Wordless Wenesday - Birthday Edition!

I can't believe my little one is 6!

Weekly Wrap-up 8/24/12

Well, the first week of the school year is done, and so far it's gone great. T loves the workbox concept, and it's really gone a LONG way towards getting her to work independently. She's happy to be in second grade and to get to work on Brownie Patches. She is also loving Sonlight Core B and all the extra reading. We are finally getting to all the great books I had on my want to read list but never got to! 90% of them are scheduled in a Sonlight Core, and we just use the others to swap out for books that are too religious for our tastes. We are tweaking the Core B IG slightly, as we don't do the bible portions and we are omitting Missionary Stories with the Millers and From Abeku to Zapotec due to their heavy religious content.

Here's what she completed:

Earned the Discover Key from the Brownie Girl Scout Brownie Quest Journey
Earned the Brownie Earth & Sky try-it
Read Clara and the Bookwagon
Completed pages 1 thru 10 in MCP Math B
Completed pages 1 thru 5 in Climbing to Good English 2
Completed pages 16 thru 23 in Zaner-Bloser Handwriting 1
Completed pages 2 thru 13 in Behold and See 2 learning about Simple tools, inclined planes and levers.
Read 3 poems from Favorite Poems of Childhood : "The Land of Nod", "Hurt No Living Thing" and "The Cat of Cats"
Read the first 6 chapters of Charlotte's Web
Read the first 5 chapters of More Days Go By Pathways Reader and completed pages 1 thru 10 in the workbook
Read pages 1 thru 11 of Usborne Peoples of the World {we are using an older edition with a white cover, not the newer internet-linked edition}
Read and completed pages 20 and 21 of Rod & Staff Proper Manners and Health Habits 2
Read chapters 1 thru 3 of The Long Way to a New Land

And a little artwork for the week! This is T's drawing of Wilbur meeting Charlotte:

And here are our workboxes with books inside! On the sectioned shelf below are all the rest of our books for the year, with the first section being Mama's teacher books & answer keys :). Under that shelf peeking out are our magnetic letters, some boxes that need sorted through {I've been working on cleaning the schoolroom while T works on schoolwork}, and other larger things like out cash register and electronic learning clock. 

Wordless Wednesday - 3rd day back at school

Got caught reading! So glad we switched to Sonlight!

Update 3/14 - Pi Day!

It's Pi Day! For us, that means I normally make a pie to celebrate. Today I'm not so sure - we're recovering from Bronchitis and a nasty cold bug, plus I'm dealing with raising funds to keep my home as it's in pre-foreclosure {they haven't set a sale date yet}. Thankfully we have nearly enough and with a yard sale on Friday and Saturday I should have enough to keep the house. So all in all we've been pretty busy. We haven't schooled in a few weeks - we were all just too sick. Hopefully we will start back on Monday - It's spring break here and beautiful weather so we're enjoying it. Tomorrow we have plans to go to Morgan's Wonderland and see an exotic animal show.

Our plants for science are growing well mostly, and our butterflies did okay as well. 2 died after they turned into butterflies due to wing problems, but we were able to release 3 outside.

The foreclosure actually turned into a blessing - it gave me the push to declutter a lot of curriculum {and other things} I'd been holding onto without really intending to use it. Now we have space on our bookshelves and I have a better idea of where we are going homeschooling and curriculum wise. Now if I could just get the rest of the decluttered books to sell lol.

Weekly Wrap-up 2/17/2012

This has been an interesting week - we have schooled in spurts, mostly at night. I haven't been feeling 100% all week, and it's still cold rainy, so things have just not been going according to schedule. In fact I'm not 100% sure how much we got done this week, but I'm okay with that. Next week we will try to catch up, but I have quite a bit of stuff to do so we'll see how it goes.

Math - T did either 9 or 12 pages this week {not sure as I said above} We finished on page 41 this week.

Reading - T has improved greatly and is now reading out loud for reading. We only did 2 stories this week in reading, and the 4 workbook pages that accompanied them.

Grammar - T only did 4 pages of Climbing to Good English 1 this week. We are now completed through page 17. I am still considering skipping ahead in this book.

Science - We didn't get any formal lessons done, but we did observe our caterpillars eat and grow and turn into chrysalises. So far 4 of the 5 have turned, and 1 is still eating and growing. We also observed the growth of our plants that we planted last week, and watered them daily.

 Handwriting - We did 1.5 pages of handwriting this week. DD is feeling the increased writing demands and complaining her hand hurts, so we took it easy this week. We have completed through page 10 and part of page 12.

Spelling - We skipped Spelling this week - since she placed farther ahead in the book I'm okay with it.

World Geography - We have dropped the R&S World Geography book. It just wasn't working for us at all. I am considering starting the Tour the Continents I had planned for second grade now, and working through it slowly, then spreading our Tour a Country program over second and third grade.

Manners & Health - We did 1 lesson this week, the topic was respecting other's personal space.

Girl Scouts - We didn't work on anything for Girl Scouts this week - I might try to squeeze in a Journey Session tomorrow if T is willing.

Weekly Wrap-up

Here's our Weekly Wrap-up. The week got off to a slow start and we skipped school on Monday. It was one of those cold rainy days that just makes you want to sleep all day - so we did just that.

Math:

T completed 15 pages of MCP Math A - We are now in chapter 2 and working on Addition, T's current favorite thing to do. T is now a full 2 days ahead in math {but I'm not telling her!}

Reading:

T read 4 stories from Days Go By Pathway Reader, and completed 10 workbook pages to go with the 4 stories. We are slowly working on the issue of her not wanting to read aloud for school - I have managed to get her to read up to 4 sentences aloud at a time this week, so we are gaining.

Grammar:

T completed 8 pages of Climbing to Good English 1. I am considering jumping ahead in the book - she already knows the material we are reviewing currently.

Science:

T read 3 pages of Behold and See 1, planted from roots a carrot and sweet potato in water, and planted from seeds in soil 5 types of seeds. Our butterfly caterpillars arrived Thursday, so T is observing their growth and behavior.

Handwriting:

T completed 5 pages of Zaner Bloser Handwriting a Way to Self Expression 1. I am finding this text works much better for her than what we were previously using. I am excited to see how her writing improves by the end of the course.

Spelling:

Finally placed her in Rod & Staff Spelling 2 at week 14 - now just waiting for the student book to arrive to begin lessons.

World Geography:

We skipped this this week - I am not really liking our Rod & Staff Our Father's World text, so I am thinking strongly of dropping this until next year when we'll use a different program that covers the same material.

Girl Scouts:

T finished up earning her Sunny petal, and is now working on earning the Mari petal. We also completed session 1 of Welcome to the Daisy Flower Garden Journey, and planted Purple Coneflowers for our daisy garden.

Manners & Health:

Completed Lesson 2 of Rod & Staff Manners & Health 2. The topic was good table manners.

Read Aloud:

We continued reading from Little House in the Big Woods.

Some photos from this week:

 T drawing of "Mr. Carrot and Mrs. Sweet Potato"

 We practiced recycling by using empty 2 liter soda bottles to plant our seeds into

 Our Butterfly Caterpillars, just after arrival. In a few weeks we'll have Painted Lady Butterflies!

T's drawing of a Monarch butterfly

Interesting last few days

It's been an interesting last few days around here. Monday we ended up not doing school at all - T just didn't want to do school, it was a cold rainy day better made for snuggling under the covers than sitting at the school table. So She agreed to do double work on Tuesday if we could have Monday off. Tuesday I had to go grocery shopping {was supposed to have gone Monday but it was too wet to go}, so we didn't get started on school until around 5 in the evening. Normally I wouldn't have even bothered, but I know we're going to miss another one and maybe two days this week as I have to be out of the house, so we needed to get some done.

So last night we were doing good - did Monday's, Tuesday's, and an extra day's Math work, Monday's English, Reading and we were starting on Science. We had a science project to do - rooting vegetables from seeds and roots. We couldn't find the seeds we needed, so I opted for just doing the root portion last night and we'll do the seed portion today {if I can find the seeds}. So we set out - got the jars, water in a pitcher, and a sweet potato and a carrot. Carrot was easy - cut the bottom half off, stick in the toothpicks, put in jar and fill with water. The problem came with the sweet potato. First off it didn't fit in our jar - so I had to go find out online if we could cut it or not. Verdict came in to cut it - so I started trying. It wouldn't cut at all - I had to go find the big meat cleaver to get it to split, and then to half one of the halves. Okay, got that done, toothpicks put in, water filled halfway up in jar.

Then my hand started itching - I didn't really think much of it, went and washed with soap and it got better. Unfortunately then my lips started swelling - apparently I'm allergic to raw sweet potato. I knew I never liked them - but I've eaten sweet potato pie and not had a problem so I am thinking it is just the raw ones. So after a double dose of benedryl and school being finished up early {we skipped Girl scout projects and geography} I crashed and slept like a rock.

Hopefully today will be better....I don't want to see worse!

Wordless Wednesday

Is it growing yet?

Weekly Wrap-up 2/3/1012

Today finishes our first week back to school, even if it only was a half-week. We decided last night to postpone the yard sale until next weekend - with the rain and I wasn't feeling well I thought it best to not push it. So we're schooling instead today.


So far this week DD finished:

Math - 7 pages of MCP Math A. We are doing number review for the most part, with an emphasis on writing numbers correctly.

Reading - the 1st three stories from Days Go By Pathway Reader, with accompanying 6 workbook pages.

Grammar / English - 6 pages from Climbing to Good English 1. These focused on short vowel sounds in words.

Science - 4 pages from Behold and See 1, including a project classifying seeds as monocots or dicots.  We gathered materials today for our project on Monday, planting seeds, carrots from tops, and sweet potatoes from tops.

Handwriting - 3 pages from Handwriting a Way to Self Expression 1.

Spelling - still trying to place her - she has spelled correctly all but about 5 words of the R&S Speller 2 up to week 14 so far. I plan on testing her on the rest tonight. I suspect she will move to the 3rd grade book soon.

Manners & Health - Finished lesson 1 of R&S Manners / Health 2. This weeks lesson was on using kind words like please, thank you, excuse me, you are welcome, and I am sorry.

World Geography - Read 1.5 pages of lesson 1 R&S Our Fathers World 2. I'm not as happy with this text as I thought I'd be - DD finds it boring. I am going to give it another week, if she and I are still unhappy with it we will drop the subject for this year.

Girl Scouts - Worked on Sunny Petal {friendly and helpful}, will complete projects over the weekend to earn petal.

Not too bad for a 3 day school week.

I also ordered our butterflies from Insect Lore - so in a week or so we will start a new project raising butterflies in addition to our other science projects. I hope to get to ladybugs, worms, and tadpoles this year as well - T loves animals and enjoys seeing them up close.

Day 2 of 1st grade & weekly recap

Well, today went a lot smoother. DD actually read just a little bit {not much} on her own, and school didn't take quite as long today. Tomorrow will probably be a school holiday on account of us having a yard sale, but we will have to see the weather in the morning to know for sure.

First day back at school

Well, we managed to get our first day back to school done yesterday with only a few minor hiccups. T is still not wanting to write or to read out loud, so we are doing a lot of assignments orally rather than writing. So far everything we are using seems to be working for us, so I'm thrilled with that. I do still need to find an art program for T - she is very good at art but entirely self-taught from books and TV shows, and I'd like her to have a little more instruction in it.

T working on the workbook pages to go with Days Go By Pathway Reader

The rose T drew and colored after we finished school. You can't see it in the photo, but she had drawn pencil lines inside the red portion to look like rose petals. 

Week in review

Not much to post here as we aren't doing formal schooling this week, but I thought I'd post anyways. T has been doing lots of unschooling using Jumpstart 1st grade, Jumpstart Music and Arthur's Reading Games on her PC. And doing lots of drawings too of rainbows and such.

On my end, I've just about nailed down our lesson plans, with the exception of the items I'm still waiting on to come in the mail. We will start back to formal lessons on Monday hopefully, but next week is looking pretty busy as I have labwork to do, a Dr. appointment, a trip to the homeschool center, and we're having a yard sale on Friday and Saturday. So it's entirely possible that it might be delayed a week. But I'm okay with that.

Waiting is such agony.....

Don't you hate waiting? I know I do - and right now we're in the limbo of waiting for things to come in the mail. I ordered the last of DD's textbooks last week, and went ahead and put in a request to The Book Samaritan for her second grade items, and now I'm in the limbo of WAITING for the packages to come in the mail. I have somewhere around 12-15 packages all somewhere in the mail system, the majority of which are for use this year. With the recent decrease in mail speed, the waiting has become even longer.

I have Amazon gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, and I can't order because I don't know what will be filled from my request to the Book Samaritan.

Guess I should get back to my school room cleaning and organizing - it will keep my mind off the waiting.

Reviving my old blog

We're reviving our school year, and with it I decided to revive my old blog. A lot has changed since I started this blog - we've changed home school programs, I'm no longer Catholic as I've converted to Islam, and T is now 5.5 instead of not quite 4. She's learned a lot over the past year, and I've had to tweak my educational choices to keep up with her.

Here's what we're using now for 1st grade:

MCP math A

Climbing to Good English 1

Pathway readers grade 1 & 2 with workbooks

Behold & See 1 from CHC

Inquisikids science dvds

Zaner Bloser Handwriting A Way to Self Expression 1

R&S spelling 2

R&S Manners & Health 2

R&S Our Father's World 2

We'll also be working our way through history - I am spreading world history over 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades. I haven't found a textbook for this yet that I like, so we're going to use lapbooks and books from the library for this one. 

It's been a while......

Wow it's been a while since I posted! I've been so busy with back to school shopping and making sure we have everything we need at the last minute.

School for us starts in exactly one month. Sweetheart is excited, and she's going to get even more excited on the first day of school. We've signed up for a local homeschool PE class done through the city, and it happen to have it's first meeting on our first day of school {we were planning on a picnic at the park so this fits in perfectly}. And then the next day, we're going to the coolest place in town to start the school year - The KIDDIE PARK! It's a lovely vintage kiddie park we have here in town with rides dating back as far as 1918, and a local tradition to take your kids. I scored half price endless ride bands on Groupon, so it's actually on coming out to about $8 to take her, including bus fare to get there.Then Friday we're taking a Field Trip to see a Dinosaur exhibit at a local museum that is done by Dinosaur George!

Then we'll start actual lessons the following week - our week looks like this:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday:
Reading - Saint of the Day and Read-aloud within our Yearly Reading Theme {this year it's Thornton Burgess and related works including Beatrix Potter}
Phonics - CHC Little Stories for Little Folks and Letters for Little Folks
Math - Little Folks Number Practice or MCP Math K depending on day
Religion - God's Love Story {CHC} or Who Am I? Depending on day

Wednesday:
Reading - Saint of the Day and Read-aloud within theme
Religion - Saint of the week {we're doing two a week, relating to the letters of the week in Little Folks Letter Practice}
PE - Homeschool PE for 1.5 hours
Arts & Crafts

Still working in the school room.....part two....

We're STILL working in the school room - I really had hoped to be all done by now. But between culling books, sorting out duplicates, potty training Sweetheart, my Father getting released from a rehab facility, and dealing with people in and out for him, it's still not finished.

I did run into a slight snag on my wonderful oversize bookcases - I need to put up wall anchors as when they are loaded they lean out. I've no idea how to do that honestly - we've never had to do it before. And I need to go to Lowes and get shelves cut for the two bookcases that I didn't get the shelves with.

I am making progress though, and it's beginning to look more like a school room instead of playroom.

I've also been taking time to work on our lesson plans for this fall. We're using CHC pretty much as written for K, with the addition of our read aloud theme for the year and field trips. But I'm setting everything up in file folders for each day/week with everything in them, so all I have to do is pull the correct file folder and it will have an outline of the week with each days work, including coloring pages, craft activities, etc included in the folder.

Still working in the school room.....

We're still working in the school room.... I really hoped to be done by now. But we're getting there - now I just need to move in the rest of the bookcases, shelve the books which are already in there in totes, and set up my desk. As soon as I find my cable for the digital camera I'll take some in-progress photos to post up.

I'm still trying to find a place to put the two rolling double sided bookcases - I really didn't figure on the other bookcases being in good shape as they were described as damaged, but they are like new other than the risers having been added {which we're removing}.  They won't fit down our hall, so they can't go in the school room - only in the living room. I may end up keeping one for living room storage and cookbooks, and selling the other one.

It's looking better, slowly but surely. I didn't get much done yesterday as I had people coming by to buy auction items all day {YAY!} - but the garage is slowly clearing out as well which is good. I think the last of it should go when we have our yard sale next month.

I did get some treats yesterday in the mail from Bookmooch, The Read-Aloud Handbook: Sixth Edition and Storybook Treasury of Dick and Jane and Friends for Sweetheart.

School Room Update

Moving furniture is taking a bit longer than expected - it turned out the bookcases we won in the auction only fit down our hall if we take the risers off. That's far easier said than done, so we're working on what we can in the meantime.

So far we've moved in 3 four drawer file cabinets {1 for school, one for my coupons, and one for general family paperwork}, one bookcase, and filled said bookcase. Another bookcase is slated to be moved in sometime today, as is a table and a short shelf. I've decided to move my office back into the school room to allow me to work while Sweetheart is doing schoolwork, so that has added to the moving time.


But I'm working on it - hope to have it done within the week. Of course that depends on life in general, but hopefully.

Furnishing the School Room Frugally!

I've been watching for bookcases as such for funishing the school room for a while now, and last week I finally found what I wanted at the price I wanted.

I bid in an online auction for discarded school items, and was able to get home 9 file cabinets, 6 tables, 7 bookcases, 1 bookcase cabinet, and 2 rolling double sided bookcases. I also got around 30 student desks which I'm selling off to help cover my costs. I left a lot more there too - we just didn't have room in the truck for everything so I had to pick what I needed most.

So this weekend will be selling up our school room with bookcases, Sweetheart's desk, a small desk for me, and getting all our books on shelves {which will be a new concept for Sweetheart - they've been in boxes for so long since we didn't have enough room}. Then hopefully next week I'm going to start on a big inventory and re-enter everything into LibraryThing, adding in what shelf it's on and tags for subjects and grade levels.

Then we'll be working on setting up my office with all the file cabinets and a table we got as well, so that I have room for lesson planning and my couponing without it taking over a big part of the living room like it is currently.

I can't wait until it's all done and set up - I'll take pics and post them here.

Any tips or ideas for setting it up?

Getting for a New Year Home Schooling

We're gearing up for Sweetheart's Kindergarten year this fall, and I'm almost done tweaking the lesson plans to better fit us. We're using CHC with a tiny bit of alterations and add-ins.

So far we're using:

Catholic Heritage Curricula Kindergarten Lesson Plans

Religion:

A Year With God
St. Joseph Picture Books Assortment
Who Am I? Image of God Kindergarten
God's Love Story from CHC
Catholic Children's Treasure Box Vol. 1-10
Catholic Children's Treasure Box Vols. 11-20: Commonly Called Simply Treasure Box
Little Book of Saints, Volume 1
Little Book of Saints, Vol. II

Reading & Phonics:

Little Stories for Little Folks from CHC

Read-Alouds:

We discovered Thornton Burgess recently thanks to a book from our thrift shop, and I've decided to make him the read-aloud theme for the year. So we'll be reading his works including the following:
Favorite Thornton Burgess Animal Stories Boxed Set (Sets)
Old Mother West Wind and 6 Other Stories (Children's Thrift Classics)
The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver
The Adventures of Prickly Porky
The Adventures of Bobby Raccoon (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)
Lightfoot the Deer
Mother West Wind's Neighbors
Adventures of Reddy Fox
The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack
Blacky the Crow,
The Adventures of Sammy Jay (Childrens's Thrifts)
The Adventures of Buster Bear
The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk
Mother West Wind'S Animal Friends
Happy Jack
The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum
Whitefoot the Wood Mouse
Mrs. Peter Rabbit

We'll also be reading The complete Tales of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter which dovetails nicely as Burgess continued the story of Peter Rabbit in his works.

Math:


Little Folks Number Practice from CHC
MCP Math K

Handwriting:

Little Folks Letter Practice from CHC
Catholic Heritage Handwriting K 



And of course lots of Field Trips and extra fun activities as well for the year. We already have planned two trips to the Witte Museum, to see their Dinosaurs Unleashed and Backyard Monsters {Insects} exhibits. I know in February we'll attend the annual Pow-wow, and we'll try to fit in a Fiesta event or two as well. And of course, the first Saturday in March we'll be at the Alamo for the annual re-enactment and celebration - we've gone every year since Sweetheart was born.

I'm going to try to keep this blog updated better with my frugal tips and more details on how we school as well.

One thing you may notice in this post - all products are now directly linked to either CHC or Amazon. I linked to Amazon where possible - don't forget to use your Swagbucks gift cards! And please consider purchasing through the Amazon links as they do generate me a small referral commission which helps cover my home schooling costs and is our field-trip budget for the year.

Seven Quick Takes Vol. 1

 

~~ 1 ~~

Tomorrow is my daughter's 3rd birthday, and I haven't even wrapped the presents yet. The cake is ordered, but I fell through on the topper so I'm just going to cut out a design from a notebook and put it on the top. She's having a Vintage Strawberry Shortcake party, since it is impossible to find anything birthday related from Miffy, who was her first choice. She's getting a bunch of Strawberry Shortcake stuff {purse, hair clips, pens, stickers, etc} thanks to .99 Only, A Thomas The Tank Engine Comforter {To match her Thomas Pillows and Pillowcases} thanks to the thrift shop, and a few new toys from Walgreens. 

~~ 2 ~~

I've come to the realization that while yes, Sweetheart is mentally ready for Kindergarten level work, physically she just is not there yet. Trying to get her to sit down for a 10 minute lesson would be a struggle at this point, as she is going through another constant movement phase in addition to the terrible two's and trying to potty train. So while I have everything for Kindergarten ready - we're going to wait a while. If by New Year's I think she's ready we'll start then, if not well then it will be Fall 2010. But we are going to do a lot more pre-school type stuff this winter either way: lots of Coloring, field trips to the Zoo & Botanical Gardens, Storytime at the Library, and maybe to the HEB Science Treehouse as well. 

~~ 3 ~~

On the topic of Potty Training - any tips? We started trying to train Sweetheart at around 18 months old, and she got it fairly well then for #1. But then my mother who lives with us had a stroke, and we stopped for a while due to juggling her medical care. We've been trying to train again for the last few months, and it just isn't working. She gets the concept, can explain exactly how one goes potty like a big girl, but refuses to do it. Nothign has worked so far - even the offer of a trip back to Six Flags to the Carosel she was enthralled with - has worked. I'm at my wits end. We are trying a new tactic though this week - cloth training pants during the day instead of Huggies Pull-ups. She does at least want them changed right away now instead of using them like a diaper.

~~ 4 ~~

On the topic of Faith, some of you know I'm a reverted convert to Catholicism. I converted in college, but then fell away from the Church for a few years, during which my daughter was born. Now I'm trying to return to the faith, and finding it an uphill battle. I want to get my daughter baptized, but need to attend Mass {and apparently tithe to show I was attending, but that's a discussion for another day} for three to six months weekly {while caring for two elderly parents with medical issues, and a 3 year old who gets quite loud}, attend classes, and find two Godparents. It's the Godparents that really put a hitch in things - I have next to no Catholic friends locally, and the few I do have I don't want as my daughter's Godparents. So I'm in a bit of a pickle.

~~ 5 ~~

It's been raining for 4 days now, and it's begining to get muddy. After an entire summer with no rain {we are somewhere around 18 inches short on rain this year} it's very odd to hear rain on the roof. Now we'll have to mow the lawn, which we haven't mowed in around nine months because the grass quit growing due to lack of water. And yet - we're still under water restrictions. I'm hoping for more rain, but not tmorrow morning when I have to run down to get Sweetheart's birthday cake at the store two miles away, since I make the run in my power wheelchair. And Power Wheelchairs and water do not mix well.

~~ 6 ~~

I remember what I was doing 8 years ago today - sitting in AP English IV in high school, and we had a TV in our classroom. The special ed was next door, and the teacher came running over and said turn on the TV they attacked New York City. Everything pretty much shut down at school - I don't think we even changed classes at all that day. And the guy I was dating long distance, was in the military and I was so worried about him. Funny - I don't even know where he is now.

~~ 7 ~~

Funny how time changes things, three years ago today I was trying to get labor started since my water had broke, but desperately not wanting my daughter born on 9/11. She ended up being born on the morning of the 12th, just in time for breakfast. And life has never been the same since. 

Take a gander at more Quick Takes by visiting Conversion Diary.

Mail Call!

In the mail today I had several lovely presents:

CHC's LOG Level E
Our Lady of the Rosary's Kindergarten for Catholics
and My Path to Heaven: A Young Person's Guide to the Faith.

My Path to Heaven came from Amazon for free thanks to Swagbucks giftcards, and LOG E and Kindergarten for Catholics came from Cathswap for a total, shipping included, of just $7.50.

Yesterday I got a copy of CHC's Stories of the Saints Volume I for free as well from Amazon thanks to Swagbucks giftcards. 

Yet another thrifty purchase by The Frugal Catholic Homeschooler.

Welcome!

Welcome to The Frugal Catholic Homeschooler!

I'm Darla, mom to a almost three year old daughter who I lovingly call Sweetheart. I'm a convert to the Catholic Church, who converted in 2003 but then fell away due to poor instruction and college life. I'm in the process of returning to the church and trying to better establish my faith.

I have a deep love for the traditional Catholic church, and Mary and the saints. I'm still learning a lot about the church though, so bear with me and feel free to correct me if I'm in error.