November 29, 2013 · 11:10 pm

Weekly Wrap Up . . . Thanksgiving

This has been a busy, busy week! It began with finalizing my lists for Thanksgiving, as we were to be 15 for dinner! So, starting on Monday, the kids and I were working on getting ahead of the laundry and cleaning, among other things.

I was also working hard to finish assembling the base Christmas cards I’m working on for my Hairstylist, Jody Muniz! They are all completed except for adding the bling and stamping the sentiments on the inside! 🙂 I needed to get them to that point so I could put away all of my paper-crafting supplies by Wednesday.

On Tuesday evening, our church, Mesa Baptist held it’s Thanksgiving Feast at 6:00 p.m., followed by our annual Thanksgiving Praise and Thanksgiving service. During the service, our teen choir sang the special music. Both “The Batman” and “The Artist” are in the teen choir, and “The Artist” had one of the duets in the song, so watch for him in this video! 🙂

Thursday, my husband had to work a four hour shift in the morning, and then about an hour after he got home, our guests began arriving. My friend Rose (who actually happens to work with my husband), her husband Bill and their four children (Danny, Andrew, Ian and Ashley) arrived first, at around 11:00. She is a Pampered Chef consultant, and came with stuff to make a veggie tray and a relish tray, complete with Pampered Chef stuff to make and serve them with! We put those out for the football watchers, but it took a bit of time to get them to eat that along with the chips and dip, lol! She also did a lovely tossed salad, a Honey Baked Ham, dinner rolls, and brought two pies.

My friend Ann, her husband Charles and their son Charlie got here later in the afternoon. She had made delicious mashed potatoes, two kinds of green bean casserole, and brought three pies. We had spent Thanksgiving at their home last year. 🙂

I did the Turkey, Coconut-Pecan Sweet Potatoes, stuffing, cranberry celebration, gravy and brownies. I forgot to cook the corn I had bought, but there was certainly plenty of food without it!

We had such a good time, and those who are into football certainly got their fill this year on Thanksgiving!

Here are some pictures of everyone having a good time together . . .

First up, My friend Ann, with her very fun hat!
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Next, we have Charlie, dressed to root for his team . . .
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Here is my husband Mike, with Ann and her husband Charles . . .
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Here, “The Batman” is engrossed in a 3DS game!
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Next, we have my friend Rose, her husband Bill, 2 of their kids plus “The Artist” . . .
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My husband Mike, gabbing with Rose, Ann and Charles . . .
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Two of Rose and Bill’s kids, plus “The Puzzler” at the Wii.
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Well, that’s OUR weekly wrap-up, how was YOUR week? Why don’t you write about it and then go link up with the rest of us? Just click the graphic below!

As always, I’d love it if you’d join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just go and enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, and never miss an update! And, if you enjoy “My Journeys”, please go to our Facebook page and “Like it. I’d sure love it if you did! 🙂

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November 28, 2013 · 7:58 am

The Force, by Alexandra & Joyce Swann . . . My Review

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I have been reading this book for several weeks now, in little snatches of time, since unfortunately, I do not have the luxury of just sitting for hours to finish a good book the way I did when I was young . . . and single . . . and not homeschooling four boys, lol!

Make no mistake, the fact that I took me a while to finish this story does NOT mean I didn’t like it. In fact, it was VERY difficult to put it down each time I had to do so!

Here is a short synopsis of the premise in “The Force”:

“About The Force:
Someone is murdering the world’s most beautiful women—over and over and over. When Jarrod and Joshua Sinclair are called in to consult with the FBI about the Hollywood Starlet murders, they immediately suspect their old nemesis Josef Helmick of creating clones of famous women for a visiting Saudi prince. Wasting no time, they hire retired detective Fred Kowalski and send him to Dubai to uncover Josef’s base of operations and build a case against him for the murders. But Fred soon discovers that Helmick Enterprises is harboring a secret much darker than human trafficking. Fred must stop Helmick before he resurrects an ancient, diabolical Force in order to bring the entire human race under his control.”

This book is as gripping as any sci-fi or political thriller I have ever read, and the bonus is that it has a Christian theme running throughout the story as the Sinclair brothers and Fred Kowalski race to prove their belief of who and what is behind the crimes that are happening.

As I read this book, which is the sequel to the equally gripping book “The Fourth Kingdom” by the same authors, I was struck over and over again by the plausibility of the story. It is no secret to believers that there is, and has been throughout history, a battle between the force of Satan and the power of God.

This book is part of the “Kingdom Chronicles” series. I am so hoping there will be a third book, and even a fourth and beyond, as I really, really enjoyed reading it. Both “The Force” and it’s prequel “The Fourth Kingdom” are thought-provoking, and will make you want to study more on prophesy and history.

Joyce and Alexandra Swann are mother and daughter. Joyce homeschooled her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees. She is a well-known author and speaker on the subject of homeschooling. For nearly a decade she was a popular columnist for “Practical Homeschooling Magazine”. She now blogs regularly on parenting, homeschooling, and Christian lifestyle issues.

Joyce and Alexandra have co-authored two other novels, The Fourth Kingdom and The Twelfth Juror, both of which were published in 2010.

Joyce’s personal story of her experiences raising and educating her family is chronicled in Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother, published in February of 2011. Her novel, The Warrior, which tells the story of one woman’s ten year prayer vigil for a man she has never met, was released in May of 2012. She is also the author of two children’s books, “Tales of Pig Isle” and “The McAloons”, which began as stories that she told to entertain her grandchildren.

Alexandra is the author of “No Regrets: How Homeschooling Earned me a Master’s Degree at Age Sixteen” and “Writing for Today”. She has been self-employed for over fourteen years and was the 2011 Chairwoman of the Board of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. She writes a regular blog, Paying for Protection, about the consequences of over-regulation and over-reaching government. Her novel “The Planner”, which is the prequel to “The Chosen”, was published in June of 2012.

Over at “Following In His Footsteps“, blogger Wendy has posted a Q & A with authors Alexandra & Joyce Swann.

“The Force” is now available here in paperback for $15.50, and on Kindle for $4.99.

I highly recommend the Swanns as writers of some of my newest favorite books, and I greatly appreciate the fact that they’ve used the King James Bible for all of the scripture used in their novel! Run, don’t walk, and begin reading the “Kingdom Chronicles” now. You’ll not regret it, I promise you!

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As always, I’d love it if you joined me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, and never miss an update! And, if you do enjoy “My Journeys”, please go to our Facebook Page and “Like” it. 🙂

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November 20, 2013 · 3:34 pm

The End Of My First Year As A Review Crew Member . . .

And it has been such a blessing to our family! We have reviewed approximately 50 products and/or curricula, much of which was new to us, and much of which we had heard of, but never really had the budget to buy it without checking it out thoroughly.

The Schoolhouse Review Crew recently voted for the Blue Ribbon Awards, given to the top choices from all of the products reviewed this year, and the results were announced this morning on the Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog.

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Many of the crew have decided to publish our own posts telling you about our favorites from this year, and I am no exception, so here we go!

If you click on the title of any of the following, it will open my review in a separate window so you can refresh your memory as to why we liked it. 🙂

As I said, we reviewed nearly 50 products this year, and it has been hard to narrow it down to what we will be using for our homeschool this year, and what will be set aside for future use. I’m going to tell you what we are now using as our homeschool curricula!

“The Batman” will be using Time4Learning at least twice a week. He is also doing Handwriting Without Tears two or three days per week.

“Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” will be continuing on with Reading Kingdom at least twice a week, along with Math Rider and Adventus, both at least twice a week.

“The Artist” will be continuing his way through Writing Fiction (In High School) by Sharon Watson on a weekly basis, and will be doing A+ TutorSoft, which we like so much that we purchased the remaining grade levels for him and for the other boys when they are ready! 🙂

I will be continuing TouchMath with “The Batman”, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” until they complete the level we were reviewing, and then they will move on to A+ TutorSoft.

Everyone will be working through America The Beautiful by Notgrass. We really, really enjoyed this one, and it works for us in the area of history, geography, and social studies. We will also be using our God‘s World News subscription in our homeschool, as well as games we reviewed, such as The Presidential Game and Chess House, both of which our children thoroughly enjoy using! All four boys will continue with VocabularySpellingCity for language arts.

We (and this time I include myself in the “we”) will be completing Song School Spanish, and will then continue on with See It And Say It Flip Flop Learning Spanish, which we all enjoyed, and found easy to learn with.

I loved the Homeschool Mom’s Bible, and will continue using it forever, I think! 🙂

All in all, without the blessing of being a member of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, I think our homeschooling would not be as enjoyable as it’s becoming, not to mention the friends I have made as a result.

I am also very happy to announce that last night, I received my email inviting me to be part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew again for the year 2014. To read a bit about what membership means to me, please go here. I can hardly wait to see what products we will have waiting for us when we start back up again in January! Until then, dear readers, I’ll just be writing about what’s going on around here, along with possibly my thoughts on current events and things in the news.

As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys”! Just go enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, and never miss another update! Also, if you enjoy this blog, please go to our Facebook page and “Like” it! I sure would appreciate it if you do! 🙂

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November 20, 2013 · 2:16 pm

Learning Can Be Many Things . . .

And does not come from textbooks only! Here is “Mr. Loquacious”, working on a structure made with his sports trading cards . . .
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He is learning patience (it keeps falling down), he is practicing engineering, he is designing.

In the end, it turned out he was simply preparing a place for his hot wheels cars to crash into and destroy, but I failed to get a picture of that, lol!

As always, I’d love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys”. Just enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page and never miss an update! Also, if yo enjoy this blog, please go to our Facebook page and “Like” it. Thank you! 🙂

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November 20, 2013 · 12:44 pm

Our November Homeschool Group Activity . . .

Our church, Mesa Baptist Church has a thriving homeschool group, and each month during the “official” school year we try to have an activity or field trip. You have already read about the trip we made to McCall’s Pumpkin Patch in October, and now I am going to tell you what our November activity was!

Since our church was having our annual Missions Conference this month, our homeschool activity centered around missions. One of our very organized ladies, who just happens to be one of my favorite bloggers (her blog is The Ministry Mama) put the whole thing together for us!

We divided up into three groups of families, with each group taking one of the missionary families that would be here for the conference, and each family was also given one of our college students who are away from us for school.

Our family, along with two others, got the Herndon Family. They are missionaries to the Zuni and Navajo Indians here in Mew Mexico.

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This is an older picture that I found online . . . the Herndons have six children now!

Each family provided a gift for Mrs. Herndon or her husband, and two of their six children. We took the two youngest children, and I got them appropriately aged baby toys. 🙂 I also made a set of notecards and a notebook for Mrs. Herndon.

For our college student, one of our young men who has gone off to his first year of Bible college in Fargo, ND, we filled a box of goodies!

Here is a picture of the kids in our group, with the missionary gift already completed, and the college student gift still open in front of them . . .
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Here is part of one of the other groups . . .
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And last but not least, the third group, at least the moms, having been abandoned by their children at picture time, lol!
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After we did the boxes, my friend The Ministry Mama led the children in singing missions songs, gave them a little lesson on missions, and told them her personal testimony of having been called to the mission field, and how God changed that call when she was in college.

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After all of that, we ate lunch!
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I think it was a fun, productive morning! Our children learned more about missions and giving, and we all had a good time together as well. Bonus! 🙂

As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys”! Just enter your email information into the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, and never miss another update. And please, if you do enjoy this blog, go to our Facebook page and “like” it! 🙂

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November 12, 2013 · 11:38 am

At Home In Dogwood Mudhole Volume one: Nothing That Eats . . . A T.O.S Review

Well, and isn’t that a mouthful of a title, LOL! However, the title of this book was precisely what intrigued me enough to want to read it when it was offered for review to those of us who are members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, so I was very happy to be chosen as one of the reviewers!

I am going to admit to you, my readers, right here and now, that I have been totally dragging my feet when it came to writing up this review. You see, getting it written up would mean getting it posted and linked to the crew blog, and I really, really don’t want to. Why? Because, this is my very last review product from the crew for the year 2013, and while I HAVE applied to remain on the crew for the year 2014, I am truly going to miss doing this in the interim! I will be writing a post about my time on the crew very soon. 🙂 But, I digress . . .

Back to “At Home In Dogwood Mudhole Volume One: Nothing That Eats“, written and published by Franklin Sanders from At Home in Dogwood Mudhole, which is quite a read! As I said, the title alone made me want to check it out!

This is a BIG book, coming in at 379 pages. It is not a novel, and I knew this from the description, but rather a collection of letters written by Franklin Sanders . . .

which were then published in his monthly newsletter, The Moneychanger over a period of 17 years.

In this, the first of three volumes to be published, Mr. Sanders tells us, in a series of letters about, well, his life, and that of his family. We read about their several moves closer and closer to being where they can live off the land, and how, when they get there, his wife’s consistant admonishments that they bring home “nothing that eats” end up being quite useless, as he and the children do, in fact, keep adding to the collection of farm animals and pets.

The family winds up in a place called Dogwood Mudhole, Tennessee, which, as I discovered in the book, is a real place, not just the name of their farm, which is what I had thought before reading the book. It all began with the desire of Franklin and his wife Susan’s desire to “go back to the land” when the Y2K scare was looming. I happen to be part of the generation that remembers when that non-event happened, and how my own mother was so worried about it that she filled her tub and all the sinks with water just in case all of the utilities went dead at midnight on December 31, 1999. Of course, that did not happen, but I guess I understand the concern a lot of people had, after all, we had never lived through the changing from one century to another before!

As I said before, this book is a collection of letters, written and published in Franklin Sanders newsletter The Moneychanger, so it really is more of a picture of the life of himself and his family written as it happened, rather than as a recollection or memoir would be.

I got a very interesting (and different!) picture of southern history, as Franklin Sanders is very much a history buff when it comes to the Confederacy. For myself, as the adoptive mother of biracial children, the enthusiasm for the Confederacy made me uncomfortable.

Franklin Sanders is unabashedly Christian, and makes no bones about it, however, his troubles with the IRS and jail time as a result, bothered me. As a Christian, I believe the Lord says we must obey the laws, unless the laws DEFINITELY go against God’s laws. I’m not so sure that the issue of whether or not one must collect tax when selling gold or silver should be considered to go against God’s laws. I think Mr. Sanders is right when he says that the constitution declares gold and silver to be money, and therefore you should not have to collect taxes when exchanging money (gold or silver) for money (paper), however, I think that by God’s law, he would have showed a better testimony to follow the law and then protest it afterwards.

“At Home In Dogwood Mudhole Volume One: Nothing That Eats” is a very good read, if you are not expecting something to read like a novel. It doesn’t. One of the things I actually enjoy about it is that because of the way it is written, as a series of letters written as they happened, this is a book that you can pick up and read whenever you have a free moment or two. I do like having books like that around, as frequently, my reading time comes in unexpected little patches of time these days! 🙂

There is even a “no-risk” guarantee offered on the website:
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No Risk Guarantee

If you don’t laugh, cry, gasp, hug your spouse or jump up and down, we’ll refund your money and you can keep the book to use as a door stop.”

I thought the guarantee was just hilarious, myself, having never read one quite like it!

“At Home In Dogwood Mudhole Volume One: Nothing That Eats” is available here. The oversized paperback costs $22.95, and is also available in pdf, Kindle and ePUB versions for $ 16.95.

To read what other Schoolhouse Review Crew Members thought of the book “At Home In
Dogwood Mudhole Volume One: Nothing That Eats, please click the graphic below!
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As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just go to the top of the page and enter your email information into the “sign me up” button. Also, please, do go to our Facebook page here and click on the “Like” button! I’d surely appreciate it, and you will never miss an update again! 🙂

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November 11, 2013 · 5:55 am

Book Lovers Give Away!!!

I am so excited to be part of the launch team for the Christian Fiction thriller “The Force, by Alexandra and Joyce Swann! I am reading my copy now, and you can be expecting a review within the next couple of weeks, but suffice to say, it is such a good book! 🙂

We are excited to help Frontier 2000 Media celebrate the release of The Force by Alexandra and Joyce Swann with a super cool giveaway for book lovers! Two prizes will be awarded, one containing 11 awesome books and the other with five books. Total value of this giveaway is $185! Woohoo!

We would like to thank the following authors for their generous donations to these giveaways! Be sure to stop by their websites to say thank you!

William Struse

Tricia Goyer

Sarah Sundin 

Eisley Jacobs

Gwen Toliver

Carey Jane Clark

To enter the giveaway, use the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post. Two winners will be selected and announced by noon ET on November 25, 2013. U.S. residents age 18 and older only please. Other Terms and Conditions can be found in the Rafflecopter.

Book Lover’s Giveaway #1 ($120 value)

The Force by Alexandra and Joyce Swann

The Fourth Kingdom by Alexandra and Joyce Swann

The 13th Enumeration by William Struse

The 13th Prime by William Struse

Love Finds You in Glacier Bay Alaska by Tricia Goyer

On Distant Shores by Sarah Sundin

Dragons of the Deep by Eisley Jacobs

Blink of a Dragon by Eisley Jacobs

Born to be a Dragon by Eisley Jacobs

Seed Sowers by Gwen Toliver

After the Snow Falls by Carey Jane Clark 

Book Lover’s Giveaway #2 ($65 value)

The Force by Alexandra and Joyce Swann

The Fourth Kingdom by Alexandra and Joyce Swann

The 13th Enumeration by William Struse

The 13th Prime by William Struse

Love Finds You in Glacier Bay Alaska by Tricia Goyer

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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November 7, 2013 · 11:14 am

French Essentials . . . A T.O.S. Review

When I was offered the chance to review French Essentials in our homeschooling environment, I thought about it for a little while first. My kids and I have been trying really hard to learn another language, but I thought it would be fun to take a break and see how we would do with French.

For this review, we received the Full Access Online Program, which has given me everything they have to offer. You can purchase the Full Access Online Program for $149.95, which will give you every one of the modules (there are four so far, with module five on the way), for a total of over 90 lessons and an entire year to get them all downloaded to your own computer! This is a savings of over 57%, as opposed to purchasing one module at a time for the cost of $69.95. Also, with the single modules, you get only 90 days to get all of the lessons and workbook materials downloaded to your computer.

From the French Essentials Home page:

“French Essentials is a complete, downloadable French curriculum with online features that include culture, fun exercises, lesson tests & more.
Designed by experienced French teachers specifically for home learners, it is clear and easy to use and does not require previous knowledge of French. The well designed lessons teach French in an easy to follow, gradual, step-by-step method with video & audio instruction that allows students to interact with the language in a fun and engaging way.”

French Essentials takes your homeschooler through all four language acquisition skills:

reading
writing
listening comprehension
speaking

They use a multi-sensorial approach, beginning with audio. We were able to read the lessons, then click on various characters, letters and words in order to hear the correct pronunciation. These sound files are embedded right in the pdf that we downloaded for each lesson.

Also embedded in the pdf lessons were little videos of a French-speaking teacher giving us time to “watch, listen and repeat”.

We also were able to download the workbook and workbook answer key for each module, which give us the opportunity to practice our reading and writing with the printable exercises, which are there to help us to reinforce speaking and comprehension as we learn to correctly understand the grammar and sentence structures in the French language.

In addition, included in the package for registered users are the following components:

Online quizzes, learning activities and French Culture. The online quizzes include things like online flash cards, listening comprehension & spelling, 2 challenging games (Scatter & Space race) and a test section that gives parents 4 different evaluation options.

The authors of this program are a married couple who are teachers living in St-Rédempteur, Québec, a suburb of Quebec City with their two children, who both attend school in French and are homeschooled in English. They are so passionate about French culture and the French language!

In their own words, here is how they began this endeavor:

“We began as a small tutoring service which came about through requests for tutoring from friends in the homeschool community. This eventually led to the development of a DVD French curriculum for home use. In August 2010, in order to make it more affordable and accessible, French Essentials was converted from top to bottom into a new downloadable format and http://www.frenchessentials.com was launched.”

If your child (or you, for that matter!) have had any exposure to the French language, there is a placement test you can use here in order to find out where you need to begin. WE began at the very beginning, of course, lol!

Here is what you’ll see when you log in after purchasing . . .

You can also go to the online exercises . . .

Or to the section on French culture!

If you go here, you can see a sample lesson from module one, and here is a sample of one of the videos, also from module one . . .

For more information about how the program works, what you can expect, and several sample lessons and videos from later modules, you can go here

What I like about the French Essentials Full Access Online Program is that as I said above, it has allowed me to download everything to my computer. I like that the sound and video files are actually embedded right into the downloaded lessons, enabling us to read it, hear it, see it, and say it.

What I didn’t like was that for some reason I couldn’t do either the sound files or the videos on the laptop computers my boys use for homeschooling, so we had to crowd around my desktop (which is newer) for our lessons. I had no problem at all on my desktop when I was prompted to install needed programs in order to use the sound files and videos, but on the laptops, I got nowhere.

While my kids were able to follow the read it, listen to it, view the video, and then repeat what was being said, at this time the worksheets are proving to be too much for them. But as I’ve said before, I often need to tweak homeschool curriculum to accommodate their various special needs, and it is my hope that a little later on, they’ll be able to handle them. 🙂 Right now, though, I’m hearing an awful lot of “French is too hard, Mom!” 🙂

I believe this is an excellent program, especially for the home learner. In fact, even though this one turned out to be a bit too much for my kids, it isn’t too much for me, and I think I will continue on with it myself to see how much *I* can learn! 🙂

To read all about what my fellow Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of French Essentials, please click on the graphic below!
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As always, I would just love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”. Just go to the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog and enter your email information. And please, if you enjoy “My Journeys Through Life”, go here and “like” our Facebook page. Never miss another update! 🙂

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November 6, 2013 · 11:01 am

Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics . . . A T.O.S. Review

If you are looking for a hands on, Charlotte Mason Style Homeschool Science Curriculum with a definite Christian world view, you will certainly find it in Exploring Creation With Chemistry And Physics, written by Jeanie Fulbright and published by Apologia. This curriculum is written for children anywhere from kindergarten through grade six, and is perfect, in my opinion, for working together as a group, even in a multi-age group.

As reviewers, we were allowed to select any two of the notebooking journals which go along with the text book. Because I had hopes that at least one of my kids (“The Artist”) would be able to use the Regular Notebooking Journal, I asked for it . . .

Along with a copy of the Junior Notebooking Journal.

Because of a mistake in shipping, I actually received two of the Junior Notebooking Journals. Apologia was kind enough to replace the missing journals for those of us who received the wrong ones, and ESPECIALLY kind enough to allow us to keep the wrong ones! In the meanwhile, I was able to acquire two more Junior Notebooking Journals from other reviewers. 🙂 As it happened, this turned out to be a real blessing, because although “The Artist” probably CAN handle the regular Notebooking Journal, he definitely preferred the Jr. one.

The Notebooking Journals are very similar, but the Junior Notebooking Journal actually has a lot more in it for someone who likes art, and the Regular Notebooking Journal has significantly more writing to do, something “The Artist” gets balky about if he has to do it with handwriting as opposed to using the computer.

One of the best things about the Apologia is that when we use it as a read-aloud (and we do!), the text is very easy to understand, and there are plenty of good quality color pictures to go along with the text.

Spread throughout each chapter (Lesson) are boxes with the heading “Try This!”. It may be a small experiment, a game, or something else, but it always goes right along with what is being taught in that section. Some of the “Try This!” sections we have done are:

The 20 Questions Game, which teaches the skill of being able to describe the properties of matter.

Figuring out the volume of a small rock using the method discovered by Archimedes . . .

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during which we discovered that this small rock from our yard came in at about 50 cubic centimeters.

We began learning about density using two eggs, two glasses of warm water, and one half cup of salt . . .

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We learned more about mass, volume and density by seeing whether different objects would sink or float in a bowl of water . . .

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And we also did one other “Try This” to learn about buoyancy. The idea was to build a foil boat, put it into our “ocean” of warm salt water . . .
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then begin adding pennies (pirate treasure) to see how many it took to make the boat sink . . .
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In case you were wondering, it took 56 pennies!

In the main text-book “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics“, there are 14 lessons. The breakdown of the lesson plans are in the Notebooking Journal and the Junior Notebooking Journal, with the suggested pace of two days per week, doing one lesson per week. As usual, we are slowing this down quite a bit, in order that all of my children can really get as much as possible out of this curriculum. I think that’s one of the best things about homeschooling, the fact that we can go at our own pace, tweaking here and there as needed to accommodate the various special needs my kids have.

There are also a multitude of lapbook style things in both of the Notebooking Journals for the student to cut out, fill in, and then glue to the appropriate page of their notebook. We are just getting ready to begin one of them, in fact!

There are vocabulary activities, such as crossword puzzles, word find puzzles, match-up sheets, vocabulary puzzle pieces, etc, and, should you need them, the answers are all in the back of the Notebooking Journal!

Here are just a couple of pictures from our Notebooking Journals:

From the Junior Notebooking Journal, you can see that my kids are not carbon copies of one another when it comes to coloring!
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Here is the one picture I managed to get of “The Artist” beginning a crossword puzzle in the regular Notebooking Journal, before going back to the Junior Notebooking Journal, which he very much prefers! 🙂
Review_Apologia chemistry physics 016

Apologia is a good fit for my family, and we will continue to use it, but with one small adjustment in addition to slowing the pace down quite a bit. The only other change I will make is that when they have a copywork page with a Bible verse, I will be having them use our King James Bible, rather than the version used in the curriculum. As my regular readers are aware, that is my one pet peeve with Christian homeschool curriculum, it is mostly written using other versions these days. I would love it if this were offered with the option of being published using the King James Version for those of us who will use no other version of the Bible. In the meantime, I guess I will just continue to adjust for that by typing the verses out from the King James Bible and then adhering them to the Notebooking Journal over the other version.

The Textbook “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” by Jeanie Fulbright can be found here at the cost of $39.00.

The “Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal for Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” can be found here for $24.00.

The “Junior Chemistry and Physics Notebooking Journal for Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics” is available here for $24.00.

My children and I are very much enjoying this Homeschool Science Curriculum, and I hope you will, too!

To find out what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members thought of “Exploring Creation With Chemistry and Physics“, please click on the graphic below!
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As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”! Just go to the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog and enter your email information. Also, if you enjoy “My Journeys”, please, go here and “Like” our Facebook page. Never miss an update again! 🙂

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Filed under Apologia, Christian faith, education, family, home education, homeschool products, Homeschool Science Curriculum, homeschooling, Kids, Lapbooking, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, special needs education, TOS Post, TOS Review

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November 1, 2013 · 1:00 pm

Weekly Wrap-Up . . . Oh What A Busy Week We Had! :-)

I think that Monday was the ONLY day we stayed at home! Tuesday, as I posted earlier in the week, Our church homeschool group had a field trip to McCall’s Pumpkin Patch, in Moriarty NM, followed by Ladies Bible Study at church that evening for me.

Then Wednesday of course, “The Batman” and “The Artist” had Teen Choir, after which we had Bible Study and Prayer Meeting at church. On the way home after church, we needed to stop and buy milk, because nobody had told me the day before that we were almost out (I don’t drink it, so I didn’t know).

Last night, our church had the annual Chile Cook-off and Fall Festival. I’ll be doing a post in the next few days with pictures from that, but here’s one picture of some of the Chile entries before we began sampling! 🙂
Fall Festival 2013 002

This morning, our church homeschool group met for our November activity, which was a missions project, as our missions conference is this month. We divided into groups, three families per group, and we each filled a box with gifts for our assigned missionary family, along with a box for one of our college students who are away at school.

Here are our packages, with the kids in our group . . .

Homeschool Missions Project 003

I’ll do a full post about that later, too, with more pictures. Meanwhile, that’s how our week has been, and now I am finishing this post, doing laundry, getting things together for a Close To My Heart Gathering being held tomorrow, and then getting my ministry card that I do each week made.

So, how was YOUR week? Why don’t you write about it on Fridays and join the weekly wrap-up linky? Just click the graphic below to find out how!

As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life”, by entering your email information in the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog. And please, do also go here and “Like” our Facebook page! 🙂

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Filed under card making, Christian faith, Church, Close to My Heart, education, encouragement, family, food, home education, Home-school Group, Homeschool Field Trip, Kids, McCall's Pumpkin Patch, Mesa Baptist Church, NM, Weekly Wrap-Up

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