Doula Mama

One of my real life friends has started a blog about pregnancy and delivery. Amy is a doula in Korea, while her husband is stationed there. She is very passionate about women being educated about their options during pregnancy and delivery. Click here to see.

Just what we needed!

" I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:13

If life is crazy, then military life is crazier! Y'all pray for us, everything is a little bit chaotic here.

Embracing the E-Book

I believe that the homeschool world has been revolutionized by the e-book. It has become very easy to manufacture, publish, and read e-books. Personally, we have been able to gleam tons of info for our homeschool days through e-books.

E-Homeschooling: Embracing the E-Book Revolution is a new e-book from The Old Schoolhouse. In this small e-book, several writers have combined to give us a little more insight into how the e-book world has affected them. There is Amanda Bennett’s view of adding to the homeschool experience to Isabelle Lussier’s view on storage.

Most people have a problem with e-books because they have a difficult time overcoming the desire to hold a book in their hand. E-Homeschooling: Embracing the E-Book Revolution is a free e-book from TOS that may help you change your mind toward having and using e-books in your homeschool. Go get this e-book and see if one of these contributors has an idea that will encourage you.

An Idea For Dad's

This year, we are much farther from our Dad's than we have been in previous years. We can't send a card with a promise of a gift when we see them and we can't plan to see one or the other. This morning, I got an email from Amazon promoting gift cards for Father's day. Don't know why that did not dawn on me earlier, but there is still time.

You can click on this link to purchase a gift card for the Dads in your life.

Tomorrow we work on homemade cards so that they can get in the mail late tomorrow afternoon.

Have a great week.
Amanda

Book Basket of Continents

I have been absent from the Book Basket over at The Happy Housewife, so I got to play some catch up. Been a bit busy and there is no chance of it slowing down. Schoolwork has slowed down, but our lives have gone through a change and it is not over yet. AHHH! The military way of things.

In our book basket for the last 2 weeks has been continents. I printed out a "My Book of Continents" booklet over at CurrClick during the Mother's day giveaway and went to the library to pick up a simple book on each continent. This is really very simple, both my kids can do this, and I can leave C to do it on her own. I purposefully got books by different authors so that I could see how we liked them. You could do this with a set of books on continents by the same author.

• Africa by Allan Fowler. Simple wording, good pictures.
• Hooray for Antartica by April Pulley Sayre. Much more in depth, great pictures
• Asia by A.R. Achaefer. Still a small book, but more details. Has maps.
• Welcome to Australia by Peter North and Susan McKay. Bigger book, to many details for small kids, but a good book, good pictures.
• Europe by Karen Bush Gibson (same company,Bridgestone Books, as Asia book) I like these best.
• South America by Michael and Jane Pelusey. Lots of details, we loved the pictures.
• Atlas of North America by Karen Foster. Not good for small kids, to much. I should have gotten something that did not have atlas in the title.

So all of these books were in our Juvenile Reference section. There were many more, I just picked and chose according to what looked good. if you visit CurrClick and get the booklet, there is a reference and idea section in the back. There are websites listed for craft and recipe ideas, if you want to take it that far. We are just looking for map awareness at this time.

Workbox Updates

I got some updated pictures of our workboxes. I got all this together in about a weekend and then we got spring fever. There is so much going on for us right now, that we are not filling all the boxes. C loves the boxes, not that she loves her schoolwork all of a sudden, she likes to see what is next. The one on the left is J's and the one on the right is C's.

We use my breakfast room. We moved into this house with a large table and it would only fit in the dining room. We use that to eat all our meals, except for those that we eat on the back porch. I got that small table and stools from IKEA. It is not a good idea to move me this close to that store.

This is what it looks like from my back porch, which is screened in. I actually have a dry erase/chalkboard easel, another small kids table, and J's little workbench out here as well. Maybe I will take some pictures of that to show you.

Good news is that I got my new computer and hopefully soon y'all will can stop looking at pictures taken with my phone. Won't that be good?

Wanna Be A Chef

Wanna Be A Chef

The newest series from The Old Schoolhouse is the “Wanna Be Series.” Periodically we will be able to purchase units that pertain to career paths that your children may want to explore. This looks to be a great idea for exploring options, careers, and neat on-the-job experiences.
“When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Chef” is the first e-book in this series that I was able to look at. There will be other titles available soon, but with the Chef e-book there is plenty to keep you busy.
The e-book by itself would be great for older students to work independently on. There is math, vocabulary, grammar, copy work in print and cursive. There are coloring pages, word search, and handwriting practice for younger kids. What a way to get the whole family involved in mealtime!
My favorite part of the “I Want to be a Chef” E-book is the real life testimony from chefs. They spell out different elements of being a chef while explaining how their careers fit into their family. Take a look and take the quiz to see how much you know because I thought the brigade system would be a military term.