Wife, Then Mama

What if a fairy tale and ten Bible verses could free you to live an effective, fruitful life in Christ? We live in unsettling, challenging times. Everywhere we look, we see giant problems: giant obstacles to sharing faith, giant barriers to peaceful lives, giant strongholds of fear. But what if you knew eight small secrets to unlocking a strength big enough to overcome whatever obstacle life may bring? Using allegory and a bit of humor, Jesus and the Beanstalk explores a passage in 2 Peter 1 to uncover eight truths that will help you unleash a larger-than-life faith: —Faith —Goodness —Knowledge —Self-control —Perseverance —Godliness —Affection for others —Love In this creative, refreshing perspective on spiritual growth, you will discover an unyielding strength when you tap the power of a God who is stronger than any beanstalk and bigger than your biggest giants. Learn more and purchase a copy. This book was great.  It was creative, and the metaphor of Jack and t...

The second week of Me and My Family was all about feelings.  We started the Mother Goose Time mini unit with a combo happy/sad day.  I had my wisdom teeth out, and was miserable for an embarrassing amount of time this month.  Which put us behind on our studies.  AGAIN!  Someday I WILL get this housewife/homeschooler thing down, but it is taking some time. The song for both days was variations of "If You're Happy and You Know It", which is always a fun song to sing.  The first thing we did was play with our magnet set we got this month.  Little Guy had some trouble following the patterns.  He did great when I had him put the pieces on top of the picture, but when I tried to get him to put it on a different piece of paper he got confused and just wanted to put eyes on things.  This kid of mine is obsessed with eyes I think.  I blame Michael for letting him watch Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters.  We also did what I think w...

Every month we get a School Bus Box from Mother Goose Time .  In the box is an amazing curriculum that teaches and entertains my little boy.  Each package has a great balance between favorites that are included every month (theme posters with looking glasses, pattern sets, storytelling sets, etc.,) and new items (different kinds of manipulatives, interesting arts and craft projects, new storybooks, etc.,). This year Mother Goose Time has made some wonderful changes to their curriculum, while still providing a familiar curriculum that is comfortable for teachers and students. The Invitation to Create is the most significant change, in my opinion.  It is a change from product based art projects to process based art projects.  At first I was quite reluctant to embrace this change.  In just a few projects, I have changed my mind.  While I still feel that learning to follow directions is MUCH more important than expressing individuality through art, Little ...

Little Guy is still, well, little.  He isn't away from me very often, and when he is it is usually with my husband, mother, or one of the select few people I trust not only to take care of him (which is a huge number, I know a lot of awesome people!), but to expect obedience and deliver consequences if it doesn't happen or is delayed, and not allow him to play on their tablets (a much, much smaller number).  But he is growing up.  This year he has started going to AWANAS, and I know that before I know it he will be involved in more things that don't also involve me.  Thinking of that gives me little mini panic attacks sometimes!  The world can be a scary place, and I fear that I won't do a good enough job raising him to prepare him to face the world and remain a good person. This book, which was provided to me free of charge from First Look/Worthy Publishing, intrigued me, because, as I said, I am prematurely worried about the choices my son will make in ...

This month the Mother Goose Time theme is Me and My Family.  The first week was all about families.  It took us a few more days than it should to complete because I had my wisdom teeth removed, and some days we didn't really do as much as we should have because I was anxious to get back to laying on the couch with a hot pack on my face.  However, I am still on schedule to finish by the end of the month, with only a few tweaks, so I am pretty excited! We started out the week learning about Family Trees, using the unique manipulatives we got this month, Family Stampers.  Although we LOVE the counters we usually get, it was a fun change of pace.  For this activity Little Guy drew a "house" (he gets his art talent from me) and then he stamped family members in and around it.  This was fun for him because he hasn't used stamps before, and educational both as a fine motor skill and because we used positional words to talk about where the family members were...

After I finished Starving Hearts by Janine Mendenhall I immediately went to Amazon to see what other books she had written.  I was quite surprised to find that Starving Hearts was her first novel, but happy to see that she was working on the sequel! Starving Hearts is a historical romance, but with quite a lot of mystery.  It has a few twists and turns, and one very unexpected ending, but it is definitely a "happily ever after" book.  The main characters are people you want to root for, the villain is very, very twisted and dark, but the author even manages to wring out a LITTLE sympathy for him, however undeserved it might be.  My only complaint with this book is that the pacing seems a little off.  It starts out a little slow, and the end seems a little rushed.  Overall I think this is an excellent debut novel and I can't wait to read the next installment! *I received this book free of charge from Litfuse in exchange for an honest...

This year Mother Goose Time made some changes to their curriculum.  I think they probably make small changes every year, but this is the first changes I have seen.  I will be going over more of these changes as the month goes by, but we are going to start with the most noticeable change. The biggest change is from product based arts to process based arts.  This completely goes against my way of thinking.  Apparently I am in the minority, because the new Invitations to Create were gladly received by most people.  This month our topic is Me and My Family, and today we were talking about brothers and sisters.  The book we read was Owl Babies, which is about owl siblings, so our owl art project fit perfectly.  An Invitation to Create doesn't have an example.  You put up the inspiration (the owl picture today) and set out the art supplies, and then just let them do whatever they want.  They do provide questions that you can ask ...