We can all use a few more hands
Great news for those of you waiting for a World of Coca-Cola deal! I just heard from our rep there that from late July through August, eight-packs of Coca-Cola at select Atlanta retailers will feature a special World of Coca-Cola ticket offer! This offer is redeemable for two tickets for just $25. Keep an eye out for these when you go to the store!
Oh my goodness! We just had the time of our lives checking out an escape room in Athens, Georgia. Urban Enigmas is the newest Athens escape room that can be arranged for various experiences and difficulty levels. My husband and I went with our older 4 children, ages almost 13, 9, 7, and 5.
Urban Enigmas is a premier Athens escape room. They currently offer 2 escape game rooms, with more in the works.
We have been to an escape room once before, but I have to say that Urban Enigmas blew us out of the water with today’s experience! We were so impressed with how well thought out all the puzzles are in the game!
When you arrive for your escape room experience, be sure to be 15 minutes early so you can get checked in and sign the waivers. After checking in, you will watch a short video explaining how the game works and what to do and not to do while you’re in the room.
When you visit Urban Enigmas, I definitely recommend taking along the kids! My children noticed things that my husband and I didn’t, helping us to solve the puzzles faster than we would have on our own. Wonderful team building experience!
Throughout the game, the employees will be watching and providing hints and clues on the room monitors. This was pretty neat! The monitor would make a noise whenever a hint or clue was coming our way. If you get really stumped, you have 3 free clues to help you solve the puzzles.
Our family explored the Dorm Room Daze room and escaped with only 24 seconds to spare! I wish I could elaborate more on the fun we had and what both of their rooms have in common, but I don’t want to ruin it for when you go! All I can say is that you will be very pleased during your experience!
Now that we know how to escape from Dorm Room Daze, it’s only a matter of time before we return and try out Innocence. Definitely a top place to visit in my book!
For more information, please check out the Urban Enigmas website and book your escape room experience. You can also visit them on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Urban Enigmas also offers birthday party packages and group rates for your own team building experience.
Our friends at Urban Enigmas have graciously offered a giveaway so you can experience this Athens escape room and the fun that we had! This giveaway is for 2 free passes for the winner, a $56 value! To enter, simply fill out the Rafflecopter below. Good luck!
Now that I have made our plans for homeschool next year, I made our homeschool schedule for multiple children. I find it helpful to make a schedule for the entire family so that I don’t have 2 kids trying to use the same computer and so I’m not stretched thin. It helps to know exactly who needs to be where during the day. With 5 kids to balance, 1 being a toddler, I expect that this next year will hold some tremendous challenges.
I think this schedule will work for the first several months, or at least until the baby drops his morning nap. I also schedule in time for the kids to play with the baby. This helps him to stay out of trouble and the big kids love taking a break from school and unwind by playing for a bit.
Take a peek and maybe it will help you in your plans for the year.
How do you plan for your year?
Happy Monday yall! Hope you all had a fantastic weekend. My youngest is getting even more teeth and he looks so silly sometimes! Thought you all would enjoy the photo!
I can’t believe that school is about to start again! I spent most of the weekend working on my homeschool plans for next year. Schedules made, checklists made, community classes scheduled, extracurricular plans made, it’s a lot to balance. I think I’m there now, though. Now on to planning food for the week!
Monday: Lazy Lasagna – from page 140 in the Trim Healthy Mama cookbook, salad
Tuesday: Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas, salad
Wednesday: Chicken Alfredo with Broccoli
Thursday: Breakfast for dinner!
Friday: Black bean burritos
Saturday: Chicken quesadillas
Sunday: Leftovers!
Being an election year, I want my kids to have a better understanding of our government. As you may have noticed on our Homeschool 2016-20-17 plans, we intend on using Uncle Sam and You curriculum for social studies with our older children.
Our friends at Timberdoodle have sent us this Notgrass curriculum set and we looked forward to writing this Uncle Sam and You review.
This Notgrass Company kit includes:
Between all of the books, you have a full year of learning about civics and government. This program is geared for children in 5th-8th grade, but can be used with guidance for younger students. Lessons focus on America’s founding documents, branches of government, patriotic symbols, voting, the election process, Washington, D.C., the presidency, how Congress works, American holidays, and aspects of federal, state, and local government.
Each text includes 15 units, and 4 lessons per unit. Perfect for 4 day a week learning. Each full-color lesson includes a short chapter to read that explains the topic to the student; chapters feature both modern and historical photographs and illustrations. Lessons conclude with a variety of subject-based activity ideas that relate to Biblical studies, literature, creative writing, art, vocabulary, reading assignments, and notes for the sold-separately (and optional) student workbook/lesson review. A weekly family activity that involves crafts, meals, and other multi-age activities is also provided.
At first, I was overwhelmed and didn’t quite know where to start! Where was the teacher’s manual to show me what to do? I opened Uncle Sam and You Part 1 and the instructions are right there for teachers and/or students. I really appreciate not having to keep up with an extra manual and having the simple instructions right with the text. This way, children can work independently, or you could work together as a family. We are choosing to work through it together.
I like that it suggests additional reading materials and lets you know exactly when you will need them throughout the lessons if you so choose to add them in. It’s enough material without being too overwhelming and can usually be completed within about 30-45 minutes.
This is our first experience with a Notgrass curriculum and we are very pleased. We will be checking out more of their items through Timberdoodle in years to come.
The Notgrass Uncle Sam and You curriculum set is another outstanding component of Timberdoodle’s 2016 Sixth-Grade Curriculum Kit! You can also get the optional Lesson Review or Student Workbook .
A few weeks ago, a local Athens, Georgia author asked me about checking out her work. Melia Keeton-Digby has written a book called The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle.
I’m all about supporting local businesses, so I agreed to check it out.
Melia Keeton-Digby is a Speech Language Pathologist, mother of 3 and is the found of the Mother-Daughter Nest. Through the Mother-Daughter Nest, Melia works to encourage and empower women to build meaningful relationship with their daughters.
The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle offers nourishing guidance and a creative approach for mothers and daughters, aged 7+, to learn and grow together through the study of women’s history. Each month focuses on a different heroine, featuring athletes, inventors, artists, and revolutionaries from around the world – including Frida Kahlo, Rosalind Franklin, Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank, Maya Angelou and Malala Yousafzai as strong role models for young girls to learn about, look up to, and be inspired by.
Offering thought-provoking discussion, powerful rituals, and engaging creative activities, The Heroines Club fortifies our daughters’ self-esteem, invigorates mothers’ spirits, and nourishes the mother-daughter relationship. In a culture that can make mothering daughters seem intimidating and isolating, it offers an antidote: a revolutionary model for empowering your daughter and strengthening your mother-daughter relationship.
The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle has been an interesting read for me. Having 3 daughters, I feel that building relationships with my girls is extremely important, especially through the preteen and teen years and on into adulthood. My oldest daughter is turning 13 (13!!!!) in just a couple weeks, and I have been realizing how much more communicating we need to be doing now before the rough years hit. I think learning from other women, especially our own mothers, has been becoming less and less. There is so much that I could have learned from my grandmothers that I never did!
For me, I think there is a lot I can glean from The Heroines Club book, but there is a few things that I would likely skip. I’m not quite sure I agree with the sacred circle and a few other things that are discussed in the beginning of the book due to my personal beliefs, however the curriculum included in the main part of the book is very intriguing.
I really liked the idea of taking Heroines like Amelia Earhart and discussing them with my daughters. The book helps to facilitate discussions about these wonderful heroines, what they did, how we can learn from them, and how we can achieve our dreams as well.
Activities are also included from making Dream Boards to share your dreams with each other to discussing stereotypes. All important things to do.
In a nutshell, this is a great book to help strengthen the bond with your daughter(s), but depending on your personal beliefs, there may be sections that you would want to skip.
For more information, you can find The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle on Amazon. You can also check out The Mother-Daughter Nest, The Heroines Club website, or The Mother-Daughter Nest on Instagram.
Thank you Melia for offering us your book to read.
I’ve been looking for a great deal on a canopy for our camper! Here it is! Walmart.com is offering a 10×10 Canopy with 2 chairs for ONLY $69.00 total! That’s cheaper than just the canopy alone!
Free value shipping on this item as well!
We love hands on learning here in our homeschool adventures. We were thrilled when Timberdoodle asked us to review another fun product by Thinkfun. This time, we checked out the Circuit Maze.
Circuit Maze is an electronic current logic game that helps introduce electricity and currants to ages 8 and up. The game offers 60 challenges from beginning to expert.
You use the challenge cards to lay out the pieces and try and put together an electric currant. Once the circuit is completed, the beacons will all light up and you win!
You will need 3 AAA batteries in order to play.
My kids just loved the challenges of the Circuit Maze. I have found them spending a lot of time working on the challenges. With each challenge, I know it requires them to think about how to make the circuit work. You can practically see the wheels turning in their heads as they work on each challenge.
I like that it is quiet and something that can be played by themselves, so it is perfect for our daily afternoon quiet time. I have even enjoyed playing with it!
Big win in the logic department! We are fans!
For more information, you can find Thinkfun’s Circuit Maze on Timberdoodle’s website and as part of Timberdoodle’s 3rd grade curriculum kit.
Big thanks to Timberdoodle for giving us the chance to do this Circuit Maze review.
Homeschool Plans! I think that I’m in denial that school is about to start again! I just realized I needed to finish ordering curriculum, but first I needed to figure out what we were using this year.
We have had a marvelous summer and stayed extremely busy – busier than I would have liked, but we have had a ton of fun.
It’s time to start buckling down and making plans for homeschool again. Last year we did have to switch up math for my oldest. She just wasn’t understanding pre-algebra with Horizons. We switched to Math-U-See thanks to a review and she has been thriving! You can see what we used in the 2015-2016 year here.
This year, I will have an 8th grader, a 4th grader, a 1st grader, a Kindergartener, and a toddler. Below I will show you what we plan to use for the kids throughout the year.
Math, we are once again using Horizons Math, but only for my middle 3 children. We use the math books plus we supplement with the extra worksheets for more practice. For my oldest, we will continue with Math-U-See. We are also continuing with XtraMath.org. I can’t say enough great things about this website! It’s a completely free way to make sure your kids understand all of their math facts. As a mom, I can login and see how they are doing as well and what needs improvement.
We are once again using Wordly Wise 3000 for my older 2 kids. This starts in 2nd grade and helps with vocabulary, reading comprehension, and sentence writing. We started Easy Grammar last year and have had great success, so will continue with it this year. It only takes a couple minutes a day.
All of the middle 3 kids are also using A Reason For Handwriting, again. My oldest has completed all of the books now so we will be working on other copywork for her. We are also adding Building Spelling Skills for the older 3 to work on spelling.
My kindergartener and 1st grader will also be working on Explode the Code. This is a very simple program, but can help with the fundamentals for the little kids. Takes just a couple minutes each day and they are fun!
Big 2 will also continue working on Writer’s in Residence that we started a couple months ago.
Little 2 girls are going to continue with ReadingEggs and have just started with ABCMouse. I’ve seen great improvement in their reading since beginning last year.
I know this sounds like a lot, but most of the workbooks mentioned only take a couple minutes.
For Bible we are continuing to use Catechism for Kids. We didn’t get as far along as I hoped last year, but with a new baby, things just don’t quite work out as planned. We will finish questions 11-20 and then move along to the next set. I’m also continuing to read through the History Lives set to the bigger kids when the littles are occupied. Some of the stories can be fairly intense so it’s taking longer to go through them so we can digest and discuss.
All the kids will also continue with VeritasBible.com.
History we will continue to pull from Allinonehomeschool.com and of course the vast variety of books at the library for my younger 2 students. We also plan to start using Notgrass Uncle Sam and You for my older 2.
My littles will be continuing through Allinonehomeschool.com and the bigs will start on Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy.
That’s it, I think! Going to be busy! Always feels great to have a written plan! Now I just have to write up a schedule and stick to it! What are your homeschool plans?
What a weekend. I didn’t sleep well at all, but I was thankful to have my husband home. On Friday, we took our middle child to the American Girl store to pick out her very first AG doll! It was so much fun and we enjoyed the family time! Her birthday is Tuesday. Can’t believe she will be 7! This week is another crazy busy summer week filled with adventures. Keeping dinner fairly simple this week and going to try to get back on the Trim Healthy Mama bandwagon.
Monday: Southwest Chicken in the Crock Pot
Tuesday: Chick-Fil-A for Cow Apprecation Day!
Wednesday: Grilled Chicken, Zucchini Fritters
Thursday: Dinner out with friends!
Friday: Deconstructed Pizza Casserole and salad
Saturday: Bacon Burger Cabbage Stirfry
Sunday: Leftovers or fix your own dinner.
Hope you have a great week!