My Homeschool Grades - Review

Record keeping and high school transcripts are one of those things that can strike fear into the heart of the homeschool parent.  To make your life less stressful, I have an AMAZING product to share with you, My Homeschool Grades!   Let me share just a few of the things I love about it.

It’s VERY user friendly!  The program works on Within a few minutes you can easily:

Add a Student (and personalize it with your kids pictures).

Add a Class

My Homeschool Grades is currently linked with boxed curriculum publishers such as Sonlight, Institute for Excellence in Writing, Alpha & Omega, ALEKS, Teaching Textbooks, Apologia, Rosetta Stone and Math-U-See. When I say linked with, I mean as you add the students course and choose for example Teaching Textbooks Algebra, it will automatically list the lesson numbers, tests etc. All you have to do is go in and add your students grades! More curricula will be added as the program progresses, however if the one you use isn’t listed you can simply choose “Other” and add the info by hand.   There is also a spot where you can request your current curriculum be added to the list!

Add an Activity (great for those extra curricular items).

Create a Transcript  (with a click of the button the work is done for you!)

You can quickly set up your entire school year, or go back and recreate past years. For past years you can enter the end of year grade instead of every single score.   My children are finishing up grades 4 and 2 this year.  In about 20 minutes I had rebuilt their academic records all the way back to pre-K!

The greatest thing?  You can EDIT.  Some programs I’ve used act as if you are carving in stone, once you’ve added it there’s no going back.  My Homeschool Grades allows you to edit everything, as often as you like.

My Homeschool Grades is by FAR the easiest, most user friendly online record keeping program I’ve ever seen! Not to mention, that for $49.99 you get LIFETIME membership to the site, regardless of how many children you have!  

If you’re still not convinced, you can try the program free for 14 days!   Click here to get started.   I promise, you won’t be disappointed.  This is one of the things I’d say are a must have!

 

Weekly Wrap Up–The End of 2nd Grade

The monsoon’s dried up this week.  Monday night into Tuesday morning we had a HEAVY frost.  The heat ran most of the day Tuesday.  Wednesday we set a  record high of 93 degrees.  Thursday we had hail, and lots of it.   Very odd indeed.

Olivia and I were finally able to get out and go walk about some.  We traveled down to the park and found out that the cygnets hatched during our absence. 

Thursday was our last Activity Day  for this school year.   My class focused on Africa.   Olivia’s sign language and guitar classes did a presentation at the end of the day. 

This is stage week for the spring ballet (Snow White).  Wednesday through Friday were dress rehearsals.  The shows are Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.  Then we are finished with ballet until the fall.

Lindsey is currently celebrating the end of 2nd grade. I’m still not sure how I managed to get her finished a week ahead of Olivia, but she’s thrilled none the less.  She celebrated by getting a new pair of toe-socks.  It’s the little things that make her happy.

Here is one of my favorite photos from last weeks co-op grand finale.  The periodic table of elements, in cupcakes.

How was your week?

Linking up with the Weekly Wrap Up..

Activity Day - Africa

Today at Activity Day the girls and I traveled to Africa.  I shared a little with them about my upcoming trip to Ethiopia.  We colored our map to show the dessert, grasslands and jungle/rainforest regions of Africa. 

We made an imitation “talking drum”.  I used my hot glue gun to attach the bottoms of two styrofoam cups.  Then the girls used masking tape to cover the outside of their drums (because we were all out of animal gut).  

To add a bit of authenticity, I used some distressing ink make the outside look more worn and “earthy”. 

We looked at some of the customs, jewelry and music of the various African cultures.   We talked about the different bead work in some African cultures and decided to make our own. Give a bunch of little girls a tub of beads and they are good to go! Due to time constraints everyone made a bracelet instead of the planned necklace.

We added our Cairo, Egypt stamp to our travel passports and headed back home.  This was our last class for this school year.  Next year I’ll not be teaching, instead I’ll be serving on the board.  We’re already looking forward to another fun year!

Books we used:
African Crafts; by Lynne Garner
Africa for Kids; by Harvey Croze
Hands on Africa; by Yvonne Y. Merrill
Explore Africa; by Bobbie Kalman
Food and Recipes of Africa; by Theresa M. Beatty
Baby Animals of Africa;  by Henrietta Bichonnier
Africa; by David Petersen
Ethiopia; by Ann Heinrichs
E is for Ethiopia; by Ashenafi Gudeta
Traditions from Africa; by Vivien Golding

Nature Walking

Olivia and I like to get out early in the mornings and get a couple of miles of walking in.  Weather and schedules sometimes wreck havoc with that plan, but we try to do it as often as we can.

This week the weather has been chilly (ok, we’re back to having frosts again, seriously).  The days have been crisp and cool, more like fall than spring.  However, we’ve had some lovely sights along our way

The swan eggs hatched sometime in the last week or so.  They have three cygnets this time!  I’m hoping they don’t get stolen like last years brood.

There are so many lovely flowers blooming in the park, and in yards along the way.   I couldn’t help but take a few photos.  I especially love these huge oriental poppies.  They are bigger than my hand.

Olivia of course likes finding nature that moves, albeit slowly.  This tiny little snail was warming in the un on a neighbors garden wall as we passed by.

Caterpillar nests always remind me of some creepy science-fiction movie.  Shudder.  Olivia on the other hand LOVES stuff like this.

Lindsey has yet to figure out that the reason Olivia loves these walks so much is because of the playground pit stop each day.

What fun things have you spotted in nature this week?

The Waterproof Bible - Review

Have you ever gone camping or traveling and left your Bible at home because you were afraid it would get wet or dirty? I admit that I have done that. It’s good to respect your Bible and want to take care of it, but you NEED the Word with you, especially when traveling.

The Waterproof Bible from Bardin Marsee Publications is the perfect “accessory” for those who enjoy an active, outdoor lifestyle. This Bible is waterproof, stain resistant, the pages will stretch before they tear and, drumroll please IT FLOATS! I see many a practical joke in my future with this little darlin!

The copy I received for review was this lovely blue King James Version that contains the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs.

Below are the four other covers that are currently available. The far bottom right being the personalization options.

These Bible come in the following translations:

ESV – English Standard Version

KJV – King James Version

NIV – New International Version

NKJV – New King James Version

NLT – New Living Translation

Each are available in full Bible for $44.95 or New Testament, Psalms & Proverbs for $24.95.

Our Waterproof Bible arrived the day we were scheduled to color Easter eggs. We thought this would be a great time to test the claim of waterproof and stain resistant. On a side note, it seemed a bit “not right” to deliberately be trying to get a Bible wet after years of trying to protect my Bible. None the less, we dipped, spilled and splashed colors onto the pages.

Below is the same page spread that you see above. No stains, no pages falling apart. LOVE IT! We actually had a hard time taking a photo of the spills, the egg coloring liquid would pool and run off faster than I could click the photo.

These Bibles would be great for the outdoorsman, someone wanting to read at the beach or pool, our military men and women, and of course parents with messy kids. This is also a great Bible FOR messy kids. They can drop that chili dog right on here and wipe it off without leaving horrible stains.

I absolutely love this product. It will be traveling with me to Ethiopia in July to give it a real run for the money as we arrive during rainy season.