All-of-a-Kind Family Resource

Awhile back, I published a link to a resource that you could use while reading books from the All-of-a-Kind Family series. This book series is set in New York city in the early 1900s, and paints a picture of Jewish family life and customs at the turn of the century, through the end of World War I.

From the resource website:

This readers guide to Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family series was created in celebration of the author’s 100th birthday in 2004. It includes historical context, background information about the author and the people upon whom the characters are based, extension activities, and read-alike suggestions.

Here is the updated link to the All-of-a-Kind Family Companion.

Christmas giveaway from Homeschool Mosaics

The team of homeschooling writers at Homeschool Mosaics would like to wish you a very merry Christmas today. We're giving away our two newest e-books, Sanity Savers and Holiday Blessings, full of ideas and practical tips for combating homeschool (and holiday) burnout. Here's the scoop, from the Homeschool Mosaics webpage:

It’s December!  So, we’ve decided to do things a bit differently for this month’s Giveaway Day!
Instead of teaming up with a  vendor friend to bring you ONE prize, we wanted to give a prize – from us – to each one of our readers! 

So, this month, there’s no Rafflecopter entry widget – and every single one of you can receive the prize(s)!  Yes, plural!

TODAY ONLY you can head over to Amazon and grab BOTH of our books for FREE!  Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still take advantage of this offer – Amazon has free apps that you can download so you can access Kindle books on your computer, tablet, or smart phone!

Find the download links and lots of helpful homeschool-related articles here.

The Old Schoolhouse: Free digital issue

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine is offering the Fall 2011 digital issue for free, online, for a limited time.

See this link for more details.

Free printables!

How Does She...? is a fun and informational website put together by a bunch of creative moms. Browsing there briefly, I found articles with how-tos for crafts and organizing ideas that range from simple to complex, a sort of something-for-everyone. No, I'm not going to be picking up a drill this week to make the cute children's chore chart, but I can see ways to adapt the craft in a way that my uncrafty fingers can manage.

Anyhow, in addition to projects you can also find free printables at the site to help you in your quest for sanity in a busy household.

They're pretty and colorful and will add a cheerful note to your organizing.

What fun!

Free printables!

While perusing this week's Subscriber Exclusive from Homeschool Freebie of the Day, I followed a link that led to a link that led to free printables from Life Your Way.

They have more than 150 free printables available for download here, including a room organizer chart (I don't know about you, but with the change of seasons we're moving our furniture around into new configurations) and a Home Management Notebook.

So if you feel the need to scratch that "get organized" itch, check out Life Your Way, and if you haven't heard of Homeschool Freebie of the Day, take a look at that site, too, where every day there's a new free download of PDF e-books or mp3 files or links to free resources.

TGIF (and an online music playground)

I've got to admit, I'm glad it's Friday. I'm tired. As a matter of fact, I started to type TIGF. Now what would that mean?

Just finished writing a review of a music education enrichment program, Quaver's Marvelous World of Music. Look for it to be published in the next issue of Eclectic Homeschool Online, along with an article about one of the co-creators.

At the Quaver link above, you'll find information about the music education DVDs, but you'll also find a website with free, music-related activities. There are arcade games (which we've spent a lot of time mastering, I'm sure you wanted to know), but there are also neat compositional tools all ready for exploring and creating music. Check it out!