Many of you are likely familiar with the Bluedorn family.  Husband and wife team, Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn are co-authors of the definitive Christian classical homeschooling text, Teaching the Trivium.  Their children are all exceptionally talented as well, penning works of children’s fiction, books on teaching logic and painting beautiful pictures (not to mention their handwork).

I’m happy to announce that our readers have the opportunity to receive two free ebooks from Trivium Pursuit.

1.The 73 page ebook of the entire text of Chapter Twelve: “Ten Things to Do With Children Ages Ten Through Twelve” from the book Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn.

I can tell you that this is a must read!  So many parents struggle to involve their children in early academics, producing stress for the entire family.  This chapter is literally ALL you need to read for the early years of homeschooling your wee ones.  If you choose to do more, that’s okay, but this is much needed encouragement to add some relaxation to your homeschooling days.

2.The new 94 page ebook Ancient Literature: Significant Excerpts from the Books of Classical Authors Which You Can Use to Supplement Your History Curriculum - Volume Two: Alexander the Great.

My dear ones are a bit too young for this ;), but you may be able to use this in your history studies with older children.

You will receive both of these ebooks when you subscribe to the Homeschooling with the Trivium newsletter. This offer is only for new subscribers to Homeschooling with the Trivium and is good only through November 30. Go here to subscribe.

In addition, if you subscribe to Christian Logic’s Fallacy Detective News you will receive two lessons from the logic textbook The Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn (Lessons 12 and 13, along with exercises and answer key). This offer is only for new subscribers to The Fallacy Detective News and is good only through November 30. Go here to subscribe.

Again, my little girls are too young for formal logic, but I LOVED the brief study provided in my high school years.

So, go sign up and let me know how these resources have blessed you!  Enjoy!

One of my blogging friends, Penny Raine has an e-booklet about family devotions for homeschoolers that will be available for FREE tomorrow at Homeschool Freebie of the Day.  That’s Friday, October 03rd, so don’t miss it!

Here is a short review I wrote for her:

Whether you are new to family devotions or a veteran, Penny Raine will challenge and encourage you in her new e-booklet, First Things First: The home schooling parents guide to leading family devotions.

Penny calls families to set their priorities straight, starting the day by worshipping the Lord and learning of His ways.  From getting started to suggestions on scriptures to start with, Penny’s suggestions are sure to bless every Christian family.

So, head on over there tomorrow and download away!

Robin Sampson at Heart of Wisdom has two free homeschooling audio downloads available at her blog.

Click here to go get them!  I haven’t listened yet, but have perused her website, blog and read through some of her teaching approach samples.  She is definitely a deep thinker with a heart for the Lord. I so appreciate her focus on keeping Jesus first in our homeschools, and keeping everything biblically focused.

Thanks for the free downloads Robin!  Robin no longer travels to do in person conferences, so here is your chance to hear her speak live.  Enjoy :).

A few days ago I noticed that I had missed an excellent free resource over at the Homeschool Freebie website.  The day after I saw that I had missed out my husband mentioned that he would like for me to start teaching our oldest daughter (5 years old) how to sew.  She’s definitely too young to learn machine sewing yet, and I am a bit…sewing challenged.  I can muster basic repairs, and sew by machine, but I was never taught hand sewing in  a comprehensive or structured way.  When I started my search today (emailing my trusted homeschooling reviews yahoo group) - one of the ladies sent me a link to this same sewing resource.  Jim Erskine has decided to offer it for free on an ongoing basis!  Here is the link :).

If you are domestically challenged you can use it to teach yourself, then use it to teach your daughters!  The Bible tells us to be keepers at home, and knowing how to effect basic repairs, and more advanced hand sewing skills definitely fall into the keeping the home category.

Well, I’m an admitted resource junkie, and I just discovered that the good folks form over at Homeschool Radio Shows (offering a weekly free, oldie but normally a goodie radio show - some we don’t download) have a new site Homeschool Freebie.

Every weekday they will be posting a new homeschooling resource, for free on this site, for you to download.  Join their mailing list so you don’t miss out on any updates!

This morning I am busy printing off a free download that my husband found on the internet, it is called The Noah Project, a .pdf file produced by the Christian Homesteaders Association.  Way to go DH!  This pdf file is 139 pages long, and is a great resource for homesteaders who are just getting started.  Covering everything from designing a house, financial responsibility, sawdust toilets (we have been using one for 2 years, love ‘em!), solar collectors, alternative energy etc.  There is no table of contests, but this little book is a gem!

The website is fabulous too, including articles such as How To Rescue the Earth without Worshiping Nature, and Good Reasons to Homeschool.  I just had to share this resource with my homesteading friends!  Enjoy :).

CurrClick.com is offering their 3rd annual Mother’s Day downloadable gift bonanza!  Last year was great (when they were homeschoolestore).  I just received this in my inbox this morning, and had to share the excitement!  So mark your calendars or sign up for email updates at their website so they can remind you to come and download!  CurrClick.com also offers free weekly downloads of homeschooling e-books, curriculum etc. so if you sign up they will let you know what’s free for the week!  I love this site

Wouldn’t it be nice if every day was Mother’s Day? We can’t make every day Mother’s Day, but we can offer savings you can enjoy the whole year through!

In appreciation for all you do CurrClick.com is pleased to announce our

3rd Annual Mother’s Day Freebie Event!

Spend Sunday with your wonderful family and then visit us on Monday, May 12th for an event that will give you a reason to keep celebrating Mother’s Day for the rest of the year:
From May 12th through May 14th, download up to 20 FREE Homeschool titles from our generous publishers, worth over $100.00 in value!

Click here to see all the free downloads!

Happy Extra-Long Mother’s Day to you, from CurrClick and it’s publishers: The CurrClick Mother’s Day giveaway event is our way of honoring the tremendous love, creativity and hard work you have dedicated to your children in their homeschools and in their lives.

We all know the typical ways to obtain books on the cheap - garage sales, thrift stores, used bookstores, library sales, friends relatives etc. Some of us even know about the used homeschooling curriculum and books yahoo groups, available in many different flavours and varieties depending upon your learning philosophy preference. And some of us are becoming aware of the benefits of book trading websites.

There are benefits of a book trading website over the conventional methods of obtaining books at a reasonable price. You don’t have to leave home to conduct your search. If you are looking for a specific title, going from garage sale to garage sale, bookstore to bookstore, thriftstore to thriftstore is a very ineffective use of your time. With a book trading website you can establish a ‘wishlist’ that will notify you if a book you desire becomes available. You can also search online to see what titles are currently available.

The savings in fuel to drive around and find books, and your time is immense! You do still need to visit the post office with your books for trade, and pay for the postage, but I have found that I can often obtain books for $2 - $4 taking into account the postage costs that it took to obtain the ‘points’ (credits I can spend towards books in the system). While this isn’t as affordable as garage sale finds, let’s be honest - how often can we find the titles we REALLY want at a garage or library sale? And when the book is sent you don’t have to pay for the postage, the sender ships it to you for points, and the shipping is free for you!

I still feel that garage, library sales etc. still have their place (I love to keep my eye out for books of interest there), but we are rurally located, and rarely make it to a locale with used books for our perusal, so this is a perfect solution for us. We need to go to the post office weekly to pick up our mail, as our location doesn’t have postal delivery, so that is no additional expense for us.

You will need some books you would like to send away to others in exchange for points to get started. Some sites also accept magazines, cd’s, dvd’s etc. for trade. The more items you send out, the more credits you obtain in the system. Some systems also give credit for listing books, so if you list 10 books, and you are awarded 0.1 points for them, you can request a book for 1 point, neat hey!? Every system works differently though, so do investigate to find out more details!

I am currently only a member of BookMooch (books and magazines only), as they are open to international users, and I am in Canada - users however can choose to ship domestically, ask first, or internationally. They are also completely free, you only pay for your postage on outgoing books at the post office. You can find my inventory here, in caes I have any books that you would like me to send to you through BookMooch! I have received 332 books, given away 153, have 6 more books on the way, 2 I need to send out, and 1 in transit. That may seem like a lot of books, but when we came to Christ I heavily weeded our library, and choose new Christian reading materials. Some of the books I weeded we had to burn due to their openly pagan nature. Others were only questionable in moral/spiritual value - these went to BookMooch and the used bookstore. God bless BookMooch for allowing us to overhaul our library affordably!

Here is a listing of other websites, many country/media specific, some are complicated and charge a bit of money etc. so be discerning while browsing:

Bookins.com
Whatsonmybookshelf.com
Titletrader.com
Readitswapit.co.uk
Readersunited.com
Swapclub.co.nz
Boekenruilen.nl
Bookswapper.de
Swapthing.com
Swapsimple.com
Bookhopper.co.uk
Frugalreader.com
Paperbackswap.com
Swaptree.com

Have fun trading books!

Today is the official start of the Ultimate Home School Expo, running until May 03rd (but if you are reading this post in my archives, keep going - the downloads are up on the site for you to access at a later date!) with a great variety of homeschooling topics covered each day, all week long, door prizes for those listening in person, and a tonne of free giveaways in the Mommy Grab Bags! I just got my ticket today, and though I can’t listen live (because I’m on a Mac) I can download the MANY (I counted 58) preview topics that are already uploaded to the membership site. AND I can get busy downloading all of the free goodies in the Mommy Grab Bag! Wow, there is such a long list I’m almost in overwhelm just wondering how long it will take my little dial up to go get them all! I just love resources, and the UHSE is the best place to get the MOST for your homeschooling dollar. Only $40 purchases a ticket to the downloads of ALL the preview chats, and live attendance, or downloads of ALL the conference topics (I count 28 full length topics, that will be available for download after the conference), PLUS all the mommy goodies for free!

Again - if you are reading this AFTER the first week of May, never fear, Cindy archives all of the audio and goodies on her site so that you can buy a ticket and go download them at any time! Homeschooling conferences just don’t get more flexible than this!

Ready to check it out? On to the download!

Oops! My Cup is Empty and My Coffee Pot is Broke!
Audio Workshop Download With Cindy Rushton

Tired? Weary? Find yourself overwhelmed by the tremendous load of motherhood? Do you consider this one of the most demanding, yet rewarding roles you will ever fill…yet that send shivers down your spine? Join Cindy as she exhorts you in your high calling. This workshop shares Cindy’s heart as she shares about those good days and bad days…sweet memories and rather bitter moments that have made life so precious all along the way. Taking you on a journey back in Scripture to meet Hannah, Cindy will share God’s answers to her heart cry during times she has found her OWN cup empty while “everything” continued to hit all at once!! The biblical insights are sure to draw YOUR heart to your Heavenly Father AND to those you are pouring into. Join us as Cindy ministers encouragement and direction straight from the Word of God to your heart, soul, and mind!

Download by Mp3
http://www.cindysdesktop.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/OopsNashvilleMP3.mp3

This is only ONE of the awesome gifts included on the Membership Site. There are hundreds more!

Take my word for it, you will WANT a ticket to this event and access to all of the wonderful resources. Grab your ticket here:

http://www.cindysaffiliates.com/go.php?offer=quiverfulf&pid=1

Today is the Day that Cindy Rushton is opening her Ultimate Homeschool Expo Membership Site. If you buy a ticket you can go there and download so many FREE gifts related to homeschooling, the free preview chats that have already taken place, and then when the Expo gets started next week the tpoics covered will be there for download too! I am just so excited to listen in!

So here is the free sample audio that Cindy has given permission for me to give out! This is just a sample of the types of teachings that will be taking place at the Ultimate Homeschool Expo. If you take a peek in my Homeschooling category, you’ll also see some other free downloads, notebooking, planning your new school year etc. that you can download for free as samples!

Scheduling ABC’s Audio Workshop with Cindy Rushton

Let Cindy take you by the hand and show you secrets to developing a schedule that works for you and your family!

Download by Mp3
http://tinyurl.com/2cpsb9

I just can’t imagine what a good deal this is! Only $40 for SO many gifts from vendors, SO many workshops, available all online for download without having to travel, book a hotel etc.! You just have to check it out here!