I usually don’t gameschool on Saturdays, but I did read a book and play some games today anyway which can count. 

I read the picture book to Bugsy for his bedtime story.  I did that after my husband and I had our online date night with friends. We played Mind Trap. See way down below. 

I had bought Mousetrap the day before at the thrift store for less than $3. So that was Bugsy’s fun thing he got to do when his Saturday morning chores were done. He put it together, first attempting his own way, then finally asking me and looking at directions.  I had more fun with this when I was a kid than I did playing it with him. My grandma gave it to me for Christmas when I was 9 maybe? I thought for sure my mom still had it in her games closet but lo and behold when I was in Utah in February, and looked for it, it was gone. I had told Bugsy if I couldn’t find it at Grandma’s, then I’d get it for him while thrifting. So yeah, I went thrifting to my local Goodwill because I don’t have any viral symptoms. I found it deserted so I felt I was social distancing. I bought Mind Trap and Mouse Trap and those Story Cards I mentioned a few posts ago. Anyway, I’ve realized Mouse Trap is a toy, not a game. So I’m in the process of adding in science trivia questions and tying those into earning cheese pieces. 

That night, hubby and I played the Mind Trap game in Zoom with some longtime friends we’ve known since we each had only two kids. We dispensed with spinning the spinner and just picked whatever category we wanted. We played that the winner was the first to answer 5 cards correctly. My friend Becky won. It’s a lot of fun, good for when you want a mental workout. The nerd in me wants to go back and study the cards I missed and figure them out but the practical mom in me has more important things to do :-). When we play again I’ll just only pick the word riddles and avoid all the other categories, LOL!. I’m definitely feeling rusty on algebra. When my  kids hit algebra in homeschool they correct their own work using the Mathusee teacher’s manual so that’s why I’m rusty! 😉

Feeling stressed? Freaking out? Here’s a giveaway of an amazing webinar series to help parents during this troubled time!

I’m pleased to announce that my fabulous friends, Kent and Amy Bowler, homeschooling parents of 7 and grandparents of 4, are starting a 6-week online course to help parents deal with stress, anxiety, and burnout.

Aren’t they cute?

It starts tomorrow, March 26th. They are giving away one registration to the winner of a random drawing. Please comment below in the comments section if you would like to be entered into the random drawing. Winner will be announced tomorrow here on the blog in the comments at 5 PM Utah time.

Look at all these tools you learn to be revolutionary!

Here is a special message from Amy and Kent:

“This could be the ugliest week we’ve ever lived through” was a particularly savory quote this weekend from Christine Romans, CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent, describing the expected economic impact of the virus this week on regular families like yours and ours.

Pretty grim.

But we all feel it.  The weight of the unknown.  It is palpable.

However,

“Heroes are made by the times,” Star Wars, The Clone Wars, Season 1

And it’s true.

This is an amazing time for you to stand up as an incredible, heroic Parent, and to help your children to become Heroes as well.

This is an opportunity to break through the constant bombardment and attacks that are working to pull our families apart and to instead make our families stronger than ever.

We want to help.

We’re starting our Revolutionary Parents mastery course this week and we’ve deeply discounted it so that anyone can participate.  The course has 6 live classes, multiple paradigm shifts, and a parenting toolbox with 14 tools you can implement now to completely change the dynamic in your home.

We’re also including our Revolutionary Youth self-paced program that includes 5 pre-recorded webinars and an accompanying workbook.  Both together are only $97.  Get details on our website.

Those who have taken the course describe how they were able to break through the walls their kids were hiding behind, connect in truly meaningful ways, and have real impact in their lives.

Revolutionary.

In the meantime, we have lots of helps on our online private FB group: Revolutionary Heroes Forum [click here to request to join].

Remember that you as the parents, are the captain of the ship. ou own and control the atmosphere in your home. Break through the noise, stay focused on your purpose, and help your family fly.

If you want to minimize the following in your home:

-anxiety

-burnout

-contention

-discouragement

-emotional outbursts

Then this course is for you! Register here! 

If you would like to enter the drawing for a free registration, comment below.

“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

If you want to register for this course, go here. It starts Thursday March 26. If you want to enter the drawing for a free registration, comment below.

Rick Steves’ videos on YouTube offer wonderful free glimpses into famous museums in Europe.

Perhaps you’d like to get more in-depth looks and a bigger variety of offerings, beyond Europe.

Here is a site, travelandleisure.com that features 12 of the most famous museums and galleries in the world offering virtual tours.

Google Arts and Culture has curated a list of 2500 museums and galleries here that have some kind of way to peek inside at their offerings.

You can see inside Ann Frank’s home here. Corrie Ten Boom’s is over here. These have been availalble online for years, but now we have more time to avail ourselves of these fabulous resources!

Then if you want some coloring pages related to libraries, museums, and galleries, here you go.

Tour the world and color some art without leaving your couch!

I listened to the above amazing talk last Sunday while taking a hot soak in my tub and oh how luscious the whole experience was! Meg is a beautiful, fun, smart and engaging speaker who will rock your socks off as she tells of how angels work, based on the Book of Mormon scripture from 2 Nephi 32, “Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

I love her talks as well as those of John Bytheway and Hank Smith. I have a few of their CDs that we listen to on long drives, especially on Sundays. For years I have checked every few months on YouTube to see if they have new content, but they still have the same ones I’ve heard before.

Guess what? Hank, Meg, and John have an app that is loaded with their talks and resources. It’s called ourturtlehouse.com. It has free services as well as paid-for, monthly subscription, premium services, like podcasts by John and Hank that are updated weekly. I signed up for the premium service and that’s how I was able to listen to the angel  talk.

Right now, during this -world-turned-upside-down-by-the-pandemic, when we are being asked to homechurch and homeschool, you can get the premium part for free!
Just go here and use the code “HOMECHURCHHELPS” to get a free month! Then you can listen to the angel talk by Meg too and see if you love this resource.

If you already know you want the premium service then you can go here and use the code “97CENTS” to get the premium service for 97 cents instead of the regular cost of $9.97. Sweet! Again, go here to sign up click on the monthly plan, then apply the code “97CENTS.” You will be charged 97 cents a month, and can cancel anytime.

I don’t get any commission for promoting this resource, I just love Meg, John and Hank! I think you will too!

Did you hear that vidangel.com is free from March 16-30? You can sign up here for a “free stuck at home account” with no credit card that will be charged if you forget to cancel.

Image credit: dailyrecord.co.uk

You’ve probably heard by now, but in case you haven’t…Audible is offering a bunch of stories for children and teens for free right now due to public school closures. I encourage you all to take advantage of this. Go here to start discovering. It’s not their whole collection, but a sizable chunk of fabulous stories that will engage any child or teen, or adult.

Listening to stories counts just as much as reading them! You also don’t have to sit sill while listening,  they or you can put a puzzle together or do crafts or cleaning. (I often have my kids do housework, especially dishes. The older than 9 kids iron clothes while they listen to read alouds, but that’s another post for another day.)

If you are wondering how to keep hands busy during read alouds, Sarah Mackenzie has a great podcast about that here.

Usborne has some terrific arts and craftsy books perfect for keeping hands busy and quiet that you can get from my Usborne store over here.

(Usborne paint with water books are here. Paper plane and other folding paper activity books are here. Sticker books are here. Paper dolls are here. Fashion activity and coloring books are here. Other coloring books are here. )

Here are some Audible stories in the temporary free collection I can vouch for, as I’ve listened or read all of these.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. Audible’s version with actress Rachel McAdams is so darling!

Rivals 1 and Rivals 2 (I actually have only listened to Rivals 1 but my friend Olivia vouches for Rivals 2, these are fun stories from history about frenemies, like Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth and the two brothers who founded Adidas and Puma)

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett, this is one of Burnett’s lesser-known works but is just as delightful as The Secret Garden, if not more.

River Secrets by Shannon Hale

Jukebox Joyride by Jacob Stein (an Audible original, very enjoyable tour of the history of music in story format for kiddos)

Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Image Credit: frugallivingnw.com

Then these look promising but I haven’t read or listened to them:

books by Gail Carson Levine, Kathleen Krull about scientists like Isaac Newton, Orson Scott Card, and Jon Sczieska and many more including other literary classics that I’ve been meaning to read, and the old ones I read but can’t remember much about, like Moby Dick.

books about memory and the history of the world

Many of the classics like Wizard of Oz, Robin Hood, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Winnie the Pooh, and Tales of Beatrix Potter

Enjoy!

FTC Disclosure: I receive no commission on the Audible link but I do receive a commission if you buy Usborne books from the Usborne links. Promotion of Usborne books on this site does not imply any endorsement from Usborne Books and More of any opinion expressed on this site.

I read aloud these picture books today:

A wonderful look at the remarkable Abigail. I don’t agree with the list of women achievers in the back but I do love Abigail. I learned quite a bit from the book, even though I read the bio of her husband by David McCullough a few years ago which does mention its fair share about her. I also love the HBO series of John and Abigail by Tom Hanks, especially Laura Linney’s performance of Abigail.

This one’s a darling encapsulation in picture book form of Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages. If I had a little girl at home I would totally get her into the Lola Dutch  activities here. Maybe I can get Bugsy playing with the puppets at least.

This one’s a great book to illustrate local interdependence. It’s fun to see the cascade of events that culminate in blue ribbons at the county fair and a young girl set a goal and achieve it. I’ll be adding this one to my list of goal-getter picture books!

For our Language Arts themed day of gameschooling, which is Monday, we had to play Codenames after scoring it while thrifting recently! The kids liked it. I think they will grow to love it as they play it more and get into the groove of the language subtleties of the game.  It’s a great game to teach strategy, thinking ahead, word associations, and connecting with the brains of other people. I plan to play it often with them on Mondays, and customize the cards, using terms from the different books I’ve read to them, by using index cards with words I write on them.

I’m also going to use pictures to make my own “Codenames Pictures” from three different sources I already have so I don’t have to make anything up:

• cards from an old Disney Memory Game I have from when my older kiddos were little. Hey, it’s instant Disney Codenames, DIY!

• cards from the Dixit Boardgame
• cards from this interesting boxed set of cards I’ve never heard of before that I discovered while thrifting last week, seen here. I paid less than $2. Because the cards were sitting in the board/card game section of the thrift store, I thought the set was a game and got them. Now that I have them here at home I’m realizing it’s not a game. Apparently it’s a promotional gift/advertisement for visiting a retirement center, LOL! I  like the cards…they have kind of old-fashioned, unique photographic images on the front and then questions on the back to ask people, especially older people, about their life, to increase human connection through storytelling and prevent dementia. I’ve been wanting cards to use with Dixit that aren’t quite so creepy and God and his angels delivered! So while not a game per se, I’ll take ’em.

I’m hoping to play Codenames online in my zoom room soon. I’ll let you know how it goes. I figured out how to suspend my iPad from my chandelier so that I have a webcam to pick up the image of a board or card game displayed on my dining room table. Then I’ll text the code card via phone to any remote spymaster.

We also played Quelf for Family Home Evening, this time with Dad/dear husband, instituting the new house rules I wrote about here, in the Monday 3/16 of that post. We all had fun. It’s definitely a game that is better with more people, especially high energy people. Any game that makes people smile or laugh or have sparkly eyes is a winner in my book, and this game did that tonight at least once for every one of the five of us.

Go here if you want more info about gameschooling! And here’s how to start the #abookandagameaday challenge for 2020!

This is copied and pasted from a message from Usborne Books and More about a nifty educational tool called the Learning Palette. (I used the Learning Palette disc with my older kiddos when they were young. I just found out it’s now an online educational tool as well).

Photo Credit: amazon.com

Watch the video below if you are unfamiliar with the Learning Palette. It’s so cool that now you can do it all online! It’s customizable for ages and subjects you want your kiddos to be drilled on, but overall it’s for elementary school-aged children. With over 660 lessons and 7920 questions, it is sure to keep at least one person in your house who likes to learn this way engaged for some time.

If you like this you will probably love all the books from Usborne Books and More. Check out my Usborne Store here. 

Learning Palette online has made this service available to customers FREE for 60 days, for a limited time. There is no need for a credit card or any commitments at a later date.

Learning Palette online is a self-correcting online product, which includes access to 55 titles (35 Math and 20 Reading) for Grades K-5. This is a total of 660 lessons and 7920 questions! The online version mimics the hands-on version of Learning Palette and is aligned to State and National educational standards. Most importantly, it is FUN!

Access Learning Palette online HERE. Simply enter your email address and name and you can begin playing today!

 

Hey, it’s the best time ever to get all of the non-statist, liberty-lover Connor Boyack’s educational materials (except his monthly Free Market Rules). If you are a liberty-lover you will want these resources. These are truths are country is founded on, no longer taught in schools!

If the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would buy these books for their children!

Are you fed up with socialism and communism being taught as truth? Then get these books to help you and your children know what a freedom-based society looks like.

I had an enlightening evening with Connor a few years ago when he came and spoke to my Hero Project class end of year ceremony/party. You can read about that here. I love the heroes he chose to speak about. These were all true heroes who stood up to government that overstepped its bounds. People like Alexander Doniphan, Edward Snowden, and the brave Unknown Protester, from June 5, 1989.

Would you like to know how you and your children can recognize when this happens? Get these books and resources, read them, and talk about them! They are written for ages 5-11 but older ages can still learn from them, including adults. They take hard to digest books like F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Edward Griffin’s book, The Creature from Jekyll Island and put them in digestible format.

This bundle includes three brand new e-books created for families to use together in the weeks ahead during social distancing and quarantining:

1. 13 Questions to Level-Up Your Family Dinner Conversations
2. Subtle Ways Your Kids are Taught to Embrace Socialism
3. 10 Tips for Raising an Entrepreneur

The bundle also includes these items:

• All 11 Tuttle Twins books
• All 11 PDF activity workbooks
• All 11 MP3 audiobooks
• The Tuttle Tales family card game
• The three ebooks listed above
• Passion-Driven Education (PDF, but paperback for the first 250 orders)

Get it all here!

That’s $265 in content for only $60! This deal will be disabled soon, so grab yours quick! Go here to get it before the sale ends Wednesday night, March 25!

No coupon needed! This price is nearly 80% off!

As a gameschooler, I’m excited to get the new Tuttle Twins card game and test it out!

Enjoy this interview here with Connor by Tom Woods on how freedom-based economy can be taught to children.

Long live freedom in economy, education, and all aspects of life! It can only do so if we the people educate ourselves about the principles of liberty, and then ACT on the principles and hold ourselves and our elected officials accountable!

FTC Disclosure: I receive a commission if you purchase this bundle using the links above. The cost is the same to you and the money I earn helps to run this blog.