Review of Educating the Whole Hearted Child by Apologia

Educating the WholeHearted Child is a must-read book for new homeschooling parents and great resource for veteran homeschoolers as well.

There are four main components to WholeHearted learning:

1. Home

The Home section discusses some basics of having your children at home including scriptues to consider on parenting, children, and the Christian life. It also addresses questions of legislation, qualifications, socialization. I particularly like the section on Nurturing and the LifeGIFTS of Grace, Inspiration, Faith, Training, and Service.

2. Learning

My favorite part of this section was on Understanding Your Child. It discusses different personalities and learning styles and how to best teach to those traits for success. This is one of my main reasons for wanting to homeschool. My children are individuals and each has their own way in which they learn best. Why make them sit in a classroom and be taught by a random method chosen by our school district? I want to know that my children are taught in a way that makes learning fun, improves retention, and develop in them a passion for learning. I know my child better than any teacher could and I can tailor our curriculum choices to best fit my child.

3. Methods

In the Methods section you will learn about specific school subjects, the reasons they are important, as well as age specific issues and concerns for each subject. I particularly enjoyed reading about Discussion Studies Methods because there is a deeper appreciation of books, art, and music when one ponders the work, applies it in the real world and discusses it with others. Discussion brings the work to life and enriches the learning experience.

4. Living

The Living section is perhaps the section I need to re-read a few times. It discusses your vision for your family as directed by God, structure in the home, setting priorities, time management, organization, and support. I think a lot of families could benefit from reading this even if they don't homeschool their children. There are some really great ideas and tools presented here.

At the end of the book, you will find a wealth of resources such as book lists for WholeHearted Learning and very useful forms for homeschooling including an agenda, overview, planner, task list, project planner, reading record, book report, and so much more.

I love that this book is written from a Christian perspective throughout. With God providing the guidance and equipping in our home, it only makes sense that a go-to resouce such as this would be founding on Godly principles and discipleship.

Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay and Sally Clarkson is available for $22.00 at Apologia Educational Ministries.



Apologia offers a wide variety of great resources for homeschooling families including science curriculums, resources and tools for parents, online classes and community, and missions.

Note: I was given a complimentary copy of Educating the WholeHearted Child in order to write this review. I was not compensated for my time and my opinions here are all my own. Please check out what others on the TOS Homeschool Crew have to say about Educating the WholeHearted Child.

Alexander Graham Bell and The Telephone

Konos Unit: Attentiveness
Theme: Sound/Telephone

We are learning a little history and science as we study the Alexander Graham Bell and his invention of the telephone.

We watched a great documentary online about the life of Alexander Graham Bell. This particular biography seems to be geared towards older children so it was the perfect fit for our lesson. I love finding wonderful free resources like this on the internet!

Some of the highlights that Nicholas remembered from the show:

* Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, an early x-ray machine, and a plane part (ailerons)
* Bell was homeschooled
* Bell's father worked to develop "visible speech", an early form of sign language.
* Bell met Helen Keller and assigned Annie Sullivan to be her teacher (this was a neat connection since we just finished studying about them!)

I got an old telephone from someone on Freecycle. They were happy to get rid of it and we were happy to use it to learn about the inner workings of the telephone. I like that it is the older rotary dial style because you can see more of the mechanical aspects of the telephone vs. today's phones that are digital and have circuit boards. I loved listening to the click of the dial spinning around. My grandmother had a phone just like this and hearing that dial click surprisingly reminded me of her.

Nicholas had never seen a rotary dial phone so we spent some time just talking about how it worked.

He quickly took apart the handset.

We talked about some of the phone parts but there was a lot of just exploring. We followed wires and figured out how the sound went into the phone, traveled out, and came back in.

Nicholas figured out how the phone rang.

Lots of wires and I was glad that I had found some information about how phones work because I wouldn't have been able to figure out all of this on my own.

Of course, when I asked Stuart to help me out he was more than a little excited to help when it came to tinkering. He is great with understanding the mechanical workings of things as well as electric circuits and such.

I left to run an errand and when I came home the two boys had managed to completely disassemble the old phone.

Stuart showed us how the microphone still works and we could see the dial move on his meter as Nicholas talked loudly into it.

Even Rachel got to yell into it!

This was a really fun way to learn about sound!

Rachel's Party at Paradise Pond

We planned a little birthday party for Rachel. We thought about having something at our house but it's really too small to do much there. We thought about a party at a park. However, Nicholas' last party involved go carts outside and it was a big bummer on the party when there was a sudden drop in temperatures the night before and chilly rain during the party. We're done withe outdoor parties.

The kids love playing at Paradise Pond, an indoor play area at First Baptist Church of Grapevine. So we arranged to have her birthday party there. Indoor fun, lots of space, different activities to keep any kid interested, and I wouldn't have to worry about a bunch of 3 year olds tearing through our house.

Paradise Pond is such a fun place for kids. They have an awesome indoor climbing structure.

Even Stuart climbed to the top. I love that he has fun being a kid again too!

Whee! That slide coming down was super fast!

My kids have always loved the costume and dress-up area.

I love Rachel's smile on the little roller coaster.

There is a doctor area with lots of baby dolls to take care of.

Doctor Rachel in scrubs tells Daddy how the baby is doing.

And even an indoor bounce house with slides!

Rachel was so excited when her best friend, Mashiyat, showed up.

When it was time to take a break, we called everyone over to sing Happy Birthday

I couldn't tell for sure if Rachel liked all the attention or not.

She did great blowing out her candles on her Hello Kitty cake.

Happy Birthday sweet Rachel! You have brought so much more joy and laughter to our home than I could have imagined. We love you!

Time for cake! I love that the Paradise Pond staff took care of setting up everything in the party room with all the Hello Kitty party gear that I brought.

Rachel, of course, just used her fork to scrape off and eat the icing on the cake. I don't think she ever actually tasted the chocolate cake that she asked for. Why waste tummy space on cake when one can just fill up on icing?

After cake, the kids went back out to play and burn off some of that sugar rush.

This little roller coaster ride was such a great hit with everyone!

Of course, there was a lot of time spent in the bounce house too.

I love this happy little girl so full of energy and fun.

Rachel had a lot of fun at her party even though several friends weren't able to make it.

We didn't want to waste fun party time with opening presents so we let her open those when we got home. You can't help but notice how interested Nicholas is in everything that Rachel got.

It's hard to be little and see others getting cool presents and not want to play with them right away too. For the most part, Rachel lets him play with her toys...until she screeches and then you know she is all done playing with him.

Happy 3rd Birthday Rachel!

Today is Rachel's 3rd Birthday! I put together a slide show that was just going to be a few pictures. It ended up being 60 pictures!

Picture slideshow created with Smilebox

As always Nicholas was excited to be the one to get her out of bed this morning. For some reason, it is very important for him to do this and he gets upset with me if I go in to wake her up without him.

But even on her birthday, the little princess can be a little grumpy and not wish for company disturbing her beauty sleep.

However, when presented with her first present of the day, she quit fussing and started opening.

When she saw it was a baby Calico Critter set, she sat up and smiled with joy.

Daddy had to leave for work but we wanted to give her this one gift early in the day since she would have to wait for Daddy to get home from work tonight before opening her other presents.

Nicholas pointed out all of the cute little accessories in the baby set.

I got Rachel dressed and she came downstairs. Everywhere she went, Nicholas would try to hide and jump out at her to say, "Happy Birthday!". She seemed to really like it...and so did he!

For birthdays, I always hang up the same shiny colorful party stuff in the same boring areas. Next time I'll have to get more creative but for Rachel it was perfect. She loved all of the shiny stuff in her honor.

After Daddy came home, Rachel finally got to open her presents from us, Nicholas, and her grandparents. Some of her favorite presents were lots of books, 2 Disney Princess dolls, a baby dolls that cries and crawls, and a mermaid bath toy.

Cub Scouts Visit The Local Landfill

Yesterday, the cub scouts took a tour of a local landfill.

They were super excited and had lots of comments and questions for our very patient tour guide.

We saw some cool trucks at work.

The scouts had a great time and learned a lot about reducing waste and recycling. Nicholas especially loved the little toy garbage truck and light up yo-yo that he was given!

Republic Services has some good online resources to help children learn about protecting the environment including a Recycle Rosie Curriculum and an online newspaper called Earth Preservers. Check it out!