Apologia Notebooks

Apologia is now producing notebooking journals that accompany each of the elementary science books. Both Botany and Astronomy are now available. You can see samples on the Apologia website here:

These journals are beautiful spiral bound notebooks that will save you time and money. You won't have to print and keep up with your child's notebook pages, buy and maintain page protectors, or purchase and compile binders...everything that makes notebooking time-consuming and labor intensive for mom. Also, your child will adore having their own notebooking journal.

Each of the notebooking journals include:

* A daily schedule for those who like to have a plan or would like their children to complete the book on their own
* Templates for written narrations, the notebooking activities and experiments
* Review Questions
* Scripture Copywork, with both print and cursive practice
* Reading lists and additional activities, projects, experiments for each lesson
* An appendix with beautiful, full-color, lapbook-style Miniature Books
* Field Trip Sheets to keep a record field trips
* A Final Review with fifty questions the students can answer either orally or in writing to show off all they remember and know at the end of the course.

See the sample pages for Botany and Astronomy here.

Jeannie is giving away four Astronomy Notebooking Journals and four Botany Notebooking Journals to bloggers who post about this on their site. Visit her blog to learn more about this contest: jeannies journal

The contest ends in one week on May 29th! That way I'll have the weekend to send them before I go to the Illinois conference.

Begin with the End in Mind!!!

Wonder what that title made you think of?!

Almost 3 Saturdays ago, I was listening to the radio early that morning. We were on our way to a mother/daughter tea. This woman being interviewed caught my attention...at first not because of what she was saying, but because of her voice. Her voice was so proper and I was trying to peg where she was from.

For those that know me, still most don't know that I love, love, love accents (along with food). Well, I never caught where she was from, but by that point what she was talking about had caught my ear...Homeschooling thru Highschool.
How to use the Bible, Math Curriculum, and a library card to do ALL your homeschooling from K - 12.
There were a couple of reasons this caught my attention. One was, that was not the first time I had heard that concept. Hmmmmm where had I heard that before? It goes back to what we are GOING BACK to. For one year we used this curriculum called SOW. Student of the word SOW . Everything, except your math comes from the Bible. We used that and that was our BEST year of homeschooling ever.
Why did I stop? Naysayers!!! It's as simple as that. Friends and family alike said, there is no way you can use the Bible to teach your children. You'll ruin them and their education will amount to nothing and they will never be able to attend any college.Well, stupid me, pleasing man rather than God, changed the curriculum and I've been searching for the right one ever since.
Well, 4 weeks ago, it was like the Lord said to me as I was driving home...What are you doing? I said Lord if you just show me how to teach my children and what to teach them, I will obey. He said...I already did and you didn't obey, so what are you wanting me to show you? So I drove about 10 min. more and then the light bulb went off. Ohhhhhhhhh You mean that?! You really want me to go back to that? I can do that.
So when I got paid, after taking out my tithes and before paying any bills, I ordered the remaining 2-6 volume. (and I've been checking the mail every day ever since) We will use the Apologia Science and the book Keeping a Nature Journal to supplement science, Teaching Textbooks math curriculum, TruthQuest to supplement history, and finally Rosetta stone for foreign language (Latin/Spanish).
Bible will be the MAIN focus and we have two library cards (Terrell & Mesquite). I'm excited, they are leery (and I totally understand, we've changed so much since first using SOW). However, they all agree as well that, that was the BEST year we had!!!

So if it ain't broke, don't fix it!!!

She had many key points for me. I will try to put them all here and pray you don't get bored. The one that was the most interesting and intriguing to me, was one I've been saying lately over the last 6 months or so. "Who cares if your child goes to Harvard if they are going to hell? I would rather have a godly garbage collector than an ungodly brain surgeon." And you know what, I feel the exact same way.

She said "Readers succeed, non-readers don't." That is something I've been telling my children...just not in those exact words. I believe that if they can read, there is nothing they can't do. They can pick up ANY book that any teacher, professor, etc. can pick up and learn ANYTHING their hearts desire to know.

She, I keep saying she but gave no name; Carole Seid Joy, spoke about television. Now even though I have one of these time wasters in my home, we very seldom watch it. She said after watching a show, ask yourself-Did it bring you closer to Jesus?
According to a study she had, television is directly linked to ADD. Hmmmmmmm, you know when I was little we seemed to stay outside. Now you have to pry children away from tv and video games to get them outside. Read: Amusing Ourselve to Death, by Neil Postman.

I wish I could tell you everything, but I wouldn't do it justice. She gave some statistics such as,
91% (2002) of children in the church who claimed to be born again, do NOT believe there is absolute truth.
82% of homeschooled children plan to homeschool their children.

Anyway, she is an advocate of reading. As am I. I LOVE books and if you put me in a bookstore or library, I start drooling all over myself! LOL
She, like Dr. Raymond Moore (Better late than early), does not believe in rushing academics. She wants parents to read to their children. I love reading to mine!!!!

Anyway, she gave a list of books that she recommended. Sorry, she asked that we not make copies of those lists. She also gave a typical daily schedule...that I can share.

Quiet time for mama
Kids up-dress, make bed, etc.
Breakfast
Clean-up
Bible
Math
Handwriting (she recommended Italic workbook, or journaling)
Break (eat some type of protein to help with energy)
History with literature - mom reads and kidlets illustrate during this time
LUNCH
1 hour of COMPLETE sacred quietness-pray, sleep, read, think (one of these but no talking)
Nature walk-2 times a week/Science for those days not doing nature walk
Freetime - listen to classical music, prepare dinner, gardening, baking, sewing, scrapbooking, music lessons, community work, etc.
45 min. before dad arrives-clean the castle

Carole said high schoolers can keep track of their own lessons, writing in a lesson plan daily what they have accomplished. don't use grades, colleges don't really look at those. Use pass/fail or credit/no credit (google carnegie credits). High schoolers should write their first term paper in their first year and 2 in their second year. When filling out college applications, add reading lists of all books read and a resume detailing every activity.

There is no way for me to get it all in this blog, so if you think of something, leave me a comment and I'll look through my notes to see if she had anything to say pertaining to that question.

I'm excited and ready, surprisingly so are my kidlets. I'll keep you posted.

Conforming? Salt & Light?

I seem to be so full of words tonight, but I will try to articulate what I feel God is sharing with me.
Romans 12:2 says And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

The life lesson, as stated in my Life Principles Bible says God does not want us to try hard to sin less, but to depend upon His Spirit to be transformed into people who love to please God through willing obedience. That transformation begins with the mind.

Then it says in Matthew 5:13 that You are the salt of the earth; but it the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

And again the life lesson states that Jesus wants us to take seriously our role as "salt," a preservative. Our behavior is to be distinctly different from those who do not know God, and it must not reflect the same kinds of sin that corrupt a godless culture.

Now, not to harp on the words that were spoken to me concerning my children, but as a dear friend pointed out to me, my children are considered dumb/stupid, simply because they don't know the ways of the world. Now I will be the first to admit that their math level is not where public school children are, but I don't see any of my children cringing when it comes time to pull out the math books either. They may not be perfect spellers, but I don't see them hesitating to use a dictionary to learn to spell a word.

I have given my children the opportunity to learn ANYTHING, when I equipped them to read and have a love for learning. There is NOTHING in this world they cannot learn, all it takes is picking up a book and reading & studying on whatever it is that piques their interest.
What brings me the most joy is when I say go get your Bibles and they are running and smiling as they go to get them.

I don't mince words here, If my children NEVER learn the things of this world and all that the world says is important and necessary for life, but they have a relationship with Christ and walk with Him moment by moment and day by day, I have fulfilled my purpose in their lives.

First Week of School

I have put this off as long as I could. I wanted to let everyone know how well things were going. Last week was a blessed week of life and school. All three of my children were so glad to get started back with our schooling. Of course they miss mama not being there all day, but they are maturing so well.
I could not believe how well they did with their Bible Study and how much they enjoyed it. We also started doing some Bible reading together as a family and I gave them each portions of scripture to read. Now let me tell you, not all of them were reading up to par. It was a slow progression, but when each of them read on Mon. evening, I was blown away. What blew me out the water was not only their readiness and eagerness for reading the Word together, but their level of reading, their fluency, their pronunciation, and sounding out words they weren’t familiar with.
Now, before I ever began home-schooling, I went to school. I read all the books I could get or request from other local libraries and I researched on the internet for hours & days, until I finally felt some comfort in the task I was about to take hold of. I knew what it all said, and yet, when it happened to my children, I panicked. I read about boys and their stages of development in reading and math, I read about the various learning styles and how they affect the learning of children. I didn’t push or force, I just let it happen naturally.
AMAZING is all I have to say. Now I watch and listen as my son really is enjoying math. No more tears. I listen as one of my daughters read and the words just spilled forth from her mouth…it astonished even her, the confidence she showed in herself.
God is so good to answer prayers…if anyone doubts (as I do sometimes), God is good and faithful to do just what He promised. If we will be about His business, He will definitely be about our business.(more thoughts on that quote later)
There have been some bumps along the way in just the first week of school, no different than when we used the Bible as our entire curriculum; except for math. Satan does not like it when we are sold out for Christ and trying to get closer to Him.
So overall, week one was wonderful.