It's been a while!!!!

Yes it has! I have been so busy around here that my blog took a back seat. Well, Erica over at Confessions of a Homeschooler has inspired me to blog every day until December 25th.




We, as a family, try to do some type of Advent calendar every year. Well this year we will be doing Advent ornaments. You can go here and see this fun project that my family will start on Saturday, December 1, 2012. We are pretty much going to follow her recommendations on each day. Some I changed that would better suit my family. This is going to be the most fun Advent we have done to this day! I am so excited.

Check back every day starting Saturday to see what we will be doing on that day and every day after that!

See you then.......

Growing Up Wild (Schoolhouse Review)

Growing Up Wild is a DVD collection featuring the adventures of the Wild brothers: Morgan, Hudson, Kian and Asher, along with Mike and Libby (Mom and Dad). These DVDs take you into the lives of this missionary family living in the jungles of Papua, Indonesia.

They share their life and lots of experiences in the jungle through these DVDs. They share about the Wano culture, which are the tribal people they live around. They are there to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with these people.

For this review, we had the opportunity to review two of their DVDs.

In Volume 1, we see how they live and gather their supplies that are needed on a daily basis. It was also fun to see how this family has fully adapted to the culture over there. From the foods they eat down to how they made their indoor plumbing using water brought into their home through a hose that runs from a spring at the top of a mountain. It is fascinating.

In this DVD, Volume 2, we get to see the tribe that the Wild family lives among. They share their different traditions and tribal beliefs. The Wild children also participate in a tribal piercing! The jungle they live in is such a beautiful place.

We love this series. Each volume features three 15-minute episodes with an activity guide for each. The activity guide includes suggested field trips, science projects, bible scripture and activities.

We as a family thought these DVDs were amazing. It gives you an inside look at how they live each day, doing missionary work, in Indonesia. Awesome! I would highly recommend this DVD series to anyone who wants to see what its like living in the jungles of Indonesia. If you would like your children to get a glimpse into another culture, these DVDs are for you.

Each Growing Up Wild DVD sells for $18.99 or you can save 15% when you purchase the whole set for $80.99. These DVDs are intended to be used with children ages 5-12, but anyone will enjoy them!

See what other crew members had to say about the Growing Up Wild!

Disclaimer: I received two DVDs as part of the TOS crew, in exchange for my honest opinion and review.

Book Review: With the Children on Sundays

With The Children On Sundays , from Grace & Truth Books is a family worship book, published in 1893, as a series of children's sermons and brought back to print in 1995. It is designed to be a weekly study for family worship or a Sunday School curriculum for children ages 5 to 11.

In this book, there is a ten page "Suggestions to Parents" that offers methods to help and make these lessons a success. It gives you 63 tips to play church and contains 52 little sermons.

How we used WITH THE CHILDREN ON SUNDAYS!

As I said before, this book is designed to be a weekly study for family worship but we have been enjoying ours as a daily bible lesson in our homeschool. Our first subject everyday is Bible, so I decided to try this book as our daily bible and it worked like a charm. We are thoroughly enjoying this book. The bugs never want me to stop with just one story.

In each story, the author tells you an object to use along side your lesson.  For example, the second story entitled The Worm In The Apple tells us to use a large perfect apple and a stunted, wormy one. This story teaches children how things on the inside is not always how it looks on the outside and how there is sin in our hearts and how it can eat its way out through our hearts into our lives like the worm in the apple.  In my opinion, using objects to enhance these lessons are a wonderful idea. The children are really interested in how the object fits into the story.

At the end of each chapter, there are questions that you can ask your children and start a discussion about the lesson. Each lesson is about 5 to 6 pages in length. The book is very vintage looking with wonderful pictures throughout. We are enjoying this book so much. It is full of wonderful, character building lessons.


With The Children On Sundays is a large paperback book that retails for $17.50.  Go to www.graceandtruthbooks.com and enjoy free shipping on orders over $49.

To see what other crew members have to say about this book and others reviewed, go here.

Disclaimer: For this review, I received the book With The Children On Sundays, free, in exchange for my honest opinions and review.

A Great Blog and Giveaway!

It's no secret, I love to cook. A few months ago, my sister sent me a link to a blog to check out. I am glad I did. It is now one of my favorite cooking blogs. The bread recipes on this blog are some of the best I have tried.  

Go to What is on your menu this week? and check it out.

She also has a cookbook giveaway going on. It is entitled Savoring the Seasons with Our Best Bites Cookbook. Hop on over to the blog and check it out and enter to win this cookbook! I did!



God Bless!

Apologia: Journeys of Faithfulness Book Review

Journeys of Faithfulness by Sarah Clarkson is a collection of inspirational stories and devotions written for young Christian women. It can be read alone or with other young women, or in my situation, two of my oldest daughters ages 11 & 15. It is written for girls ages 12 & up but my 11 year old is a very smart bug!

This book is broken down into four parts:

Part One: Mary and Martha

Part Two: Mary, Mother of Jesus

Part Three: Esther

Part Four: Ruth

The author provides fictionalized stories of these women and adds in possible actions and feelings. She also includes a devotional at the end of each chapter, a bible study and a journey journal for writing down you thoughts or prayers.

The stories in this book are very interesting and engaging, however, are fictionalized versions of God's Word. For some people, this is not a problem but for me, it is. I want my children to know the truth and God's Word is true! In my opinion, I am not that comfortable with any fiction in our Bible stories. We really enjoyed the Bible study and devotions in this book.

This paperback book consists of 232 pages and is available for purchase through Apologia Ministries for $13.00. Go here to purchase your copy.

This is strictly my opinion about this book. Since I have told you how I feel about this, you should see what other crew members had to say. I am sure there are many different views on this!

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free, in exchange for my honest opinion and review.

Activity Bags!!!!

Let me start by saying how Awesome these Activity Bags are. I heard about this company a couple of years ago and wanted to try them but over time had forgotten about them. When they came up for review, I was so excited. I jumped at the chance to review some of these bags.

For this review, I was able to choose two bags from this company. After hours and hours of thinking and trying to decide which two would be a good match for our homeschool, I decided on Science Activities in a Bag - Books 1, 2, & 3 and Preschool Activities in a Bag Books 1 & 2.

We love science in our homeschool but if you are like me, I find it hard to do all that is required of science experiments. I have good intentions when it comes to hands-on experiments but after hunting down all the supplies and hoping we have everything we need to have a successful science experiment, let's face it.......I'm exhausted!!!

Science Activities in a Bag can solve all of these problems for you. They are exciting and easy to do. The ebooks contain instructions, supply lists and detailed instructions on how to assemble each activity bag if you are wanting to organize a "swap" with friends or other homeschooling families. This would be great for coops and homeschooling groups.

Science Activities in a Bag - Book 1 - Biology, General Science & Nature is $15.

This book has examples of 25 experiments to enjoy with your children. In this book, you can: Learn how to determine the temperature using a cricket's chirp, how yeast and sugar can inflate a balloon, how to force a spider to spin a web right in front of your eyes, and more. The first experiment we wanted to try out of this book is entitled "Fungus Amungus". Here you can see the supplies needed for this experiment.

Two sandwich bags, one slice of bread,  glass of water, a straw and a slice of citrus.

The best part other than actually doing these experiments with my bugs.......

is that many of the items needed for these experiments were already lying around our home.

Science Activities in a Bag - Book 2 - Chemistry, Human Body & General Science is $15.

This book also has 25 experiments. In this book, you can learn how salt makes it harder for water to freeze, how you can hold a flame directly under a balloon and not pop it and how to collect and match fingerprints.

And the one we chose is entitled "Eye Parts". We learned all about the parts of our eyes and their purposes. This came in really handy since my Dad just had cataract surgery.

Science Activities in a Bag - Book 3 - Chemistry is also $15.

This book also has 25 experiments in it. There are so many to choose from but we decided on "Salt Crystals". We are learning how to grow crystals out of salt. Here are the supplies needed for this one:

One metal paper clip, one 8-inch piece of string, one pencil, plastic spoon, 8-10 oz glass of water and salt

We are working on it daily and recording any changes on the experiment log that you print out for each experiment. It is so much fun doing these experiments now that activity bags has made it so easy to do.

You can also get these three science activities in a bag for a special combo price of $39 or buy them as a bundle for $27.

                   



Preschool Activities in a Bag - Book 1 and Preschool Activities in a Bag - Book 2 are an answered prayer! I have a 3 and 5 year old that, sometimes can be quite a handful during school time. The three older bugs would totally agree! It is hard to hold their attention for a long period of time, so these activity bags do just that for me.

Each night, I will pick one or two activities out and prepare it for the next day. It is so easy to have everything laid out for you, ready to go. Each book comes with a Preschool Activity Supply List. It lists general supplies needed for each activity.

Some of our favorites from Book 1 are ABC Puzzles, Alpha Spoons, Chalkboard fun (which we enjoy tremendously since I painted one of my dining room walls in chalkboard paint!!!) and Hand Puzzle just to name a few.

Out of Book 2, Alphabet Match, Fruits of the Spirit, Fruity Puzzles and the list goes on an on.

All of these books are downloadable in PDF format. I really like this because each book contains a good number of pages so I am able to pick and choose what I want or need to print.

In my opinion, these little ebooks are well worth the price for the amount of activities that are included in each book.

I am looking forward to using these books again and again. They also have Math Games and Travel Activity books. I am planning on purchasing those in the near future!

The Preschool Bags are great for ages 3-6 years of age. The Science Bags are for K-8 grade but I have to say that my 9th grader is loving it just as much as the other bugs!

To see what other crew members thought about activity bags, click here.

Disclaimer: I received Activity Bags, free of charge, in exchange for my honest opinion and review.