Reviews | Heart of the Matter

March 10, 2010 By Karin Leave a Comment

Steady Days: A journey toward intentional professional motherhood is artfully written by Jamie C. Martin, mother of 3 and author of the popular blog, SteadyMom.com.

Steady Days is divided into forty readings, presented in short digestible chapters.

We live in a world that places a high value on organization and many of us were picture perfect examples of what that looked like before we had kids. So what happens after we have kids? Organization is a blessing to our family. So why is it so hard to get motivated? Why are simple things, such as getting dressed and looking presentable put to the back burner after we become mothers? You know the joke about the mothers who live in their pajamas or sweat pants with their hair piled on top of their head in a messy bun or ratty ponytail. Is this really the image we want to project about motherhood?

A prepared mother looks professional. Why are we walking through life doing the most important job in the world while looking the least professional?

Steady Days is about sharpening your skills and parenting with purpose and intention. If you’ve never been organized, you owe it to yourself and your children to question everything and begin to make small changes toward greater good.

It is possible to develop a plan for your day that allows you to juggle the many hats that you wear as a mother and homemaker, while still spending creative and flexibly structured time with your children.

Jamie Martin offers practical ideas for busy mothers that are thoughtfully challenging but not overwhelming. Her book offers encouragement and helpful tips for those struggling with organization and implementing manageable routines in their home.

Steady Days is a quick read that will get you on the path towards professional parenting and less harried days.

Karin Katherine is a proud stay-at-home mother of four who feels blessed to be the mother of 5 year old fraternal twin boys and two daughters, ages three and 10 months. You are invited to follow her homeschooling adventures at www.PassportAcademy.com and her adventures as a mother, wife, homemaker, decorator and organizer at www.MommyMattersBlog.com

February 24, 2010 By AmyF 5 Comments

If you have not heard, I am gearing up for a coupon class at my church. I am so excited about doing this! One of the topics I am going to talk about is organization. To get the full potential of savings, I believe you need to be organized. There is many ways to do this and there are no right or wrong ways of organizing it either. You just need to find what works for you. What works for me is a Binder system. I have everything in one place and within easy reach.

Jennie, over at The Coupon Binder, has generously donated one of her wonderful binders to give away here. Here is a little about the Binder she offers:

What I like about The Coupon Binder is the convenience. It is built for you already to use and start that instant savings. This 3 Ring Clear View Binder is not wimpy one either, it a sturdy one. On the outside of the binder in the back is place for a insert. Jennie has not left that space empty. You will find Sorting Mats that help you do just what the name says- sort your coupons. In the inside pocket, you will find a few tidbits of information that will either be new to you or review. The Main Characters of this Binder will surely impress you.

*50 Ultra Pro 9 pocket pages
* 30 Pre-defined Category Tabs (installed to match the general layout of a grocery store)
*5 Customizable Category Tabs
* 1 Set of Coupon Sorting Mats that correspond to the Category Tabs
* 1 Pencil Pouch
* 1 Highlighter and Pen
* 3 Store Envelopes
*Spiral bound Notebook
And you get a stylish reusable bag also because The Coupon Binder is also committed to helping the environment.

To enter this contest you must do the following two things:
1. Be a member of the Forum (REGISTER HERE)AND
2. Post here on how you save money in homeschooling.

Because of the cost,Only avaible to ship within the Continental United States.
Winners will be announced at the Forum on evening of March 3,2010.

Good Luck and I can not wait to see your answers at the forum, see you there!

Information can be found about The Coupon Binder at http://thecouponbinder.com

January 18, 2009 By Karin Leave a Comment

Little Kids Draw by Teacher’s Friend Publications is a wonderful little book for preschool parents to help develop beginning drawing and writing skills. This easy to follow packet provides fine motor skill practice through through a series of worksheet activities including: tracing lines and simple shapes, coloring and adding details to a picture, and following 6-step instructions to draw objects on their own. This artistically challenged mama was even able to draw an elephant from one of the worksheets—-to the amazement and pleasure of her children!

Appropriate for preschoolers- 2nd graders. Click here to preview the first few pages.

Available from Scholastic or Currclick for $6.99

Karin Katherine is a proud stay-at-home mother of four who feels blessed to be the mother of 5 year old fraternal twin boys and two daughters, ages three and 10 months. You are invited to follow her homeschooling adventures at www.PassportAcademy.com and her adventures as a mother, wife, homemaker, decorator and organizer at www.MommyMattersBlog.com

January 14, 2009 By Karin Leave a Comment

In this Review Round-Up our focus is on educational materials that you can use when instructing your children on the importance of good nutrition and healthy habits.

The United States Department of Agriculture offers complimentary My Pyramid for Kids classroom materials by request for grades 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. You may also download the program lesson plans immediately from their website but if you request the printed copy you will also receive two cd’s including a MyPyramid Blast Off game that is not available for download on the website.

Healthy Hops is a healthy eating and physical activity program for children ages 3-6. The nutrition units focus on healthful, body-friendly foods that can reduce the long-term risks of obesity, heart disease and more. The units use the concepts of “Go” and “Slow” foods. GO foods are low in saturated and trans fats and sugar and are high in complex carbohydrates, protein and other nutrients. They are taught to the children as food that gives the body lots of energy and fuel to make it GO. The SLOW foods are simply foods that should only be eaten in moderation. These are foods that are high in saturated and trans fats as well as added sugars. They do not give energy and instead make the body work more slowly and are less healthy. Thus, they are taught as being SLOW foods.

Junk Food Jed got out of bed,
tripped over his feet and fell on his head!
He didn’t stop to blow his nose
or brush his teeth or wash his toes
He just buttoned his shirt and put on his shoes
and walked to the door while rubbing his bruise

Yesterday Jed ate only junk
so today he woke up and fell, kerplunk!
He ate no fruit, or bread to grow strong
He drank no milk or water all day long.
He ate only candy and cupcakes for lunch
and when he was thirsty he drank purple punch
He had nothing for breakfast and greasy chips for snack
and he drank sugary soda which turned his teeth black.
For dinner last night he settled for soup-
made of marshmallow fluff and thick orange goop.
This morning Jed felt very bad
because of all the junk food he had.
Heading for the door he heard a voice call, “Wait!”
“You need a good breakfast,” said his plate.
From Junk Food Jed gets out of bed.

Curriculum and Teaching Strategies:
• 3 units covering nutrition and physical activity with more than 25 learning activities
• 7 reproducible worksheets to reinforce the lessons
• Designed to be easily integrated into preschool lesson plans

Inside my chest there are two lungs
that help me to breathe clean air.
I’ll exercise to keep them strong
and treat my lungs with care.

What I like about the program:
Everything you need is laid out. You can just simply follow the guide. Or you can easily integrate with your other materials or lesson plans. It’s flexible and adaptable.

It is a fun hands-on program for preschoolers that really offers a strong foundation in nutrition and healthy eating. I believe learning should be educational and fun. This program is both.

Although it’s written for classroom application, it is easily customized and adaptable for use in a home education program.

The fitness portion of the program is fun and quick. You can do do each activity in minutes at either the start or middle of your day top get everyone charged for the day (or recharged).

Songs and Poems are used throughout to help the children learn and remember important concepts.

You may download a sample page from the Healthy Hops curriculum guide here.
Healthy Hops retails for $39.95 and is available for purchase below.

Healthy-Start, LLC
PO Box 115
Huntington, NY 11743
(631) 549-0010
Email: info@healthy-start.com

Learning Resources has a variety of materials to help you supplement your nutritional lesson plans or use to create your own.

Magnetic Healthy Foods Set includes write-on magnetic place mat, 1 order pad and 33 magnetic pieces including 3 utensils, 1 glass of water and 29 foods. Before using parents should introduce a brief lesson on the Food Pyramid. Then, using the magnetic pieces, allow children to sort the foods into the various food groups. From there you can use the set to plan a menu and discuss the importance of healthy eating. The quality of this affordable set is amazing. The photographs of the food are so lifelike you may find yourself getting hungry!
Item LER-0497 # $32.99

Healthy Food Playsets come in a variety of sets (19-piece to 21 piece) and allow you to do the same hands-on activities above with play foods. If you have young children you’ll get double duty out of this playset when they use it for general play (dramatic play activities). By introducing this lesson and then having the playfood available in our play area afterward, my children kept repeating the lesson in their pretend play.

Foodgroup Magnetic Tabletop Pocket Chart encourages the classification of magnetic foods right onto the food pyramid on the front and 48 double-sided food cards into pockets on the back. There are so many ways to utelize this chart in teaching the Food Pyramid. Again, I cannot say enough about the picture quality of this set.
Item LER-6503 $32.99

Learning Resources 1-800-333-8281 Click here for store locations

Karin Katherine is a proud stay-at-home mother of four who feels blessed to be the mother of 5 year old fraternal twin boys and two daughters, ages three and 4 months. As someone who never changed a diaper until she had children, Karin is surprised by the fact that she has been changing diapers for the past 5 years straight with no end in sight! As the 7th of 8 children, Karin feels blessed by her average size (in her mind anyway) family and wouldn’t mind a few more– God willing and her husband notwithstanding. Her biggest homeschooling dream is to one day homeschool across the United States in an RV. Please visit her blogs Mommy Matters and Passport Academy.

December 15, 2008 By Karin 34 Comments

Over the next five weeks we will be bringing you reviews of some of our favorite catalogs for educational products plus a few special giveaways. This is our first installment...

When I see the Timberdoodle Catalog arrive in my mailbox, I begin to feel giddy. Receiving it is like receiving a copy of my favorite magazine. Yes, it’s that good. When I was an early homeschooler, before I knew about conventions and vendor halls I happened upon the Timberdoodle Catalog. It was only within the pages of their catalog that I could really feel that I could make an informed purchase.

The catalog is in color and reads like a magazine. Not only is the selection of products diverse and quite good—-the descriptions are informative and honest.

If you do not already receive the Timberdoodle catalog please visit their website and request a catalog, free. You won’t be sorry.

Two lucky Heart of the Matter readers will receive a $25 gift certificate to use to purchase ANYTHING from their catalog.

To enter simply:

Visit the Timberdoodle website and locate the item you would purchase if you won (it can be over $25) then write down the product name and item number.
Post a comment below letting us know which item you selected (with item number) and why along with any comments you may have about Timberdoodle.

This contest will be closed Friday, December 19th at 10pm EST and the winner will be announced on Sunday in our new weekly newsletter. You can sign up by entering your email address in over in the right sidebar.

November 24, 2008 By Karin Leave a Comment

If you are looking for an alphabet book that is slightly different from the rest you will really enjoy AA is for Aardvark by Mark Shulman, with its double letters for double fun.

Like a letter?
Twice is Better!
Can you see all the perfect pairs?

The book is based on the concept of words with double letters such as AA in Aardvark.
My children enjoyed hunting for the double letters on each page.

We also enjoyed reading this book and saying the phonetic letter sounds for the double letters. This book is a homeschool mother’s dream—you can use it with your preschool and elementary age children. There are many creative ways to use this interesting picture book and it was nice to see a fresh new spin on an older concept.

Other interesting alphabet books include:
A is for zebrA by Mark Shulman

Alphabet Mystery by Audrey Wood

Q is for Duck and alphabet guessing game by Michael Folsom

November 24, 2008 By Karin 1 Comment

I cannot say enough fantastic things about Barbara Curtis’ book, Mommy, Teach me to read! A complete and easy-to-use home reading program. Barbara Curtis is a former Montessori educator, homeschooler and Christian mother of twelve children including three with Down syndrome. Her writing style is both comforting and informative. Even if you are not a familiar with or a follower of the Montessori approach,there is so much in this book that you will appreciate.

The book begins with a simple overview of birth-age 2 developmental milestones and things you can do to create a literature rich environment in your home that will help pave the way to growing a reader!

Barbara, like Ruth Beechick, subscribes to the teach the letter sounds before the letter names approach and teaching lowercase before uppercase letters. Why? Well, look at this post. How many lowercase letters do you see?

Throughout the book Barbara gives both teaching tips and exercises. Laid out in an easy to understand and duplicate manner. Photos are included and instructions for creating your own manipulatives are given or referenced on her website.

One of my favorite features in this book is Barbara’s list of 75 three-letter phonetic words, two-syllable words made of three-letter phonetic parts, 50 four letter phonetic words, and 25 five-letter phonetic words. Additional word lists are available on her website. With these lists you can devise your own games using magnetic letters and early readers can simultaneously become early spellers using phoenetic words.

If I had come across this book earlier in my homeschool journey I might not have purchased as many books on teaching reading or been so apprehensive about my ability to teach my own child to read.

November 23, 2008 By Karin Leave a Comment

I am generally impressed with DK Publishers books and Earth Matters: an encyclopedia of ecology does not disappoint.

The book begins with a brief secular history of our planet’s birth and development and discusses the global ecosystems, or “biomes,” such as Desert, Ocean, Tropical Forest, and Grassland.

Ecology is the unifying theme and each section (Polar Regions, Temperate Forests, Deserts, Grasslands, Tropical Forests, Mountains, Freshwater, and Oceans) explores each unique ecosystem and explains how mankind can upset the balance of nature and cause further damage.

Each section is packed with photos, graphs, illustrations and maps as well as interesting facts and statistics.

All is not doom and destruction as the last section, entitled Helping the Earth, explains the various ways we can slow down or even reverse the negative effects on our environment including information on renewable energy, how to use energy well and how you can make a difference, starting today!

My children find the book visually appealing and often request that I read them sections from the book almost daily. An index is included in the back to help you find subjects you are most interested in quickly. As ecology and global warming come to the forefront in our news, I believe it should also become a part of our children’s education. This book is a great beginning resource for that. Some Christian parents may take offense with some of the evolotion references in the beginning of the book, however, we use it as an opportunity to explain to our children that while some people believe in evolution, we as believers believe that God created everything, as is clearly stated in the bible. Others may choose to skip this section altogether.

Earth Matters: an encyclopedia of ecology edited by David de Rothschild (DK Publishers/2008)
Suggested retail $24.99
Available at the DK Publishers website and major booksellers

November 10, 2008 By Andrea 8 Comments

For use in parking lots, the Parking Pal™ magnetic hand is designed to help busy parents keep their child out of harm’s way while tending to other tasks. Parking Pal magnets come in several kid-pleasing styles!

MISSION:

* Help reduce injuries to children in parking lots
* Heighten awareness of the dangers in parking lots.

WHY IS IT NEEDED:
Parents, grandparents, day-care providers, aunts, uncles, friends, or whoever is caring for a child can be easily distracted in parking lots. Loading or unloading packages, rifling for keys, tending to the baby, or helping elderly parents can take precious attention away from our children, leaving them vulnerable to a number of dangerous situations. Other drivers can’t see when they back up because the car next to them is too large or they’re distracted by their cell phones, or blind spots make it easy for them to overlook small children who may be behind them. And children, well, they don’t always do what they’re told or stay where they should. It only takes one second for tragedy to strike.

I have my Parking Pal on the driver’s side of my car. Now, since I have two young children and only one Parking Pal, I have them both get in and out on the same side so that they can share it. They actually compete over whose hand will be on the Parking Pal and this occupies them while I load the car or just need a minute to find my keys. I just say. “Put your hand on the hand” and they know exactly what to do. This Parking Pal is a really great idea and keeps them close to our car and away from other moving vehicles which was quite a chore before. The only down fall to the Parking Pal is the fact that it is a magnet and since my car has many bends I did not have many options as to where to put it and I have to remember to take it off when driving through the car wash. My children also like to spin it around which may not be good for the car. Vinyl is an option that I hope the company will consider in the future but all in all the Parking Pal has more than served its purpose in our family.

Review by: Andrea Orcino, Louisiana

Amy from Buffalo Wings is our Parking Pals winner- congrats!

We have 2 Parking Pals to give away to one random reader. To be entered, simply leave a comment telling us the ages of your children. Comments will be closed Friday, November 14th at 10pm EST and the winner will be announced on Sunday in our weekly newsletter. You can sign up by entering your email address over in the right sidebar. As always please make sure you leave your email address or that it is clearly listed on your profile or blog. If we can’t email you, you can’t win.

In addition, Parking Pal is hosting a fantastic $100 Toys-R-Us gift card giveaway over at their website. Hop on over for more information.

November 3, 2008 By Sallie 37 Comments

**The winner is Cynde Fail**

The Progressive Pianist is a complete piano program that allows your child learn to masterfully play the piano, whether you know anything about music or not! Much like trying to teach your child a foreign language when you have no prior skill, teaching an instrument with no prior skill is a formidable task and it is hard to find study materials that will allow you to accomplish this in a way that you can feel comfortable with. I felt completely comfortable with using this program with all four of my children, especially my special needs son whose thoughts altered weekly between whether his last teacher was moving too fast or too slow. He can safely pick up music lessons again and it will be at his pace and that helps keep his stress level down… awesome for HIM… awesome for Me!

There are three books available with this program: Book One, Book Two, and Book Three. Each book is basically the equivalent of one year of lessons. It is recommended that you start with the first book, even if you have had lessons before. This made complete sense to me as our daughter has had three different piano teachers who used three different types of books. You may move as fast, or as slow, as you need through the book. Remember, though, that you need to master playing each piece without hesitation before moving on. Our last teacher pounded our daughter on this and I was pleased to see it in the notes of this program as well.

The books are all relatively inexpensive and range in price from $35 for a downloadable book to $53 for a print book. We typically spent $50 per month on lessons in previous years and our newest estimate for a teacher here in North Carolina, where we just moved to, was $12 per lesson. The book can easily pay for itself in about a months time if you use it exclusively, especially considering you won’t be spending money on gas, or your time away from home, to go out for lessons. There are also extra books for purchase that include Christmas songs and Hymns.

Each lesson contains a theory and finger exercises. That is impressive to me because I have seen many children taking lessons in recent years where theory is no longer taught but rather the focus is just on playing the notes, or even worse, only chords. You truly can not know piano well if you do not learn theory, in my opinion!

You will find digital recordings at the website to go along with the lessons and this is truly an added benefit worth having. This is useful to both you and your child(ren) that you are teaching. It is especially useful if you have no prior music background. One great tip that was offered to me when I took the challenge of reviewing this product was that many children like to put the digital recordings on their ipod’s or mp3′s to listen to. This was such a great idea and proved very helpful!

I also appreciate the fact that they have a fully staffed support team that offers online support. It is nice to know that if an issue arises, then help is only an email away!

Overall, I really liked this program!! I did previously have one year of lessons (a gift for my 30th birthday so I was a late start at learning and am still on the lower end of the scale as far as knowledge goes) and my daughter has had approximately 4 years of lessons. The books were very easy to maneuver through in a .pdf format and all were easily read. If I had to find a con to give with the review it could only be that I did find one smudged note on one page… truly not bad when you consider there are more than 450 pages in the three books I looked at.. but it did nothing to take away from the lesson and was still completely readable. Wait, does that even count as a con?!

Anyway, I think you really can’t go wrong with this program! It was easy to understand and follow. I feel like children who try this program will still get the satisfaction of learning to play quickly while still getting the theory and facts they need to know as well. It truly is a well rounded program!!

Please feel free to go look around more at The Progressive Pianist Website.

We are very please to give you the opportunity to win a Level One package which includes the bonus Christmas Favorites!! To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment. Comments will be closed Friday, November 7th at 10pm EST and the winner will be announced on Sunday in our weekly newsletter. You can sign up by entering your email address in over in the right sidebar. As always please make sure you leave your email address or that it is clearly listed on your profile or blog. If we can’t email you, you can’t win.

Sallie is an off-again, on-again homeschooling mom to her 4 children, ranging from elementary to high school. In her writings, she discusses the challenges of homeschooling a child with disabilities and offers insight to those who sometimes feel all alone in a round hole world. Please visit her at Seaside Tales.

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