Head over to Currclik to get 5 homeschooling freebies, today thru May 15th. There’s also an opportunity to enter to win an iPod Nano and an iPod Shuffle. Visit Currlick’s Facebook page for 5 additional homeschooling freebies through the week.
This post contains affiliate links.
Can’t get away from home to attend a homeschool conference? Here’s an online conference for you: The Homeschool How-To Conference. It runs from May 1-3, 2012.
The goal and focus of the Homeschool How-To Conference is using the Word across all subjects. You’ll learn to use the Bible as the foundation of your homeschool -
My friend Kelli from Adventurez in Child Rearing is one of the sponsors and speakers! Other sponsors of the conference include: Sowers of Hope, Institute for Excellence in Writing, See the Light, Foundations Press, Usborne Books & More, Anne’s Health Place, The Home Scholar, Sonbeams, All About Spelling, and Free Homeschool Deals.com.
You can attend for FREE or purchase a Premium Pass for $49 to get extra goodies and the MP3s of the sessions. If you use the code ADVENTUREZ you can save 10% of your Premium Pass ticket.
What’s in the goodie bag? Lots of great stuff from the various sponsors, but here are a few of the things I’m most excited about:
One of my readers gets to win a Premium Pass ticket to the Homeschool How-To Conference! Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Can’t see the Rafflecopter form in your email or RSS Reader?
{Material Disclosure: I received a Premium Pass in exchange for spreading the word about the Homeschool How-To Conference. This post contains affiliate links.}
I’m in the process of sharing quotes, tidbits, and reflections from the various sessions at the Apologia Live Retreat which I had the opportunity to attend recently. Start here to read about my over all experience at the Apologia Live Retreat and head over to this post to read reflections from other sessions.
Debra’s session was really titled “Celebrating the Journey in Awe and Wonder.” But, it was loving God will all your mind that really stuck out to me. She used the framework of how God speaks to us through Scripture, Jesus, Creation, and through man as the Creature.
We can create a context for our kids to learn about God, but only God can bring about the revelation that we’re sinners. We do out best, but ultimately it is up to God and the decision of our children as to what happens to them. (I talked a little about this in my reflections from Shepherding a Child’s Heart Chapter 2-3.) Isn’t that just a little freeing to realize?
What really stood out to my from Debra’s session was in reference to loving God with all your mind. It seems like so often we can handle the idea of loving Him with our heart, soul, and even strength, but somehow loving Him with our minds seems unbiblical and heretical. Christ-followers tend to fear the mind. To use Debra’s phrase, we’re skiddish about loving God with our minds.
The thing is, God created us with minds to be used for Him. He has given us curiosity and a love for learning. We’re naturally wired this way. We’re created to be healthy when we are learning. Our conventional schooling model tends to squash this curiosity and love for learning in our children. It pushes down our innate need to explore and seek after God with our minds.
Encourage curiosity and pursuit of loving God with all your mind in your homeschool!
Want more from Debra Bell? See Debra’s website.
How do you encourage curiosity, love of learning, and loving God with all your mind in your homeschool?
I’m excited to be partnering with WriteShop and preparing to review WriteShop Primary Book A. We’re using their ebook format. I like ebooks for a number of reasons. Easy to store. Portable. Easily reusable. Most of all, I like that I can use the teacher’s guides on my iPad and not have the expense of printing them. But, sometimes there are little technical issues to overcome to make using ebooks work on a portable device such as an iPad.
WriteShop’s Teacher’s Guide file is formated as an Adobe Portfolio, meaning that the individual PDF files are packaged together as a single PDF file. This is fine if you’re using Acrobat Reader on a computer, but you cannot open this file in Preview on a Mac or use it on most portable devices. Here’s a simple tutorial to help you unpack those files.
This tutorial was created using Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac, but the process should be similar on a PC. Although my instructions are specifically for iPad, the resulting files can be used on any device that can open a PDF file.
1. Open the WriteShop teacher’s guide file. There should be a preview pane on the left hand side that shows the individual lesson files. Right-click and select all.
2. Right-click on the selected files and choose Save File from Portfolio. Choose a location to save the files.
3. You now have each lesson as it’s own PDF file in the location that you chose to save them. These individual files can be opened in Preview for Mac or moved to a portable device.
4. Move the files to your iPad or other portable device. My preferred app for reading PDF files on my iPad is GoodReader. I put the files in either Evernote or Dropbox on my Mac. Those files sync with my iPad and I can open the files using the GoodReader app. You could also use the Adobe Reader app or the iBooks app. I like GoodReader because I can highlight and make notes on the pages.
GoodReader for iPad is available in the App Store for $4.99.
I hope this tutorial helps you make the most out of your ebooks from WriteShop. If you have additional questions, please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.
I’m in the process of sharing quotes, tidbits, and reflections from the various sessions at the Apologia Live Retreat which I had the opportunity to attend recently. Start here to read about my over all experience at the Apologia Live Retreat and head over to this post to read reflections from other sessions.
Jonathan making silly faces with Jeannie Fulbright at Teach Them Diligently
Notebooking combines:
What is notebooking?
It’s a book of your child’s learning that replaces artificial means of assessment.
Why notebook?
Notebooking can be time consuming, but it is so worth the effort. The possibilities are endless; they can be as simple or complex and as wordy or artistic as your children are. They can include anything from maps and postcards to field trip reports scrapbooking supplies. It’s all up to you and your child. There are time saving options like using a pre-templated notebook or lapbook. This can help children who panic at the thought of filling a blank page.
On a personal note, I recently found that Jonathan really enjoys lapbooking, which is a form of notebooking. One of my sponsors, A Journey Through Learning, creates templates for a variety of subjects and curriculum to aid in this process. We’ve enjoyed both Jeannie’s junior notebook for Astronomy and A Journey Through Learning’s lapbook for Astronomy.
Want more from Jeannie Fulbright? See Jeannie’s website.
Do you notebook with your kids? Any favorite resources to share?
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