Today is the 5th day of school, and guess what.

It is definitely time to recover from summer.

And you know what else? It’s going to take me way more than 12 days to recover the basement playroom and the stacks of papers from a summer of neglect.

There are about a billion cluttered surfaces in my house that I’ve saved for “when the boys go back to school.” And you do not want to see the storage room where I shoved all the bins of items I didn’t have a place for when I unpacked them from the move. “I’ll find a place for those when the boys go back to school.”

Ah yes, that day has come. Time to put my working hands where my mouth was.

Do you listen to music when you clean?

I HAVE to.

Like it or not, cleaning must be done. It’s quite important, so I find it imperative to distract myself with some fun, upbeat tunes from people with better voices than my own. And of course, I will be singing along, sometimes even dancing, and not just because I like to watch my children roll their eyes.

My big accomplishment of the day wasn’t just cleaning though.

(Cleaning is the never-ending job.) It was this YouTube playlist I put together of a few (like 14) of my favorite songs to listen to while I work! After all, who pays hundreds of dollars for music when you can listen for free on YouTube?

It’s super simple to do. I thought about typing up an explanation for how to make a playlist, and then I figured that’d be time-consuming, and it’s already been done. Here’s a link for how to make your own YouTube playlist.

Here’s my playlist below. What’s on yours? I’d love to hear more ideas for songs to add.

Link to my playlist:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIigYXl0ipjUCeVz0lttQ71FPZZD7JRr8

1. Someday by Michael Bible and Meghan Trainer (love those 2!!)
2. I Wanna Go Back by David Dunn
3. Grace Got You by MercyMe
4. Tell Your Heart to Beat Again by Danny Gokey
5. A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman Soundtrack
6. The Lost Get Found by Britt Nicole
7. Hold Me by Jamie Grace and Toby Mac
8. Little Ol’ Me by Jamie Grace
9. Fight Song by Rachel Platten
10. You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift (The high school girl inside of me finds this song quite relatable okay)
11. Still That Girl by Britt Nicole (Skip the first 30 seconds of the song and then listen. LOOOVE the rest. She could’ve had a huge hit with this one if she’d chopped off the intro, in my humble opinion..)
12. Better Place by Rachel Platten
13. This One’s For the Girls by Martina McBride
14. Keep Walkin’ On by Faith Hill & Shelby Lynne

I need more songs for it. I’ve already listened to this whole list twice in the last 24 hours. What should I add??

The post 12 Days of Summer Recovery: Day 1 is My House Cleaning Playlist appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This post is sponsored by seedsfamilyworship.com. They are here to teach the Bible through songs.

John David is 3 years old, but he already knows that Christmas equals presents.

He is also fully in love with Santa Clause, aka the King of Christmas. And in all fairness, who wouldn’t love a man who shows up once a year just to give you all the things you wanted???? Sign me up for that!

My sweetie-pie professional product tester. He accepts payments of hugs and toy airplanes.

So you might be wondering why I’m talking about Christmas in October, but the thing is that if you are planning a children’s ministry or want to teach your kids an awesome song to perform at Christmas for their grandparents, then now is the time to order your material.

We got this lovely Christmas DVD and accompanying CD in the mail called Seeds of Christmas. By the way, it’s also available digitally if you don’t want to have to fool with a hard copy DVD and CD.

I tried it out the first time with just John David because he’s the only guinea pig hanging out with all day while I’m working. He is also a lover of all things music.

Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Oooo, John David, I have a new Christmas movie for us to watch. It has songs! (JD loves songs.)

JD: Yay!!!  It has Santa Clause?

Me: Well, um, I don’t know. Let’s watch it. We’ll see what it has. I’ve never seen it before, but I do know it’s Christmas.

JD: Yay!!!

Some of the songs are fast, but most of them are slower, very worshipful. I’m going to include a preview below for you to see what I mean.

Every single song line is a Bible verse.

We watched it without hand motions, but if you are teaching a class or your kids happen to like doing the motions, that’s all on there for you. I have four BOYS. They dislike singing in public, and they especially dislike hand motions.

The last video on this disc is BEAUTIFUL.

They were all good, but this one was my favorite. It has that wow factor you would want for a program, if you are performing these.

We are only using it at home, but I just adored that last video, called “Joy.” You can’t tell from the preview online just how powerful that video actually is. Watch it without the hand motions, and focus in on the whole Bible story of Jesus’s birth played out in front of you.

So this is what sold me on this video:

We were watching the Joy video at the end, and JD could not stop asking questions!

“Who’s that?”

JD had to know who each little figure at the bottom was and what they did.

“That’s Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus.”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s Jesus.”

“Jesus died.”

“Yes, but this is when Jesus was born. Jesus is God’s son.”

“He died?”

“Well, yes, later on, but this is about when he was born. See, he was a baby, born in a manger in a barn. Christmas is really about the birth of Jesus, not about Santa Clause and what we can get from him.”

I can’t remember the entire conversation, but you get the idea. This opened the door to talk about these important things. That’s right. Christmas isn’t just about presents. What a great reminder.

When the video was over, JD actually asked to watch it again!

Now here’s the other unusual thing about this company, Seeds Family Worship. All of their songs are 100% Bible verses. There are no fillers or added words. They are literally just singing the Bible!!

They call it family worship because their stuff isn’t just for kids or just for adults. Anyone can enjoy it and learn. You could get the music to help you learn scriptures! You could use it to help teach your children memory verses. You could even use it for your Bible class or children’s choir. I am impressed with the versatility.

Click here to go to their website and see a preview!

I was excited to learn that Seeds Family Worship is also a touring group. They are traveling performers, and because I have readers in Bowling Green, Kentucky let me tell you: they will be in your city in January. I found this on their website:

Bowling Green, Kentucky: God’s Awesome Word Event, Living Hope Baptist Church, January 8. You can click here for more info on that.

Two more pieces of good news:

1. The Christmas Set is on sale now for $19.99. You get BOTH the DVD and the CD for that, so it’s an awesome deal.
2. We’re giving one set away!!!!  Wahoo!!! Click to enter below:                                  a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Fun Way to Teach the True Meaning of Christmas, with Giveaway! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

What a week. More shootings, more Facebook shaming, more Christmas shopping.

I can’t take too much of it. The bad news and the negativity steals my joy. I don’t get the Facebook shaming thing. I’m talking about the people who post their viewpoint, and tag onto it, “How can you be so STUPID to think otherwise…” or my personal least favorite, “You aren’t a Christian if you think otherwise…” Real helpful. Real loving. Super edifying.

I’m guilty of being negative too, but I’d much rather be loving.

I have no business reading Facebook these days. Once something becomes a ‘bring- me-down’ instead of a ‘pick-me-up’, it needs to be set aside.

But I don’t think that means pull out all together. This world is full of evil things, but if all the loving people leave the forums of the world, it gets ugly fast!

No, instead of isolating ourselves from all negative, since it can’t be done anyway, we need to limit those influences, maybe even hide those peeps who routinely do the Facebook shaming from our news feed.

The only way to spread love or to get love is to show love. 

Keep on dancing, keep on singing, keep on praying, keep on giving and giving and giving, teaching, reading, learning, and giving some more. 

Sometimes I just need a good pick-me-up like this peppy song.  Get up, and do your soul thing. Be happy. You’re God’s child. You have nothing to fear and only love to give.

“The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”           Galatians 5:14-15

I hope you all have a glorious weekend! We have some Salvation Army bell ringin’ and a 5K run for Arthritis planned.

I spent this week getting MRIs, blood work, and x-rays. Maybe I’ll finally find out what is causing my achy back problem. Maybe I won’t. Either way, no biggie. There’s no reason for anyone who belongs to God to be stressed. We just need to trust him. I will not be stress ball April any longer. I’m going to be resting-in-the-arms-of-Jesus April. Won’t you join me in the peace of it?

Come on, Daniel! You’ll feel better you’re dancin’!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct3y0LZuPSM

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”    1 John 3:16

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Home schooling may be one of the greatest challenges I have taken on as a parent.  

One of my biggest struggles is making learning fun. If the boys spend all day doing seat work, writing, and listening to me teach them, they start to become unmanageable. A house of unmanageable children will wreck your day in a hurry. I figure if it is hard for me to find ways to make it fun, it must be hard for other parents too.

Of course, I occasionally run into those parents who seem to have it all together. They LOVE home schooling, and their children seem to know everything. Then I think, “Oh, huh, look at that. Actually home schooling is quite easy for some.”

It’s amazing the difference that experience, preparedness, organization, and a toolbox of good ideas can make!

We’re growing in this. S-l-o-w-l-y but surely I’m figuring out how to manage home schooling.

I have one ace up my sleeve that is a big help. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are fully experienced teachers. Nonna taught in the public schools, mostly middle school, for twenty years. Amy also taught middle school for over ten years. They have both sent me great supplies this year, and I have used as much of it as I could work in and saved the rest for later.

When Nonna was here this last time, she helped me set up a FANTASTIC filing system. I’ll talk more about that on a future post.

Then she introduced us to……..Brain Pop, Jr.

This can be used whether you are home schooling or not. I just joined as a parent. First, I want to tell you upfront that this is not a free site, nor are they paying me to talk about them. Man, I wish they were! This site offers:

-A huge selection of cute and funny teaching videos, divided by topics and subtopics in math, science, reading and writing, health, social studies, and arts and technology.

-Each sub topic offers a game, printable activity, hard quiz, easy quiz, and more!

-For science, the print-outs are often easy-to-do and fun science experiments!!  I am loving this!

I have tech-savvy kids who are hard to impress, and they actually enjoy these videos and activities.

It is the very first educational “computer center” that I’ve found this year that my second and third graders enjoy!

Brain Pop does have a few free videos and games, and you can download all of that on their app as well. This site is computer friendly as well as app friendly.  They have a new “free movie” every week.

I warn you. The theme song is so catchy. It WILL get stuck in your head.

If you’d like a free preview of what Brain Pop Jr. videos are like, see this free one on local and state governments on their YouTube channel.

There is currently a two week free trial you can start out with.

I chose the parent option. It was $119.00 for the year. If you want to also get Brain Pop (grades 3-8th), you can get both for a total of $159/year.

Oh! And you want to be careful which Brain Pop version you get.

We use Brain Pop Jr. because it’s for Kindergarten through 3rd grade. The only thing they were missing that I’ve needed so far was Evolution and Natural Selection information, to go with our current science unit in Classical Conversations.

Regular Brain Pop has the same hilarious robot videos, but on the more advanced material. Nonna said that her middle schoolers loved it.

(Side note on the evolution bit: Yes, I teach them about both evolution and creation. Obviously, I’m a firm believer that the Earth was created by God. The boys are too. )

Using Brain Pop Jr. with Classical Conversations

So far, we have barely scraped the surface of what all you can do with this technology. You can bet I will be sharing more details on this in the future. For now, I’ll share what we have done so far, and my Brain Pop Jr. CC Cycle 3 Science Lesson plans for weeks 21-24.

-Composers and Musical Instruments! Brain Pop Jr. made learning woodwinds vs. brass, etc. a lot more fun!

This will take you to the whole music section: Music

There are so many options there!

I also used Brain Pop Jr. to help my third grader with division.

I used it to help my first grader with Reading and Spelling Skills.

But more than anything, we are using it for Science:

CC, Cycle 3, Week 21:

Uniformitarianism.

Brain Pop, Jr. didn’t define uniformitarianism, but it did have a whole video, game, quiz, and activity section on gradual land change and fast land change.

There is an erosion experiment to download, as well as fossil activities, and a Grand Canyon puzzle!

CC Cycle 3, Week 22

Catastrophism

Again, they didn’t use the word catastrophism, but they had all the bells and whistles for a fun lesson on “Fast Land Changes”, complete with science experiment and a sequence game.

CC Cycle 3, Week 23

Natural Selection– I couldn’t find it on Brain Pop Jr. either, but I guarantee you they would have it on the not-Junior version.

However, I did find a great video, somewhat related, on Extinct and Endangered Species.

CC Cycle 3, Week 24

Good Science

I found a great lesson on the Scientific Method.

For a complete list for Cycle 1, click here.

Thanks again to Nonna for introducing me to Brain Pop Jr.!

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