love to paint

Last school year, I posted HERE about my music study plan since my oldest daughter stopped taking piano lessons.  I was excited to find some free notebooking pages to use along with our studies this year as we go through the historical periods of music.  Classics for Kids allows you to go through the composers by period to get a sense of what the music during that time was like. Here is a link to the great and FREE :) notebooking pages that I found: HERE .  The site is practicalpages.wordpress.com I like the composer pages as well as the music appreciation pages.  I suspect I will use a combination of the two over the next two years in our music studies!  I am going to have my kids listen to the talks on Classics For Kids and take notes.  There is also a short printable biography for each composer on that site that you could print instead.

My kids read a lot.  A lot.  I can't read everything they read.  It's impossible.  I do have a few sources, but aside from those I keep looking and looking...  I am constantly searching for good books for them to read.  I try to find good series I can trust.  But, I've also found some great novels along the way. Here's a few sources I go to: 1.   Honey for a Teen's Heart , great discussion of reading and gives both maturity and reading level for books, as well as world views of authors 2.  Heart of Dakota, Sonlight 3.  My book review opportunities (which are mostly done now) 4.  Books from when I taught middle school--I have to go back and review these though, because I am finding that I no longer subscribe to the idea that it doesn't matter what kids are reading as long as they're reading.  Instead, I want good stuff to go in their heads and junk food isn't always beneficial.  A lot of books have the potential ...

My daughter is entering 7th grade this year.  Wow!  Wow...  Wow.  All sorts of emotions flood my head.  She's a tween.  Her academics will be changing this year.  She'll be taking 3 classes at co-op (though 1 of them will be taught by me).  I have most of her curriculum in place, but I needed a plan for her vocabulary notebook.  I use a combination of things because I'm a cheapskate. 1)  For grades 6-8, she does 30 pages (1 page per day) from the book  101 Vocabulary Words in Context each year.  Then, she works in a vocabulary notebook... 2)   Vocabulary Notebook I was talking with my husband the other day about the Economist.  We have a student subscription (which is much cheaper than a normal subscription).  He asked if the girls could use it this year as part of their curriculum.  And the idea clicked!  I am going to have Autumn read 1 article per week.  She will highlight the words she do...

When Autumn was 2, I found a great set of math manipulatives in a bag at a garage sale for $3.  That was when I started my collection.  I knew I wanted to homeschool, so I just started keeping an eye out.  My youngest is now entering 2nd grade and my math manipulatives have been used a lot over the last 9 years (beginning when my oldest was in PK3). Here are the manipulatives I've found most helpful (and that I would buy at retail price if I hadn't gotten them at a garage sale).... 1.  Unifix Blocks   A set of 100 is very helpful.  I store them in a tupperware, rather than stressing about getting them all back in color coded stacks of 10 each time we use them.  I had the other type of cube at one point that look like this:   But, I found them harder to link together and I wasn't as pleased with them, so I gave them away. 2.  Scale I found this at a garage sale and had no idea how often I would need it in the future for m...

I grew up in a Quaker church.  I didn't hear a lot about Jesus, but I did hear a lot about God and "that of God in every man."  I didn't understand it at the time, but I just finished reading a Christian fiction book who's main character was a Quaker woman in Cincinnati, Ohio. The book was titled Blessing by Lyn Cote.  The story focuses on Blessing, Brightman.  A young widow of means who is very active in the underground railroad and in helping orphans and widows in Cincinatti, while advocating women's rights and abolition.  Blessing is a very strong woman shaped by her past.  Enter into the picture her best friend Tippy, her friend's beau--Stoddard, and Stoddard's cousin--Gerard Ramsay.  Ramsay is determined that his cousin should stay single, but you can guess what happens in that regard.  Ramsay sees something in Blessing and she in him.  Blessing sees him as having the potential to be more than he is.  Ramsay doesn't see a point ...

A few years ago I started reading Jen Turano's Christian fiction novels and reviewing them.  I still remember how much I enjoyed the first one because it made me laugh.  Her novels have continued to do that for me.  Her latest one is the second in a new series she's written, titled In good Company . The first book in the series told the story of Harriet Peabody (After a Fashion).  This second book tells the story of one of good friends Millie Longfellow and her adventures being a nanny.  Millie has this peculiar habit of liking big words, carrying a dictionary with her, and often using those words incorrectly.  It's very funny, really.  My eleven year old daughter read the first two pages and told me, "Mommy, I like this one."  She's not going to read it, but she did appreciate the humor of it.  She hates romance and I wouldn't let her read it because it's not a kids book.  But, I did really enjoy it.   Millie is a nanny who ...