Christian Home School Hub

Looking for a fun and tasty way to share the Easter story with your children? Courtney, author of the blog Women Living Well has shared a delicious (and fun) recipe for Easter Story Cookies that is sure to be a hit!

Easter Story Cookies
Ingredients:
1 cup whole pecans
1 tsp. vinegar
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
zipper baggie
wooden spoon
tape
Bible

Easter is quickly approaching and if you are still on the search for Easter units, activities, and coloring pages to add to this week’s lesson plan, here are several to consider:

Preview these downloads now!

Easter Fun & Learning - This 76 page Easter download is packed full of fun and engaging activities: Language Arts (manuscript and cursive handwriting, vocabulary, alphabetical order, synonyms, syllables, creative writing, poetry and more), Math (number words, ordinal numbers, even/odd, addition/subtraction with & without carrying, skip counting, patterning, and more),  3 Science activities plus several just for fun pages (hidden pictures, coloring, symmetrical drawing and more).

Easter Coloring Book - This 100 page Easter Coloring Book is packed with hours of holiday fun for preschool and up! Inside you'll find: chicks, bunnies, boys and girls, Easter signs, Lilies and flowers, eggs, baskets, crosses, lambs, and more.

Create an Easter Book - Students will love creating (and reading) their own Easter Story book. To create the book, students simply trace and color! To prepare for your child’s use, all you'll need to do is print, cut and staple!  Once complete, your child will have a fun 18 page Easter story book. (Characters in the story: Easter Duck, Little Duck, Easter Bunny, Little Lamb and Easter Bear.)

Easter Number Unit – This colorful 14 page unit is perfect for your younger ones. It covers numbers 1 – 10 (both number and number words).  

Easter Notebooking Unit - This 41 page unit is perfect for those who notebook. Pages are designed for multiple levels and offer a wide variety of layouts.

Easter Scriptures Handwriting Unit - Created with all student levels in mind, this 69 page unit offers scripture copy work for both manuscript and cursive.

Preview these downloads now!

All these downloads are available here on the Hub to Download Club members! Not a member, find out more: Download Club

The Christian Home School Hub was recently asked to share a personal testimony (from a member wanting to remain anonymous because of the subject matter - A past struggling with thoughts of suicide). The hope is that it will touch someone in need...We hope you will read on...

When I was in tenth grade, my family moved and we started at a new school. On the outside, my family looked whole—we all lived under the same roof, ate at the same table, rode in the same car. But on the inside, we had shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. My parents walked around with fake smiles and real tears. My brother was teased in school and his only friends were the trouble-makers who got suspended from school. My sister was teased in school and her only friend transferred to a different school halfway through the year. I was teased in school and my only friend was the high school dork who didn’t even try to hide his crush on me.

After two years of keeping our feelings bottled, my family was about to rupture. My sister was the first to rebel. It wasn’t anything major at first, just general smack-talk about the values we had been raised with, but soon she started acting out her feelings. My brother was next, getting into trouble at school, doing unspeakable things with his friends, finally getting expelled from high school. My rebellion followed not long after. In the two years of being made fun of and talked about like trash, I had learned a thing or two about life. I had learned that if I wanted to be left alone, I had to compromise what I was willing to say. If I wanted girlfriends, I had to compromise where I was willing to go and what I was willing to do. If I wanted to be invited to any parties, I had to compromise what I was willing to watch. And if I wanted a boyfriend, I had to compromise what I was willing to give and have taken from me.

By the time my high school graduation rolled around, I took stock of my life and did not like what I saw. I had friends now, but their actions toward me hadn’t changed—I had. Now I just hid the pain when they made fun of me, and I looked the other way when they picked on someone else. I went to parties now, but it took weeks to forget the filth I had seen. I even had a boyfriend now, but I had to go behind my parents’ backs to date him, and he did whatever he wanted to me whether I liked it or not. I realized I had done exactly what I had learned. I had compromised every precious thing I had.

Why? Why did I take something that is highly valued and just give it away like it was yesterday’s newspaper? Before my life turned upside-down, I was a nice, innocent teenager whose worse crime was blaming my little brother for starting the fight between us. I had integrity, virtue, and honor. I gave it all away, and I didn’t like the end result.

I’ll tell you why I thought so little of my values. Halfway through tenth grade, I considered suicide. I’m not talking, “Hm, I wonder just how much more of this I can take?” And I didn’t stop at, “What is the least painful way of dying?” I planned the day, the method, the place, the time, the note, all of it. I had been called “sweet” one too many times, and I was going to let every mean girl at school know just how much their “I’m just kidding”s hurt. I was going to tell the boy I was secretly in love with how his mere presence in my class made it worth coming to school every day. I was even going to berate the kids in my siblings’ classes for being so mean to them. Of course my parents would be crushed. Their firstborn—the one whom they had drilled into her head her entire life that she was supposed to be the leader for her younger siblings, and to be careful what she did because they would want to copy their big sister—their stubborn, somewhat smart, somewhat pretty oldest daughter had committed the most cowardly act ever. But do you know what I figured? Served them right. That’s right. They deserved it. They shouldn’t have plucked our family up from the only home we’d known, with only a month’s notice, and dropped us in a completely foreign culture, with strange customs and even stranger people. They were the grown ups. They should have been more careful, watched themselves better, not gotten caught up in sin because as we all know now, when a life lived in sin is exposed, it explodes, and the shrapnel hits everyone close to them.

Just because I figured my parents didn’t deserve any better than a kid who couldn’t take it didn’t mean I thought I would be less of a coward, though. I knew I would be a coward. All those other struggling teenagers would hear of my demise at my own hand and they would think to themselves, “She shouldn’t have done that. It’s not fair that she doesn’t have to endure the horror of life anymore and I still do.” Such thoughts were, to me, kind of stupid, because if I could successfully kill myself, then what was stopping them? If there truly was nothing left to live for, what was keeping them here in their miserable existence? Okay, so maybe I didn’t think it was quite as cowardly as all the popular kids made it out to be.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized I wasn’t the only one in my family who hated what had happened to us and planned an escape. Turns out my dear little sister shared my sentiments. I never carried out my plan, obviously, and thankfully neither did she. I wonder, if I had killed myself at 17, would my brother have any sister at all, or would my parents even have any kid at all?

So how did I get from totally depressed and ready to die to slippery morals and bad friends? Halfway through eleventh grade, one of the boys in my handbell class noticed (finally!) that my perpetual silence had nothing to do with my ability to speak and little to do with the fact that I was naturally shy. After several attempts on his part to get me to tell him what the matter was, I asked him what the point of life was. I must have looked pretty pitiful, because he frantically reached into every pocket, finally pulling out a pen. He bent down, looked me straight in the eyes, and clicked his pen on right in front of my face. I will never forget his words. “Life always has a point.” He clicked the pen closed and pointed at the empty end. “Sometimes, we can’t see it, but the point is still there.” He told me that if I ever forgot that life had a point, that I should just pull out a pen, click it on, and remember what he told me. Nothing too profound, nothing uber-spiritual, just a quiet reminder to have faith. I thought to myself, I can have faith. I had faith all the way until I turned 15. If 15 years of protection, happiness, and a good life said anything, it said that I could endure three or four years of misery and emotional pain. It’s strange how one little blink-and-you-miss-it conversation could change the course of my life, but I’m glad it did.

What I should have done after my new friend quietly confronted me was start a journal of sorts. I should have pulled a Pollyanna and looked for the good, all the times that God subtly showed me life’s point. If I had been tuned in, I would have seen that not only was the class clown my only friend, I was his only real friend. I would have seen that the baby-Christian teen in our youth group could have grown so much more had I been more concentrated on developing all of life’s points rather than wallowing in self-pity that I wasn’t the most popular kid in school.

The rest of my high school career could have been so different—instead of compromise, I could have experienced spiritual growth. Instead of spending my time doing things I later regretted, I could have concentrated on making the honor roll. And instead of having to explain to my future husband why he wasn’t going to marry a virgin, I could have planned and looked forward to my wedding day with blissful innocence.

If your life is depressing and the only bright spot in your future is the day you end it all, ask yourself one question. Do you know that you will go to Heaven when you die? If the answer is no, there’s part of the problem right there. Find a Christian counselor or pastor and get your eternal future settled. No one can have a joyful life without Christ. If you are saved, but you’re still wondering what the point is, let me tell you the same thing my friend told me. Sometimes, life’s point is hiding. When peer pressure mounts, and circumstances conspire against you, imagine life’s pen as being clicked off. The point is still there, it’s just very difficult to see. I should know. I’ve been there. But don’t follow my example once you decide to weather the present. What I did didn’t work very well in the no-regrets department. I wish someone had not only reminded me of life’s point but also taken the time to encourage me to embrace life, however difficult it became. With Jesus in my heart, I can do anything. I don’t want anyone else to look back ten years down the line and wish they had known what I know. You can have no friends and be picked on every day and still live to tell about it. I did.

As part of the new management of the Hub (under Christian Homeschool Publishing), two changes have been made related to our downloads.

The first is a name change for members who access our downloads. No longer will members be referred to as Platinum Members but instead as Download Club Members. Since membership on the Hub is free, and will always be free, there will no longer be two tiers of membership (Regular Member and Platinum Member). This step has been taken to alleviate any confusion. Now to download, Hub members can choose to join the Download Club! Members of the club will still have access to unlimited downloads as they have before.

The second change will not effect current subscribers. This means that if you have set up a subscription service through PayPay for $1 a year, you will continue to only be charged $1. For members joining the new Download Club beginning today, the subscription rate will be $20 a year. It was very important to me that all current subscribers be grandfathered in and if you are a current subscriber you have been!

This is a big jump I know, however Christian Homeschool Publishing will be adding a lot of new downloads throughout the year... New Easter downloads will be coming very soon!

We've had a few people who say they are not getting the Hub's important emails. To make sure you get every email, please add the following address to your email contact list:

Lynda Ackert (lynda.ackert@hotmail.com) and Christian Homeschool Publishing (christianhomeschoolpublishing@hotmail.com)

We have been experimenting with different history supplements lately. I am a history LOVER, but my daughter HATES history. Right now, we are reviewing Heritage History’s Ancient Rome. It uses living books. So far, the resource is very good, but it is probably not going to be a solid fit for my visual spatial learner.

I have heard of Drive Thru History many times. I finally decided to preview a few of the You Tube videos with my daughter. She couldn’t stop laughing. That is not a bad thing. She wasn’t laughing because it was dumb, on the contrary, she was interested in the clip. Dave Stotts humor brought on the fits of laughter.

I am particularly interested in the American & Ancient History programs. The site states the lessons are geared for 6th grade and up, but also says younger kids love the program just as much.

Since my daughter is so visual, the video lessons appeal to her learning style, and the humor doesn’t hurt. I like that the lessons are based on a Christian worldview; that is a plus. I also like the on-site locations. I don’t know about you, but I tend to engage more whenever I see places I am learning about; it helps make it more real for me. However, I feel the resource is definitely just a supplement, not a whole curriculum. We already use a super online curriculum as our core, so this would be an added bonus. I also read that the series meets curriculum standards established by the National Council for the Social Studies.

Here is what HSLDA says about the series:

“Tired of getting history from a dusty old book? Check out Drive Thru History America! With a comedic style, host Dave Stotts travels through time in an H1 Hummer introducing his viewers to the people and places that helped shape the United States of America. Discover the character, faith, and experiences of America’s Founders as they developed this great country where we can worship, work, travel, and live in freedom!”

If you are currently using this series, or have used it in the past, I am very interested in what you have to say. Please leave a comment for me telling me about your thoughts on the resource.  

Look-say, whole language, phonics…what approach do you use to help your child who is learning to read? What method were you taught as a child? I am going to date myself here, but that’s alright. I grew up learning to read with Dick and Jane. Oh how I loved baby Sally, Spot the dog and Puff the cat, Mother, Father, and of course, Dick and Jane. I loved the pictures in the series, too. The problem is that I was not exposed to any phonics instruction until after second grade. YIKES!

My family moved to a different town, and thus a new school, when I was going into third grade. My new school didn’t embrace sight words, they were very much into phonics. Uh-oh, that spelled trouble for me. Not having a basic understanding of phonics made completing worksheets in third grade a bit of a challenge. I was expected to know stuff that was foreign to me. I survived somehow.

When I was in college learning to be a teacher, whole language was riding high. I didn’t think I was the total answer though. My gut tells me that kids need a healthy mix of phonics, sight words for those that can’t be decoded, and great literature. Using a healthy mix of resources produces balanced kids who are ready to attack anything that comes their way. It’s a little like math. There are sometimes multiple ways to learn to do a specific problem. If you have been exposed to some of the various methods, the likely hood of you successfully solving the problem is high.

Do you have enough minutes in your day? It seems everyone is busy these days, especially homeschooling Moms. We are the taxi driver, master chief, nurse, educator, arbitrator, and domestic engineer for our household. How on earth are we supposed to find time to check our Yahoo groups, put our status on Facebook, update our Linkedin profile, read our tweets, text our friends, update the kid’s portfolios, or chat in our favorite forum groups???

I am sure you have met Organized Olivia at a homeschool group or local co-op? She has it going on, and is sure to offer tons of charts, calendars, and graphs showing how she schedules and organizes her day. Some people are just born with a natural talent for fitting 101 things into their day. I don’t know about you, but charts, graphs, and organizers just never seem to work out quite that great for me.  I need practical hands-on tools. Some days I simply want to shout, “Calgon, take me away.” Rats! What am I thinking, I don’t have time for that. 

I know you have heard the saying, “time is money”, so I am going to try to help you save a little time and money. While I am not Organized Olivia , I will share a few things that save time for...Read More at Quaint Scribbles. 

St. Patrick’s Day is March 17th and if you are looking for fun, holiday-specific educational materials and activities to supplement your lesson plans for your little ones, here are three you may want to consider:

• St. Patrick's Day Alphabet Cards
  This download contains alphabet cards with both upper and lower case lett.ers and is perfect to use for identification, matching, sorting and ordering! Laminate or cover with clear contact paper before you cut these flashcards out and you'll be able use the cards for many years to come.
• St. Patrick's Day Unit for Preschool - PreK
  This unit has over 70 pages which can be used to create colorful file folder games/puzzles and more. Types of activities included: letter knowledge and early word recognition, language/phonemic awareness, prewriting/writing skills, sorting and matching, number recognition, counting and more.
• March Math Cards, Counters and Mats
  This shamrock themed download contains number cards (1-100), counters (indivdual and in groups of tens), and several math mats.

Preview all three downloads now

Downloads available here on the Hub!