Homeschool Crew Review: Zondervan Beloved: 365 Devotions for Young Women

Zondervan has been publishing Bibles, Christian books, curriculum, and other resources for more then 80 years.  They publish over 300 new books and Bibles annually.  We recently had an opportunity to read and review the devotional Beloved: 365 Devotions for Young Women. 
Beloved: 365 Devotions for Young Women is a beautiful, hard cover, 380 page page book.  It was written by Lindsay A. Franklin with young ladies ages 13-18 years old in mind, but can be used with mature younger girls and those that are older as well.  It can be purchased for $15.99.

Each day starts with a scripture verse, using the NIV translation,  about a Biblical girl or woman and then you read a short devotional (less then a page) related to that verse.  At the bottom of each page there is a few short lines for journaling.  There are 365 devotions as the title implies, one for each day of the year.  But unlike other devotionals I have had, they are not labeled with a specific day for each one.  So no matter when you receive the book, you get to start right at the beginning and just read one each day.

Each day's devotional relates to every day challenges that will speak to young ladies today.  For example:

DAY 24 Genesis 16:8 (Hagar running away from Sarai) Everyone makes bad choices but running away from our consequences is never the best choice.

 Day 41 Genesis 24:17-18 (Rebekah giving a drink to Abraham's servant) Have a spirit of hospitality wherever you go and reach out to others or offer kind words or friendly face.

Day 118 Judges 13:6-7 (Samson's mother being visited by and angel and she goes and tells her husband about it) Have a testimony ready to be able to share with others the ways God has answered our prayers and  Jesus changed our heart.

Day 343 John 8:3-6A (Pharisees caught a woman in adultery and made her stand before the group asking Jesus what they should do) Even when someone does something wrong we should treat them with dignity and kindness first then speak the truth in love.

These devotionals can be read through in less then 10 minutes a day.  You may want to spend a little more time researching the Scripture around the chosen verses if they are verses you are not already familiar with .

I do not have any teenage girls in the age range intended for this devotional at home right now.  My girls living at home are much younger and my oldest is not living at home, so I read through this devotional myself.  The books is very appealing to young ladies.  It is beautiful!  Since it is hardcover rather then paperback it will last a very long time.  I love that it has a ribbon book mark included because I can never find one when I need one! The devotionals are short but meaningful and can be worked through by teenagers alone or mothers could go through the devotionals with their daughters.  The Scriptures used are not all "happy" verses but they are all used for teaching lessons that we can apply to our lives today.  I love that the days in the devotional are not labeled making it easy to start at the beginning whenever you receive the book.  Also if you miss a day or two you never have to catch up, just pick right up where you left off.


Beloved: 365 Devotions for Young Women would make a great gift for teenage girls.  To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

Tweet

Homeschool Wrap Up Week 15

Back to school this week after a week off for Thanksgiving. 

Week 15 in Our Homeschool

Bible: We completed 3 lessons in Bible Study Guide for All Ages.  We are almost finished with the first set of lessons.

Read Aloud: We doubled up on our biography of Ronald Reagan this week so we could get to where we are reading in our history book, so we read 8 chapters.  In the evening we finished The Magician's Nephew (I think this is my 4th time to read aloud the Narnia series to different children.)  We also finished the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series.  We loved this series!  It was so fun to read aloud.  I had no idea what to read next but we found a book on the shelf called Dragonspell by Donita K Paul and started that. 

History: We completed chapter 20 in America's Story on The 80's Part One.  One of the things discussed was the space shuttle Challenger explosion.  That is the first major news story I can remember when I was a child.

Science: We started reading chapter 9 on the nervous system in Apologia Anatomy and made a clay model of the brain.

Music Appreciation: We completed chapter 20 in Music Appreciation I on The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.  I had never heard of this piece of music and even after listening to the piece it did not sound at all familiar to me but it was interesting to listen to.

Spelling/Reading: The boys completed lesson 3 of All About Spelling Level 6.  Emmie completed lessons in AAR Level 2.  Her reading is improving but you know how it is with young readers one minute they are sounding it out great and the next they are reading "dust" as "bench."

Language Arts: Lily started the Prairie Primer this week with AJTL Binder Builder.  We are not reading a chapter a day, instead doing one chapter and activities each week.  We started at the beginning with Little House in the Big Woods.  The boys did a key word outline and paragraph on Andrew Jackson.  Emmie did 4 lessons in LLFLE.

Math: Anthony started his new Math (Rod and Staff Level 7) and completed 4 lessons.  So far we like it.  The only challenge is since it is a textbook he has to copy the problems over in a notebook.  The others completed 4 lessons in MLFLE.

Other Activities this Week

Monday afternoon Lily had a sewing workshop.  She made a soup cozy.

Tuesday afternoon the girls had gymnastics.

Wednesday we had Kid's Club and children's choir.

Thursday we did some work modifying the goat pens.  Then Lily had piano and Emmie had dance.  Lily and I went and walked at the park while Emmie was at dance.

Friday Nicholas left to go on a school trip to Fort Smith for the regional BEST Robotics competition.  He was gone until Saturday night.  They came in 8th out of 30 but did not advance to the finals.

We had a Geography Through Art Co-op on Australia.

Saturday we went and picked up this guy.  We are keeping him for a month or so.  The children named him Frank.

Then the girls and I went to see The Nutcracker Ballet.  It was a community theater production at the Perot Theater. We have never seen the ballet before and knew several little girls that were in it.  We all enjoyed it!

Sunday after church we went to get out Christmas Tree.  There were not very many to choose from this year so the one we got was much bigger then the ones we usually get. 

We went and saw The Grinch while we were down there.  It was an ok movie but I was not that impressed.  The best part was the music and that they actually sang carols that talked about Christ.

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

Tweet

Our Week in Review (Thanksgiving Week)

 We had no power for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, that's why I am running a day behind.

We took off the whole week of Thanksgiving from school at home and the local public school was out as well so Nick did not have to go for his class.  We still read at night before bed and are making our way through The Long Lost Home.  We finished The Secret Garden and started The Magician's Nephew.

Monday we had the 4 H Holiday Craft workshop that lasted from 8:30-4:30 with a break for lunch.  I wrote more about it here.

Tuesday the girls had gymnastics, and it was Alex's birthday!  Emmie made him a teepee (just what every teenage needs!)

While I was at gymnastics with the girls, Alex texted me to tell me that one of our outside cats, Jack had a large, deep wound on his neck.  I told him to spray some wound care on it and we would take a look after we went to eat pizza for his birthday.  Looking at it that night I was surprised how it looked, like a deep puncture wound.  It wasn't bleeding and he was eating and drinking.  Wednesday morning it looked worse so off to the vet we went.  He had to stay a few hours so they could drug him and clean the wound.  It was an abscess.  He was also given an antibiotic shot.  While we waited to go and pick him up, we baked pies for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day Chelsea, Cody, and Liam came to eat lunch with us.  I didn't take any photos except this one of Liam playing the guitar with Art.

Emmie ate too much and was up all night with a belly ache.

Friday morning Nick and I went to Walmart to do some grocery shopping and pick up a few sale items that were left over.  It was cold and rainy and we spent the rest of the day being lazy watching TV and playing games.

Saturday was a beautiful day.  Art had to work all day.  The children wanted to go to a playground so I took them to one less then 5 minutes from the house that we never go to.  Emmie wanted to have a picnic so she made herself a lunch to eat while we were there.

Later we started to put up a few Christmas decorations.

Sunday we stayed at church to help decorate the sanctuary.

I hope you had a great week! (I can't believe November is almost over!)

Happy Homeschooling!

Tweet

Holiday Craft 4 H Workshop 2018

Every year our county 4 H has a Holiday Craft Workshop.  This year they did it a little different.  They split up the children by age with the younger group (5-9) going from 9-11 in the morning and 10 and up going from 1-3 in the afternoon and each age group working on different crafts.  With kids in both groups and teenagers helping and me going as an adult volunteer that meant it was an all day affair for us.  But it went great.  All of the children had a good time and they made some really cute crafts.

Lily and Emmie were in the morning and Nick and Alex were helping so I told Anthony and Christian to bring some things to do to kill time in the morning.  But, for some of the time they helped sort the canned foods the teens collected last week-end so they could be delivered to the families and food bank they were going to.

The 5-9 year olds made 5 crafts.  They did a painted cookie plate, a mug, a painted canvas, and a small and large globe ornament.  They were given suggestions of things they could do, but how they wanted to design or decorate was completely up to them.  I was amazed at all of the creativity!

After clean up we took a lunch break at McDonalds and were glad some friends were able to join us!


The afternoon group had 3 different projects.  They did a wooden board, wooden "cookie style" ornaments, and decorated glass jars.  They also were given suggestions but could do whatever they wanted and came up with some amazingly creative and beautiful crafts!  Emmie and Lily had brought some things to do, but there were not as many kids as had signed up for the afternoon so Lily got to make some crafts with the leftover supplies and there were a few things leftover from the morning so Emmie did another painting.

Anthony's He didn't even draw it first, just started painting

Lily's

I even got to do a board.

We had a great time!

Tweet