Have you all moved over to my new blog location yet? I’ve had several great giveaways, some printables, and other interesting posts go up in the last 10 days. I hope you haven’t missed out!
Be sure to head on over and subscribe to the new blog so you don’t miss a thing!
There will not be any more posts here…..hope to see you over at wendywoerner.com.
Today I am thrilled to welcome my friend, Rebekah, as a guest on my little blog. I just know you will be blessed by what she has to say!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – and not just because that’s a great lyric for a fun, seasonal song, but because it truly is the most wonderful time of the year. This is the time we focus on God, what He did for us in sending Jesus, and remembering the importance of the baby who would become our Savior!
This is the time of year for family traditions. That looks different in each of our homes, but the fact remains that this is the time of year, more than any other, where we do things as a family. We discuss traditions from last year, we often re-evaluate traditions to see what we may need to do differently, and we spend our time together.
The older I get, the more I like the traditions. My youngest is 7 this year, and she has started asking for some of her favorite traditions this year. She wants to decorate the tree while eating her favorite Christmas candy. Once she gets started in her acknowledgement of traditions, the boys follow suit and ask for some of their favorite traditions.
For me, though, the best part is that they’re asking more for our family traditions than for gifts.
Each year, as we consider our traditions, it’s a great time to also look back and see how far we’ve come as a family. Some of our traditions were impossible just a few years ago, due to one of our kids’ needs. The beautiful part of our traditions, though, is to see how far he has come – how much he can do now, that he could not do a few years ago.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – as we eat our Christmas candy, pile in the van to see the Christmas lights, spend too much time watching too many Christmas movies, and soak up all the family togetherness that we can stand!
Even better than all of this, though, are the traditions we have that focus on the true reason for the season. Each year we participate in Operation Christmas Child and pack shoe boxes for kids around the world. We join in activities at church where the focus is not the gifts, not the craziness that Christmas morning can bring, but rather on the utter peace and quiet that Jesus can place in our hearts.
As the season seems to get a little more hectic with each passing day, I turn to our traditions to help us focus and find our peace in Jesus.
What are some of your family’s favorite traditions? How can you use them as a blessing this year, rather than just as “one more thing to accomplish”? Let’s truly make this the most wonderful time of the year! Merry Christmas, friends!
Rebekah and her husband make their home together in Pennsylvania. She is a homeschooling mother to their three children, including one with special needs. She is fiercely in love with Jesus first, and then her husband and family. Her hobbies include drinking coffee, spending time with her family, knitting, writing, and fellowship with friends. She has followed her God-given call to writing, to encouraging, and to offering support to women in their various roles. She offers encouragement for real life, and a place of respite for when life becomes overwhelming. She shares her perspective on everyday life because it’s in the realities of life that common bonds are found. You can find her blog at Journeying Outside My Box.
Hi, everyone! I just wanted to be sure you are aware that my blog is moving over to wendywoerner.com. Today is the first ‘live’ day and I have gathered some beautiful resources and put them together in a giveaway package for one lucky winner. Please head on over to read the post and enter to win! And then check back often because that is where I will now be blogging. Be sure to subscribe over there so you don’t miss anything!
A Homeschool Moms’ Dream Giveaway
I’m excited to introduce Tara to you today! She is sharing with us how she created independence in her homeschool, and I just know her insight will help you out!
We use a lot of technology in our homeschool day. From You Tube videos to online articles to vocabulary review, it was getting hard to keep up with all of the links I needed my fifth grader to access throughout the day. Not to mention, I hated having all those tabs open on my desktop. So, I came up with a great solution! I created an assignment blog for Emma. She can use the laptop or the Kindle or the iPad to access the links she needs. An added bonus of the assignment blog is that it has enabled Em to work independently on quite a bit of her assignments. I just make a note on her daily checklist when she needs to check her blog.
On her blog, I am able to create a place to keep her reading log. She likes looking back through this to see what she’s read throughout the year. I can also create pages for web quests. For instance, right now she is studying Lewis and Clark. I have put all the links and pages of instruction in one place. We’re also working on a “Famous Ballets” unit study. To supplement this study, I found clips on You Tube from each of the ballets we’re reading about. At the end of each lesson, she goes to her blog to watch the video from that day’s ballet.
I can put lengthy copywork passages on her assignment blog and save on printer ink. You can see, I have also created a page for bracelet tutorial videos for her Rainbow Loom bracelets. This keeps her off of You Tube, but it gives her access to new techniques. I know that is totally unrelated to homeschooling, but I thought I’d take advantage of that opportunity since I had a safe place to compile those videos.
This is a snapshot of a typical day on her assignment blog. For record keeping purposes, the title of the post is the current date and # of days in school. You can see that for history and vocabulary, I linked to activities outside the blog. I make sure all my links open in a new screen. That makes it easier for her to navigate back to her home page. If possible, I embed videos on her blog. It’s easier that way.
When I sit down and prepare my lesson planner for the week, I go ahead and draft her daily posts. Once the draft is complete, I schedule it to post early in the morning the day it should go live. This keeps the current day’s post at the top of her blog.
This assignment blog has been a real lifesaver in our homeschool day as Emma thrives on the independence this gives her throughout the day. It is also a nice little reflection of what we’ve accomplished day-to-day and throughout the school year.
Tara Mitchell is a wife and mom to three beautiful children ages 19, 15, and 10. She enjoys reading, cooking/baking, and crafting. When she’s not driving to and from her children’s activities, you can find her blogging at This Sweet Life. You can also connect with her on Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and Facebook.
As my little girls are getting closer to school age, they have begun to show interest in writing, drawing, cutting, and tracing. Since I am trying to learn more about creating printables and graphics for my blogs, I decided to try my hand at a simple preschool worksheet this week. I’m offering it to you as another freebie download! Please share with your friends, and let me know if these are helpful to you, or if there i anything in particular that you would like me to try.
This post is linked up with Frugal Homeschool Friday Linkup. Go take a peek!
Following In His Footsteps 