Right Start Math Review

We have been using Right Start Math this year, and are loving it! Right Start takes a unique approach to math that just makes sense to me and I love seeing my son do well with it. (Here he is with little brother tagging along.)

Here is a glimpse into their philosophy:

•  "Informal mathematics should precede paper and pencil work. Long before a child knows how to add fractions with unlike denominators, she should be able to add one half and one fourth mentally." Instead of putting lots of abstract worksheets in front of a Kindergartener, we're working hands-on with quality manipulatives. A lot of them. 
• "The only students who like flash cards are those who do not need them." Amen to that. We use games, not flash cards, for practice. 

Luxury Baths in a Bottle!

I've never been a big "bath person", but one of the perks of our new house is a nice big bath tub. Since it seemed like a pity to let it sit there unused, I thought I'd give the bath thing a go. After doing some intense research (you know, Pinterest style) I found all sorts of recipes for bath salts and bath soaks. Although it seems nice to make all that, I've got plenty of projects on my plate right now and wanted something simpler, and this is what I came up with...

Luxury Baths in a Bottle!

If you want to take a relaxing, skin-nourishing bath without lots of chemicals (which are pretty much every store-bought bath product), you need to look no further than the following basic ingredients: baking soda, milk, salt, and oatmeal. If you really want a treat then add in some essential oils too.

You can find lots of recipes for specialized bath salts and other concoctions on Pinterest, but for the most part, the good ones all utilize some combination of those ingredients. So I decided to just make some Bath Bottles instead. Here they are:

As pretty as they were in glass, I later opted for plastic containers because they're easier and safer to use with wet, slippery hands. (If you decide to make these, I share my free, printable labels at the end of this post!) Here they are:

To use them, simply grab what you need. Here's what each one is good for...

I Heart My Laminator

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

I love that you save, protect, and shinyize my stuff. 

I love that you turn any document into a dry-erase board. 

The Color Swatch Ring

 Would you like to know what's in this cute little beaut?

We recently moved and have been painting and painting and painting some more, ever since. I wanted to do something handy with my swatches, and have wished a couple times that I had them with me when shopping. And so I present to you, the color swatch ring:

I cut the paint color cards to the same size, made divider cards for each room in the house, laminated and hole punched them, and stuck them on a ring. And now I can flip right to living room and see both colors used in that room, or bedroom and see the colors used in that room. I even laminated a swatch of each fabric I used to sew bedding items and curtains, which was handy when choosing my paint colors.

Now if I'm shopping for something for the house I can take my colors with me, which is rather handy! 

Did I mention that I love my laminator? 

Life Happens, But So Does Home Schooling

This has been quite a busy fall & winter for us... besides home schooling, we've been house-hunting, house-buying, packing, moving, unpacking and settling in to our new place. Oh, and did I mention that meanwhile I was in my first trimester of pregnancy?

If you've ever thought to yourself that you may want to do all those things at once, let me be the first to tell you that you MAY prefer to do otherwise, but if that's how life happens, it's ok. :)

Just for kicks I thought I'd share with you our "daily schedule"...

See how well-planned that is? You may be thinking that I've got it really together, but in that case you'd be wrong. We have yet to do ONE day by the schedule I so thoughtfully made before starting our school year. But somehow school happened anyway. And I'm thankful it did.

If we weren't home schooling, our home-buying process would've been WAY more stressful since various setbacks changed our would-be move-in date from August to November, which would've resulted in our little guy changing schools only a couple months into Kindergarten.  Besides that, he would've missed out on a lot of play dates with friends, a day-time bible class we join (a couple home schooled teen girls teach a class for the little ones while the moms have our bible study), visiting Dad at work, visiting his grandparents during the perfect fall weather and enjoying the Pumpkin Patch and Wild Animal Park minus the crowds, Day out with Thomas the Train, and behind-the scenes tours of Auntie Anne's Pretzels and Braum's Dairy Farm with our other home schooling friends. Most of all I think he'd miss getting to romp around with his brother, hunt roly polies, build forts, play super heroes, and go exploring.

I know I'd miss our "big talks," little snuggles, and hearing his lunch time prayers too. Besides, how can a class room compete with this???

Creation or Natural Coincidence?

Take a look at this aircraft cabin for a minute... 

It takes a lot of genius, planning, technology,
and wisdom to build such a marvel, wouldn't you say?

If someone said that the aircraft and its cabin were not planned... they just existed... by themselves... or by chance... or by coincidence... how would you react? How would the engineers and designers and scientists that built it react?

Now let's consider these wonders...  

My Bible Marking System

I will just tell you right off the bat that I am big on organization. Now, what does that have to do with highlighting in your Bible? Well, if you use any color to highlight any verse here there and everywhere with no logic behind it, or if you underline verses here there and everywhere that have to do with this that and the other, then you will have a very written-in Bible, but it won't serve you as well as it could. So, what I'd like to suggest is that the next time you get a new Bible, it's a great time to re-think your Bible Marking System! If you were to mark certain themes in a certain way or color, it makes it easier to find verses you've marked, and helps you to glance at a the page and know what themes are talked about. You'll see what I mean in a minute... let's just dive in.

First off, ditch the highlighters! They are unstable ink (they'll bleed through the page or mess up over the years). Second, get yourself some colored pencils for underlining. I've tried various bible markers, including the chalky type special Bible highlighters and other stuff that's geared specially for Bible marking, but colored pencils are the way to go. If you get a good little set, you'll have a variety of different colors that you can use for various different subjects, and since they're pencils, you can erase the occasional line that goes askew. Or the one that your one-and-a-half-year-old drew after watching Mommy do it.