My Lamplighter

Lamplighter Publishing is a wonderful company with so many books and audio theatre cds, sometimes it is just impossible to pick which to purchase. I fell in love with Lamplighter books three years ago at our state convention. I knew I only had enough money to purchase one book and one audio drama cd. Boy, it was hard. Well recently Lamplighter has started a program that makes choosing so much easier. My Lamplighter Book Club has three different monthly plan for any amount of money you wish to spend. I have started with the lowest plan where I will receive one book a month for $20.00 This means I will receive 12 books in a year which will help greatly in enlarging my endeavor of a lending library with quality literature. Other plans include: 2 books for $36, 3 books for $51, and 4 books for $64. The other great part of this is the fact that you have a your own queue (just like Netflix) to fill with the books or audio dramas you wish to receive throughout the year. Also you can pick which day of the month to receive and pay for the monthly book/cd. I received my first book right on time last month. Each book and cd is a family treasure to hand down to each generation. I encourage you to visit www.mylamplighter.com to find out more information.

Score

As many of you know I have undertaken the adventure of starting a lending library through our home. Of course I probably have a couple of years before I can start inviting people to check out books. I still have lots of books to collect both in fiction and non fiction. If you know of any great sites to visit with great prices on used books please send it my way. Today we visited a used book store and the local library was having another sale. Hurlburt's Story of the Bible is a book I have wanted for my collection for a good while. The price was never right when I did find it. Today I only paid $3.00. So excited! The picture on the right are all purchases from the library sale. This was also very cheap. As many books you can fit in a bag for $3.00. All total I only spent about $12.00 and got some great books to add to my library.

My New Favorite Company

Notgrass is my new favorite company to purchase curriculum. I actually discovered them before the convention when I purchased a Lifestyle Learning Journal to record our somewhat unschooling activities. I also contact the company about how much I loved their products and asked if they were every in need of a product to be reviewed that I was their girl. Just a day later they sent me a link to download a new Olympic Unit. A review will be ready in about three more weeks. At the convention I got to lay my eyes on their history programs, and I must say, that I just love them. I purchased the second half of America the Beautiful because as Grace has told me many times we have studied the Revolution and Colonial Times to death. The second book deals with more modern times in American History. I promise to do a review of this product sometime during the next school year. We will not be starting it until July.

New SketchFrom Grace

The Best Time of the Year

For most homeschooling moms you would be referring to homeschool conventions. Yesterday as a family we traveled down to Atlanta for our convention. This is our fourth year in a row of going and maybe just the newness has worn off, but it wasn't all that inspiring. Last year's convention would be hard to top with main speakers like Ken Hamm and Voddie Baucham. We decided to pay at the door this time and just do the shopping only pass which gets you into the vendor hall and the used book sale. The used book sale is always crazy. Everything was very picked over by the time we arrived (due to horrible rain and traffic equals an over two hour drive) but I still managed to purchase something for science next year and items for my ever growing lending library. The vendor hall seemed to be the same booths that are set up every year. This event is a Christian event and has stricter guidelines as to who can set up a booth. Don't get me wrong I very much like that but would also like to see some of the other secular products and compare. Something new for me this year is The Notgrass Company. I recently received an Olympic Unit from them that we are finishing out the year with that I am reviewing. Will post about when finished. While visiting their booth yesterday did purchase America the Beautiful for history next year. I always enjoy visiting Queen Homeschool's booth and purchased some of their products for english next year. A new booth this year was Tim Barton from Wallbuilders. If you are not familiar with Wallbuilders I would recommend checking them out. His father is David Barton and makes many appearances on Glenn Beck and Liberty Treehouse. David Barton is a brilliant historian. He has written a new book about Thomas Jefferson that I hope to get soon. Anyway all in all the convention was not as satisfying as usual or encouraging. Of course I didn't attend any workshops or seminars this year so that might be the problem. I think next year I might wait till July and go to the more secular homeschooling convention at Cobb Galleria and see what they have to offer.

American Revolution

Today for history we watched one episode from "America, The Story of US". Grace didn't want to watch the first episode about the pilgrims and Jamestown so we skipped to the second about the American Revolution. Of course she did say halfway through it that this time in American history is the one she has studied the most. But we did learn a few interesting tidbits that I had never heard before or maybe just didn't remember them from high school or college history classes. Did you know that more people died in the British prisoner of war ships than on the battlefield. Of course we need to remember this was also during a smallpox outbreak. Smallpox had also made it to George Washington and his soldiers at Valley Forge. George Washington had smallpox as a child. He had the doctors try something very peculiar for that time - the doctors made cuts on the arms of the soldiers that were not sick and then transferred material from the sick soldiers lesions to the cuts. Kind of like a vaccine. It actually worked and only 1 out of every 50 soldiers that were treated that way actually died. Tomorrow we will watch the next episode about Westward Expansion.

End of the School Year

That is the legal school year we are required to put in for the state of Georgia. 180 school day. Today was 175. So officially only 5 more school days. Of course I am not telling Grace this. We will continue with some light work of her choice through the month of May then take a break. Still deciding of our parameters for the new school year. I would like to work year around with three weeks on and one weeks off. But we will see.