Ok. With the way the economy has been, I believe it is really important to teach your kids how to properly manage and handle finances at an early age. Much to my surprise, Family Mint was one of our vendors this year for our Homeschool reviews for the TOS Homeschool Crew. I honestly had no clue what they were about until I explored their website.

Family Mint provides a free subscription to their website that allows you to virtually set up your own family bank so that you can set up someone (preferably a parent) as the banker and establish accounts for each of your family members. They have a secure website for you to use so that you need not worry about that while using their service.

It allows you to process your transactions and set goals and such for your personal finances. For the most part it acts like a real bank. We set up our kids to have separate accounts, had them set up goals for their money, took their deposits so that they had to request a withdrawal and went from there. What a great way to start your kids off in learning the value of money and how to deal with their own personal finances properly. You can also use Family Mint in a virtual way by using pretend money or virtual money and teach lessons that way as well. Maybe set up a unit study and use it as a way to make things seem more real for your kids.

I suggest that you explore the Family Mint website and check it out for yourself. Their website contains a lot of information and discusses their service in more detail so that you can make a choice whether or not you feel like it would be a valuable tool for your family.

Right now Family Mint is a totally free resource and eventually they are adding a paid subscription area as well.

Check out what my fellow Crew members have to say on our Blog here.

One of my fellow bloggers had a giveaway on her blog for a box of the new chocolate Cheerios, a chocolate scented bath set and a cereal bowl. It arrived the other day and here is what I received.

Here are the contents of the bath set

Chocolate scented body soap, bath salts, a scrubby, and body wash. Well the scrubby is not scented but it will be when used. LOL

For anyone looking for math products, here is yet another product that I received to review as part of the TOS Homeschool Crew. Galaxy of Education provided me with a choice of products to try out and review from their Math Galaxy product line.
Here is a list of their list of products broken down by the type of product:

The following items are math programs (for PC and MAC) that provide specific topics that your child can focus on learning as well as games associated within each one. When you bring up the program the topic areas show up in red and the games are shown in blue boxes. You can see an example of one of the main windows for one of these programs below.

Other products are worksheet generators which create a math riddle for specific subject areas for your child to use the answers of math problems in order to determine the solution to a riddle:

Lastly there are two e-books that are math riddles as well:

The products we tried started at basic math up through algebra concepts. These items are all standalone supplemental math products. I have to admit my initial reaction once i downloaded the various products was that they were a bit outdated as far as the look and feel of the products and not as sophisticated as some math programs you can buy. However, if this is not important to your child and once you get into the actual content of the products you may also be surprised at how well they help as a supplement to your existing curriculum. My youngest not only learned but had fun while working with the various products she tried. The e-books such as the Whole Number Riddles eBook were fun ways to motivate learning by incorporating riddles into solving math problems. The only thing I would have preferred was if the printables would have been in black and white only in order to save color ink for printing. However I just turned my printer on to gray-scale and this worked out well for me. Overall what you get when you use Math Galaxy products is the experience of a step by step approach to learning the various math topics, you get games to reinforce those topics, fun riddles that your child can solve by doing math problems and challenges for your children using graphical representations and logical approach to learning the various topics.

You can purchase the above individual math programs and the worksheet generators for $29.95 each and $14.95 for the individual e-books.

I suggest you take time to explore the Math Galaxy website for yourself to learn more as well as to see what other things they have to offer.

TO read what my fellow TOS Crew members had to say about Math Galaxy, please visit our blog here.

Children’s Bible Hour Ministries provided me with a complimentary copy of Seasons of Faith book series in order to provide an honest review of it as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew.

Each book encourages children to learn more about their faith in God. Based on the CBH radio scripts these books are wonderfully illustrated and unashamingly discuss the Gospel of Christ as their main message to children that read them.
The books in this series are:

Each story is based on a different season of faith that teaches your child about basic Biblical truths. The books each come with an audio CD so that your child can listen as they read along in the book. My youngest has listened and followed along with each of these four books and has enjoyed each one. I am very pleased that these books are wholesome books full of good values and messages for my children. Each book ends with a clear and easily understood message of salvation which would make it a good book for a Christian home or Sunday school classroom.

You can purchase each book separately for $10 from the CBH website. From now until April 15, you can receive free standard shipping when you order the entire set of four books. Simply use the code FREESHIPAPR15 when you check out.

Check out what my fellow Crew member had to say about this book series here at our Blog.

My family and I have been fascinated by watching Molly, the barn owl, and how she is handling the new hatchings as they come. The other day the first one was born. He was called Max by the person who set up this experience for us web viewers. I remember when the internet first started and who would have thought we would be where we are with it today. Can’t imagine having homeschooled with out it.

You can check it out for yourself here:
http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox

Home School in the Woods is a name many homeschoolers are already aware of. Many have used some of the history products that Amy Pak has available through her website.

As a member of the Homeschool Crew I received a free set of the Olde World Style Map sets (US and World)

The first thing I thought of when I received this set was that this would be excellent for history notebooking and unit studies. In fact as part of the set there are notebook pages that you can print and use in addition to the maps themselves. With either the World or US map sets you receive over 130 maps and a bonus of notebooking pages. Sometimes when you are studying history you leave out the places where things happen. You can use these map sets to fill in the complete picture of history for your child.

You can view samples of these two sets from the Home School in the Woods website here at http://www.homeschoolinthewoods.com/HTTA/OldeWorldMaps.htm. Though I can say the images on their website don’t show how wonderful these illustrated maps really are in person. When I printed several of the maps to include in my kids’ history notebooks I was amazed at the detail and quality of the images.

You can choose to purchase individual sets as downloads for $18.95 each or for an extra dollar you can receive it on CD. If you choose to buy both map sets you can purchase a combo download for $28.95.

Check out what my fellow Crew members had to say about the Olde World Style map sets here on our Blog.

ARTistic Pursuits is an art curriculum that I have heard many homeschoolers talk about but I had never experienced it until I was given the choice of reviewing any of their art books as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew. I chose to receive a free copy of Junior High Book One: The Elements of Art and Composition. My daughters and I are fairly artistic but we were excited to receive an art book to explore. I gave the book to my oldest daughter and we did a few lessons together.

I plan on allowing her to work independently with the book since it is so well written that it allows your child to work by themselves. The books from ARTistic Pursuits exist for all school ages from Preschool through Senior High.

Each book provides well-rounded instruction on various techniques and teaches art appreciation and history and has various projects in each section. To get a better idea of their curriculum you can read the teaching philosophy of ARTistic Pursuits at their website here.

I like this art curriculum because my daughter is learning some art history and art appreciation as well as various techniques along the way. This program lets your child explore their own creativity and develop their own sense of their artistic abilities. Some programs make the students do things step by step and stay within a virtual box when learning and this is not what ARTistic Pursuits is all about. I taught homeschool art lessons in my home and I took a similar approach. I had parents tell me they appreciated the fact I did not make their kids draw and paint everything in a predetermined set way. I feel that ARTistic Pursuits fits well in my vision for teaching art so I plan on continuing to use this art curriculum for my kids.

You can view details of The Junior High Book One on their website here and can purchase this book for $42.95.

Check out what my fellow Crew Members said about ARTistic Pursuits on our Blog here. You will find reviews for the different books in the ARTistic Pursuits curriculum.

Ok. We have windows in our main room that extend to the floor. Yuki likes to sit on the small window sill and look outside. She even fits in the area between the screen and where the window comes down and closes. Yesterday, the window was closed which was fortunate. Why? Because for some reason she decided to run across the room towards the window at full speed and jump up onto the window sill. Bonk! Headfirst into the window then she fell backwards to the floor.

I wish I had a a tape rolling for that one.

This morning she discovered that if I have my legs crossed out in front of me that it makes a nice ramp for her to get up to my lap when I am sitting on the couch. She took a leap onto my lower part of my legs then climbed up my legs and into my lap and snuggled up non it.

The following is information I received from The Old Schoolhouse Store promotions such as the Expo and March madness. TOS is allowing me to attend the Expo at their expense for sharing this to you, my readers.

If you’re looking for homeschool encouragement, resources, and fun, check out all that is going on at The Old Schoolhouse!

Right now March Madness and Win Big are going on in the Schoolhouse Store. During March Madness, over 240 items are 10 to 40 percent off!
Click here to read the details.

Then, if you’re customer 139,000, 139,500, or 140,000, you will win over $348 in prizes. Prizes include a 5 year subscription to TOS (U.S.
only), Scripture Sleuth literature series, guitar lessons on CD, and more! Hurry, they are just past customer #137,818.

The BIGGEST news of all–The Schoolhouse Expo is coming in May!
Pre-register now and save $5!

As homeschool teachers?what do you need to learn? More about teaching multiple grades? All about different homeschool methods? Transcripts?
Could you use some help with reading, language arts, math, and more?
Are you intimidated by the idea of teaching middle school and high school?those dreaded, advanced courses? Would some encouraging words and motivational Scripture help you on your way? Get answers when you attend The Schoolhouse Expo, an 3-day, online conference, presented by The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine and The Old Schoolhouse® Speaker?s Bureau.

Pre-register today for only $19.99 through March 31.You do not want to miss this unbelievable, virtual homeschool convention! PLUS, you’ll receive over $300 in free gifts when you register.
Get the details and preregister here at http://www.schoolhouseexpo.com

Our family just brought home our puppy on Saturday. Our Shih Tzu was born on New Year’s Day and currently only weighs a little over 3 lbs. She is quite a handful for someone so tiny. She is part monkey, part daredevil, part Houdini, part drama queen and part princess. You can probably get the picture of what our life has been like the past several days now. Today she managed to sneak past us, crawl under the couch through a tiny clearance area at the side of the couch and turn around and peek out at us.. daring us to get her out again. A few pieces of dog food later she was out and we were trying to figure out how to barricade this new area from her.