Stand Strong (Review)

This review is for the book "Stand Strong" by Nick Vujicic. This is the third book by Vujicic I have read, and he did not disappoint. If you are not familiar with Vujicic I urge you to look him up on the Internet. Watch some of his videos. Buy some of his books. He is very inspirational.

The thing I like about Nick Vujicic is that his personality shines through in the way he writes. Here is an example from his book. He is talking about a guy (an adult) who was making fun of Nick in public (as an adult).

"After a few minutes, he stumbled into the hotel. I prayed for him. I really did. I prayed for him to walk full speed into a closed glass door! (Just kidding. Maybe.)"

I think Nick is totally open and honest. He is incredibly honest about his struggles, even to the point of wanting to commit suicide. This book is all about his struggle with being bullied - even to this day. I love that he isn't perfect but he shares himself with readers so they can learn from his mistakes.

I can't say enough good stuff about all of Nick's books. I think if you have a child who is in middle school or older, they may want to read this book as well.

Thank you to Waterbrook Multonah for a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

A Grand Design (Review)

This review is for the book "A Grand Design" by Amber Stockton. This is another book in the Quilts of Love series. I am really enjoying this series. All of the books have quilting in common, but the characters and stories are completely different, and even written by different authors. This particular book is about Alyssa. She used to take a vacation every summer to Mackinac Island and then suddenly stopped one summer. Now, fifteen years later, she is back visiting her grandmother. Her grandmother sets up a goal for Alyssa to complete which has to do with quilting. Meanwhile, Alyssa keeps running into this guy Scott who she is trying not to get the hots for.

I enjoyed this story although I did feel that it was a little more mysterious than necessary. Alyssa quit coming to the island for fifteen years and it takes almost the entire book to find out why she stopped. And the person who she confides in is Scott, who she's known for only a couple of days. But hey - it's fiction.

Thank you to Litfuse Publicity and Abingdon Press for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The Deeper Life (Review)

This review is for the book "The Deeper Life" by Daniel Henderson. Usually I don't go for books like this because I feel like they are a cheesy list of self-improvement techniques. I do think this book was more than that. The thing about this book is that half of it is Henderson explaining his ideas, and then the other half is you completing worksheets which help you discover your spiritual strengths, weaknesses, goals, and primarily your self-identity in Christ. The purpose of the book is to be less wasteful with the time you have. Figure out your goals and priorities and then start acting towards those in order to live out your life for God. I think this is a great book. It will get you thinking about your life and if there are any steps of improvement that need to be taken.

Thank you to Bethany House for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Kindergarten - Day 7

For some reason, Hunter was way more involved today than any other day. At bedtime I mentioned that he sat with us a bunch tonight. He said, "Yep, I interrupted!" (Was he proud of that??? Hah!) I told him he wasn't interrupting, and I was happy for him to come sit with us as long as he didn't distract Brianna from getting things done. He seemed happy with that agreement. We'll see. Tomorrow we'll be doing school during naptime, so he won't even be around for it. It was pretty cool to see how much he picked up on today even though I didn't think he'd be interested in the content of what we were studying. I told my mom that he came in for Bible time but then left during math and she said, "Oh! He takes after his grandma!" :-)

Prayer time/pledges:

Going over our Bible verse for the week (Acts 16:31). She basically has memorized it already which is very impressive. I told her she has all week to learn it but she has a great memory. I wish she could share that with me!

 Bible time: Today we watched a couple of videos on YouVersion again, about Abraham. Then we read the story about Abraham and Isaac.

Encyclopedia time: We talked about all the ways traveling has changed over time. I was really proud of her, because I pointed to the first chariots and she remembered last week how we talked about the first wheels being wooden. It's nice to know that she's paying attention and linking these things together. She really enjoyed talking about the trains, and even remembered this afternoon all the speeds we talked about (first steam train went just 15 mph, while the ones made in the 1930s were going up to 100 mph). We also talked about how fast cars go. She was astounded to learn that in 1997 a car with a jet engine actually went 750 mph! When we were leaving the gas station later in the day, she said, "Mom, can we go 750?" Hunter started chiming in, "Yeah, 750! Yeah!" So I said, "Sure!" and they both started cheering and yelling. After going 35 mph for a couple of minutes they realized that my car actually wasn't built to go that fast. Hah! I told them I would never go 750 mph with them in the car!!

Next was math. Today's focus was the number three along with some shapes and colors.

Next was our poetry. From Mother Goose we read "Solomon Grundy", "Pop Goes the Weasel" and "Jeremiah". From our Llama poetry book we read "Brother" and "My Sister Saw a Dinosaur". This is a great poetry book! I highly recommend it!

 Then we talked about the days of the week. She learned a song a couple of years ago for that, so she knows them really well. I found an easy worksheet for her to do and went and checked on Hunter. He was being really quiet...

 Check him out! He's playing a matching game!

 ...and eating tons and tons of peanuts.

Break time! I needed to make a cake so the kids created a table and had a snack.

 Then this "bridge" was born. Probably not the safest thing I've ever let them do. Grandparents, avert your eyes! (No children were harmed in the making of this "bridge")

 Okay, back to work! Language arts: working on the letter "B" still this week.

 Hanging out, being patient.

 Time for community helpers/social studies. Today we talked about firefighters. We had great discussions due to the fact that we actually visited a fire station with a local homeschool group last year. The kids remembered so much from that visit.

 I can't remember what she was talking about, but she was describing the duties of firefighters.

 She had to look on her map and tell me which direction the fire house was located in (west). Then I picked out a house on the east side of town and she had to "drive" to the house fire while telling directions (north, south, east or west). She loved that game and did it several times.

 For history, we finished our unit that was on creation, sin, the beginning of the world, oceans/continents, etc.

We played a game that is supposed to help with "in", "out", "near", etc. Inside the circle is the Garden of Eden. I would say a phrase - "Eat from a tree inside the garden!" and they had to follow the directions. Then, "Walk around the garden!" or "Sing in the garden!" or "Cry outside the garden!" or "Dig near the garden!".

 This is our song to help remember the continents (1 minute 30 seconds):

Kindergarten - Day 6

Already on to week two of Kindergarten! I can't believe how quickly time passes. I was curious to see how this morning would go after having a weekend with no school schedule. The only person in the house who was bothered was Hunter! I think he was hoping that whole school thing was just an ugly phase! :-)  After the first fifteen minutes, though, he must have remembered how much he enjoys playing without sharing! We were uninterrupted until our singing and laughing floated upstairs... and then he joined us for a little while!

Before getting to the school stuff, here are a few pictures from the weekend.

Brianna showing off her new dress from Grandma. It is just her style!

 Saturday we woke up to no water (water main break) and then that night we had no electricity (tree fell on power branches)! We had to eat McDonalds since it happened right at dinner time. Of course I didn't hear any complaining from the kids!

 We had a praying mantis visit us last year. Not sure if this is the same guy, but we welcome him!

 Stephen was gone to a race over the weekend so we had to welcome him back home too!

Okay, on to our school day!

Starting off with our prayer list. Every day I write our new names down (if we have any) and she is still copying them into her own journal. She even grabs it at lunch time and goes down her list while we're blessing the food. It's really sweet. Rest assured, if I tell you that you are on our prayer list, you ARE being prayed for!

Next was Bible time. We did our devotions out of this book this morning. I'm skipping around in different Bible devotion books right now, trying to find one that I like. So many of them are dumbed down. I liked this one, though. Maybe we'll stick with it for a few days. Although we are being pretty rebellious by using it in the morning! ;-)

 Still talking about prehistoric times. Today we talked about the ways they traveled. A lot of these are things Brianna is pretty familiar with, so she catches on very quickly.

 While she colored, I read our poetry. Our Mother Goose rhyme was "Old Mother Hubbard", which was MUCH longer than I remember it being! It had over a dozen verses! It was pretty silly and she really liked it. We also read "The Birthday Bus" from our Llama poetry book. It was really cute!

 

 This is what she was coloring: Our new Bible verse for the week is Acts 16:31.

 

 I read our history next. We are kind of going over things that aren't really new to her (like the story of creation) so I was excited to see these fun activities in our book.

This was a song which helps you learn the continents. It was so cute that we did it several times - and Hunter jumped in on it too!

Then we played this game where we tried to "trick" each other like Satan tricked Eve in the garden. I would make two sounds. If they were different sounds, she would say, "Ssssssss!" like a snake. If they were the same, she would say, "Yes Lord, I'll obey you." It was actually fun, and she took a turn trying to trick me as well!

 Time for math! Still reviewing numbers one and two and also sticking in some colors and shapes. I'm kind of thankful for this early time of review. It's very simple for her so she tends to rush through things. It gives me an opportunity to remind her to wait for instructions so she doesn't do anything wrong. It's a good chance for her to learn to slow down and listen.

For example, on this sheet I pointed out the numbers which I felt she had rushed through - as well as the coloring. I reminded her of our rule that says "Always do your best work". I am trying to teach her that even though she feels something is easy, or she already knows it, doesn't mean she rushes through or does it in a sloppy manner.

Next up is language arts. For just a few minutes we review the letter "F" from last week. We will make an alphabet book from her own creations this year, so we did that today. She wanted her "F" word to be "Fish". Then she also drew and wrote two more words - Fox and Family. I'll laminate them all at the end of the year.

But our letter this week is B! So we journeyed through the dictionary to find words we recognized. Even Hunter wanted in on this part.

These "Do-A-Dot" pages are very simple and I feel as though they are much too young for her but she really loves them for some reason. So of course I'll let her keep doing them until she gets bored with them!

She also had to do copywork of the uppercase B.

Technically, school was over, so we moved on to painting. I had found an activity I wanted to do with the kids. Believe it or not, it is okra painting! I know, crazy. So apparently if you use a little paint on okra, it looks like a flower and is totally gorgeous.

Didn't work so well with us.

After a few minutes we moved on to paintbrushes and then paint with water books. That's okay, it was just an experiment!

We love to paint.

We also read a bunch of books today, including more of The Boxcar Children, which we're about halfway through. Later in the evening I got on the piano and played the music for several of the nursery rhymes we've been reading in the Mother Goose book. These are often the songs the kids request for their bedtime music. For a long time, the only song Hunter wanted was Twinkle, Twinkle. Now both of them are stuck on "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" and "Three Blind Mice". I know, violence at bedtime. Although I will say, tonight Brianna and I sang a pretty powerful duet from the movie Frozen.

We also got out our Wee Sing Games book tonight. We hadn't looked through that book in probably a year. Bri recognized lots of the games and silly songs we used to do, but she enjoyed them more than ever. Hunter is at the right age for them too. That was a lot of fun! It makes me very happy to do things like that with them because I remember my own parents taking a lot of time to do things like that with me.