Saving Memories Forever

As a member of the Mosaic Review team, I have been given the opportunity to review a special app that allows you to create audio recordings of your family history.   The idea was interesting and I was curious about it.    You could use it personally in order to leave a bit of history for your future grand-kids or use it with the older generation in order to record their memories from the past.    This app will allow you to record as many memories as you like, share them with whoever you want and create an audio family album for generations to come.

The App and website will allow you to record as many stories as you like, then share them with whomever you wish, as you create your own audio family album.   You will have numerous suggestions of possible recordings based on the age the person was when it happened.  Here’s the questions you will find in the app according to their age group.

• Childhood – ages 0-12:  Where and when were you born?, What did you enjoy doing?, Describe your mother and father,  Describe your siblings/aunts/uncles…, Describe your childhood home, What did you like about school?, Tell me about your friends, Tell me about your pets, Describe your early family adventures, What did you want to be when you grew up?, Other childhood memories
• Teenage Years – ages 13 to 19:  Describe your town,  What did you like about school?, Describe your best friends,  What was a typical school day?, What was it like to learn to drive?, Describe yourself as a teen, Any extra curricular activities?, Describe your first job, Describe your grandparents, What historical events do you remember?, Other teenage memories.
• Adult – ages 20-25: What was your first “real” job?, How would you describe your best friends?, Where did you live?, Did you date/marry?, Describe your family, What was your favorite saying? What technology did you use?, Describe your favorite trip.  What historical events do you remember?, Other memories from 20-25.
• Adult – ages 26-40: How has your life changed? Describe your town and home, Tell me about your friends?, Describe the most interesting place you visited, Describe your family, Births, Deaths, additions to the family?, What did you like to do?, What was your favorite car and why?, What historical events do you remember?  Other memories from 26-40
• Adult – ages 41-55: Who do you admire?, Describe the political environment, Describe your family, What did you like to do?, Describe your friends, Which vacation was the best?, What did you do for fun?, What do you wish you could change?, Describe your job, What historical events do you remember?, Other memories from 41 to 55
• Adult – ages 56+: Describe your family, Who do you like to do?, What are your happiest moments?, Describe a perfect day, where did you live?, What are your future plans?, What is the future you wish for your family?, Describe your life by decades, What is the best vacation you have had?, What historical event do you remember?, Other memories from 56 onward.
• Jokes:   What is the funniest joke you have heard?   What is the funniest thing you have seen, Other jokes you love to tell.
• Philosophy:  What would you want your children to know?,  What do you believe?,  What guided your decisions?,  Describe yourself, Other thoughts on philosophy?
• Religion:  Have your religious beliefs changed over time?,   How were you brought up?,   Other thoughts on religion?
• Other Stories and Songs:  What parts of your life would you change?,   What got you through stressful times?, What songs did you love? (Sign them)

As you can see you will have the possibility to talk about numerous things like the first time you met your spouse, the birth of your children, a letter your grandma wrote you, your favorite vacation, your sports achievements, the first car your purchased (mine was a NEON), as well as college/university days.   The premium service allows searching by tag words in order for you to find a story rapidly.   Once you have stories to share, you have the opportunity to let close or distant relatives listen to them via the internet.

Soon you’ll have an audio scrapbook that includes the memories of your extended family, told in everyone’s own words and voices, exactly as they remembered them. Listeners will get real insight about the character of each relative and learn more about them than they ever could from a family tree or statistic.

The app is very easy to use.   First you will have to download the app before you can start recording your family history.  Once the app is installed, you can access the categories and their questions rapidly and start recording.   Simply select the category and a question within that category and you will then obtain the recording screen.

The recording screen is very simple to use as well.   Click on the record button to start recording the memories of the person you are interviewing.   Saving Memories Forever  allows you to record someone speaking about a specific subjects and upload the story online on the website.    The website also allow you to save and store the recordings, some photos and family recipes as well.  

You can watch a presentation on how to use the app on the website.

The app is free to download on iTunes or Google Play.    However, if you decide to go ahead with the Premium subscription be aware that it will cost you a monthly fee of 3.99$ US.  It all depends of what you want for the service.   Below is a chart highlighting the features of both the FREE and PREMIUM package.

Come to think about it, I see tremendous advantages of this little app for history and genealogy purposes.    This little app and the website together allows you to make an audio scrapbook that can include not only your memories but the ones from extended family as well.  Everyone can share their memories on their own words and voices.   Then, in the future when you decide to listen to them you will be transported back in time and learn more about your ancestors.    Thinking of all this little app could do I almost wish my maternal grand-mother would still be alive today.  She died back in the 90s and she was born in 1904.   She had experience numerous events through her life – including the two world wars.   I wish I could sit down with her and record her memories for my kids to listen.    Below are pictures of her family (minus the sons she lost due to sickness) and the family house in Valcourt, QC.

I wish there was the possibility of adding new questions to the suggested one within the app.   I guess the reason for the Other memories suggestions is for such possibilities.  You will have to speak up the questions to know what it is related about.   The app is interesting and I am planning to experience with it a bit more hopefully in August as we will be attending a family reunion on my mother-in-law side.    All her brothers and sisters with their respective families (kids and grand-kids) are supposed to attend this get-together that will happen in Northern Ontario.   I never attended a family reunion so in a way it will be a first for me as well as my kids.   I am also thinking of letting my kids using this on their grand-parents when we visit them.   It would be nice to record some of their memories of when they were growing up.

Saving Memories Forever has numerous possibilities for your family if you want to keep a record of the events happening in your life.   It can also help the kids explore their genealogy when they interview their grand-parents and great-grand-mother.

Spanish for You! Estaciones

Spanish for You! Estaciones

As a member of the Mosaic Review Team I was asked to choose one of the two options offered from Spanish for You! to review.  I decided to pick Estaciones which I have received as an online product that I was able to download easily.

Spanish for You! is a curriculum that I would consider multi-sensory learning.   It has been written with grades 3 through 8 in mind and can be used either in classes or homeschool.    Each course will contain a text, lesson guide, worksheets, audio files as well as suggestions for games and activities.

The guidebooks can be printed according to the grade your child is in.   Three different guidebooks are available in your package Level 3-4, Level 5-6 and Level 7-8.     The lessons can easily be covered through a regular school year.

I particularly like the fact that the students can work on their own pace and use the worksheets and audio files in order to get the proper pronunciation, the common words and phrases as well as other information necessary for them to learn the lessons. 

Depending of the level your child will be he/she can build up it’s comprehension of the language by revising the previous lessons and by testing their knowledge with the language.   Each week will encourage your child to learn, practice and review the lessons on a four day basis.  If necessary, you could use the fifth day as a review.   The exercises will be more challenging is the child is at an older grade.

I think the curriculum is covering pretty much every language issues from basic vocabulary, verb conjugations as well as grammatical lessons.    

Spanish as always been a language I wish my kids to learn but it’s always hard to find something that will teach by building up the learning.   I think this product is offering an interesting way of learning while having fun at the same time.   You could technically start with any themed packages offered by Spanish for You! and slowly expand your vocabulary as you purchase other ones.   I would assume that each package would review lessons from other ones particularly when it comes to the verbs and grammar.

What I also like about this curriculum is the fact that a child currently in grade 4 could go through the package and pursue it when in grade 6 and then in grade 8 in order to build up his/her learning of the language.   I would alternate Estaciones with Fiestas in order to cover more vocabulary as well.   One year you do Estaciones and one year Fiestas before going back to a deeper level of Estaciones and so on.    Gotta love flexibility when you are homeschooling!

In all Spanish for You! allows you and your student to learn to speak, read, and write Spanish through fun themes.   This program can be used by students who don’t know Spanish yet and by student who are already comfortable with the language.

My only disappointment is that I had to take the initiative to print out the lesson myself because I receive the pdf format of the documents.    But apart from that I find the curriculum quite complete and interesting.

You can obtain free mini lessons and worksheets if you visit Spanish for You!

Other packages are available on their website – Fiestas and Viajes.   Spanish for You! Estaciones is available for purchase directly from their website at http://www.spanish-for-you.net for the price of 64.95$ for the three levels or 39.95$ for each levels separately.  

Apologia Homeschool Planners

As a member of Mosaic Reviews I had the privilege to receive an Ultimate Planner and two students planners for my two oldest kids who will be in grades 4 and 7 next year.  I didn’t know what to expect when I received the planners.  I liked the fact that it was published with Apologia and that it was Christian based but I didn’t know if it would be similar or different to the planner I had used in the past four years or so.   

So imagine my surprise when I received The Ultimate Homeschool Planner by Debra Bell and two copies of the Ultimate Daily Planner for Student.  Flipping through the pages that first day, I suddenly realized that my homeschool would change and be more – how should I say this – organized…  In the past, I would use my planner to write what the kids have done during the day but I wasn’t planned per say.  This planner will help me to become more pro-active when it comes to homeschool which is a blessing in disguise because I am entering the middle years of homeschooling next year and I want to make sure that my oldest child will be able to cover all that needs to be covered for his level.

In a nutshell, the mom planner works hands-in-hands with the student and teen version.   It will not only record your progress but it will encourage independence to your kids in taking property of their studies.   It’s a great way to train them to take charge of the things they need to do in order to be completely independent by the time they arrive to college or university.

Let’s star with the Ultimate Homeschool Planner for Moms.   I particularly like that you can plan on year in a two page grid to get an high level view of your school year.  Then you can decorticate this high level view into a monthly view and eventually in a weekly planning which can accommodate up to six children with this flexible format.   You can alternate where you put the subjects or the names of your kids on the weekly grid.   I really like to have the options in writing the subjects myself.  My previous planner was not allowing me to do so.   For me this particular flexibility with the Ultimate Planner for Moms is fabulous because we not only cover English, Math, Science, History, Geography but we also have French in our home.  

When the planners were designed, the author, Debra Bell, had specific goals in mind.   She wanted to make you aware of God’s faithfulness and activity in our homeschool journey, that you can catch God’s faithfulness so you can see how He showed up through the years, and to allow you to raise an independent learner. In this specific planner, you can count your blessings and reflect on the grace that God has showed you through the weeks.    I am taking the habit to write in my Gratitude journal on a daily basis and it’s a good exercise to do on a daily basis.  Doing so will shift your thinking process especially if you got up with a not-so-good mood in the morning.    Before each week of planning,you will get two pages that will allow you to focus and ponder on scriptures and God.  You will have a place to write a Bible Plan, a section for your specific Battle of the week (What do I want God to do in my life?  example: dealing with anger or frustration, anticipating traps) and where you can write a fighter verse.  A section for prayers will help you to go back daily on specific prayers requests and finally a place where to write down you hospitality/outreach activities as a family.    My family loves to open our doors for people to come over and have a good meal.  Usually I jolt it down on our calendar.  I never really thought of the possibilities to write this in my homeschool agenda.   But it’s a great idea as it teaches the kids the importance of hospitality and outreach in the community.

The second page consist of two sections – one will allow you to jolt down the week’s memorable moments and achievements and the other the various evidences of Grace in your life.    It could be family funnies, victories, progress, promising signs, small beginnings, finished projects, faithfulness, protection, provision, and so on.

At the complete beginning of the planner, you will find specific pages titled Student Goal Setter and Pre-Planning Guides.  These pages are found between the yearly planning and the monthly planning pages.   The Student Goal Setter pages will allow you to identify specific character and academic goals for each children you have in the family.   Like it or not, your kids are not all the same and will have different challenges in learning.   For example, I have a child who has the tendency of putting himself down when he doesn’t have everything perfect in his math.   In his character goals, I wrote that he will have to learn to fight the tendency of putting himself down.   Another child of mine need more self-control in his actions, one needs to be less bossy and another one needs to control her emotions.    On the academic level, they will have different goals as well since they are not all at the same level – one would have to improve his cleanliness in writing, one will have to learn to read and so on.  Having clear goals identified will help me to see if they are making progress.

In the pre-planning pages, you will have the opportunity to enter your family priorities (example: have people over one a month for fellowship) and list the resource list for each kids during the year.   At this point in time, I am trying to figure out all the curriculum that my oldest will go through for his 7th grade.  So far, I have Math-U-See Pre-Agebra, Awana Trek Book 1, Easy Grammar, Le Petit Prince, Le Canada Un Patrimoine à Raconter, Adventurers – Hudson’s Bay Company, Of People Literature, grammaire Française, Ortho-Fiche, Lexico, and probably Observing God`s World or God`s Design for Heaven and Earth.  Once I have completed his curriculum list, I will move to the next child and so on until I have covered all of them.

In the Student Planners, you will find a check list format, a scripture of the week, an activity log and study aids.  You will also find some presidential trivia but for us living in Canada, this information is not really useful.  I would personally prefer world geography trivia or world history trivia.    OH!  And guess what!  The binding of this specific planner is glow-in-the-dark…   We tested it by going in our laundry room and closing the door and you can indeed see the binding glowing.  It was an interesting feature to add for the kids.   In this planner, you will find page which will allow the child to write about himself and about his future self.   He/she will also have the opportunity to write down her personal goals for the year.   The planner also gives some helpful guidelines on how to study and learn, monthly pages and weekly pages as well.  In the weekly pages, the child will have a place for each day of the week where he/she can write down what she has done and if  it was approved by mom or dad.  Each day also has a little quiet time circle which can be colored in when the quiet time has been done by the child.  At the end of the planner, you will also find a reading list where the child can write down the books he/she read during the year, an activity log of the fun things he/she has done, a place to write down the active lifestyle for six weeks in a row, a timeline of the U.S. and World history, maps, scientific method, multiplication and division chart, conversions, equivalence chart and some grammar.   You will also find a recommended reading list for middle schoolers at the end of the planner.  Oh! and totally at the end of this planner the child will find some fun stickers to put in his monthly planner if he/she likes.  

So I am on a journey to become more organized in homeschooling – even more than I was before…   There is place for amelioration and this planner will help me to reach it.  I am planning o take the yearly planning retreat by myself as well as the monthly planning sessions, weekly planning breaks, the Monday Morning Tutorials with the two oldest and Friday afternoon reviews.   I need the accountability and so do they kids.   Having to sit down together to see what needs to be done during the week and what has been done at the end of the week, will allow us to revise the planning if needed be.

I can see tremendous possibilities with this planner and I intend to use it a lot during the coming year.   I wish there was also a portable version (iPad/iPod/iPhone) and hope that in the future there will be one.   I also hope that they will come up with a variety of different covers and trivia as for us all the things that are U.S. based is not very useful.   However, it would be nice to have a Canadian Edition with facts about Prime Ministers, history and geography…!  *grin*    I’m sure that some Canadian homeschoolers would be happy to work with Debra Bell and Apologia to make this a reality!   I am very impressed with the quality and the flexibility of these planners.  I strongly recommend them to homeschooler who are looking in becoming more organized and want to train their kids to become more independent.

Are you curious about The Ultimate Homeschool Planner and would like to see what it’s looks like?  A sample is available at http://debrabell.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Ultimate-Planner-Sample.pdf.  

In Canada, you can purchase the planners on amazon.ca.

In the U.S., the planners are available on amazon.com or on the Apologia website.

FamilyMint Money Management Certification Program

FamilyMint Money Management Certification Program – A Complete Step-by-step Program for Learning Money Management
Written by Robert Masterson and Jeff Eusebio
Published at FamilyMint

It has been about a year and a bit that we have started teaching our kids about money and how much things cost.   Well, the two oldest ones understand it more than their younger siblings at this point in time and last year we have decided to incorporate the concept of tithing and saving.   So now our two oldest sons have a bank account where they put aside money for their future education.   They are also involved in the tithing process by deciding where they want to put their money for organizations approved by us.

But when I got the opportunity to review a complete program about money management, I thought it was a great way to introduce other aspects of how to manage your money.

Did you know that 2 out of 3 high school seniors graduate without knowing the basics of budgeting?    I am not surprised because I was part of that statistics.   I entered university and saw that creditors were quick to offer your credit cards.    I will admit that I wasn’t all wise with my money and it took me year after getting married to understand it.   Now we are both wiser with our finances and don’t buy on the spur of the moment.

We want our kids to be independent of credit and be successful when it comes to finances.  So I was delighted to be selected to review the FamilyMint’s Money Management Certification Program.  This 60 pages workbook has a complete step-by-step plan on how to develop healthy money habits at a young age.   My kids are learning to track their money, creating SMART goals, how to budget and much more.

The workbook itself contains exercises to help the kids visualize their “bank” and the money that goes in and out.    I loves seeing their imagination in writing cheques and entering bank deposit information.   Though nowadays, you don’t write much bank deposits in Canada anyway.

One positive element I have of this workbook is the fact that the kids are learning early in life how to have SMART goals.   SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.    Right now, both boys have a desire to attend a Christian camp this summer.  We have registered them but at the condition that they raise about half of the price (it is an expensive camp…).  They agreed on this condition but there were times when they felt a bit discouraged.   So when came the time to set a SMART goal, I strongly suggested that they take the idea of attending camp.   Within minutes, they realized that it was specific enough, measurable (take the total amount divided by two to figure out how much they need to have on their own), achievable (with deadlines of mid-July and mid-August), relevant since they both wanted to attend and time-bound (again the deadlines).

Once they finished working on this SMART goal, I asked them if it was possible for them to raise the money.   One has to worked an equivalent of 20$ per week and the other about 8.33$ per week.   Both eagerly agreed that they could do it.   Now to be honest, their amount is a bit less than that since they have already started to raise the money a few weeks ago.   Going through this exercise was beneficial for them to realize that they could easily reach their goal.   Honestly, just by this exercise alone, I am impressed with the workbook.  I have learned quite a bit with SMART goals that I will personally apply this in my life as well.

After the tracking money and the goal setting chapters, we will embark in the budgeting and interest chapters.   My kids are respectively 11 and 9 years of age and I am taking the curriculum in small bites for them to digest and fully understand the concepts presented.   The program also comes with a website where you can create your family bank and allow your kids to track their money directly on the system. 

On the negative side, I find the book concentrating a bit too much on the American way of dealing with finances.   Mind you the book was written by a company in the US.  But I think it would a positive move to consider adapting the workbook to other currency like Canadian dollar or Euro.  After all there are homeschoolers there as well.   Even though the book emphasize the American money, I have no problem to use this curriculum to teach my kids about interest rates and so on. 

In conclusion, I consider this curriculum very informative and would recommend it to any homeschool families.  It is a great springboard in learning how to manage your money and be wise financial without going into debts.   I want my kids to be able to say that they were able to avoid going into debts in the future.  Having a strong  foundation in money management will allow them to develop healthy habits and behaviors concerning their finances.

At the time of this blog post, there was a special introductory bundle offer of 29.99$ which gave you a Certification Program workbook and a FamilyMint Premium for Life(normally 25$/yr)!   Additional workbooks are an additional 50% off.

Blog Planner from Confessions of a Homeschooler

 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am now part of a group of bloggers who will review a variety of products for Mosaic Reviews. We comes from various background and our families are all different but we all are eager to explore the opportunities that will come to us in this adventures.

As a first review, we were all asked to proceed with a test review before everything starts officially.   And the best part was that we had a choice in this particular review…  The gals leading us had found ten different Blog planners to help us to get organized.   They are all free as well so you could discover something that will be very helpful for you if you read our reviews.  Each and every single one of us had the possibility to choose which planner we would review.  This possibility made it very interesting and I slowly proceeded to check out the ten different planners suggested by our leaders.

Almost immediately  one of the planner caught my eye but I wanted to check all of them.   As much as each and every single on of the planners are interesting, I have selected the one found at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Actually, you can find get two different planners on the website – Calendar style layout or the Lined Format Post Planner.    The Calendar Style Layout was interesting but my heart went toward the Lined Format Post Planner.  I love have some space to write down so it made sense to me to use the lined one.  See the two different versions below.

So as soon as I downloaded it, I printed it and started to use it.   That day, I immediately wrote the review I made as well as the giveaway to be held later in February. 

What I particularly like about this planner is it’s simplicity and the fact that I don’t have to print over 100 pages.    It goes right to the point and simple to use.   I can see my whole month in one quick look as I check the posts I have made.  It does contains all that a blogger reviewer needs to do her job.   I can mark down which social media received the post, if the review was posted, if there is a giveaway and if a winner was chosen.

My only major disappointment is the fact that I would love to have more than one line per day.  But then again it would also mean that I wouldn’t have a full month under my eyes.   So I have to write small when I do multiple posts in a day. 

I must admit it will take some getting used to write down my post on this blog planner.   Why you wonder?   Well I am used to organizing my reviews and post with Word and Outlook believe it or not.  I have set up a specific outlook calendar for the reviews and I make sure I include the giveaways there as well.  Then automatically I get a reminder about it when I check my emails.   The other thing is that posting on social media is automatic for me.   It goes with the job.  I also email my clients as soon as the post is on (which I can’t record in the planner). 

But as a blogger part of a team, I think this blog planner will be very handy as I can jot down when a specific review is due.  Already I have included the three post for March and April that I know of.   And with a quick scan I can realize if I am on time or late to review it.    MY journey with Mosaic Reviews will be organized and I hope to be able to track my post more efficiently with this blog planner.   I am keeping it close to my laptop and update it as often as I can.   There are days when I forget to write a post but then when I think of it again, I quickly write it. 

I suspect that this planner will give me a better understanding of the reviews I do in a year and visualize which months are more busy than other.

Already I have discovered an interesting tool to use in my journey as a blogger reviewer with the blog planner I have in my hands.  

Announcing upcoming reviews

I have to admit that 2013 will be a different year.    I have learned at the end of 2012 that I was accepted as a member of the Mosaic Reviews and will be part of a great group of people who will review a variety of products – not only homeschool ones.  

Since January, we are slowly getting the gears going in order to review fabulous items in the months to come.   Already I have gotten confirmation for some fabulous products;

• A practice review for the whole group is planned for the end of February.   We had to pick a blog planner that we are currently using and then share our thoughts about it.  
• Then on March 18th I will post a review on Family Mint which is a complete step-by-step program for learning money management.  
• On March 22nd, I will post a review for Saving Memories Forever.     This app will allow you to preserve family stories via audio recording.   I see lots of possibilities with this app and look forward on how it can help us to develop the storytelling aspect of our memories.
• Finally, today I have received confirmation that I will be reviewing the new Apologia homeschool planners by Debra Bell.   I am looking forward to these to review has I have been using the homeschool planner of a "competitor” for the past three years.   I am quite interested in this opportunity and delighted to know that these will arrived before the homeschool conference in our city in April.   This review will be posted on April 5th.

The other factor that 2013 will be different is that I have learned not too long ago that another publisher has decided to stop sending internationally due to an hike in postal prices.  I am quite sadden by this decision as I had a wonderful relationship with Tyndale.   To date, I think this is the fourth or fifth publisher making such a decision in the past two years.   However, I am planning to stay close with DK Canada and Hasbro Canada which have been fabulous partners in the past three years.     I have also recently contacted other companies producing games and have received three positive answers so far to review Marvel Heroic RPG, two games from Rio Grande Games as well as Pandemic from Z-Man Games.

So I trust that new opportunities will come to me as well as hope that 2013 will be a great year for us.   Already I am having fun reviewing fabulous products and plan to do so for the rest of the year.

So stay tune for more great products coming your way.

Blessings

The Canadianladybug

Mosaic Reviews–A Medley of Review Perspective

Fall back a few months from now.   I saw an opportunity to participate to a new endeavor called Mosaic Reviews and decided to apply on it.  I really enjoyed being part of the review team when I was on the TOS Homeschool Crew as it opened up opportunities for me to get homeschool products that I wouldn’t be able to afford.   God has blessed me so much since I started homeschooling more than 6 years ago.  I received wonderful products for my kids either via the Crew, some publishers and even with free items through my homeschool association one night. 

Mosaic Reviews will be different as this time it’s not only homeschoolers that are part of the team.   It will be a medley of enthusiastic people – mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, single, married, teen, homeschooler,…  I will also have the opportunity to learn new techniques with a training program set up for us – the reviewers.   

I am so looking forward to connect with the rest of the people on Mosaic Reviews and work again with my friends Heidi and Brenda.

2013 will be a great year!   Keep an eye on the Mosaic Reviews logo you will find on my blog.