Little Bird Tales: Scrapbook With A Voice

// 10.22.09 // 28 Comments » // Homeschooling, Link Love

A couple months ago I heard about Little Bird Tales, a service that lets kids create and share personalized books online. Given my love of scrapbooking, I immediately started thinking of the many ways my family could use this service.

Little Bird Tales is easy to use. Have your child draw some pictures (with an online paint program or on paper which you can scan), upload the picture to the site, add text if you want, and record your child’s voice telling the story. The interface is clean and simple. My 5 year old and I created this book in about 15 minutes.

If drawing pictures, creating a story, and recording your child’s voice isn’t enough fun, you can upload photos from a vacation and ask your child to narrate. A scrapbook with a voice! Another thought that crossed my mind is the usefullness of this service for homeschoolers. Your online book needn’t be a preschooler’s story or a photo album. How about asking your older child to actually write and illustrate a book? Thinking ahead to the holidays, Little Bird Tales would be great to use as an electronic greeting card. Upload photos and artwork from 2009 and ask your kids to sing some holiday songs. Enter in email addresses to easily share your story with family and friends.

You can sign up for a free 90-day trial account or subscribe to Little Bird Tales for one year and 100 MB of storage space for $24.95. The good peeps at Little Bird Tales have offered a 20% off coupon code for me to pass on to you. Use code gr8stmom20 when you sign up, which you should do now because the code expires October 31st.

To celebrate the launch of the site, Little Bird Tales is hosting an online contest where kids can submit an ending for their tale “How Little Bird Got His Name” that includes a name suggestion for “Little Bird,” a picture, text and audio. One lucky winner will be selected to win $250 cash, $250 donated to the environmental charity of their choice and a free 3-year membership to the site. Again, the contest ends October 31st, so head on over there today.

Disclosure: I was offered a free one year subscription to try out Little Bird Tales.

Defining Twilight

// 10.7.09 // 19 Comments » // Homeschooling, Link Love

Defining Twilight is a nifty little workbook that uses the Twilight saga to teach vocabulary for standardized tests. I received a review copy from author Brian Leaf and was impressed with the fun, simplistic way the book is laid out.

Defining Twilight has 40 groups of vocabulary words (about eight words in each group) selected from the book Twilight, many of which will show up on the SAT, ACT, GED or SSAT. You are told what page in Twilight the word appears so you can read it in context. The workbook asks you to suggest a definition, then turn the page and read a complete definition. The author also provides drills for further comprehension, such as synonyms, analogies, sentence completions and memorization tools. Defining New Moon will be available in late October.

Since my kids aren’t anywhere near taking the SAT, I’d love to pass my copy of this book on to you. (It’s gently used – the binding shows a tiny bit of wear because I did look through it for this review.) Just leave a comment here and tell me if you (or your child) is Team Edward or Team Jacob.

Sweepstakes open to US citizens ages 18 and older. Winner will be chosen at random on Monday, October 12th at 9 am.

Apparently I Blog More When I Have 1,452,779 Things To Do

// 9.23.09 // 26 Comments » // Homeschooling, Link Love, Parenting, Thriving

So, yeah, I’ve been updating my blog an average of twice per month, but today you get two posts in one day! I have a lot of random thoughts to get down, so I am making a list (copied from inspired by my cool friend Jenny on the Spot).

• My blog is in desperate need of housekeeping. Plugins to be updated, sidebars to be cleaned up, wonky stuff to be de-bugged. But it’s most likely that I will spend my time creating an entirely new theme design before I clean any of the other stuff up. That’s just me.
• I am starting a new part time job (details forthcoming, like after I finish the web site design and can make a big announcement and good impression and all). And I’m kinda worried. Worried I don’t know enough. Worried I don’t have the time. Worried I’ll let down my employer. Who, by the way, happens to be my sister. {gulp}
• I laid down the law with my kids the other day. I won’t go into details but this is the “strictest” I’ve ever been with them. The most I’ve ever asked from them. And so far (well, it’s been two days), they are rising to the occasion. My new motto? “Expect more.” (I know that’s a corporate slogan for something…)
• I’m so happy my kids are brilliant. They pick stuff up like *snap* that. Makes my job as a homeschooling Mom way easier.
• I have the opportunity to exercise 3 days a week at my gym. And by “opportunity” I mean that I have to be at the gym for my kids’ stuff and there is no reason I shouldn’t be exercising. I will accept no excuses from myself.
• I’m also taking an adult tap dancing class. I love it more than I can tell you.
• We’ve been having fun letterboxing the past few weeks. It was even fun today when we walked around a park for an hour and a half before discovering that the trail we were looking for was completely overgrown.
• I’m going to Vegas with my husband in a couple weeks! Vacation and SITScation.
• What the hell is up with the half-constructed Starbucks in Flemington? PLEASE OPEN SOON. And please do not tell me it’s never opening because Starbucks is closing a bunch of stores.  I will not listen. LA LA LA LA LA LA.
• Fractions are kinda hard to teach. When you’re reducing, you have to change the numerator AND denominator. But when you’re adding/subtracting, you only work with the numerator. Confusing to a kid. Need to seek out a better way to teach it.
• I want to read Atlas Shrugged. It’s 1,075 pages. If I start tomorrow I might just finish by next summer.
• I’m taking my kids to see Demi Lovato in November and I bought the VIP package so we can meet her. I’m a little more excited than a 40 year old should be about this.
• Did you know I write blogging and SEO tips over at SITS on Saturdays?
• I’m teaching a web design class to 11 students in our homeschool group.
• Did I mention we’re going to Vegas in a couple weeks?
• My oven door won’t open. The lever that locks the door closed is stuck. I’m having minor anxiety about this. I need to bake bread for a Tastefully Simple home party tomorrow.
• I have 167 email messages to deal with.
• And now I shall attempt to sleep.