The fact of the matter is we really do use NotebookingPages.com every single day in our homeschool. I talked a little bit in Part 3 about how we use The Notebooking Publisher™ to create copywork pages for my eldest daughter. Her assignment each day is to copy whatever AWANA verses she is working on for the week. Sometimes, she just gets really bored with the pages that we create and she likes to look through the variety of pre-designed pages available. The picture I’ve shown here is from the Basic Floral set which is one of the first sets we owned and one of our most used. It goes over really well with girls!

As you can see, these pretty little flowers can also be colored in and she probably will when she wants something to color.  She also likes using the different designs because she can fit more then one verse on a page with the natural breaks. These beautifully designed pages are perfect for copywork.

It’s so nice to be able to just pull out something already done for me and find that it actually works perfectly for something that one of my children wants to create.  We use different styles of notebooking pages for for my eldest daughter (age 14) then we use for Anna (age 9) and Caleb (age 7) and we even find pages for Joshua and Peter (age 4) but they all use notebooking pages from NotebookingPages.com.  The variety is amazing!

We have also used some of the beautiful bird pages for copy work, and some of the pages from the original basic set.  We’ve also used pages from the Alphabet copywork pages with my little guys!  With over 150 products (literally 1000′s of pages!) we can always find what we need in the moment whether we are studying Science, Geography, History, or just practicing copywork.

I know I’ve been talking about NotebookingPages.com every few days lately, and there is a reason for that!  From now until May 31st, you can get $25 a LIFETIME membership!!!!  This is absolutely the best time to buy during the NotebookingPages.com 7th Birthday Sale-a-Bration Event  I don’t want you to miss out!  Plus, if you order by May 24 you will get 15 months of access to The Notebooking Publisher.

To put it bluntly, YES I am an affiliate.  I am proud to recommend this amazing membership and all 150 products created by Debra Reed of NotebookingPages.com.  We love these products and use them every day in our own home.  You will like them too!

Visit NotebookingPages.com to learn more about their LIFETIME memberships
and their notebooking (& copywork) web-app, The Notebooking Publisher™

A few minutes after my Sparks Red Team finished game time on Wednesday night, I left our class early to go visit my daughter’s class. I snuck in the back just in time to see her get her Excellence Award and get a great picture. She didn’t even realize I was there, and the surprise was really special to her. The Excellence Award is given to an AWANA clubber  when they finish the second book of Truth and Training. This means Anna has memorized 101 verses this year and a grand total of 181 verses in the two books of Truth and Training.  And that doesn’t even count the verses she learned in Cubbies and Sparks!  That’s a pretty impressive accomplishment.

What makes this accomplishment even more amazing is the fact that Anna is only just now (in the last few weeks!) barely reading at a fourth grade level. Most of her verses throughout the year have required a higher reading level then what she has reading. How in the world was she able to memorize that many verses over the last two years when she wasn’t able to read most of those verses for herself? The answer lies in the title of this post: we’ve been Leveraging Her Strengths.

Many parents would not even put a struggling reader into AWANA because of anticipated failure. This post is for you! Many children struggle with some aspect of learning, and reading is one of those areas that effects every other subject of study. But if we can find a way to leverage the strengths of each child (and each child does have strengths!) we can dramatically improve their chances of success in spite of the difficulties. Was it easy for Anna to finish her AWANA book this year? No, absolutely not! Certainly not as easy as it was for her older siblings at the same age. However, by leveraging her greatest strength we were able to work together and “get her done.”

In Anna’s case, her greatest strength is her amazing ability to memorize everything she hears. In fact, we have to be careful what we say! Last week we were frustrated when she wriggled and colored all through the church service (she’s almost ten after all!). However, when my husband asked her at supper what she remembered she recited almost the entire sermon! It’s a gift, truly a blessing from God given her many other areas of struggle! We have found a pretty straightforward solution for anything Anna needs to memorize. We just find an audio or read the list aloud to her a few times.

This gift makes learning AWANA verses simple except that she has to get help. She doesn’t like to get help, and sometimes when she is ready for help no one else is ready to help her. But once we have a moment, we read the verses or at least help her with the words she doesn’t recognize and her brain does the rest. What makes finishing the book more difficult is the vast number of “Search Sites” and other puzzles that Anna has to complete by looking up and reading Scriptures or unscrambling words. For someone with dyslexic tendencies to reverse letters, those unscrambling puzzles were a huge struggle! Fortunately, by leveraging her strength (auditory memory) to get through the memorization parts faster we gained her more time to work on the extra reading and writing required. She also had amazing teachers who looked right past all of her misspellings and reversals and encouraged her to do her best at each task instead of judging.

Auditory Memory is not Anna’s only strength, and no matter what we are struggling to finish I look for things we can do differently in order to fully utilize the skills in which she excels.

What are the strengths of your special needs child?

Have you seen the The Notebooking Publisher™ web app?  This feature at NotebookingPages.com is seriously awesome.  We use The Notebooking Publisher™ almost every single day because my eldest daughter prefers to have her copywork pages created in this web app.  In fact, we use the pages every day, I just usually create quite a few pages at once.

It is so easy to use The Notebooking Publisher™.  I just upload a few pictures, pick the layout I want, and create a page.  It sounds so simple right?  The only variability is in the endless number of options available in layout.  You can choose primary lines, regular lines, or no lines.  You can choose different picture sizes and locations, add a title (or not), add your own text — including handwriting fonts.  Honestly, you are only limited by your imagination here.

In these examples, I actually searched the web for free floral doodle art and found this pretty floral burst.  On the landscape page with primary lines, I added two copies of the image and flipped one, joining them in the middle.  For the portrait aligned page I used just one copy of the image and it still looks very nice. My girls like to color these in after they finish copying their Scripture verses.

I have also used The Notebooking Publisher™ to create special pages related to a field trip, family vacation and other special learning activities.

Visit NotebookingPages.com to learn more about their memberships
and their new web-app, The Notebooking Publisher™

Let me blunt.  I am an affiliate with NotebookingPages.com because I love their products.  We use these products every single day and we never have trouble finding what we need!  During the month of May, you can get $25 a membership in the NotebookingPages.com 7th Birthday Sale-a-Bration Event I want you to have the chance to purchase this amazing membership while you can get such a good deal!  I will be blogging about NotebookingPages.com throughout the month and sharing how much we use the product in our daily homeschool life.

What exactly do you know about Andrew Jackson? Today is Free Book Friday for New Leaf Publishing Group and I am so pleased to be
hosting this month’s giveaway!  You can win your very own copy of Life of Andrew Jackson by  John S Jenkins and published by Attic Books.  The book is an appropriate history book for high school students and an interesting read for adults of all ages. This beautifully bound hardcover edition of an 1847 classic is printed on heavy paper with antiqued edges.

Andrew Jackson’s story is filled with action, adventure, battle, and strong leadership.  This man was courageous, independent, and interesting to know.  His decision to drive the Indians off their lands was the one controversial black mark on an otherwise loyal and stellar career as an officer, leader, and president of the United States.

Written at a time when a Christian Worldview was still the prevailing thought of the people of the United States, this book does not re-write history from a socialist or otherwise non-Christian point of view.  I have to be honest, I did not know much about this man.  In fact, until I finished the book I erroneously thought President Andrew Jackson and Stonewall Jackson were the same man!

Still not sure whether to enter?

Read my full review of Life of Andrew Jackson.

Read Debra’s review of Life of Andrew Jackson.

Read Heather’s review of Life of Andrew Jackson.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As I began to print the various things we needed to get started with Spanish For You!, I was amazed at the number of game suggestions in this material.  How fun!  Like most children, mine definitely prefer to spend time playing a game as school over textbooks.  Playing games was even more appropriate for our studies because the book we were chosen to review – Fiestas –  is all about celebrations or parties.  In my family, games play an intrinsic role in every celebration!

Here is what you get when you purchase Fiestas.  A 24-to-30 week lesson guide, (We used grades 3-4 which is 30 weeks), self-checking worksheets for grades 3-4, 5-6, or 7-8, MP3 files of the entire book, bonus MP3 files of a native Spanish speaker reading the entire book,  and pictures for creating flashcards and other activities.  These are all digital downloads, but a softcover copy of the textbook is available as well. Download a Fiestas sample here to check it out.

Spanish for You! has several options so that you can purchase exactly what you need for your family. A theme set such as Fiestas with material for all grade levels is $64.95. This set is what I received and is perfect for families with multiple children.  If you would prefer to purchase an individual grade level  it is $39.95. Extra volumes of the textbook (all grades) are $12.95 each.

I’d like to talk a little bit about how Spanish For You! worked in our home.  The first thing I did after printing the different files was start organizing.  I organized all of the printouts by lesson number and placed them into the textbook with the lesson they corresponded with.  I quickly realized that each lesson is supposed to span several weeks.  There is a lot of depth to each lesson!  By grouping all the different printouts by lesson I was able to quickly and easily find what we needed without scanning through multiple pdf files.  For me, that initial organization was essential to making this curriculum work.

Once I got all of the printouts organized, I uploaded the mp3 files to my computer and got all of the audio files onto Anna’s iPod and my iPhone.  This turned out to be pretty important, since the audio files demonstrate every single piece of material in the book twice (an English speaker, and a native Spanish speaker) and Anna is highly auditory.  This was her favorite part of the curriculum – listening to the native speaker speak.  Having the audio on Anna’s iPod allowed her to listen at her leisure and in private.  Having the audio files on my iPhone allowed us to listen in the car.  I found that listening in the car is a very effective way to practice “trickle-down education” which is what happens when the younger siblings start learning the material older siblings are being taught.  My little kids thought it was funny to try to pronounce all of the Spanish words correctly.  Anna preferred to practice her speaking skills in private  . . .

What worked for us with Spanish For You! were the games and the audio.  The worksheets attempted to have the child start reading Spanish right away (they were written entirely in Spanish from day one).  Since Anna is barely reading English at grade level and is a grade behind where she should be according to age, reading and writing all of those Spanish words just was not going to happen. I ended up having to talk her through each and every question/answer but she didn’t do any of the reading and writing herself.  I guess the benefit of me reading through all of the worksheets is that I am reinforcing my own knowledge of Spanish at the same time!

My Bottom Line:  As long as we focus on the audio and games we enjoy Spanish For You! very much.  We will probably continue to use those two elements and put the worksheets aside until Anna is more prepared to read and write in Spanish.  A few years ago that would have bothered me to miss out on an entire part of a curriculum, but these days I am just happy Anna is being exposed to Spanish on a daily basis through methods she actually enjoys.

Last time I blogged about NotebookingPages.com I shared about my daughter and her sudden love for all things notebooking.  Today I am going to talk about how we supplement various curriculum with the different pages from NotebookingPages.com.  Now just so you know, Caleb is really starting to enjoy notebooking too.  He is newly seven-years-old and wants to follow in his big sister’s path.  Caleb is just finishing first grade, so for his notebooking we do a lot of narration/dictation and that means I write everything he tells me to write.

My son’s science curriculum is the perfect example of how we use NotebookingPages.com as a supplement.  We are using a basic science curriculum called Earth Rocks that is really strong on printables for his Science Notebooking Journal.  However, we add lots of hands-on exploration beyond the curriculum too, and I want Caleb to be able to record his finds and experiences in his journal.

Since we were studying sedimentary rocks the last few weeks, I went onto NotebookingPages.com in the membership section and looked under Nature Journal.  Sure enough, I found a set of pages for Rocks and Minerals including several different pages for sedimentary rocks with different sized lines and layouts.  I liked the layout with primary lines and a space for a picture or drawing best, so I printed multiple copies of that page and set them aside until they were needed.

For the last few days, Caleb has been up on the bank behind our house for hours looking for rocks to add to his growing collection.  Every time he finds a prize, he brings it home to share with us and of course, I take pictures.  He has found some beauties!  Today I printed out pictures of his favorites onto full sheet labels (four pictures to a page) and we stuck them to our sedimentary rocks pages.  Then I had Caleb tell me what he liked about the rock, or what he thought about the rock or what he knew about the rock.  Once we finished writing his answers, I trimmed around the notebooking pages and we put them into his science journal using scrapbook tabs.  The result looks very sharp and helps him remember some serious fun!  He has so much fun exploring on his own and by building a page in his notebook centered on his exploration we help cement that exploration with knowledge and observation.  This is delight-directed learning at it’s very best!

Here’s a close-up so you can see those pages better.

Let me blunt.  I am an affiliate with NotebookingPages.com because I love their products.  We use these products every single day and we never have trouble finding what we need!  During the month of May, you can get $25 a membership in the NotebookingPages.com 7th Birthday Sale-a-Bration Event I want you to have the chance to purchase this amazing membership while you can get such a good deal!  I will be blogging about NotebookingPages.com throughout the month and sharing how much we use the product in our daily homeschool life.

Have you thought about getting a NotebookingPages.com membership yet?  Don’t forget you can sign up for the free level to try out some pages!  The free members section is incredibly generous!