Month: April 2016

A Review of “Homeschool Planet” Daily Online Planner

by // // No Comments

homeschoolplanet1

I’ve been tracking our homeschool assignments and hours in a planner. However, I needed something easier to use now that I have 2 kids that I am homeschooling. That’s when I decided to try Homeschool Planet.

homeschoolplanet

Homeschool Planet is “a full-featured planner that doesn’t require hours to learn how to use it. Just launch Homeschool Planet, click on the calendar, and start adding classes, assignments, and appointments!” (quote taken from their website)

What I like:

  • I can add assignments for each child easily.
  • If the assignment is basically the same the entire year – like Lesson 1, Lesson 2, etc, the program can input that in automatically for me and change the number assignment each day.
  • Along the same lines, if the assignment is “do the next chapter”, I can easily put that down for each day without copying and pasting it or writing it down each time.
  • I can pre-assign certain subjects for certain days.
  • You can allocate times to each assignment to help you keep track of your total hours. I don’t really rely on this. I manually write down how long each assignment took. However, I like that I have this option.
  • I can easily print the day’s assignments for each child on separate sheets of paper. You can keep these in a binder to have a record of what you have done.
  • It’s easy to move assignments around. Maybe life got in the way and you couldn’t do any schoolwork. You can easily move the assignments to the next day and all the future assignments will shift out (or you could say to double up for the next day).
  • You can view your whole family’s schedule together to see how every meshes together or view each member’s schedule separately.
  • There is a free 30 day trial so you can try it out and see if it’s a good fit for your family before you commit.

Homeschool Planet Screenshot

Overall – I love this planner and will renew my subscription.

Cost: Homeschool Planet costs $65 for a 1 year subscription OR $6.95/month.

View their website here to see a full list of features.

 

Praying for Your Elephant: Boldly Approaching Jesus with Radical & Audacious Prayer

by // // No Comments

praying for my elephant

 

I’ve been reading this book – Praying for Your Elephant: Boldly Approaching Jesus with Radical and Audacious Prayer” by Adam Stadtmiller. While, I got this from Amazon, it looks like there is a free downloadable ebook on his website.

Praying for your elephang

The book is about revolutionizing your prayer life. What if we did pray big bold prayers? What if we did pray for that huge elephant? The elephant represents the huge or small things that we are afraid to pray for because we don’t want to appear greedy or ungodly.

However, the author suggests that God wants us to pray boldly to Him. Yes, there is a balance and no, we don’t pray to God thinking he’s a sugar daddy (my word choice, not the author’s) and that He’ll give us everything we want. Our hearts have to be right with God.

Stadtmiller challenges the reader to come up with 10 different areas to pray for. Then, under each area, we are to write down 10 prayers and then pray for them every day. Areas could include: friends, ourselves, finances, family, work, health, the world, our country, etc. As time goes on, God may impress upon our hearts to change certain prayers to be more specific.

Stadtmiller also challenges the reader to put down prayers they are afraid to pray for. Ex: you may want to pray for a new laptop, but you feel like that’s too materialistic or greedy. Stadtmiller would say, put it down! Or, you may want to pray about going on a vacation, but again are too afraid since it seems like a frivolous idea. Put it down!

Don’t limit God. God may just answer that prayer you are afraid to pray for.

My takeaway: I struggle with praying for small things like wanting my son to stop sucking his thumb or money for a vacation. I wonder if it’s ok to pray so. God wants us to pray specifically, but I don’t want to appear “greedy”. This book reminded me that God cares about all areas of our lives. He wants to know what my desires are. He wants me to pray boldly.

I made my own list of 10 areas and have been praying over them for a few weeks now. I don’t quite have 10 prayer requests under each category, but there are at least a few I wrote down. I can’t wait to see how God works through them!

My Monthly Coupon Savings for Jan, Feb, March

by // // No Comments

monthly coupon savings

For January  I saved $31.73 by using coupons.

For February, I saved $12.99 .

For March – $21.65

YTD Total: $66.37

Where do I get coupons?

  1. From the Sunday paper. My town has a free option where they deliver just the coupons along with a few ads (not all).
  2. From Swagbucks – When you print online coupons from them, you get 10 points per coupon. The points can then be redeemed for gift cards to places like Amazon.  Alot of the coupons found in the Sunday paper are also found here so it doubles my stash. It can take awhile for me to get credit for the coupons, but I don’t mind. The points are just an added benefit of using their coupons.
  3. E-coupons on Grocery Store Loyalty Cards – My King Soopers allows me to add e-coupons to their card, which are deducted when I buy those items in the store.
  4. Ibotta – an app I use on my iPhone. Ibotta has quite a few coupons that you can use in conjunction with a physical coupon. The coupon savings collect in my account until I reach a payout threshold. I consider this “extra” money and don’t them include in my monthly coupon totals.

How do I maximize my coupons?

  • I try to use my coupons at King Soopers which doubles the value up to $1.00. However, the product must already be a good price, otherwise I won’t buy it just for the sake of using a coupon.

I’ve been keeping track of how much in coupons I use per month to help me actually see their value. I plan to do a separate post with the total.

** Affiliate links are used in this post. However, I only recommend companies that I like and use.

How I do Morning Family Devotions with 3 Kids

by // // No Comments

Morning family devotions with 3 kids

I want to instill the practice of morning devotions with my children. We already do something right before bed, but I wanted to do something in the morning.

Previously, my oldest was supposed to read her devotional each day and write the focus verse. However, I don’t think she always did this or did it thoughtfully. She needed more accountability. I also wanted to instill the practice in all of my children and have them see it done each day.

My new plan:

We will all do devotions together each morning. Each child has an age appropriate devotion or children’s Bible to look at or read including the 3 year old. I will also have my Bible to read. This way, everyone sees the others doing their devotions, plus they see mom reading her own Bible.

I will usually read part of a proverb from my Bible out loud while the kids look through their books.

Then, I will read aloud from the youngest two’s devotion

Then I will ask my oldest what hers was about

So far this has worked for a few weeks. They know and expect that we do a devotion each day. I keep it short since the attention span of the youngest 2 are short.

These are the books I use:

Baby Bible ABC for my 3 year old

Day by Day Begin to Read Bible for my 5 year old

Adventure Bible Books of Devotions for my 8 year old