Compass Classroom Spring Sale!

*This post contains affiliate links






From April 8th-15th, enjoy up to 50 % off from Compass Classroom!  Compass Classroom offers quality, Christian video curriculum in a variety of subject areas including Latin, Bible, Poetry, History, Filmmaking, Economics and more.

Some of our favorite curriculum is included in this sale!  Visual Latin, Word Up the Vocab Show and Economics for Everybody are all 30 % off.  We have LOVED all of these!

These two we have reviewed and are on the shelf just waiting for the boys to get older ;)

Dave Raymond's American History is 35% off.

Old Western Culture is 25 % off.

Plus there are several others that we have yet to try such as:

Filmmaking From the First Directors 50% off

Logic, Grammar of Poetry, and Modern Parables 25% off.

And the newest Compass Classroom product Homeschool Made Simple 50% off.


*links in this post are my affiliate links.  I only form affiliate relationships with companies whose products I actually can use and recommend!

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Review: The Inn at Ocean's Edge by Colleen Coble

Book Description 

" A vacation to Sunset Cove was her way of celebrating and thanking her parents. After all, Claire Dellamore's childhood was like a fairytale. But with the help of Luke Elwell, Claire discovers that fairytale was really an elaborate lie . . . The minute she steps inside the grand Inn at Ocean's Edge, Claire Dellamare knows something terrible happened there. She feels it in her bones. Her ensuing panic attack causes a scene, upsetting her parents. Claire attempts to quiet her nerves with a walk on the beach, to no avail. She's at too great a distance to make out details, but she believes she witnesses a murder on a nearby cliff. When local police find no evidence of foul play, they quickly write off the "nervous" woman's testimony as less than credible. But Luke Elwell, home on leave from the Coast Guard, has reason to believe Claire. Years ago when his mother went missing, Luke's father suspected she'd been murdered. He died never having convinced the police to investigate. So when an employee of the grand hotel doesn't show up for work, Luke steps in to help Claire track down the missing woman. As Claire and Luke put together the pieces of a decades-old mystery, they discover that some family secrets refuse to stay buried. And some passions are worth killing for."

 About the Author-  USA Today bestselling author Colleen Coble has written several romantic suspense novels including Tidewater Inn, Rosemary Cottage, and the Mercy Falls, Lonestar, and Rock Harbor series. Visit her website at www.colleencoble.com Twitter: @colleencoble Facebook: colleencoblebooks

I have been a big fan of Colleen Coble, especially her Hope Beach series so I was excited to see the first novel in a new series, Sunset Cove, being released.  The Inn at Ocean's Edge is a very well written story that will keep you up at night so you can see what happens!  It has all of the elements of a good story: great characters, great setting you can imagine yourself living in, plus mystery, suspense, and romance.  The plot is very complex and it's twists and turns will keep you guessing right up to the end, even after you think you have it all figured out!

If you have read other books by Colleen Coble, you will see some similarities between this story and a few of her others in regards to the characters, setting, and parts of the plot.  I still LOVED the story and look forward to seeing other books in this series.

Disclaimer:  I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance to FTC regulations.

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 28

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No photos this week.  Some of you might remember that last fall a specific website was using some of my photos without my permission.  That post was removed and I thought the problem was solved.  But recently I discovered more pictures on the same site.  After further investigation it seems that all of my pictures are ending on that website.  Every time I put up a new post, the photos show up there. Reporting them to their web hosts has been unsuccessful because they keep switching hosts.  So I am working on trying to find a way to get this stopped.  So this week at least will not have pictures which makes me both sad and mad!  This blog is my personal property. I enjoy writing it and keeping a record of my homeschool journey and I hate that someone is trying to spoil that for me.

But anyway on to the weekly wrap up!

Week 28 In Our Homeschool

Bible: We finished Missionary Stories with the Millers and have continued to read through the book of Proverbs.  We will begin a review of The Book of Moses part 2 from Real Life Press starting next week.

History: We finished lessons 73-75 on The Scottish Covenanters, K'ang-shi the Manchu and the Ching Dynasty, and Sir Isaac Newton.  We did the corresponding time line figures and memory cards.

Science: We skipped science this week.  I had thought we would go ahead and start Apologia Exploring Creation Through Anatomy and Physiology which I had planned to use next year, but we were given an opportunity to review a unit study called Weather on the Move from Homeschool Legacy.  I did not get it until Thursday morning so we will be diving into that next week.

Art: We did another assignment in our ARTistic Pursuits K-3 Book 3 book.  I am not going in order of the lessons in the book because I want to show a variety of things the book covers in my review.  So we skipped ahead a bit and did lesson 11 and used oil pastels to create our artwork.

Grammar/Writing/Literature: Nick and Alex finished Lesson 26 in Fix it! Grammar and Lesson 22 in IEW Medieval Writing.  I have combined Anthony and Christian on literature and we are reading The Wheel on the School and answering the comprehension questions aloud.  Anthony and I are still working on practicing for his upcoming Iowa test.

Spelling/Reading: Anthony and Christian finished Lesson 13 of AAR Level 2.  I had planned on Alex starting Level 5 of All About Spelling, but when I get strapped for time it seems like that is the first thing that goes and we did not get to it.  He did work on The Orphs of the Woodlands 3 days this week.

Math: Nick finished Lesson 28 of Math U See Pre-Algebra.  Anthony and Christian finished lesson 26 of Beta and Gamma and Alex finished Lesson 25 of Delta.

My Father's World Creation From A to Z

This week we started and completed Unit 16: Penguin.  The Bible lesson focused on the phrase "I show love to everyone especially my family."  Lily did a picture card page, handwriting page, sound discrimination page, math page, cut and paste page, blend ladder page, and drawing page.  She also had a story page she could read!  We read books with facts about penguins, made icebergs, and a penguin badge.  We did a little geography with a globe talking about the equator, north pole, and south pole.  We also read the book Tacky the Penguin.

Lily is also working on a review of Memoria Press's First Start Reading.

Other Activities This Week:

Monday Christian still was not feeling 100%.  So we did not go to archery and he missed his first soccer game of the season.  Art was still home sick from work.  I did take Nick and Alex to their soccer practice.

Tuesday Lily had gymnastics.  The girls and I dropped by the library while we were in town.  We headed home to make and eat supper and head back to town for Nick and Alex's soccer game but Emelia started complaining that she had a stomachache! So I stayed home with Emmie, Lily, Christian, and Anthony and Art came and got the older boys and took them to their game.

Wednesday was Christian's birthday.  My baby boy turned 8!  I made him a creeper cake and cooked his birthday supper.  He requested cheese ravioli so I made that with some homemade bread and a salad.  He is such a sweet boy and so easy to please!  He had a great birthday!

Thursday we headed off to archery.  After archery we went to Walmart to grab something for supper and then went and ate at the park.  Christian had a soccer game at 6.  After his game I headed home with the 4 youngest and Art stayed for Nick and Alex's practice.

Friday we had to go back to Walmart to have tires put on the van and do some grocery shopping.  After that we relaxed at home and took care of some chores.  That night was the 4 H achievement banquet.  Chelsea, Nick, Alex, Christian, Lily, and I went to that and Art stayed home with Anthony and Emmie.  Christian and Lily both got Cloverbud award certificates and Nick and Alex both won journal awards (Nick's was for Poultry/Rabbits and Alex for Utilizing Science and Technology)and also gem awards for 4 H participation.  They received a certificate, a 4 H snuggie, and will get trophies at the district competition in June.  Chelsea gave two speeches about the two national 4 H trips she attended last year.

Saturday we headed over to the lake for some fishing.  The children have been asking and asking when we would be able to go.  Nobody caught anything, but we had fun and played on the playground for awhile before heading home.  They are eager to go fishing again soon!

Happy Homeschooling!

*links to All About Learning Press and Apologia are my affiliate links.  I only form affiliate relationships with companies whose products I actually use and can recommend!!

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The Perfect Curriculum

I have already started shopping for next year's curriculum choices (actually I started back in February.)  I just love getting those curriculum catalogs in the mail!  In my spare time I have been searching through catalogs, looking up information and samples on websites, and reading reviews.  I do not have a homeschool convention close to me, but many homeschoolers will head to a convention to get their hands on the curriculum and talk to the vendors in person.  We all want to find the perfect curriculum to use with our family.

It doesn't exist.


Now don't get me wrong.  There is a lot of great curriculum and resources out there for homeschoolers.  I have been greatly blessed over the years to have an opportunity to use and review many different products from many great companies.  But there is no perfect curriculum and the search for it can lead to frustrated and burned out homeschool mamas.

For there to be a perfect homeschool curriculum there would have to be perfect children that all learned the same and perfect mamas who all taught the same.  Children do not all learn the same and mamas sure do not teach all the same!  Even within one homeschool family you will find that each of the children learn differently!  I have seen this to be very true in my house!

This is why when we are researching curriculum and we find what appears to be a wonderful curriculum: the samples all look great, rave reviews are given, and several other homeschool families that we know love it, but it doesn't work for us and we feel frustrated and wonder what we did wrong.  Or we see how much other homeschoolers manage to get completed in a day and feel like a failure because we didn't even get half of that accomplished!  Or we wonder how in the world we are supposed to find time for all of the homeschool work, plus take care of the house, our husband, and transport children to their extra activities, and everything else we need to do in the course of a day and we are exhausted before we even get started.

There is no perfect curriculum and we need to stop expecting there to be and base our success/failures on the curriculum we use or how much we manage to get done in a day.  Curriculum is supposed to be a tool for the homeschool mama, not a task master.  When I first started homeschooling, I did everything just like the book told me too.  Every assignment, every project, every activity just like it was written.  I only had one child to homeschool and I was VERY overwhelmed.  I could not see how people homeschooled multiple children.  And then I started to realize something.  If one of the reasons I wanted to bring her home was to provide an individualized education I needed to do just that.  Not every activity, project or assignment had to be completed and even the ones that did could be "tweaked" to fit what we wanted it to.  Since then, I have very rarely followed the book or curriculum exactly like it's written.  We use the curriculum to guide or learning process not decide it. There is a lot of freedom in that!

Just because something works for one child doesn't mean it will suit your family as a whole.  There is a curriculum that I absolutely love that was great for Chelsea, but I can't make it work for the age spans of my other children.  I would have to be teaching 3 different sets of core curriculum plus separate math, reading, and spelling.  That would drive me crazy, cause us to spend lots of extra hours on school, and I haven't even mentioned the cost!  Just because it's a great curriculum doesn't mean it would work for us.

The urge to compare ourselves with other homeschoolers is strong.  Especially when you see and hear all of the things that others are doing.  I find myself second guessing myself often when I hear how many hours people spend on school and we only spend half of that.  But every homeschool is different and we should not be worried about comparing ourselves to others but instead focus on our own homes and children.

Feel free to change and adjust your curriculum to suit your needs.  You don't have to do it all!  There is nothing wrong with skipping activities or putting them off for a later date.  There is nothing wrong with allowing children who struggle with reading or writing to dictate answers to you rather than write them themselves.  There is nothing wrong with turning a reader into a read aloud.  There is nothing wrong with ditching the curriculum for a day for a field trip or even for a few weeks or months during a life change (new baby, illness, move, etc...)  And if you buy something that makes homeschooling more difficult for you or your child, and you can't make adjustments to it, don't continue to make yourselves miserable.  Not every curriculum no matter how great it is will work for everyone.  Sell it if you can and look for something else.

Happy Homeschooling!

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Review: A Heart's Obsession by Colleen Coble

Book Description

" Can a woman held captive by her family make it back to the one man she knows she can trust? When Sarah Montgomery's father succumbs to his long illness, Sarah is faced with a life-altering choice: submit to her brother's will and marry the deceptive Ben Croftner . . . or escape through the dangerous American West to reclaim the heart of her beloved Rand Campbell at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From captivity in her family's home, Sarah makes her decision-and begins the perilous journey to Wyoming by train. But even in the company of Rand's brother, Sarah does not receive the reception she had hoped for. The necessity of a military wife has preempted her, and Rand is already engaged to Jessica DuBois, the seductive daughter of the post commander. With her heart broken and her life in ruins, Sarah has no choice but to remain at Fort Laramie and try to win Rand back. But things will get tougher before they get easier . . . the obsessive Ben Croftner has just shown up in Wyoming."

A Heart's Obsession is book 2 of 6 in the Journey of the Heart series which has just been released by Colleen Coble. It was her first series and was originally titled Where Leads the Heart and Plains of Promise.  The books in this series are short, only around 100 pages and are quick and easy reads.

I shared in my review of A Heart's Disguise that I am not a huge fan of series that are longer than 3 books.  They are of course written to keep you reading through the whole series so just when the story really starts to be developed it cuts off and you have to wait for the next book.  Plus I think publishing 6 separate books adds an extra cost to the consumer.  But as I mentioned before it appears as though this series will be released soon in one volume.  That is the way I would prefer to read it, but some people like the suspense of waiting for the new one to be released.

Colleen Coble has written a very good story that has had the designed effect on me.  After reading the first book I couldn't wait to review the second.  And now after finishing the second book I can't wait to read the third! It has everything you want in a book: christian romance, action, adventure, suspense, a villain or two, and those like us who have some character development to do.  I am eager to see where the adventure leads next!  I will be eagerly awaiting the next book.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance to FTC regulations.

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Spring Break Trip to Dallas Part 3

Last year when we went to visit my parents in Florida, my 7 and 9 year olds really, really wanted to go to Legoland but it rained that day, not just a little, but pouring down ,cold rain (which honestly we can't complain as it was the only day of bad weather we had.)  So when I found out that there was a Legoland Discovery Center in Dallas I knew that would be something they really would want to do.  I didn't tell them though.  I wanted it to be a surprise.  I bough the tickets online since they were $7 cheaper that way and scheduled our visit for Wednesday at 11:30.  Also, since the little girls had just had a birthday we planned on taking them to Build A Bear Workshop for their present.

We slept in a bit, had breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning cleaning up and loading the van. We got to the Grapevine Mills Mall just a few minutes before our entrance time.  I have to say, in my opinion it was WAY overpriced.  I know I have a larger than average family, but for us to go it was just over $140 with the discounted tickets.  Personally, I think they should just charge for the children and not the adults that are accompanying them like other similar places do.  My 6, 7, and 9 year olds enjoyed it though.

When you enter they do a little introduction that talks about how LEGOS are made and everyone gets a free LEGO brick.

Inside there was a play place that Lily, Anthony, and Christian were the right size for.

And another play area with a slide some other play equipment and some building blocks that Emmie was the right size for and big brothers could play too.

There were 3 "rides", Merlin's Apprentice, Kingdom Quest, and one that you could drive LEGO police cars.

The city of Dallas made out of LEGOS.

A Ninjago area.

A theater (only Chelsea went in there), and a place where you could build and race your LEGO cars. There was also a cafe and a store.

After 2 hours we were ready to leave.  We grabbed some lunch at Applebees which was right outside the mall.  Stopped in 3 stores, including the Disney Store where Chelsea bought something for each of the children.  Then we headed to Build A Bear Workshop.

Lily and Emmie both picked the same thing, a My Little Pony named Princess Luna.

Lily picked a skirt, shirt, and pink shoes for her pony.  Emmie picked a cinderella dress and shoes for hers and they both got hair brushes.  They both got hair brushes.  Chelsea made a puppy.  Emmie named her pony Sparkles and Lily stuck with Princess Luna.

We grabbed a snack from the Original Cookie Company and started the drive home.  Within minutes Lily and Emmie had fallen asleep.

We had a great time but it is always nice to be home.  It seems our timing to arrive home was good because the next morning Christian was sick (and still is), that evening Anthony got sick, the next morning Art started not feeling well, and Emmie started running a fever too!  We are laying low this week-end and praying everyone is better soon!

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Schoolhouse Crew Review: Circle C Milestones

I was first introduced to books by Susan K. Marlow back in 2011 when I had an opportunity to review Andi's Scary School Days, a Circle C Beginnings Book.   Then in 2013 I had an opportunity to review Tunnels of Gold  a Goldtown Adventures Book.  We loved those books!  I was very excited to be chosen to review the first book, Thick as Thieves  in the newest series, Circle C Milestones by Susan K. Marlow and published by Kregel Publications.
The Circle C Milestones series was written for ages 12 and up.  In Thick as Thieves, the story of Andrea Carter from the Circle C Beginnings and Circle C Adventures series continues.  Andi is now 14 years old.  It is 1882 and life on the Circle C ranch is very busy.  Taffy is expecting her first foal and Andi has to try and find balance between chores, school, and foal training.  A new girl at school, Macy Walker, has been assigned as Andi's seatmate and her cruel behavior and bad manners has the whole school in an uproar, especially Andi.  Life at home isn't much easier when cattle rustlers strike the Carter Ranch.  The book is a 174 page paperback with 26 chapters.  
You can read an excerpt of the book here.
Purchase your copy here for $9.99.
To go along with the book is a free downloadable Study Guide.  In this 40 page guide that is broken down into 6 different sections you will find vocabulary and comprehension questions, 1880 arithmetic problem, writing activities, and digging deeper questions.  Also included is information and activities on foaling, training a foal, lice, cattle rustling, the Palace Hotel, and dime novels.  An answer key is included along with further activity suggestions such as keeping a journal, writing a dime novel, and memorizing scripture.
I am reading the Circle C Beginnings books to my 6 and 4 year olds and they love them. They are a little young for the Circle C Milestones books right now, but I was interested in reading the series myself and having them on the shelf for when the girls will be old enough to read them.  The book arrived at my house at the perfect time because I had broken my toe and couldn't do very much.  I don't sit and do nothing very well so I was happy to have something new to read!  I read through the entire book in a couple of hours while the children enjoyed a movie.
I know I have said this before but it is true and worth repeating, it is hard to find good, wholesome, enjoyable for books for children in the tween and teen age range.  There is so much objectionable content that is added into books of this age range.  I know that when I pick up a book by Susan K. Marlow to read aloud or allow my children to read on their own that I have nothing to worry about. Thick as Thieves is a great story that will appeal mostly to pre-teen and teenage girls though as an adult I found it enjoyable as well.  Andi faces a lot of challenges in her life that girls today will relate to.  The story has a great message that is carried throughout the story about the importance of friendship and being a good friend.  Andi uses her knowledge of Scripture verses to help her through situations in her everyday life.  Knowing what God's word has to say helps her to make the right decisions even when it is difficult.  That is something we all can learn from!
I love the free study guide that you can download to go along with the book.  The vocabulary, comprehension questions, and digging deeper questions will help your child not only read and enjoy the story but take a deeper meaning from it.  I found the sections on foaling, training a foal, lice, cattle rustling, and the Palace Hotel quite fascinating and they added even more of an understanding of the time period and life situations that Andi was dealing with.  The activities that went along with these sections were fun and interesting, and I loved the Scripture mini posters to copy verses in.
I would highly recommend any books by Susan K. Marlow.  Girls will especially enjoy the different Circle C books.  Circle C Beginnings is for ages 6-9, Circle C Adventures for ages 9-14, and Circle C Milestones for 12 and up.  The Goldtown Adventures Series is for ages 8-12 and is geared more towards boys, but girls can enjoy those as well.
I look forward to the next book in the Circle C Milestones Series, Heartbreak Trail, releasing July 2015.
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, click on the banner below.

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