EDIT: The HOAC sale listed below has overwhelmed their servers! They have posted to their Yahoo group that they are working to get the site up and running again. If you are on their email list, they will email you when the site is back up. (They asked that you not keep trying right now, so that they can recover!) If you aren’t on their email list, just check back in a bit. They said that they WILL honor the discount, lol!

There’s been LOTS of interest in the HomeschoolEstore announcement, so I thought I’d pass along a couple more Black Friday sales that might be of interest to some of you out there:

First, Amazon.com is a staple in the homeschooling purchases of many homeschoolers. They are having online sales all day on Friday. Check in often to see what the current offerings are!

Second, In The Hands of a Child, provider of fine lapbooking products for the homeschool market, is offering steep discounts on all of their Research Kits and Project Packs. If you are looking for a mid year pick-me-up, this could be just the ticket for spicing up your learning. They gave me permission to share the details of the sale, including the coupon code to get the savings. (This information is not currently available on their website, but was distributed to those on their mailing list.) I’ve copied the details below:

Here is How the Sale Works:

All Times Are Eastern Standard Time

3am – 9am: 45% off all Project Packs and Kit Packs

9:01am -11am: 40% off all Project Packs and Kit Packs

11:01am – 1pm: 35% off all Project Packs and Kit Packs

1:01pm – 3pm: 30% off all Project Packs and Kit Packs

3:01pm — 3am: 25% off all Project Packs and Kit Packs

Here is your code:

ThankUall07

Please remember to enter the code and click the UPDATE button before proceeding through Checkout.

With the expectation of heavy traffic the wait time for approval of eBook orders may be several hours. Please be patient as we process those orders.

NOTE: This Sale is good for Project Packs and Kit Packs ONLY in your choice of formats; eBook, printed, CD or printed/CD combo.

Cannot be combined with any other offer, sale, discount or special.

This sale DOES NOT include custom designed Project Packs.

I’ve gotten quite a few of HOAC’s downloads and I love them.

Enjoy!

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

EDIT: Note that this sale starts at 9:00 am CENTRAL time. So, if you were wondering, like I was, why there was no sale at 9:00 EASTERN – well, that’s why, lol.

The list of free Black Friday downloads from HomeschoolEstore won’t be officially announced until the morning of the 23rd, but I’ve been given permission to “leak” the info now.

These giveaways have been HUGE events in the past, with the unexpectedly massive demand totally overwhelming their servers. They’ve since upgraded their servers, and are getting ready for a site overhaul and a name change, too.

This site gives away more free product than any commercial homeschooling site I’ve ever seen, including new freebies every week. Their regular prices are more than reasonable, too. Plus, no waiting for the UPS man after you place your order!!! You can just download your purchases instantly. Okay, enough with the pitch, already. (Can you tell I love them?)

Here’s the list of titles that HomeschoolEstore and their publishers are offering for free on Black Friday:

It’s HomeschoolEstore’s 2nd Annual,
“Black Friday Giveaway”

Download up to 20 titles for FREE, Nov 23rd-Nov 24th! (9:00 a.m.-9:00 a.m. CST)

This page contains affiliate links to a resource I am proud to recommend, HomeschoolEstore. Thanks so much for your support of this blog!

EDIT: I found a couple more online sales that will be of interest to many homeschoolers. Click here for the info.

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is up at HomeSchoolBuzz.com

Go have a peak, if you have a few minutes. If you don’t have much time for reading blogs, you can bookmark it and read a few posts a day until the next week’s carnival arrives. I always find something inspirational or informative, even when I don’t get to read every post.

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

This post is the third in a series on private blogs. The other posts are There’s No Place Like Your Own Private Blog: A Journal for Your Eyes Only, and You are 5 Minutes from your own private blog on WordPress.com.

I wanted to wrap up my series on creating a private blog by examining some of the practical ways in which you can use your blog to keep track of many different aspects of your life. There are three topics that I’m specifically going to address to get you up and running. They are: using categories and tags, customizing your sidebars, and using Pages. These instructions are geared specifically towards WordPress, but many of the same functions can also be accomplished using other blogging platforms. Feel free to take these ideas and run with them! Here goes:

From Chaos to Categories: How to get your notes organized

First, I find it really helpful to set up a few categories, so that I can easily find the posts that I am looking for later. WordPress lets you set up categories and also subcategories, allowing you to further organize your notes. You can add categories from the Write Post screen, just by clicking on Add. Type in the name of your category, and it’ll be added to the category list. You can then easily select one or more categories to apply to your post.

To keep up with homeschooling related posts, for example, you might:

• Set up a category called Homeschooling
• Then set up sub-categories for Diary (where you keep track of what academic activities you do each day), Field Trips, Curriculum Research (where you keep up with resources in which you may be interested), and so on.
• You can do the same for other areas of interest, hobbies, and responsibilities. Work, Household, Finance, Knitting, Sports, Journaling, or whatever topics for which you are likely to be making notes on a regular basis.

If you have a short-term project that you want to be able to find easily, but don’t want to give it a permanent spot in your categories list, you can add a more specific label in the “Tags” field at the bottom of your Write Post screen. For instance, I might make notes about a particular knitting pattern that I’m working through. I could add a tag of “Paisley Long Shawl” in the tags field. “Paisley Long Shawl” won’t show up in the categories list, but I can still find it by searching or by using the Tag Cloud, which is a collection of all your tags that can be displayed in your sidebar. I’ll also categorize this post under Knitting, so that I can also find it by browsing through my knitting entries.

Confused about the difference between tags and categories? I like to think of categories as a table of contents. The category list should consist of broad umm. . . categories into which your posts are grouped. The tags, on the other hand, are like an index. They include more specific terms that you might want to use to find your post later, but that you don’t want to necessarily add to the table of contents. You can add as many tags as you want by typing them in, separating each one with a comma.

You are the boss of your sidebar!

If you don’t have a Tag Cloud, hanging around on the theme you are using, you can easily add it to one of the side areas (called sidebars) of your blog. Your sidebars are fully and easily customizable. Just go to your Dashboard, click on Presentation, and then click on Widgets.

This takes you to an area where you can easily (by dragging and dropping) select whatever information you want to show on your sidebar(s). You can insert links to all your Pages, lists of recent Posts, a Calendar, the list of Categories, a Tag Cloud, links to your post Archives, and much more. Just drag what you want over and drop it where you want it to go. If the widget that you placed can be customized, just click on the little icon on the right side of the widget to set it up. Be sure to click on Save after you have things fixed the way you want them!

The Power of Pages

The regular posts that you make will be saved and displayed on your screen in date order. You can access older posts by clicking on a month in your Archives widget, by searching for a particular phrase, by clicking on a category or tag, and so on. Sometimes, though, you’ll want a permanent, non-date oriented page to make lists or collect information. In this case, you’ll want to write a Page, instead of a Post.

You can set all your pages to display in the sidebar, using the Widgets screen that I just described. That way your pages will be easy to access at all times, right from your main page.

What topics are appropriate for Pages? Well, I have a page for a list of Blog Ideas, so that I don’t lose track of the different posts that I want to write. I also have another one for a Master To-Do List. I add items to that list as I think of them, and I erase the ones that have been completed. This means the list will always be up-to-date and easy to find in my sidebar.

Other good ideas for pages are: Shopping Lists, Important Phone Numbers, Login Info (I try to keep a list of my usernames for the various websites with which I have accounts – otherwise it gets pretty unmanageable, pretty fast!), or really anything at all that needs to be kept up-to-date and in one place.

Now go get busy and have fun with your private blog!

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

I saw that Why Homeschool found this hour-long interview with Elizabeth Warren, one of the authors of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke.

This is one of my very favorite books. It explains so well why having two incomes can, indeed, be a terrible trap for many people. It was after I read this book a couple of years ago that I knew we were going to be in for some major problems in the U.S. real estate market.While I had known for a while that many people are lured to financial disaster by easy consumer credit, I had not put the pieces together to see that even many people who pay all their bills and live within their means are still vulnerable to financial disaster.There is a common perception that homeschoolers make a financial sacrifice to enable one parent to be available for child-rearing. This book, though, was proof positive for me that homeschooling is a great way to avoid the trap that many families find themselves facing. After reading this, I knew that homeschooling was actually going to strengthen our family’s overall financial security.

Essentially, much of the danger of the two income trap comes from rising home prices. While people spend less on necessities like groceries than they have historically, they spend a lot more on their mortgages.

This book argues that one of the main drives in the cost of housing has been the need to be located near good schools. Homes cost more in desirable school precincts, and the more people who want to live in that district, the more the houses cost.

Though the authors don’t have anything against having two incomes, they do see a huge problem when a family HAS to have two incomes in order to pay the mortgage.

If you have extra income just to pay for luxuries, vacations, or for saving money, it isn’t such a big problem. When one of you gets sick, or is laid off, your family can just cut back on those optional expenses, without being in danger of losing your home or going bankrupt.

If your family requires both incomes in order to make ends meet, you are in an incredibly precarious position. Most bankruptcies are caused by illness or job loss, not just running up credit card debt and living beyond your means.

If you are a one income family, then you have a great safety valve. If that one income is reduced or lost due to a layoff, or if expenses go up because of illnesses or other temporary factors, the unemployed spouse can go out and get a part-time or full-time job, until things get better.

If both spouses are already employed, then it is much more difficult to bring in more money in the case of an emergency. So one-income families are more solid, financially, than many two-income families, even though they may have to live a somewhat more frugal lifestyle on a day-to-day basis.

We homeschoolers don’t have to think about what school district we are near! Furthermore, if we do find ourselves needing to reduce our housing costs, we can just sell our house and buy a smaller one. We don’t have to agonize about kids switching schools mid-year, losing their entire social network at the same time that the family is undergoing many other challenges.

After reading The Two-Income Trap, I’m convinced that homeschooling is a great way for our family to build a stronger financial and emotional position. It is a responsible way to anticipate life’s unexpected problems, while building a lifestyle of family bonding.

And heck, I just realized that the book is on sale at Amazon for only $4.99. What a steal! Find it at your local library, or pick up a copy on Amazon to have for future reference and moral support when you start envying those big houses.

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke

(This is an affiliate link, and helps generate a few cents for Bringing Up Learners if you buy through my link. If you enjoy my posts, you can send a little encouragement my way by making purchases on Amazon after clicking on one of my Amazon links (any book you want to buy, not just the ones I recommend!)

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Nerd Family. Be sure to check it out!

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about why you need your own personal for-your-eyes-only blog.

Now that I’ve got you convinced that a blog is the way to go, I’m going to walk you through the process of creating your private blogging haven using Wordpress.com. (Just because that is what I use. You can do the very same thing on Blogger.)

Ready? Ok!

1) Go to Wordpress.com.

2) See that huge Sign Up Now! button? Click on it! Then enter your desired user name, etc. On the next screen, you will have the option to name your blog. You will also see a checkbox marked privacy. You want to UN-check that box, so that WordPress doesn’t notify the other sites whenever you post. Then, click on Signup.

3) Congratulations! You are now signed up. Click on the link to go to your homepage. Before you start posting, you do need to go in and make your blog private. Do that by :

• Clicking on My Dashboard, in the menu near the top of your screen.
• Select Options, and then Privacy
• Select “I would like my blog to be available only to users I choose.”
• Then, you can enter your own user name in the box underneath. You’ll be the only one who can view or edit the content in your blog. If you want to let anyone else access your blog, have them register on WordPress, and then add their usernames to that box as well. Save your settings, and you are good to go!

4) Now that you are up and running, you’ll probably want to change how your blog looks. I think the default theme is boring, but fortunately, there are many different themes that you can select, and you can switch them whenever you like! Just click on My Dashboard, and then click Presentation. You’ll see a large selection of themes from which to choose. Page through and find one that suits your mood.

And that’s it! You have now activated your very own private blog, and you are ready to start keeping up with your stuff. Later this week I’ll post some ideas about how you can use the blog as your extra brain.

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

Yes, I’m talking to you.

You need a blog. Here’s why:

I know you’ve had “things” in your life that at one time felt so real and solid that you couldn’t imagine ever forgetting them. Events, ideas, even details of daily life were so much a part of you at one time. Now, weeks or years later, how many of these can you even recall at all?

This forgetting phenomenon seems to apply to details both big and small. You forget that great idea you had, that insight into a relationship, those lessons you learned from that really good book, that homeschool resource that you really meant to look into, and even those funny little toddler mispronunciations and cute childhood sayings.

We take those things for granted, and then, while our attention is turned elsewhere, they slowly slip, unnoticed, from our grasp.

Memories Are Vulnerable

This point was driven home to me, when I stumbled across some old notebooks from a few years back. I leafed through them, and couldn’t believe it. Until that moment I’d forgotten all those ideas and experiences I’d documented, but when I read over the notes, it all came back to me. It was a truly amazing and life-changing experience.

It was great to be able to read through and see where I was back then, the things I was thinking about, the problems the kids were having, the solutions I was going to try. These notes weren’t elaborate, by any means. Really, it was just a collection of lists and jottings. They were, however, enough to remind me of how things were, and of how far we had come.

It also reminded me that some things hadn’t changed much at all! I was amazed by how often I seemed to be (unknowingly) churning my wheels. I’d been meaning to get to a few goals for years, but kept getting distracted. I never realized how long I’d been procrastinating until I found these notes. Turns out that memories can play funny tricks with our sense of time!

All of these experiences impressed upon me how valuable memories are, and how vulnerable, too.

Since that time, I’ve tried to keep some records that I can refer to later. I’ve found that even as little as a few notes every few days can make a huge difference in how much I remember.

As you can imagine, though, I soon found myself surrounded by a hodgepodge of notebooks, binders, and other scraps, with no real way to organize or find anything that I needed. Finally, I realized that one great answer is (literally) right under our noses:

a blog.

Blogs Are Great Tools

No, not a public blog that everyone can see. I’m talking about setting up a private for-your-eyes-only blog (available for free from several different hosting services) where you can keep track of:

• What you did each day (or each week), educationally.
• Ideas you have.
• Lists of resources you want to track.
• Questions you need to research.
• Journaling
• Traveling details
• Work details

And really, much more. This is a literal web log of all the “stuff” that you need to keep tabs on, or don’t want to forget. Unlike a hodgepodge of papers, though, you can painlessly search your blog to find just what you want, when you want it.

You can assign tags to each entry, as you write it, so that you can easily pull it up later. Keep all your homeschool records under one label, and all your knitting ideas under another. Don’t forget to enter those priceless gems your kids come up with. (I can’t stand the thought that I might someday forget that for years my girls confused the words moth and wasp, referring to any random fluttering insect as a “mahsp”.)

Retrieve exactly what you want, when you are ready for it, and think of it as a working scrapbook of your ideas and experiences. Nostalgia is one good reason to keep a private blog, but it can do wonders for your personal productivity, too!

Where to Get Started

Now that you know blogs aren’t just for “bloggers”, (though personal blogs are invaluable tools for bloggers, too!), here are a couple of places where you can get your own free blog:

• Blogger
• Wordpress

Both of these sites are easy to set up, free, and allow you to restrict access to your blog so that only you (or people you invite) are allowed to see it.

As you can see, this is a topic with lots of possibilities, so I’ll be posting more information this week about how to set up and use your private blog. If you want to be sure to get the updates, use the link in the sidebar to the right to subscribe. (It’s free, of course!)

Image credit: scol22, stock.xchng

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

Have you been looking for a great family-centered service project? With the holidays coming up, many families will be thinking of sharing their (relative) abundance with others. Locating a meaningful service opportunity that is appropriate for even early elementary aged children can be challenging, however. We don’t want to overwhelm our children with the tragedies that go on in this world, but at the same time we don’t want to insulate our youngsters to the point that they think everyone in the world has the same opportunities that we do. It is too easy for our children to take our security and comforts for granted.

Here’s one solution for you: Kiva.org. Through this website, you can view profiles of people and organizations in the developing world, and you can see the projects that they want to undertake in order to make a better life. If you find a project you would like to help fund, you can contribute as little as $25, for a loan to get the project under way. Here’s a blurb from Kiva’s website:

We let you loan to the working poor

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

Some of the loans that I’ve seen are being requested for projects like: helping purchase plots of land, fertilizer, refrigeration equipment for a fishmonger, money for renovations of tourist lodgings, merchandise for a grocer, cows for a dairy, and so forth. These microloans have an amazingly good record of repayment, to date. And frankly, even if the money isn’t repaid, the cause seems good enough to justify the small risk. Think about it: If your loan is repaid, you can turn right around and loan it to someone else, spreading the giving even further.

With such a small investment required, even young children can contribute a few dollars of savings. When the family pools their money, selects a project, and then tracks the progress of their adopted project, it provides a point of departure for kids to learn about other countries, other cultures, business, the idea of using money to make more money, and lots more, in addition, of course, to simply lending a helping hand.

This is something that I want to do with my family this year. I’d love to hear others’ suggestions for good service projects, as well!

If you liked this page, Stumble it!

Close you eyes for a moment, and think ahead to a crisp Fall day five years from now. How likely do you think it is that on that faraway day you will be able to say that you have read (in their entirety) at least 5 great classics since you read this post? Be honest, now! I know many of us have great intentions of getting all those wonderful books read, but realistically . . .

Let me put it this way: How many works of great literature have you read in the 5 years before now? If you’ve read lots of great lit, then wonderful!!! You have a really good chance of reading more in the future. But if you are like many busy parents, and you haven’t really found the time to read more than one or two since graduation, you probably will need to do something a little different, or you risk your life going by without ever getting around to most of them. Fortunately, there may be a way to get those books into your busy schedule, painlessly!

Check out DailyLit, the home of a truly fantastic idea. On DailyLit, you can sign up to receive installments of your chosen book via email (or in your RSS feed reader, if you prefer). The idea is to send segments that take 5 or 10 minutes at a time, and they are sent as frequently as you desire. This breaks an overwhelming task into very manageable, very do-able increments.

Relatively few people feel that they have the time to sit down and read a classic. Who has the spare hours, or the brainpower, to sit and focus on something that was written a hundred (or a thousand) years ago, when the laundry needs folding, and the children need feeding? I bet you have time to check your email, though! And even to surf a few great sites. For many of us, an extra 5 minutes can be added to our computer time without our even noticing! (Don’t worry, though – if you finish a segment and can’t wait to see what happens next, you can click to have another installment sent out immediately.)

I think this idea is tailor made for families. Imagine sharing a great book with your teenager (or your spouse, or both!) over the course of a few months. You are helping build a common family culture, you’re adding lots of material for dinnertime conversation, and you’re bonding with your family. What could be better? This idea works great for friends, too.

Another really great thing about DailyLit is that all of their classics (which are in the public domain) are free. So, go ahead and sign up for The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin if you want. Or try out the poems of Emily Dickinson. Or heck, go hog wild and sign up for War and Peace. It’s definitely worth 5 minutes of your time. And, it’s one way to guarantee that 5 years from now you’ll have read a whole lot of great books.

If you liked this page, Stumble it!