7 quick takes friday

ONE

I'm back to trying out this fun meme.  Thanks to Jen at conversion diary for hosting it.  She has a very thought provoking blog that I enjoy following. Especially when she talks about her drastic conversion from Atheism to Catholicism.   This post about her marriage too is absolutely worth a read.

TWO

Jelly Telly is becoming a regular fixture in the house.  It's done by Phil Vischer, the guy who started veggie tales, and it never ceases to amuse the kids.  A plus for any of you americans: they show a condensed version of the Drive Thru History (american history series) every Tuesday. This week was on Benjamin Franklin.

THREE

Speaking of Jelly Telly, we have also been enjoying their Movie of the Week.  This is a family friendly movie that they show free of charge every sat/sun.  You can watch it on your computer/laptop, or if you have a connection to your tv like we do, you can watch it right in your family room!  This week's movie is Gigi: God's little princess

FOUR

We are on a pretty tight budget this year, usually running out of money before the next paycheck comes in.  Since we are avoiding the use of credit, we have started looking into other means to supplement our fun money.   Sean wanted to look into airmiles, so I did a bit of calculating for him.  If we bought all of our groceries with an airmiles visa each month (that's $700 every two weeks, or $16,800 a year), we would only have to collect points for a mere 14 years to get enough for one ticket to Rome!!  So that means, we can celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary there because in another 30 years we'll have enough for 2 tickets (of course I suppose that's not taking into account inflation... hmm maybe it will have to be our 50th. I hope they still take airmiles by then).

Setting our sights a little lower, I calculated how much we would need to get a free Ipod Touch: Not bad... only a mere 8.4 years.   So all you people out there who always have airmiles to fly you to these fun vacations you keep taking... How do you do it???

FIVE

On that note, I've added some booklists from Amazon.ca to my sidebar.  I'm trying to keep a list of the books that I find particularly helpful in homeschooling, family life, crafting and faith life.  If you see any you want to buy, you can help support our homeschooling fund by buying your books through the link on the side.   Maybe if enough of you buy books through here I can get to Rome with the kids for a field trip before they graduate?  

SIX

I've been inspired from Lori at Camp Creek Blog to gently encourage my kids to get more excited about learning...  Monday and Friday afternoons around here have become designated as 'project time'.  (i need to work on a more creative name, but it works for now).  The kids can choose whatever they want to learn about and I'm going to help facilitate their exploration into new topics.    They were so excited by the prospect and came up with a million things they wanted to learn about.   Z (5 year old) was set on 'sheep' of all things, but decided to copy his big sister, so now they are learning about Butterflies.  

SEVEN

This idea that they can learn about whatever they want inspired them onto further projects this week.  THey are both working on their own chapter books.  I'll have a post on them later in the week because they are so cute.  Z's first book was an autobiography, and the newest one is entitled 'Super Dog and the Return to Earth'.  His inventive spelling is like a secret code you have to decipher while reading. 

E's book is called Imagine Land and is about a little girl with a big imagination.

I love that in homeshooling we can work around some of these creative impulses and let them write for 2 or 3 hours in a row, saving the math for later in the afternoon.  It's amazing to see the concentration and detail that they are capable of when they are excited about what they are doing.