The Best Part About Graduation ... The Party!!

After a couple of extremely stressful days in our personal life, it's good to spend some time putting together this post about Kyndal's family graduation party. Because when it's all said and done, family is all that really matters anyway.

On Saturday our family, and a few friends, celebrated Kyndal's high school graduation with a cookout and fun day at my parents' lake house. Those attending were me, Rick, Dawson, his girlfriend Taylar, Eli, Brynne, my mom and dad, my niece Rylee and her boyfriend Cade, Kyndal and her boyfriend Collin, Collin's mom Pam and brother Austin (dad Tracy was working on their deck), my uncle Jon and aunt Dixie, next door neighbors at the lake (and boys who Kyndal actually went to high school with for a time in the first town she lived in with her dad) Channin, Dalton and Dakotah.

Oh, and Crusoe was there!

We grilled burgers and hot dogs, had hashbrown potato casserole, pea salad, pasta salad, chips, brownies, lemon bars and drinks. The adults mostly just sat around on the deck and the dock and enjoyed the beautiful day!

The kids fished and rode the wave runner.

And we went on a boat ride. The little kids even got out on the couch for some splashing fun!

It was just such a great day spent with family and friends celebrating Kyndal and her accomplishments!

So How Did We Do? ~ An End of the Year Review

I don't know about you, but I cannot believe the school year is coming to an end! It went by SO fast! We had a few little bumps along the way, but mostly this was a very successful year and there really isn't much I would change about it.

It was a transition for me to send Dawson back to public school (I have missed him and the high school subject matters a lot!) and to bring Eli home to school with Brynne. But, the kids all did well and I know that we made the right decisions. I do still wish Dawson was home and, in fact, I wish that I would have homeschooled all of my children from day one and graduated Kyndal this year from home.  (I don't care a thing about bowing down to the oppression of government institutions ... had to deal with the harsh realities of that this week!) But she has graduated and Dawson is doing fine and is where he wants to be, so I guess all is good.

Speaking of graduation ... now there's an adjustment! I have a graduated child. So strange! She is very excited about her future plans of attending cosmetology school, which she will begin in the fall. She and I will be going to tour the school next week. She will do a great job, I know, because it is something she has always wanted to do! My sister is hoping to apprentice her so that she can take her booth here in the town where we live on the days she is not able to work it. So, Kyndal might come out of school with a booth and clients already established. That would be a blessing!

So, onto what worked and didn't work for us this year in our homeschool ...

Bible. We started each morning with a Bible lesson out of Grapevine Studies: Stick Figuring through the Bible - Old Testament Overview Level 3-4. I would read passages from the Bible and the kids would then draw stick figure drawings in their journals. We learned about:

• Creation
• Adam and Eve
• The Fall
• Noah and the Flood
• The Tower of Babel
• Job
• Abraham
• Isaac
• Jacob
• Joseph the Slave
• Joseph the Ruler
• Moses
• The Deliverance
• The Exodus
• The Law and the Promises
• The Tabernacle
• The Twelve Spies

This was a perfect way for us to start our day and we will use this book again next year and do the last half of the series. Excellent!

Grammar. We started our year using Easy Grammar, but it just didn't seem to work for Eli the way that it worked for Brynne. So I spent some time just printing free worksheets off the internet. We focused a good deal of our time on nouns, verbs and adjectives using Rainbow Sentences and Samson's Classroom. But, both of those things ran their course. We were doing so much reading and writing that I decided to abandon formal grammar for the rest of the school year. We replaced it with Spanish lessons. I would really like to find a good fit for us for grammar. I do believe the kids are getting loads of it with all of our reading and writing, but I would still like a formal program. My heart has always leaned toward Cozy Grammar. I may just have to buckle down and buy it.

Writing. We spent the year doing the lessons out of WriteShop Primary Book A and are finishing it this week. I have really liked this program a lot. I don't know that the kids love it, but I feel like it has given them so good foundation in writing. They covered these topics:

• Personal Writing
• Thinking of Ideas to Write About
• Selecting a Title
• Constructing a Beginning, Middle and End
• Using a Period at the End of a Sentence
• Using Word Families to Write Stories with Rhyming Words
• Using a Story Web to Organize Ideas
• Introducing the Personal Narrative Story
• Writing About Events in the Order They Happen

Brynne loves to write. Eli does not. I realized this week that part of his problem may be linked to his Asperger's (took me long enough), so I need to spend more time allowing him to get his thoughts out orally and then helping him to put them in writing. This causes him a lot of stress, usually combined with a lot of tears.

I have already received WriteShop Primary Book B and we will use it next year.

Additionally, we have also begun cursive handwriting using Handwriting Without Tears Cursive Handwriting. We will continue to use this throughout the summer. It is wonderful and the kids have really taken to cursive. (Do you know they don't even teach that in public school anymore? What???) My children will learn to read and write cursive. Next year we will move onto Handwriting Without Tears Cursive Success for 4th graders.

Spelling. Ugh. We used All About Spelling this year, starting with Level 1. I thought we liked it. By the end of the year, and midway through Level 2, I decided we did not. We abandoned the tiles early on as tedious work. I don't know how to explain it. We just didn't like it and it was one of those subjects that got LOTS of groans! We homeschool. Groaning is not necessary. I considered abandoning formal spelling altogether and just doing copywork. But, honestly I think Eli would groan so much through the extra writing that he would miss the spelling aspect of it. So this week, at the recommendation of a friend, we are using some sample lessons from Soaring with Spelling and Vocabulary. LOVE! I think it is exactly what we have been looking for! I love the games and the vocabulary aspect! I think I will definitely be purchasing it for next year. Whew!!

Math. We started out our year reviewing facts with Addition and Subtraction Teaching and Learning Made Easy by Glenda Brown James. It was a great way to start the year. Then we moved onto Math Enhancement Programme, a free math curriculum that I absolutely love. It is intense and wonderful! Brynne loves it! Eli, not so much. But then we had some math programs to review through the Schoolhouse Review Crew. We did lessons with A+ Tutorsoft, did some of our own lessons on measurement using living books, and then found the wonderful world of Math U See. This came at a perfect time because it was time for us to start multiplication!

We will continue to use Math U See Gamma throughout the summer to work on our multiplication facts. The kids also play Math Rider everyday and do Multiplication Math Wrap-ups. They will continue this, as well.

When school starts back up in the fall, we will start our year with Multiplication Teaching and Learning Made Easy by Glenda Brown James. After we complete the book (6 weeks) we will finish Math U See Gamma and then move onto Math U See Delta to work on division.

Unit Studies. For social studies and science, we do unit studies. This also includes literature studies. I just build these on my own based on interest, community events, literature and Schoolhouse Review Crew products. This year we studied:

• Caves
• The Story About Ping (Five in a Row)
• Penguins
• Fairies
• Insects
• Fall Equinox
• Lentil (Five in a Row)
• Clown of God (Five in a Row)
• Nigeria
• Indonesia
• Halloween
• Election
• Japan
• Charlie Needs a New Cloak
• Atoms, Molecules, Crystals
• Gingerbread Friends
• Arctic Animals
• Denmark/Polar Bears
• Canada/Snowy Owls
• Norway/Arctic Fox
• Sweden/Whale
• Australia
• Rocks
• Birds
• China
• Valentine's Day
• Abraham Lincoln
• St. Patrick's Day
• Stick Man
• Light
• Shells
• Vikings
• Lewis and Clark
• Recycling: Plastic Bags
• Herbs
• Square Foot Gardening

This was a fun year learning about a wide variety of things. But next year it's time to start a more concrete area of study. I am planning for us to do an entire USA geography study using Road Trip USA by Confessions of a Homeschooler. Eli and Brynne love Geography and I think this is going to be a great year-long study for us. Any science we do will be nature or product reviews.

Art, Nature, PE. These things were done intermittently throughout the year as time and interest arose. Next year we will probably just do it the same way. We had days where we just went to the park for nature study, or played on the playground. We took lots of walks and rode scooters. We did some art projects here and there with our other lessons and independently. I was happy with what we did.

Co-op. We miss our Co-op in Oklahoma. It was a perfect fit for us and we had great friends. We joined a Co-op in a town 30 minutes away, but it just did not work for us. The kids took two classes: Holidays Around the World and Water World. We just didn't like it. This fall I am hoping to start a very small Co-op with a few local families to meet on Friday mornings. I would like for us to do some type of weekly art lesson. And then I thought I might lead a study through Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling since we never seemed to get to it this year. And I want to!! I am still working through this in my mind.

Reading. This was a biggie for us this year! The kids did LOTS of independent reading, progressing very nicely! They read every day for 30 minutes. Then we also had several read alouds. This year we read:

• James and the Giant Peach
• Secrets at Sea
• Stuart Little
• Peter Pan
• The Storm
• Snowshoe the Hare
• The Spiderwick Chronicles series
• Bud, Not Buddy
• Herb Fairies, Stellaria
• Herb Fairies, Secret of the Scotch Broom
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
• And loads and loads and loads of picture books and non-fiction books

I would have to say that all-in-all, this was a successful year with excellent products and great progress! With only a few tweaks, we have next year all mapped out with few changes. We have a relaxed summer schedule planned with continued learning and then will start back full-time in late August.

How was your year? I am linking up with the Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog Cruise, and you can go to their blog to see how other families felt about their school year. It goes live on May 25th.

J is for Journey to a Frog, Butterfly, Chicken

We will be schooling through the summer, with a more relaxed schedule. Our schooling will occur from 10:00 a.m. to noon, to allow for lots of afternoon playtime and swimming. We will do Bible, math, reading, and a unit study each day.

Our unit study will consist of our Square Foot Garden and the life cycles (aka Journey) of a frog, butterfly and chicken.

We are starting with the Journey of a Frog. We received a bowl of tadpoles from a friend. Starting this week we will be reading about the life cycle of a frog and notebooking the changes in our tadpoles as they make their journey to full froghood. Then we will release them back into the water source from where they came.

In a week or so, we will begin learning about the Journey of a Butterfly. We will be reading the book Poppy by Avi and will be growing butterflies with our Green Earth Butterfly Kit. (This is all part of a review we are doing for the Schoolhouse Review Crew.) We will also be doing lots of butterfly life cycle activities and reading other books.

In July, we will be receiving a loaned incubator from the University of Missouri Extension Center, twelve eggs and a lesson plan to plot the Journey of a Chicken. We will hatch our little eggs, plot our chicks' growth, and care for them until they start stinking too much. Then we will give our babies to a local family who will use them as meat chickens. No, the kids will not know that. They will think they are going "to the farm".

Our read aloud while we are hatching the chicken eggs will be Omelette: A Chicken in Peril by Gareth Owen.

This will be a great unit for us to do this summer! I am really looking forward to it! I hope the kids enjoy our Journey, too.

Linking up with Marcy at Ben and Me.

Dating Through the Alphabet ~ Church

Well, I have to admit I have not been diligent in planning dates for Rick and I. It seems that when he is here on the weekends, our weekends are full. What that really means is that I have NOT made a date night a priority like I had intended. For that, I feel horrible. We allow his weekends here to be monopolized with time spent with the kids, family events, kids' activities and yard work. It is only my fault that I have not made that intentional effort to set aside time for just the two of us.

This weekend was no exception. But, we did get away without the kids on Sunday morning as we travelled out of town with my bell choir from church to play in a little country church that had invited us. We were with other people, but we still had some fun together without the kids.

After our performance, nine of us went to a local winery for lunch. It was kind of funny for all of us to show up in our United Methodist Church shirts to eat lunch and drink wine. Yes, we drank wine. We had a GREAT time!! Lots and lots of laughs and a beautiful setting! The food was great! It felt like we were in Italy. Gorgeous!!

Who says Church can't be fun?? And who says Church can't be a fun date??

Do you have a date you would like to Link up?? I'd love for you to, if you do.

Weekly Wrap-up ~ The End is Near, But There's Another Beginning

In our regular life this week…

This has been another crazy, busy week. We have been away from home every night this week! Monday night we drove four hours to Tulsa, went to WWE Monday Night Raw, then drove home another four hours getting here at 3 a.m. On Tuesday night, after a late afternoon power nap, the kids wanted to go for a walk so we walked to Dairy Queen for dinner and stopped by Grandma and Papa's to eat it. On Wednesday night we walked to and from church for dinner and bell choir practice. On Thursday we spent the day in Kansas City (an hour and half drive each way) and then came home for Brynne's softball practice. Last night I needed to run some errands to get supplies for Kyndal's graduation family party at my parents' lake house, which is today. Then tomorrow morning Rick, Brynne and I are getting up bright and early to travel to a nearby church for our bell choir to perform. Afterward we are stopping at a winery for lunch with some of the group. Whew! I need a full week of doing NOTHING! And I need to stop driving my car! The trip to/from Kansas City on Thursday cost $39.10 in gas! Ridiculous!!

In our homeschool this week…

We did our basics all week, lots of reading, cursive handwriting, and multiplication worksheets and drills.

With ongoing frustrations with spelling, we have decided to change up our spelling routine for these last two weeks of school and by using some sample lessons I printed online from Soaring with Spelling and also playing games with that list on Spelling City.

I love a planner page with lots of check marks, especially on a Friday!

We had taken a several week break from our WriteShop writing program to do Spanish lessons for a couple of different products we have been reviewing. With only one lesson remaining in WriteShop to finish Primary A, we picked it back up this week to get it finished by the end of our school year. We are practicing story sequencing.

Our unit study this week centered around our Square Foot Garden. We spent a lot of time planning and discussing the importance of proper placement. Then we filled out a grid of where we will plant their seeds. After a little more research and revision, we made final plans. The seeds will go in on Monday.

This might be their final plan for their Square Foot Garden. We'll look at it again one more time on Monday morning before the seeds go in the ground.

With the weather so beautiful and FINALLY spring-like, although it's almost summer, the birds are just happily chirping away. And that brings us out the front door and into the yard several times a day.

Where are those Starlings? I can hear them but I can't find them!

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

We have been reading aloud the book Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis.

It has been our favorite read aloud of the year. It is about a young orphan in the 1930's who believes that his father is a famous musician and he goes in search of him. On Thursday we went to Coterie Theatre in Kansas City to see the play based on the book. It was SO good! The adaptation was amazing! We really enjoyed it!

Then after the play we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Fritz's. The food is mediocre, but the train delivery of it makes it all worth it!

A favorite thing this week was…

The beautiful temperatures that had us outside every day playing, riding scooters, going for walks, playing with the dogs and planting flowers.

What's in the kitchen this week ...

It's been another week of grabbing whatever we have handy. We did walk to Dairy Queen for dinner one night, had church potluck on Wednesday, and cereal for dinner Thursday night since we ate out for lunch at Fritz's. I finally sat down yesterday and organized our schedule for the next two weeks, got menus planned, made a real-live grocery list, and went shopping. I haven't accomplished that in weeks! We'll be having some favorites: chicken and noodles, chicken cigars, fried fish, burritos, spaghetti, and popcorn chicken with waffle fries. Gotta get those veggies worked in, too!

What we're reading ...

Mom: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, Becoming a Titus 2 Woman by Martha Peace, Created to be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl, Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. ** I have not been able to read much because of our crazy schedule the past couple of weeks. Looking forward to summer!

Eli: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules by Jeff Kinney. (I just ordered him a box set of George Brown, Class Clown.)

Brynne: Flash (Puppy Place) by Ellen Miles (She is blasting through this series and I just ordered her the next five books.)

Read-aloud: Secrets of the Scotch Broom (Herb Fairies series) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. I picked this old hardback up for 50 cents at our church garage sale several weeks ago. We were excited to see that the Coterie Theatre (that we went to on Thursday to see "Bud, Not Buddy") will have a production of  "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" next June!! I love when that kind of thing happens!

Things we're working on…

Finishing up our last five days of this school year. We will take a week-long break and then start on our summer school schedule on June 3rd.

I’m grateful for ...

The freedom to set our own schedule when homeschooling. I know the kids won't be excited about doing school work in the mornings this summer. But, I think they will be happy when we are able to take a couple of two week vacations in the fall because of it. That way we can enjoy some extended sunny Florida weather in October or November, and then an extended Christmas break here at home!

In the garden…

I got my peppers, jalapenos, red onions, parsley, and purple basil planted this week in my pizza garden. I will finish off that garden box by planting regular basil and oregano.

What's coming up this week ...

We will be working hard to finish up what we are doing so we can begin a more relaxed summer schedule! Brynne has a softball game Monday night that her daddy gets to go to while Eli and I are leading his Scout meeting by teaching about landscaping. We will be planting flowers at the Scout cabin and making mini greenhouses. The rest of the week might be kind of quiet?? ... I hope ?? Then on Friday night the family is going camping with the Scouts for one night. Boy, I can't wait (insert sarcasm here).

Things you might have missed at Journey to Excellence ...

• I revealed the new tattoos Kyndal and I got as part of our graduation bonding day.
• I reviewed Spanish for You!
• "I" was for "Invest Locally".
• We went to WWE Monday Night Raw and had a blast!
• I shared our Summer School plans.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share (silly, serious or both!)…

Yesterday morning Brynne said, "Eli and I are almost in 4th grade!" I didn't tell her that we are really doing 3rd grade again because she is only 7 and Eli could use another year of reinforcing "3rd grade" concepts. If I don't do this, she will graduate when she is 16. We'll just call this 3/4T for 3rd/4th transitional. Or maybe our school year will be January to January so that we can spend this summer and fall doing 3rd grade work and graduate to 4th in January. Whatever.

We are happily linking up this week at the following sites:

Summer School

Do you school year round? In past years, we have followed the public school schedule and stopped schoolwork in the summer months. We would have an occasional unit study day (that I would count as a school day for the following year), but otherwise we would give our brains a big ol' break.

But this year, I have plans to do things differently. We will have a modified schedule for summer that will involve fewer subjects. The kids are in the middle of learning their multiplication facts and I don't want to break when we are making good progress.

They have also really improved on their reading skills and in their stamina with read alouds, so I want to keep reading everyday!

Since we don't get to a lot of science in the school year, and since the kids are planting a Square Foot Garden, we will do Science unit studies all summer.

And I came across a really neat short Bible/Culture lesson that will take us around the world.

And we will also have various Schoolhouse Review Crew products we will need to be reviewing throughout the summer.

So here are our summer plans:

• We will start each day doing a Math-U-See workbook page and then will split up to play Math Rider and to practice facts on our Multiplication Wrap-ups. This should take us about 30 minutes.

• The kids will read independently for 15 minutes every day out of the book of their choice. I will also read a chapter or so out of another book as a read aloud. This will take us about 30 minutes.

• We will work on our unit study. In addition to caring for our garden, we will be doing a summer-long study on the LifeCycle. We will be hatching chick eggs in July (using a program offered by our local university extension office), growing butterflies (as part of an upcoming review), and (hopefully) gathering some tadpoles to watch the transformation to frogs (gonna have to get those the old fashioned way ... out of the pond). This will likely take us about 20-30 minutes a day.

• We will finish our lessons by doing Around the World in 60 Days by Thriving Family (by Focus on the Family). This is a daily devotional, cultural, activity and prayer program that covers 27 countries in 60 days. We will add stickers to our passports as we study each country. This will take us about another 15-20 minutes a day.

• We will also have to put in our time doing reviews as they come available. That will take a few extra minutes a day, as well.

All total, we will do about two hours of schoolwork each day. I plan to keep track of our hours. Every five days of summer school will earn us two days of logged school. In 60 days we will earn 24 days of school that we can take off throughout the rest of the school year on trips to Florida or extra days off around Christmas! That's totally worth a couple of hours of school work a day, huh???

We will definitely be done by noon each day and our afternoons will be spent at the city pool soaking in the rays, reading (mom) and playing with friends!

How about you? Will you have summer school?

WWE were there!

Monday night Rick and I had the time of our lives with Eli and Brynne. We attended WWE Monday Night Raw in Tulsa! Oh ... my ... gosh ... IT WAS SO FUN!

Now, this is one of those things that had you told me a year ago that I would be doing it, I would have laughed in your face .. like REALLY hard! (That ranks right up there with getting a tattoo! Who am I?) But right before Eli's birthday this past year, he received some hand-me-down WWE figures and a ring from a friend and he has been hooked ever since. I mean really hooked! Which means that we, as a family, eat, sleep and breathe wrestling. It's been contagious and Brynne is almost as big a fan as Eli.

When we found out they were coming close, we had to go! We had the BEST seats! We were right on the corner of the ring in the risers, 10 rows up. And we saw EVERYBODY we wanted to see (except for Rey Mysterio, Eli's favorite). Yes, it's staged and acted out, but it's like seeing any other celebrity. It's just fun! And, it doesn't hurt that a couple of them look pretty, um, nice in their costumes. (I have the hots for John Cena, Rick has the hots for Randy Orton.)

The kids were so excited and so cute! They sang theme songs, cheered, boo'd, gave thumbs up and thumbs down, screamed chants. It was awesome! Brynne just kept saying, "I can't believe we are here." and "This is the best night of my life!" and "I am so glad this is not a dream." Eli was so overwhelmed that he was, literally, speechless at the end. He was in a daze.

Here are just a couple of pics. I won't bore you with the other 77. If you don't follow WWE, you could care less, I know.

Sin Cara ... a very exciting pre-show surprise!

Eli spent the majority of the time in this position, or high-fiving Rick.

Randy Orton ... yeah, we kind of like him.

My love, John Cena.

Eli and Brynne jamming out with the 3MB.

The steel cage match. THIS was a good one!

What memories we made Monday night. And, it won't be our last live WWE event. It was really just too much fun!! Money VERY well spent!!

I is for Invest Locally

When we lived in Oklahoma, I had over 20 pots that I loaded up with flowers every year. This was what Rick bought me for Mother's Day and I usually spent around $300 or more. It was a lot of work, and cost a lot, but I loved how pretty it made our porches and driveway. I did the majority of my shopping at Lowe's.

This year, now that we have moved, we have scaled down quite a bit, but I still have a lot of pots to fill.  Yesterday my mom and I headed out to one of the Amish greenhouses. We live in the middle of a thriving Amish community. I was blown away with all the Amish had to offer, and the prices were fantastic! I came out with enough flowers to fill several of my pots, and even got some pepper plants, jalapeno plants, and red onions for my garden. I only spent $35! Now, I still have ferns to purchase, and will replace my pansies with other annuals in the next several weeks. But, I got a great start for a fraction of the cost!

And, they also have lots of other landscaping perennials for when Rick and I get ready to do our landscaping. They have crepe myrtles, hydrangeas, peonies, phlox, knock out roses, strawberries, blueberries and many other things, all of which are on my list. And, they are CHEAP! You can bet I will be getting my tomato plants from there in the next week or so when I finally get them planted.

This year I decided to try to invest in our local businesses as much as possible. Although the prices at the mom and pop grocery store are higher, there is much less variety and no real impulse purchases, so I have found that I spend TONS less than when I meticulously made my list to go to Aldi and Walmart every two weeks. I buy as many of my baking goods, apples, applesauce, peaches, pickles, grains, peanut butter, essential oils and soaps, and eggs at the other Amish store.

At the end of the day, I feel so GOOD about investing in the businesses of those who are local because, frankly, they need the business! Without customers, our grocery store would close (as have many of our local businesses) and the Amish community would need to move away.

I challenge you to look around and see what you can find at your local businesses and invest in them!

As always, linking up with Marcy at Ben and Me.

Spanish for You! {Schoolhouse Review}

My kids have really wanted to learn Spanish this year. So we were pleased to review Fiestas by Spanish for You! This was a very thorough, yet simple, Spanish program developed by a Spanish teacher with loads of practical experience. The program teaches the students speaking, reading, and writing skills, as well as grammar. Fiestas taught these things by learning about various Spanish celebrations, such as a birthday party, Day of the Dead, Carnival, Holy Week and April Fair. The program is broken down by grade level, and we used the Grades 3-4 lessons.

How We Used the Product

At the beginning of each week, I would pull up the provided Lesson Guide and print off all necessary text pages and worksheets and clip them together for use later in the week. Each day the kids and I would do the assigned lesson (again, following closely the provided Lesson Guide), by listening to the provided audio versions of the text. Then the kids would do the worksheets. Additionally, they would play suggested games and/or practice with flashcards. We made regular ol' index card flashcards, and then I also made some on a free website where they could practice and play games with the vocabulary words. Their favorite game to play was Hangman on the white board. They would take turns choosing a vocabulary word and the other would try to guess it by guessing letters.

You can see the Sample Lessons for Fiestas by clicking HERE.

My Opinion

There were positives and negatives to this program. The Lesson Guides provided in the program were excellent. They very clearly indicated which lessons should be followed and completed on which days. We reviewed a downloadable version of the program, so the negative for me was that after the materials were downloaded to my computer, I had a very difficult time finding which one we were supposed to be doing which day. The lessons are labeled in Spanish and, well, I don't know Spanish, so I spent quite a bit of time locating which pages of text we would be using, which worksheets to print, and which audio files to que. It wasn't very "download-and-go". It took much more preparation on my part than I prefer. I do believe, however, that the author has made some changes to this part of the program already, so hopefully it is easier to use once downloaded.

I loved the audio versions of the text and the audio pronunciation guides. Yeah, the way I pronounced the words wasn't going to work. That's the hard thing about teaching a Spanish course. It's hard to teach if you don't know Spanish! But, Spanish for You! made that part easy by providing an "audio teacher", of sorts, to help out.

The program is designed for children Grades 3-8, and you teach your child according to more specific grade levels ... 3-4, 5-6, or 7-8. We definitely chose the 3-4 grade level materials. However, it still seemed a little much for my 9 and 7 year old students. The lessons were a little long for them. We tend to do fairly short daily lessons, but cover a lot of subjects. I found us spending quite a bit more time on Spanish each day than we normally spend on a subject, and the kids started to dread it. We always do our essentials in the morning when their minds are fresh, so by afternoon they were dragging and just didn't want to put the necessary time and thought into the Spanish for You! lessons. That wasn't anyone's fault. It is just a personal preference thing.

I didn't really care for learning about Spanish celebrations. For me, I just wondered when we would ever use any of that Spanish in a practical setting. I would have much rather received a program that taught the basics. Maybe such a program will be in the works in the future. But I'll hold onto the program! If we are ever going to be visiting a Spanish speaking country during one of the celebrations, I have no doubt that Spanish for You! would have us prepared to participate fully.

Customer service on this program was fantastic! The author sent several personal emails to members of the Review Crew with troubleshooting ideas and improvements already being made to the program. You can tell that she wants her customers to be completely thrilled with her product!

Overall, I think that the Spanish for You! program was EXTREMELY thorough and my kids DID learn many Spanish words and proper grammar usages.


Product Details

Spanish for You! is available in three themed units: Viajes (travel) coming in June 2013, Fiestas (celebrations), and Estaciones (seasons). They are intended for students Grades 3-8.

(From the website) ALL Spanish for You! packages come complete with:

• soft cover book or e-book (currently only our trial pkgs.)
• 24-30 week lesson guide for the grades you need (24 weeks for G5-6 & 7-8, 30 weeks for G3-4) (PDF download)
• self-checking worksheets (PDF download)
• audio files of entire book (includes bonus audio of native speaker of entire book) (MP3 download)
• flashcard/activity pictures (PDF download)
• *Teacher lesson plans are NOT included. These need to be purchased separately. Please visit our CLASS USE page for important information on using Spanish for You! with classes.

Each unit study can be purchased by grade level for $39.95 (i.e. 3-4, 5-6, or 7-8), or the entire Grade 3-8 package can be purchased for $64.95. This includes a Lesson Guide. The full Teacher Lesson Plans are sold separately ranging from $12.95 to $14.95. You can read about this by going to the Spanish for You! Class Use page.



Members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew reviewed Fiestas and Estaciones. To read other reviews on these two products, visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.

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Blink

Sonic for lunch in the car on a mini road trip ... $11.58.

Mother-Daughter tattoos at the end of that road trip ... $210.00.

Spending the whole day with your daughter, marking something off your bucket lists, together ...  on the day she graduates from high school .... PRICELESS!

For graduation, Kyndal wanted a tattoo. On Wednesday night she, jokingly, said, "We should get mother-daughter tattoos." On Thursday I texted her and asked what she was doing on Friday morning because I thought we should go get those tattoos. She was blown away ... couldn't believe I was serious!

I thought I had passed through my phase of wanting to get a tattoo, but then decided that it would be such a cool thing for her and I to do together. I had a bird put on my upper back, by my shoulder. It is shaded in yellow, which is Kyndal's birthstone color. It symbolizes my first child leaving the nest, flying away into her future. I plan to have a bird tattoo added each time one of the kids graduate, with their birthstone color shaded in.

Kyndal chose to get the phrase, "She flys with her own wings" put on the top of her foot. Yes, we know it says "flys" instead of "flies". We like it better. She is going to go back and have angel wings added to it.

The last couple of days I have been feeling very nostalgic, sad, and proud, all at the same time. During the commencement, the graduates passed out red roses to the people in their lives who meant so much to them. They did it to this song, "Blink" by Revive.

I don't think I will ever hear that song that I do not think of Kyndal. What a crazy ride it's been. It has been such a roller coaster. But, Kyndal is a unique girl who definitely flys with her own wings. She always has, and she always will. She has taught me to not take life quite so seriously, to not worry so much about messing up, and to not live so much in fear.

What memories!