7/21/14

Bountiful Homeschooling On A Budget

I published a book. It has been a long held dream of mine to write a book, but taking care of my children, homeschooling and writing articles has taken most of my time so that book writing and marketing was just an idea in the back of my head.

The thing that finally made my dream a reality was seeing the persistence that my 12 year old son had to publish his book, Finding Joy In a World of Sorrow. He found a self publishing website, wrote the book, and I finally came in at the end to briefly edit it.

Fun at a local park

I have had many ideas for book, I am passionate about so many things, so choosing a topic to narrow in on was one of the hardest parts initially. However, my workshop on Homeschooling on a Budget provided a good framework for my first book.

My book, Bountiful Homeschooling On A Budget is not an exhaustive reference, but it is an entertaining, short book that is full of ideas for saving money as well as inspiration to know why you might want to save money.
Homemade Fun

One chapter is about saving money on household goods and I talk about how often our children have so many toys and playthings that their imagination and resourcefulness is hindered. This morning I was given hope, that despite my children's many toys, they still have an imagination.

My youngest daughter, seven years old, looked through a craft book and found the idea of painting rocks. She spent time painting with her younger brother, painting the rocks into an entire family complete with grandparents. She then painted bricks to be beds and a kitchen and then drew a chalk house on the patio to play in. Although she has a small doll house, what excited her more today was to build her own with rocks and chalk.





Your family can have the blessing of living on less so that you have more to give also, and this book may help you get started.

                                                             

I will be speaking on Bountiful Homeschooling On A Budget this Saturday at the Valley Home Educators Conference  and giving away a free copy of my book to one of my workshop attendees. It just might be you!

7/10/14

Swimming Creatures Lapbook



We loved our year studying the book, Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day by Jeannie Fulbright of Apologia. The only thing I did not love was the notebook. Some of the pages were wonderful but there were just so many of them! It frustrated me to have blank pages but my children had other work and projects that were higher priorities than filling out multiple workbook pages.

                       

The way we solved this issue when we hit the end of our school year and reviewed all the blank pages was by taking apart the notebook and making a lapbook. The children did this project in a morning, with a little help from me in the cutting department. We simply cut the lovely mini books from the back of the notebook, assembled them, and then wrote definitions for the terms.

                        


Once the writing was finished the children glued them into their tri-folded file folders. The children were eager and happy to get this project done and it was a nice way to review all they had learned through out  the year. 




Even my reluctant hand writer enjoyed putting effort into making a lapbook, and I was so proud of his efforts and accomplishment.