Cyber Monday

My husband and older boys fought the crowds on Black Friday, and apparently won untold (until Christmas) shopping victories.  Good for them!  But that's not my style.  I'd much rather stay home and do my Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday Christmas shopping from my own cozy home while the baby sleeps and the little ones play nearby.

Online Deals:

My own website, My Audio School, is offering a free download of Greg Howlett's beautiful instrumental Christmas album, Seasonal Spice, with any My Audio School subscription purchase between now and Christmas Eve.  I really love piano music, and Seasonal Spice is just lovely.  You can listen to some samples from Seasonal Spice here. Buy a subscription to My Audio School for your own family, or contact me at support@myaudioschool.com to give a gift subscription for Christmas.  The Seasonal Spice download link will be sent to you after purchase.


Grace and Truth Books has lots of fantastic titles for sale through Thanksgiving weekend.  Their own titles have been marked down as low as $2.95.  I am purchasing some titles for my little girl from their website, as I seek to build up her library.  She won't read some of these books for 15 or 20 years, but I trust their timeless wisdom will be an encouragement to me now and to her in years to come. 

One of my favorite online destinations is Vision Forum.  Their Black Friday weekend sale (buy any 2 items, get a third free) is a good deal, especially when you shop their clearance section, as I typically do.  In addition to toys, we also buy several books, videos and audio products from them every year.

Here are some of my top picks from the Vision Forum shelves:

Must-Read Books for parents:

Voddie Baucham's Family Driven Faith and What He Must Be If He Wants to Marry My Daughter are both must-reads, in my opinion.  First we read Family Driven Faith, which helped us solidify and intensify our commitment to intentionally discipling our children.  What He Must Be helped put legs to that commitment, giving us a concrete vision of what we are striving to raise our boys to be.

Thoughts for Young Men by J. C. Ryle was a fantastic and challenging book for my husband and oldest son to read together.  I can't recommend it more highly.

Vision Forum Toys:

We have accumulated a lot of Vision Forum toys over the years. My younger boys absolutely love their lego-compatible military building sets, and this year they have expressed hopes of getting lego-compatible knights and castles building sets.

If you have any wide open space to use it, their 3 man slingshot is awesome.  We've had one for years and we love firing water balloons out of it.  Highly recommended!

We also love their weapons.  Whenever one of our sons turns 9 we hold a rite of passage ceremony as a family, and he receives a Vision Forum sword.

Our boys also like the high-impact training swords and daggers, which are sturdy and heavy enough to pack a wallop if you aren't careful.


I am excited this year to have a little girl to shop for!!  I confess I may have gone a little overboard buying cableknit tights and ruffle socks for her today, but she's just so cute!

What are your favorite sites to visit on Cyber Monday?

Full Disclosure:  I am a Vision Forum affiliate and I do make a small commission on products purchased through my Vision Forum links.

World War 1: Boys' Hands On Activities

Our younger boys have been longing to dig a trench in the backyard so they can play World War 1. They had visions of digging at least 7 feet deep and lining their trench with boards to make it just like the trenches they saw in our WW 1 books. This weekend they got permission to start digging.

My husband didn't think they'd get more than about 1' deep in our Georgia clay before giving up. Never underestimate the will of a boy to carry out his plans! They have been digging all weekend and last night they hit the water table.

Their glorious trench is about 4' deep now, and filled with water which bubbled up from the ground. It is a muddy mess! But they are so proud. They are bummed about the water, because they had visions of sleeping out there.  I'm glad nature spoiled that plan so I didn't have to!

It has been hard to find WW 1 replica costumes online. One of the boys took an old plastic army helmet and used cardboard to fashion a brim around it. He covered it all with silver duct tape and he is pleased with the result.

We bought this helmet at our local army store. It had originally been worn by the Italian Civil Air defense in WW 2, but its shape is reminiscent of the WW 1 style helmets, and our youngest son is thrilled with it.

Whenever the boys needed a break from digging their trench, they prowled around the yard fighting imaginary Germans. One of the boys pretends he is a British Tommy, one is an Anzak (Australian New Zealand Army Corp) and the third is an Italian. Occasionally I wandered out onto the deck shouting in German, and tossing imaginary grenades over the rail to keep things lively.

Jello spello

My dyslexic son and my youngest son (who struggles with auditory perception) really need hands on, kinesthetic activities to help them cement spelling into their brains. If those activities can also be fun, then all the better!

Enter "Jello spello". Pour a package of jello powder into a bowl. Allow your child to trace his letters or spelling words into the powder.

I let my kids lick their finger after every correctly spelled word, but hey, I'm a softie for things like edible cookie dough maps and stuff of that nature. In fact, I told my boys that the more times they traced the words, the more times they could lick the jello powder off their finger. One boy only had 10 spelling words, but if he was willing to spell them each 5 times that meant 50 licks of jello powder. Guess what? He was more than willing.

There are only two problems with this activity. First, it can become mildly sickening, even for the kids...I didn't really enjoy watching it, and none of them finished their jello powder before they decided it was too sweet. But they had fun getting to that point. Second, the jello tends to stain...faces, hands, clothing. Next time I think I would use vanilla pudding powder!

Ultimate Special Needs Expo

< I'll be speaking Wednesday September 14 at 11 a.m. on Homeschooling the Dyslexic Child. You can listen in live for free, or purchase a ticket to the expo using the above button to listen to all the great speakers at your convenience. Other speakers include Andrew Pudewa, Carol Barnier, Diane Craft, Tara Jenner, Kathy Kuhl, and many more! To listen live, go to the chat room at 11 a.m. or call in with your phone: 347-205-9175.

I'll be giving away one free subscription to My Audio School---a fantastic educational resource for dyslexics and other struggling learners---as a door prize!

Ultimate Homeschool Expo free ticket give-away!

I'm excited to be a part of the Ultimate Homeschool Expo again this year! The UHSE is a fantastic virtual homeschool conference. Your ticket gives you unlimited access to all of the messages, and you can listen at leisure whenever and wherever you want...whether in your jammies at home or on your ipod in the car!

I'll be sharing my messages about The Homeschooler's Library and my newly updated talk Cultivating Loyalty Between Siblings. Tickets to the Expo cost $24.95 and include over 100 audios, door prizes, e-books, and a Vendor hall. Or you can enter my contest and possibly win one for free!

Just leave a comment below about what topic you'd like to hear a message about. It could be anything related to homeschooling, motherhood, marriage, homemaking, etc. I'm curious to find out what's on your heart right now. I'll do a random drawing from those who have entered on April 29. Make sure to leave your email address or link to your blog so I can contact the winner! For additional entries, blog, Tweet or Facebook about the UHSE and my contest...leave me a separate comment (with a link to your blog, tweet or FB post) for each entry, up to four entries per person!

What message would you find helpful and interesting at this stage in your life? For me it would probably have to be something about transcripting. My oldest is finishing up his freshman year in high school right now and I am feeling a bit daunted by the process of writing up his transcript and gathering samples of his work. Or maybe a message about raising girls...I'd love to hear some wisdom about that as we embark on a new adventure with our first girl!

Teacher's Institute

During the school year, public and private school teacher's take a few days of teacher's institute for encouragement, skill development and planning. Why shouldn't we do the same?

We recently took a few days off. Part of this time, for me, was spent evaluating our year. What is working for us this year? What needs to be changed? Which subjects are going well, and which need tweaking now so we can maximize the rest of the school year? 

Mid-year  Teachers Institute Days are also a good time to start organizing filed work so that assembling that end-of-the-year portfolio is not quite so daunting.  Update your list of "books read this year".  Order photos from first semester field trips or fun projects and slip them into an accordion file before you forget what you did first semester.

If you are planning to do standardized testing in the spring, go ahead and submit your testing application now so you'll be ready to go when the time comes.

The Value of Motherhood

Moms often struggle with the question, "Who am I?" as they spend their days investing in everyone else. This 30 minute message will encourage you to see the true significance in a seemingly mundane job. Press play in the widget below to listen at your computer, or click "Visit my call" to download this podcast as an mp3.



Recommended Reading:
Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss (free audio book!)

Homeschool Blog Awards nominee

Counter-Cultural School was nominated this year for Best Special Needs Blog in the Homeschool blog awards.  I don't feel deserving of any mention in the blog awards this year, as I have been posting only sporadically since getting pregnant and having our baby.  But I do thank you! 

This blog covers a wide range of topics, but in the past year I have tried to focus special attention on homeschooling the dyslexic child. 

If you are visiting from the HSBA Post blog awards, I hope you'll take time to read some of the articles about dyslexia, or to listen to my free podcast about our journey with dyslexia and what we are doing in our homeschool to help our dyslexic child.  You can find the podcast and all the articles linked in the right sidebar under the title The Dyslexic Child. 

Our family also created the website My Audio School to help accommodate our dyslexic child, who learns best by listening.  If you have an auditory learner and you are looking for educational books and other audio resources, please check it out!

The Job Jar

I got this great idea from my good friend and fellow blogger, Homeschool Dawn, who blogs at Olive Plants.

You can read all the details about this "chore time strategy" at the above link, but here's the idea in a nutshell:  take index cards and write a job on each one.  Assign each task an amount of money that the task is worth, if completed well.  Put all the index cards in a jar and allow the kids to draw out the cards....once they finish one task, they can draw out another card.  At the end of the allotted cleaning time, add up how much money each child earned doing their various jobs and give them their wages.

I love this idea, and it works great with my boys.  I use different colored index cards for the various jobs so that each of my boys has their own color.  This way I can make sure that no one gets a job that is too difficult for them.  I don't want my Kindergartner getting a job meant for my high school aged son, and vice versa. 

My boys know that some cards are only worth 3 cents, while others are worth 25 cents....and believe me, they want those 25 cent cards!  No one is allowed to look at the job they are drawing out until the card is in their hand; once they've drawn it, they must complete it before moving on to another card.

There are a couple of ways I keep the boys motivated.  They thrive on competition, and I take advantage of that whenever we do the Job Jar.  First, I set a timer so the boys know how long we will be cleaning.  The quicker they do their jobs, the more cards they can draw out of the job jar (and the more money they will be able to earn).  I do check each job, however, to make sure it is also done well; if they have done a poor job, the job must be re-done before they can draw another card.

Since I am using different colored cards for each child, they are not really competing against each other to get the highest paying jobs.  But they are competing against me!  I do not have an assigned color, but can draw cards from any color.  If I draw the card and do the job, I don't have to pay them to do it.  I make sure to draw at least one higher-paying job from the jar sometime during the cleaning time (wink, wink), just about the time that energy is starting to flag.  The reminder that mom might get some of their higher paying jobs is enough to light a fire under the little cleaners, giving them renewed zeal for their tasks.

Free Book from All About Spelling

My favorite spelling curriculum, All About Spelling, is offering a free copy of their popular e-book All About Homophones this week!  When you place any order, no matter how small, they'll include this downloadable book for free!  This book usually sells for $27.95, so that's a great deal!  Sale ends at midnight on November 1, 2010.  Here are the details:

Here's how to claim your free book with any purchase:

1. Add any product(s) to your cart.
2. Do not add the All About Homophones e-book to your cart quite yet.
3. In the upper left corner of the cart, you'll see a box that says "Special Code." Type in these three letters, all in capital letters: AAH. Then click the "Apply" button.
4. The free All About Homophones ebook will appear just above where you enter your shipping information. Click the orange "Add to Cart" button.

Enjoy!

I am currently using All About Spelling with our dyslexic 5th grader and with our 3rd grader.  For more about how we are using All About Spelling, read this post.

Disclosure:  I am an All About Spelling affiliate and will receive a commission on any purchases that result from following the links to their site that I provided in this post or elsewhere on this blog.

Seasonal bargains

My boys love costumes.  They dress up all the time!  My youngest one practically lives in costumes 7 days a week.

The day after Halloween many shops will mark costumes down as much as 75%! You can often find great deals.  Last year after Halloween I picked up several inexpensive costumes for Christmas gifts.  If you'll need costumes to go along with something you are studying this year (cowboys, kings and queens, knights....) this is the time to pick them up!

I also bought some Gingerbread "castles" last year...they were meant to be haunted houses or something, but we used them to make medieval gingerbread castles when we were studying the Middle Ages. Just don't use the orange and black frosting...make your own.

Family Devotions During the Christmas Season

Do you have a desire to start family devotions? Are you looking for some ways to turn your childrens' hearts toward the Lord during the upcoming holiday season? The Advent season begins the Sunday after Thanksgiving!

In my podcast Preparing Hearts for Christmas, which I recently shared for the Ultimate Homeschool Expo, I share lots of encouragement and practical tips on implementing family worship during this special time of year.




It's not too early to start planning for a meaningful Christmas season!

Introducing.....

Our precious baby girl is here!  In case you don't follow my other blog, but would like to see a picture, here is the link:http://counterculturalmom.blogspot.com/2010/09/introducing.html

My Body

To enhance our study of the human body last year we used an excellent, inexpensive resource from Teacher Created Materials.  My Body is a book of reproducibles representing each of a child's body parts.  You can also see the full table of contents and a product sample at the above link.  

Before beginning the book, kids lay down on butcher paper and have their body traced and cut out.  Then throughout the semester the child learns a few things about a particular body part, and then colors in and cuts out the body part.  Each body part is fastened to the child's paper body.

In the end, they have a life size cut out of themselves with all their body parts attached.  Of course, the boys couldn't resist getting a little bit creative with their body drawings!

I first used this book when my 14 year old was in Kindergarten and he loved it.  In fact, we still have "his body" in storage and it was fun to pull it out as the other boys were working on their bodies last year.  This activity was a hit with all of them.  It could be a stand alone science activity for a preschooler or kindergartner, or part of another science program for an older child.  We did not go in the order that the My Body book suggests, but instead we tied this in to the lessons we were doing in God's Design for the Human Body.

God's Design Science

Last year we decided to take a break from our traditional Apologia Young Explorers science curriculum.  I have used that program for years and absolutely love it!  But after completing all but one of the books in the series I was ready for a change.  I'm sure we'll go back to them in the future with the younger boys, but for now my grade school aged boys are using the new curriculum from Answers in Genesis, God's Design.

God's Design is set up with shorter books, and you are encouraged to try and complete 3 books per year.  Each overarching topic (God's Design for the Physical World, for example) includes 3 books, but I chose to purchase the curriculum "piece meal" so I could customize our study with 3 topics we had not done yet. My boys were longing to study the weather and I felt they needed to study the human body, so this was a great option for us.

Making a simulation of homemade ""blood" with white blood cells, red blood cells and plasma

The three books we chose were The Human Body (from God's Design for Life series), Weather and Water and Our Planet Earth (both part of the God's Design for Heaven and Earth set).  All three of my younger boys loved the chance to study some different topics, and I found it refreshing to try a new format for a change.

The lessons in God's Design are much shorter than in Apologia, allowing us to quickly and easily fit science in even on busy days.  I did not find it to be as thorough as Apologia, but for my little boys I felt it was a fine introduction, and they were grateful for the shorter lessons.  The books are designed for use by a wide variety of age groups; there is a very brief "beginners" lesson, followed by a more in depth reading.  Some days we did just the beginner lesson, and other times I added to it with additional facts from the lesson for older children.  This was a good fit for my preschooler, 2nd grader and 4th grader.

 Transferring your fingerprints onto an outline of your hand is fun!

Some lessons had true "experiments" and hands on activities, while others had a worksheet for the kids to fill out.  We liked this variety, though sometimes the worksheets were geared toward older children and then we didn't do anything to supplement the lesson at all.

It is very important to me that experiments be easy to carry out and that they teach scientific concepts.  There are few things I hate more than "busy work" experiments which require a lot of time to plan and pull off and make more mess than they are worth.  To me, this is one of the real strengths of both Apologia Young Explorers and God's Design Science:  they both have fairly simple, useful experiments which reinforce major concepts.  As usual, I gathered all science supplies in advance into our Science Box so that there would be no excuse for not doing experiments.

We had fun with the experiments, and the kids learned from the short, interesting lessons.  The colorful pictures in the newer editions of God's Design were a must for us; you can get the older version a few dollars cheaper, but we loved the bright pictures and it was worth paying a little extra for the newest edition.  We liked this series so much that we decided to spend another year using God's Design, this time doing the God's Design for Chemistry and Ecology series.

*UPDATE* APRIL 5, 2011* We have not enjoyed the God's Design Chemistry nearly as much as the other God's Design books. The content was too dry and technical for my young boys, and there weren't as many experiments as we were hoping to find. I prefer the chemistry book Adventures with Atoms and Molecules for this age group.

As I mentioned before, this series doesn't seem to me to be as thorough as the Apologia books are.  My science lovers really enjoy Apologia and it has served us well for years.  I definitely want to return to it as my little boys get bigger!

But we were having a hard time getting through an Apologia book in one year.  We are still spending a lot of time on the 3 R's and history and literature also take their fair share of time, so this has been a great compromise for us.  On days when we have more time we can do the longer lesson for older kids (which is still much shorter than a typical Apologia lesson).  On days when time is short we can do a simple one page overview geared toward early elementary aged children.  I felt the kids learned plenty, and that it held their interest well this year.  If this sounds like it could be a good fit for you, I encourage you to click on the links above to view samples of the curriculum on the Answers in Genesis website.



Finding the Best Price

One drawback to this series (as opposed to Apologia) is that it is more expensive, costing almost 3 times as much as the elementary Apologia books.  For example, Apologia's new Human Body book (not available last year when we started with God's Design) costs $28 at Rainbow Resource, and is meant to take an entire year to complete.  The AiG Human Body book costs $19.75 but is only meant to last 1/3 of the school year.  Each of the other two books needed to complete the year cost $19.75, as well.  And you'll need the teacher manual with the supplemental CD of worksheets and quizzes, which costs $23.50 (one teacher manual is good for all three student books if you stick to books within one series).  So the total cost for one year of the God's Design Science is over $80. Since I did it piece meal and needed two different teachers manuals, it cost me about $100 for the year.

So if price is a big factor, Apologia is the better choice. 


With that said, the best price I've found online is at Rainbow Resource, coming in at about $5 cheaper per book than the publisher, Answers in Genesis, for the individual student books.  Rainbow doesn't appear to sell the student/teacher/CD Rom combo pack, though.  So to truly maximize savings, you would need to purchase one student/teacher combo pack at Answers in Genesis (selling right now for $32.99) and the other two student books from Rainbow Resource ($19.75 apiece), bringing the total cost for a year of this curriculum to $73 plus shipping (the entire curriculum costs $89 at the Answers in Genesis site when purchased as a complete set, or $85 for everything when purchased from Rainbow Resource).

Keep in mind, too, that if you purchase the teacher set with the CD Rom you don't need the additional student or teacher test/quiz packets; the complete set comes with a disc of reproducibles which you can print off for multiple students, so you'll have all you need without purchasing those additional supplements.

One more note about price:  Rainbow Resource does give free shipping if you spend $150 or more, and their price is typically the best on just about EVERYTHING.  So you might just go ahead and buy the whole set there, along with whatever else you need, and get the shipping free.