Hey, I am still around

Hello, yes I am still around. We have been so busy here. Our son left for two weeks to visit his grandparents in Washington state. Our daughter is here with us and we have been working on the house some. It has been a weird autumn and the leaves are turning, but the weather is warm. We have started school, but I have been taking time off because Luke is gone and Melanie is having a hard time concentrating. I will try to post some more websites and some offers in a week or so. I haven't really done alot of research. Hopefully once our schedule dies down, I will get a chance to surf the net.
This is my husband and I in front of our house. We will be celebrating eighteen years of marriage on Sunday. He is an awesome guy and I love him alot. Thank you so much for checking out our homeschool blog and I hope that you will find useful information on this blog. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them and I will get back to you. God bless you all from Tanya

CPI Forms for Iowa

This has always been alittle confusing for me, "What day do we put in our CPI forms?" Well, this year I have been alittle more concerned and asking more questions. I found the answer to my question through my Supervising Teacher. If you live in Iowa, you have to have your CPI forms in by or on the first day of school. Here in Red Oak, the first day of school is August 19th. If you are having trouble locating CPI Forms, here is a couple of site to get them from. Niche has forms on their website, these are the forms that I use the most. I do the portfolio, so all of the forms that I reconize are on this site. Another site to get forms is Homeschool Legal defense, they have all the forms on their site. Also, if you are signing up a child that is 6, there is a lead testing process. You can read all about it on this site. I do not have a six year old, so I am really not sure what it is all about, but I would hate to show you these sites and not say anything about it. This time of the year is really busy for me, I am getting books ordered and planning out the kid's schedule. Then I am grading this year, that is huge for me. I am also doing this while my husbands family is living with us, they moved in on the 25th of July. So, it has been a really busy new school year. I hope that you will be able to have a relaxed beginning of the year, and that everything just falls into place. Again, if you have any questions or concerns, you can leave a comment or email me at www.tanya_rss@yahoo.com. Have a great day.


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A New Search Engine

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I would like to announce that there is a new search engine for homeschoolers. Of course it is new, but it is now availiable.

Grading, UGH!

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For years, I have not graded my children because, I did not know how or I was not sure on how to grade. Yesterday, I went to a seminar by my homeschool supervisior. She taught our group from a book call "Making The Grade." It was an awesome seminar and I learned so much about grades. I highly advice you to check out this website. The book is by Lesha Myers, she compares the grades with the bible. You have to check out the book, I am going to start planning my school year here within the couple of days. I am really excited. Lesha suggest that you plan your school days and then start the grading process. If you have any questions about homeschool, please me @ tanya_rss@yahoo.com, I hope that I can help. Have a great planning.

Nature Study

"Pocketful of Pinecones" is a great book for beginning or even pro home school mothers. Karen does an awesome job taking diary entries to help you understand how to do nature studies. I really enjoyed reading this book and I encourage any mother who wants to use nature study as science to read this book. It also gives other ideas for just homeschooling your children. I highly recommend these books.

"Handbook of Nature Study" is an awesome book if you want to do a nature study with your child. I have a copy of this book and it has so much information in it. I plan to go on nature walks with my daughter and get her in the thought of God's creation. Anna Comstock really spent some time doing the research and pictures. Really worth the money.

We have had a wet summer here in Iowa and with all the dampness we have received some interesting house guest. The fruit flies have been terrible and the spiders just as much. We have also had some June bugs and some black ants. My daughter and son have been really curious about all of these bugs. So, I did some googling and found some wonderful websites I want to share with you. This is the Wild Life education site. It has wonderful pictures of insect and spiders and it even has curriculum to download. This is the Land Care Research website of New Zealand, there is so much information on this site.

This site has all kinds of information about insects and spiders, and wouldn't you know it, it is call Everything about.This is a bug guide to use with so much information. This is a website from Arizona,

Getting Ready for School

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Like many of you, I am trying to get scheduling and curriculum in order. I have noticed that some of the shipping has been aweful, in some cases as much as what I have bought. The price of gas is so crazy and has causes shipping to be high. This company is offering free shipping with the purchase of $29.00 or more and no sales tax. The company is love to learn.
Rainbow Resource, they offer free shipping after $150.00 in sales. Rainbow Resource is a huge company and they have alot of products that you can choose from. Most of the time I can get all of my school supplies through them. Another company that offers free shipping is Dover Publication, if you buy $50.00 worth of items.
I would just look around and check out all of the different sites, if anything try to order all of your items off the same site. It may be cheaper that way. I also suggest using your local library, I am going to do that this year. I plan on putting library day in our schedule. And again, if there is a company that you use and would like to share, please let me know. I am always looking for fresh websites that I can share.


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Beauty

In this world, the view of beauty is so misstrued. Our daughters are growing up and watching the models and movie stars distort beauty. In all of this, there is one company that is trying to give our daughters a chance at looking a beauty in a different way. I should reword that, there are lots of people and websites who are giving our daughters a chance, but one manufactoring company is doing the same thing.

Our daughters look up to us as mothers. We are the beauty that they see everyday, and therefore it should be us who trains our daughters to be beautiful. And Dove sees that, they have an eighteen page pamplet that you can down load and a mother's guide that you can do with your daughters. I looked throught the guide, and although I did not agree with all of it, there are some wonderful questions in it for you and your daughter. I was really impressed with what Dove is trying to do.

There is also a book, if you want the christian veiw point called " Who calls me Beautiful?" by Regina Franklin. The book has several questions that you and your daughter can go throught at the end of each chapter. Regina takes this subjects and she compares it to what Jesus says about beauty. It is a really good book. I want to do it with Melanie. In this day and age it is up to us as mom's to renforce our daughter image of themselves. They need us to tell them of true beauty. If you check out either one of these sites or the book, please give me some feed back. Or if you know of other sites, let me know so that I can post it. God bless all of you, From Tanya

New Websites

Here are some more sites that I have stumbled upon. I hope that you will be able to find what you are looking for. I know that now is a great time to shop for school. If you wait to long, you sometimes have to wait for your supplies before you start school, have fun shopping. Here is Birch Books, this is a Consumer math site, this is writing workshop site for children, this site is for math games online, I played some of the games and I had a great time. This is a free spelling course. This is a math challenge online games site, or their are worksheets that you can pull off.

Here are some history sites that have free things or you can order items from them. This is a really nice history site, This site is an animated history timeline, this site is a christian history timeline, this is another church time line, this is an American Heritage site.

This site is a homeschool planner site, I am looking for other sites that can be utilized for free. The web is full of awesome resources for your homeschool needs. I hope that you are able to use all of this information.