Halloween is Coming

Halloween is coming!

I know this is a very touchy subject for some.  It is either one of those love it or hate is holidays.  I for one love it because I LOVE candy.  That is seriously all we celebrated it for growing up.  We hardly even took the effort in dressing up.  Only a bit to pull off something in order to get candy.  Now that I have kids I still participate because well what kid doesn't like to dress up? I think it is fun to dress up and get some candy. I don't let them have it all though, mama gets half :) of the loot.  I wouldn't be a very good mom is I let them eat it all right?

If you are questioning to participate remember you can do something fun with your kids without doing things that do don't agree with that others may do. 

Fix It! Grammar Review

Vendor: 

Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW)

Product: 

Fix It! Grammar: The Nose Tree [Book 1] (Teacher Manual)

Fix It! Grammar: The Nose Tree [Book 1] (Student Book)

Age: 

3rd grade and up

Price: 

Teacher Manual $19

Student Book $15

About:
Fix It! Grammar is a complete grammar program from Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). This is a 6 book series, with each book being a 33 week long lesson plan. Each daily lesson takes about 15 minutes to complete.  You search the short passage for mistakes and correct them.  These passages also build together to create a story. Each week you are learning a different topic that you will implement into those daily lessons and corrections. The teacher's manual is 228 pages long and gives all the instructions you need. It also gives you tips on teaching the lesson to your child as well. The student book is 126 pages long and contains grammar cards that are on card stock. Also, if you purchase the teachers manual you get the student book download for free. Both books have a glossary in the back with words from the work.

How we used:
I used this with my 9 year old.  She is a super speller and very smart in a lot of her work.  However she hates writing and making stories so we have slacked in the whole grammar program.  Getting this review was great because you are getting your child to write and entire story before they even know what they have done.  They are writing it one sentence at a time.  Then by the end they have made the whole story and it is not so overwhelming to look at. So each week we would sit down and go over the new topic.  I would read over the teacher book and give her some of the tips that were in there.  She would then open her own book, read the instructions and do the sentence for the day.  I would then go over her work and correct anything that was wrong and talk to her about how it was wrong and how we could fix it and why. Only spending 15 minutes a day on something that can be tedious was a God send for us.  My kids like to get frustrated when they have to sit for a long time going over something, especially once they have figured it out. This one allowed her to go in and get her sentence for the day done and move on to something else.

My favorite part was the tips that the teacher's manual had.  I will be the first to say that I suck at grammar.  When I went to high school I did the bare minimum in classes to graduate so I never had any kind of English class after 10th grade.  I did not care to pay attention to how I was writing because my other classes did not care either. I do not want my daughter to be like this but sometimes I have a hard time explaining things to her to make her understand it when in reality I barely understand it either.  So having actual tips versus normal instructions on teaching was a blessing.

You can also take the Placement Test to see what book you should start at and then watch the Webinar to understand how the program works.

Be sure to check IEW on social media, they have some great postings.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/excellenceinwriting

Twitter: https://twitter.com/iew

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/iewriting

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Iewriting/posts

You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/user/iewtv

Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/iewtv

Homesteading

So I am now in my Tiny Home finally. It isn't finished but is livable. It feels so good have it almost complexly cleaned up. I need to work on the outside some more and finish flooring in the downstairs.  But that all comes slowly as I save money.

 I have also decided it would be a good time to start out own little homestead. I do not receive government assistance (and no judgement on those that do) so I want my money to stretch as far as it can. We bought 14 chickens to get us started. We also have a Californian rabbit as well. My next goal is to get a milk goat!

Callie's Contest of Courage Review and Giveaway

Jan May is a homeschool author as well as a veteran homeschool mother of two. Her books are of Godly character as well. New Millennium Girls Books are published by her.  I was very excited to let my daughter read Callie's Contest of Courage, which sells for $7.95. This book is geared towards tween girls.

Callie's Contest of Courage is about an eleven year old girl named Callie. One thing about Callie is that she is very much an animal lover.  In this book it talks about how she has been waiting around all year to enter some photos into a I Love Nature Photo Contest. You see Callie has a dad that is an award winning photographer himself.  She was going to utilize her dad to help her win the contest.  He also left her with his camera to use! Sadly Callie's dad is also in the Marines and was deployed during this time.  She tries to keep in contact with him through emails which eventually stopped. Then you will have to read the rest to learn how she continued her journey.

I reviewed over the book before giving it to my daughter.  My daughter is not yet a tween, 9 years old, but she is an excelled reader and I knew she would like it. I gave her the book and let her read it.  We usually do a 30 minute a day requirement in our homeschool lessons of reading.  Sometimes though she would get hooked and want to read more, which is always OK. She said the book was really fun to read and kept her wanting to read more because she felt bad for Callie's dad leaving and wanted to make sure she would be OK.

  I love a book that can keep my child on their toes wanting more.  I also love even more having a book that has God's heart in it.  Reading about them saying prayers and living by the grace of God is great for kids to be reading about these days.  Not many books out there are for young girls that show a Christian family that is realistic and that the girls can relate to and maybe have them look up to.  I know my daughter has had more want in finding some good Bible versus to have handy when she is feeling down now.

We also received another great perk to this book in the form of a study guide.  We love it when we can make more of our reading into school work. The study guide is broke down to a section for each chapter.  Each section starts with some literature focus questions.  These questions help you recap what you read in the story.  The next part is discussion questions.  These also go over what is read but then dig a little further and even open up about how you would do things. Then each part as some sort of activity to do as a little hands on and finally the vocabulary words.  I think it was really well put together and had some amazing questions that were great for my daughter to think on.

The study guide is $8.95 but currently you can get it free by signing up to New Millennium Girl Books here.

Be sure to check out New Millennium Girl Books on social media:

FB- https://www.facebook.com/pages/NewMillenniumGirlBookscom/119755288101609?ref=hl

Pintrest-http://www.pinterest.com/janmay2012/

Twitter-https://twitter.com/JanMay2012

Giveaway is open to anyone in the US.

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LEGOLAND Discovery Center Kansas City Offer

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Cloth Diapers Rock

You never realize how much you love something until you actually see the benefit. 

With going through the move and life just hitting me I have really had to stretch my dollar.  I didn't even think about it until the other day, on how grateful I am for cloth diapers.  Sometimes I get frustrated at the washing and putting them together but when I was looking at my bank account thinking about the $7-$10 that I would have to spend every few days made me open my eyes.  These things have saved my pocket book. 

 I know they can get expensive buying new, but all mine are hand me downs or they are bought used at a fraction of the cost.  I really enjoy saving the money and it makes the laundry not seem like such a bad thing.  I must mention I also have well water and I line dry if at all possible so the cleaning cost is very minimal too.

Collage.com Deal

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