Homeschool Planet: A Review and How I Use It

Homeschool Planet:  A Review and How I Use It

(plus a discussion of our current 4th grade subjects)

Homeschool Planet:  A Review and How I Use It (plus a discussion of our current 4th grade subjects)

How cute is this?

One of the things I want to start talking about on my blog is my homeschooling journey with my daughter Gracie.  I have homeschooled Gracie formally since she was 4-½ years old.  (I say "formally" because all moms teach their children from birth, but homeschooling typically involves using curriculum!)  Back then, I used one main curriculum, A Beka Books, so all I had to do was follow their lesson plans.  Over the last six years, I have made changes so that I'm using a variety of curricula that work better for us.  I'll highlight a few of those changes in future blog posts.

One thing I have changed, most recently, is the use of an online homeschool planner.  I have attempted to use several different ones in the past, as well as paper planners, and Homeschool Planet is the one that has worked the best for me.  As a matter of fact, just a few minutes ago, I went and ahead and started the monthly subscription for it.  The $7.95/month is well worth my sanity!

The best feature of Homeschool Planner is the ability to control the assignments and the school days.  I can set up the school calendar and adjust on the fly.  Ever since Gracie's K-5 year, when my mom was sick and we had to go back and forth between Memphis and south Mississippi, I have moved to a year-round school schedule.  That's just a fancy way of saying, "Some days we do school, and some days we do not."  Being consistent and staying on track can be very difficult with a year-round schedule, especially when we have a lot of interruptions to our days and our weeks.  However, that's what I love about homeschooling:  merging homeschooling into our life.  I believe that education my child involves both academic and real-life preparation.  However, the lessons must be completed!

There is a little bit of a learning curve to Homeschool Planet, but over the last four weeks (during the free trial), I have learned what works best for me.  I use Homeschool Planet to track lessons, assignments, and grades.  Every day, I print out an Assignment List to use to guide our schooldays.  I really like the Assignment List because it will print out both the current day's lessons and assignments as well as any that have been missed.

Today's Assignment List.  I print these two pages to a piece of paper both to save paper and to keep them all on one page.  This view shows one page per piece of paper for readability.  

I overloaded a couple of subjects because I have set tomorrow as an off-day even though we will do some school.  We will do the assignments that we do not complete today, and we may also work on some future assignments depending on how our day goes.

{Tomorrow is an off-day because it's my birthday!  Also, we will probably be going to church so that I can help my pastor's wife with the new puppet show video.  (View my Playlist for Noni & Buck's World of Adventure)}

Homeschool Planet: Calendar view for next week

Homeschool Planet: the other half of Calendar view

A Brief Discussion of Our Classes and How I've Handled Them in Homeschool Planet

Even though the classes are listed in the same order according to a time each day, we follow neither the order nor the time.  I just set it up that way so that it would be consistent with the way I think.

Reading

We typically start our day with reading.  I set out everything that will be read aloud, either by me or by Gracie, and I let Gracie pick the order.  This includes our current Read Aloud book(s), her reader, History, and Science.  She typically picks out the current Read Aloud (called Storytime in the Calendar) first.  Gracie is a great reader, but she does not particularly like to read (which breaks this bibliophile's heart!); she would rather have her nose in a screen than the pages of a book.  However, she does enjoy, most of the time, listening to me read aloud to her.

I never really thought about reading aloud to her even after she could read well until I read various posts online about the benefits.  However, in remembering my own childhood (and adulthood), I learned the most when I read what is called "living books" -- books that submerge you into an engaging story where you learn about different places or different times in history.  Over the last several years, I have read aloud some of the following:  All of the Little House books (my personal favorite books), Adventures with Waffles (I may have the title wrong, but it's a good book.), half of Little Women (taking a break and will resume the second half in a few months), Grimm's Fairy Tales (never again), Toliver's Secret, and others that I'm drawing a blank on.

Currently, I am reading aloud Indian Captive by Lois Lenski which I will probably do a book review about soon as I think parts of it have been relatable to recent current events.  Most of my picks for read alouds have been to coincide with our history program.  In Homeschool Planet, I input the name of the book and the chapter number for each day.  Indian Captive's chapters are too long for one sitting, so I actually read part of it in the morning and part of it at night.  I will also read on the weekends and will adjust the assignments accordingly.  Homeschool Planet has a neat input feature where it will put in successive numbers automatically (1 - 16 for example) which makes it very easy and fast.

For Gracie's reading aloud, we are finishing up the A Beka readers for 4th grade.  Somehow I forgot about Saved at Sea because I think that was supposed to be done earlier in the year.  I should tell you now that I don't follow A Beka's lesson plans for this.  My main purpose for Gracie reading aloud is to improve her oral reading ability and to make sure she reads things that are both enjoyable and from which she (we) can learn.  I don't even make her read all of the stories in the readers.  I choose the best ones and occasionally I'll give her the option of skipping one that I am ambivalent about.  We will be finishing up Saved at Sea sometime next week.  After that, I will have her begin reading from my collection of childhood books that are stored in the garage.  We will start with picture books and we will decide which ones are keepers and which ones are not.  (Concurrent decluttering project!)  We will begin reading the 5th-grade readers in August.  I plan on using the A Beka readers in 6th grade as well.

Bible

For about three years, we have used Bible Study Guide for All Ages for our Bible curriculum.  (I'll do a post about it soon.)  When I first input the Bible lessons into Homeschool Planet, I only put in lesson numbers, but I never could remember a lesson according to its number, so I added in the name of the lesson as well.

We will be switching to another Bible curriculum for 5th grade; however, I hope to return to Bible Study Guide for All Ages in another year or two.  Gracie has been wanting to try out ACE/School of Tomorrow because that is the curriculum that her best friend (whose family serves as missionaries to Ghana) uses.  I used to teach ACE in a Christian school, so I am familiar with the program and I know which subjects fit better with our homeschool needs.  Actually, we never used ACE Bible at the Christian school, but I do want to try it out with Gracie.  I hope this will make a good transition to doing some work more independently.

Grammar

Language Arts: Grammar.  Whew!  This one is probably the trickiest class because there are a lot of moving parts.  I probably could, and should, separate it out more in Homeschool Planet, but I'm not going to (at least not now).  Here are the elements that make up our Language Arts grammar class:  A Beka Language Arts 4, A Beka Oral Lessons, A Beka Reading Comprehension Skill Sheets (each grade level has a slightly different name), and Daily Grams.

As much as I have enjoyed A Beka in the past, this year's Language Arts threw me and Gracie for a loop from the get-go.  All of a sudden they went from doing one lesson on one or two pages, no more and no less, to splitting pages between lessons so that one lesson might be 1-½ pages and another lesson might be 2-½ pages.  In other words, page 6 is for lessons 3 and 4.  In my OCD mind, this is not acceptable.  I know it's weird, but it has been a hangup for the whole year.

I didn't even find out about the Oral Lessons book until a year ago.  Apparently, it can be used from 1st grade through 6th grade.  The lessons are supposed to train your ear to using proper grammar so that you begin to speak it correctly.  Every day that I use it, I read aloud a group of ten sentences that incorporate properly spoken grammar.  Gracie copies me in saying each sentence after me  (and then she continues to copy everything I say or do until I get annoyed and super mad -- she's mischievous that way!).  I will continue to use this for 5th and 6th grade, and then for 7th, I may do a pretest for each section and only go over the ones she needs help with.

I really like the Reading Comprehension Skill Sheets.  I think we started doing them in 3rd grade.  They are short and sweet.  The 4th grade teacher's guide lays out a different schedule than I have used.  I will continue these for 5th and 6th grades.  A Beka also has reading comprehension books which tests both comprehension and speed of reading, but I have opted not to do this.  I think it's too much.  The Skill Sheets do exactly what I want them to do:  develops and improves reading comprehension.  Another note is that I do not time these.  Gracie balked at the time limit.  Even though I'm sure she CAN complete it within the recommended time, getting her to focus squarely on it is a difficult challenge in itself because her brain goes all over the place.  I tell her, "I don't care how fast you can do it; I DO care about you getting the right answers."  Again, I type in the number of each as well as the title that coincides with it.

Daily Grams.  <Cue some beautiful instrumental music.>  I found Daily Grams 4 (Teacher Edition) in our local Bibles for China thrift store for $3.  It looked interesting and worth a try.  After all, $3!  It's probably the best accidental change I have ever made for homeschool.  This particular book is designed to be a short-and-sweet daily review of grammar.  Truthfully, it looks dull and boring.  There are no pictures and everything is in black and white, but Gracie loves it!  She would rather do Daily Grams than A Beka Language Arts any day!  I think she loves it because it is short and sweet.  It's done in less than 10 minutes, and we can move on.  For this reason, and because A Beka Language Arts threw us both for a loop this year, I am going to switch totally to Daily Grams and Easy Grammar (the teaching component) for 5th grade.  I'm hoping that Easy Grammar will be just as enjoyable as Daily Grams.  (You might wonder why I kept on with A Beka Language Arts since we have disliked it this year.  Well, I paid for it, I know it's a good program (albeit a little too much too soon), and I'm determined not to let it defeat us!)

Additional note:  I did not do any Creative Writing and only one (traditional) book report this year.  I wanted to add in IEW for composition but just was not able to fit it in.  I plan on adding it in for 5th grade.  For our future book reports, I will be assigning books to Gracie (She can choose some; I'll choose others.) and she will do alternative book reports for her assignment.  I have a list of 80-something alternative types of book reports from which to choose.  (Neither of us is a fan of the traditional book report.)

Spelling

For spelling, we now use Spelling Power, another somewhat-accidental find.  I love Spelling Power because it doesn't make the child do busy work, and it keeps on moving.  I think that all school assignments should be intentional and meaningful.  (Redeem the time!)  Therefore, I do not see the value of making a child write spelling words multiple times if they already know how to spell the word correctly.  Spelling Power is short and sweet and requires that Gracie only study the words that she gets wrong.  We will use this until she completes the program, and then we will be done with formal spelling.  For Homeschool Planet, I input each group of words over two days.  We have not done spelling every day this year, but I'm glad to see that we will be able to finish Level G by July 31st which is our last day of 4th grade.  I'm good with that.

Additional note:  Spelling Power recommends adding in Dictionary Days every so often to practice dictionary skills.  I went on a huge Google (and TeacherPayTeachers) search and found things to use on these days (in addition to the Dictionary Skills section found in the A Beka Language Arts book).  I will also incorporate the use of other reference materials and library skills.

Handwriting/Penmanship

We have been using A Beka Penmanship 3, but I've added in some copywork sheets that I found somewhere online.  For the current copywork, each day, Gracie writes out a different Principle of Liberty (as taught in the book The 5,000 Year Leap which I have not yet read but would like to).  I'm not sure how long I will have her practice penmanship.

Math

We use Singapore Math (US Edition) which incorporates three books at its basic level:  Home Instructor's Guide, Textbook, and Workbook.  I combined each day's use of the Home Instructor's Guide and Textbook into one line.  I put the Workbook separate since it will be graded.  You can mark some assignments as "Not Graded" and others you can indicate the type of grade (Homework, Quiz, Test, Project, etc.) so that it knows how to average the grades.  I also incorporate Math Games from Multiplication Facts That Stick (I also used the Additiona... and Subtraction... books) and math fact practice on Xtramath.org.

Geography

I use Evan-Moor's Daily Geography Practice for map skills.  I actually bought it to use for 3rd grade and forgot about it!  So I've been using it for 4th grade and will continue using each subsequent grade until it is finished.  One major change I have made is that instead of having Gracie answer two questions a day for five days for a particular lesson, I teach her the concept and have her do all ten questions (plus the challenge) the same day or the next day.  It's pretty simple and straight-forward and I'm not sure there's any benefit to stretching it out that long.  When looking for online sources of this product (I bought the 3rd grade book at our local (overpriced) teacher store), I saw that they have an additional Skill Sharpeners: Geography workbook which we will try this year as well.

History

I have admired Notgrass History for several years and have bought some of their material at used book sales to use in the future.  I was really excited when they came out with Our Star-Spangled Story for elementary history!  It is recommended for Grades 1-4 which fits perfectly for Gracie's 4th-grade history.  Notgrass has three other history courses to use for the middle school years (5th-8th grades) and to fill in the gap before 6th grade, we are going to finish Our Star-Spangled Story and then I will have Gracie do ACE Social Studies 1061-1072.  She's been wanting to do some ACE like her best friend and I think this will be a good subject for her to do independently.  I picked the 6th grade level since the scope and sequence indicates that it covers topics that we have not yet covered.

Science

Science has been another hit-and-miss subject in previous years.  I actually own all (but one? can't remember) of the Apologia Young Explorers series.  We are just now going to finish up the Astronomy book and will dive right into the Botany book with lapbook activities next week.  I do plan on doing all of the Apologia elementary science books over the next 2-3 years), but I may not incorporate all of the activities.  Since it is (late) spring, we can easily do botany activities over the next few months and I think it will be both interesting and useful.  Homeschool Planet has a bonus feature of offering lesson plans that you can purchase to import into the planner.  The free trial includes a free lesson plan and this is the one I picked.  The purchased lesson plans are helpful, but you have to do some work to get the assignments laid out the way you want them.  I have incorporated a "lapbook check" day every other day as a reminder to check the activities and also as a buffer day to catch what hasn't yet been done.

A Final Note about Other Activities

When I began the free trial, I added everything I could think of to Homeschool Planet including music practice, chores -- all the daily things that SHOULD be done every day but often ISN'T.  It was just too much of a pain to deal with the rescheduling, deleting, or checking off every day.  Homeschool Planet also allows you to add in scheduled extracurricular activities such as outside lessons (e.g. Homeschool PE, field trips), church, American Heritage Girls, but I have chosen not to do that.  I have a very narrow purpose for using Homeschool Planet: keeping me on track with assignments and keeping up with grades and attendance.  The rest of our homeschool LIFE is better handled elsewhere for me (namely my wall calendar and phone calendar).

One More Thing about Homeschool Planet

Overall, I think Homeschool Planet is well worth the time, effort, and cost.  It has already proved to be extremely useful for me.  The only trouble I've run into, beyond the learning curve and learning how to tweak it, is that when I've needed to reschedule lessons, it will sometimes put some lessons out of order.  One thing I have done to combat this is to declare a day as an off-day rather than telling Homeschool Planet to reschedule assignments.  This basically puts a pause in the assignments while giving us time to catch up and rebalance.  Since it is currently summer and I do not count "summer school" days towards attendance, I don't worry about the lack of accuracy for attendance.

Well, this turned out to be longer than I originally intended.  In fact, I just laughed at where I called it a "Brief" discussion.  Yeah, I'm almost never brief when writing!  I probably could have split this post up into two posts.  If you have any questions or if you would like me to write about anything else homeschool-related, drop a line in the comments.  If you have any helpful suggestions, I would love to hear those as well!

American Heritage Girls: Pathfinder Files for Leaders

We have been members of American Heritage Girls, a faith-based organization that is an alternative to Girl Scouts, for over five years now.  As a matter of fact, I signed her up just after her 5th birthday!

During Gracie's kindergarten year, I was a leader of the Pathfinders unit which is specifically for girls ages 5-6 years old in kindergarten.  It is a wonderful program that serves as an introduction to the American Heritage Girls program for older girls.  Because that was the year that my mom became sick and we were out of town taking care of her, I was not able to make all of the meetings.  However, I had a wonderful assistant leader who kept things going in my absence.

I have kept my computer files (MSWord docs and PDFs, etc.) and have decided to share them with anyone who would like to use them.  This link will go to my Dropbox.  Please note it is a ZIP file.  If you have any trouble downloading, please let me know.

View the ZIP File Here

Gus Bounds: A Man of Faithfulness and Integrity

Gus Bounds in 1993

On April 18th, my grandfather, Gus Bounds, went to Heaven.  At the age of 96 years and 10 months, he had become the longest-living member of our family, second only by his mother who lived to be 96 years and 4 months.  Although we were in the middle of safe-at-home orders due to Covid-19, we were blessed to have been able to attend the graveside services held at my family's cemetery in Carnes, south Forrest County, Mississippi.  I have heard that there may be a memorial service later, but I do not know if that will happen, nor do I know if I will be asked to speak.  However, I would love for my readers to get to know my Grandpa through the eyes of his only granddaughter.

Grandpa was born in 1923, the oldest of eight children.  His mother Ida and his father Ben reared him to work hard and to serve God.  He helped his father farm and raise sheep from the time he was very small.  He grew up hunting and was an excellent marksman.  As an adult, he won awards for his skeet shooting and throughout his life brought home plenty of game for his family to eat.  He was also a talented artist.  I heard his sister, my great aunt Penney, say that after he went to town with his father, he came home and drew pictures of what he saw for his younger sisters and brothers.  As a boy, he was bullied and was injured very badly when a kid choked him.  He had to have surgery and for the rest of his life was unable to sing.  He learned how to box and he taught other boys how to box so that they could protect themselves from being bullied.  After his father died in 1941 from a stroke, he had to help his mother take care of his siblings.

In December of 1941, he married his high school sweetheart, Wilna Lee, when he was only 18 years old and still in high school.  He moved to New London, CT, where I believe he went to welding school.  After his first child, my mother Sylvia, was born, he became a boxer for a short time.  He then decided to join the Marines.  He moved Grandma and Mama back home to south Mississippi and enlisted in the Marines.  He fought in the Pacific Theatre of WWII and was a messenger boy on the front lines.  He claimed God's promises of protection found in Psalm 91 and made a promise to God that if he made it home alive, he would rear his family for the Lord.

Grandma and Grandpa reared three children: my mother Sylvia and her younger brothers Ben and Steve.  Grandpa was a very hard worker.  I've heard it said of him that, "There's no quit in him!"  He worked hard his whole life until he could not work anymore.  In addition to subsistence farming to provide for his family, he also worked at a furniture company and as a welder.  He worked at Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, MS, for over 20 years helping to build huge military battleships such as the USS Ticonderoga.  When he retired in 1988, they had to hire three men to take his place!  It takes a faithful man and one of integrity to be such a hard worker!

Even after retirement, he didn't stop working!  He and Grandma moved back to the "Old House" which they tore down and set on fire before building the new house to take its place.  While the new house was being built, they roughed it by living in the new barn they had built just a few months before.  We lived just a short walk away; they could have stayed with us, but they enjoyed living simply in the same way as they had growing up.  Grandpa continued to farm, putting in large gardens and raising cows, chickens, ducks, sheep, and even some guineas.  Although he owned several old tractors (he loved the antique ones the best), he often used his donkey Deacon to do the plow work.  He also grew sugar cane that seemed to reach to the sky and cut it down by hand.  Every year, he enjoyed taking the sugar cane to be processed into sweet, delicious cane syrup which we all enjoyed poured over homemade biscuits!  In his downtime, he always found time to read the newspaper and watch the news on TV.

Grandpa read the
Christmas Story to us
from the Bible.

Grandpa read his Bible faithfully.  He was a lay preacher and Sunday School teacher for much of his adult life.  After he retired, he even taught himself how to play the piano using materials he ordered through the mail.  He proved his faithfulness to the Lord over and over by his devotion in service and in his relationship with God.  He never failed to mention God's grace and mercy in his prayers.



I had a wonderful relationship with my grandfather.  When I was grade-school age, he made a puzzle cut out of a floor tile and showed me how to put it together.  The Christmas I turned 11, my mother gave each of us a Rubik's Cube and a book that showed how to solve it.  We sat together on the couch and figured out how to work it together.

In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit, Grandpa chose to stay home even after Grandma and Mama evacuated to my brother Sammy's home in Alabama.  He hunkered down and rode it out.  His property didn't sustain any catastrophic damage, but it was still a mess from all the fallen branches and debris.  He had it cleaned up long before FEMA came in and even more quickly than others in the community.  He didn't wait for others to come clean up his property (although my brothers and cousins went down to help him - but they didn't have as much to do as they thought.)  By the way, he was 72 at the time, still spry for his age.

In 2007, I became engaged to my husband.  I knew that my Grandma would come to the wedding with my mother who was her caretaker; however, I knew there was a good chance that Grandpa would not want to leave home.  I knew that the best way to get somebody to be somewhere is to give them an important job.  I called Grandpa on the phone and told him I was getting married and that I wanted him to give me away.  I could tell that he wanted to say no, but after hesitating, he said OK.  When I came home about a week before the wedding, he was excited about it, and he asked me to take him shopping for a brand new suit to wear to the wedding.  I gladly took him to Belk's at the Turtle Creek Mall in Hattiesburg where he bought a very nice black suit and a tie to match my wedding colors.  (He was supposed to have been buried in that suit, per Mama's wishes, but I forgot to ask about that.)  I remember walking with Grandpa down the aisle and when my pastor asked, "Who giveth this woman in marriage?" he straightened up nice and tall and said with great pride in his voice, "Her granddaddy, Augustus L. Bounds!"  I will never forget that to my dying day.

Toward the end of my Grandma's life, she was very insecure and didn't talk much.  She digressed to the point where she would make one of several statements, "Where am I?"   "Where's Gus?"   "I don't know."  and "OK." I remember Grandpa answering one time with, "I'm right here.  You've still got me, Wilna.  Yeah, you've still got me!"  A man married for 70 years, he proved his faithfulness to his wife and to his family many times over by his example.

In 2010, I had my daughter Gracie.  From the time they first met when Gracie was a newborn until the last time they saw each other when Gracie was not quite ten years old, the two shared a very special, very close bond.  They delighted in each other's company! Grandpa loved to rub his whiskers on Gracie's cheek like he used to do to me.  Gracie loved to hug on her Papa and play with him.

Another favorite memory is when Gracie lost her second tooth in my mom's hospital room.  Gracie had slipped on the tile floor in her sock feet and busted her lip.  Grandpa was visiting in the room at the time or came in shortly after.  I saw him get a mischievous glint in his eye, and he pulled out the top plate of his dentures showing her how he can take his teeth out, too!

Grandpa was last allowed to attend our annual Bounds Family Reunion in 2017 when he was 94 years old.  His mental faculties had been declining for a couple of years.  At my mother's funeral two years before that, not only did he not recognize my brother's daughter, but he also didn't even know that he had grown grandchildren at all!  At that time, he had been going outside at all hours of the night (sometimes not dressed properly or for the weather) to do anything from getting the mail to feeding the chickens.  Despite all of the mental confusion to that point, the family reunion was the first time that he did not recognize Gracie, but he was fascinated by her.  He kept asking, "Who is that little girl?  She looks like Mother!" as he watched her run around and play with her cousins.  Although it made me sad that he didn't know her, my heart was warmed by the fact that his heart remembered her, even if his head did not.  We are very blessed to have had the opportunity to be able to take Gracie to see him as often as we did.  I think it is important for children to know their grandparents and great grandparents well.  It is well worth the time and effort to establish lasting relationships and memories.  Children need to see that those relationships are important and need to see that the elderly are valuable.

The last thing I want to tell you about my grandfather is his integrity.  Grandpa grew up in a time when a man's word was his bond.  One thing you can be sure of is that if Gus Bounds said he was going to do something, it got done.  If Gus Bounds said that this is the way it's going to be, then that's the way it was going to happen.  He never resorted to secrecy or deception to make things happen the way he wanted to; he was an honest man, through and through, and worked for everything he had.  He never asked for anything from anybody, but freely gave from the abundance of what God had given him.  He planted a large garden to help widows of the community.  He also gave to those who asked for handouts time and time again.  I am blessed to have known him for as long as I did and am grateful to God for his influence in my daughter's and my life.

Thank you for allowing me to tell you about my grandfather.  Those of you who knew him personally know what a great man he was.  He was loved and well-respected by many.  I told my daughter today that, although he was a quiet man, when he spoke, people shut up and listened.  I believe that's because he had God-given wisdom, and he allowed the Holy Spirit to work in him to become the embodiment of a man of faithfulness and integrity.

"A faithful man shall abound with blessings." Proverbs 28:20

"The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him." Proverbs 20:7

Here is a slideshow I put together showing some of my favorite photos of Grandpa.
 

Congratulations to Celebrate Lit on 5 Exciting Years!

I am starting to get back into blogging a bit and one of the things that I'm most excited about sharing with you are book reviews!  I have recently joined a book review team called Celebrate Lit who is just now celebrating five years of existence!  As an introduction and congratulations, I am copying an article that my friend and fellow reviewer, Chautona Havig, wrote on her blog (and gave permission to share).  By the way, I'll be reviewing a few of her books as well!  ~Ava


As often happens, college classes sparked an idea—a desire. Authors needed exposure for their books. Word of mouth goes so far, but what if more “mouths” could be rallied to spread the word about great books? Sandy Barela took all she’d learned in the marketing classes and began with one blog tour to help a friend promote a new release. Little did she know then that five years later, she would have hundreds of bloggers helping her promote authors’ books. Little did she know then that she'd tour hundreds and hundreds of books. That first blog tour gave birth to a fledgling company that since then has featured every genre in the clean and Christian realm. From rom-com to women’s fiction, historical romance to contemporary, sci-fi to fantasy, not to mention nonfiction, they've done it all.

Note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you.

Congratulations to Celebrate Lit on 5 Exciting Years

In the past few years, Celebrate Lit Publicity has expanded first to include Celebrate Lit Publishing and more recently, #BecauseFiction Magazine, an online magazine also dedicated to helping authors and readers connect in one, easy-to-find place. Each tour reaches thousands of potential readers who are already looking for their next read. This benefits authors and readers both. Authors know that people don’t just see a picture of their book and hope that’s enough to capture the interest of their ideal readers. Instead, those readers are exposed to other readers’ readers’ impressions of that book. All the benefits of an Amazon review (which authors receive, too) but delivered directly to potential readers. Even more than that, Celebrate Publicity takes those reviews and advertises them where those readers congregate to ensure that even blogger/reviewers with a small following have their reviews shared beyond their little sphere of influence. The Celebrate lit team devotes dozens of hours to each tour to ensure the best success they can give it, and all for an extremely affordable price.

Christian authors love one more thing about it.

Knowing that the team prays over every book toured with the company reminds authors of Who controls not only the outcome of the tour but the company as well. Everything the Celebrate Lit Team does is through careful, prayerful consideration.

So, just what is a blog tour?

You’ve probably seen one here. It’s just information about a book, a reader’s perspective on the story or content, a post from the author to you, and a list of other readers who are featuring that book. It’s a great idea to visit at least a few of the books to get a balanced perspective on it, but it’s an even better idea to go to all of them. Why? Because most tours also include a giveaway. Visiting each blog gives each visitor the opportunity to gain more entries into the giveaway, especially if one leaves a comment. You can discover all the books on tour today by visiting Celebrate Lit to see what books are on tour this week or by visiting the Celebrate Lit Community Forum on Facebook. From all the authors and bloggers blessed by Sandy and her team at Celebrate Lit, Happy Anniversary! And may you have fifty more years to serve the Lord through this ministry.

Children's Puppet Show

I wanted to share with you a YouTube playlist I have for a special set of children's videos.  When we were all put on lockdown "Safer at Home" orders and were not able to attend church or do any formal outreach, my pastor's wife began putting on puppet shows for children to watch at home.  She portrays herself as "Noni" (her grandma name - grandma to 26 grandchildren!) and has friends Simon, Sarah, Miss Penelope join her along with Buckaroo (played by my pastor)!  All of the videos are great fun and are very engaging and educational for children.

Below, I have embedded the first video that was produced; the remaining videos should play after that.  If you want to go directly to the playlist, go to Noni and Buck's World of Adventure; if you would like to view more videos put on by my church, go to Calvary Baptist Church of Memphis.  My pastor has being doing devotional videos for the last couple of months which are very encouraging.  All of our church services for the past several years are there as well, along with our Christmas and Easter programs.  Lots of great things to watch!

Today, since I am able to get out more, my daughter Gracie and I joined Noni and Buck to help them out with the filming of the next puppet show.  I have given myself the title of Stage Manager which basically means I help her "find" Simon and Sarah and help get props ready.  Noni included Gracie in the episode that we filmed today.  She did a great job, and I look forward to seeing the finished product next week!

My Computer File Storage System

I was texting with a friend about cloud storage earlier today and thought that writing out my system would be good to get down on paper. Then I decided to turn it into a blog post. Because why not?

Local Storage

Computer – I keep a lot of files on my computer’s hard drive, mostly files that I am currently
working on or want quick access to. 

External Hard Drives – I have two external hard drives which have larger files such as my
iTunes music backup, former photography business files, videos, and other photo files (from
my big camera).

Automatic Backup

Backblaze – This is the automatic backup service I use to back up my computer’s hard drive
and the two external hard drives.  As long as the external hard drives are hooked up to the
computer, they are backed up.  I can disconnect them but in order for them to continue to be
backed up, I have to reconnect them every 30 days or so.  Since I have a desktop iMac, I just
leave them plugged in.  The reason I chose Backblaze is that at the time the other company I
was considering did not offer full functionality to Apple computers.  The service costs about
$100 for two years for one computer.  I’m not sure what the pricing is for multiple computers.
If something goes bad on your computer (hard drive failure or computer is stolen), they will mail
you an external hard drive with all your data on it.  You can also go in and recover single files if
you accidentally delete them.

Cloud (Internet Website Services) Storage

Recommended for Most Users

Dropbox – My primary use for Dropbox is for sharing files with other people and for them to
share with me.  For example, our missionary friends in Ghana, West Africa, put their photos for
the missionary magazine that our church produces into Dropbox so that I can access them.  It’s
much better logistically than having them email them to me especially since I prefer to have the
full-sized photos to edit. GEMS

I access Dropbox only via the website or on my phone or iPad.  I have a Dropbox folder in
Finder, but I noticed today that it is not synced with the website.  However, I also noticed the
Dropbox app (which, when opened, is located in the upper right menu bar) will sync files to the
Finder’s Dropbox folder.  I actually prefer not to have a copy of Dropbox on my computer hard drive, for space’s sake.  With that in mind, I went to Settings/Security in the Dropbox website
and I unlinked my computer’s hard drive from Dropbox after copying the Finder’s Dropbox
Folder to another folder on my hard drive.  I will make sure that these files are only located in
one final place whether it be on my computer hard drive or in Dropbox.

Google Drive – I use Google Drive for some sharing (when I create Google Docs or Google
Sheets to share with others), but I use it mostly for personal storage especially for files I
create in Drive as well as some PDF files.

I am currently testing out the benefits of storing MSWord files in Drive (so far, I’m neutral in
my assessment.  Use it if you want, or don’t use it if you don’t want to.)

I love Google Drive because the Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides (Google’s
version of PowerPoint) are easy to use and do what I want them to.

I have a Google Drive folder in my Finder, but I don’t use it at all.  In fact, I have copied those
files into another folder on my computer hard drive so I can organize them later.  I only use
Google Drive by accessing it on a web browser or on my phone.

I use Google Docs a lot more than MSWord now because 1) it’s a lot easier to use and access 
2) MSWord is a pain on my old computer and 3) I’m boycotting MS products ever since Bill
Gates has announced his support for a vaccine with embedded chip (and actually has a patent
for it).  My other alternative to MSWord – for graphic documents such as GEMS magazine and
other little graphics – is Canva.com.

Cloud (Internet Website Services) Storage

Not Recommended for Most Users, But Only for Specific Purposes

B2 – B2 is a cloud service offered by Backblaze.  I put a ton of photo, music, and movie files
on B2 (much of which are already on my external hard drives which is probably a bit of overkill,
but I would be inconsolably heartbroken if I lost my photos).  This is for long-term, don’t-have-
time-to-do-anything-with-it-yet storage because I was running out of room on my computer hard
drive.  It made sense at the time to get it.  And it’s cheap.  I think I’ve been paying just a couple
of dollars a month.  This is strictly put-it-somewhere-safe storage, not work-with-it storage.
Someday I will redownload these files back to the computer to do projects (photo books, prints,
whatever) with the files.  (I recommend B2 for anyone who has a lot of photo files that they
want to put somewhere safe while freeing up hard drive space. Not for general use.)

ShootProof -- I used to use ShootProof as an online photo gallery for my photography clients.
I still use them as an online archive of those photos.  I also currently use them to share photos
for our church's special events.  When I get around to it, I will probably notify my former clients
that their photos will be permanently deleted from ShootProof Archives by such-and-such a
date.  Some archived storage is free, but I’ve gone over that.

Hitting the Reset Button // Updates

Wow, I almost can't believe it's been so long since I've posted on the blog. I've been thinking about getting back into blogging and came here to see what I could see. Apparently, some elements of my blog have changed in my absence -- there's now a "missing image" block from Photobucket indicating that I need to pay a $399/year fee in order for them to allow me to use their site as a 3rd party host. Hmmmmm.......yeah, I'll pass on that. But now I gotta figure out just what images are being pre-empted and do I want to use them anyway. Decisions, decisions! (I'm halfway tempted to scrap this blog and start over - but there are some posts that I still refer back to.

It looks like my blogging took an abrupt pause in early 2015. That year and the following year were very difficult. My life started changing dramatically mid-October, 2015. First, my good friend at my church and her family moved away out of state. She was our main pianist and her husband was our assistant pastor. Their children and my Gracie played well together and she was my main Mommy friend here in Memphis. About a week after they moved, our pastor unexpectedly resigned our church. I think it was the very next day after that (or possibly the next week after - time gets muddled in my mind, but it was a very short time), my mother called me, coughing her head off so much that I couldn't understand her. Her pastor who was with her talked to me and said that she was on her way to the ER. Gracie and I left the very morning to go see her and take care of her. To abbreviate the story (which can be read on CaringBridge), a month or so after that, my mom was diagnosed with cancer (squamous cell carcinoma), and we (Gracie and I) spent the five months helping to take care of her, tag-teaming with my brothers, my heroes. It was a long-but-too-short battle that resulted in a bittersweet ending: My mom fought bravely, manifesting a testimony of strength that has been inspiring to me; but the Lord took her home to be with Him. In the middle of that battle, my church began seeking a new pastor and we are blessed to have a man whom I have known for over a decade and who is the perfect pastor for our church.

When we came back home in April of 2016, I had to transition back to a new normal for my life. It was a very difficult year. I have never been so glad to see a year end like I was to see December 31, 2016. I had started the 2015-2016 (Kindergarten) school year early in July. It sounded crazy, but I was ready, and Gracie was ready, so I thought, "Why not?" I can see that God led in this decision as well as others because when we went to go take care of my mother, we were ahead. I quickly learned that hospitals and homeschooling do not mix very well -- at least not when there are many interruptions. Over the next 5 months, we did not progress very far in the normal academics, but my daughter learned much about LIFE and SERVING. Towards the end of my mother's illness, I could see a jump in Gracie's reading ability. I remember her being able to read the words on the bucket of Easter candy (motivation, right?) at the nurse's station. She also learned how to read hundreds (100, 200, 300, 400, 500, etc.) by reading one of my mother's medical bags. We were blessed to have been able to be a part of two great churches in the area. Anyway, by the time we got back, I did a double-up and triple-up, and let's-skip-this-and-that (because she was doing quite well on it already) on her schoolwork so that we could finish up Kindergarten. I had her participate in a homeschool kindergarten graduation with one of her friends from American Heritage Girls in early May even though we didn't finish her work until June. I also spent some of that time trying to produce some order in the house (a little hard to do since we brought home a trailer-load of stuff from my mom's house).

One of the best things I did was decide to keep things as simple as possible for the next year. I had some added responsibilities as the administratrix of my mother's estate, but, for the most part, I tried to keep things simple. We continued to do American Heritage Girls, violin lessons, and soccer in the fall, but I did not resume swimming lessons until February of this year. (Amazingly, she did not regress at all, but seemed to be better than she did 16 months prior to that!) We enjoyed a wonderful trip to California to visit my brother and his family for my niece's wedding. The only downside was that we started 1st grade in late August instead of in July. I didn't want our school year to be interrupted by our trip, plus I didn't even get all my school materials (backorder) until August. We also enjoyed seeing my husband's side of the family in Atlanta for Kinsey Christmas in March. We enjoyed a full day of activities together (Coke Museum, escape room, Georgia Aquarium). Somehow, I had to really push to finish First Grade by my self-imposed end date of the last Friday of May. I think we were both kind of glad to be done with First Grade.

I took the whole month of June off. I intended to use that month to, once again, attempt to produce order in my house. I did as much as I could do, and my husband began a project that I had asked to be done for my Christmas present -- turning the utility room (catch-all room for man junk) into a pantry/storage room. Well, he took off a week from work, and wouldn't you know it? We had a horrific storm come through Memphis and we lost power for three days. That put him terribly behind and between needing to work on the weekends sometimes and just being exhausted, he hasn't yet finished my pantry. I'm at a stand-still with my plans-of-great-order until it is finished. I have hopes that Labor Day will see it completed. There's not that much left to do, but since he has removed the panel to the electrical fusebox and has not allowed me in the room at all, I can't even try to do any of it. Not that I have the time or the ability to do a good job with it. So I will be patient. But it's going to be amazing. Two preview words for you: Happy Color and really cool IKEA hacks.

I have made a few small changes to our homeschool plans for Second Grade and we did a "soft start" on July 10th. I will post more about that another time. So, if anyone is still here, comment below to say Hi, to share some homeschooling tips. or mention a few things you would like to see on the blog. Since so much of my life has changed since 2015, should I go ahead and change addresses and start a new blog with a new name and a new location?

In the meantime, I do Instagram at @mrskinsey. I think that's also my Twitter handle, but I mostly lurk on there. My personal Facebook feed is already overloaded with people I actually know and I know I don't have time to do anything with the 21st Century Keeper at Home Facebook page, so don't feel compelled to join that. In fact, just typing out that long name is almost impetus enough to rebrand with a (shorter) new name, etc. for the blog. Suggestions welcome. Prizes will include a Thank You and a shoutout.