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Showing posts from November, 2008

Black Friday Curriculum (& Other) Sales

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Hi, this just arrived in my email today and I thought I'd share it with everyone: We are pleased to make you aware of CurrClick's Black Friday Freebie Giveaway and Homeschooling Through the Holidays Sale , in advance of the general public. Black Friday is about savings, this season is about being frugal and CurrClick is and always has been about helping you trim your education budget. That's why this year, beginning Friday the 28th at 10 AM EST, we're inviting you and your readership, egroups and co-ops, to our biggest Black Friday Giveaway and Homeschooling Through the Holidays sales event yet, offering 28 COMPLETELY FREE TITLES from our most popular publishers and dozens of your favorite holiday education titles up to 85% OFF! This Friday, November 28th, put on your pajamas, put away your pocketbooks and "head over" to CurrClick's best ever Black Friday Freebie Giveaway and Homeschooling Through the Holidays Sale! **Look for these graphics on our homepa

Brendan Kizer’s Legacy

At the beginning of the year Jade and I wanted to do a fundraising project and were very happy when Agora decided to do a cyber-charter fundraiser for Alex's Lemonade Stand . Jade was quite touched by Alex's dedication and bravery to raise money for other children with cancer even as she was dying. So, this past summer we held a lemonade stand and were able to raise about $100 – not bad for a couple of novices, I guess. Jade wanted to do more and so did I so we set up an online fundraising portal at www.firstgiving.com/CherylHendersonKhalid in order to do this. To date this hasn't been much of a success, but I blame lack of experience on that. So, for I put this project on the back burner for a bit while I licked my wounded ego and tried to figure out a new strategy to contribute more to this charity. Then, about a week ago, I picked up my local "Our Town" at our local library and started reading through it. I was touched by the tribute that Mrs. Kizer gave t

Elizabeth Haydon Rocks!

While in the children's section of the library my eye fell upon a book entitled " The Dragon's Lair (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme) " As I am a fantasy reader and was looking for something light to enjoy I picked it up for myself … and fell in love. The book is set up as a restoration of archeological records and they tell the story of Ven Polypheme as he goes through his life as an explorer, adventurer, and journalist for the High King. As has been my misfortune of late, I began the series at the end – "The Dragon's Lair" is actually Book 3 in this series. The other two books are " The Thief Queen's Daughter (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme) "– Book 2 -- and " The Floating Island (The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme) " – Book 1. Because I do have younger children I checked to see if audiobooks had been created for the series, but not as of today. The story itself is fast-paced, sometimes funny, sometimes scary, but always

Sarny

Well, once again homeschooling has been an education not only for my children but for the parents as well. We listen to a lot of audiobooks when we're traveling from dance to shopping and all around the town. Since we were studying the about the Civil War figures, this book jumped out at me while perusing the shelves of the library. And I am so glad that it did. This is a story of Sarny (by Gary Paulsen ) a survivor of slavery times and the Civil War. It is told in retrospect by the 90+ year old Sarny. Why did I like this story so much? Well, one thing the person who was chosen to read this story did so in such a convincing manner that I felt as if I was sitting at Sarny's bedside listening to her relate her life. It was that gripping and real to all of us. The story itself was, for me, about how the love of one's children can make you do things that you never thought you could. Not to give too much away, Sarny's children were sold shortly before the emancipation and

Cool way to make spelling interesting

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My daughter has problems with spelling and I've been trying to find new and more interesting ways to help her to be more successful. Jade was in speech therapy for a little over three years for an immature auditory system and still has problems sounding out words. Ironically, she's a very advanced reader with great comprehension. Anyway, quite by accident I found this great site (www.wordle.net) that will allow you to make art out of words. Here's an example of her first spelling/art masterpiece: If you'd like to see more of Jade's masterpieces (or just play around with it yourself) be sure to visit www.wordle.net. Jade's work will be saved under "Cherbear2768" in the gallery. BTW, there is no censorship within Wordle, so you may want to just let your children play with the application without going through the gallery.

FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real

Today I received some news from my husband that brought to mind the words of Napoleon Hill. He tells us in his masterpiece "Think and Grow Rich" that "The prevalence of these fears (fear of poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love of someone, old age and death), as a curse to the world, runs in cycles. For almost six years, while the depression was on, we floundered in the cycle of FEAR OF Poverty." This sprang to mind as I listened to my husband describing the scene down at Goldman Sachs last night. He works for Williams Lea, a British outsourcing agency, and they've already laid off fifteen people with more to come. Yesterday, he found out when he arrived for the graveyard shift, Goldman Sachs laid off over 3,200 people. Why? Because they had a loss this last quarter -- the first loss since 1999! And because of this momentary downswing in their profits they've now left 3,200 people without jobs or hopes of even finding new jobs quickly because other bu

Today's Free Game -- Dominoes!

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Every weekend Game Giveaway of the Day has free downloads of some pretty nice family games. Every game isn't a 10, but if you have children or are a puzzle lovers you can't beat FREE! I hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend and a wonderful week.