Circling Through This Life

Happy New Year!  With the New Year, I opted to change the look of my blog.  It's currently a work in progress and Tailorbear is doing some design work for me. It's been about a year since I last posted.  I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with blogging.  Did I want to continue to blog?  What would write?   Then I found inspiration. It's a long story and I'll share it - bit by bit - going forward.  I am still passionate about education.  While BooBear, TurtleGirl, and Tailorbear are now busy being adults,  Supergirl continues with her "homeschooling."  As our special needs, medically fragile, miracle girl, she continues to amaze us, and we continue our commitment to keep homeschooling as long as she is interested and still making progress.   I will continue to blog about homeschooling-related topics. However,  I am most excited about blogging about my health journey. I want to share what I am learning!  I'm inspir...

Today is December 6.  Many people around the world celebrate December 6 as St. Nicholas Day.   I don't ever remember not knowing that December 6 is Saint Nicholas Day.  I knew that our American Santa Claus has its roots in the very real St. Nicholas of Myra.  Growing up we didn't have a fireplace, so my sister and I didn't hang traditional stockings or put out our shoes on December 6th.  We did, however, lay out our own socks on December 24th.  Real socks. Not Christmas Stockings. That means they were little girl socks so not very big.  My other always put an orange in them and sometimes chocolate.  I didn't realize at the time that oranges and chocolate were very traditional St. Nicholas gifts. Are you familiar with the stories and legends surrounding St. Nicholas of Myra?  St. Nicholas of Myra was a real historical figure though not much is known about him.  One story is about how he gave coins to a poor widower for daughters' do...

The Homeschool Review Crew hosts a Monthly Challenge with a theme for each week of the month.  The theme for the last week of November is Preparing our Hearts for December. It made me think of Advent which is more preparing our hearts IN December but then I realized that Thanksgiving helps my family's hearts to prepare for preparing our hearts in December. We celebrate Advent.  Advent is the preparation for the feast of the Nativity of Christ or Christmas.  So how does Thanksgiving, an American holiday celebrating the Pilgrims coming to the New World, prepare hearts for Advent? Well for me it is because I do not view Thanksgiving as just about the Pilgrims.  The Pilgrims had a feast because they had gratitude.  They were grateful for surviving.  They gave thanks to God.   It is that same vein of gratitude, the gratefulness to God for all things, that girds my family's celebration of Thanksgiving. 2020 has been an especially tough year. It is diffi...

Thank you Ancient Faith Publishing for providing the coloring book Beautiful Christmas for review. Coloring is not just a great way to practice fine motor skills but it is also a wonderful tool for exercising your brain. When you color you develop planning skills and build your creativity muscles. My special needs daughter is developmentally delayed both cognitively and physically. While chronologically outside the intended age range of 5-12 this coloring book was perfect for where she is developmentally. From the back the cover: Beautiful Christmas is a 64-page coloring book for children aged 5-12. As they color Christ in the cave or the shepherds glorifying God with the angels, they are cultivating their own sensibility to beauty while learning to recognize some of the meaningful symbols, elements, and motifs of the Church. May this small book bless those children who color and create within its pages. I love the wide variety of coloring pages.  Some pictures have la...

Recently the Homeschool Review Crew had the opportunity to check out the Music & Creativity - Foundation Course from Simply Music . This course is free so every member of your family, with their own email address, could create their own Simply Music account.  With their own accounts, they can move through the program at their own speed and keep track of where they left off. If you have thought about piano lessons for yourself or your children but are unsure if it would be worth the time and investment you'll want to check out this free online piano course . As part of the Leadership Team for the Homeschool Review Crew, I do not typically write reviews.  I volunteered to write this review. Originally I was thinking I would have family members use this program and tell me their thoughts and I would just tell you about the program.   I set up an account for myself and then I encouraged my family to set up their own accounts. Honeybear, Turtlegirl, and BooBear...

Lent is fast approaching Today is Meatfare Sunday.  As a community, Orthodox Christians will not eat meat again after today until the fast is broken on Pascha.  But Lent is more than just not eating meat or dairy .  It's a time of preparation.  We renew our minds by focusing on the spiritual.  Along with fasting we pray more and do almsgiving.  Many of us turn to books to help us renew our minds and focus on the spiritual.  The Wilderness Journal: 365 Days with the Philokalia by Angela Doll Carlson is an excellent choice for preparing for Lent. First let's talk about the Philokalia. The Philokalia is not a single continuous book with one author. It is is a mult-volume collection of texts from the 4th to the 14th centuries focusing on spiritual living. The writers are all spiritual masters in the Orthodox Christian Tradition. The Wilderness Journal is a devotional tool we can use  to pursue Holiness by mediating on God, faith and...

Yes I am specifically writing this post to link up to the Friday (I know it's not Friday!) Homeschool Blogger Link Up hosted by the Homeschool Review Crew a division of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine.  This Crew Blog's post is Homeschool Review Crew Needs You.   Yep we want to grow the crew an to do that we need more home educating bloggers.  But not just bloggers.  We want Vloggers too!  Are you an active You Tube Vlogger?  We have a section in the 2019 Crew Application just for you! Now that you know why I am writing this post let me tell about my long term love affair with the Homeschool Review Crew.  We meet to speak when it was brand spanking new in 2008.  An online friend and co-moderator with me of an online email group for home school support had just embarked on the Maiden Voyage of this new concept of receiving home school product in exchange for a review!  Back in those days you didn't have to be a blogger you just had to...

As a Crew Leader for the Homeschool Review Crew I typically do not write reviews.  I become familiar with the product so that I can do my job as Review Quality Manager.  From time to time , I come across an amazing product that I love so much that I choose to write a review simply because I love the product. GrammarPlanet  is one of those products that I love so much that I want to share it with my readers. GrammarPlanet is an online subscription based program to teach students of any level. This program can be used with students who have had no previous grammar instruction as well as students who have had quite a bit more experience. So what is GrammarPlanet?  GrammarPlanet "is the brainchild of Erin Karl and Jerry Baily."  Let me share with you what Erin shared with me about GrammarPlanet: The creation of GrammarPlanet is the realization of a years-long dream to be able to make grammar education … REAL grammar education … available and affordable ...

It's Thursday!  Thankful Thursday and day 4 of the Back to School 5 Days of Encouragement Blog hop hosted by the Homeschool Review Crew! Today's post is simple and to the point. I am grateful for the Homeschool Review Crew.  I started as crew member in June 2010  which was the start of Year 3. I've been serving on the crew since then coming back for Year 4, the short transitional 2012 and continuing with 2013, 2014 and 2015.  In 2016 I stepped up into the role of Crew Leader. Through the Crew I have made some fabulous friends.  I've been introduced to vendors I never would have known about and tried products that I never knew i needed until I reviewed them. Money has been tight. Some years more tight than others.  God certainly used the Homeschool Review Crew to provide curriculum that I might not have been able to afford otherwise. Because of the Crew I've had a change to try different reading and math programs with Supergirl and really ge...

Today's theme for the Back to School 5 Days of Homeschool Encouragement  is Work It In Wednesday! Today I want to share about how homeschooling isn't just form of education but a way of life.  One of my big goals for home education was to instill a love of life long learning in my children.  Just because it isn't a school day or we are on vacation doesn't mean that education doesn't happen. We live in a state that requires instructional hours.  Something equivalent to 5.5 "instructional" hours a day for 180 days.  Thankfully my state recognizes that home education can be more efficient than classroom education in a public school. We tended to do 'year round' schooling taking breaks as life thew its punches.  During the summer we did more "fun" school like hands on science but my favorite thing about "homeschool as a lifestyle" is that going on vacation didn't mean a break from learning.  It meant a break from forma...

I think the greatest lesson I have learned as a homeschooling mama is to be flexible.  Being flexible isn't easy for me.  I don't like change.  I like having my road maps (i.e. lessons plans laid out for me) but I learned to love the detours. Having a "game plan" or a "road map" at the beginning of the year, meant that I knew where I wanted to go even if we didn't finish in June.  We always schooled year around with doing more "hands on" and "fun" schooling during the summer so I gave up early on trying to squeeze 36 weeks or 1100 hours of education between September and June. In today's Take a Look Tuesday post which is part of the Back to School  5 Days of Homeschool Encouragement Blog Hop hosted by the Homeschool Review Crew I am going to share my general road map for studying American History for the 2018-2019 school year for Supergirl. If you're you're hopping over form another Crew member blog, let me br...

I started investigating homeschooling as an education option for my family when my oldest, who was then my only, was 14 months old.  We were an active duty army family stationed in Germany and my husband was deployed to another country.  At the same time that I was introduced to home education my husband had stumbled across it.  We felt it must have been God working it out to bring us to decide together to homeschool. That was 22 years ago.  My husband changed up his career path and we continued to be a homeschooling family. We've had 3 of our 4 daughters graduate from our home school.  I continue to home educate Supergirl who is our medically fragile, developmentally delayed special needs daughter. As I thought about what to write for this Motivation Monday, the first day of Homeschool Review Crew's Back to School 5 Days of Homeschool Encouragement Blog Hop I couldn't decide if I wanted to talk about the encouragement I've been getting from Julie Polanco's...

Thank you Northwest Treasures and the Homeschool Review Crew for the opportunity to review Rocks and Minerals for Little Eyes  from their Geology for "Little Eyes" series. Many years ago when I was trying to finish up my Associate of Arts degree I needed to take a science with a Lab or another math class.  I looked at the math classes and went nope. Not happening.  I looked at the science classes. Remember it had to have a lab.  I quickly crossed off Biology. I was not about to dissect anything.  Chemistry was the next to go as it had too much math involved.  I settled for something called Physical Geography.  It was listed as a science. It had a lab.  It met the requirements I needed.  I fell in love.  Physical Geography is part of the Earth Sciences.  It's geology that focuses on the physical characteristics of the Earth's lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere.  I mostly remember the lithosphere stuff....