Friday Freebies; all my stuff for you

Apparently I’ve provided 92 freebies to That Resource Site so please do go and have a mooch and see what you might like.

They are split into LITTLE LESSONS and PLANNING and other PRINTABLES.

FAITH lessons including Via Guade for Easter

HISTORY  including my lesson on Milgrim’s experiement.

SCIENCE especially Catholic scientists but other stuff too.

Some other freebies

Centre for Innovation in Mathmatics have a whole load of free maths printables that goes right through from Reception (pre-k) to secondary

I also recommend Scholastic’s STUDY JAMS

This free Middle School Chemistry curriculum looks good

The Treasure Chest comics are well worth looking at.

Free physics comics, activity and colouring books

eSkeletons have a life size adult and child homo sapien skeleton printables

For the Montessori stuff Helpful Garden is brilliant.

Friday Freebies

Free Audio Books

Lit2GO has a good set of audio books with the words available as pdfs.

For more audio books you might like a recent find of mine,  Cover to Cover where Ron Hansen’s book Atticus is presently being read. Can’t tell you anything about this book as I’ve never read it – and haven’t listened to it yet either. I note that Cover to Cover has a Library section which is being updated.

This Librivox reading of The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald is really good. I hope Mr. Minter might get around to reading The Princess and th Curdie as well.

We are still listening to Stranger Moon from Readings from Under the Grapevine

Patrick Madrid does a complete set of talks following his useful little book Pope fiction debunking the silly black legends and other crud that has been spread about the papacy over the years.

Free lesson help

We are using the Classical Academic Press Latin and Greek. They have Head Adventure Land as a free resource to back the lessons up, but I reckon you could use some of the resources whether or not you use the books.

FREE from ME

My latest Freebie is up on Kalei’s  Thatrescourcesite Blog which is a notebook timeline of the 19th Century. I am hoping to make other century notebooks as time goes on.

Friday Freebie; St Peter Witness to the Resurrection lesson pack

Kalei has posted up my latest lesson pack for Easter. St Peter, Witness to the Resurrection. You will need a Bible to work with on this one.

I have a free bible software that I use, but apparently the owner doesn’t like being linked to. Not sure why. Anyway what I would really love to have is a free Catholic Bible software. Although by searching about I’ve found some good Catholic add-ons for the software I have, it’s been a mighty faff to load ’em.

If anyone knows of a good, easy to use, well laid out software that’s free or very cheap let me know (Logos is out of my league I’m afraid).

Anyway get yourselves a good translation and have a go at the lesson pack. I’ve included journal/note/prayer sheets for most pages and some lapbook mini’s. I hope it will be a good family one suitable for a mixed age group.

Kalei has written about what the Stations have taught her and offers a lovely copysheet too. Check out her other resources to get ready for Easter.

Frugal Friday Freebies: Colour book. The Ten Commandments; the month of the Sacred Heart: Science and a story about milk.

One of the HE mums I know posted a link to THIS COLOURING BOOK to help children deal with some difficult situations.

As she mentions herself the illustrations are a bit rough but there may be useful stuff there.

It’s June so if you are studying the Sacred Heart – there are some freebies on offer over at Kalie’s Resource Site – notebooking and a little lesson from me.

If you remember that I did a post on how to remember the Ten Commandments. There’s a quick sheet HERE to help understand how the Our Father, Decalogue and Beatitudes all work together. I need to write some follow up on this – but I will wait until I am actually awake to do so.

Final freebie for today is this bloomin’ marvellous site The Catholic Laboratory. The podcasts are excellent. I have them on my Kindle and am listening to them all. (It could take a while). I have a long standing interest in Catholic scientists, especially as so many moon craters are named after Jesuits- so this is quite a find.

With all those frugal freebies for your use, I have a story of milk to tell you.

Unlike the Promised Land, Britain is not flowing with milk and honey. It’s more like bills and debt. Ordinary good hard working people are finding life very tough at the moment.

We have our milk delivered in the traditional way – by the milk man. If we run out (as does happen) we do the cheapo thing and buy some from Tescos. However, Tescos is a massive and badly behaved corporation that we are not that fond of. It is very important to keep local people employed and this means keeping the local businesses supported. However it is more expensive to have milk from the milk man than the supermarket and we’re trying to be frugal here aren’t we?

Well, it seems to me that being frugal should come with a caveat – that is, not at someone else’s expense. So. When the man who helps run the local dairy farm came to our door and said his brother’s farm is at risk because Kraft, who now own Cadbury’s have cancelled the massive milk order, I was willing for him to be our new milk man. His milk is just a little cheaper as well so that’s great. I also wondered if we could arrange a Home Ed trip to the farm to see the very cows whose milk we are drinking now. All seems great doesn’t it?

So I paid the other milk man and explained I was going with the local farm milk. It turns out that he is self-employed in a franchise rather than employed as I assumed. Ouch! He is past retirement age but has to work as he is still supporting his family.

The outcome is I now have two milkmen. It does mean that our milk bill will be a bit more – but not so much it will add to the debt so hey. It is vitally important to keep our communities alive and help people keep above water.  Anyway, I am a distributist and what kind of distributist wants cheap milk anyway? So, be frugal where you can, but get your milk from a milkman.

A Frugal Friday Freebie: A slice of Gatto and some other resources.

If you are getting ready for St. Valentine’s day you might want to have a look at a St Val resource put together at That Resource Site.

I found this set of free audio that has a treasure trove of Gatto talks done all over the place. (There’s also the Ken Robinson Audio  about the destruction of creativity in schools). Now, I have to admit I have been very cautious about whether I was a “fan” of Gatto or not. He is well-loved in home education and homeschooling circles, but I have discovered one or two heroes of home ed are not that heroic when you get to listen to or read what they actually have to say.

Teacher of the Year one more than one occation.

I haven’t listened to all these Audio files yet, but so far I am truly impressed. He speaks as someone who really has learned some history. I was particularly pleased to hear him speak with complete accuracy on Calvin and Darwin.

One of the ways I discern whether I can trust someone on what they say about stuff I don’t know about, is how they handle the stuff I do know about. Gatto is a massive breath of fresh air, not only because he does know history but because he is quite happy to speak about things that are cultural no nos.  I love his courage and strength of character.

The other free audio I have found is HOMESCHOOL AUDIO. I haven’t listened to all of them but I do really recommend the last one about DARE. I was surprised to hear Dr William Coulson whom I wrote about three years ago. He worked with Rogers and Maslow and brought about the damaging and frankly ludicrous “how does it feel for you?” revolution. I first came across Dr Coulson when I heard his Mea Culpa on his role in the therapeutic nightmare of Rogarian Therapy. As it happens Rogers and Maslow both repented of their deeds; which is good, but I am saddened that despite this, in far too many places the damage continues to be done.

Plenty to listen to there. I wonder how many people who still think school is the way to educate children would bother to hear what Gatto and Coulson have to say. In the book I’m reading at the moment Socrates Meets Jesus there is a moment where Socrates is discussing the question of being open minded. He asks how someone can decide to be open or closed minded about a subject without having first listened to the arguments on the subject. It’s a good question. If  we don’t hear the reasons for and against schools and compulsory education, how will we know which is true? And let’s be sure about one thing the truth of this matter is vitally important because it effects the lives of every single child and family living under this system.

Frugal Friday Freebies

There are days when I want to hear someone talking about the stuff of my life. Unfornunately I ama bit weird, so not many radio shows or online shows have much to say to me about my life. I do like to listen to Dr Ray when I’m cleaning or sorting the washing, but the biggest chunk of my life is about home educating and so it was good to find some podcasts and MP3s on that sbject.

HOMESCHOOL.COM has a lot of podcasts for Christian homeschoolers. I have listened to a couple and they are ok. There are some great pionters for those just starting out and some I haven’t heard yet that look aimed at the old’uns like me 🙂

There are some great workshops from Dayton Catholic HS Conference 2010

If you are going to listen to Regina Doman’s “No Matter What Happens, Blessed be His Name,” have tissues on hand. Even though I am sure most of us already know her story, it is heartbreaking hearing her speak so bravely and positively about it. She offers excellent advice on how to cope and support others when tragedy happens.

Her workshop with teens is well worth listening to. I’m going to get Iona to hear it too as it will be very useful to her.

There’s more good Dayton MP3s HERE  . So you have plenty to keep your home education life happy.

Check out my friend Kalei’s new blogsite with recipes for busy homeschool families. If you have some recipes, why not send them to her for the blog. You can catch the latest recipes on the right sidebar of her Resource blog.

She has also posted my latest Little Lesson, to continue my forensic science history theme. This one is on the history of Facial Reconstruction.  Hope you like it.

I am reading the children Edith Nesbit’s “Five Children and It” which I have downloaded as a pdf.  My lot are really enjoying this.

Frugal Friday Books and free lessons for Home Education

One of the ways Home Educators are often offered for saving the pennies is to use the local library rather than buying all the books children can get through on their educational endevours. Well, I have to admit I gave up on our local library quite some time ago. The selection and standard of books were just awful. The idea that you can order something only works if the book is anywhere in the system. 

Iona has built herself a pretty impressive aray of books from charity shops including  some good Oscar Wilde, Conan Doyle and de Maurier books. I’ve collected a lot of books over the years which she has inherited, such as the Poldark novels and some Dumas stuff.

A fellow HE mum has noticed that her local library have just shut down the school books supply and they actually had a reasonably good set up. Apparently local authorities faced with cutting costs don’t feel the need to cut down on extras at City Hall, when stopping educational resources is a way of clawing back the debt.

School libraries could step into the breach I suppose, but I bet they wont.

As it happens our family supply of books, which grows a bit at a time is shared within our little HE group and they share with us. I have donated quite a few books to church and hope that soon Father will sort out the bookcase there so people can borrow books at the weekend.

Communities could step into the breech here and people could donate good books to parishes for more parish based libraries that could be open to the local community.  Perhaps if parents were choosing, supplying and borrowing the books there would be a much better quality selection. (And perhaps if library budgets weren’t splurged on naff ‘teen’ fiction there would be money for books that actually have something to say).

Meanwhile Internet archive is a great resource for free books.I recently downloaded Five Children and It which I am reading to the children. It offers a lot of books for Kindle now as well, for those who use it.

 Also check out Freebie of the Day as there’s often books to download there and audio.

I also love  this HERITAGE HISTORY site which has the books colour coded from Green for beginners, to Olive and then Red for more advanced reading. The books are organised for time and place and they even have some good Catholic stuff there.

FREE LESSON set as I did a follow on to the Milgram lesson.  I think this lesson is just an introduction to a huge subject on what is legitimate authority and obedience. But I hope it will be a start for a good family discussion.

There’s more here for the organisation journal set and some more Greek.

Kalei puts up a lot of stuff herself so do keep checking her blog and site.

Frugal Friday: freebies.

I’m going to try and do some Frugal Friday posts- whether freebies or cheapies or some ideas for keeping the debt collectors at bay.

Today’s are Freebies. THIS WEBSITE offers quite a few free downloads and games for children learning Greek, Latin and Spanish using the books from Classical Acedemic Press. We haven’t any of their books yet, but I hope we can get some soon. Even so the free colouring books for Greek and Latin vocab are useful and I think fit in reasonably well with Linney’s Latin and his free MP3s and KidsGreek which is also free.

While we are on the subject of languages I recomment free British Sign Language Stories, which is just a lovely site.

Just as interest I noticed that Latin is to be part of the Baccalaureate . It must have mentioned in the White Paper. Latin and Greek are both classical languages that open up a whole world of linguistic understanding and history. Also it’s just fun for the children.