Jamie Soles mix

Posted on October 17th, 2007 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

After listening to “Up from Here” for a few days, I’ve found that I like it just as much as “The Way My Story Goes” if not more. It has sparked some great conversations with Éva. She’s fascinated with Israel’s history, and can now tell you about the exile.

Here’s the way I’ve mixed the two cds for chronological listening. It’s not perfect, but I think it works.

1. These are They

2. Take and Eat

3. Into the World

4. Lady Don’t Listean

5. East Wind

6. The Way My Story Goes

7. By Grace

8. Abram

9. This is the Sign

10. Supplanter

11. Up From Here

12. Let My People Go

13. Bad Guys Part I

14. Sign of the Cross

15. Land of Canaan

16. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram

17. Do it Again

18. 600 Philistines

19. Ehud and Deborah

20. Bad Guys Part 3

21. Israel worshiped Ashtoreth

22. Judges for Yourself

23. One Man Army

24. How to Catch a Wife

25. Rats (Philistine’s Lament)

26. Remember Me

27. Bad Guys Part 2

28. Oh Absalom

29.  King of Israel

30.  Greater is He

31. Follow the Line

32. Seventy Years

33. Homeland

34. Dreams

35. Give Ear

36. You Can Go

37. As the Hart

38. King

39. Jesus to the Rescue

40. Apostles

41. Get on Board

42. Resurrection

43. Apostle’s Creed

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Jamie Soles - Again!

Posted on October 13th, 2007 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

Up From Here

I’ve come out of blog-slumber to report that I just bought another of Jamie Soles’ albums - Up From Here. I couldn’t be happier. This is an excellent album, following on the heels of The Way My Story Goes.

If you only buy one Christian album for your children, buy one of Jamie Soles’. You won’t be disappointed. I especially recommend The Way My Story Goes - everytime I listen to it from beginning to end, I can’t help but be moved. It follows the Biblical redemptive storyline. Excellent stuff.

I haven’t listened thoroughly to Jamie’s new album, Fun and Prophets, but I’m sure it’s worth buying too. My next purchase will be Memorials - can’t wait to get that one!

Word to the wise - you can buy these albums now on iTunes. Hooray! Only $9.99.

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Wedding Book - Blurb.com

Posted on June 11th, 2007 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

It’s been a busy month - between my Mom’s graduation, Éva’s ballet recital, my parents moving in with us, family visiting, sewing dresses for my cousin’s wedding, and getting ready for our vacation in the Adirondacks, I haven’t had much time to myself! One of my priorities this month, however, was to finish a project I’ve had on a back burner for quite a while.
Our sixth anniversary is coming up in a week and a half, and as a present to each other this year, Phil and I decided to finally scan in our wedding pictures and put together a book. After doing lots of research on the best photo book sites, I finally ended up at Blurb. Their software is downloadable, and the book is assembled offline before uploading to their website. I love having that option. There’s nothing worse than waiting while uploading 100s of pictures to a site before you even know if their photo books are what you really want. Blurb lets you chose from three sizes - 7×7, 8×10 (both portrait and landscape), and 11×13. The books can be either softcover or hardcover with a beautiful dustjacket of your own design.

Perhaps what I like best about Blurb is its ability to be customized. I made a photo book at shutterfly last Christmas, and was constantly frustrated that I had no option to shrink or stretch a picture to fit the picture box the way I wanted it to. Blurb gives me this option, as well as much better picture and page layouts. This software would be perfect for the everyday person to assemble a cookbook (actually… this would work perfect for the ever elusive RMFO cookbook :lol: ). There are a myriad of text and picture layout possibilities.

Like Lulu, Blurb lets you set your own price and pays you the difference when other people order your books. The prices are quite reasonable… actually, their much cheaper than most photo book sites. The 7×7 hardcover wedding album that I designed with 40 pages costs around $22. Not bad at all.

I could go on and on about this software. It has a lot of possibilities, and their full color bleeds are beautiful. If I had more time to invest in a project, I’d do full page layouts in photoshop first and then import it into the software. The software also can “slurp” blog posts to make a beautiful book of your blog. Really nifty.

I highly recommend this company. The software was intuitive, the preset photo layouts were well designed, the prices are excellent, and it’s fun! Try it out.

Click the link below to see a preview of our book (or order it yourself if you’re so inclined! I haven’t added anything to the price, so it’s not expensive). Hopefully the link will show up on your browser. If not, surf on over to blurb.com and search for “Our Wedding” or “Hanfaith” and it should turn up. I wish the preview showed the dustjacket as that’s really my favorite part. Pardon the bad quality of the pictures - that’s not blurb’s fault at all, but rather the fault of scanning in photographs that aren’t all that great. My next photo book will be made from pictures from our digital camera - can’t wait!!

Booklists

Posted on April 16th, 2007 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

We’ve had some family things come up the past two months, so I haven’t been able to blog much. Look for new reviews to be posted soon. In the meantime, here are my booklists for February, March, and half of April. I put a smile by the ones I highly recommend and a frown by books I would avoid.
February 2007

- The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman :)

- Dark Matter – Tony Watkins :)

- The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle – Avi :)

- Detectives in Togas - Henry Winterfeld

- Ginger Pye - Eleanor Estes

- Roller Skates – Ruth Sawyer – reread

- The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger :) (adult fiction)

- The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde :(

March 2007

- Follow My Leader - James B. Garfield

- Little Pear - Eleanor Frances Lattimore

- Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine

- Dark Angels - Karleen Koen

- Keturah and Lord Death - Martine Leavitt

- Up a Road Slowly - Irene Hunt :)

- Jacob Have I Loved - Katherine Paterson :)

- A Year Down Yonder - Richard Peck

April 2007

- A Single Shard - Linda Sue Park

- The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: The Pox Party - M.T. Anderson :) (mature readers)

- Princess On the Brink - Meg Cabot :( :( :(

- Tomorrow, The River - Dianne Gray

- Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money - Christopher Paul Curtis :(

- Charlotte’s Web - E. B. White

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Preparations for School 2007-2008

Posted on February 14th, 2007 by hanfaith.
Categories: General.

I’ve been very busy the last couple of weeks putting together my homeschool curriculum for next year. Eva will be in first grade and Seamus in preschool. My family can attest to the many hours of research I have put into next year’s choices, and the fun is only just beginning! I’m getting about 95% of my materials used and I love the hunt.

Phonics

We used Abeka for phonics this year and for consistency sake, I plan on continuing with them for another year. I give them credit for a thorough program. There are a few things I take issue with, such as Manuscript only being a handwriting option (i.e. some of the visuals in kindergarten are in Script) and huge variations between workloads on various days (i.e. some days have way too many workbook pages while others have barely any). I do feel like Eva is well grounded in phonics, though, so I’d give the program about 4 out of 5 stars.

Grammar & Composition

I wish I had known about Shurley English when I was teaching in a classroom. What a great program! Shurley English fits well into a classical model, making just of jingles, chants, and question/answer sessions. Students learn the parts of a sentence by asking and answering questions. This curriculum is great for an auditory learner, but would probably need to be supplemented with more visuals for other types of learners. I like the flow of the teacher’s manual, but I feel like the student workbooks could have been better laid out. Students constantly have to flip back and forth all over the book for different activities. I think it would be better if the student workbook was designed around each lesson, giving all the activities on the same page. Overall, though, I’m impressed.

** after typing this, I went and looked at Shurley’s website, and it looks like a new edition is due this fall, with some of the workbook issues solved. I’m not sure, however, if this is only for the school version of Shurley or also for the homeschool version. Hopefully both.

Mathematics

We’re switching next year from Abeka math to Horizons math. Pretty much all the reviews I have read indicate that Horizons is similar to Abeka math, but better. Both use a spiral method to teach arithmetic, but Horizons apparently does a better job of not overdoing repetition. I’ve heard that for those students that have lost the joy of math through the Abeka program, Horizons is a good fit. Hopefully that will be the case for us too. Again, like in their phonics program, Abeka is thorough, and students coming out of their math program will know their stuff, but in the process I think many stop enjoying math. Horizons is also colorful, something that appeals to my children.

History

We’re voyaging into Core 1 with Sonlight this year, exploring a first year course of World History. I love that Sonlight teaches without textbooks, using “real” books to interest students in history. I’m impressed by some of the books I’ve collected so far. Looks like an excellent program. We’re also doing the read-aloud part of Sonlight, sharing many good books with our children.

Penmanship

I’m going to try out A Reason for Handwriting, Manuscript A next year. I haven’t received a copy in the mail yet, so I don’t have much to go on, but the idea of making presentation pieces based around Bible verses and decorating the borders sounds like something that will appeal to Eva.

Science

We’re going to try Sonlight’s science program for Core 1. I’ve heard that Sonlight jumps around a bit when it comes to science, but we’re going to give it a try and see if it works for our kids. At the very least, they’ll be exposed to a lot of different scientific topics, and we’ll see what piques their interest.

Music

I like the looks of Praising God on the Piano, and I’ve heard good things about it on various message boards. Thankfully, it’s not too expensive, so looks like we’ll give this program a try this year. We’ll probably do a lesson once a week, so I’m still looking for something else to do once a week – preferably centered around classical music.

Art

We’ll be using the Come Look with Me books to talk about various art pieces, and will be producing our own masterpieces with our art supplies.

Preschool

I’m working on putting together Seamus’ preschool curriculum from various books I’m collecting. Our local library has a book cellar with .25 books, so I try to pick up a couple every time I go. Hopefully I’ll have enough soon to organize them into unit studies, and we’ll work from there. I’d like to get some of the Developing the Early Learner books as well as Critical Thinking Press’ Visual Perceptual Skill Builder.

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