Technology is moving along…..

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I just sent this short message from my cell phone to my blog, and it posted!

“Testing my text to blogger posting.”

There have been a few times when I have had time-sensitive prayer requests or updates that I would have liked to post my blog quickly. With my cell phone and text messaging, I can now do that.

A few years ago, I attempted to live blog from a convention, but my laptop was always tied up with ringing up customer sales so that I could not use it to post updates to my blog. Now I can LIVE BLOG from my cell phone. How cool is that?

I also learned tonight how to Twitter from my cell phone, and it will post my tweets to my sidebar on my blog and on my Facebook page. What a fun night I have had!

I have also started a new blog for answering all of the homeschool questions that I receive. You can check that out at Your Questions Answered About Homeschooling. It has only taken me a couple of years to start putting this particular blog together.

So check me out on the web! I am in a lot of different places!

Thinking about homeschooling?

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Are you thinking about homeschooling your child(ren)? When our oldest child was old enough to start school, we did what everyone else we knew did, we sent her to public school. After 4 years, that did not seem to be working for her or our second child, and thus, our homeschool experience began. That was in the year 2000. Now, we are in 2009, and we are weeks away from graduating our oldest child from our homeschool.

I did a lot of reading over the years about homeschooling and the various methods of homeschooling. And I found a “fit” for our family. We love being together and being active. So we do a lot of projects together. It amazes me what our youngest children, who are 5 and 2, have picked up from their older siblings. I think it is referred to as “trickle down education.” It was how the younger children learned in the one-room schoolhouse, and it is how my children learn today.

How do you start homeschooling? First, research the homeschool laws in your state or province. Home School Legal Defense has made it easy for you to find out homeschool laws in all 50 states of the United States. It is legal to homeschool in all 50 states. But each one has its own laws governing homeschooling.

Next, you need to figure out your family’s mission statement and goals for education. This is essential in determining what curriculum to use in your homeschool. I would also recommend reading a book on the various methods of homeschooling. There is a book called, Homeschooling Methods. I sell it on my website, and it is a good synopsis of the various ways you can educate your children at home.

You have the rest of the spring and summer to do all of this, so start reading and researching! You care also welcome to leave your questions in the comments section of this post!

God is so good!

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Hello,

I have had one of those days where I know God is close and ordering my steps. We had a barn fire today. It happened at lunch time when we were home. On Fridays, we are sometimes somewhere else at lunch time. But today God had us at home. I was sitting down to eat with my boys, and my daughter was taking a load of towels out to hang on our clothesline. She heard a noise toward our barn, and she went over to check it out. She saw a small fire in one area of the barn and ran to tell me. I immediately grabbed my phone and dailed 9-1-1. At the same time, I walked out to survey the damage. We had chickens, feed, hay, and assorted tools out in the barn. Our volunteer fire department was here very quickly, but the barn was engulfed in flames by the time they arrived. It was located very close to our woods, and I was very concerned about a brush fire. God had that under control. He sent us two days of rain this week, and it was just damp enough that it did not spread. If it had been drier out there, it would have been a very different story.
I am very thankful that our family, our house, and our neighbors’ houses are all okay tonight. God is so good!
My husband was out of town during all of this, and he arrived at work only to have a front axle fall off and tear up two front tires. It is now sitting in the parking lot at work, and we will have to have it towed later. God is good in this, too. It happened just as he was backing up slowly. It did not happen while he was driving faster down the road. Thank you, God, for your protection today!

Here are a few pics:




Discount Home School Supplies is giving away a microscope!

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Join Discount Home School Supplies in celebrating SPRING!

Discount Home School Supplies is giving away one SMD-04 Microscope. We sell this microscope for $68.95 on our website.

Here is the description:

A 3D Exploration!

We’re proud to introduce the latest in the My First Lab series of quality microscopes. Designed for viewing solid or three-dimensional objects rather than traditional glass slides, this scope makes it possible for students to view virtually anything. The binocular head allows comfortable viewing with both eyes (no more squinting) and the built-in light illuminates all specimens for premium viewing every time. Real glass optics provide high-quality images and battery power makes it portable for outdoor use.

Perfect for collectors and hobbyists, it allows users to explore the infinite diversity in nature, making it an ideal – and fun – educational adventure for young and old alike.

Features include:

  • binocular eyetubes
  • built-in light source
  • real optical glass lenses
  • 20X magnification
  • portable battery power
  • vinyl dust cover

Requires 2 AA batteries (not included).

How can you enter this contest? It’s very simple! Tell your friends via your blog, Facebook, email, or other social networking site about the Spring Shipping Special Discount Home School Supplies has from March 19-April 1. You can copy and paste the following, and once you have posted this information, you can leave a comment on my other blog at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Tami/670229/.

BEGIN COPY:

Join Discount Home School Supplies in celebrating spring with special shipping rates. The more you buy, the lower your shipping fees will be. You can read more about the special on the front page of Discount Home School Supplies’ website.

END COPY

This contest is open to residents in the 50 United States. I am sorry that I cannot open the contest worldwide at this time.

The contest begins now, and I will draw the name of a winner on April 2, 2009. You can enter the contest more than once if you blog about it more than once, or if you announce it more than once.

Thank you for spreading the word!

Field Trip

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A few weeks ago we went on a field trip to a large science center. I forgot my camera, but my daughter remembered to take hers. So I have a few pictures to share from that day.

Water table fun!

Bungee time!

Contortionist


You have to cooperate to play with this.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. I am trying to blog more often.

Spring Cleaning

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Hello! In our area, we are having lovely spring weather, of course this is a week after a snow storm in our area. So we spent Saturday cleaning and rearranging bedrooms. For the first time in many years, we do not have a crib set up in our house. Our two youngest ones now have a set of bunkbeds in their room.
And we set up twin beds for the next two older boys in their room. This was not the original plan, but we could not fit the twin beds in the younger boys’ room. So we went with plan B. And all 4 boys are quite happy with the changes.
This also spurred me on to do some decluttering, and I ended up with a van load of items to donate to a local charity. So we, hopefully, blessed someone else in the process of spring cleaning.
Next on the spring cleaning agenda is yard work. We seem to have a lot of pine cones and sticks and assorted stuff that needs to be cleaned up.

A Review of Famous Figures of Ancient Times by Cathy Diez-Luckie

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Recently I received a copy of Famous Figures of Ancient Times to review for author Cathy Diez-Luckie. I have homeschooled for many years using a time line to help my children remember important people in history, so I thought this would be a new way to introduce famous people from the ancient days.

These timeline figures are so much fun to create and manipulate. I appreciate the thought the author put into this book. Not only did she include color pictures you just cut out and assemble, she also included blackline drawings of the figures, so the children can color them and then assemble them. I like to give my children hands-on activities to work on while I read aloud to them, and the blackline pages, make that so easy. I will say that I enjoyed the simplicity of just cutting out one of the colored figures and assembling it. Some days you just do not have as much time as others to devote to hands-on activities.

We also like the size of the figures once they are assembled. They are large enough for the children to manipulate and handle.

I also liked that it took minimal resources to create the figures. I only needed sharp scissors, small brass fasteners and colored pencils. I used the sharpest point of my scissors to make the holes to attach the brass fasteners. I did not have a small hold punch or awl handy. And it was simple enough to punch a small hole in the paper for my children.

These are available through Figures in Motion (www.figuresinmotion.com), and they retail for $19.95. There are 20 famous figures in this book about the ancient times. And there is a brief paragraph about each person, so you do not have to do a lot of research if you are just doing an introduction to a person. They could be used with many different history programs. I highly recommend them.