Faith in God Cards 2.0

 Hi Everyone, 

I have decided to redo the Faith in God Cards to, hopefully, make things a little more simple. Hopefully my explanation will make sense. 😆  I have done 3 things. Here we go.

First I removed the month from all the cards. This will allow you to do which ever cards you like in whatever time you want. It also keeps it simple in the aspect of starting over. The number of requirements do not make it easy to simply rotate these starting at the beginning of the year. So I decided to just take the months off all together.

The second thing I did was create a third set of cards. Previously I had separate sets for the boys (blue) and a separate set for the girls (purple). I still have those but I have added a 3rd set that is for both boys and girls. This way if you only want to print out one set for everyone, you can. These are a sort of turquoise color. 

The third thing I did was darken the text. I had a few people tell me the lighter ones were a little hard to see. This can simply be from a difference in printers, but I thought I'd make them a little darker in case there were more who felt this way.

OK, apparently I have done 4 things. I updated the Requirement Calendar for all 3 sets. This just tells you what requirement is schedule for each month. These are just word documents that are editable, so feel free to make changes that fit your needs.

The links below each card picture will give you access to both the printable sheets and the calendar. The Printable Sheets basically look like 8 little business cards on each page. Each sheet is one requirement. Each file includes the 8 or 9 requirements (minus the ones that say to come up with an activity of their own). I have separated the printable sheets into the 3 categories Serving Others, Developing Talents, and Learning & Living the Gospel. I am still working on updating the Preparing for Priesthood and Young Women's cards but here is the link to the older ones I have done. They will work, they just aren't as dark as these new ones.  

Both

Girls

Boys

I have deleted the old ones that have the months on them to help reduce clutter and confusion. If there are any problems, typos, whatever, please let me know and I will do my best to fix them quickly. I am a mom of 3 very busy young kids. I don't get paid for doing these or even for having you look at my blog. I share these because they have been so helpful for our ward and encouraging the kids to be more proactive in the Faith in God program. So please be kind in your feedback, and patient in your requests. Thank you for all the feedback and wonderful comments. I have had so many people tell me how much they enjoy these. I hope they will continue to help. 

Here are the links to my other posts that have what we do as a final award and how we use these cards for those who are new to this, this one also has the tracking sheets we use.

Time 4 Learning Review

This year I have been working on doing some research for what programs and curriculum I want to use for my kids next year when we start doing homeschool. I love it when I can see what the curriculum actually offers or when there is a free trial. That way I can really see if it is something I want to spend our time and money on. I have heard a lot of great things about the Time4Learning program so I checked it out. As I was looking around I found that I could try it out for a month for FREE if I posted an honest review for it on my blog. So of course I said yes! So here we go...

First I have to admit that trying this out during the holiday season was probably not the best idea. We started out strong doing it 3-4 times a week, but then life got insane and we only kept it up 1-2 a week. But even that was helpful enough in seeing how my kids responded to it and what it had to offer us. I have 2 kids that I had test it out. My pre-k loved the the "My Colors" section. Every time she logged on, she went there first. It was easy and intuitive for her. Other things were a little more challenging for her like the syllable drum and the counting bubbles. These were challenging for her and she didn't quite get them at first, but then after sitting with her and helping her through it, she understood it a little better. With time and practice, I'm certain she would have been able to do it without help. There were a couple of things that she didn't get at all, and I personally feel are a bit to complex for pre-k. that is the word counter and sentence slopes. The concept is more advance than beginning pre-k. They are just learning letters and numbers so counting words feels and putting them in order seems a bit to advance. But there are so many other options and things for them to learn and play with that not being able to do those 2 things aren't a problem at all. 

My kindergartner also really enjoyed using Time4Learning. The science section was his favorite. It was a bit more interactive and fun for him compared the the language arts. He knows how to read really well already, but I wanted him to focus on more of the basic rules to make sure he has a good foundation. Because of that I think it was a little less fun for him, but he did enjoy it. I felt like it taught the concepts well. We only tried it for the short time so I don't know if it does this more, but I do wish there were a few more activities to master the concepts. What they have is good, but I felt like we would have had to repeat them a couple of times to master them. Without a variety, I think my son would have gotten bored with it easier. Having said that, I still think it is good at introducing the concepts and giving us a starting point. He absolutely loved the playground games. Some were a bit complex, but I don't think it is broken down into learning groups, I think everyone has access to the same page. In one way that is good because it forces him to expand his abilities, but at the same time can cause a lot of frustration. I would have liked to see the playground broken down into smaller groups, ( example: pre-k, k, 1st grade together, 1st, 2nd, 3rd together, etc.).

As far as the parent tools, I feel like that did a great job with the resources and help available. Everything is easy to figure out. They have a lot of options to chose from. Where we live we don't have a lot of restrictions and requirements for homeschooling so I didn't fiddle around too much with these. When I needed to adjust what level my kids were on, that was very easy, as well as managing how long they could be in the play ground area, or  if I wanted to check their progress for the week or month was also very easy. Like I said I think their parent area is a great resource and a definite winner.

Overall, I think Time 4 Learning is a great asset to any home whether you homeschool or do public school. It's fun, it's easy to navigate, there are a lot of helpful and useful resources. This was a great experience for us. Feel free to leave questions if you have any, I'd be happy to answer them. If you are interested in trying Time 4 Learning, Click Here for link where I went to get the free trial.

Time 4 Learning Review Opportunity

I am so excited about this. I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as a homeschool curriculum, forafterschool enrichment and for summer skill sharpening. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning. Check out this link to find out more.

Mom's Gratitdue Turkey

Now that Halloween is over I have started to think about the season of Thanksgiving. It seems like the last few weeks life has been really exhausting and my patience has been very thin. Sometimes I feel like it is so easy to get upset at my kids about the ridiculously little things and even easier to forget to focus on the simple and good things that they do all the time. So I've been thinking of ways that can help me remember to tell my kids thank you for the good things they are doing and how to encourage them to do those good things more. I came up with this little guy. 

This is my Mom's Gratitude Turkey. I laminated the body but not the feathers. We taped the body up on the fridge where we can all see it. This helps me to remember that at least a few times a day I need to point out and make kind of a big deal about the good things they have done. When I do this, they get to pick out a feather, we write what the good thing was and then we tape it onto the turkey. (This is why I didn't laminate the feathers.) My kids are getting so excited about how big our turkey tail is getting and I feel like we are starting to focus more on the good things happening around us, which has allowed me to focus on the hard stuff as much. Does my patience still get thin? You bet, but its not as often and its easier to get it back. It's really hard for those negative feelings to stick around when I am actively working on telling my kids good job and giving them hugs and loves.  

There is both a colored and black and white printable. Hope you enjoy this!

Free Fall Printables

Hello all! 

I love the fall! I love fall decorations! I am learning how to and starting to love creating fall printables. I also love sharing things for free. SO... I thought I'd share the files I have created. I hope you like them, and I hope they work (fingers crossed).  Please let me know if you have any problems with them.   

Free Fall Printables

Free Homeschool/Family Planner

  I am the busy mother of 3 wonderful, amazing, beautiful, funny, crazy, loud, energetic, messy kids. I am pretty sure that if my head wasn't connected to my body, I would forget one of them at least 4 times a week (or day😆 ). That being said, it is super hard for me to mentally keep track of all the things going on in our lives. We are just starting our homeschool year, with my oldest in kindergarten and my middle one doing preschool so things seem a little extra crazy right now. So I thought that now would be a great time to make up a fun little planner. Now I know it's only kindergarten and preschool and we don't have a thousand things pulling us in every direction, but I am the kind of person who likes to write things down in a neat and organized fashion. Since I am pretty sure I am not the only one who likes to do that, I thought I would share my little creation. For Free! Yay! I love free stuff and I love to share free stuff, especially when it can be helpful. I hope you enjoy it! I'd love any feed back or suggestions for future drafts. This is my first one, so please, be kind. Just a few notes: Everything is aligned with 1/4" margin for hole punching. There are a few pages that I did both horizontal and vertical and there are 2 different cover pages to choose from. The monthly calendars and menus  are in a file of their own. SO, be sure to look at the files before just printing all of them. Enjoy! 

Preparing for Priesthood/Young Women's Faith in God Cards

Hi everyone,

I did separate cards for the Preparing for the Priesthood and Young Women's if you would like to have those for the older kids. Hope you enjoy!