Homeschool eStore

I'm excited to announce that I have joined forces with Homeschool eStore to sell my e-Books!

Here is a quote about Homeschool Estore:

HomeschoolEStore.com is the only eBook and audio book site specializing in Homeschool curriculum. This is a great place to get instant access to many eBooks and audios for homeschoolers. They use the latest Adobe server technology, allowing publishers to make eBooks available easily, instantly, cheaply and completely free of shipping costs.

Here are the eBooks I'm selling through Homeschool Estore:

Cursive Contemplations

Most writing students do today is done on a computer. Consequently, many don’t have the opportunity to practice the cursive handwriting style they learned when they were younger. If they don’t practice, however, they don’t develop neat cursive writing and often end up preferring print. Print is laborious and tedious when writing long essays; thus, it is important to practice cursive and become fluid with writing it neatly and legibly. By practicing a bit each day, writing cursive will become easier and easier.

Psalm 91: The Shelter Copywork

Because copywork has been shown to improve not only handwriting, but spelling and grammar, many are seeing amazing benefits from consistently adding copywork into the school week. However, the benefits of memorizing Scripture are useful for building character, a love for God and faith in Him.
The Psalm 91 copywork eBook allows children to obtain all the benefits of copywork and Scripture memory, using one of the most wonderful verses in Scripture of God's protection and care for us.
This daily copywork eBook takes your child step-by-step through Psalm 91, teaching reading fluency, spelling, grammary, handwriting, writing and the Word of God. By the end of the year, your child will be able to recite and write the entire verse from memory.
Included in the introduction are instructions for using the Charlotte Mason method of copywork and dicatation to improve spelling, grammar and language usage.

Spelling Solutions: For Struggling Spellers

Some students are natural spellers, others are not. Why? The difference is that natural spellers have learned how to imprint the correct spelling of words into their minds. When natural spellers see a misspelled word, they know it's misspelled, not because they know the rule, but because the misspelled word does not match the picture they have in their minds of that word. Natural spellers naturally photograph words and store them in their heads for retreival. Rules may be helpful with words they have not yet photographed; but ultimately, it's not rules but mind pictures that makes one a good speller. Poor spellers simply do not know how to take pictures of words and imprint them onto the mind. This is where Spelling Solutions comes in.
Spelling Solutions teaches students how to do what comes naturally for good spellers using a process described by Charlotte Mason in the early 1900's. This is done by taking photographs of the 250 most commonly used words in the English language. Spelling Solutions 2 follows this with the second 250 most commonly used words. After using this program, your child will not only be able to spell the common words, they will have been trained in mind photography so that they can apply this to any word they come across. Once they have learned how to "take a picture" of words, they will do it throughout their lives and become natural spellers after all.
This eBook is eCards. You will print the words and the instructions on 250 index cards (3 x 5 or bigger).

Speak UP! Public Speaking Course

Statistics show that most people would rather jump from an airplane than speak in public. Even more astonishing, the fear of speaking is greater than the fear of death.
Amazingly, only five percent of the people in the entire world are capable and willing to stand up and address the public. This begs the question: "Who are those five percent?" and, "Will your child be in that five percent?"

Since virtually every adult pursuit or career requires one to address a group at some time or another, shouldn’t equipping our children with the skill of public speaking be an important part of their education? Practically, the only sure way to overcome the fear of public speaking is to speak in public. The best way to get practice is through a class or co-op setting designed to promote and perfect presentations and public speaking in a safe environment. You can create that environment using this manual as your guide. This manual is designed for a teacher (experienced or inexperienced) to facilitate a group of students in learning this vital life skill in a fun and educational manner. Using lesson plans, a suggested schedule, games, activities, handouts and scripted teaching, students will learn how to write speeches and perfect their presentation skills, while gaining experience with the different genres of competitive speech. For ages 8 - 18

Homeschool Estore carries a lot of great eBooks. I'm really glad to have joined with them to carry my titles.

Oregon

We went to the Oregon homeschool conference and met some wonderful homeschoolers. In addition to the conference, our entire family met with some close family friends (the Holland's from Oregon) and went to Sunriver for a family getaway.

Here's a photo of our adventures:

Imagine if every few minutes a hundred gallons of ice water is dumped on your six year old daughter who was clinging to a rope at the front of the raft in order not to be tossed into the level 3 rapids, while two dads and four kids under 14 years old fight for your life (well, maybe not your life). It was an adventure. It was all my idea so I'm glad we made it through.

First Week!

Well, we did it. We completed our first week of school. It went quite well, inspite of the fact that we homeschooled in the most disastrous homeschool room one could ever imagine. I had wonderful visions of cleaning up that room and organizing it before we began; but after a few hours of cleaning, I realized that we would not be starting school until January if I waited for the homeschool room to look lovely.

Do you have one of those rooms that collects all the items you don't know where to put? All summer long, if I didn't know what to do with it, into the homeschool room it went. That was not long-term thinking. Oh well, I've managed to work through chunks of it throughout the school day.

Our schedule is quite packed right now. My oldest daughter (will be 14 in two months), is now doing two-a-days. No, she doesn't play football. She's training to be a ballerina and goes to ballet from 10:00 -11:30, then comes home to do her school work, and returns for her afternoon classes. I'm really happy with all the choices we made for curriculum so far. Here is what she is doing:

Cambridge Latin (I'm still waiting on the teaching DVD's to arrive, this counts as high school credit.)
Analytical Grammar (We'll do the 3 year course in 1 year - it will be our last indepth grammar course before she takes the SAT)
A Fresh Approach Algebra I (Seems to be going really well, so far. No need for my intervention yet; but she's still reviewing pre-algebra.)
Basic College Math (Yes, she wanted to do two math courses just to make sure she was ready to leave basic math behind)
Sonlight 100 (She'll then study for and take the American History CLEPs this summer)
Cursive Copywork (Because her beautiful cursive has gone downhill. I created a copywork devotion for her called Cursive Contemplations - now available through HomeschoolEstore.
Write at Home (writeathome.com) Essays and Research Paper workshops
Apologia Physical Science (she's doing the Liveandlearnpress lapbooks that go with this, which are fabulous! I have a sneak preview of their Physical Science, but they have them for all the Apologia courses - including all my elementary books!)

She's also taking a lot of electives including competition speech through a local arts academy for high school homeschoolers, called Artios.

Although we are super duper busy, the year is off to a great start! I'll share how things are going with the younger ones soon.

Shooting Stars

Do you call them shooting stars or falling stars? Whatever you call them...you're in for a treat tonight and tomorrow night (Sunday and Monday). The annual Perseid meteor shower will be awesome tonight. If you are out stargazing, you'll see a few here and there. However, around 11:00 pm, the show begins. You will see many meteors streak across the sky until dawn.

Have fun! Let the kids stay up late. Look towards the North for the best view.

Sample Schedule

I'm so sorry I haven't posted the sample of the schedule I am creating for my son. Life seems to always get in the way of all my great plans. I still haven't finished the schedule. I had several projects to do for Apologia, then I had to go to Washington DC to pick up my daughter from her ballet intensive. Then, my boys were horseback riding all week while the girls did ballet. It seemed my car was where I spent my entire week last week. Now I'm getting everything ready for a trip to Oregon where I will be speaking at the Oceanetwork conference there, and seeing old friends.

As promised, here is a preview of the schedule I'm creating for my 11 year old (5/6th grade) son. This is the first week. I've only done 14 weeks. As I said, I am not done and things may still change with it. I'm sorry if it's difficult to read. I had to convert it from a table to an image and it lost some of the resolution in the transfer.

He will have the schedule coil bound into a book and he will be responsible for making certain he does all his work each day/week. This is for him to follow - not me.

He'll be doing Teaching Textbooks 6. I love Teaching Textbooks for the younger grades. For Algebra, I recommend other programs.

Since he has read all my science books, he will be doing science through an online course called the Edison Project. It has a quiz he has to turn in every Friday. We're not used to testing, but the course looks like it will be right up his alley. He's done a lot of robotics and can build a computer from scratch, so this is a great avenue for him this year.

I have added science books to his reading list as he truly detests fiction and only likes to read science books. We are doing Phonics Intervention to help him on his progress of overcoming dyslexia - which may be why he doesn't like fiction. We are also using a reading intervention program called Passport to Reading. It's for older struggling readers. Very expensive. I'll let you know if it is effective. I am expecting this to be a landmark year with his reading! My nine-year-old doesn't struggle with reading and will have a completely different set of readers at a higher level.

We will use the Big Book of Latin for Latin. Only my 11 year old and my 14 year old will do Latin. I have used other Latin programs, but BBoL seems to be really easy to teach. Charlotte Mason was a big advocate of teaching Latin and I think it's the most logical way to provide a foreign language for our children - no need to speak the language! There are other benefits. But I don't think it necessary to begin when they are young.

His handwriting will include dictation. He'll be doing a cursive handwriting book I created that includes a devotional with every verse he writes. This will give him practice with cursive, memorizing Scripture and spiritual food for thought! I'm getting it ready to offer as an ebook.

For history, we've decided to do Diana Waring's CD's with extra reading and notebooking. I love her CD's; they are so lively and are simply fascinating. Diana is my all time favorite history person. I highly recommend her CD's for whatever time period you are studying.

So, that's it for now! Let me know if you have any questions!