I thought I would follow up my review of the newest Adventures in Odyssey set, Cause & Effect, with a post about a free way to listen to Adventures in Odyssey episodes. It was mentioned in the comments by All Americanx5, who blogs at All American Family, and I had just discovered it myself a few days before posting my review. Besides going to your local library to borrow Adventures in Odyssey sets, you can listen to a different free episode every day at WhitsEnd.org, the official site of Adventures in Odyssey. On the front page you will see a box labeled “On the Radio” with a new episode each day. Just click the episode and listen.
After browsing around for a bit I discovered the How to Listen page that gives you even more information on free online listening. You can listen to the last 10 episodes from the On the Radio spot here. There are also instructions on the How to Listen page showing you how to find a few more episodes online as well. One thing that really helps is they show pictures of exactly what you need to click!
There is a podcast section, but it is not the actual episodes from what I can tell. Instead, the podcasts are more of a “behind the scenes” look at making the episodes. While that is something my husband would like, my kids are not really interested in that.
What are some of your family’s favorite audio books or programs to listen to? I will be posting about another audio series in a few weeks hopefully, after my family has had some time to listen to them. They are all new to us, as a matter of fact they have not even arrived yet! I listened to samples online and then bought them. They should arrive Monday.
This year we knew we wanted to have all the Christmas gifts bought by the end of October. What with a new baby coming in November we didn’t want to think about it when things got busy. I know everyone does gifts differently, which is completely okay. I have had some questions about our gift buying habits, so I thought I would share the answers in this post.
First rule at our house – if we can’t pay cash, we don’t buy it. This includes Christmas gifts. Our finances determine the Christmas budget each fall. We do our best to save and keep from wasting our money. We also have 3 birthdays between October and Christmas to buy for, all of which is done at this time. This year, as an example, our Christmas budget was $50.00 per person. It has been less in the past. The budget for my husband and myself is the same.
Second rule at our house – we buy toys or crafty things. We don’t buy books at Christmas, or homeschool supplies, unless that is what a child is asking for. The only other time we buy toys for our children generally is their birthday, the rest of the year they have to shell out their own money for toys.
Third rule at our house – we are not opposed to yard sale toys, clearance, or other sources. This year several toys our children will receive between birthdays and Christmas were bought at a Church yard sale I attended (total spent: $5.00, total toys would cost new: $100.00). This year a dear friend called me up in early October to ask if I wanted to look through some toys she had cleared from her children’s rooms. I found some treasures there as well that will show up in Christmas gifts.
This year my husband and I did our Christmas shopping in one day, as a date. We made a list of the things we hoped to find for each child (they had given us ideas), taking what we already had stashed away into account. Then we got on the computer. We went to Amazon.com and bought more than half of our Christmas list. Many things were on sale, so we were not going to beat the price at a local store. We were able to use the Amazon giftcards I had earned with Swagbucks as well, saving on our budget even more. The things we chose not to buy on Amazon were items we were pretty sure we would get cheaper elsewhere.
That evening my mother came and watched the children (thank you mom!). My husband and I had our much smaller list in hand. First stop – WalMart. We bought a couple toys from the list. Then we went over one street to Toys R Us and bought the rest. We grabbed a milkshake on the way home and it was a fun date night – something we don’t do nearly often enough.
When all was said and done we stayed within our budget (with room to spare) and each child will get around 5 gifts to open. One thing that really made a difference was having found a few things through the yard sale, from our friend, and getting some deals on Amazon. Now all that is left to do is get things wrapped. That will have to wait, however, because I can’t sit on the floor and bend over enough to wrap much of anything with this baby belly in the way…LOL!
Do you have any Christmas gift buying rules? Have you finished your shopping, not even started, or somewhere in between? What is your budget for each child? Leave a comment because enquiring minds want to know how it works in other families!
A few weeks ago Bethany House sent me a book to read, Within My Heart ($14.99) by Tamera Alexander. This was the third book in the Tiber Ridge series, so I was not sure if I would be able to jump in a follow the story easily or not. It turns out, after the first chapter, it was pretty easy to follow and worked well as a stand-alone story.
That first chapter was really weird. It began in a graveyard in 1864 with the caretaker tying bells to each corpse before burying, and ended with one of the bells beginning to ring. Near the very end of the book this chapter is explained, and was integral to the story, but I really wondered for most of the book why that first chapter was there.
Most of the book is the story of a widowed mother’s struggle to keep her ranch running in the Colorado Rockies after the death of her husband (prior to the book opening). I did enjoy reading Within My Heart, and will be checking my library for more books by Tamera Alexander.
{Disclaimer: I received one copy of this book for free to read and review from Bethany House. I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}
I just found a new large family website to explore: The Jeub family has more than a dozen children and they have a new book out, Jeub’s Guide to Speech and Debate. It sounds neat and I’m hoping to get one of the 100 free copies they are offering. Go here to learn more!
Thanksgiving and Christmas have started at my house. It really is rather interesting. We have been practicing Christmas songs – I love hearing my little children singing both on key and off. I have one dear boy, Joseph, who also tends to sing off time from everyone else…LOL. When we do our song practice we also recite the gratitude scripture verses we’ve been working on (D&C 59: 7, 21). With this it is Daniel who is so sweet to watch. He repeats right after us, but inevitably lags just a bit behind trying to get out all those big words. If we start to say the next phrase before he’s done he will literally cry, because he wants to say it all too. So we are all learning patience as we give everyone enough time to participate.
We have also done one full week of our Thanksgiving unit study. We are about 50 pages into Stories of the Pilgrims, our read aloud. Everyone is enjoying it, and the general rule is I read while they work on a printable page that is Thanksgiving related. We are at the point in the story where the Pilgrims have finally been able to leave England and go to Holland. Did you realize that they had to make several attempts to even get there? The king sent soldiers and caught them the first time they tried to leave by ship, then threw everyone (men, women, and children) into prison.
The second time only part of the Pilgrims made it on ship (most of the men, who were loading their things). When the captain of that ship saw the soldiers coming he pulled up anchor, despite the fact that all the women and children, and a few men, were still on shore. Those left behind were again put in prison for a while. They did not join their husbands in Holland for a while, as money had to be earned again to make the trip. What a difficult time that would have been! My children have been following the story eagerly, and sometimes the questions they ask remind me just how blessed we are to live in our day and country.
The basics, math/reading/spelling and such have just moved right along this week. Daniel and Oliver are still excited to do Little Reader (read my review), which is very funny to watch. They still ask to do more. Makayla has been reading books I got at the library book sale last weekend. As of yesterday she had finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Adventures of Robin Hood both. She really loved Sherlock Holmes, she’s in to mystery type books at the moment. I’ll have to wait and see what book she begins reading next.
The other thing finished this week was Makayla’s American Government lapbook. She learned a lot in this unit, though there was so much more we could have studied too. I’m sure we’ll come back around to the topic again down the road. Here is a look at the first folder inside the lapbook:
It took two folders to hold the pieces. I thought it was funny that she wanted to glue in the little information bits from her reading about American symbols, as she already has an entire lapbook on them, but whatever works!
That is the end of another week. I’m off to enjoy the rest of the day with my children, and probably to read some more of Stories of the Pilgrims.
Until recently, I had never listened to an Adventures in Odyessy CD. I had heard about them, and my children love listening to audio books, but I had not taken the time to check out these yet. All that changed when Tyndale Blog Network sent my family a free copy of the newest album, #52 Cause & Effect ($24.99).
In this 4 CD set are 12 stories that help children see what God can do in our lives. Each story has a lesson or theme and a bible verse, which is nice because it gives you a jumping off place to discuss the lesson more with your children. The lessons in Cause and Effect range from fear to friendship, fasting, to trust. On this album are even a story on Thanksgiving and one on Christmas, which work out well for the season we are in.
It starts off with The Mystery of the Clock Tower, which immediately caught my children’s attention. Each episode is different, and we’ve enjoyed them all. We listen to the CDs when we are in the van, and often my children bring the CDs in the house to finish a story if we were not on a long enough drive. Even my husband and I find ourselves listening to the stories and enjoying them.
The only con, I have to say, is the expense. At $24.99 for one set we could not invest in very many sets of Adventures in Odyessy CDs at one time. However, you can find these CDs at discount retailers, which helps, and I’ve discovered our local library carries many of the earlier Adventures to borrow.
{Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Cause & Effect as part of the Tyndale Blog Network to review. I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}
Another week of chorepacks is under way and it is time for an update. We are still doing chorepacks after breakfast. The one concession we made to my desire to have chores done earlier is waking up the sleepers at 7:30am instead of 8:00am. To help with that adjustment the girls are going to bed a half hour earlier in the evenings, at 8:30pm. We explained to them that when they show us they can cheerfully get out of bed on time then we can try moving their bedtime back to 9:00pm with the boys. The boys all get up cheerfully with the 9:00pm bedtime. Joseph is up before 7:00am, while Daniel and Oliver climb right out of bed at 7:30am when I turn lights on in the hall.
One other change this week: I rearranged the order of the cards in the kids chorepacks a little. Originally they would get dressed, put away pajamas, then head to the bathroom for brushing hair and teeth, then back to bedrooms for scriptures, prayer, making beds, etc, then out of bedrooms for other chores. While it worked all right for some of my children one particular little girl is a bit distractible and she simply took forever to move between rooms and jobs, sometimes getting distracted along the way.
Now the chorepacks have children doing everything in one room before moving to a new room. For Emma, especially, this has been essential. She now gets everything done in her bedroom before heading to the bathroom to do her hair, brush her teeth, and clean the bathroom. Joseph does all his upstairs things before heading to do his downstairs chores.
Things are moving smoothly enough that I’m considering printing up our evening chorepacks this week to begin on the weekend.
A funny chore happening to share: One morning Makayla grumpily said she didn’t want to wear her chorepack, she could remember everything without it. We compromised, she only had to carry the chorepack along, though I reminded her clipping it on would help her not lose it. Needless to say, she lost it. After reading her scriptures she could not find her chorepack. I insisted she look for it until it was found. 15 minutes later she still had not found it and was getting frustrated. I suggested she try pretending to do everything she had done already in her chorepack, in the hopes that she would find it along the way. Sure enough, when she opened her scripture case to pretend to read she found her chorepack inside the case, under her scriptures. After that she clipped the chorepack on, and has continued to do so each day.
How goes the chore work at your home? Are you satisfied with how it is going? Any funny stories to tell? Leave a comment and tell me all about it.
You can read my original post about Managers of Their Chores, as well as Chorepack Update #1 to follow along with our family’s chore adventure.
It is almost November – only four days left in October - have you signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo yet? Did your children sign up to participate in the Young Writer’s Program for NaNo? There is still time for you to join us in the novel writing madness that is November! Last year was my first attempt, and I have to admit that it was hard to write some days, but I did finish my 50,000 words before midnight on November 30th. I expect this year my novel may end up with a very pregnant main character and become an outlet for my emotional self, but hopefully not.
Now, if you’re still wondering what’s the point to participating in the crazy 50,000 word writing frenzy let me point out a few things:
Dedicating time consistently to writing is a great way to improve your writing.
You’ll become one of the few who don’t just say, “I should write a book about that…”, but who make time to actually sit down and force yourself to write.
You will discover that when you have no idea what to do next in your story these characters you are pouring your sweat and time into every day will suddenly come alive and take your story places you never imagined. It happened to me last year. It will happen again this year, I’m sure.
It gives you something to focus on instead of counting down to labor and delivery. Oh, wait! That’s me – but you may not be pregnant and due November 25th! Still, it’s one of my reasons.
It’s fun. Really.
Hopefully I have convinced some of you to join me and write. I’ll be posting word count updates here on the blog throughout November so you can all motivate me to write, write, write.
A while ago I received PGKey ($49.99)to review for the TOS Homeschool Crew. Just what is PGKey? Well, that is what I’m going to tell you!
Basically, PGKey is a USB tool that you plug in to your computer. Once installed, you create accounts for each person using that computer. For each account you can choose to do any of the following:
Set a time limit – this feature allows you to set how long a user is allowed on the computer daily. When time runs out it blocks them from using the computer until the next day.
Block Sites – block websites you decide are inappropriate for your family.
Set word notifications – this emails you when your child is searching for a specific word, perhaps during a time when they are to be doing school work.
Control computer access – If the key is removed from the computer the computer cannot be used.
Video track what your child does on the computer – With 60 hours of recording time, PGKey allows you to review what your child did on the computer similar to watching a movie. This means you see what your child saw, including emails or chat they do, websites they visit, and more.
Allow access to chosen websites only – another feature is to block access to ALL websites and only allow an account access to specific sites.
What We Did: My husband and I installed PGKey on his computer and blocked two specific websites for our trial. Being the family friendly type and not wanting to attempt to access anything inappropriate ourselves, we chose to block Twitter.com and EBay.com. My husband then proceeded to try and get around PGKey’s block. He succeeded with EBay by accessing the United Kingdom EBay site, instead of our US site.
We then set word searches that we wanted notified of when used. We chose IPad and Star Wars because we were not willing to test it out with anything less family-friendly. What we found is that PGKey does not block an account from searching or clicking on the results of that search. We just got an email each time the search was done. If we had been using PGKey as a parental control with a preteen or teen, trying to block access to pornography or other inappropriate sites it would be no help. We would like any site that came up with the notification words to have been automatically blocked. We also do not know the names of every inappropriate website out there, so blocking the individual websites with the website blocker is not realistic.
We did receive notifications when the searches were done, as well as notice when PGKey was removed from the computer. We were able to watch the footage of what had been done on the computer.
Would We Use PGKey for our family? No, probably not. Right now our children are young enough that they never have internet access without one of us beside them. We keep our computers in the living area, so there is no privacy for an older child who might be on the internet in the future. We would prefer a program that gives us more parental controls, instead of just emailing us when a child accesses inappropriate material.
I could see a family choosing to use PGKey as an accountability motivator with a generally responsible teen. Both they and the teen would choose the acceptable internet activities for their family and the teen would know that everything they did was being recorded with PGKey. That might motivate some teens to stick to the family rules on which sites to visit and acceptable conversations during chat and email with friends. However, the parents would have to follow through on watching the PGKey recording to monitor their teens.
While PGKey is not right for my family, you can learn what other families thought by reading my Crewmates’ reviews.
{Disclaimer: I received one free PGKey to use for this review. I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}
I am not sure how often you look at the buttons and things in my sidebar, but yesterday I put up something new. I got official word that my blog has been added to the list over at Top Mommy Blogs. Guess what that means?!
It means that once every day you can click on this cute button in my sidebar to vote for my blog if you like it. I get nothing out of it beyond a little publicity on TopMommyBlogs.com as my blog climbs the rankings. That means it will be easier for others to find my blog and hopefully be uplifted by reading about our family’s homeschool journey, finding that if we can do it with God’s help, surely they can too.
So if you enjoy reading this blog and have a spare twenty seconds please click on the button in my sidebar and then click the much larger copy of the picture you’ll see on the page that opens (it looks like the header of the blog, and matches the button pictured above) to vote for Our Busy Homeschool as a top mommy blog. You’re welcome to make this a daily habit if you want(hehe).
We will continue practicing Away in a Manger and begin learning the song Samuel Tells of Baby Jesus. We simply sing every day, often more than once (see our music plans here). As we begin our new unit (learn more here) we will start reading Stories of the Pilgrims. The first several chapters tell of life in England, how the King would only allow people to worship his way in his church, and how the families who would become the Pilgrims would meet in secret to worship. Then we will learn how and why they choose to move to Holland, as well as the trials along the way. Our scripture on gratitude this week is:
7 Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.
21 And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.
- Doctrine and Covenants 59:7, 21
Preschool Work
Besides the fun printables they will do for our Thanksgiving unit, Daniel and Oliver will be continuing their adventures with Little Reader software. I need to make some time to create a set of cards on the program for a few Thanksgiving words and pictures to add in to their lessons. I am thinking just a basics like turkey, thank you, please, pilgrim, indian, ship. We also will continue our exploration of math manipulatives and Kid K’Nex.
Kindergarten Work
Joseph and Emma will work some more on adding tens this week, and both will keep using the Kid K’Nex. They will be reading to me with our All About Spelling materials, and they will have some fun printables to do with our Thanksgiving unit too. For handwriting they will be writing words from Stories of the Pilgrims.
4th Grade Work
All About Spelling continues for Makayla, as does Math U See Gamma. She has really been having an easy time with both the last several weeks, which I am enjoying. It is nice not to hear groans over math, especially. She will have several printables related to our Thanksgiving unit at her level, though I am sure she’ll enjoy a coloring page in there too. Her other big project this week is to finish her American Government lapbook. She’s just doing a piece or two a day and so far it has been lots of fun watching Schoolhouse Rock to go along. She’ll begin outlining the plot for her NaNoWriMo novel as well. We’re using some pages of the workbook they offer on the Young Writer’s Program portion of the site.
What are your children learning about this week?Have you gotten things ready or are you just going to go with the flow?
It has been a few weeks since I have participated in the Blog Cruise, but this week’s question is one I like to talk about. Here’s the question:
What is your homeschooling style, and how did you choose for your family?
In a nutshell we are an Eclectic-Unit Study family. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. The eclectic part means we use a variety of resources, including the occasional text book, while the unit study part means we study things by topic. Our curricula can really be divided into two parts, the basics and the unit study.
For the basics we tend to have a textbook or curricula we work through. We use Math U See for arithmetic, All About Spelling for spelling and reading (depending on age), Peterson Directed Handwriting to learn basic handwriting. These are daily things we just keep working through.
For everything else we do unit studies. We choose a topic or theme and read about it, write about it, experiment with it, and often make a lapbook about it. This year we chose to spend the first half of the school year focusing on history and geography units. Beginning in January we will switch to a science and health semester.
To create a unit study we start with a literature selection. Once we have something to read we plan some related activities, projects, and fun. It’s that simple. We try to produce some paper trail for our portfolio with each unit, so it may be writing a story or poem, doing a worksheet or art project, a lapbook, or any other possibility. For some units we may have 10 shorter books for the topic to read through, while other units center around one main book.
Have we always been an eclectic-unit study family? Yes, pretty much. I know that some families begin their homeschool journey in one style and find that it does not fit just right, so they try something else. We began with unit studies from the get-go. We knew when pregnant with our first child that we were to homeschool, and so I spent quite a long time reading everything I could on teaching, learning, and homeschooling. When my little guinea pig, Makayla, was 3 1/2 we began purposeful lessons centered around a theme each week. The theme would begin with a sound we were learning that week, such as Frogs for ‘fr’ or Sheep for ‘sh’. It made sense to have as much as possible be related together and interesting.
As we have added children to our family, unit studies are what has made homeschooling work well for us. Makayla is now 9 years old and in 4th grade. I have been pregnant and/or had babies every year since she was two. Adding new little learners to the family every 13 to 20 months means I have a whole group of children who want to do what big sister is doing. They all want to be involved, to participate, and to learn. From very young that is possible with our unit studies. Everyone can listen to a story, color on a piece of paper, or help with a project. And the more older siblings a child has, the more they learn without direct lessons from mom. They are simply surrounded by learning moments every day.
Our unit studies have gone in phases where we are more or less relaxed about how much pre-planning we do, versus how much we follow interests as they come up. We have done things like toss out all math curricula for a few months (it’s okay, really!), or use a textbook for science instead of unit studies for a short time. I think it is important to let your current situation impact how you are learning in your homeschool. There are times when someone looking in would not recognize most of what we do as ‘homeschooling’. We read and play and create, but formal lessons are few and far between, such as when a baby is born. Other times it is very easy for someone looking in to recognize the learning happening as we sit to do math lessons or a science experiment has covered the dining room table and the latest history unit is being reenacted complete with lightsabers doubling as swords, and children who suddenly tell you their name is now Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Marie Curie. I try to keep our ultimate goals in mind and keep working towards them, whatever the method we are using.
Once again we are finished with a unit (the most recent being France and the Eiffel Tower), and I realized that I need something easy to fill the rest of our weeks until baby Caleb arrives. I went through the many resources I have sitting on my shelves and in my computer files and narrowed it down to three topics, then asked my husband to choose because sometimes it is nice to get his input. He chose Thanksgiving. Looking back through the blog I realized it was a great idea because last year we did not do a unit about Thanksgiving or the Pilgrims. We studied ballet, Tchaikovsky, and the Nutcracker because we were going to see a live performance of the Nutcracker the day after Thanksgiving.
So just what will we be using in this unit? To tell you that I need to explain our goals for the unit, which are:
To learn about gratitude and practice it in our lives.
To learn the whole story of the Pilgrims, from England to Holland, to England again, and on to America. This is a story of faith that is inspiring!
To have fun with my younger children’s first introduction to learning about Pilgrims, Indians, turkeys, and more.
The main book we will be reading together as a family is Stories of the Pilgrims by Margaret B. Pumphrey. This classic was first published in 1912, which means you can read it free here on the Baldwin Project. We happen to own an old copy from Christian Liberty Press. The book covers the Pilgrims from before they were Pilgrims and on beyond that first Thanksgiving, in 244 pages. To go along with this we will have a scripture about gratitude to memorize each week. I will post those as we go along.
To keep a record of our time learning I have quite a few printable resources to pull from. First, I have lots of clip art, coloring pages, etc from ABC Teach saved on my computer. There are math pages with word problems centered around Thanksgiving, patterning pages for my little ones, and things in between.
Second, I have two History Pockets books from Evan-Moor. One is Life in Plymouth Colony, the other is Colonial America. There are things for all my children’s ages between these two books to print, create, write, and do. There is more here than we will ever do in a month, so we simply won’t try!
Third, I have the Thanksgiving lapbook from Live ‘N Learn Press. This is a huge lapbook with tons of possibilities. I am not sure how much of this we will use, but we will surely use some of it because we like lapbooking.
Just what will we do each day of the unit? Here is where my “I’ve been doing unit studies for years” tendencies show themselves. We will read from our main book each day. Then we will do at least 1 printed thing each day, more as the kids want to. I simply print a good selection out and stick them in a folder to pull from as we go. In a typical unit I would also assign Makayla some writing (creative or reporting). However, as she will be spending all of November writing a novel for NaNoWriMo, I am not giving her any formal writing related to Thanksgiving.
You will also notice I am not offering a big book list this time. There are lots of books you can choose, we even own a few already. However, my goal is simplicity, focusing on the history through our one read aloud book. I will encourage my children to create paper dolls and ships and make their own plays as we go. I want them to live the story we read in their free time and create fun performances of the book to share with Daddy. Why? Because I know they like to do that already, and I know it helps them remember what they are learning.
What is coming up next for your homeschool? Will you be learning about Thanksgiving this year, or do you have any favorite traditions related to Thanksgiving?
This is what my living room looks like right now because I went to the library book sale this morning. For all of $3.00 I brought home all of these books. Not only did I make my children very happy, I was able to find some real treasures, including books I need for our Middle Ages/Renaissance/Reformation study next fall. Now I just need to figure out where to shelve them all! But for right now I am going to go read with my children. Have a great Saturday!
Welcome to yet another week in review. Can you believe this is our 69th one? When I started these posts it was a way for me to be able to look back when it seemed like we were making no progress and get a better perspective on how far we’ve come. So what have we been doing this week?
Daniel has kept it simple this week, spending time every day doing Brill Kids: Little Reader (read my review here) and building with Kid K’Nex, as you can see in the photo above. These things are fantastic! He and Joseph got some for their birthday and everyone loves building with them.
Oliver has been very clingy this week. He has a runny nose/cold, so it doesn’t surprise me, but still – I look forward to when he’s feeling better. His favorite this week has definitely been Brill Kids: Little Reader. He smiles, claps, points, laughs, and tries to make animal sounds or say the words.
Makayla aced her math and spelling tests for the week. She has done about half of the pieces for her American Government lapbook and watched several Schoolhouse Rock videos to go along. Daily piano practice happens effortlessly with our Chorepacks, which makes me thrilled to no end! She also decided she is going to participate in NaNoWriMo next month (National Novel Writing Month) so she began character creation today. I will be writing a novel alongside her. You can join us – read about it in this post.
Joseph is doing well with adding tens, and has done some review in math as well for fun. He really likes reading time each day and was thrilled to see The Runt Pig arrive in the mail from All About Spelling this week. His handwriting is so funny, he’ll write one letter about an inch tall and the next may be half that size. At least he’s making them without help though.
Emma is a bit fuzzy on adding tens. She’s just kinda lost, so we’ll be sure to keep working on it next week. Reading is trotting right along for her as well, though she still mixes up lowercase b and d occasionally. Her handwriting is much much neater than her big brother’s, and smaller. Maybe it’s a girl thing? She’s also left-handed and he’s right-handed.
Everyone knows the first verse to Away in a Manger now, (read about our Christmas music plans in this post), so next week we’ll add in another verse and start a second song. France was finished up this week as well, which means I have to decide what interest we’re following next week. The children have all been watching our painted lady caterpillars grow and today they began hanging upside down to make their chrysalis’, so we’re following along with those too.
This week the Weekly Wrap-Up is hosted at See Jamie Blog, so go there to link up!
My youngest boys have had the pleasure of trying out the Little Reader Basic Software ($199.00) from Brill Kids Learning Systems for the last month. Yes, I really mean Oliver my 1 year old and Daniel my just turned 3 year old. Have you ever considered teaching your baby to read? Believe it or not, I had. I came across the concept about 2 years ago when I was pregnant with Oliver, my 5th child, but decided that I simply did not have the time to create all the flashcard based materials I would need. The concept, however, is solid. You can learn so much on the Brill Baby section of the website, so be sure to read beginning here to learn more. I have to share one video, this is the daughter of one of the creators of Brill Kids. It shows Felicity reading from the ages of 12 months to 2 1/2 years old. You can see even more videos of other babies and young children reading on the Brill Baby area of the site HERE.
So just what is the Little Reader Software? Basically, it is a software program that eliminates the work of creating multitudes of flashcards for mom. The 12 month curriculum has daily lessons to watch with your baby or young child, each lasting about 5 minutes. You do this twice a day and all you have to do is push play. Basically, the program shows a series of flashcards, photo cards, animated action cards, or videos for a set of words each day. There are a variety of pictures used for each word, giving your child the opportunity to define for themselves what makes a dog a dog, for example. One day they may see a bulldog, the next a golden retriever, the third it could be a poodle. The text flashcards on the screen change both font type and color, which helps your child recognize it in any variation it may appear.
Little Reader offers several lesson types, as shown below. These take advantage of both a child’s right brain ability, which is strong until age 6, and their senses. Little Reader is something you do with your child. When you are doing a multisensory lesson your child is encouraged to do actions corresponding to the words, and the parent both models and helps a young child to do the movements. All the work of preparing and creating lessons is done for you, however…
Another neat feature of Little Reader software is the ability to personalize lessons for your child. While the software comes with two complete semesters of curriculum, you can choose to add pictures and voices from your child’s life to the flashcards. For the word ‘nose’ you can add pictures of Mommy’s nose, Daddy’s nose, and your child’s nose. You can record Mommy, Daddy, or Grandma saying the word ‘nose’. If you have pets you could add photos of your own pets for the appropriate cards. Remember, this is optional, but is it a quick process and engages your child even more in the lessons.
Free content to download and expand your program is available through the Brill Kids Forum. You can download more categories of flashcards that have been created by other users of the system for free. There is even a large foreign language section created by native speakers in more than 24 languages, which expands the potential for Little Reader beyond a reading program. I have found the forums to be active and full of ideas.
What about phonics? I’m a phonics mom, I’ll be honest. I feel most children will need to be able to decode words for long-term success in reading. Little Reader software takes that into account as well, as you can see below: Little Reader can show words in pattern phonics if you choose, helping a child learn to decode words. The process takes advantage of a child’s natural intuitive drive to see patterns.
You can try Little Reader free for 14 days HERE. Brill Kids is so confident in their product that they offer a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Here it is in their words:
“We're so convinced our easy-to-use learning system is so effective, that we will confidently guarantee that your child will learn to recognize words after following the 12-month Course Curriculum (Semester 1+2)!”
What has our experience been so far? Let me say, it’s been a mix. I actually have been using the soon-to-be released updated version of Little Reader and the first thing I noticed is my desktop computer wouldn’t open it. However, my husband’s laptop gets along with Little Reader and so that is what we have been using for the review period. I worked with Technical Support to troubleshoot why my specific computer is not compatible with Little Reader, and just this week was finally able to use Little Reader software on my desktop. I have to say customer service has been thorough, helpful, and diligent in working with me to solve the problem. I am very satisfied with the Brill Kids customer service!
I love that Little Reader has taken the work out of creating multiple flashcards for my children. I like being able to customize the program with our own photos and voices with a few clicks of the mouse. Little Reader has made the process of teaching a baby or young child to read doable, even for me, and I’m a busy homeschooling mom with 5 children and baby number 6 due next month. It is easy to find five minutes to snuggle up with my children and push play on our lesson each morning and afternoon.
What do Oliver and Daniel think of Little Reader? They like it. Honestly, it’s fun to them and Daniel especially wants to do more than one lesson at a time. Having only worked with it a few weeks, it is still too early to see them reading on their own. We are planning on continuing to use Little Reader though, so I will update our experience later on.
You can read my Crewmates’ thoughts on the Little Reader Software here for more opinions.
{Disclaimer: I received free access to the Little Reader Basic software to enable this review for my work with the TOS Homeschool Crew. I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}
Part of Makayla’s American Government study is being done with the good old Schoolhouse Rock videos. We own the whole set on DVD and I have to say they are a fun way to stick something in your memory. Today we are talking about the process for a bill to become a law and watching “I’m Just a Bill”. I found it on YouTube for you to enjoy if you don’t already own the DVDs.
Do you have a favorite Schoolhouse Rock song/video? Have you introduced your children to the fun of Schoolhouse Rock? Leave a comment to answer my questions.
Don’t you just love this artwork by Liz Lemon Swindle of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph? I posted earlier this week that we have begun practicing and learning our Christmas hymns for the year and promised to share what we’re learning. Depending on the song, we may learn one verse or all the verses, and depending upon the children we may make it through half this list by Christmas, or all of it. By clicking on the title of each song you will be able to hear the music and see the words, all of which you can download for free. Just a hint – we like to burn all the Christmas music to a cd and listen to it every day, and I’ll add the songs to my IPod Touch for on the go as well. There are more Christmas songs in the books but these 19 are the ones we’re hoping to get to. Yes, I’m nothing if not ambitious. We started with Away in a Manger from the Children’s Songbook on Monday.
Do you have a favorite Christmas hymn or song? From this list I think my favorites are The Nativity Song, With Wondering Awe, and Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful. Of course, if you ask me tomorrow my answer may change!
The school week is half over – can you believe it? Today’s post will be random, I just have too many things in my head to focus on one topic.
First up, pregnancy and baby update! I visited the midwife today and everything rolls along toward baby day. I’m 35 weeks along tomorrow and measuring 37 weeks, gaining another 3 lbs, to hit 210. Considering I’ve been eating a lot of yummy treats, I’m not surprised. Ooo, and drinking hot cocoa too. It’s cooling off most days here and I love hot cocoa. With 5 weeks left to my due date I really need to get hubby to set up the crib, and I need to wash the newborn clothes. It will all get done eventually.
Next on my mind: Homeschool. Things are rolling along and I am afraid of what taking a big break will do when the baby arrives. We’re in a groove where work gets done, kids are productively occupied for a portion of the day, and they play nicely most of the rest of the day. I think I need to print up some things for after the baby arrives to hand out when they need something to do besides pick at each other. It is amazing what a little math worksheet does to their attitude – they start playing better together immediately so they don’t get another one!
Another thing I’m thinking about – books. We are between read alouds at the moment and I need to pick a new one for the kids. For some reason nothing is jumping out at me. I need to spend a little time browsing our books shelves and pick one. I just started reading The Work and the Glory series for me. I own the whole set and haven’t read them in a while. They are a historical fiction series centered around the Restoration of the church, from Joseph Smith through heading west and settling the Salt Lake Valley. Lots of fun to read and with 9 books in the series they provide me with a nice long series to read.
Even more on my mind: Vegetarianism and how much of a pain it is to have a daughter who is trying it out! Makayla has been avoiding meat for a few weeks now. She will occasionally eat meat, but most meals she refuses. This makes me have to pay more attention to offering lots of alternative proteins, veggies, and grains. Sigh.
Don’t forget – I’m also getting a post ready about music with links to the Christmas songs we’re learning in the next two months before Christmas. I just need time to grab the links for each song…. maybe tomorrow.
Well, that’s enough for now. The kids are upstairs and it sounds like there are eight of them instead of five, so it’s time to investigate! I hope you are having a lovely day! Stop in again tomorrow for a visit!
I think I will try to do some regular updates on how life is going using our Chorepacks. You can read my original post to see just what I am talking about if you missed it.
We are still only using morning chorepacks; we want to get this firmly in place before we add evening chorepacks. Last week we discovered a problem – that one child is an early riser while the others sleep until 8:00am. The early waker can’t start a chorepack and wake everyone with his lights and noise at 6:30am.
The solution we are trying this week is to do chorepacks after breakfast. I wake anyone who is still sleeping at 8:00am and we do breakfast. From the table each child grabs their chorepack and gets going. Each finishes at different times, which is giving me one child to work with on homeschool at a time to start.
Typically, Joseph finishes his chorepack first and we sit at the table to do math and reading. Then he’s free to play and Emma comes to the table for math and reading. Daniel and Oliver can come to the table for some activities, or they may play happily during this time.
Makayla is still doing her chorepack at this point in the morning. She reads in her scriptures, which takes her a while depending on how much she wants to read that morning, then her last chore is piano practice, which technically is also homeschool. She’s not usually done with the chorepack until 9:30am or so. I snuggle with Daniel and Oliver to do Little Reader (review coming Friday!). Then I go help Makayla with any piano practice she has questions about.
When Makayla finishes piano she does math and spelling right away. It’s not her first choice, but that is what we’re doing. Then she gets a 15 minute break, everyone has snack, and we gather everyone for group work. This week group work is reading together about France, then singing the Christmas song we’re working on. The younger kids are free to play after this for a while and Makayla does 1-2 pieces of her American Government lapbook, then writing. Then she is free for a bit.
The rest of the morning we just read, draw, play games, or do things that need done. As I type this Makayla, Joseph, and Emma are observing the Painted Lady caterpillars we have growing, Daniel and Oliver are playing with balls, and I’m heading off to make lunch!
I like doing our Chorepacks after breakfast so far, but I really would prefer that they got done first thing upon waking. Still, we’ll try this way for at least a week, then reevaluate whether we want to start waking all the kids closer to 7:00am to start the day. What would you do? Leave me a comment with your ideas!
Okay, I was tagged by Beverly from The Cow Queen, and as I have fond memories of watching my children play tag this summer, and I enjoyed reading her answers, I will answer her questions (but I’m not passing it on again).
1. Do you plan to homeschool "forever" or just for a season? Forever. We really can’t imagine life any other way and it would take a very direct revelation from God to get us to stop.
2. What is your biggest homeschooling challenge, and how do you handle it? Oh my, it is either feeling inadequate as a mom or trying to coordinate learning for so many children/levels at once. To handle the inadequate feelings I pray and turn my problems over to God. I know I can’t do this homeschool thing without him. For teaching so many levels at once I am always looking for ways to combine everyone’s learning as much as possible. Unit studies save my sanity, and as my children grow they also learn to do things independently, which is a big help.
3. If you have multiple children, how do you find one-on-one time for instruction? (I mainly mean for younger children and reading.) Ah, yes, we’re in the middle of that. Right now I have one great reader (age 9), two beginning readers that I work with directly (age 6 and almost 5), and two early phonics children (ages almost 2 and just turned 3). My beginning readers are able to read short vowel words and blends. We read together every day. Lately we are using the readers that go with All About Spelling level one. I sit in the middle and the child on my left reads the left page of the story aloud, then the child on my right reads the right page of the story aloud. It works most mornings. For the youngest two we are trying Brill Kids Little Reader software, you’ll have to come back Friday to read my review and learn more! The key is really just short daily time, consistency does more than long sessions of practice a few times a week.
4. How do you find time for your own pleasure reading? I multi-task. I read while cooking, while in the bathroom, while I’m exercising, during nap time, or any other time I can fit a page or more in. I also try to choose great books to read aloud to my children so I enjoy it as much as they do.
5. How do you find any time for yourself? Daily quiet time has been my sanity saver. Read all about it here.
6. What is your favorite kid-friendly recipe? (you can just put the title, if you want -- I know where to find you ;) ) Do hot dogs and macaroni and cheese count? LOL. Okay, honestly, my kids all love when I make pancakes or when I bake fresh wheat bread. Everyone is guaranteed to eat those. The fresh bread becomes sandwiches with peanut butter, jelly, butter, honey, or some combination of those.
7. Why do you blog? It began as a record of our family’s life and homeschool adventure. The days were just flying by so quickly and I had a hard time remembering much in my sleep-deprived state, so I began blogging. That is still one of my biggest motivations to blog, though I am also hoping to encourage others along this road of parenting and homeschooling, which is why I keep sharing the good, the bad, and the crazy from our days.
8. Boxers or briefs? Just kidding ... sweet or salty ... your favorite snack. Both! I like to alternate, or have them together. I love semi-sweet chocolate chips with a handful of pretzels, apple slices with cheese chunks, you get the idea.
I thought I would share the homeschool plans for this week today, just so you get a peek. Honestly, this post is also for my benefit, so when the week is over I can look back and see if we stayed close to the plan or if other opportunities came along. I’ll share the plans for the whole family, then each child.
Family Workboxes
France Week 2: Now that we’re familiar with the basics of France and the Eiffel Tower we will spend the week reading stories about Madeline as well Children Just Like Me, A School Like Mine, and Children Just Like Me: Celebrations, each of which tells about one child in France and their life, school, or a special holiday.
Christmas Hymns: It’s already time to begin learning or brushing up on the hymns and Children’s hymns we sing for Christmas. We practice these each year and I will share a post later with links to each song we’ll be working on. I love this time of year, though I usually don’t begin our practice until late November. Makayla requested we start this week, so we shall. A small note – we have not taught our children the world’s Christmas songs, things like Here Comes Santa Claus, Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, etc. We try to keep the focus on Christ.
4th Grade Workbox – Makayla
All About Spelling: She’s on step 18 of level two and trucking right along. We may try to do two steps this week if one is really easy.
Math U See Gamma: Multiplication rolls along, she’s multiplying by 5’s this week.
Writing: Time to start thinking about NaNoWriMo. Makayla is not positive she wants to participate this year, so if she decides not to she will begin a special product we’ll be reviewing over the next 6 months from Institute for Excellence in Writing.
American Government: Yep, this is new. Ohio has specific subjects you are required to teach your child, and one of the categories lumped in with national and state history is also National, State, and Local Government. Starting this week we’re taking some time to focus on the 3 branches of government, the job of the President, and how a bill becomes a law. Our main resources for this are the American Government lapbook from Hands of a Child and the Schoolhouse Rock dvds we have for some fun ways to study the concepts. She’ll do at least one lapbook piece each day until we’re done.
Piano: Daily practice and lesson day is Monday.
Homophones and Greek: Again, she just keeps doing the next thing. Easy and fun.
Kindergarten Workboxes – Joseph and Emma
Reading with All About Spelling: They are just working through lessons and enjoying the Cobweb the Cat reader. Don’t tell, but I ordered the newest reader, The Runt Pig, which was released last week. It should be a fun surprise this week when it arrives.
Math U See Primer: With skip counting by 2’s cemented we are going to start learning another skip count song this week. We are also going to work on adding tens.
Writing/Handwriting: I just keep encouraging them to write something neatly each day. We’ll probably try word related to France again this week.
Preschool Workboxes – Daniel and Oliver
Reading with Little Reader Software: Okay, I know I have not said a lot about this yet. You only have to wait a few more days, my review will post here on the blog Friday. Have you ever heard of teaching a baby or toddler to read? Have you heard of Glenn Doman? Those are the only hints I’ll give you right now.
Math/Counting: No curriculum here, we’re just enjoying math things. This week we’ll choose another fun math manipulative and go for it. It may be dominoes, pattern blocks, tangrams, counting bears, or something else all together.
Handwriting: I think I’m pulling out the Peterson Directed Handwriting cd I won a while back to play around with. We love Peterson Handwriting, and this cd is animated letter cards that we can ‘air-write’ with to work on large motor letter formation. Joseph and Emma will probably join in because it’s fun.
That is all I have planned for the week. We have the usual interruptions like another midwife appointment for me on Wednesday (I’ll be 35 weeks along this Thursday). Some of the kids are recovering from a minor cold and I’m praying the others don’t get the cold to start out the week.
I have been reading and pondering two talks from General Conference all week, so I thought I would share links to them, as well as the things I have been thinking about.
The first talk is Stay on the Path by Sister Rosemary M. Wixom, Primary General President. She speaks about how we can hold on to our children and follow the Savior’s lead to show them the way to Him. She tells a few stories, one about a family with four young children. This family wanted to read the scriptures with their children, none of whom could read or had long attention spans at their ages. They began reading the Book of Mormon by reading three verses each night. The mom read one verse, the dad read one verse, and the oldest of the four children repeated a verse with mom or dad’s help. As the younger children grew they, too, began repeating a verse each night. It took them three and a half years to finish. They did not try to ‘run faster than they have strength’. They knew with such a young family it was not realistic for them to read 2 chapters every day with the children. Sister Wixom goes on to say this:
“Do you take from this family’s experience what I do? When our intent is to hold tight to the word of God, our reading of the scriptures can be just one verse at a time. It’s never too late to begin. You can start now.
“The world will teach our children if we do not, and children are capable of learning all the world will teach them at a very young age. What we want them to know five years from now needs to be part of our conversation with them today. Teach them in every circumstance; let every dilemma, every consequence, every trial that they may face provide an opportunity to teach them how to hold on to gospel truths.” (emphasis mine)
That sentiment has stayed with me all week. I have thought about where my children will be in five years. Makayla, my oldest, will be 14 in five years, officially way too old. I remember what it was like at fourteen. I know there are things I want her to know at fourteen that I need to start teaching to her now. Joseph, Emma, and Daniel will all be 8 or older, old enough to have chosen to be baptized. Am I preparing them now for a time that will be here all too soon? I have seen it already in my 9 and a half short years of parenting, the time flies. What do I need to be doing now?
The other talk that has been in my thoughts and heart this week is Courageous Parenting by Larry R. Lawrence of the Seventy. He speaks to parents, especially those who have teenagers. I love his whole talk, there are lots of things I would love to mention, but today I want to quote an example he relays early in his talk, with my thoughts to follow.
“Imagine for a moment that your daughter was sitting on the railroad tracks and you heard the train whistle blowing. Would you warn her to get off the tracks? Or would you hesitate, worried that she might think you were being overprotective? If she ignored your warning, would you quickly move her to a safe place? Of course you would! Your love for your daughter would override all other considerations. You would value her life more than her temporary goodwill.
“Challenges and temptations are coming at our teenagers with the speed and power of a freight train. As we are reminded in the Family Proclamation, parents are responsible for the protection of their children. That means spiritually as well as physically.”
What a powerful example! I know that being a parent is not a popularity contest, and remember several decisions my own parents made that were very unpopular with my sister and I. I did not always like their protection, but looking back, I am eternally grateful for parents who often chose to value my life, both spiritual and physical, over my goodwill. I know it was not easy on them, I was quite awful sometimes about it all. Now I am facing the same opportunity, to choose what is best for my children’s protection, and sometimes that means I lose their temporary goodwill. It starts early, even with a toddler.
May we all be courageous parents who are teaching our children today those things they need to know in five years time is my prayer. God will help us. These are His precious children. We just need to ask Him.
Just a quick post to share pictures from Joseph and Daniel’s birthday party today. We had lots of fun with friends and family. The kids decorated paper candles and then played pin the candle on the birthday cake(here is Daniel taking his turn). We had a fun game of musical chairs (which is impossible to get a non-blurry photo of apparently…haha). Makayla took a few minutes to visit with Grandpa while little ones were busy with games. We had a chocolate cake (egg-free of course!) with a candle for each boy. And there were presents to open and enjoy. It was a great morning!
Ahh, another week is done and I’m glad to come out relatively unscathed. It was a good week in general on the homeschool front. Makayla did especially well in spelling and math, taking tests for both early in the week as she just ‘got’ the concepts. That works for me! Joseph and Emma worked along cheerfully in math and reading. We did art and craft fun on and off all week, too. They made paper dolls and foam dolls (cut from sheets of craft foam), woven paper bookmarks, and moon sand creations among other things. The moon sand was done outside on the picnic table.
France has been fun this week. We read several books on France and the Eiffel Tower, learned a bit of French, and we’ll read a few more books next week while we also enjoy some Madeline adventures. The favorite thing this week about France, other than being grossed out that they eat snails, was learning about the Eiffel Tower. I had no idea, nor did the kids, that the engineer for the Eiffel Tower also was the engineer who made the framework for the Statue of Liberty, or Lady Liberty as Joseph calls her. We even tried building our own Eiffel Tower, as you saw in the picture at the top of this post. I’m glad the photo turned out because Oliver came along moments later and broke the Eiffel Tower!
In other areas things rolled along as usual. We have a few review items going still and more on the horizon. Next week should be similar to this one, more France, more basics, more Greek, more piano, and more Brill Kids Little Reader for my youngest two.
That’s all I’ve got time to tell for now, the muffins are ready to come out of the oven. What did you do this week in homeschool? Leave me a comment or write a post and link it to the Weekly Wrap-Up like I do.
The crisp winds of autumn have blown TWO special deals into the Schoolhouse Store for ONE DAY ONLY!I’m not participating in today’s deals, but I thought I would share them, along with my thoughts, so read on.
Option A: Just $19.95 for The 2010-2011 Schoolhouse Planner. Plus, receive the gorgeous Cranberries & Cream Homeschooling with Heart tote bag for free! Click Here to go buy Option A. You save 63% in all--for ONE DAY ONLY.
My thoughts: If you still do not own the Schoolhouse Planner then check it out, it is my favorite planner because it is personalized by printing just what you need. The sale price is a great deal and you get the Cranberries and Cream tote free – I want the tote…
Option B: Only $19.95 for the May 2010 Expo To Go OR the Fall 2010 Expo To Go, and receive the Cranberries & Cream Homeschooling with Heart tote bag for FREE. Select from the May 2010 Expo To Go or the Fall 2010 Expo To Go! You save 43% in all--for ONE DAY ONLY. Either offer is only $19.95 and both offers give you the beautiful Cranberries & Cream Homeschooling with Heart tote bag for FREE. Click Here to choose Option B.
My thoughts: I’ve listened to both of these Expos. Love them! It is like going to a homeschool convention from home. I love having the audio files so I can listen to them any time I need a little pick me up or inspiration. I even put them on my IPod Touch. And again, you get that tote… which I still want….
Remember, you have to act fast-the wind is changing and this offer is only here for today!
This Psalms study is aimed at students in 4th - 8th grades and has 30 lessons. Each lesson includes the text of one Psalms and a few questions and activities to help them study the Psalm and apply it to their life. The student is to spend one week on each Psalm studied. We actually use the King James Version of the scriptures, (the product came with verses written out from the New International Version), so I printed out a copy of the psalms from our preferred version for us to use each week. Each day we had some defining, highlighting, and question answering to do. To see exactly what I mean you can see the first lesson here.
Because we chose to use the KJV I checked ahead on each question to see if I needed to change the wording. For example, in the sample linked above you see that the student is to look up the word majestic in the dictionary and come up with two synonyms for the word as well. The NIV version for verse one (and later in verse 9) reads:
O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
However, in the KJV the verse reads:
O Lord our Lord, how excellentis thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
It was simple for me to cross out the word majestic and write excellent above it before giving the assignment to my daughter. I found that the whole study worked equally well with the King James Version, only needing simple changes such as I have described.
What did my 4th grader think? Honestly, she did not enjoy the study. She liked the parts where she was to circle or underline things in different colors. When it came to the questions that asked her to analyze what the psalmist meant, thought, or felt based on the verses, she had a hard time and did not like it.
What did I think? I, personally, enjoyed using it. I think some of the questions are a bit too challenging for a 4th or 5th grade child (age 9-10ish) to complete on their own. Being right there with Makayla we were able to make it work, but I would love to find a scripture study that is easy enough for my daughter to do on her own, to have that private time studying God’s word.
You can check out my Crewmates’ reviews of this and other products from Soli Deo Gloria Resources to learn what other families thought.
{Disclaimer: I received this ebook for free to enable my review. I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}
I thought I would follow up my review of the newest Adventures in Odyssey set, Cause & Effect, with a post about a free way to listen to Adventures in Odyssey episodes. It was mentioned in the comments by All Americanx5, who blogs at All American Family, and I had just discovered it myself a few days before posting my review. Besides going to your local library to borrow Adventures in Odyssey sets, you can listen to a different free episode every day at WhitsEnd.org, the official site of Adventures in Odyssey. On the front page you will see a box labeled “On the Radio” with a new episode each day. Just click the episode and listen.
