16 hours ago
We got Wyatt the Usborne Children's Encyclopedia for Christmas, and he poured over it for two days. He asked me questions about all the pictures, and I told him what the words on the page said, and he was just fascinated. It was so fun to watch him learning just for the joy of it. While I think we will follow some sort of curriculum, I want to make sure we have plenty of interesting books around that fit in with what we are learning, to make the whole year more fun.
I've been making book lists galore, but today I wanted to focus on Usborne books! A friend of mine, Brittney, asked me if I would host an Usborne Facebook party, and it sounded like a lot of fun - so I've been going through their thousands of books and making a list of the ones I'd like to get for school next year. I'll share the ones I'm thinking about getting, but first, let's talk quickly about the ones I have, shall we?
Usborne Books We Already Have
The Children's Encyclopedia - Like I said above, this one has been a hit. I think it's the full-page gorgeous illustrations that have really sucked Wyatt in. I'm not going to lie, there were a few pages I felt the required more explanation (like the world religions or aliens pages), but they are easy enough to skip if you don't agree with or your child isn't ready for some of it.
How Things Work - This book is just so cool. It's a flap book, and under each flap it gives pictures and descriptions about how the different things in this book work.
Horses & Ponies and Weather - I bunch these together because they are the same type of book. These books have fun illustrations and less text because they are meant for younger readers - but I love it because the few words are used really well, and these books get a lot deeper into the topics than you would expect them to. They have a bunch of these on different topics, and I'm hoping to get more!
Birds Pocket Book - Have I mentioned that our family is really into birds? We don't know a lot about distinguishing birds, but we would like to learn more. All of my kids love flipping through the Audubon bird app on my phone, and this is like the book form!
Starting Chess (not pictured) - I forgot I had this one until I sat down to start typing! Derek is very good at chess, and I picked this up as a supplement for when Wyatt is ready to start learning (which probably is sooner than I think).
So those are the books I have, now on to the books I want.
Usborne Books On My Homeschool To-Buy List
These are the books that I would love to have as we introduce different subjects over the next few years, in addition to the ones I already have.
Science And Nature
The Outdoor Book - I think we would love this for ideas of activities to do outside and nature study!
Human Body Reference Book and Shine-A-Light Human Body Book - This is my area of interest (biology), so I think this looks fun. And the shine-a-light book adds an interesting element!
Poisonous Animals (etc.) - This is one of those great books for young readers!
How Things Grow - I think I need this book to help my black thumb.
Astronomy And Space Reference Book - I don't know if I even need to explain this. Yay for space!
100 Science Experiments - Someone told me I need this, and I think I do!
History
Big Picture Atlas - I think this will be good for context with different historical events.
Living Long Ago - I'm still not sure my kids grasp how different life was 200 years ago, so this looks great!
Christopher Columbus - One of the few American history books. Usborne, I know you are British, but more on the American History front please!
See Inside Exploration And Discovery and The Story Of Inventions - These looked really interesting to me.
Reading and Writing
Illustrated Grammar And Punctuation - We are a way off from needing this yet, but my grammar nerd is coming out! I love this idea!
Illustrated Dictionary and Illustrated Thesaurus - Same as above!
Illustrated Classics: Huckleberry Finn And Other Stories - This is one of a few classics collections that are condensed and rewritten for young readers, and I am really curious about them.
Miscellaneous (aka. Just For Fun)
Over 50 Secret Codes - I would have loved this as a kid.
Fingerprint Activities: Animals - This just looks adorable, and would be so fun for everyone, including the little two!
First Book About The Orchestra - The kids love Maestro Classics (#affiliate), and I think this book would be a great visual to understand the different instruments.
Big Keyboard Book - We are still hoping to teach our kids how to play the piano, and this looks useful!
I could go on, but you get the idea! There are just a lot of really fun books. Clearly it's probably going to take me longer than the next year to collect all these! Maybe I should retitle this post "Usborne Books For Early Elementary", because I think all of these will last well beyond first grade!
Now for a little plug - the Facebook party is tomorrow night at 8 PM EST, and Brittney has a bunch of fun things planned - including a drawing for a book prize! So if you want to check Usborne out, this is a good chance! If you comment below saying you want to join, I'll send you an email to add you to the party! Or if you have your eye on something and want to buy without attending the party...can you purchase through any of these links and select my eShow on the left before checkout? Because then I can earn discounts on books! (Shameless plug, I know.) Party is open until next Monday!
Do any of you have some Usborne books? What would you recommend to me for the elementary school years?
I'd love to hear!
P.S. Brittany also made me this handy graphic for Usborne books that go with different curricula! Pin this!
1/5 stars.
I snagged this book because I have been listening to a lot more audiobooks over the last year while I work on other things. This one peaked my interest because I like a good food-related fiction book every now and then.
Bottom line - I kind of suffered through this book. Not for any one reason, but for a bunch of things, and I honestly found myself skipping chunks toward the end of the book just to get through it quicker. Read below if you must know why.
Language: Several uses of the f-word, other curse words, and Jesus' name in vain (which I never appreciate as a Christian).
Sexual Content: From the very start of the book we learn that the main character is having an affair with a married man, and generally sleeps around a lot. That kind of soured the book for me right from the start. No lesson ever seemed to be learned related to this relationship either, even though I think people generally agree that having an affair with a married man is not a good thing. Other sexual references. An extended and pretty explicit sex scene that I skipped past. Another almost sex scene. I honestly started skipping through the book after this because for other reasons I list below, I was just so tired of this book.
Politics: Spoiler Alert - near the end of this book the main character finds out she's pregnant, and the doctor presents her with her "options". Then we have an extended debate about whether she'll abort or not, including an older lady who suggests some herbs that could "take care of it" (an older lady who had an abortion earlier in her life and regrets not having children, so it felt like a weird character to have giving her this talk). I am strongly pro-life and know that abortion ends the life of an unborn child, so I just cannot stomach casual abortion talk like this in my books. Thankfully the character decides to keep her baby, but the serious abortion consideration put a sour taste in my mouth.
Politics: Spoiler Alert - near the end of this book the main character finds out she's pregnant, and the doctor presents her with her "options". Then we have an extended debate about whether she'll abort or not, including an older lady who suggests some herbs that could "take care of it" (an older lady who had an abortion earlier in her life and regrets not having children, so it felt like a weird character to have giving her this talk). I am strongly pro-life and know that abortion ends the life of an unborn child, so I just cannot stomach casual abortion talk like this in my books. Thankfully the character decides to keep her baby, but the serious abortion consideration put a sour taste in my mouth.
Plot: This was my main problem with the book - there was really just no plot to speak of for most of the book. I kept waiting for something big to happen, but there was just nothing until the character found out she was pregnant, and you already know I wasn't thrilled with all the abortion talk. Even after that one big plot point, the book seemed to move slowly. I guess you could say this book was more character-driven, but I typically don't like audiobooks that are character driven. I need a clear plot to drive the book forward when I am listening on audio, or I have a hard time paying attention.
Characters: The second prong of my disappointment was that I liked none of the main characters in this character-driven book. From the start I felt like the protagonist was unlikable. I felt like her personality kept changing, and I couldn't decide if it was the author's fault or the narrator's fault (I'm thinking a little bit of both). Was she supposed to be high-spirited and sarcastic, or introverted and reflective? I guess she could be both, but I felt like it was hard to see her growth in the book because I couldn't figure out who she was to begin with.
My second beef with the characters - the two main characters were so immature (once again, was this the author's fault or the narrator's fault? I don't know!). If I had read the book without any ages being mentioned, I would have guessed early twenties...but no, the girl was 32, and the guy was almost forty. This was a big pet peeve of mine in this book. I felt like both of them should have had their lives together, or at least had a direction, at this age. Maybe almost-forty-year-olds aren't really expected to have their life together in this culture anymore? But in fiction, I like my characters to be a little more age-appropriate.
Narrator: I don't think I would have liked this book much even if I had read it on paper, but to me the narrator didn't do a lot for this book. And I think that is honestly just a personal thing. I didn't like the way she read certain lines (I think she added more sarcasm than I would have gotten from print, and her dictation made the main character feel more stuck up). Her voice for the male characters came off as creepy to me as well (in all fairness, I think a lot of female narrators have this problem though, at least to me).
What I Liked: The positive about this book was definitely all the food descriptions. Whenever I listened to it I would start to get hungry, and nothing I ate seemed quite up to snuff after hearing about all the food in this book! Books like this make me want to bake and cook more, which is a good thing because sometimes I need that extra motivation.
The ending was sweet, as it seemed like the main character finally found a place where she belonged and got the guy, so it all worked out. I do love a happy ending. However, this book was just really not for me.
Note: I received a copy of this audiobook for free in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion.
The ending was sweet, as it seemed like the main character finally found a place where she belonged and got the guy, so it all worked out. I do love a happy ending. However, this book was just really not for me.
Note: I received a copy of this audiobook for free in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion.
(Some affiliate links in this post.)
Last week I shared our crayon-melt valentine gifts, and some Minted Valentine's cards to go with them. Well, after much deliberation, I made up my mind and chose some cards for the kids to hand out to their friends! Minted had some great coloring/melted themed cards, but in the end, these are the designs that were calling my name for the kids, and I just decided to go with it.
I was not disappointed! The cards came and they are so cute! The quality is also excellent, and I'm almost sorry to waste them on preschoolers (but their moms will appreciate them).
Clyde is so into anything transportation-related, and I thought this message was adorable for all his little two-year-old classmates!
I did let Wyatt have a choice between a couple different invitations, and this is the one he picked! He liked the airplane on it, and I thought this was the perfect card for a six-year-old boy to hand out to his friends!
And then Gwen's. I just knew it had to be pink! My favorite part of this card is the gold pressed foil lettering on the front. It's so fancy! For Gwen's card I also decided to try out the tic-tac-toe backer, and now I'm kind of regretting that I didn't choose it for the boys too - it's so fun!
So there you go, those are the cards my kids will be handing out to their friends! If you are ever in the market for classroom valentine cards, keep Minted in mind! Their quality can't be beat, and these designs were just a few of the dozens of adorable options!
Where do you buy valentines for your kids? Are you going with a theme, or just whatever strikes your fancy (like me)?
Note: I received the above valentines for free from Minted in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion.
I never really considered myself a "people pleaser". I fancy myself one of those people who wouldn't change my own opinions or convictions just to please someone else, and I always thought I had pretty good boundaries.
But I realized last year that no, I am kind of a people pleaser. The way it manifests itself for me is a difficulty in saying "no". This really became a problem this last fall. All of a sudden I had several writing commitments and other commitments at church, and barely time to breathe!
Unfortunately because of this busyness, I decided I needed to let some things go, and one of those things was co-hosting the With Grit & Grace Linkup. However, I don't see any reason why I can't still share what I want to work on each month! As far as goal-setting goes, you all already know that I'm not a resolution-making, goal-setting kind of girl. When I pick a goal for the month, it's one thing, and usually a bit vague at that. Another blogger wrote recently about how she accomplishes more when her goals are vague - and even though all goal-setting experts say that vagueness is a no-no, I find the same thing is true of me.
So here is my one, not-super-specific goal for February.
I want to give Valentines!
To whom? I don't fully know yet. However, this goal fits in with my larger focus for the year, and it's also something I just want to do. I have a hard time with the love languages concept, because I feel like I could claim all of them as a personal love language, but I do enjoy giving gifts, even small gifts. I like to make my own gifts occasionally too, especially when they are simple. It makes my non-crafty self feel like I'm not a complete failure in the DIY area!
(Affiliate links below.)
Especially every year around Valentine's Day, I get the urge to make something, which is convenient because Valentine's Day is a great creative outlet! This is one of the things I came up with for the kids to give their friends this year. Did anyone have some of these crayon melts growing up? I wrote a whole post once about my first-grade crayon melt wishes. We have a bunch of broken crayons around, so I bought a heart mold, melted the crayons in the oven, and let them cool completely before I removed them!
They turned out pretty well, and I am planning on making enough for all the kids' little friends. I'm still looking for the perfect valentines to include with the crayon melts though! I've had the opportunity to work with Minted in the past, and this year they gave me a chance to pick out some classroom valentines. Oh my goodness. The choices are endless because every single one is so cute!
To help you out in your valentine-giving efforts, I put together a few ideas for little gifts to include with some of Minted's classroom valentines. But do yourself a favor and check out the entire collection, because there were so many cute ones I didn't have room to share here! (Also, I'll take feedback on which one you think goes best with the crayon melts. As I type this, I'm still not sure which ones to pick.)
Firefly Love Valentine - This is a great Valentine for glow sticks, or glow-in-the-dark anything, really.
Banner Takeoff Valentine - I have given airplane gliders as valentine gifts in the past, and this one is the perfect valentine for that!
The bottom line is that you could choose almost any valentine treat or theme, and Minted probably has a classroom valentine choice that will go with it! I seriously had a horrible time narrowing down which valentines to show you in this post - it's going to be even harder to pick the ones I want for my kids to hand out. I'm still debating on whether I'll stick with the "melted" theme, or not!
To help you out in your valentine-giving efforts, I put together a few ideas for little gifts to include with some of Minted's classroom valentines. But do yourself a favor and check out the entire collection, because there were so many cute ones I didn't have room to share here! (Also, I'll take feedback on which one you think goes best with the crayon melts. As I type this, I'm still not sure which ones to pick.)
Firefly Love Valentine - This is a great Valentine for glow sticks, or glow-in-the-dark anything, really.
Banner Takeoff Valentine - I have given airplane gliders as valentine gifts in the past, and this one is the perfect valentine for that!
Sharp Student Valentine - Cool pencils would go with this one. You could even include a sharpener if you wanted to add something extra.
Bee My Valentine - Minted has a few adorable bee-themed valentines, and if it were me, I'd include a honey stick!
Precious Gems Valentine - So many possibilities with this one. Ring pops, gem-shaped erasers, plastic jewelry.
Sweet Bubbly Valentine - A bubble gum valentine! Tuck a stick of gum in with it, and there you go!
You Rule Valentine - Colorful plastic rulers, obviously.
School Of Fish Valentine - You could go with gold fish (the crackers), or any sort of fish toy with this one.
Color In My World Valentine - Crayons, and the valentine recipient can finish coloring this one themselves! Minted has a few valentines that are also activities, like this one. This one might be a contender for our crayon melts.
Bugs And Kisses Valentine - I would go with inexpensive plastic bug toys or magnifying glasses with this one. This is also a great example of one of the activity valentines!
Smart Cookie Valentine - Bake some cookies!
The bottom line is that you could choose almost any valentine treat or theme, and Minted probably has a classroom valentine choice that will go with it! I seriously had a horrible time narrowing down which valentines to show you in this post - it's going to be even harder to pick the ones I want for my kids to hand out. I'm still debating on whether I'll stick with the "melted" theme, or not!
Do you hand out Valentine's (for your child's class maybe?).
Am I having a little too much fun with this? I have this sneaky feeling that putting together Valentine's gifts for other people's kids is supposed to be burdensome, but I think it's so fun!
(And just as a little bonus - check out these Valentine-inspired prints! Perfect for a gallery wall or as a Valentine's gift for a grown up.)
(And just as a little bonus - check out these Valentine-inspired prints! Perfect for a gallery wall or as a Valentine's gift for a grown up.)
(I love a beautiful vow print - I have one on our wall!)
(You can customize this print with your own photo.)
Stay tuned and I'll update in a week or two on which valentines I picked to go along with the crayon melts!
Note: I will be receiving Valentine classroom cards to review in exchange for this post. This is my honest opinion.
(Affiliate link below.)
The first couple chapters talk about the way the Bible was put together, and what qualified different books to be included in the Bible. I thought this was really interesting. I think there has been a lot of confusion and misinformation about how we came to have the Bible we can hold today, and these chapters explained why we can have confidence in the Bible as the inspired word of God.
The next two chapters give a timeline of the Bible, from Genesis to the writing of Revelation. I've read through the Bible several times, but I really liked this condensed version of the story to give a bigger picture. The part I liked best was the historical details that the author included, placing biblical event sin historical context.
Finally Lasseigne gives tips on how to study the Bible, and how to teach the Bible, along with an entire section with a summary and quotes about each book of the Bible. I thought these sections were a great encouragement and resource!
This book is sound, and the author holds the Bible in high esteem - and I think this is something we need more of, even within the church today. I highly recommend this book! It was readable, but full of information and encouragement to dig into God's Word!
Note: I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion.
(Edit: Please see first comment! It explains how to turn off affiliate links in Disqus. Very helpful, but at this point I personally am not putting it back on my site because I still don't like other people making money off of my hard work and I'm a little upset that this is apparently the default setting.)
Today, I have a sad blogging tale for you, especially if you use the commenting widget, Disqus, on your blog. I started writing a quick blurb about this for my Tuesday old-fashioned blogging post, but it became rather long, and considering the popularity of Disqus, I thought it might be worthy of it's own post.
A couple years ago, I jumped on the Disqus blog commenting bandwagon. A lot of bloggers (especially those on Blogger) were using it because Disqus makes it easier to respond to comments on your blog. You respond once, and the person who commented gets an automatic email with your response in case they want to continue the conversation. Since responding to every comment via email was becoming more popular, this streamlined the process.
I was a little skeptical, because I think Disqus also makes it harder to visit the blogs of commenters (unless they add their blog to their Disqus profile, there is no way of finding their blog). But the ease of responding and the clean look won me over. I got the widget, made sure my blog was linked from my Disqus profile, and I didn't look back.
Where It All Went Downhill
A few months ago I was offered a sponsored post from an online clothing company. It was before Christmas, and I could use the extra cash for presents, so I jumped on it. One of their few requirements was that I not use affiliate links in that particular post. No problem, I thought, because I rarely use affiliate links anyway unless it's for something very specific.
The post went live, and I sent the company my links so they could approve the post...and they emailed back letting me know they had detected affiliate links in the post. What? So I went to click on a few links to see if I could catch what they were talking about, and indeed, an affiliate network redirect was attached to each link. What was this? Had I been hacked?
I apologized profusely to the company and let them know I was getting to the bottom of these links. My mom picked up the kids to help me out, and I spent literally the entire day trying to figure it out. I checked the html of the post. Nothing. I clicked on product links in other posts, and spotted the same redirect, and realized it had to be something in my blog template. I spent hours scouring the html of my template, trying to find the piece of code that was doing this. I tried out my template on my design test blog, and it was the same problem. I tested out an entirely new template and it didn't fix the problem. I could not figure it out! I was crying as I finally decided to remove every gadget on my blog to see if that helped anything.
And then I deleted the Disqus gadget I was using for blog comments. Poof. Problem solved. I no longer saw any affiliate links in my posts.
Of course by then my template was in shambles from all my hunting, and I had to re-install everything and contact the girl who designed my current template so she could help me fix it. What a mess!
I tried spreading my sorry tale in a small Facebook blogging group, and no one else reported the same problem back (yet), but I can't help but wonder if they weren't looking close enough. I checked out a couple other blogs with Disqus, and I did see the same type of affiliate links on those blogs as well. I tried to find an email for the company who runs Disqus to let them know that their gadget may have been hijacked to insert affiliate links without the site-owner's permission (which is what I thought was happening at the time), but I couldn't find any contact information or support email.
So now I'm telling you, in case any of you has Disqus! You should know that somebody somewhere might be making money off of your blog links without your knowledge.
It is possible there is some sort of permission for affiliate links in Disqus's terms of use, but I wasn't aware of it before signing up, and I wouldn't have installed the gadget if I had known about the links. I would have never realized this was happening unless that company had told me they had detected affiliate links.
It is possible there is some sort of permission for affiliate links in Disqus's terms of use, but I wasn't aware of it before signing up, and I wouldn't have installed the gadget if I had known about the links. I would have never realized this was happening unless that company had told me they had detected affiliate links.
I had this same problem one other time with a different gadget, an old analytics gadget called Sitemeter that had apparently been hacked to include affiliate links as well (Sitemeter has long since been deleted from my blog). Some external gadgets don't necessarily update their security measures, and over time they can be hacked and the code used for purposes like this. I don't know if that is what is going on with Disqus or not, but my experience with Sitemeter makes me wonder. I wish I had remembered that previous problem gadget before I tore my whole layout apart trying to figure out the culprit - which was Disqus!
What Should You Do?
If you want to see if your Disqus gadget has turned on you as well, try linking to an online clothing store in a post (I tested with a Forever21 product link). Then go to the post on your blog, and click the link while watching your web address bar. It should go to the page smoothly and show only the clothing store link in the address field - if you see an odd flash of a different address before it switches to the clothing store link, that's an affiliate link.
Needless to say, I removed Disqus, and I have since been a little more suspicious of externally-made gadgets (i.e. those outside of the ones that are included in Blogger). Finding unsuspected affiliate links has happened to me twice now, and I know that I have never had problems with Blogger's internal gadgets.
If you want my recommendation, I would test out your links. If you find the same issue of affiliate links that you didn't add yourself and weren't aware of, remove all Disqus code from your blog (update! or view the first comment below on how to turn off these affiliate links).
If you want my recommendation, I would test out your links. If you find the same issue of affiliate links that you didn't add yourself and weren't aware of, remove all Disqus code from your blog (update! or view the first comment below on how to turn off these affiliate links).
The good news is that Blogger has improved the look and formatting of their internal commenting system since the days when I installed Disqus! I still have to respond via e-mail separately, but that is a price worth paying to keep my blog free of these types of issues.
Do you use Disqus for blog comments?
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