Papa's Pearls: A Gift of Love and Wisdom to His Children and Grandchildren

With age and experience, wisdom usually follows. Wisdom is exactly what Carol Joseph Flynn gained through the ups and downs of his life. Living through the Great Depression, and being a kid going down the wrong path, he turned life lessons into great pearls of wisdom.

Diane Flynn Keith, his oldest daughter, wrote about these pearls of wisdom in her book, Papa's Pearls: A Gift of Love and Wisdom to His Children and Grandchildren. 

 

I knew when I saw this book it would be a little gem. This book is full of humor, love and of course, wisdom. The way that Diane writes of her dad shows the immense love that she has for him, and that he had for their family.

Papa's Pearls takes us through many of the lessons Papa learned in his life. I just love the sayings that he came up with to remember them! Here are some of my favorites:

You don't kick someone when their down, you give me a hand up.

Let it go, like water off a duck's back.

Be grateful every day.

Life is too short. Take a little time off.

Keep a foxy pocket.

Doodle-lee Do It!

Papa took life experiences, like growing up in the depression and living with out necessitates and turned them into little rules for himself. As he grew up and earned money he saved and invested it. He taught his children and grandchildren to do the same. He encouraged them to save half of any money they were given or earned. He even doubled any money they put in their savings account as an added incentive. He taught his kids and grand kids to always "keep a foxy pocket," so they would never be without a little emergency cash.

Diane, thanks so much for sharing your daddy with us. I was glad to hear he got his whistle back!

Papa's Pearls is available for $21.95. It would be a great summer read!

 

Click to read more reviews from the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

Phonics and Reading with McGuffey App

Over the years I have heard great things about the McGuffey readers series. Many moms have successfully used this set to teach their little ones to read. It wasn't until recently that I got to check them out for myself.

LiteracySoft has taken a tried and true McGuffey reader, and turned it into an interactive phonics and reading app.  The Phonics and Reading with McGuffey App is a complete beginner level phonics and reading program.

I loved this quote from LiteracySoft's website....

“The generations which made America rich and great all grew up reading the McGuffey's Readers.”

The goal of the program is to bring the user to a 1st grade reading level. The App consists of 53 Lessons that are based off of the McGuffey Eclectic Primer, which has been successfully used for over a century. 

Each lesson has several different activities to help students learn, as well as retain letter sounds and words. There is plenty of reading and spelling practice in the program, but with enough variety to keep it fun and exciting. The program is flexible, allowing students to work at their own pace, and even repeat lessons when necessary.

According to LiteracySoft's Website, this app includes:

• All 53 McGuffey Primer lessons

• All 44 letter sounds of English and their graphemes

• 60+ letter sound animations

• 400+ practice word vocabulary

• 9000+ nonsense word audio dictionary

Here are a few pictures of this app is action....

By dragging the letters into the Phonics Blender, students practice spelling words.

Illustrations through out the lessons add interest to the stories.

Here you can see the different activities in the lessons....

This activity was probably our favorite! You are asked to build (or load) a word, after you have spelled the word correctly the truck drives off.  Pretty cute!

 

Little Bits, my Pre-K'er, was my guinea pig for this review.  He seemed to do pretty well with it. I think t hat for him, the progession of learning the letters and words was just right.  I do feel that this is something that I need to be near by to keep a watch on what he is getting and not getting.  This way I know what he needs to repeat.  

For the most part, I was pretty impressed.  I do wish that the app keep track of what they have mastered and what they haven't.  We plan to continue to use this as a supplemental activity.  

You can purchase the Phonics and Reading with McGuffey app for $19.99  It is currently available for your PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone.  We use ours on the iPad.  

LiteracySoft also offers a Lite version of this app.  They give you the first 10 lessons to try for FREE!

Check out what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members are saying about this app! 

Menu Plan 5/6/13 - A few new recipes

I don't know about you all but I have NOT felt like cooking lately.  Every once in a while the daily grind of breakfast, lunch and dinner gets tiring!  What's a wife to one and mom to four to do?  Well, for me, it means it is time for start to find some new or different recipes. 

So that is just what I did!  I pulled out a cookbook that I haven't used in a long time, Supper's on the Table, Come Home by Rachel Masters.  This mama/cookbook author is a homeschool mom of 5, in other words we live in the same world, minus one child.  It's actually a neat little cookbook, she has 13 weeks of recipes along with shopping lists.  The recipes are of the simple, family fare variety, however, I found several new recipes and was reminded of some old ones. 

Okay, enough yapping {smile}.  Here's what I am serving up this week....

Breakfast

• Cereal w/ Banana Slices (x2)
• Waffles w/ Berries
• Oatmeal (x2)
• Eggs, Toast, Orange Slices
• Egg Wraps

Lunch

• PB&J's, Carrot Sticks and Chips
• Turkey & Cheese Rolls Ups w/ Fruit
• Ham, Cheese, Crackers and Grapes
• Cheese Quesadillas, Salsa, Fruit
• Hot Dogs, Fries, Apple Sauce
• Egg Salad Sandwiches, Fruit and Chips

 Dinner

• Hot Dogs, Veggie Pasta Salad, Corn on the Cob
• Homemade Hamburger Helper, Broccoli and Cauliflower
• Upside Down Pizza, Salad 
• Honey Baked Chicken, Sweet Potatoes, Mixed Veggies
• Cavatini, Peas, Fresh Bread
• Turkey Clubs, Potato Wedges,  Cucumber & Tomato Salad
• Broccoli & Cheese Soup w/ Panne Bread

The last 5 dinners are from the Supper's on the Table, Come Home cookbook.  Do you have any go to cookbooks? 

Weekly Wrap Up! {The week we had nothing to do)

I tell ya, I just can't seem to keep up with this little blog lately.  Life seems to be pretty busy lately.  We have been keeping busy with school, taking weekly field trips and decluttering a bit. 

We completed Trail Guide to Learning Paths of Exploration a few weeks ago, and have moved on to KONOS for now.  TGTL is a wonderful program, and I hope to continue with it again next year.

We just finished a unit on lighthouses and we are starting to study horses now.  I think that the flexibility, living books and hands on activities are a better fit for our crew at this point.  I will keep you all posted as we go along. 

We have also been taking field trips on Fridays with a few other families.  That has been lots of fun!  So far we have done a train museum, nature center, the National History Museum and today we did the zoo.  It has been so nice to get out and explore!

As I mentioned, I have been declutting a bit.  It all started one lovely day when I went to the garage to pull out the spring/summer clothes for the kids.  I had been saving baby clothes and baby "stuff," but at this point I am feeling led to get rid of them.  So I am Ebaying some things and yardsaling others, my thoughts were that the funds from selling this stuff would go nicely towards next years school books.  It will also just be nice to get rid of extra stuff. 

This past week we actually took our week off.  You know 6 weeks on and 1 week off with school.  I was kind of torn about taking the week off because other than the zoo we weren't really doing anything.  BUT the down time gave me the extra time to work on the sorting through stuff and listing them online.  For the kids,  it gave them time to play and relax.  It was perfect!  There were forts, train tracks through the WHOLE playroom, READING, an impromptu trip to the park and LOTS of outside play.

Here are a few pictures from our zoo trip today....

Timeline Builder

 

History is one of my favorite subjects to learn, ahem, I mean teach.  As a high school student history was the one class that I really enjoyed.  Unfortunately, it wasn't until I started homeschooling that history really came alive and clicked for me.  Prior to homeschooling, what I knew about history seemed fragmented and sloppy.

One thing that I think has really helped the kids and I to put things in perpective is having a timeline.  It allows one to stand back and look at the big picture.  Enter, Timeline Builder from Knowledge Quest, a user friendly App for history lovers of all ages!

 

 

 

Things we really liked about the Timeline Builder:

• We do already have a LARGE timeline on the wall in our school room, but I love that this one can be seated right next to me wherever I am.  Like when the kids and I are snuggled on the couch reading a good historical fiction and we want to add some thing we learned to the timeline or look something up.

 

• Timeline Builder is very user friendly, for moms and kids! This App has instructions that explain how to get the most out of your timeline.  I felt that the timelines were easy to create, change and add to. 

 

• When adding a new timeline event or figure you can connect to Wikipedia to add facts and pictures.  I must say this is quite an awesome feature!

 

• I like that you can create several different timelines.  You could have one for American history, Ancient history, your state's history, composers, scientists or even your family tree!  Endless possibilities!  The kids can also personalize their timeline a bit by choosing their own background.

 

• Fun!  The Timeline Builder is actually really fun to work with.  The kids and I both enjoy using it. We like that you can be creative and design your own timelines.  Kids love to move the pictures around to arrange their timelines.

 

What I felt could be improved:

• While this is not a huge deal, I would like to be able to create a timeline from creation to present that we could scroll through.  This doesn't seem to be possible due to the fact that each timeline is a as big as one iPad page.  Not a deal breaker by any means, just a feature I wish they had.

Here is a great video of the Timeline Builder in action....

 

The Timeline Builder is one of our favorite products that we have reviewed.  We will continue to use it for years to come!

You can purchase your own Timeline Builder through the App store.  Normally it is $6.99, but it is currently on sale for $4.99.

 

 

You can see what others on the Schoolhouse Review Crew have to say about the Timeline Builder over at the SRC site.