TOS Review: If You Were Me and Lived in…

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Review Crew has been reviewing four books from Carole P. Roman with Away We Go Media. As part of the review, I received If You Were Me and Lived in… Mexico…, If You Were Me and Lived in… South Korea…, If You Were Me and Lived in… France…, and If You Were Me and Lived in… Norway… all in paperback form. These are stated to be ideal for ages 10 and younger, particularly young elementary age, but even I learned something in reading them.

We read these aloud together. My kids range in age from 2-10, and everyone was interested. The kids all sat at my feet… for a few minutes. Then they couldn’t stand themselves. They crowded around to see the colorful drawings that illustrate the story. Much discussion followed, and we had to find the countries on the map. The kids were particularly fascinated with the book about France, since Blaine lived there for a year. They were thrilled to learn that ‘doll’ in French sounds like 'poopy’ in English. They rushed to tell their daddy when he got home that night, only to find out that he already knew that. Good use of a bachelor’s in French, to be sure! :)

Talking of routines and common words and phrases for things an elementary child might encounter in each different culture, these books were easily relatable by most of my children. (The younger ones were listening… but I’m not sure how much they understood at ages 2 and 3. They liked the pictures though.) I love opening my kids’ world a bit, and these books were a great way to do that. If you were planning to travel to any of these places, this would be a fantastic way to introduce the things they’ll encounter – and if you can only travel on the pages of a book, these were pretty fun books to read, again and again. They never get tired of hearing the name of a doll in French… sigh. Once we finally clarified that, while I don’t know what it is, #2 has a different name in French and they aren’t exactly referring to beloved baby dolls with the same word as the gift the rooster left on the front porch this morning, all was well again. This opening the world to them a bit is interesting business!

Each of the paperbacks has about 25-30 pages and is quite easy to read in one sitting. It was a great way to show my children that the world is just a little bit bigger than them in our little corner of Missouri. Reading about language, culture, and more was fascinating to them, and they learned a bit in the meantime. The first three books in this series are available at Amazon in Kindle format for $.99 each and in paperback for $8.99 each. If You Were Me and Lived in… Norway… is $1.99 on Kindle or is listed for $10.79 in paperback.

To read the rest of the Review Crew’s thoughts on the “If You Were Me…” series, head over to the Review Crew Blog and check out the linky there.

Angus and the… small mouthed peanut jar.

One dear kitten has apparently lost a few brain cells in the booting-out-of-the-house process it insists on completing multiple times a day. The kids were cleaning out the van, throwing garbage out in a pile, and Angus decided to check things out.

 

She’s stuck. She didn’t even seem to mind. She just kept cleaning out the peanut jar.

She’s also fine. No kittens were harmed in the taking of these photos. She got herself stuck. Liberty got her unstuck. After I took a photo. Priorities, after all.

There will be pain.

After a crazy day that involved an ER visit and getting to know my midwife a whole lot better, I’m home, having convinced hospital personnel that I can recover from a kidney infection at home. I’ve never been so thankful for midwifery care, the ability to get a hold of my midwife in the wee hours of the morning, and her willingness to pick me up from home, take me to the ER, and be an advocate for me as I walked the maze of possible labor threats and renal ultrasounds. Not to be confused with rectal ultrasounds, which is what I heard. I had a mental conversation of “You’re going to do what?! Where?” Let’s be clear: all is external, and the kidneys are no where close to… that. Whew. I was just a bit out of it. Apparently. No drugs involved. Give the midwife her due: she barely laughed when the nurse left and I asked for clarification. Oh. My. Word.

So thankful for her. And dear friends who delivered dinner so that I could come home and not worry about cooking. And dear friends who prayed while I freaked out, fearful this baby was in grave danger. Thankful for a baby who’s heart beats strong and who decided to move far, far more than normal this stressful day, reassuring me all was well.

What a day. So thankful for God’s care, clearly displayed so many times today.

 

Update: Saw my midwife the next day. No signs of infection. Zero. Amazing. Sometimes, antibiotics are really, really good things.

Today:

• Pierce threw two new rolls of toilet paper into the toilet.
• Someone left the toothpaste, uncapped, on the bathroom rug. Charlotte stepped on it.
• The rug’s in the washing machine. Fourth load for today.
• I took the kids grocery shopping at two stores and to the library.
• A random man asked me when I was going to be done having babies. I sputtered but remained polite.
• I found out Liberty had a huge amount of homework to do for co-op. Due tomorrow. It’s still half done. Three maps to color and label takes a long time.
• I found out Eden had a report on Laura Ingalls Wilder to do, among other things. Also due tomorrow.
• I remembered once again that I’d rather homeschool than deal with daily homework.
• I took the kids to the library. I’d borrowed Courting Cate by Leslie Gould and liked it so much I went to see if she had other titles. None were there. Read Courting Cate if you like Christian Fiction. It’s really good.
• I didn’t have to throw even one kitten out of doors. They seem to be learning. I took Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to speak softly and carry a big stick to heart.
• Floppy rulers qualify as big sticks.
• I counted four gallons of milk in the fridge when we got home and sighed, realizing we’re not going to make another week. I thought we had six.
• I sprayed the tub down with Comet spray at 9 am.
• I finally got the tub scrubbed at 9 pm.
• The tub soaking for that long doesn’t help out anymore than soaking for three minutes.
• Pierce made it to 8 pm before he pooped in his pants. I was just thinking that we’d had an accident-free day.
• Sterling couldn’t remember what lines of symmetry means on his math assessment. Seconds later, he informed me that 22 x 10 = 220. I don’t know what to do with that boy.
• Ruby maybe, just maybe, has caught onto reading. She’s getting faster. It amazes me what personality and a little bit more time means at the ripe old age of five. Thinking back, the older the child was, the easier it was to teach them to read. The oldest one was 5.5 years old. That beats 4.5 any. That’s nearly a quarter of their life difference.
• I stayed up way too late typing this, because I walked into the bathroom and saw the two rolls of tp in the garbage and it was just enough aggravating to write about.

TOS Review: Rosie’s Doll Clothes Patterns

I’ve been reviewing Rosie’s Doll Clothes Patterns with a one-year access to their Learn How to Make Doll Clothes Video Course with 8 Free Doll Clothes Patterns. Designed for ages 8 and up, Liberty (10) and Eden (8) both fall into this age range, but using the sewing machine is something I’ve done only with Liberty. She watched many of these videos, but with a mother who sews… it’s easier to show her than watch the videos for her. We worked on the patterns together, but I did most of the sewing when Liberty got sick on sewing day.

I was excited to begin this review. I’ve made dozens and dozens of things, beginning to sew with my mother in my teen years, and since making many more things, learning the hard way at times. Doll clothes have been something I’ve worked on quite a bit, but clothes so tiny are not so easy to work with. With my sewing experience, though, I watched many videos before I learned something new – but I’m thrilled with the new things that I did pick up! Hems, fabric choices, elastic, stitch types, and more are covered in this beginner sewing course that lasts 6 weeks with a handful of videos for each week lasting 2-15 minutes long each. There are over 130 videos in all - it starts out super simple and builds skill as you go along. The videos live stream – there’s nothing to download. I watched several videos in a sitting. Well done with decent quality but nothing fabulous, the videos loaded well for me and my fairly fast internet.

This isn’t something I’d just set my daughters loose with. The course has many how-to videos, but then you jump into sewing and simply refer back to the videos for instruction should you need it. My sewing machine is one of my more important, more expensive, and favorite tools, so perhaps I’m a bit overprotective, but I’m not prepared to set them loose with my machine quite yet. This did, however, provide us with a fun thing to do together. Liberty loves to sew with me and has visions of making her siblings Christmas and birthday presents, so she was a very willing participant in this review.

 

I chose to make the Summer Nightgown and a pair of doll panties. Super simple, to be sure, but I found the directions rather confusing. I searched and searched to find out how much elastic of the 20” required was for each leg and the waist of the panties, until I finally figured out they weren’t cutting it, but marking where to cut it, using that length, then cutting it and taking the leftover to the next leg, etc. I’ve never found a pattern that does it this way, and found that part frustrating. The patterns for the dress were simple rectangles, but I found myself pasting the two pages together to make the pattern that could have easily been instructions to cut a rectangle x inches by y inches. I’m sure this was to keep the beginner confident, but the extra steps with the patterns seemed unnecessary. My items turned out great, although, live and learn, I found that I was out of blue thread except for one bobbin. I thought I could get away with it since the mismatched color would be on the inside, but the t-shirt I cut apart to make them wasn’t so thick that the thread didn’t show through. Dolly doesn’t care, but it looked less than neat because of that.

Overall, the video course is great for beginners. It clearly explains and shows steps required for sewing, and I learned a few new tips even as one who sews quite regularly and has made a multitude of doll clothes for my four daughters. The patterns I made I was rather disappointed with how difficult they made something that was truly simple. I think, perhaps, it’s to be super clear for those that have no experience, but I couldn’t help but think it could be a bit more clear in the directions and make it sound far less complicated in the process. Most of their patterns are available on their website for an additional cost, I only made two of the free ones that are offered as part of the video course.

The course includes 8 free patterns. There are many other patterns for sale on the website, but the free ones include the ones pictured on the dolls above:

• Sport Shorts
• Crop Top
• Sarong
• Halter Top
• Summer Nightie
• Hat
• Pumpkin
• Underpants

All come with PDF pattern pieces and basic written instructions and step by step videos on how to make the outfits.

Access to the lessons for one year is $47.85 USD. Copies of the videos on DVD are also available. See their store page on their website here for more information.

To read what the rest of the Crew thought of Rosie’s Doll Clothes Patterns and her How to Make Doll Clothes video course, check out the review crew blog.

Dreams, projects, and the messes they can make.

I woke up with a start at 3:00 am with a dream. My dear son, having been potty training since June, still has a LOT of moments. In my dream, I was sitting on the floor folding laundry and he decided to relieve me of my chore, relieve himself on the laundry, and save me the steps of folding and putting away.

It actually made me jump.

While Mr. P has had accidents in a multitude of places, on clean laundry, thankfully, has not been one of them. But I couldn’t help but laugh. I got a three hour nap yesterday, went to bed at 9pm, so a total of 13 hours of sleep later, mostly uninterrupted, I was finally sleeping hard enough – and long enough – to dream. (Uninterrupted until 7:18 am when Pierce hit me in the face with a cheese stick and asked if he could have it. Hello, morning.) But what do I dream about?

This motherhood thing is getting to me.

We’ve had sick kids this weekend. It started Friday afternoon with Liberty, Eden started complaining Saturday, and today, they’re asking if co-op is still on for tomorrow. We shall see. From the sounds in the kitchen, Liberty’s eating real food again. Hooray for the small things. Eden never did get it very bad – I’m still not sure if she got it or she just wanted the opportunity to read all day. When I dictated it would be only toast and no books during her illness, she felt better quite quickly. Amazing recovery.

I spent Saturday sewing. I’ve decided that’s my spend-little-to-no-money method of not shopping when stressed. Of course, looking around the house and seeing my sewing mess and the mess made by many small children while I didn’t pay them 100% attention is enough to send my stress levels back up to where they were. But, for a little while… I sewed a maternity dress that turned out a little less fabulous than the photo in the pattern. I’m trying that again, a little differently. I shocked and amazed my children at my ability to twist fabric strips into rosettes. Sew for hours and make slings and dresses and blankets and doll panties? No big deal? Make a flower with a strip of fabric in 32 seconds? Now that’s amazing.

After that, I sewed doll clothes for another review. Liberty’s doll got two new items. Liberty joked her doll hadn’t gotten two new things in one day since the day I sewed a heart on her behind to patch the hole and sewed a patch nearby to patch an even larger hole. I love it – my daughter has quite the sense of humor developing these days.

Then… I looked at my house and had the brief thought that it might be easier to just move than to clean up the mess that had taken over every inch of my home. But, after an hour in the kitchen trying to find my tile floor under the dirt, and an hour in the living room, putting things away and cleaning that floor, it started to look manageable again. And then Pierce woke up from his nap. It was nice while it lasted.

TOS Review: VocabularySpellingCity

Many members of the Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Review Crew have received a VocabularySpellingCity Premium Membership from VocabularySpellingCity to review. I received the membership and have used it with all three of my students who are studying spelling: Sterling (6), Eden (8), and Liberty (10). It’s appropriate for K-12, but since Ruby is still learning to read and not doing spelling in our home school, she didn’t use this.

Each week, I’d type up each student’s spelling words from their current curriculum, and they spent the week playing games, taking practice tests, vocabulary tests, and more, all with the spelling words I’d chosen for them. The possibilities were endless, but they soon each had a favorite game that they kept going back to.

Honestly, the biggest problem I had with this program was getting their words typed in there for them. We’re always scrambling for time, and I was forever forgetting to get them typed in there before Monday rolled around again and they started a new list. I think if we’re going o stick with this, I’d spend some time entering every word from all 36 lists that are in my kids’ spelling books, organize them by list number, and then I could step away from all responsibility beyond the occasional reminder for them to do it.

My only other complaint is that some of my girls’ lists are longer than the 51 word maximum we ran into. They are their review weeks, and I couldn’t enter in all the words on those lists into one practice section. That was a little frustrating, but we figured it out. Signing in for the kids was strange – it didn’t require a password for the kids so I didn’t use one, but I found out too late that because of this, it wasn’t recording any of their scores. Not critical for us since we just used it for practice on their words and I still administered a regular test on paper each week, but this could potentially replace the need for me to give a test at all, but it would need to be recorded properly. I’m sure it’s an easy fix, but I didn’t find it.

There are so many games. Liberty saw my screen shots on my review and had instant comments. “Oh, I liked that game. That game was hard. That one wasn’t my favorite…” All three of my kids loved playing on VocabularySpellingCity and begged to do a practice test each Thursday morning before I gave them their regular test. All of them recognized their scores much improved with a practice test first. The kids have been learning typing this year too, so the games that allowed them to type or had them searching for a letter quickly were particularly fun for them, since they got to practice their newly acquired (and still developing) typing skills.

Overall, this has been a great site for our family and the kids have learned and enjoyed themselves. Liberty in particular wanted me to mention how much she enjoyed it. Perfectionist that she is, she loved that she got 100% on every spelling test taken during this review. Eden scored perfectly the entire time too, and Sterling did almost that well. While they typically do quite well in spelling, this was a bit better than normal. In our house, a 100% on Thursday’s test means no Friday test and no words to write multiple times, so this was cause for rejoicing on their part!

VocabularySpellingCity offers a much more basic offering (less games/tracking/options) for free. Their premium price is $29.99 per year for up to five students. They also offer classroom and school-wide prices on their website here.

To read more reviews from the Crew on Vocabulary Spelling City, check out the Review Crew Blog.