Our recent 1 day trip into the city has turned into nearly a week, and needless to say – my packing for an overnight stay didn’t include bringing our homeschooling materials!  After a couple of days I really started to miss our simple homeschooling schedule, I feel like I’m a bit at loose ends with my little ones!  Thankfully though, we did pick up a few more of our educational goodies on a quick trip back to the farm to feed the cows – hands-on activities for preschoolers were sorely needed!!  Now I’m excited to get back home and dig in once again .

This past week I’ve been reading a fairly simplistic picture storybook Bible designed for very young children.  (This isn’t my review, but keep an eye open for my full thoughts on The Big Picture Story Bible in the near future.)  For the purposes of this post it is enough to say that it skips many of the traditional details found in more detailed story Bibles.

My three-year-old has been busy asking questions, my 1.5 year old runs over to look at the pictures from time to time, and my six-year-old?  She’s busy gasping in shock at all of the parts that are missing!  ”But Mom, they missed the part about the golden cow!  They’re skipping stuff!  That’s not fair!”

As a homeschooling mom I find that incredibly encouraging.  Yes – she’s listening.  Yes – she’s learning.  Yes – she knows more about Bible stories than I did at her age.  Yes – she’s passionate about the details of God’s revealed Word.

It’s so easy to feel like I’m not doing enough.  That I could be teaching more Bible, more deeply.  But it’s sinking in, and I’m incredibly thankful for the One who takes my miniscule efforts and multiplies them in the lives of my children.  Thank You.

I have to be honest, some days I am NOT happy to be living in Alberta.  The winters are long…and cold…and dry…BUT homeschooling is legal here, AND there is a prolificacy of homeschooling support groups here as well.  Now that it looks like we’ll be here in the Breton area for the next year or two, I’ve found that there are homeschoolers (with young children) living within a few miles of us, HOW exciting!!  Up at our farm, the homeschoolers we knew were at least twenty minutes away (and had older children).  Alberta has one of the largest percentages of homeschoolers in North America (I wouldn’t be surprised if we have every other province in Canada beat!)

So today I’m feeling blessed and looking forward to the prospect of homeschooling fellowship sometime in the near future.

Our family has been so blessed this past week to be part of the Estes Family’s fundraising sale.  Jeff and Karen Estes are the owners of Hands and Heart - a homeschooling supply store.  They are also the parents to a lovely quiverfull of eight children, one of whom (Noah) suffers from complex and ongoing health problems, you can read more on their blog here.

With such a difficult situation their family is always looking for flexible ways to support themselves, and have found a business opportunity that they feel has great potential.  To raise  the funds they need to pursue this venture, a group of homeschooling publishers has come together to provide a huge assortment of homeschooling products, including one of our copywork titles, for an incredible total value of over $330 for a low minimum donation.

You can read all about it here, but you’d better hurry!  The sale runs from today (January 21st) through to January 29th.

Thanks for your support of this incredible homeschooling family!

My 3.5 year old has been asking me to teach her her ‘numbers’.  By thatshe means that she wants to start learning basic phonics!  I blame our LeapFrog DVDs.  She’s now learned that “A” says, “Aaaah!”  And she’s very excited!  So, we’ve been doing some StarFall, watching The Letter Factory, and pointing out letters that she knows that we find around us in print in our daily lives.  I’m pretty sure that Kaelynn was around the same age when she initially expressed a desire to read – maybe a tiny bit later, and we’ve been taking a relaxed approach to reading with her.

After learning her basic, short sound phonics we had to wait until her ability to blend kicked in at around 5.5 (she’s now 6.5), and she’s now reading well for grade 1, but still needs me beside her to prompt her with rule reminders, and point out certain rule ‘triggers’ like silent letter e’s, vowel teams, and some consonant teams.  It’s exciting to see her progress though!  She read “Tory called the animal doctor.” a few days ago – I was so proud of her!  So it now seems that I have two on our relaxed, learning how to read program, and we’re officially heading into multi-level schooling territory!

…nature documentaries!  In the past month we’ve watched a few different documentaries that feature a lot of footage of wildlife, and my 17 month old absolutely loves them!  Well, truthfully, everyone in our family is  fan of nature documentaries (well, sometimes my 3-year-old wanders off), but her level of excitement is adorable!  When the animals come on screen (particularly babies!) she squeals, dances, points – it’s so sweet.  Home educating is without doubt, a lifelong journey, and it begins at birth!  Nature documentaries have always been a favorite of mine – watching animals in their natural settings is absolutely fascinating, and we can catch a lot of variety on our television screen without having to travel around the world!

We now have a free copywork download available at Bogart Family Resources for anyone who signs up for our email newsletter!  Just sign up on the home page and you’ll automatically receive a free download of Copying the Hymns: All Things Bright and Beautiful, Traditional Style ZB Manuscript, Level 1, a 15 lesson Christian devotional copywork book that includes the lyrics of “All Things Bright and Beautiful” along with related Bible verses (KJV)!  If you’d like to share your thoughts with us after downloading it, we’d love to hear from you .  Enjoy!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Wheat Food Council. All opinions are 100% mine.

With the vast majority of North America’s population living in urban areas, so many of us are far removed from the agricultural cycle, and a true understanding of how food production takes place.  I know that this was the case for me when I lived in the city – I had vague, pastoral ideas about agriculture, but just didn’t realize how things REALLY worked!

There’s a fun new website called How Wheat Works that is sponsored by the Wheat Foods Council; it’s an interactive, online experience that guides users (your children!) through a four day course that takes only a few minutes today.  Moving through the growth, harvest, milling/baking and the grocer’s aisle, participants can virtually grow, harvest and mill their own kernels to create their desired wheat food.  Additional extension activities are provided such as preparing wheat-based recipes, exploring wheat grown in their area through our state wheat commission member sites and viewing harvest videos from “America’s Heartland.”

For the little ones, there’s even a link to a “Just for Kids” website at wheatfoods.org with online recipes, games and quizzes.

And the even more exciting news, is that for each online participant, the Wheat Foods Council is donating 2 lbs. of flour (up to 90,000 pounds) to Operation Homefront, a non-profit that provides assistance to needy U.S. troops and their families.

So, if you’re interested in learning about wheat as it’s actually grown today in a fun, and interactive format – now’s the time!

I just received notice this morning that The 205th Carnival Homeschooling is now up at the Atlanta Homeschooling Examiner! I know that if I don’t post this notice ASAP it’ll get buried in my inbox (speaking from experience here!)  So if you’re in the mood for a reassuring round-up of real, slice-of-life insights into the homeschooling lives of other families, grab a cup of tea, kick back, and dig in!

Some of you might know that we’ve had some problems finding readers that my daughter (6) would actually ENJOY practicing with.  She hasn’t been liking the little “Bob Book” style readers – she’s not too keen on the black-and-white line drawings, and the small format.  She hasn’t been liking our big reading textbook.  But what she does like are some used Scott Foresman Reading readers that I got used on Bookmooch that came with some other titles I’d mooched.

What I don’t understand is how these fit into the whole system.  What I have are softcovers from 1987 that used to belong to a school.  There isn’t any instruction, just full color illustrations and simple stories that my daughter really likes to read.  When we encounter a word that uses a rule she’s unfamiliar with I just informally teach it to her verbally, and this has really been working well.  Now if only I can figure out how their leveling system works, and how I can find some more of these!