lessons book away at any time. There were no tears , no huffing and puffing, no going on book strikes. Katie read and she read away. Looking back on it all I think that having her sister there and that sibling competitiveness came in very handy for her.

Then came along my 3rd daughter. I had a rough birth with her which I believe did something and caused her speech delay. Hannah just really didn't speak. After all she is Hannah and had two sisters that spoke volumes, so why speak? Hannah didn't talk until she was 4.5 years old. But she took everything in. She was no dummy, and still isn't. Looking back on it had I had the knowledge of infant reading I think she would have done excellent with learning to read when she was little. She would have had plenty of time to contemplate all those words. With this said , Hannah is a good reader today at age 7yrs. 10 months. Phonics too was helpful to her and she was reading at age 5 but not at the same level that Katie was. I had used K12 and though I liked their phonics we were kind of sludging through. It wasn't until I pulled out my 100 EZ lessons , once again, that she flourished and is now reading well at least a 2nd grade level right now.

Last but not at all least is my Maggie girl. At age 4yrs 8 months she is reading at an early 1st grade level. It wasn't until I stumbled upon Your Baby Can Read did I finally learn that babies and young children( talking mostly about children before the age of preschool) could learn to read. Had I known this I would have done this from day 1 with my oldest daughter. It would have saved us a LOT of struggles. Sadly I didn't learn all of this until my youngest was 4yrs old. I knew that some kids could read early. But those where the smart kids. You know, the ones that one day just start reading? Those weren't my kids. I once came upon a mom who had a son who was reading at the age of 3. At the time my oldest was about 6yrs old or so and I had innocently questioned the mom what she did to get him up and reading like that. Natuarally it was, he just learned it on his own. His big sister was learning to read and he learned right along side her. I'm sure that could have been the case. But I looked upon that as he was gifted , and gifted my children were not. So I dismissed it all. Thinking that only certain children could learn to read early like that. I was lucky to get my girls reading at a 1st grade level by the time they were 5. Little did I know that natural window was really closing by then.

With that long speech I've learned quite a bit along the way. That you have to teach your child with what works best for them. Had my middle two had been younger I would have most likely needed to have used sight reading with them to begin with because little ones just have a difficult time with phonics. I've found that getting them reading is what makes them confident. Phonics can be learned later or in conjunction with getting them to read. I'm not putting down phonics. It is necessary to break down unfamiliar words. But phonics is NOT the end all to be all. What is important is to get your children reading first, loving to read. Then everything else falls into place. If you get a child frustrated with reading then reading becomes this horrible struggle and then ultimately the child gives up. They either shut down completely and not learn to read, or they shut down in a more suttle way by not reading on or above grade level and they lose that love of reading altogether.

I'm happy enough to say that Maggie is reading, she's even showing signs that she's figuring out phonics on her own. Of course I'm supplementing with showing her how to sound out words that are decodeable when we come upon them. Websites like Starfall help too. So just because you start with one method doesn't mean at all that you can't combine , or go back to once your kids are reading. After all growing up as a child I don't remember having instruction with phonics whatsoever. Guess, what? I've always read above grade level growing up as a child, and when I come upon words I don't know I literally know how to sound them out. Sorry phonics only advocates, so how's that for phonics only???

Read and Share Give Away

2011-04-08T15:51:00.000-07:00

Jump on over and check out the Read and Share Give Away.
Its a cute Bible program geared towards preschool/elementary students.

http://domanandaba.blogspot.com/2011/04/read-and-share-bible-giveaway.html?showComment=1302303054508#c1578321048703284387

HUGE Montessori Giveaway

2011-04-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

Have you ever drempt of having an unlimited amount of Montessori curriculum at your disposal? Well look no more.
Two websites are currently holding a HUGE Montessori give away.

Montessori Print Shop is one of my favorite Montessori suppliers, offering over 940 beautiful printable Montessori materials in digital file format. I’m extremely excited to be able to offer such a wonderful prize (all the Montessori Print Shop PDF files) for my giveaway!!! And the giveaway is open to my readers worldwide! Perfect for school or home use for children ages 18 months-early elementary!

What You Will Win: Montessori Print Shop Deluxe CD Rom 2-Disc Collection – 944 Montessori Materials AND 4 Primary Teaching Manuals!

all PDF Files listed at the store at this time

944 Montessori materials

all PDF Files listed at the store at this time

944 Montessori materials

4 Primary Teaching Manuals in PDF File format

(Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Math)

Instructions on how to prepare and use:

Toddler Cards and Books

3-Part Cards

Nomenclature Books and Cards

Match-Up and Memory

FREE Xpresspost shipping

Current Value: $580.25. If you were to purchase all of these files individually it would cost $2152.27!

Montessori Print Shop will ship the product at no cost to the winner. Winner must provide Montessori Print Shop with full shipping address (including phone number). Winner will be contacted directly by e-mail for shipping address (address and phone number is kept confidential). Be sure to use an e-mail address through which you can be easily reached if you win.

Where can you get all of this stuff? Go to www.livingmontessorinow.com and www.countingcoconuts.blogspot.com

Brillkids Discount Offer

2011-03-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am happy to say I'm loving this. Anything to share something with someone else always makes me feel really excited.
With the myriad of things making their way onto the market for babies and young children. Its not hard to get excited when some kind of offer or discount comes my way.

With the many things I've used with Maggie to teach her to read I'll have to admit that as for an all in one program I love Brillkids.
You say to yourself, well what about Your Baby Can Read and Monkisee? To me these are the most excellent video programs out on the market for little ones. But as for a computer based reading program, well, Brillkids is the bomb!

We have been very fortunate that we've been able to use Brillkids. It all started innocently one day when I joined a Yahoo group and saw a link. I just had to click it! By doing so it took me to another world that I had no idea existed. You know, a world where little children actually have the ability to learn whatever it is you give them. Wow! You mean that they don't have to be school aged to learn this stuff?

So hence we gave the Brillkids program a try. They have a 9 day trial to see if its something you and your child would like. I'll admit the first few times Maggie wasn't all to interested. But then again we were doing the Your Baby Can Read at the time and that was more interesting. After a few days though all of a sudden she became VERY interested in it because you can download a ton of videos, powerpoints and so on to your Little Reader and I came upon this cute little video, I then downloaded. So after she was finished watching YBCR she quickly wanted to watch her favorite video. Every since Brillkids is something we do everyday.

There are several things I love about the program. I like that its all done for me. I don't have to waste marker ink to make cards, I don't have to worry about when to switch to new words, or count. The Little Reader program does that all for me. On top of that I can find lots of fun educational videos for Maggie to watch. Which she loves by the way. I can find lots of Encyclopedic Knowledge information all there, ready for me to print out. No need to spend countless hours of making them myself. Last, but not at all the least is the access to countless foreign languages. Maggie has been on a Chinese kick. So I can pull up Powerpoints and the Little Reader Chinese program and she can sit and watch. She loves it! My older daughters very much love that part of the program. Just the other day Marilyn and Maggie were home with the ick and we sat and watched the Chinese slides on Little Reader. Fun was had by all that day that's for sure. He, he

With all of this said Brillkids is a wonderful product. Something I wished was around about , oh say, 13 years ago.
what's even more amazing that I've learned so far is that not only can 'healthy' children learn to read but children with special needs can too. I have seen amazing blogs, videos etc , on children with Down's syndrome, autism, and brain injured children actually learn to read. I mean seeing a child like Maggie , who has physical health problems ( no mental challenges) learn to read so well its amazing. But its even more amazing to see children with special needs learn to read.

Brillkids also think its amazing and is offering an awesome offer. You can go to this blog to read more about it :
http://downsyndromeupupupandaway.blogspot.com/2011/03/exciting-announcement-from-brillkids.html

Flashcard fun

2011-03-18T19:57:00.000-07:00

I remember when I first started to teach Maggie reading. I learned very quickly on that she loves flashcards. She loves them because she knows that we can play games with them after we're through using them.

I have the set of Your Baby Can Read cards. These were the first type of flashcards that I used for reading. She loved their sliding cards, and I thought they were pretty neat too , with the word in the front and the picture that you could pull out the side.

We played lots of word games with them and she loved the little dry erase board that came with them as she could copy the words on them. That was just so super fun for her.

After we finished YBCR we moved on to Monkisee. Maggie loves these flashcards. I like them too because they are ready made and I don't have to do anything but to pull them out of the box. You can't get any better than that!

That leads me up to right now. Maggie still watches her Monkisee, and she even watches the Your Child Can Read that we have right now. But most times, especially the end of the day she cuddles up right beside me on my chair and she watches her Little Reader. This program too comes with printable cards. I know right now they are working on some ideas on maybe selling word card sets but I'm sure that won't be for a while. I do like their feature and you can print different sized cards. You can make large cards that you could easily slide into the paper protectors ( like I showed in my Monkisee review) and can be used that way. You can print them so that they fit in their Brillkids Binder (something I eventually would like to get) , and cards that are nice and big. Maggie loves these nice big cards. The words are big and I found a great way to laminate them. Granted I'm not sure how economically sound my idea is but it does involve packaging tape, and recycling cereal boxes.

As much as I love the Monkisee flashcards they aren't made to withstand a 4yr old who likes to step on them. No matter how much I tell Maggie not to step on them , she does anyways. So I only use them if we are sitting at the kitchen table, or involving a game where she is sitting flat on her bottom. Thankfully we haven't destroyed any of the cards yet but I'm trying to prevent that.

So what do you do with a four year old that likes to step on cards? Well, you make them yourself of course. So with the magic of Little Reader they already have the cards made online. You pull them up with Little Reader and select the style, type face, color etc. and then press the print button. Easy as apple pie.

So how do you make them sturdy enough to last through trampling by your toddler? Well let me show you.

First you need the materials. The flashcard, the packaging tape, scissors, and cereal boxes that were cut up and stored ( see, I finally found a use to my crazy keeping of cereal boxes).

Next you want to cut the cardboard from your cereal box just big enough to fit on the inside of your flashcard,, the flashcard is folded in half as it usually has a word and a picture on back. For phonics words I write the word on the back so when I flash them to Maggie I don't have to fickle around with the flashcard to see the word.

Stick that piece of cardboard right on the inside of the flashcard.

After you've done that, begin to tape "laminate" your flashcard by going across it. The Little Reader flashcards require about 4 strips across on each side, front then back.

Once you've finished taping both front and back of the card, cut around the edges. Try and be careful that you don't cut to close otherwise you'll have spots where the flashcard didn't seal. I've done this a few times. Its hard not to do, but try and keep just a little bit around it so it keeps a seal. Once you've finished cutting around the card, voila'!
You've got flashcards sturdy enough for at least some fun word playing games that require feet stomping!

Monkisee Giveaway Winner

2011-03-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. So sorry that I didn't get to the giveaway winner sooner. I'm sure you all wanted to know who it was.

My little one caught a viral crud that just didn't want to go away, and I was so superbusy with Girl Scout cookie money retrival that I almost forgot about it.

Thankfully enough I just remembered yesterday so I wrote all of the names on paper and we put them in a bucket that I had from Halloween and I had Miss Maggie pick the winner out of the Halloween Bucket. I should have video taped it but of course didn't think to do that.

So without further adue the Monkisee winner of the Three DVD set is ..........

Erica!!!

Erica you have two days to contact me with your name, address so we can get these sent out to you. If not I will have to draw another name out of the Halloween bucket. My email address is : reedfamilypa@yahoo.com

Thank you everyone for participating. That was super fun and I'm hoping to be able to do another one sometime soon

Monkisee Review and Give Away

2011-02-24T16:26:00.000-08:00

The one thing that I and any parent out there wants for their child is the very best. To give them the best life, the best education, the best of everything they possibly can give. Glenn Doman set out to prove to the world a little bit at a time that young children are capable of much more than then they are given credited for. This is why he founded the Institutes for the Achievement for Human Potential. His philosophy and the philosophy of all parents who are involved in early education is that learning should be a joyus, pleasant experience for the child. That babies and young children can learn anything that is taught to them in a joyous, factual and honest way.

With this said this leads me to my review of Monkisee. When I first learned of the product Your Baby Can Read I was super excited. Here was something that was educational that I could present to my daughter. The purpose was actually two fold as my youngest has to sit for a while on her potty for potty time. This being because we do enemas to keep her artificially contient due to a birth defect that she was born with. Previously I had let her watch tv to pass the time away. I bought her a little desk to let her color on or eat snacks. The one thing I had noticed though was she was watching WAY to much of nothing. I wanted something fun for her to watch yet educational. Thus Your Baby Can Read was bought for her at Christmas time and Maggie was super excited. She ate the program up, and literally went through it in one months' time. Her reading was just amazing and her confidence totally soared. Unfortunately we had gone through all 5 DVD's in such a short period of time and I didn't want to end it there. Some days Maggie loved watching her DVD's. Some days she did not want to watch them and she loved her books. Some days she wanted to play with the flash cards. Teaching 'older' young children to read requires some creativity to keep those juices flowing.

So along came Monkisee. We were excited to get our box in the mail. My daughter had seen some previews online and she knew right away that she would love " Monkey".

Our box included :
1.all of the DVD's , Baby's First Words, All About Colors, All About Shapes, two Memoflix DVD's, and the Teaching Baby to Read DVD.
2. We also recieved three boxes of flashcards
3.and two of the Monkisee books to read

The first DVD I viewed was the Teaching Baby to Read DVD. If you do not get the program this DVD can easily get you started in teaching your child to read without having to even buy the rest of the DVD set. The creator of Monkisee ,Krista Guerrero nicely presents how to teach your baby/child to read. She presents all the information clearly and its easy to understand. I think my favorite part of the DVD was the creative ways to get your child to read. She presents how to make flashcards,books, and gives ideas for games to play to keep your child engaged in learning to read. Some ideas I had already known about and read about, and some I did not. I loved the idea of using folders (with prongs in the middle) to make books. Maggie enjoys using them to look at when she copies words on her dry erase board.

The first DVD that we watched was the Baby's first words and I think had Maggie not known the words she would have been interested in it. Since she knew but maybe two or three words she lost interest. The same for the colors DVD. She knows most of the color words except for the advanced color words like gold, silver etc. that she was interested but not because the words she didn't know were more towards the end. It had nothing to do with the DVD but with the fact she knew how to read most of the words. She did like watching it though. The DVD she was most interested in was the shapes. She loves Howie and Skip and loves to sing the Monkisee theme song. The Color and Shape DVD are fun for children to watch. I would say they are between a Your Baby Can Read/ Baby Einstein/Sesame Street all rolled into one. There are words flashed on the screen like Your Baby Can Read, puppets and children. I can honestly say my daughter loved to see the kids. The DVD really has held her attention and in a short time my daughter has learned almost all of the words. I will secretly admit I wished there were some words like pyramid, cone, cylinder, rectangular prism,sphere, and quadralateral on there. But hey that could be an idea for a next DVD, or book, right? Over all we have been extremely happy with the DVD's and they have definitely held my daughter's attention more than the Your Baby Can Read.
We have also viewed the Memoflix DVDs. These dvds are like having flashcards but on your television. We have enjoyed using these and Maggie has days that she just wants to look at the flashcards on the television too. Like to forwarn that my daughter is sitting on her potty. She is covered but this is the time we usually break out the DVDs.

The next thing we played with was the flashcards. My daughter LOVES to play games with the flashcards and I will admit it was super nice to have them already made. After eight years of homeschooling and always making our own cards it was really nice to have it already done for me. We play card games quite frequently and this gives Maggie another alternative to learn her words without always having to depend on the television to do it. The cards are that, cards. They are not sturdy enough to endure a young child's. grip. They can be ripped if tugged on enough, they can get bent if stomped on enough too. Luckily we haven't managed that, but I can see that happening. They are meant for the adult to use. Maggie loves to play " Find that word!" I put the cards on the floor and I let her know which card to find and she goes and finds it. Sounds simple enough but its her favorite game. Sometimes we jazz it up with " March to the word, diamond." Or " Walk on your tippy toes and find pentagon."

Last but not at all least are the Monkisee books. There are two books, Know your Monkey and Monkey's Like Color. These cute books make a nice addition to the program. These books finally give your child the chance to take everything they have learned and put it together to read to their parent. Of course parents can read it to them too. The one thing I really like is the fact the words are presented before the picture. This helps the child learn the word and not be distracted or focused on the picture. Maggie has thoroughly enjoyed reading her books.

To sum this all up we are very happy with Monkisee. Its definitely a great product that will surely teach your baby or child to read. The price is also right and I love the fact you can buy parts of the product you want. For instance with Your Baby Can Read if you don't buy the entire program from their website you will be missing out on other components of the program that you are not able to purchase on their website. You have to try and find parts of it on ebay. Here with Monkisee should you need new cards, or your child has ripped their precious book you can easily go to their website and purchase a new one. The customer service is beyond excellent. I didn't have any problems with the product, but did talk to the creator of the product via email and she was very prompt to answer any questions that I had. Monkisee is geared towards children ages 0 months to 3 years but you can easily use this program with a 4 or 5 yr old. You could possibly get away using this program with a 6 or 7yr old. My 7yr old has sat and watched this along side her sister and has learned new words too. I definitely hope to see new products from Monkisee, and highly recommend it as an aide for parents to teach their children to read. Monkisee definitely fits the bill of being joyous, factual and educational all rolled into one for children.

This review is linked to Homeschool Curriculum Review Round Up

Thank you to Monkisee for providing the products to review. The opinions are that of my own ,and I was not paid in anyway to give my unbiased opinion.

So would you like to give Monkisee a try for your child? Here is your chance.
This giveaway will include the first three DVDs in the series: Baby's First Words All About Colors and All About Shapes.

What do you need to do to enter?
1. Go to Monkisee and look at the website. Tell me about one thing that you think you would enjoy using with your child from Monkisee.
2. Follow me on my blog
3. Like Monkisee on Facebook
Please leave a seperate comment for each action you've followed,and leave your email address should you win so I can contact you. The winner will be emailed and have 48hrs to contact me.

The winner will be randomly drawn on March 10,2011 @ 11:59pm EST.
Give away is closed ............................................................

Montessori PrePrimary Teachers Course Giveaway

2011-02-18T07:02:00.000-08:00

I've posted lots of Giveaways (which stay tuned for my next Giveaway for Monkisee), but none of them really have been a benefit for the parent. Meaning that the giveaways usually done are for things for the education of the child, and not neccessarily the education of the parent.

This one is very different as its a Giveaway for those who are interested in teaching using the Montessori method. This would be great for those that would like to work in a Montessori school or want to use the Montessori method in their homeschool.

One lucky winner will win a $240 teaching course to learn the Montessori method for children ages 2-6 yrs old.

Just visit this link : TheWizKidsofOz and follow the directions and see if you are one of the lucky winners.

What is meant to be will be

2011-02-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

This year has been an amazing experience for my girls attending private school. They really did enjoy going and the enviroment. So with that said last night my 7yr old hands me a slip for the tuition assistance and I look it over to find that there will no longer be a 7th and 8th grade next year.

So my 13 yr old is down in the dumps about it and there isn't anything I can do about it. Unfortunately our local public school is NOT an option by any stretch of the means. Its not a place I want my children in. Its just not up for discussion at all.

So you wonder what all this means? It means that we're going back to what we were doing all along. Homeschooling. I've toyed with the idea of letting my middle two stay but in all sense of the word it won't work. Because I plan on keeping my youngest home too. The stress of all of dealing with keeping insurance to pay for a nurse that comes two times a day is getting to be to much. It would be different it were a full time nurse but she isn't so insurance is going to bust my buns about it. The public elementary school isn't an option. It would not be a good place for Maggie just so I had nursing services.

I can honestly say that being a parent just is not easy at all. Add in all these different factors and it can be down right just not fun at all sometimes. I know if I keep two in school then the oldest will fight, argue and not be a happy camper that her other siblings are in school and she isn't. So keep life in all fairness they are just all going to come home, and you know what?
That's okay by me.

I will admit there are pros and cons to both. Pros and cons to homeschooling and pros and cons to sending your children to school. I guess you just have to take the one that has the most pros for your family.

So this fall we will go back to the homeschooling family that God wants us and we were meant to be.

Mighty Reader

2011-02-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

Whew, today we have a snow day. This is about our 4th or 5th snow day this year already. This winter has been so crazy with tons of snow and this time lots of ice. I took the opportunity today to do some video of some of the stuff I have made for Maggie for her reading. I stopped and counted the words on her ring and in 32 days she has learned to read 135 words. Just in one month's time!!! I am so very happy and impressed with her reading. We've found some small readers that she can read, and it really has made her more confident in herself. Lately I've found that Maggie has been shifting her preferences when it comes to reading. Some days she really enjoys her Your Baby Can Read videos. Other days she likes to look at the Powerpoint or Brillkids. Some days she likes to look at flashcards, and sometimes she likes to look at the Your Baby Can Read books. So today in the spirit of Snow day I took the time to video tape some of the items we have been using here at home for reading and math.I found that though making some of these things is time consuming they've all been very helpful in their own right.

I've also found that if your starting to teach your child to read at such a late age(4 and above) that you really need to be creative if you want to get them up and reading. One thing that I've also found with teaching a child this age is that they learn extremely quick. This maybe because they are still in that window where they learn quickly though. According to Glenn Doman that time is between ages birth to 6 yrs of age. I will admit it is amazing to see how much children at this age can do.

Even last night Maggie decided to tackle some of the book Green Eggs and Ham. We've been working on sight words lately because really all sentences are composed mostly of sight words. So I figured it would be helpful to teach these. I've used the list from the Kid 2020 website to cover all of the sight words that are taught between k and 3rd grade. The first set has about 6 lists of words and she's completed quite a few words from that already. Some where covered in the Your baby Can Read and some we've worked on with the card books that I've made.
She also was excited to watch her number 5 Your Baby Can Read DVD too. Its much longer then the rest of the DVD's. Its about 40 minutes long, but she sat and watched the whole thing. Her very favorite part of the DVD is the word games at the end. She loves the games at the end that ask them to find this work, or say that word , or touch this or that.

To end my journal entry here for today I want to share Maggie and I celebrating 100 days of school with her reading 135 words ( want everyone to know at the time I had counted 134 words but found there was one that had come off her ring, so she has 135! )

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Reading, Maggie's way

2011-01-31T06:26:00.001-08:00

Its definitely obvious I've neglected the blog here a little bit. Being a mom to four girls definitely leaves not much room to blog all of the time. I do enjoy doing it though when I get a moment of time to do it.

So far we're almost in the month of February and Maggie has made great strides with reading. We began our journey with reading on December 31st of last year. So today has been one full month of learning to read. Granted Maggie is going to preschool she still loves to read with mommy at the end of the day. It usually starts during her potty time and goes right into bed time. She loves to sit on my lap and look at the books that I've made for her using her flashcards.

I had to get a little creative since just using flashcards wasn't cutting it every time. I did see how much she loves her Your Baby Can Read flapbooks so an idea was born.
I took those words, cut them and put them on colored construction paper and voila' Maggie's flashcard books were born. She thinks she's reading a book and in reality she is going over her words in flashcard form. Nothing like a little switch a roo, right?
Of course there are pros and cons to my flascard books:
The pros:
she thinks she is reading a book. This has boosted her self confidence and really follows Doman's advice as to getting books into a child's hand at this stage of the game in teaching children to read at this age level.
She can cuddle up on my lap while we read the 'books' .. with using flashcards my daughter has to sit across from me so I can flip them.
We like to hold the words in our hands. Some times Maggie loves to look at the computer. Sometime she likes to watch YBCR on the tv , and sometime she is just like me and loves to hold the book in her hands. So

The only con that I found with this book is we can't retired words. So it makes it hard to add new words and retire ones she already knows. It is a con but a plus because she loves to read the words she already knows. Just I have to make more books.

I am currently coming up with an idea with using a binder and some page covers. I'll post more on that later on. This may save me on construction paper. He, he.

Of course my 7yr old has joined in on the fun. She reads fairly well for a 7yr old that has never been taught reading using Doman method. Hannah learned to read using phonics. It made sense to her but once she got up and reading I think we started leaning more towards whole words. So at 7 using whole words only makes sense. I was also amazed at how the Your Baby Can Read videos seemed to work with my 7yr old as well. She knows most of the words but there were some that she didn't know , such as chimpanzee, rhinocerous, hippopotamus, crawling, bouncing, comb... etc. I think the very fact that her 4yr old sister knew these words and she didn't motivated her to sit and watch the videos and sit with us while we did flashcards. I've already noticed a big difference with Hannah's reading. So even though Hannah is considered 'over the hill' in brain development. I don't ever think its too late to stimulate the right brain.

Okay, back to Maggie. To date Maggie is reading 129 words on her own. Which is an amazing accomplishment in one months time. She is just soaking up words like a sponge. Of course 129 words in the English language is a drop in the hat since there are about a million words in the English language. I will say I am excited to see how many she gets to this month. It seems every day she is picking up between 8 to 10 new words now. Its just totally amazing. Not all of those 129 words are from Your Baby Can Read either. I have found a gem called Brillkids. Love it, love it. Of course its geared towards little ones but Maggie seems to like their program called Little Reader. We tried out their Little Math and she isn't as enthused with it as Little Reader. But I like it because it exposes them to quantities and numbers. Anyways, the thing she loves the most about Little Reader is the fact that it includes learning words in foreign languages. You have tons of languages right at your finger tips. Maggie seems to really like Spanish, and Polish. Not so much the Chinese at the moment but I think that's pretty neat. I do plan on investing in Little Reader if not for anything else but the foreign language. I will admit I do like the fact they have flashcards that you can print out. They are all ready made. As much as I love making my own stuff, sometimes I just want something already done for me. Especially since I had homeschooled for so long and had to create much of my own resources. Now is a good time in my life to say .. let someone make it for me.

All in all I am very happy with Maggie's progress with reading and even more so that this helps Hannah with her reading too. I will admit I wish I had know about this a very long time ago when I had my first daughter. This would of helped them to excell so much in school. I guess in the end you live and you learn.

Early Learning

2011-01-15T11:34:00.001-08:00

I will admit. There is so much out there that is available to parents today for children. I've found that there is an ever increasing amount of material now out there for babies and young children too. When I first had Marilyn much wasn't available. You had Sesame Street, Barney and so on to teach your chilren early learning skills. Little did I know that my oldest at the time showed much potential in learning. I knew she was a smart cookie but I didn't know that I could have done more to hone in on her abilities. I didn't know much about teaching to begin with. It wasn't until Marilyn was 4yrs old that I even learned about homeschooling. Don't get me wrong. I didn't set her in a crib and walk away, though that would have been extremely easy to do with Marilyn because she was my most content child I had too. Marilyn showed her abilities to learn to read at the age of 3. At the time I worked in daycare so my days were busy watching other people's chilren. My girls (Katie and Marilyn ) came with me and they stayed in their rooms. Marilyn's teacher was the most impressed with Marilyn though. She adapted to preschool the very first day she went. Eventually after time she became the helper as they found she was reading the chilren's names on the cubbies. According to her teacher Marilyn was the only one in the room doing this. Marilyn also had ( and still has ) a great memory. She would just soak up stories and memorize them completely. It was amazing. I wished I would have known at the time that I could of done more with that in teaching her to really read. It wasn't until Marilyn was about the age Maggie is now (4.5) that I learned about homeschooling and the very thought just brought much excitement in me because in those early years I read, and read and ready to my girls. I still do and we have tons and tons of books laying around my house, shoved into shelves to prove that. Sadly enough I really didn't learn about teaching young children ,even babies to read until last year. Even then I figured that the Your Baby Can Read was another useless thing that people unwittingly purchased, and wasted money on. It was last year that Maggie saw a commercial for Your Baby Can Read. It was my older girls who noticed the commercial along with their sister as I watch t.v on the fly. With that Maggie told me she wanted that, and I thought , oh yah, I've got tons of money to waste. So I ripped out my Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book because as all homeschoolers like to point out.. Phonics is the right way, the only way to teach reading. So I slowly "tortured", I mean taught Maggie with phonics. I began to slowly torture myself once again. It reminded me of Marilyn all over again. Marilyn never took to phonics very well in the beginning. If I had had something like Your Baby Can Read or BrillKids she would have flourished for sure. So instead of torturing myself and Maggie like I did with my oldest child. I gave in and bought the Your Baby Can Read. It was the best investment I could have ever made. Its only been three weeks , we are going on to week 4 and my daughter has blown through the first two DVD's and can read and recognize 33 words , albeit on the television, the computer, on flashcards that are already made or even if I've made them myself. I can point out the words in books and she knows them. So its amazing as Maggie seems to be a visual-spatial learner. Which I know have learned Marilyn must be. Hannah and Katie were very much wired to learn reading the phonetic way and that is just the way they are. I've read quite a bit of literature both in books and online about the subject of teaching early reading. So since I have the opportunity to do this with Maggie I will. I love to see the confidence that she has now with reading. She gets so excited (as you can see in our video) when it comes to reading. She loves it when she sees a word she knows. At the rate she is soaking up learning new words that she will be up and reading very soon. Babies and young children love to learn. They love to learn to read. It gives them a sense of confidence that they CAN do whatever it is they put their mind to. Of course parents are and need to take a roll in this. You can't sit your child down to the t.v or computer and think that they'll just absorb it on their own. There maybe some that do. But children need the loving encouragement from their moms and dads to know what they are doing is good. So of course the homeschooler in me I had to find out if there were more programs out on the market. No one ever hears about early reading. Its not talked about in mommy circles. Its not encouraged by school teachers, beacuse woah is the child that reads well above their peers in school these days due to No Child left behind. There is just no money or funding for children like that nor do teachers have the time to do extra stuff with them while they are teaching those who struggle. Its rare you find a school that will challenge a child. So with my findings I found quite a few. Though pricey are so worth the time and money you put into them because from what we've found here in our home is that they actually do work. So you ask , what did you find? I'll share this with you. The first of course is Your Baby Can Read. This is a fun program using DVD's, flashcards and flapbooks. YOur child watches the DVD that has the word, then pictures of children ( who you will see featured on YBCR website), animals etc doing the actions to the words. The words are flashed on the screen and repeated three times, in between giving children 'breaks' with fun songs that they know like " Twinkle, twinkle little star", " Itsy Bitsy Spider" " Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" , " If your Happy and you know it" and so on. Maggie loves these songs and dances to them all of the time. So its visual, fun and interactive. Your Baby Can Read , reviews words from previous DVDs in the next adding more. This gives children variety. It is worth getting the full curriclum. If I would have had the money I would have gotten the entire program as Maggie REALLY enjoys Your Baby Can Read. When your child is finished they will be able to read 200 words. You can purchase single volume, three volume, four volume and the full 5 DVD Volume sets. You can purchase Your Baby Can Read programs from places like Walmart( and Walmart.com), Toys R Us and even full programs on ebay. The only draw back is purchasing from the Your Baby Can Read company themselves. For some reason they seem to have complaints from consumers that have ordered from their website not recieving orders, getting charged the full amount and not getting money back when they were not happy with the product. So my suggest if you want the Your Baby Can Read is to purchase it from Walmart, Ebay , etc. Your Baby Can Read seems to be very pricey though and there really are other programs out there that do the same thing and cost much less, and you get much more. The Your Baby Can Read costs around $200 and right now comes with Your Child Can Read which is a new program that teaches your child about 800 more words after using Your Baby Can Read. The next I came across was Monkisee. This a cute program. Again a DVD program like Your Baby Can Read. You get 6 DVD's, 5 sets of full flashcards, and 2 books for $139.95 right now. Which is MUCH less than Your Baby Can Read and you get quite a bit more. The vidoes are fun and interactive.They remind of something similar to Baby Einstein with the use of puppets, etc to keep children's attention. The Monkisee videos will teach your child a whopping 800 words in a 7 month period versus the 200 Your Baby Can Read. Though if you purchase Your Child Can REad it will give you 1000 words. But you will have to pay more to get 1,000 words. With Monkisee you get 800 words right off the bat without having to purchase another program. I'm not familiar to much with the program other than that. I don't see where words are reviewed on other DVD's like with Your Baby Can Read. They could be but I just may not know about it. If not I don't see how this can keep children's attention constantly because I know with the Your Baby Can Read my daughter has seemed willing to watch a video for a week or less before wanting to move on to the next one. If I'm wrong though I'd love for someone to leave me a comment and let me know. Also another nice feature is you can find replacement stuff online for Monkisee. For example our Your Baby Can Read didn't come with the number 5 volume. So I'm going to have to purchase the number 5 from Walmart.com. Sadly it only comes with the video and slide cards, but no book. Maggie really enjoys the books a lot. So I've been searching high and low for just the book because they do not sell the books to the YBCR set seperately. But with Monkisee they sell their products seperately. So you can purchase a little at a time or get the whole product. Something I really like. I have read very good reviews about their customer service as well online. So you really can't go wrong with this product at all. I do plan on purchasing some things from them here in the future. The next program I came across I believe in the holy grail in infant/toddler reading programs. This is Brillkids Little Reader program. This is actually a whole community of families from all over the world that are committed to teach their infants/babies/toddlers/ older children to read. Its amazing and their product I believe really can't be beat. Little Reader consists of Powerpoint presentations. Easy enough for anyone to set up in their home, but its all put together for you. Brillkids literally is unlimited in the amount of words it teaches. It says 3,000 words but you can download tons more slide shows created by families all over and use them to add even more. So its really an unlimted resource. The Little Reader package includes your download material and you can personalize it. No need to use what's already put on there. If you are teaching your child words such as : Mommy, Daddy, sister, brother, grandma, grandpa, you can insert pictures, videos of everyone in your family and it makes it so fun for the kids. I did this for Maggie and she LOVES seeing pictures of herself, her sisters and other immediate family. You can do the same for pets, household items etc. This program seems to follow the Doman method of reading, which I will eventually write about this as I'm finishing his book recently. Another neat feature of Brillkids is that you can download their Little Math program and work on Math concepts and you can even download word slideshows from other languages around the world. I even downloaded a version of Your baby Can Read, Spanish and Chinese. Maggie thought it was pretty neat. I haven't bought the program yet but I sure want to. It gives Maggie variety in learning the words. Sometimes she feels like watching the t.v and sometimes she just wants to do the slide shows on the computer. Some days like today she does both! LOL. At the moment I don't think you can beat this product as far as price, supplies and everything else goes. Everything, and I mean everything is done for you. Their delux reader kit includes 2 Brillkids Presentation Binders, 40 customizable flapcards, 20 customizable flash cards, 160 sheets of words and picture prints, 5 story books, 2 weekly lesson planners, 10 sheets of sticker lables to play the label things around the house game, and access to unlimited amount of words, and full access to customer service and their forums for $250.00 You can't beat that , you really can't. Of course you can buy just their small Little reader package in which they offer a payment plan for. They don't offer a payment plan on their deluxe packages which is a bummer since I don't have $250 to drop out of my hat. Of cours my daughter is SOOOO worth it, but I just don't have that kind of money all at once. Also if you purchase anything, or sign up on their forums be sure to use my coupon code which is on my side bar on the right hand side here. Brillkids has a neat system in which they give you points , and the more points you earn the more you can download onto your Little Reader/Math system. One last thing, is they recently made it possible to download the Little Reader and Math system on the IPad and IPhone. The next one that I have looked into is Preschool Prep. These cute DVD's teach color, numbers, letters, shapes and sight words. These DVD's are cute. Priced fairly and you can purchase them seperately or as a full package. The company offers books, coloring books , placemats, flap books , board books and flashcards. I would say their prices are comparable to Your Baby Can Read. Also I hear that some children like the vidoes and some don't. They do have samples of the program on their website. All children are different and it either holds their attention or it doesn't. I would think they would be very effective in teaching the sight words since its an isolated dvd. Another program I came across last night was from a company called Wink to Learn.com They too also follow the Doman method of teaching children to read and learn. This company is located in Singapore so you will have to convert prices to American money on their website to find out how much everything costs. I was really impressed with the vidoes. They offered learning to read not only in English (not American English though )but in Chinese(both traditional and simplified, Korean, Japanese, Philipino and Malay. They offer dvd's on teaching children the different languages in song and I was extremely impressed in the Encyclopedic DVDs they have on Zoo animals , Rainforest animals , Jungle Animals , Threaten species, African animals, Australian animals ,and the Wetlands. These I am VERY intersted in. This website definitely is worth looking at and considering when teaching your child to read. As when they are little learning other languages are much simpler for children. I wish they had something like this for Polish. He, he.. Another nice feature is if you have an Iphone or I pad you can access the programs on these. Nice for those that own these or may live in isolated places without computers. Last but definitely not the least at all is Signing Time. This is a great DVD program for those who want to teach their young baby to sign. A neat little feature to this program is that it also can teach them to read! So if you have a hearing impaired child this program is wonderful. It is a little bit pricey and you don't get much bang for your buck so to speak as in getting the extra stuff. But you do get the vidoes and flashcards. You can buy bundle packages that are as little as $150 to almost $$800 for the whole complete program! You can also buy DVD's and other items seperately as well. I'm sure as I continue learning about early learning I will come upon more intersting proudcts and websites. For now these are the ones I'm currently aware of at the moment and they are all worth looking into because what I may see as awesome for us maynot be so for you. The important thing is that the information is out there and you can make an informed decision. For us the DVD route seems to be the better route as Maggie seems to learn better this way. It also makes a great use of her time she is on the potty doing her potty time. Maggie has to sit on the potty longer than the average kid due to the way we have to do potty. So if she is going to sit there I can fill her mind with educational information. Which seems to be working REALLY well. So there you go folks! Video of Maggie , 3 weeks into using Your Baby Can Read and Little Reader on the side :>) To date she reads and recognizes 33 words.

Your Baby Can Read Schedule

2011-01-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've noticed quite a bit lately from reading posts on the YBCR facebook page is that some of the kits that you buy at the store come with schedules and some do not. I've also noticed the " What is the schedule?" Question become very common. So I thought I'd type it out for those who do not have this. Of course you can go to the Your Baby Can
website and purchase it there. But if you have everything else in the Your Baby's First Teacher pack, such as the workshop DVD and so forth this is kind of expensive.
So I'll be kind enough to post it here and please remember that this schedule is not a steadfast rule. Some children need more time and some children need less time in viewing the videos. I've seen stories where children as young as 9 months old plow through all 5 DVD's in a matter of 2 to 3 months, and I've also see stories where parents go through it slowly with their little ones and they aren't reading until 14,15 16 months old. It will depend on many factors. The age of your child, the interest of your child ( some children just aren't interesting in learing to read quite yet), and the time and commitment you put forth with your child and the program.
So if you have a child that is learning the words quickly and you feel confident your child has grasp the words, then by all means move on to the next DVD. My 4.5 yr old daughter caught on very quickly with the 1st DVD. She watched it for the first 4 days and that was it, she was ready to move to the 2nd. The 2nd DVD has more words so I see that she is going to take a bit more time with it. Possibly. Lately she has just been eating up learning to read. So who knows?
If you have a child that is taking longer then so be it. Move on when you feel confident they have learned the words.

The Basic Schedule: This is according to the YBCR Parent's Guide...

Start with Volume 1 regardless of your child's age....
Also children who are learning English as a second language may progress at a slower rate than children who's first language is English.

Age 3 months to 12 months old
1st DVD- watch for 1 month , twice a day, move to volume 2 after 1 month. Baby may not recognize all words but that is okay because volume 2 repeats words from volume 1. After a couple of sessions with watching the first DVD you can use the sliding cards and books, play with them for a few minutes several times a day.

In months 2 and 3 , Watch Volume 2, twice a day for 2 months, review during the week occasionally watching the first DVD, play with cards and books from volumes 1&2

In months 4&5, Watch Volume 3. Follow this for 2 months , move to the next dvd according to the schedule, even if they don't know all of the words after two months. Your child will have more opportunities to master the words later. Watch DVD twice a day, review with Volume 1&2, a few times a week, play with books and cards for volumes 1,2&3 several times a day for a few minutes.

In month 6 , Watch Volume 4, will combine words your child has already seen in previous DVD's along with new words.
Watch DVD twice a day, watch volumes 1,2& 3 few times during the week, use cards and books for volumes 1,2,3,4

In month 7, Watch DVD 5, this DVD combines words from previous DVD's with new words for a total of 164 key words to review and learn.
Watch the volume 5 once or twice a day. This DVD is longer so feel free to watch it in two or more sessions.
Watch the volume 4 dvd , several times a week, occasionally review DVD's 1,2,3 , use books , cards for all volumes, 1,2,3,4,5

At the end of the month 7 if your child is reading most of the words from the DVD , they are ready for Your Child Can Read series. You can also expose them to different words to increase their vocabulary. If your child isn't fully recognizing all of the words yet, continue with the schedule for month 7 for several more months, but randomly select any of the 5 DVD's rather then focusing on volumes 4&5. Continue with showing your child the books and sliding cards.
Go to the library, check out books, teach your child to point to the words while you are reading to your child. When you come across a familiar word have them read it. Reading to your child will help give them an appreciation and love for learning.

Ages 12 months to 3yrs old: (follow instructions above for when to introduce books, cards and previous DVD's)

Volume 1 for one month,,

Volume 2 for months 2&3,

Volume 3 for one month

Volume 4 for one month

Volume 5 for 1 month

Ages 3 to 5yrs old; ( follow instructions from 3month to 12month schedule as to when to introduce books, cards and previous DVD's)

Volume 1 for one month,

Volume 2 for one month,

Volume 3 for one month,

Volume 4 for one month,

Volume 5 for one month.

You may find with this age group that you can accelerate MUCH faster than this. This of course depends on the age and ability of your child. Some children may need longer. Go by the lead of your child. My daughter seems to be speeding up with this program, but your child may need a full month or more. You will know when they are ready to move on. I also know that my daughter was sooooo ready for this that she wanted to play with the books and cards that very day. She does well with this and I'm fine with that. If your child wants to look at these things , especially in this age range its absolutely fine. I think its encouraged my daughter more to look at those flashcards the day I introduce the the new DVD. Plus at this age they also may like writing out the words. My daughter knows how to write her letters so she loves to spell them out on her dry erase board or on paper as much as she can. She loves the card games. So with this said, at this age level do what makes them happy and wanting to do more.

I hope this helps some. Just remember its a basic guide and a guide only. This is not meant to be set in stone. You may have a much younger child that can follow a schedule of a 3yr old and you may have a 3yr old that may need the schedule of the 3months to 12 months range. Children are different and they learn at their own God-given pace.

Your Baby Can Read

2011-01-05T07:55:00.001-08:00

Hello all, thought I'd write a review of my own on this since I've had some ask us about it. We bought Maggie the 4 DVD version of Your Baby Can Read for Christmas this year. She has been wanting this program since she and I first saw the commerical about a year ago. I held off because I've had many tell me how inferior learning to read using the whole words approach is and how superior using phonics only is. To be honest I'm not sure why I listen to other people. If and when I do, I, for the most part get some kind of resistance from my children. Plus I thought maybe Maggie would take to the phonics approach like Katie and Hannah did. Alas, she has not and Lord knows we tried, but I'm finding that the Your Baby Can Read approach works much better for her.

We began the program on 12/31/10 so we are only really 5 days into the program now. From what I have witnessed with Maggie is nothing short of a reading miracle. Even that first day she was learning to read words. After her second viewing she knew how to read about 2 or 3 words. We are on day 5 and she knows about 14 of the 22 words on the first DVD. This is with making our own flashcards and using them, randomly giving her words to make sure she just isn't memorizing the words in order and so on. I can see us going through this program much quicker than the schedule allows for the program.

Your Baby Can Read is geared towards children ages 3 months to 5 yrs of age. The 'window' of opportunity in teaching children to read. Dr. Titzer is the creator of the program and I was able to watch a little bit of the Workshop DVD before it went all wonky on me. I'm not sure if there is a scratch on the disk or what but I didn't get to see it all unfortunately. The program was actually created out of love. Dr. Titzer found he wanted something stimulating for his daughter while she was in daycare during the day. So he created a video and learned himself that she was learning from them. So he turned his focus away from adult learning to how infants/toddlers learn. You can go onto the Your Baby Can Read website and see testimonies from parents and watch their young children actually read. These are real people with real testimonies. In all actuality the idea isn't really a new one at all. This has been common knowledge in China. Dr. Titzer described how he was once a judge in China for a baby reading contest. That they literally hold contests with young babies and children in reading. So here is my run down of the program: The Your Baby Can Read comes in sets that contain 3 to 5 DVD's. The set with the 5 DVD's is the full program of Your Baby Can Read. Walmart carries the 3 and 4 disk program. They also carry one volume each on Walmart.com (some Walmarts may have these in store as well)if you just want to give the first one a try. Your Baby Can Read website , Ebay and Amazon.com carry the 5 DVD sets. The kits come with a Parent Guide, Workshop DVD, 3 to5 boxes of sliding word cards, 3-5 books and if you have the full set already made flashcards.

The program works like this: Your child watches the 1st DVD, twice a day, every day for a full month. After a few weeks of watching the DVD you can pull out the cards and books. Now of course this depends on the age of the child. An older child can really start using the books and cards the very first day versus a young child who may need those few weeks for the words to soak in. We used the DVD, the cards and the book the very first day. It also says for your child to watch the video twice a day for a month. Again depends on the child. I've heard of little ones blowing through all 5 DVD's in as little as two to three months, and some have needed to follow that full month schedule. Just remember to follow your child's lead. Depending on the age of the child you will watch DVD's 2 and 3 ever day for two months. An older child ages 3-5 can go through each DVD in a month if they need to. Of course again this all depends on your child. After 5 days doing the 1st DVD I can comfortably say that I will start DVD 2 this Friday with her ( that will be 1 week from where we started). Of course you have to slide in DVD 1 during the next week. You continually review the other DVD's as well. You don't use one then leave and go to another. How are we using it? Just like the guide suggest. Watch the DVD twice a day ( though since she has started school I have only been able to do once a day with her, and I'll do them twice on the weekend. Then after she is finished watching the DVD we play some card games or use the books and read those. It doesn't take us long and its a good thing while she has 'potty time' and has to sit on her potty for a while. I'm hoping this schedule will work just as well as watching it twice a day everyday. I did try to see if she'd watch the video before school but she wasn't up to that. So we just played card games. Maggie also likes to write the words on her dry erase card that comes with the sliding word cards. The sliding word cards are really neat. Maggie likes them because she can see the word first then slide a picture of the word on the side of the card if she forgets. The book does the same thing pretty much. It shows the word , then you open a flap and the picture is on the inside. The program is not time consuming, but it does involve parental involvement. You can let your child watch the DVD but you need to follow up with the flashcards and reading the books along with your child. In the end Maggie is reading about 14 of the 22 words from the 1st DVD.
Maggie 4 years 5 months, reading words on 1/4/11(words are randomly given)

and loving it. My plans are to let her do this program, then go on to Your Child Can Read, and follow that up with Preschool Prep I'll also throw Starfall.com in there , Progressive Phonics and Literactive to finish it off with some phonics. The Your Baby Can Read does teach phonics but with the idea that your baby will and can figure out the phonics patterns. It also includes phonics teaching ideas in the Parent's Guide. So its not a totally whole words approach.

My opinion is I think this program gets children off to a great start in reading. The younger you can start them the better off they are. I wished I had known about it when Marilyn was little and was able to start Maggie sooner with it. The program really does work and is well worth the money.

I also had a few people ask questions about the program, here are my answers:

Q: How do they do the program?
A: The child watches the DVD. The DVD's show the word, has a little pointer that goes under the word, twice, then they show a short clip of a child, animal, ect doing some kind of action with the word. For instance the first word on DVD 1 is "hi" they show and say the word twice, then show a short clip of a little boy named Grahm and he says " Hi, my name is Grahm and we're going to learn to read!" And the video goes on. There are about three breaks in the video. Two of them will have familiar songs. Such as Twinkle, twinkle little star, and Itsy Bitsy Spider while they flash the words to the song on the screen with cute video. Then there is one poem in the video , the first one has " The Zoo" with a child reading the poem as the words and pictures are shown on the screen. Maggie really likes these a lot. They are still learning but don't realize it. There is a schedule for the different age groups in the Parent's Guide that it comes with.

After they are finished with the DVD , depending on the age of your child , they can can use the slider cards, flash cards and books that go along with the DVD after that day or in as long as a few weeks after starting the DVD. That's about it. No fuss, no muss. It really doesn't take long to do at all. And the reward is great.

Q: Can I use this with my hearing immpaired child?

A. At first I wasn't so sure but I think I can say you can. With some modification on your part. Young babies I've seen as small as 9 months on video reading and they aren't verbal yet. So they use simple signs to relay that they know what that word is. Of course they can hear the video so it doesn't take to much effort on the parent. With that said I'm sure that the parent would have to sit there and reinforce the signs. So I would say , yes you can use this program but you the parent will have to sit and show your child the proper sign for the word. Once they start learning the word and know the sign I can say you can sit them in front of the video on their own. There is also a company that has videos to teach children ASL and they have the word, a picture, etc. The name is called Signing Time you could also create flashcards and make your own books to go along with it and it would be the same as Your Baby Can Read. Either way if you want to put the time and effort to modify it, you can do it !

Q: What is included in the package?

A: The complete pacakge that you can get off the Your Baby Can Read website, Ebay and Amazon.com is a 5 disk program. This program comes with the 5 DVD's, 5 books, 5 sets of sliding card, parent guide, parent workshop, and flashcards.
If you buy the sets from Walmart they usually come in either single volumes that only include the DVD and sliding words cards, or they also sell the three disk version and 4 disk version(what we have) and they come with the DVD's , books, sliding cards set and workshop. This does not contain disk 5 volume or the premade flashcards. Either way , it can get you up and going. Just depends on how much you want to spend. The complete kit from the website costs around $200.00, you can go to Ebay and find it for less and even Amazon.com. I wouldn't worry about getting costumer service or anything. As great as a product this is , they unfortunately have a really bad customer service problem that I hope at some point will be addressed. So get the program whereever you can for whatever you can afford.

This Review is linked to Homeschool Curriculum Review Round Up

Touch Math Giveaway

2010-12-07T07:07:00.000-08:00

Though my girls are going to private school this year really hasn't meant that I've given up homeschooling completely. Actually I have turned to what is called Afterschooling, or now since we are having snow days...part time homeschooling.

Honestly after eight years of homeschooling I just can't give it up like that. Its like asking a school teacher to stop teaching and then asking them what they are going to do with themselves after they stop. They eventually find something to replace that. Well I'm doing my best continuing on the learning path with my daughters all the while fullfilling my need to educate.

TouchMath has been a blessing for our family. I had found TouchMath quite some time ago on the web and had looked at it and dismissed it because of the price tag. It wasn't until my third daughter began having difficulty with math that I turned once again to TouchMath. We were very fortunate to get most of the program from our school district. They were happy to oblige us with copies of the math program. I'm not sure what edition is was or what level it was but it was enough to get my daughter up and going and to get confident once again in her math abilities.

I was happy to see her enjoy the math and she happily jumped at the chance each time I brought it out. My youngest daughter was about 3 at the time and she too wanted TouchMath. So I did manage to find the Prek math program on Ebay and bought it. She is 4 now and she still loves her TouchMath and asks to do it everyday.
Even as I type right now my girls are on a snow day and sitting at the table coloring the Holiday TouchMath cards and doing the subtraction snowflake maze for 'fun'. Little do they know they are learning something.
TouchMath is an amazing math program. I surely wished I had something like that for math when I was a kid. I think I would have been much more confident in math that's for certain.

With that glowing review there is a TouchMath giveaway being offered on another blog. These are for the Touch 2 Learn Numerals. These are 3 D numbers for the kids to touch and learn the points to where each number should be counted. It also includes a Base 10 tray with the kit.

How do you win this? Easy. Go to the Doman, Aba, Dayhome and Homeschooling Momma Blog and read about the new TouchMath Software for Kindergardeners and follow the steps listed in order to register for the giveaway. Its that easy!

Thanksgiving Season

2010-11-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

The Thanksgiving Season is already upon us. The girls have completed 50 days of school at St. Thomas and not any one of them have complained that they have wanted to come home. Which is a good thing. We honestly have a good little school here where we live and its a shame that more families don't give this little school a chance in what it offers. They do many wonderful things for the kids and the families alike. Just recently they had a fun hay ride for Halloween and the kids got to dress up and have a Halloween party.
With this time of political correctness public schools are turning away from celebrating the holidays that we use to celebrate in our youth.

My feeling on this is that this it he United States of America. This is our country and if others come to our country then they need to live by the American way. Not the other way around. Of course we need to respect one another but if we went to their country we would be forced to believe what they believe and practice whatever religion that is the religion of that country. No where else in the world can you go to a country like ours where Americans give up their right to live as Christians for other people.

Okay I'm off my soap box about that but really. Back to my topic at hand.
The girls are doing well at their new school. They are thriving and just really enjoy it. The only thing they don't like , and me too, is getting up early. I'm just not an early bird person at all. Never have been and I don't think I ever will be. I do just fine getting up at 8 am thank you.

So this is the very first thing I am thankful for this season. I'm always thankful for each and everyday that God has given me on this earth. Even if its not the kind of life I wish. I'd love to be well and pain free but I'm on the road to recovery and that I am thankful for too.
I am thankful for my daughters having such wonderful teachers. I am thankful for my family and I'm always thankful for the roof over my head and the food that I have to create wonderful creations for my daughter's school lunches and our bellies.. :>)
I am thankful for the wonderful friendships that I have gathered throughout the years with our VACTERL families. Without them I would not be able to give the best care I can for Maggie.
I have so much to be thankful for. I really do. So much so that I can't really type it all. Those are just the things that come to my mind as I type right now.

So for fun. List the things that you are ever so thankful for ......

National Pierogi Day!

2010-10-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

Hello all. For all of my Pittsburgh and Polish friends it is National Pierogi Day. And in honor of National Piergogi Day I made our own pierogis for dinner tonight. They turned out really good. We haven't eaten them yet but they look and smell delicious.

First you need your ingredients to make the pierogi. I like to use the King Author flour. Its pure flour without Bromide( BAD stuff, in most breads unless the ingredients on the bread bag says unbrominated(Wegmans has these)burger and hot dog rolls etc. Bromide is BAD stuff for your body). You want 2 cups of flour in your bowl. Next you want some salt. I like the Himalayan and Celtic Salts, these are REAL salts, not refined garbage. So you want 1/2 tsp of salt. Next you want to mix those two together. Add one egg, your soften butter 1/4 tsp cut up in little pieces and 1/2 cup of sour cream. I had forgotten I had some plain Greek style yogurt in my fridge. You can use that too and actually its more healthier than the sour cream. Mix it all together. I used my hands if you have a food processor with a hook you can use that too. You want to keep mixing it until the dough is NOT sticky anymore. This can take up to 5 to 7 minutes.
Once your done with the dough , wrap it in some waxed paper and let it sit in the fridge for at least 20 to 30 minutes. You can make this a day ahead of time too and use it the next day.

While your waiting for your dough to settle. Cut up about 3 to 5 potatoes. I cut 5 russet( that I had here in the house and it made A LOT! I even made 2 batches and still had some left). Wash, and cut the potatoes and boil them til their nice and soft.

So while I was waiting for my tastey spuds to cook I choppped up some onion(shhhh, don't tell hubby HATES onion) and chopped up half of my lovely garlic that I got from my mother in law's garden. Yum. I sauteed the onion until it wasn't much of an onion. Sauteed the onion first as the garlic cooks up much quicker. Once the onion started looking 'softer' I added the garlic to the pan.

Once the potatoes were done and the onion. I got my trusty mixer out and started to mix those puppies up for about a few seconds. Then shut off the the mixer, added my onion/garlic mix to the potatoes and mixed those puppies up again. Shut if off, added some cheese to the mix. I thought I had some cheddar in the fridge but I didn't. So I settled for the taco cheese I have. Still tastes pretty good. Mixed that up , there really isn't a set amount of cheese. Just add to your taste. You can add a little salt and pepper to your liking too. To top it off I cut up the parsely I had in the fridge and ended up with that yummy mix. MMMM.

Okay so the mix is all set and by the time your done doing all of that your dough is ready to take out of the fridge. Assuming you are doing this all in one day like I did. I used my favorite rolling pin, a pastry/bread cutter that I had gotten from Pampered Chef, but you can use a cup , jar or anything that is circular to make your pierogi.

Roll your dough to about 1/8 inch thick. If your super human. If your not and your like me try to roll it as thin as you can. Then cut out your circle to make your pierogi.

Add your mix. About a tablespoon or so to the middle of your pierogi. I used a fork to hold the dough and slide when I folded the pierogi. It really worked well in keeping it from squishing out of the pierogi when you fold it in half.

After folding them in half, use your fork to press the edges together. It gives the pierogi a more interesting looking look. Plus it keeps that darned filling in there too. If your pierogi isn't sticking together then your using to much flour to roll out your dough. If you did, that's okay. Just use a little water on the fork and then press.

Then viola'! Your pierogi is all done. If you plan on making them for dinner after your done. Go ahead !Boil these babies for about 8 to 10 minutes or when they start floating at the top of your pan. You can boil them , bake them, fry them. A true Polish person does not fry their pierogi though, they boil them. You can also eat them with a side of sour cream. If your like my dad who is the human 'garbage can' you can eat them with sour cream and salsa(which is pretty good by the way). Add a little butter to them. Be creative.
If you want to eat them later like me. I used my bread pan and put waxed paper in it and added my pierogis to it then wrapped them up nicely. I wrapped up some to put in the fridge for dinner and then the other half in the freezer for another day.
So there you go. Have a great National Pierogi Day!!

Missing my life

2010-10-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

The one thing about thyroid disease is that it takes your life from you.
I once had a wonderful life. One that was full and vibrant and enjoyable. Along time ago I had energy to enjoy life and have fun. I felt on top of the world and enjoyed doing everything and anything with my family. Especially my children.

Now I am not enjoying life like I once did. Its a sad, lonely and horrible road for me. Not to mention very scary. If I could talk to my thyroid I would tell it to leave me the heck alone. Go away! Let me live my life and be the best me I can be and the best mom I can be.

I so miss my life. I miss being the fun loving, always going everywhere and doing fun things mom I was. I still am but not to the same extent. I miss homeschooling my girls. I sent them because, one, they wanted to give it a try and two because I was losing my energy to even do it anymore. I wasn't being an effective teacher like I once was. It makes me sad to even think about it.
I miss spending my days on homeschooling boards reading about the latest curriculum and trying to decide whether it would be a good fit. Instead I spend my days on thyroid yahoo groups in hopes that I can get this all figured out, and trust me I wonder some days if I need to become a chemist to figure it all out. The complexity of thyroid disease is sometimes so above my head that I miss those simple days of just worrying whether we had the right math program or not.

Of course I'm doing something about it. I'm trying to find an actual physican that will help me heal my thyroid. I really don't want to take it out. I really don't. I read everyday the heartbreaking stories of those who have. I am very fortunate this time that I was able to start researching before even agreeing to any type of surgical procedure. This one out of a couple that I've already had myself , would of been the one I most regretted if I had gone ahead and done it.
I can't stress to anyone who reads this how much you NEED your thyroid. It controls all of your body organs. It controls your metabolisim , in a strange sense its almost to compare to your soul.

Once taken out your energy levels are never the same. No pill on earth can replace your thyroid gland. Its as if your soul is taken from you and you are left as a shell of a person. Its also very sad that many doctors don't take the time to really read, research and do what really and truely helps the patient. They'd much rather take out the gland so they can line their pockets to pay that next bill. Forget the fact that you may start out feeling better, and then later down the road it catches up to you, or forget the fact that there are high risks such as losing your parathyroid glands, or their function. Losing your vocal cords and the ability to read well. If those things happen its not the doctor's fault. Its all par for the course risks that you signed up for.

Its sad really. To know you can lose so much when you get sick. I hope and pray that the path I take is the right one. The one that will get me back to feeling like the awesome momma I was.

Dear Dr. Endo

2010-09-23T11:27:00.003-07:00

Dear Dr. Endo ( or should I say evil Endo?),
I received a letter from you in the mail today from your office (which I threw out by the way). It said that it wanted my blood work so that you could continue giving me quality care. Um, yah, right.
I'd like to know your definition of 'quality' care. Is it having your patients walk out in tears and breaking down crying in their car after an appointment with you, after you tell them that taking their thyroid out was better than dying?
Is your 'quality' care having the doctor tell me that they didn't understand the report from the hospital? Which by the way I understood just fine when my primary care doc and I went over it. Really it was written in English and I didn't need a degree to understand it and my ENT understood it just fine when he told me that he saw nothing 'scary' in there, and monitoring it would be just fine. He even let me know how I felt was not that of people coming in with just nodules and that something was going on that needed to be taken care of first because he could take out my thyorid but it won't make me feel better. In fact my ENT really worked at discouraging me from having it taken out, even though he left it up to me as to whether I want it taken out or not So hmmmm.
Which leads me to the next thing. You joke me by just checking my T4 levels and nothing else. The thyroid consists more of than just T4. What about my Ft4, or my Ft3, or my RT3? Or heck what about T3 in general? Its been years since anyone has ever checked that. It seems doctors don't check that anymore. How about my adrenal glands, pitutitary, my iron levels for peat sake? I ask for these to be looked at and doctors poo paw it ,or just totally ignore me as if I just didn't say anything to them. Guess what? I am more than a thyroid, I am a person and I have more organs than just a thyroid.
Is your 'quality' care that where you poke my neck with needles when I tell you that I am very very sensitive when it comes to my neck. I even had a tough time having the sono done. Even more so when the biopsy has more false readings anyways. Is your 'quality' care telling me that your going to remove my thyroid and then put me back on the same poision(Synthroid) that has most likely put me in this position to begin with? Even more so then when I told you it had stopped working for me years ago.
With all of that said, Dear Dr. Endo, I will not grace your office with my presence. What I will do is pray for all of those women and men who do go to your office. I am a consumer and expect you to listen to me so that I can heal myself. If you cannot listen to me or help me then I will just do what I can to heal myself, and pray that I will get the money soon to see a doctor who really knows how to treat my condition. I have a family to take care of , four beautiful children and a husband, who need ME very much and not a shell of me.
So if you throw this letter out too that's fine, just letting you know that I will NOT be coming back.

Sincerely,
A well read consumer

St. Theresa's Little Flower Faith Folder Giveaway and Afghan Give away

2010-09-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

The one memory I have growing up as a child was that of my mother in her garden on the side of her house. In that garden we had all sorts of flowers but my mother's most prized possesion was her roses. This must of been a love passed down by mother and child as my grandmother had her roses on the side of her house as well. Both when my mother and grandmother passed away several years ago we even made it a thing to make sure that there were roses on their coffins and on their headstones.

So when I saw this giveaway on the Shower of Roses website it brought back those wonderful memories of when I was a child watching my mother tend to her beautiful roses in our garden. www.showerofroses.blogspot.com

We have done a few of the Faith Folders and they really did turn out great. I will have to dig them out of our Lapbook collection and post them pics here.

Also on the website the author is also giving away a beautiful afghan to commemorate the Feast of St. Theresa as well.

" I have given nothing but love to God and He will repay with love. After my death I will let fall a shower of roses." St. Theresa Lisieux (April 1895)

Maggie's first day of school

2010-09-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

Boy, oh , boy. How could I forget my Maggie pie's first day of preschool? Here are some beautiful pictures of my peanut girl. She started preschool on September 7th, 2010.

Preschool is going well for Maggie at the moment. She is really progressing and isn't so fearful of being there. Drop offs are usually really good for her and her teacher says she fusses sometimes but calms down.
I'm hoping we can continue preschool but I'm not sure as we still don't have a nurse for her for school. As it stands I go over to the school to cath her at 10:30 or whenever she has a poop accident. Which has only been once so far.

Its really getting old going over to the school three or four times a day. It really has defeated the purpose of it all and as it stands I'm just getting worn down and tired. Don't get me wrong I love my baby girl and will and have done anything for her but I am human. I can't go anywhere and am stuck at home. I hope that this all works out but I'm not so sure.

My proud Maggie girl..

Maggie and Daddy

Maggie waiting to go up to class

Maggie sitting at her big girl desk

Here is to a good 2010, Maggie Reed. Mommy loves you so very much.

Living with Thyroid disease

2010-09-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'll admit our blog is a bit all over the place at the moment as I'm not homeschooling this year. The girls decided to give school a try and I have been needing to work on my health.

The past 7-8 years now I've been batteling with thyroid disease in one fashion or another. The first was I was diagnosed with thyroid disease when my 3rd daughter was born. I believe I've had it for a long time previous to that but that's when finally the first time in my life I was diagnosed. I was a good little patient, taking that little tiny pill called Synthroid. For the first three years I actually felt really well on it. I didn't question what I was put on , all I knew was that finally the first time since I could remember I felt 'awake', and alive. I was losing weight with diet and exercise and I felt normal. Of course that's all my doctor said, " you just take the medication , come in for some blood tests once a year and all will be well."

Then I had gotten pregnant with Maggie. A very true blessing even though I had a few rough spots through it. I just knew something wasn't right. In the end I was right as always and Maggie was born with what is called VACTERL association. Which is basically multiple birth defects. It wasn't until about 6 months after Maggie's birth with all of the stress , lack of sleep from a sick baby and many hospital stays with her I noticed I wasn't feeling my 'normal' self anymore. I started gaining weight and somewhere along the line I began developing a goiter. I've probably had it for a long time and just noticed it more when it bothered me a little bit on one side of my neck.

Along the way I had my blood tested and the 'good ole' docs told me all was fine. So obviously it was all in my mind. Not. It wasn't until this January that I just crashed. My blood pressure went sky high and I could barely move. I was sick. Along the way I still took my Synthroid because that's all the doctors will prescribe you because " It helps everyone." Not.
No matter how much I've begged and pleaded with doctors not one of them will prescribe me dessicated thyroid hormone , nor will anyone check out other things like adrenal glands and ferritin(iron) in me. I'm sure its because of my insurance. Actually I know it is. Why would we want to heal people? No its much easier to just run T4 tests, and check red blood cell count and end it there and wisk me off on my way. Or how about rip my thyroid out? That will 'fix' it.

I'll tell you I have lost most trust in the medical establishment these days. Why not rip the thyroid out and once they've screwed me up, put me back on the Synthroid that literally made me feel horrid and then they'll send me on my way. I mean really.. I have four children that I need to take care of and depend on me.

I have read quite a bit on the subject. Joined a group a while back called Thyroidless and have learned so much about what happens to people once they get their thyroid out. Its very sad and its heartbreaking to see these ladies/men suffer so much after they get it taken out. Doctors/Endos have this cold attitude that you can live without it. Not true if your body isn't doing what it needs to be doing to keep you alive and your medicine working properly. Its nothing for these doctors to take a thyroid out and wisk you on their way because after all their work is done and their pockets are lined with your thyriod( money).

There is hope and possibility to 'heal' the body and treat the thyroid rather then just rip it out. Postassium Iodine seems to be the thing that helps the body heal and rid itself of the toxins that build up in the body that leads to thyroid dysfunction, disease, cancer , goiter etc. Its sad to see so many women get mislead by the medical community on how to treat this. Don't get me wrong conventional medicine has its place. Its what saved my baby girl. Some of her birth defects would have killed her had she been born in someother life time before now. Most kids with her Imperforate anus defect didn't make it very long after birth. So it has its place but they sure still have a lot to learn about thyroid. The master gland. Without this gland your body wouldn't function properly at all. It controls your organs so its not like an appendix or tonsils that if they take it out you'll be fine. One will be dependent on this medication for the rest of their lives otherwise you die. Enough said. I'd much rather keep my thyroid thank you.

I will admit I wish I didn't have this problem at all. Some days it seems like to much to bear. I have spent countless hours reading about what I can do to heal myself,what to take and so on. But to me its not helpful if I can't go see a good doctor that can help me. The worst thing is I just can't afford it because these type of doctors ( holistic) don't take medical insurance ( I don't blame them). We can barely make ends meet right now. Its hard enough having to save for Maggie's medical trips let alone for me. So I'm sorry if I sound like I'm having a bit of a pity party , but I feel lost, hopeless and everything you can feel when you are faced with medical problems and no way to get the right treatment. Somedays I feel like I am going to be reduced to having my thyroid ripped out and to live a shell of a life because I can't afford to pay for a 'good' doctor. But I can't fold into that because I don't want that taken away from me. I don't want to be ill with cancer or anything like that either. My girls need me and I need them. My husband needs me and I need him. It just doesn't seem right that after having Maggie and dealing with everything that I have do deal with her that I get sick with something. I am MOM, I am supposed to be on my toes to take care of my children. After all God gave me them to care for.

I'm not sure what to really do. I would have to come up with the money to test my adrenal glands. For the dessicated thyroid , for the vitamin supplements,,, and the list goes on and on. Its just frustrating. I try so hard to lean on God. I will never know why this has happened. For all of the places on my body to get weird growths , my neck. The most sensitive part of my body. On my thyroid, the gland that controls my organs, and lord knows where ever else. None of my doctors have been the least bit helpful in any respect.

That leads me into reading the book of Job. What an amazing man. I bet if he were alive today he would have a blog or a Caringbridge page documenting his trials. Here was a man that lost his family, everything he had, including his health. He had friends who told him to blame God , yet he wouldn't. In the end he overcame his health scare, went on to gain back everything and then some of what he had and reestablished a family of his own and lived for a hundred some years. Yet in the end he learned that somethings in life can never be explained as to why they happen the way they do. He knew that it wasn't God's fault. I think Job best said it when he proclaimed : " But you smear me with lies, You are worthless doctors all of you! I wish you would just stop talking ; then you would really be wise! Listen to my argument and hear the pleading of my lips. " Job 13:4-6
If these doctors today would just stop and listen to their patients that maybe, just maybe they could help people more then just throw them on medication and line their pockets with taking organs out that need to be healed and not taken out.

School and Fall

2010-09-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

I will admit this is not exactly my favorite time of the year. But I can say that I do appreciate the cooler temperatures. Its not to cold and not to hot, but just right.

The girls have been doing really well with school. Maggie started her first week of school last week. Its been a bit of trial and error for the most part since she has started. It also has been a little frustrating too since we do not have a nurse for her either , nor do I see one taking on the job to come in and out of the school once or twice a day.
So I'm taking this in stride and hoping for the best out of it all. If it gets to be to much , to stressful or just not woth it all anymore I will bring her home.

Even though the girls are doing well in school they are showing signs of wanting to come home. They will finish this school year but they've been hinting to how much they miss their mom being the teacher. I told them we will reevaluate at the end of the school year. See how they feel about everything then and go from there.

I'll admit I do miss having them home and teaching. I guess its just something I have always done, but in the same breath I will eventually have to get used to it as they won't always be little for ever.

I'm hoping this time away will give me the time to work on my health so I can feel better and be able to have the energy to teach. Thyroid disease is an ugly disease. Its very frustrating and confusing to deal with. I've been looking into alternative ways of treating my problem so that I won't have have my thyroid taken out. To me at this point I feel like its just not a very good option as I need my energy to care for my family and most of all Maggie. God gave me her to care for her. If I don't have the energy to care for my baby girl then what will I have left? How will I be able to make sure she gets the best care she can get if I can't function? I can't so I NEED to find a way to get well. So please pray for me and most of all my family. I need the wisdom to find the right things to treat my thyroid problem with and my family needs a mommy who can feel well and be the best mom she can be.

8/25/10- First Day of School

2010-08-25T07:21:00.001-07:00

Well there you go folks. That day has finally arrived here in the Reed Family household. Time for school.
Marilyn, Katie , Hannah and Maggie all woke up , got their breakfasts as I made their lunches for the day. They were super exicited and Maggie was disappointed that she wasn't going to start today.She won't start until September 7th but that's okay.
She learned that she can watch what she wants on t.v and play with the toys while her sisters are gone and not have them yell at her. She is a little whinney though so she is definitely going to take a nap this afternoon for sure.

It is so strange not to have them here at home. After homeschooling for 8 years I have found that I'm not sure what to do with myself without the girls. I'm sure I will figure it out but in the time being I'm just going to get some much needed house cleaning done. Its kind of nice to be able to clean stuff up and not have the kids tear it up behind me. For the first time in 8 years my kitchen table is clean.

I am so looking forward to hearing how their day went. Its only 10:24 and am thinking about them already. What are they doing? Are they having fun? What are they learning about right now? Have they met any new friends yet? The only thing I know is that at 9:30 am they have snack. I'm sure I'll get lots of papers to read tonight about what they do , when they do it , and how they do it. LOL.

We will see how this all goes. It doesn't feel quite right but in the same breath it needs to be done this year. I need to get my health in check so I can be the best mommy that I can be that's for sure.

The girls this morning

The girls met up with their friend Alicia.

Out in the parking lot

In the Multipurpose room waiting for their teachers to line them up.

Here is to a great school year for the 2010-2011 school year. I can't believe how my babies are growing up. Maggie starts September 7th, and was a little disappointed that she wasn't starting today. I told her all in due time because I have a feeling that me leaving isn't going to be the easy part for her. Or maybe it will and she'll surprise me. Who knows?

The Countdown is On!

2010-08-16T06:19:00.000-07:00

School supplies : Check

School Uniforms: Check

Tugging on Mommy and Daddy's heart strings: Check

With 9 more days to go I think the reality is beginning to hit me that my little girls are all goingn to school. The older girls are enjoying every last minute of their summer vacation and Tim and I have been preparing for everything they will need for school. I'll admit it was quite a bit more work then I wished for but its worth it and I think they will have a positive experience with school this year.

It was quite a roller coaster ride when it came to getting nursing for Maggie. Since our school doesn't staff a full time nurse I had to go private. That didn't come without its 'fun'. First we had to get the diagnosis which led to our trek to Cincinnati. Once we had that getting the ball rolling for nursing was less then fun, but we managed and insurance is going to cover it. So this week we are going to interview nurses hopefully and find someone we are comfortable with.
I am hoping that everything will go alright for Maggie with even going to school in the first place. Whenever she gets sick it always ends up in some drama either taking longer to get over to ending up in the hospital. So we'll see. Even if we just get preschool in it will do Maggie a world of good. It really will.

Speaking of school right now our school is participating in a contest to see if we can will $500,000 dollars. What a blessing that would be. Our little school building is about 80yrs old and is in need of an overhaul. Unlike public schools we don't have money set at our finger tips to fix it up. We depend on fundraisers and everything to just keep it open. Its been sad to see so many Catholic schools close. Less families have the money to send their children to private school. Not that we have lots of money. We surely don't. We took advantage of the scholarship program that they have, which I think not many people realize it exists. So that was how I was able to manage to get the girls into private school. Otherwise we would have never of been able to afford it either. But it would be such a miracle if our little school wins it. So on the sidebar of our blog is a Kohl's Cares button. Click on that button. I'm not sure if you have to type in the name of the school and state but its St. Thomas of Corry, PA. And you have a chance to give 20 votes. You can only give 5 votes per school so don't worry if your school is participating as well as your school can only get 5 votes per person. So vote away and help our school get a much needed makeover!

3 more weeks!

2010-08-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

I can't believe in three more weeks the girls will be going back to school. Not so sure about whether Maggie will venture off to preschool yet or not, but the other three will be going.

We've been doing some school shopping and getting prepared. The only think left are book bags, lunch boxes, and school uniforms and shoes. The girls are really excited yet at the same time a little nervous with this new journey. I know they will do absolutely fine.

Unfortunatley Maggie isn't any better off from our trip to Cincinnati at the moment. Don't get me wrong I am so happy that she isn't pooping 24/7. But she isn't out of diapers. We basically traded in one problem for another of course. So we get the constant pooping out of the way but add in cathing every four hours to keep her bad kidney from damaging her good kidney. Plus the fact that we aren't quite sure what to think of the motility problems she has been having. Hopefully we'll get the results of that sometime this week and we can get it figured out. If her blood work doesn't show anything we will do a trial of Flagyl and see if it helps at all or not. If that doesn't help then her GI would like to scope and see if this is allergy related. Sometimes allergy cells can get into the esophagus and GI tract and can lead to diarreaha ( a.k.a hypermotility). If nothing shows up with all of that then her GI suggests looking into her motility then. Even so if it happens to be motility related its not going to matter what type of testing we really do because there really isn't much to do to fix it, other then what we are doing now(Immodium and Enemas). If this is the case that will really stink for Maggie. Even though we went to Cincinnati, saw the Colorectal guru guys and went through the whole bowel managment program. It doesn't mean that Maggie still won't have accidents, and we all know how embarrassing accidents are. The older she gets the more its going to matter to her.

I can say if we do manage preschool for Maggie this year I will guarentee that it will be the only grade she attends brick and mortar school. With all of the hassle this has been, trying to come up with ways for diapering, which turned out going to Cincinnati. Then adding the cathing, trying to get a nurse for her to do this, insurance , insurance denials,. Its just not worth it in the end. Its a darned shame because Maggie will have so much to offer the world, yet I find that the world has nothing to offer her.

Life Flashing Before My Eyes

2010-07-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was quite a day. It started off like any day of course. Getting up, getting the kids their breakfast, giving Maggie her meds and then sitting down to my computer to check my emails for the day. I never know who is emailing to ask me whatever question it is they have for the day.

Of course as I sat down to my computer I felt this wave of nausea and thought to myself " Oh goodie, the stomach flu." It started off very mild with some diarreaha( I know to much information), and ended with throwing up once(thank goodness). It was a quick lived stomach flu and that I was very grateful for because if anything, I mean anything, that anyone here in this house gets sick with I'd rather it not be the flu. It doesn't bother me that they throw up. Just when children get sick it doesn't start with them feeling nauseated and walking to the bathroom to do their business. It usually ends up with someone throwing up all over their beds, the floor and all of their toys that occupy the floor. It also most rarely ever starts during the day. Its usually in the middle of the night at 2 or 3a.m when you've just started in a REM cycle and are at your most comfiest.
Anyways, my stomach flu was short lived and I was finally able to stomach some ginger ale. Of course we had a tiny bit left in a bottle and I poured that into my cup and slowly sipped on that. Then later on I thought, what the heck, I'll have a few pretzels. That I did have and was starting to feel better. As fast as I felt better I began to feel light headed and my ears began to ring. I felt as if I were going to throw up and stood by the sink hoping it was just going to pass. I've had that almost going to pass out feeling before and if I stood in one place, breathed, or sat down I was most always fine and it passed. Not this time it didn't.

All I remember was bending down at the sink and that was it. All of a sudden I was laying on the floor starting up at the ceiling. It was as if I were just waking up in the morning and was looking around the room. Except I wasn't waking up from a full night's sleep. I was laying on the floor in the kitchen with my husband calling my name .. Tracy, Tracy. The first words out of my mouth weren't " What happened, or "Where am I?" or anything like that. The first words that came out of my mouth were" What???!!!!" Then I quickly got up on my feet and walked into my bedroom and layed down.

After everything was all said and done. I laid in bed with Maggie and just cuddled with her. I felt as my life flashed before my eyes. One minute I was at the sink and the next minute I was on the floor. I don't remember a thing. It was like as if I had went to sleep and woke up. I will admit, I know that people pass out all of the time, but it sure did scare me into thinking how limited my time on earth is here. What if that had been something more serious and I didn't know it?
I wish I could of said I saw a bright light, or an angel, or the Lord, but I didn't. I don't even remember anything going black. It was just crazy,and scary all at the same time.

It also scared me into thinking about who would take care of Maggie if I died? Tim tries to help but cathing a little girl and doing enemas make him feel uneasy. I'm the one who pretty much is in control of her care, making sure that she goes to her doctor appointments, her medications, scheduling surgeries, etc. I know Maggie's meds and enema recipes by heart ( though I do have them written down too). Ugh. At the age of 34 I shouldn't have to worry about these things. I should be enjoying life with my children not worrying about things like that. But I do unfortunately.
I wish God knew what he was doing. If he gave me a little child with health problems then He should at least give me good health at the minimum so that I can take care of her.

Oh well, I move forward and keep going. As my mother in law said " I'm one tough cookie". I'm not sure if I hit my head as it doesn't hurt, but between my shoulders and a part of my bottom. I'm sore.

How the summer flies by

2010-07-09T20:25:00.001-07:00

Wow! All I can say is I can't believe how much time has flown by already. The girls have had so much fun this summer. They were in the Alice in Wonderland play. Which by the way they did fabulous. They worked so hard on that while Tim and I were gone with Maggie in Cincinnati.
That all went well too. I always enjoy going down there. Cincinnati is such a live and bustling city. It just seems to interesting. More so then the little island I live in here in Corry, PA.
Anyways our trip yieled answers and of course new medicines, procedures and equipment. I'm finding out that we need more room to live in and store stuff. Maggie just keeps us on our toes every day. She was a trooper through all of the testing and such. Mommy had to learn how to cath and do enemas all in that 10 days we were gone. There was even a moment that I had when I broke into tears because I was just so frustrated with it all, and my sweet, sweet little girl looks up at me and says " Smile, mom." So I looked at her and smiled and she then turns and says, " See, mom, I knew you could smile." With a bright beautiful smile on her face. She was the one going through all of this stuff and she was telling me to smile. Bless her little heart. I just hugged her and we laid on the hotel bed and cuddled. God has given Maggie such a beautiful personality. She has to have it to get through life.

As to the fun stuff we've been doing since we've gotten home. The girls continue to go to swim lessons, gymnastic lessons. We go to the lunch time at the Y for lunch and swim. Today we went to the library to check out some books. The girls always enjoy going. They really do. We're hoping to go see the play Annie Go Get Your Gun, which is put on by the Community Play Theater.
The girls cheered on their friend Abbey this year for Little Miss Corry. Marilyn didn't get to run this year. But she'll try again in a few years. It was fun to cheer on our friends.

The girls will be starting school on August 25th. I'll admit its still July and I already miss homeschooling them. Even though I've been doing bits and pieces of stuff with them throughout the summer. I'm not sure how to let go. I really don't. I'm sure I'll manage somehow. Right? I think I may just keep Maggie home. I haven't fully decided yet. I'm trying to determine if its worth sending her yet or not. I probably will but that little voice in my head or my gut feeling whatever it maybe. Is telling me to keep her home, yet at the same time she needs to get out a little bit. Maggie's life has been being at home and hospitals. She doesn't know how to play with children her age at all. She shuns anyone who isn't mom, dad, or grandma. So I feel like I'm in a pickle in a way I guess.

Well time to end it here. Its almost midnight. I need to quit staying up so late.

Its Summer Time!

2010-06-14T07:16:00.000-07:00

All I can say is Wohoo! This is my favorite time of the year. Its warm, there is no snow, and lots of fun things to do throughout the summer. We've started out our summer with the first Vacation Bible School of the year. I wished I could say I have pictures but I don't. Our flash on our camera broke so its hard to get good pictures on it. The girls had tons of fun with the Egyptian themed VBS this year. They are looking forward to more throughout the summer. The girls are also participating in the free lunch program at the YMCA. They get a free lunch and swim or gym. They enjoy that a lot. Its a shame more people don't take advantage of it. The food has really improved from last year. Last year was mostly sandwhiches, which of course were made with white bread. My girls aren't used to that. I've always used wheat bread. This year they have had chicken alfredo, spaghetti and lasagna to name a few things.

We are also going to Cincinnati here with Maggie on Wednesday. This is a 'business' trip only. Meaning that we are going down for medical stuff and not for pleasure. I'm hoping we can get a plan going otherwise I'm not sure if Maggie will be able to attend preschool or not. We'll be there for about 10 /11 days so I'm hoping something will be accomplished there for being there down that length of time. I'll admit I look forward to going though because Cincinnati is really a nice place. We will be staying at the Raddisson hotel, which is located in downtown Cincy. So we'll be closer to the hospital this time.

I will admit that this summer is already going by super quick. By the time we get back from Cinncinati it will be almost July. Then we'll have August and then its back to school! Such a short amount of time to enjoy the summer. Which also leads to the fair! The Spartansburg fair is always so much fun. We've been going to this fair for a little over 12 years and its always a great way to end summer vacation. The fair isn't a big one , but its just right. Of course it gives us all summer long to work on our crafts and grow our vegtable to enter into the fair. The girls always enjoy that part. Which reminds me, I need to get the fair book so we can go down our list of stuff. I've also was inspired to get our tags for our entries in such a neat way. There are a few families that enter under ever catagory. They come down , get the entry tickets , and then put them on everything before they even come to the fair. So simple, yet so inspiring. So that will be our method of delivery. It will make it so much easier. Each year we go and get the entry tickets and sift through them only to find out that we forgot something at home or we take up to much time in line.

Well that's it folks. Summer is hear and its meant to be enjoyed! So we definitely plan on enjoying it that's for sure.

Pennywise Give a Way

2010-06-03T16:10:00.001-07:00

Why not do something fun and educational this summer? Sign up for the Pennywise Giveaway. I copied and pasted the info from their blog as I don't know much about the item other then it looks pretty cool if you like to disect dead things.

This week at PennywiseLearning.com, we’re giving away an Ein-O Science Nature Explorer kit.

Explore 10 Gritty Activities

- Nature Lab (plants)
– Growing Plants
- Plant Survivors
- Bug Eye
- Nature Lab (bugs)
- Light Shelter
- Antzville
- Germiniator Lab
- Plant Preservations
- Bug Viewer

Visit the Pennywise Blog to enter today...

If you teach a 3yr old a Kata?

2010-05-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

If you teach a 3yr old a Kata , can they do it? Absolutely. Tonight Miss Maggie impressed me by learning her very first karate kata at the tender age of three. Of course she will need to keep practicing it and refine it but I was so proud of her.

Maggie looked so darned cute in her karate Gi and her Sensei thought it was the cutest thing he has ever seen. He's also convinced it helped her do better with her karate too. I'm also so proud of how far she has come as well. When we first started Maggie was so scared of the Sensei's. She was scared to take gymnastic class. She's been scared to do most things. But now this evening I was able to sit and visit with a friend of mine while Maggie lucked out and had one on one attention with her class since the other two kids didn't show up this evening. She had her teachers all to herself. She didn't cry or anything. She is even going and doing her gymnastics all by herself. I no longer have to sit next to her to do warm ups and there are no tears. Maggie still has a long way in learning to trust those who aren't her mom, dad or grandma. But this sure is one awesome positive start that's for sure.

Maggie loves her karate class as well as the older girls. They are determined to get their Green Belt. I wish I could help them more at it. I've been able to find a few videos on the strikes, kicks and such that they need to know. But not to much. If I could just find a good video on Goshin JuJitsu to help us practice more.
In all actuality I need to get my butt moving and start taking karate myself. I've held off because I don't have anyone to watch Maggie after her class. But if there is a will there is a way that's for sure.

Dishonest Curriculum Sellers

2010-05-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

Okay. Well I can't post who they are on other boards. But this is my blog and I will all let you know that I just have delt with one just recently.
I had never bought from Homeschool Classifieds before and was looking for a cheap copy of the Saxon 6/5 book to use with Marilyn over the summer to catch her up in math a bit here.

So I responded to an add where someone was selling the tests, answer key and book for $13. What a good deal I thought. I patiently waited for my books and they did come. Problem was when I looked at the package it was to small to be holding three books. It had a small tear but nothing big enough for a book to fall out of. Surely the seller must have packaged it seperately. So the good seller and buyer I am I promptly emailed the person to see if I just needed to wait for the student book.

Nope. She responds with I sent the book with the others. Umm, nope. I would know if there was three books. I would have told her I recieved three books and to have a great day. So being the person I am I ask her to check to make sure the book didn't get taken off the pile by a rouge toddler or child. I had that happen to me once when I sold something. Here to find out my toddler took it out of the box and hid it under her 3rd sister's bed. I promptly found the book and sent it to the person and profusely apologized. Had I not found the book I would of refunded that part of the money so the buyer could of found another book.

This transaction did not go this way at all. I was pretty much had. The woman never apologized once for the book not being there in the first place. I even kindely took pictures so she could see that it didn't fall out of the package and that there was no possible way she of packed three books in this package. I also asked if it was the packaging she packed it in. Which by the way DONOT wrap books in a grocery bag and expect it to come through the postal system unharmed in anyway. Know that if you sell something I bet that person would rather have to take a pair of scissors to get through the layers of packaging tape that you wrapped around it then to have a packaged damaged or a book lost or whatever.

Anyways so the woman insisted she put the book in there and that it was my problem and she wasn't going to do anything further to help the problem. Even after I told her I spent my last $13 on school books. It is my last because I don't want to buy anymore school books with my girls going to attend brick and mortar school this year.

The moral of this story is if you can't be honest, don't sell. Homeschooling families aren't made of money and we need to get the curriculum for our children for a reason. Also don't sugar coat it and tell the person who bought from you if your co-op has an extra book that you would send it. What about homeschooling boards that sell these items? You could have easily have gone on Homeschool Classifieds, Well Trained Mind, Vegsource to find another book to send to me. I took the time to find you so I could buy my wares from you.
Plus if you are a dishonest seller, know that the money you are taking is the last of what someone may have for a while..
Isn't that right ahall003@verizon.net????

Pennywise Learning Giveaway

2010-05-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

This weeks giveaway for the week of May 7th. I copied this from the blog as I have never used the product but it looks oober cool.

This week at PennywiseLearning.com, we’re giving away an Ein-O Science Nature Explorer kit.

Explore 10 Gritty Activities

- Nature Lab (plants)
– Growing Plants
- Plant Survivors
- Bug Eye
- Nature Lab (bugs)
- Light Shelter
- Antzville
- Germiniator Lab
- Plant Preservations
- Bug Viewer

Click here to Enter

Finding the right math program

2010-05-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

I'll admit, after all of these years homeschooling you would think I would have it all down pat as to what curriculum works best for us. Sadly after eight years I still have much to learn as what curriculum really works best. We've had our fair share of duds as well as that great curriculum.

I've found that I really like Christian Light Curriculum. I think for the price and how the curriculum is put together its well worth it and children really learn quite a bit from it. I really liked the Christian Light Math when I used it with Marilyn. Thought it wasn't her favorite her math skills really improved quite a bit that last half of the year.

I have found that curriculums like Calvert and K12 , though very good in their own right are to time consuming for families that have more than two children. Sometimes it can be to time consuming for even those with more than two. I think it would work well if I just had one child. But since I live in the real world I don't I have four and the more independent the curriculum and the less lesson planning I have to make the better.

With all of this said the girls are going to go to private school this fall and the school uses Saxon math. I used Saxon once before with my 2nd daughter Katie and it worked REALLY, REALLY well for her. I had used the K and 1st grade and she just thrived with it. What made me stop using it you ask? Well for one we were with a cyberschool for 1st grade. So I was juggling both Calvert math and Saxon so it lined up with her tests that we had to send back to the school. It worked just fine for 1st for us but by the time we got to 2nd grade we had Maggie and well,,, I then only had time for one math program and Calvert won out since I had to turn in tests to the school. So for the past 3 years its been nothing but tears for math for Katie. Her believeing that she is stupid when it comes to math and in all honesty that's not the case at all. Saxon works for Katie and it also works well for Hannah. I used the K12 math with Hannah last year and it worked just fine with her but not this year. Hannah needs more review just like Katie.
So if you've read this far you will no doubtly guess that I caved in and bought Saxon for the girls. The point is two folds as it will help them to just dive right in with math when they go to St. Thomas this fall and it will help catch them up on the things they just weren't understanding.

So for now Katie is loving math once again. That lightbulb has finally turned back on once again for her. Hannah is understanding math much better finally, and Maggie loves her K math.
I also bought the 6/5 for Marilyn in hopes it helps her. I feel she is lacking in something somewhere and after taking the diagnostic test this is where she placed. Not sure if it was lack of taking the time to do the test or if this is really where she is but we'll go with it and move on from there. I'm not sure if Saxon will fit Marilyn well or not. She is such a picky kid when it comes to school books in general. I think in the end Marilyn is just going to have to get over it and do the math.

Pennywise Learning Giveaway

2010-05-07T12:02:00.001-07:00

The homeschooling company Pennywise Learning is giving away one Complete Zoo Adventure Guide. I don't know much about it other then from what I've read about it on their blog. So I have copied and pasted the review of this really neat curriculum from their blog.

Sometimes The Best Learning Happens Outside The Schoolroom!

With the Complete Zoo Adventure, a family field trip to the zoo becomes an unforgettable learning adventure with this unique, evolution-free guide to the incredible world of animals!

Did you know:

•That the flamingo’s pink color comes from the food that it eats?
•That the hummingbird’s heart beats 1,000 times per minute?
•That the polar bear has a third eyelid that acts as “sunglasses” to protect it from snow blindness?
The Complete Zoo Adventure sets the stage for learning with “Before the Zoo” preparations, gives you the tools you need for an awesome “At the Zoo” experience, and then continues to deepen the understanding of God’s Creation with fabulous “After the Zoo” activities. Truly a complete guide like no other!

Includes:

•7 Devotionals
•27 Encounters with God’s Creatures
•“Looking Ahead” – 7 Creation Foundation Lessons
•Detailed Professional Educator Guide
•27 Scripture Memory Aids
•12 Name Badges
•Over 35 Reproducible Activity Sheets
•27 Field Fact Cards
•3 Field Journals
Spiral Casebound • 9 x 9 • 150 pages • 4 Color • Authors: Gary and Mary Parker

You will need to visit the Pennywise blog to enter.

Maggie's first Lapbook!

2010-05-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Horray! Maggie made her very first lapbook with her mommy. Though coloring it was quite a chore for her. I can't blame her though as she may not have the muscle strength in her hands due to her hypoplastic left thumb. But she did it and I am so very , very proud of her. By the pictures you can tell she was proud of herself too! The lapbook we chose to do was The Carrot Seed which we got off of the website Homeschoolshare.com

The sides:

The inside of the lapbook: We talked about different kinds of vegetables, what seeds need to grow, we talked about different sizes, large, medium and small, the vegetables that start with the letter C, and there is a cute little pull up carrot in the lapbook too.

On the bottom flap we talked about the colors of brown and orange.

Here it the back. I did manage to google a few carrot worksheets from Kidzone.ws
Plus the Itsy Bitsy Book as well. The seed minibook is from a template from Homeschool Share's lapbook templates and may beans, apples,and tangerines gave their life to sit in this minibook.

So there you go. Maggie's very first lapbook. Our next lapbook we are going to do is called Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb Book. I think it will be pretty fitting to talk about her hand differences with her going to preschool. I know there will be some inquisitive kid that will notice that she has what we like to call a cartoon hand. LOL.

Lapbook Giveaway

2010-05-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

To celebrate Mother's Day. Lapbook Lessons.com and the Hearts at Home website is holding a giveaway for one of the Homeschool in the Woods Lapbooking CD's.

If your not familiar with Homeschool In the Woods they sell a hands on curriculum for History, Sciene, and Art, and Bible.
We actually own about three of the History Cd's that they sell and let's just say they are really fun to use.
My oldest really enjoyed the Explorers CD's. The history is included along with notebooking pages and lapbooking templates. Also included are some hands on activities that we really enjoyed doing. Last year Marilyn made an adobe hut, which we entered into the fair which recieved first place. We also made glow in the dark constellations with glow in the dark puffy paint.

So check out the giveaway and enter today! Click here : Lapbook Lesson Giveaway

Where the Red Fern Grows

2010-04-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

Phew! We are finally finished with our Where the Red Fern Grows Lapbook.
It was a labor of love for sure as I didn't have many ideas to spawn off of since there aren't many lapbooks on the literature for the upper grade levels. I had only found one lapbook that had been made by a school teacher online. So it helped a little bit in getting the ideas that I needed. Though I still feel like there could of been more to our lapbook it did turn out nice and I hope it spawns ideas for others.
Though we are done with it its still a work in progress because a friend of mine just so happened to have a literature guide that went with the story. So I am printing some things out of that for the girls to do and save in their lapbooks. I wished I had it from the get go because it really would of helped with what to put in their lapbooks. Still I can't help but to be impressed with what we did do with it.

Bascially all we did was read the book as a read aloud. I'm sure at some point the girls will want to read the book again. Marilyn pretended as if she didn't like the story but I know better. Katie and Hannah enjoyed listening to the story. After we were finished with the story we began work on the lapbook and in the meantime we managed to find the DVD movie of it at Walmart. It was just sitting there all by its lonesome self on a shelf. As if it were meant to be there for me at that very moment. Talk about luck, huh?

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

TOS- Homeschooling in the Summer

2010-04-27T16:29:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone. So its Monday and the question of the week for the The Old Schoolhouse is: Do you homeschool through the summer? Why or why not? What do you do?

Usually in the Reed family household we enjoy taking the summers off. There has been a few years (those after Maggie was born) where we had to school through the summer and we maybe were fortunate to have three weeks off before starting the next round of schooling. The last few years we've been able to dodge the bullet and enjoy our summers.

This year will again be the acception to the rule as our summer will pretty much start off with going back to Cincinnati with Maggie for bowel managment. We are going to attempt to get her in big girl undies so she can go to preschool school this year at St. Thomas. Of course if all else fails she is going to have to stay home and I'll have to homeschool preschool. With that said honestly out of my four children Maggie is my one that REALLY needs to be attending school. Since birth the poor child has been poked and prodded by strangers and so now she is four years old and now is forming the opinions that those who are different from mommy and daddy must be out there to hurt her. Who can blame her? She's only has been poked, literally prodded and has had countless tests and surgeries. I think I would feel the same way.

The older girls are going to need to continue to work on their math. Hannah is working well with her Saxon 1 and Katie is doing VERY well with Saxon 5/4 math. I do have Algebra 1/2 for Marilyn but I think I may need to back up a little and put her in maybe 8/7. I'll have to have her take the placement test and we'll have to see. This way the girls will go into school and not feeling clueless when it comes to the math. In the same breath it will only benefit them if they continue practicing math since most kids lose math skills if they don't practice them through out the summer.

We will also have to work on writing skills. I will say out of everything we do here at home this part of our homeschooling has been the weakest. My girls are NOT natural writers and they just resist this at every possible turn they can get. Boy are they going to be in for it when they go to school this year. But in the same breath I really want to help them get past this hurdle before they start school because it will be a true struggle if they don't.
I haven't decided on what to try and use yet because I can't seem to find anything that really fits what I am looking for. I'm looking for something spiral, to break down how to write sentences the right way all the way to being able to write something on their own that makes sense.
I'm possibly looking into maybe something like Writing Strands but I haven't made up my mind yet.
I'm still looking for any and all suggestions from others on the subject of writing.

The next thing we will work on during the summer is on lapbooking. I love to do this with the girls. My younger three enjoy it more then their older sister. But I make her do it just for my amusement. Plus whether she wants to believe it or not its good for her and she'll appreciate them someday when she sits with her own children someday and can remanice about the fun times and when they did this with me.

So as this year begins go to close we will be preparing for a new journey. In the meantime I'm not going to give up my reigns when it comes to homeschooling all to easily. There is always the summer time!

Preschool Reed family style

2010-04-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

I've had some families ask me what we do for homeschooling and preschool. I will admit this was the first year I really got into homeschooling preschool as my older girls went to preschool and we just did things on the side at home. Usually working on handwriting, or letters or numbers we usually did a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

This year was a little different as I chose to keep Maggie home from preschool. Our preschool has consisted bascially of getting in what I can when I can get it in since I have three other children to teach at the moment. We haven't skimped on things though. Maggie has learned her days of the week, months of the year, how to tell what the weather is like and chart it on her weather map. We're working on colors and color patterns, number recognition, letters and their sounds, and even blending some three letter words to read. Maggie has learned so spell her name and is learning how to trace lines to spell her name and other letters.

This all sounds like a lot, but in fact we do it in such a matter of fact way that it has not seemed like much work at all. How you ask? Well I'll tell you. You can actually get these results buy remembering one simple thing. Have fun! If you can remember that you will find that your preschooler will learn so much in such a way that it almost seems effortless for you.

Here are some of my preschool secrets :

Learning Letters and their sounds- Leap Frog Videos,, Letter Factory, Talking Words Factory, Talking Words Factory 2 are all great videos and they work. In 2 weeks or less they will learn their letters and their sounds. Of course in order for that to work they do have to watch it at least once daily for two weeks.

Letter of the Week - this is a free online curriculum that teaches the letters and their sounds. It includes daily activities for each letter of the alphabet.

Number recognition- I use a combination of Touch Math and The Leap Pad Math Circus video.

I've also used websites such as Tot School to add some pizzaz to our days as well , and created our own Totbox to add Maggie's school stuff in so she can pull it out. I actually have a picture of that on the blog here and will have to dig for that photo and will post it.

File Folder games are awesome for little ones and even big kids to in order to help them learn. What better way to teach your child and not have them even know that they are learning something?
Websites such as:

File Folder Fun.com
Child Care Land. com
Positively Autism.com
Preschool Printables.com
The Resource Site.com

are great places to start with. Some of the websites may require you register for membership but these websites are free. You can also make file folder games of your own, and you can also buy premade ones as well. You just have to google them.

The next fun thing to do is to make Lapbooks. We absolutely love to Lapbook here. Lapbooks are educational and make a fun keepsake. You can be as creative with them as you want.

To learn about lapbooking you can go to www.squidoo.com/lapbooking
This website will give you some links and a quick tutorial on how to make lapbooks.
Also Lapbook Lessons.com will give you a not only all the information you'll ever need on lapbooking but also videos on how to make minibooks to add to your lapbook. If your unable to access that from their site you can easily type in lapbook on You Tube and they are on there.
Some of my favorite Lapbook websites are :

www.lapbooklessons.com
www.homeschoolshare.com
www.homeschoolhelperonline.com

You can also purchase them already made and download to your computer

www.currclick.com
www.heartofwisdom.com
www.homeschoolinthewoods.com

So there you go. Simplicity is the name of the game for preschool. Fun and enjoyment.
Playing with playdough, helping cook things in the kitchen with mom, learning to set a table, tie their shoes, zip their coats , jump and skip, draw pictures on paper and on the sidewalk with chalk. All of these things are equally important as much as academic work if not more important. Cuddling, kissing and lots of hugs also go along with the grade, because our little ones are little only once in their life time. So enjoy my suggestions and enjoy your little one.

Spiffing up the Saxon K and 1 Meeting Book

2010-04-05T08:57:00.001-07:00

Since I am using the Saxon K and 1 right now to get the girls used to the math program that St. Thomas will be using. I found it pretty redundant to repeat myself twice everyday. So I made my own meeting book on our walls. By using some of the stuff I already have here at home, finding some things on the internet and creating my own stuff it turned out really nice. I took a video of our Meeting book wall since our camera's flash is not working so the pictures were coming out to dark even with enough light in the room.
Saxon K and 1 Meeting Wall Part 1

Saxon K and 1 Meeting Wall Part 2

Here are the links for the charts I printed out: Click on the Title.

100's Chart
Weather Stickers
Skip Counting Pages
Calendar Pages
this I forgot to take a picture of and mention. Since the K meeting book is bascially the set up of our wall plus arrows at the top where you add a number each day and do color patterns on. I am using the calendars from Touch Math because they are cute and do the job. Right now they just have January-April for the time being but each month they add a new calendar and hopefully by the time November rolls around they will have Decembers. My suggestion is to make two copies each time they bring out a new calendar. Touch Math doesn't keep everything on their websites for all times sake and plus they are celebrating 50 years this year so I think this will be up for a limited time. Of course you can find other calendars on the web if you google them. In the end if you have these items in your home or are up to creating some of the stuff this can give you an idea of a better way to do the Meeting if the meeting book is a drag ,or if you need to combine levels that are close together with Saxon math.

Getting Ready for Easter

2010-04-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

Ahh, its finally spring and warmer weather has been showing up lately. Its wonderful to now see the sun and the grass on the ground. Its nice to not be freezing all of the time either.
We've had much to do last month. The girls spent some time with their Agora friends getting those cute little caricature pictures done. Then they also had a chance to spend a day at school! The girls will be attending St. Thomas this year. This was by their own asking so in the spirit of life Tim and I feel that we can not deny them a chance to see what it is like to go to school. So off they will go in September and I on the other hand will be busy finishing my degree. I am both excited and sad all at the same time. Excited for them because they will be having a new experience, and isnt' that what life is about? Trying new things? Sad because I just don't feel ready to give up my homeschool mom status either.
Of course I'm sure I will try to fit in afterschooling in there somehow.
The girls visited St. Thomas on March 29th and they had a great day and really enjoyed it.

Maggie was sort of okay with it. The moment we step foot in the classroom and I took off her coat she began to cry. So I sat in with her for some time until I was able to slip away. She did well for the most part. Her teacher Mrs. Buell said she only cried when she realized when I was gone but she settled herself down, then looked a little teary eyed in the afternoon and then she finally had enough and cried around 1:30 ish beause she pooped her pants. Of course I had to come and change her diaper because she wouldn't let anyone change it except for me. So I stayed the rest of school because school was almost over anyways and she went back and stayed right until the end. I was very proud of her because that made for a long day. I'm sure we'll have to go through this again when school starts but I think she will do just fine. I really do.

Marilyn, Katie and Hannah really enjoyed their time. Hannah's favorite part was that one of the children in the class had a birthday and they all got Dairy Queen for desert ( lucky Hannah). Katie had fun and all of the girls asked if she was coming back the next day (which she wasn't). Of course one little boy had to pipe up and act like an idiot but she was fine with it and was more interested in what the girls thought of her. LOL. Marilyn said she had fun with her friend Abby and she talked to a few other girls and there were a couple of boys who thought she was pretty neat,, ;>) That's my Marilyn! In the end I think this will be a good experience for them.
Hopefully with the time I have I can finish my degree. Work on getting better with my health and maybe the 'funness' of the school will wear off and I can go back to doing what I do best,,, homeschooling. This definitely will be another season in our life. One that we will all get through with flying colors. That's for sure.

Oh yes, before I forget I ran across a pretty neat blog called Homeschool Creations. There was a really cute Easter Bunny game and thought you all would enjoy!

Cartoon Caricatures.....

2010-03-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

Today we had an awesome fun day. The girls went to their PSSA party for Agora and we were surprised with an artist that drew caricatures. So of course the girls each wanted their very own cartoon version of themselves and they turned out so cute! Of course I took some photos of the drawings and this is what they looked like!

Aren't they funny? I plan on going to Walmart or someplace that sells frames and get these all frammed. They definitely are something that the girls will look back upon with some fond memories!

The never ending winter

2010-02-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

I'll have to start off by saying I'm sorry I haven't posted pictures in a while. Our trusty Kodak camera's flash is not working so I'm not getting very good pictures off of it. At least none that would look any good on the computer. So I'm in picture withdrawl at the moment.

We've still be pretty busy with school work. Trying to get this year done and overwith. I am still looking forward to going back to traditional homeschooling. I think I was happier when I did it that way. No, I know I was happier when I just homeschooled on my own.

The girls are getting ready for Thinking Day at Girl Scouts. They've also been busy with working on earing patches for their vests. They love earning badges. Silly girls.
We've also been busy with more physical activity. This winter has left us pretty sedintary and I don't like that. I like for the girls to be active and that is what they need. So Marilyn, Katie, Hannah and Maggie have taken up karate at the YMCA. The older girls like it, Maggie isn't so sure. But there isn't much you can do with a three year old and karate. LOL. She'll learn to like it though. Maggie has also found she really likes gymnastics instead though. She is a little monkey girl, and its good getting her out and about around other kids about her age. She really needs that because my 3 yr old thinks she's either 6,10 or 12 instead of 3.
Marilyn, Katie and Hannah are continuing on with swimming and they are enjoying that.

Me, I've been working out at the Y at least 3 times a week. I'd like to do it everyday but well being a mom that isn't always possible. So far I have lost 12 pounds and I seem like I am at a standstill with my weight again. Grrr. I'm hoping that I can lose some more here. I'd like to lose about 50lbs if I can. That would be very good for me if I could. I am glad to say these days I am feeling better. I'm not sure what had been ailing me in January. Just that I really was not feeling well at all. It could of been a number of things, my thyroid, stress, the winter weather, not getting enough exercise, not enough vitamin D or B , or heck maybe all of the above. All I know is I've been feeling much better than I had been last month. I still don't feel 100% yet, but its a work in progress. I still think I'm having hormonal issues but its so hard to find a doctor that is willing to work with me and get to the bottom of things so I can get to my old self.

Other then that we are just having a never ending winter. The snow wont' stop. It just won't get warm and just looking at the tundra of snow is getting really old. I want warmth and sunshine. I want to walk outside without a coat, hat , boots and gloves on. I'm just so glad that Feburary is almost over with. Thank goodness its such a short month.

Wishing it was Spring

2010-02-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

I think I am pretty much done with winter. I am so longing for some warm air and looking around at green grass and leaves on the tree. I long for walking outside without a coat, boots and hat on that's for certain. I am also longing for this school year to be overwith as well. I am so ready to end cyberschooling. Not because its a bad thing, its not at all. Just because I'm one worn out momma from it all.

I love having the girls home and I love teaching them more than anything in the world. I just am finding with me having health issues that I need to use something more mom friendly if that makes any sense. I just have enough on my plate right now.

Dealing this whatever is going on in my body wether it be thyroid related or not has really taken a toll on me. It has taken a toll on me both physically and emotionally. So its definitely time to beging to prioritize what needs to be done for the upcoming school year so things aren't so stressful.

Horray for Spelling!

2010-01-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

I'll have to admit I am impressed with my girls today. I had signed them up to participate in their cyberschool's National Spelling Bee. Yes, the National Spelling Bee that you see on television. This was the school's first try at it this year. They won't always be able to participate at the national level but the school will always hold a Spelling Bee. Which is great because it really encouraged my girls to really try hard at improving their spelling.

I had fun creating a spelling file folder for them ( which I don't have a picture of at the moment because the flash on my camera went and it won't take good pictures) so they could study their spelling words. We worked on this for an entire month, and today was the day!

Marilyn impressed me by getting first place , with two other first place kids in her 6th grade class, and Katie was a runner up for the 4th grade class. Hannah gave it a try and she tried her hardest but couldn't spell egg and macaroni. I told her at least she tried her very best and she did.
Now they have this under their belt and can someday tell their children that they participated in the National Spelling Bee.

Way to go girls!

Life still goes on

2010-01-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

Well since I last wrote I began having issues with my blood pressure going up and it just woulnd't go down. The monday before Marilyn's birthday I had to go in and have them check my blood pressure because I felt so sick. I felt weak and tired and just like my heart was pounding in my chest. It was very scary for me to feel that way.
I went in and my blood pressure reading was 152/98! Those are some scary numbers that's for sure. I've seen people walking around with worse numbers but that made me feel mighty icky. So they've started me on a low dose of high blood pressure meds.

I will admit that stress is just one of those ugly factors in my life. The past three years since Maggie was born has been nothing but doctors, traveling , more doctors and more traveling. Dealing with doctors have no clue, some clue and a clue. But the trick was finding which one. The stresses of basically jumping up and down to get them to listen to me that my baby wasn't feeling good has taken a toll on me. Which it really, really stinks. At 33 years old I shouldn't be worrying about these sort of things. I should be enjoying life right now , enjoying my children and my husband. Not worrying about things like my thyroid and all its many components.

Today luckily my blood pressure went down to 122/98. The bottom number is still a bit high but I've only been on the med for one whole day and I was told it could take 2 weeks for it to really take effect. So not so shabby there. My doctor did go over the results of my sono and said I have a couple of cysts on the right side of my thyroid but I have a "blob" a mass of some sort on my left side. I would lie if I said I wasn't scared. I am very scared. I just wish there was a quick fix to this . You know kind of like your appendix. Oops its inflammed lets just get it out of there. Unfortunately its not that easy. They need to figure out what is up , and what that blob is. I'm not looking forward to someone messing with my neck. What a sensitive area!! I am hoping that this is just hormonal issues causing it and it can be something 'fixed' with medication. But I have a feeling its not going to be that simple. Nothing for me ever seems to be that way for some reason. Its been the theme of my life.
I will admit that I'm tired of doctors, tired of medical stuff. I would just like a break and have some enjoyment in life.

All I know I can do is that is to just pray. Pray to God that he can at least help me heal myself. He doesn't even need to heal me , but if he can at least throw me an anchor and help me heal myself I would be so appreciative. I need to be here for my girls.

My crazy life....

2010-01-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

Just when things begin to stablize with Maggie of course it has to be my turn. I've had to deal with hypothyroidism for at least 6yrs now. I believe I've had it all of my life. But that's another story.
I guess when one medical journey ends with one family member another one starts with someone else, and that's me. I mean why not? I'm only responsible for caring for four children, and schooling them , and taking them to activities which we all love to do.

My problem is that I have a few cysts on my thyroid and trust me I'm not happy to hear that. Not at all. I believe whole heartedly that its because my thyroid has not been managed very well by my doctors, and at times it makes me angry to think about it. I'm just praying that I won't have to have surgery but then I guess what are they going to do to deal with the cysts? I'll admit my 3yr old is a much braver person than I am. She has had 5 surgeries so far in her first 3yrs of life and numerous procedures that I've lost count on. Yet she bounces back like a ball. Me on the other hand I am a wimp. Or at least over the years I've become one. I think with a combination of having surgeries myself, the older I get the harder it is to recover, and the fact I have dealt with so many doctors and seen so much with Maggie I think that I've just about had enough with it all.

I know my friends have extended their concern but I think the worse piece of 'caring' I've gotten was when a friend of mine said to me " God is doing this because he wants you to slow down." I don't think so. Why would God cause me to have something wrong with me to make me slow down? Why would he want me to slow down? He blessed me with the responsibilty of four beautiful little girls. How can you slow down? Isn't that what happens when the kids grow up and leave the nest? Then you can slow down a little? God certainly doesn't need to make me ill to tell me to slow down that's for sure. He could tell me in other ways if He really wanted me to. I believe that Satan has his hand in it and truely and honestly I want him gone, out of here and to leave me the heck alone. We've been through enough and I just feel like I'm at my wits end. I just want some happiness for a little while. A break. Maggie is finally 'stable' at the moment and now I have to deal with myself? Come on.

I am even just about half way done with my college work too. I have always wanted to finish college and get my degree. I tried twice after getting married. In the beginning I was having some marriage issues so I dropped out.Then surely enough the next attempt I ended up pregnant with Marilyn and very sick and couldn't even concentrate so I dropped out again. Waited for a long time and here I am finally doing something with my life so I can make it much better and Wham! Really I am learning to hate the saying " God doesn't give you what you can't handle." I think that is a load of bull. He has given me way more then a normal person's share of hard times. My life has been nothing but hard since my childhood and beyond.

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, but how much can one person take?
I guess all I can do is keep my chin up and pray for the best. Hoping and praying that I can continue to homeschool my children and that its nothing major.

Christmas Cantata

2009-12-23T20:42:00.000-08:00

Well after spending most of my evening downloading the video. Here is it. The 2009 Christmas Cantata with the girls. This is a 25 minute video so sit back and relax and enjoy. Also, please forgive the video. First, it was downloaded on One True Media so its not the original video quality. Second, not the best of hand holding with the camera. So please forgive some of the shakiness. We weren't in the best of spots. In hind sight we should have recorded it at the evening program because there were fewer people there and we wouldn't of been video taping the back of people's heads, or picking up background noise of children. Nonetheless we got it and I can say it was much better in person then it seemed on the video tape.

Here is our gift to you! Hope everyone has a VERY Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Tape 2 and When in Rome.....

2009-12-18T17:41:00.001-08:00

Okay. So I know the title is a little corny. I'm sure your rolling your eyes as you see it on the screen. But I have to share with you this strange fasination I have had with tape lately. You can come to my house and find , scotch tape, masking tape, duct tape and even medical tape. The tape that I find I go through the most though is packaging tape. So as you read this you ask yourself, well why? Why do you go through so much packing tape?
The reason is that my daughters love to play with the collection of file folder games that I have procured throughout the years of homeschooling.
If you google file folder games you will find that there are many free resources on which you can download and print various games you can glue, tape and laminate into a folder and they can learn... excuse me play games on various topice from math, language arts, from history to science and even Bible school topics. Today I had counted that for my older girls I have about 38 games thus far and for Maggie I have a total of ten. So you can see I have definitely given our printer a good work out. Out of all of those games I've maybe created 3 or 4 of my own from googling clipart and then making my own games. Even today I created a game for the girls so they could study their Latin vocabulary. They love it and had fun and told me it was much more fun then just sitting there trying to memorize it from their book.
Okay so you ask why are we talking about tape then? Early on I found that with my file folder games I could use packaging tape to laminate them. Instead of going out and buying a machine and then the expensive laminate I could easily go to Walmart and spend less then $8 for two rolls of packaging tape. If I was really spendy I would go to the Fed Ex store here in town and buy their really heavy duty packaging tape. Fed Ex tape to me is the gold standard in packaging tape and honestly the best for laminating them. In the real world though I can't always buy it and settle for my Walmart tape. It does the job well and they look fanstastic.

I think next to butt cream I could easily say that we could hold stock in packaging tape here and make a fortune. LOL. Or maybe I help the packaging tape business make a lot of money.

Well also since I've mentioned File Folder games. Today I had gotten a bit crafty as the girls sat and did their work. I decided to make something fun for them to help aid in learning their Latin vocabulary. They always find it a drag to use the flashcards. So I thought I'd spiffy things up a bit. So I Googled my way through clip art and this is what I came up with:

Our cheesy title for the game

The helmets with the Latin words on them.

The little soldiers with the definitions.

Once I had the idea in my head I found that the game was pretty easy to make. I plan on making some more Latin games to get us through the Latina Christiana series. I do like the series. Its reasonably priced and they have DVD's to help teach the concepts. I never had taken Latin so this is a new experience for me as well. I am learning right along with them. Its the beauty of homeschooling though. You learn all of the things you never learned as a child.

Here are the links to the clip art that I used:

Roman soldier
www.fotosearch.com/CSP140/k1400910/
Roman helmet

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/clip/roman.html

Girl Scout Party

2009-12-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

Of course you would think I had pictures of this too. But I don't. Its funny that I have a video camera and a regular camera and I don't take either of them with me half of the time.

Today the girls had tons of fun at their Girl Scout cookie party. They had Christmas arts and crafts, pizza and exchanged cookies. Let's just say that this time of the year is not good on my figure. LOL.

Actually I can't believe that Christmas is almost here. This month has gone by so fast that's for sure. I can't wait until this winter is over that's for sure. I'm finding the older I get the less tolerace I have for this sort of weather anymore. No fun I tell ya.

School is going so so for us right now. I'm just feeling so schooled out. I'm glad that in 3 more days I'll have a break from my own school work for the next two weeks. I'm also glad to know that by Feburary I'll be half way done with my degree. I'm far from being done as my ultimate goal is getting my bachelors degree. But I'm taking this college thing one step at a time.

I'm also rethinking next year as well as far as schooling the girls is concerned. I know something needs to change. I like the K12 , the girls like it too. But I'm just feeling a little burnt out. Having three children and two of them need my direct attention at all times is tough. Then stretching myself even further for Marilyn when she has questions and trying to keep track of my 3yr old is not easy at all. Then by the end of the day I'm working on my school work. Its just an exhausting cycle. I am hoping that I can just homeschool on my own , maybe use a combination of Christian LIght , Ace and add in some good books from Sonlight. That would be my perfect world.

Anyways here is to a good day and that is all folks!

File Folder Games , oh my!

2009-12-16T21:39:00.000-08:00

Okay. So I usually have a picture to post on my blog about the things I talk about. I may even post a picture later on when I get a moment and its not almost 1 o'clock in the morning.
But I'd thought I'd take a moment and talk about File Folder Games.

I was just looking at our little stack of File Folder games in our living room. Did you know there are tons of free File Folder Games to download and print on the internet? If your really crafty you can even make them yourselves. I'll admit, I'm crafty but not that crafty. No, just kidding. I could do it if I had the time. Between teaching the girls, doing my mom duties, and college school work there is only so much time left in the day. So there are other moms out there that take the time to put these games together and they post them for free. All I can say is bless their hearts that they are actually help make my life a bit easier.

What are File Folder games you ask? They are bascially educational games made out of file folders. Minus the printer ink, they are easy to put together and the kids have fun and learn all at the same time and they don't even know it.
They can be as simple as using a coloring book and crayons, file folder, and glue.
Or if your like me finding premade games so all you need to do is print them , cut, glue and laminate. There are many free ones online and there are some that you can purchase online. I've even found you can purchase them in workbook form so all you have to do is cut them out of the book , glue , then laminate.

Such as this one. I have found Rainbow Resource has great prices on them.
Or better yet,, if you want to skip the whole cutting process and you just want to open and go then something already made for you might be beneficial. Such as these:

I'll admit though that would take the fun of the cutting , gluing and laminating away. For me the very act of sitting down and cutting paper can be relaxing after a crazy day of school.

As I was saying I've accumulated quite a few of these games in the past few years. I counted about 40 of them today. That doesn't include the ones I make for Maggie to sit and play with.
I have found they make great 'distractors' for one child when I am working with another child. Plus I know they are learning something from them in the process. Its much better then having the usual chaos of have the other three running around while I try to teach one of them something.

I'll admit, File Folder games are right up there with making Lapbooks. They are fun for the kids and educational all at the same time. They are very hands on and great for kids who learn best doing hands on things. Even if they don't all children love games.

Here is a list of my favorite places to go for my freebie games:

www.filefolderfun.com
www.preschoolprintables.com
http://www.mormonchic.com/crafty/filefolders.asp ( great for toddlers)
http://www.myffgames.com/ ( this one you do have to purchase but they are the only ones at the moment that i know of that have File Folder games up to 4th grade)

http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads_foldergames.html ( has a few simple games to print out for free)
http://www.gigglygames.net/freebies.htm
http://www.christianpreschoolprintables.com/ChristianFileFolderGames.html

http://www.biblestoryprintables.com/BibleFileFolderGames.html
http://www.childcareland.com/free.html ( games and file folder games for prek-K)
http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/printables/filefolder.htm ( there are three of them on this website)
http://www.filefolderheaven.com/shop/ ( have some freebies)

I'm sure there maybe other sites but these are the major ones that I have been able to find that offer free file folder games.
I do hope in the future that I will be able to find games for children in upper grades. I've made one of my own so far and one of these days I'll have to share it on here so others can benefit from it.

Homeschooling Blahs

2009-11-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

If you can't tell by the title its easy to see that I am going through homeschooling blahs.
We began our homeschooling journey when Marilyn was 4.5 years old. My baby girl will be 12 this January so we've been homeschooling for almost 8yrs. Its hard to believe it but really that's how long we've been at it.
In that time I've homeschooled on my own and we've utilized cyberschooling during our journey.

I remember the fun and the joy that the elementary grades brought when I taught Marilyn reading and math, and Katie as well.
I'm finding this year that my homeschooling enjoyment is just being sucked from me. When Marilyn was 7 years old we decided to join with a cyberschool in our state. I mean I would have free curriculum ( school books are expensive) and the school could deal with the paperwork accountability that I would otherwise have to do with our school district. I mean what could be better?
That first year was a total disaster. Marilyn fought me tooth and nail, letting me know each day that she wasn't going to do her school work. I can't tell you how many tears and arguments were shed that year. Katie , she did great. Always wanting to please her mommy.
The 2nd year was difficult, but not as bad as the first. Then the third year came along and Marilyn began to be more cooperative. But we were finding that we were just going through the motions to get those green Calvert tests done to send to the school. Then the 4th year came along and Maggie was born. That was a horrific time of turmoil and uncertainty dealing with all of the health problems that kept surfacing from her condition. I'm not even sure how we did it that year. It was just all a horrible blur to me. But we did it and I was proud. The 5th year we decided to give the virtual classes a try and boy that was just a horrible mistake.Technology and me donot mix at all. Marilyn was frustrated, I was frustrated and nothing was getting accomplished. Then during that year we have to travel with Maggie to Cincinnati and this gave me the perfect "excuse" to cut ties with the cyberschool altogether and just homeschool on my own. Even though it was almost the end of the school year I managed to throw some curriculum together and though it wasn't perfectly executed we mangaged and finished out the school year. I was happily awaiting to homeschool the two older girls and leave Hannah in with the other cyber we were with as it was working fine for her. So I pulled Katie out and got all the paperwork signed for the school district and we were officially homeschoolers once again.

I was so happy but of course doubt set in my mind. I had some curriculum to start out the year but not all of it.. We were working with parts of curriculum and the girls were just not enjoying it. So a friend of Marilyn's was with the cyber Hannah was in and of course I once again got talked into doing it. So once again we are with another cyber and this year I just feel like the fun, the enjoyment of learning is just being sucked out of me. The girls tell me they like their cyberschool but our days are being filled with Scantron tests, and even some tears because of the pressure. There is Study Island once again and on top of it all school work. I just feel so totally stressed out lately that its not funny.

One thing is for certain I will NOT be doing cyberschool with Maggie. Of course I could pull the older girls out but they are actually progressing this year, though in some areas we really need to work on things such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.
They enjoy the activities that we would probably not be doing since finaces are still really tight for us. Our area doesn't have social homeschoolers in the the sense they don't like to get out and do much to get together or become friends with. So just getting together with kids that homeschool is such a treat for them. I do try but others really don't seem interested.

Don't get me wrong I do like the curriculum( wish I could afford it myself), its the extra stuff that we HAVE to do with the school that is just causing my homeschool blahs.

File Folder Game: History of Us K12

2009-10-07T18:43:00.001-07:00

Of course we have finally hit our snag in the road so to speak. As much as we enjoy K12 we are not enjoying the 6th grade History. The curriculum uses the Joy Hakim books The History of Us. As much as I've heard good things about the books its just not working well for us. Even my husband finds the information they have in the books mundane and scattered. So in my attempts to make things a little more interesting I've created my own File Folder game for Marilyn to help her review the facts she's learned in the books, and also for it to help her review for her assessment tests too.

I will I give lots of credit to those who create their own file folder games. I only have Microsoft office so my futile attempts at making a "professional" looking game that not only looked good but was fun.
So I created a game for Unit 2. I still have some kinks to rule out before I post it for others to use. But my daughter did test it out and she enjoyed playing it.

Here are some pictures of what it looks like if your curious.

As you can see I added some clip art to the front of the game. Bascially, I googled the clipart and glued it on the front. I also added a few pictures on the inside to give more visuals. Like I said its not a perfect looking game but I think it will really help her understand what she is reading more. I know I learned a thing or two while putting this game together.

The Many Faces of Maggie

2009-09-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

I had to jump on and share these photos that Marilyn took of Maggie. Marilyn enjoys photography very much so whenever she gets the opportunity she is always taking pictures of something. Most times Maggie has the honor of being her subject. Maggie absolutely loves to get her picture taken too.

I really had no idea Marilyn took these pictures until I was going to download something on the computer from a picture that I took. I thought these pictures were so cute that I just HAD to post them here on our blog.
I'll have to say if you think Maggie looks pretty animated in these pictures, your right. She has become quite the silly girl since she has turned three. Sometimes not so silly too.

I will also post her other two projects with the Many Faces of Katie and Hannah too.

So here is " The Many Faces of Maggie"