It’s a win - win - win situation for Learning Maps™! Me and My House is now an affiliate partner of NovaMind, meaning you Win! Win! Win! You get the convenience and great looks of a computerized Learning Map™. You get a great mind mapping software to help you do it, NovaMind. And you even get an educational discount on the Pro edition; (home educating families qualify). Both Windows and Mac versions are available.

Me and My House also wins! Your purchase through our website helps support Me and My House ministries. 

You don’t know what Learning Maps™ (mind mapping) is? You haven’t hung around me long enough! Mind mapping is an AWESOME and POWERFUL tool for learning, for gaining and retaining understanding! It is a natural with biblical principles learning because it shows relationships!

Basically a mind map (our terminology is Learning Map™) is a way to graphically/visually outline and organize, brainstorm and research, plan and present, educate and evaluate, comprehend and communicate. We first learned how to make these as a pre-writing help many years ago. I was impressed by their usefulness and benefits as both a learning and teaching tool, and it grew from there to be one of the primary tools we use in education - both learning and teaching.

You start with a word/picture/idea in the middle of a paper and then branch out from there - first your main points, then each of those branched into subpoints. Utilizing color and pictures, as well as the design, helps us to remember the ideas and information easier. (Schools sometimes call these "webs".)

I originally drew my Learning Maps™ by hand, and my children still do most of the time. But software is available to make our Learning Maps™ on the computer. That makes them super fun and convenient, as well as enhances our use of color, pictures, and all sorts of design. (I LOVE color and design. — And I own 3 different mind mapping apps.)

We use Learning Maps™ to plan studies, to document studies, to outline lessons (for me to teach from - or the kids outline as I’m teaching/ what they learn), to outline writing assignments, to brainstorm anything, etc…… I even made a Learning Map™ of their daily responsibilities. And I make them of each seminar session I teach, as well as for the books I write.

You can take a peek at a few of our simple Learning Maps™ on our webpages.

• Spiritual Journey
• Bible - Foundations Study
• Lesson Plan Format
• Rudiments of Literature
• Link to our P.I.P.E. Learning Maps™
• A session of Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ ~ The Seminar

Then look at what others have done with them. (It’s up to you how elaborate you want to make them.) (Please note, these are examples of the types of things you can do with mind mapping - not recommendations of the content within the examples.)

• NovaMind Example Mind Map Gallery
• Mind Mapping educational examples
• Mind Mapping personal use examples
• NovaMind "religion" examples (sermons - prepare and present, bible studies, speakers notes)

There are several editions of NovaMind to choose from.

NovaMind Pro - for advanced Mind Mappers, senior school and university students, coaches, and for general business use. The 30% educational discount is available to home educators for NovaMind Pro.

NovaMind Express - an entry level product, providing excellent Mind Mapping capabilities for schools and beginning Mind Mappers.

There’s a Pro edition too. You can compare all three here: NovaMind Feature Comparison.

AND here’s another way you WIN! You can download a 30-Day FREE Trial.

What are you waiting for? Have some fun over the next month as you work on your Lesson Planning for next year!

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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It’s been two weeks ago now, but those weeks were filled with dd’s wedding and my L.E.D. Seminar. So finally getting around to say, we had a great time at the Colorado Home Educators’ Conference. Our favorite speaker (which we knew would be before we went) was Voddie Baucham. I highly recommend ordering his sessions from this conference, especially "Government Education", and/or his book, Family Driven Faith or DVD, Children of Caesar. Also here’s the most extensive listing I know of for his online resources.

Other sessions I attended and enjoyed were by Doug Phillips and Kevin Swanson on family entrepeneuership.

I also, only becuase bored and tired of walking around, stopped into a math workshop. The speaker was speaking on how math resources need to teach concepts. He mentioned programs he thinks are good, which was the same list as current programs on my website.

We shopped a bit, getting some great family resources. I haven’t even begun to think of what our studies for the next sveral months will be, so don’t know if I was shopping for "school" or not. Just for life!

Anyhow, it was a great all around conference, though I misssed a few of the vendor’s we normally buy from that weren’t there this year, notably Children’s Books, from whom I usually make a sizable purchase. We took only our teens this year, so they could go to all the sessions. That was nice that we didn’t have the running back and forth and having to miss sessions, but we sure missed our little ones, and were glad to get home.

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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Before today’s post - just a reminder, get info and register for our Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ ~ The Seminar LIVE! 2008 - coming to North Platte, NE June 27th & 28th.

I’ll preface this with - this isn’t a Bible I have, so it isn’t necessarily a recommendation. HOWEVER, it is a SUPER SALE if you are famliar with the editor and agree with his viewpoint.  Sale price of $14.99 ends today.

NKJV The Legacy Study Bible, Hardcover By Thomas Nelson Document your legacy of faith with the Legacy Study Bible. Best-selling author and "Bible Answer Man" Hank Hanegraaff has created the perfect tool to build and pass along your spiritual legacy. Features Include: Four-color legacy presentation section Book introductions written by Hank in his LEGACY acronym (Location, Essence, Genre, Author, Context, Years) format Informative and educational acronym articles written by Hank include: LIGHTS-How to understand the Bible MAPS-Demonstrating how the Bible is divinely inspired and preserved MEALS-How to grow in the faith DOCTRINE-Essential Christian doctrine FEAT-Apologetic on Christ’s resurrection Legacy Reading Program Timelines and charts Extensive concordance Four-color maps 7" x 93/16" x 15/8" Hardcover 1664 Pages Words of Christ in red

Here’s another that we do have and use, at a good price too - currently 19.99. Of course, leather bound is also available for either.

NKJV Open Bible Hardcover By Thomas Nelson Over the years, the Open Bible has been loved, used, and worn out by countless students of God’s Word. Here you’ll find an excellent combination of essential helps to guide you as you learn God’s truth. This large print edition features the New King James Version, in a hardcover binding. Includes the following features: Presentation page Large, easy-to-read 8 point type Double-column format End-of-verse references Words of Christ in Red Subject headings Translation/textual notes 300-page Biblical Cyclopedic Index Christian Guide to the New Life (with notes chained throughout the Bible) Visual Survey of the Bible Concordance Book introductions and outlines Full-color maps Harmony of the Gospels Timelines Prophecies of the Messiah Fulfilled in Christ The Parables of Jesus Christ The Miracles of Jesus Christ Teachings and Illustrations of Christ God’s Answers to Man’s Concerns Prayers of the Bible Laws of the Bible Archaeological Supplement 61/4" x 91/2" x 11/4" Hardcover

Wow, it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted and I have NEWS TO SHARE. If you haven’t been reading the L.E.D. section of my website, and are not subscribed to our complimentary email newsletter, you may not know the most important L.E.D. news of this year. That is, Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education™ - The Seminar LIVE! 2008 is only about ONE WEEK away!

Below is the basics, click here to read more and register.

Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ ~The Seminar LIVE! 2008

will be presented LIVE! in North Platte, NE on June 28th. This is your chance to not only learn the foundations of L.E.D. and renew your mind to biblical views of education, but also to ask Lisa all your questions about L.E.D.!

 The Seminar is a full day Saturday, with an optional Friday night fun session for those that can attend. We will cover the philosophy, principles, and practical application of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™.

Please consider joining us. Pre-registration required - and due June 15th. –You can still register. Please register online now.–

 $25 for the LIVE! Seminar or
$40 for the LIVE! Seminar PLUS the downloadable audios afterwards, so you can re-listen again and again. That is HALF-PRICE for the audios when purchased with your Registration for L.E.D. ~The Seminar.

More details - register - or order previous years’ Seminars - at the L.E.D. ~ The Seminar webpage.

Hope to see you there!

Other, more important news, and why I’ve been too busy to blog lately - dd gets married this weekend!!

One of our family’s absolute all-time favorite books, Pilgrims Progress, is available in audiobook format as a free download from ChristianAudio this month (June ‘08). Click on "Free Download" on their homepage to get the details for getting this free audiobook.

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
Order Christian & Home Ed Resources here

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Ever get tempted to go back to "Egypt"? Perhaps you were getting free to follow God and shake off the shackles of the world’s ways and ideas of education, but … you get scared. You wonder, "Can I really do this? I don’t know HOW to do this. Is God really going to get me through this? At least I knew what I was doing in the "old way"."

This is my general advise for getting started - or restarted - with olders and youngers - when you don’t know what to do - or are tempted to go back. (Quoted as sent to a mom asking somewhat the above questions.)

Don’t despair. God has given your children to you and He knows best for them and will work it through YOU! Some curriculum company does not know your child, your family or where God has you or is leading you. They don’t know best. God does - and He will guide YOU. When you know you are weak and inadequate, He can work HIS way through you - then you know you must lean on Him and can’t do it in your own strength. HE does it through you! I’ve also found that all those pre-packaged curricula at various grade levels and schedules to keep creates MORE burn out and stress on Mom, than just working with the children together on your own timetable. I continually hear moms saying, "we’re behind" and feeling like a failure (in some way or another) because they can’t keep the schedule, or stressing their kids out trying to keep the schedule. And I know way too many hs-ers who have quit because of this.)

What’s my solution?
Take your children - all of them. Get out the Bible - and read to them. For the little ones sake, perhaps a familiar story will hold their attention better. Talk about it. Ask questions about it. Questions that make them think about it. (Questions that make MOM think about it!) Not just who did what, but why God told us this, how does it change my life, etc. Even a familiar story has more to dig out than what lays on the surface. Then go run and jump - or sweep a floor or do some dishes, whatever. Then draw a picture of the story, or copy a verse, or make some type of project or notebook page to remember what they learned. OR just play-act the story in the run and jump time!

Next head back to the couch and grab a living book that you know they will all enjoy (not so "school-y" that the little ones won’ think it’s fun.) Cuddle up on the couch and read together again. Don’t read so much that the little ones lose it. You want your older ones begging you to go on. But if the littles are getting restless, quit. And talk about it. Same routine - dig into it. Any words they didn’t understand? Look them up. Anything they/you want to know more about - look it up. (Same goes for Bible on these.) Go back to the table to draw, copy, chart, write - whatever. While olders are working on this, you can work/play with youngers, if they don’t want to do the activity at the table. Or they can act it out again. Run, jump and play again.

Are there things you really need to work on individually? Many times even the things we typically think of that way can be done together. Spelling and reading? How about dumping a tub of letters in the middle of the floor or table, giving the first word to your older ones (to spell with the letters) and your younger can find the letter that makes the beginning sound of the word. He doesn’t know it yet? Find it for him and teach him. I made a game called "Mailman" (that I need to get redone electronically, so I can sell it again.) The children roll dice and draw a card - they are color coded for difficulty, from letters to HARD words - if they can read/spell (id the letter/sound) they can move forward. The whole family can play!

Math you can do somewhat the same in learning math basics/facts. Roll dice, littles tell you how many, olders add or multiply, etc. You can even use different colored dice for place value. "Story/Word" problems can be given throughout the day - with real life things.

You just have to think outside the box, and realize if they are learning something new - or increasing understanding of something old - or personally applying something they’ve known "forever" - they are growing in wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. And that is good and fine. It doesn’t have to be according to someone else’s scope, sequence, or time table. Things you really want them to do/learn? (think they "need" to) Include them. They will be YOUR book choices, activity choices.

If there really is more - work with big ones while little ones nap. Work with little ones while big ones work or read independently. Have one big one work with little ones while you work with other big one, and vice versa.

God always creates a way.

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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Today at My House.

DD16 calls from friend’s house, half-way across the country: "Mom, you want to hear really bad news? — I forgot my math book at home." "You want to hear even worse news? —

Read the rest here.

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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Please take a moment to read Dick Jones’ article at American Vision - Today. Here’s a brief quote:

… Discipling, conversely, is a dual approach. The child is still presented with academic as well as biblical facts, stories, and examples. Let’s call this collection of material our “tools.” But in the discipling approach these academic and the biblical tools are carefully woven together into an integrated, coordinated whole. And it’s done daily on a subject-by-subject basis. When done well, this composite will give your children what is called a “biblical worldview.” Once ingrained, it lets the grown child see that, when applied daily to all of life (and unto God) it will provide a practical foundation for managing every situation at work, in marriage, at home, at play, at church, in illness, in one’s planning and ambitions, in political contributions to the community, etc., every day, forever. …

This is what L.E.D. is all about.

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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This week I’ve been experimenting with pdf organizers, to see if they are really an improvement to my folder hierarchy system I’ve always used. Out of the 4 options that sounded like most likely candidates, 2 were eliminated early on. iTunes (free and a great app for your music collection) is not a good organizer for a large collection of pdf’s - (that’s not what it was designed for, but I can be used for a small number of pdf’s.). And Papers is geared toward scientific/academic/medical journals - so a little more feature specific than normal home ed needs.

Of the remaining 2 apps, already I am leaning toward Yep. I love the visual lay out. Like it states, it is like iPhoto for your pdf’s. But Yojimbo seems to have more features. You can organize more than just pdf’s - notes, images, bookmarks, web archives, passwords, and serial numbers in Yojimbo. It also has a little tab dock that sits on the edge of your desktop that you can drop files into, so you don’t have to switch back and forth between programs. That is handy. (But Yep automatically adds your new pdf’s so you don’t need that drop feature -  for the pdf’s anyhow.) You are able to color code and flag files if you want. I really like those features too. But I’m not sure they outweigh the icon/preview of Yep. And ….

I don’t like that Yojimbo imports all my pdf files rather than just finds them. It crashed on me the first 2 times I tried to use it. I have a large number of pdf’s and it won’t import them all at once. I’ll have to bring them in a few at a time, which will take a LONG time - and take up more disk space (having 2 copies). Then they will view in Yojimbo, rather than my default Preview. In Yep it automatically searches my computer and finds all pdf files and shows them to me - quick and easy.

In both apps you can add tags, and notes/comments, and create smart folders. In Yojimbo you can also encrypt your files - perhaps helpful if you are putting in passwords and serial numbers. Yojimbo looks and functions much like a cross between Mail and Preview. Yep looks more like iPhoto - but… You can view in list or image mode. You have 2 sidebars, in which you have listed - on the left, changing your view to: 1) all your tages, 2) all your Collections (folders you’ve organized into Smart or regular), 3) all the folders on your user name. On the right: if you have no file selected - total document count, page count, tag count, as well as most popular tags. When you select a file, the right sidebar gives you the info about the file - all the general finder info, tags - you can add these here, name - you can change here, original creation date - you can change, author - you can change, description (same as notes/comments - Add anything you want. This is a handy feature for me in both apps.), location (folder hierarchy), URL - you can add one, and a preview pic.

Yep also has a magnifying loupe. And also when you double click on a file, it enlarges to fill the window, and gives you the options of hand or text tools, print or email, rotate, open with (Preview or other viewer), or  view full screen.

The costs of the apps are within $5, so that isn’t much of a deciding factor. Yojimbo is priced at $5 more, but you can get the educational license if you are a home educators, which makes it $5 less. So we’re talking between $30 and $40 for either program.

You’ll have to decide for yourself. Both are available for a free trial period. So play with both and see if a pdf app might be helpful for organizing all your ebooks and other pdf files.

P.S. Another feature I’m exploring. In Yojimbo I can add "Notes". I experimented with copying and dropping from Emails I want to save. I am on several home ed elists, which have many helpful tips I like to keep - and organizing by subject, etc. is a great help. In Yep I can do this too, by printing as "Save pdf to Yep". Then I can tag each and quickly search and find all the emails on a topic. Yojimbo also has a "Save pdf to Yojimbo" feature.

BTW, these are both Mac apps. I got started on this by the recommendation from Michelle Gefflin for My eBook Library (found the link) which is for Windows XP and Vista only, but will organize ALL formats of ebooks, and is more feature specific to ebooks - not just pdf’s in general. I’ve haven’t found that in a Mac app yet.

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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Last year I wrote a post or two (1, 2, 3) about using ebooks. I am not against ebooks, I have found them very helpful in our learning. But my conclusion was, I am not out to piece together all our learning through free ebooks. That would limit us beyond what is acceptable to me for our home.

2 weeks ago I wrote about organizing your ebooks and free downloads, in conjunction with the UHSE which will give you plenty to organize. I recommended a basic file folder hierarchy. It works.

However, after reading Michelle Gefflin’s ebook about organizing your ebooks, (received through the UHSE, but you can get a free copy too, even if you aren’t a Member of the Expo) I am experimenting with pdf organizer apps. These may have some advantages over just the folder method.

Michelle recommended ‘My eBook Library’, which is only for Windows XP/Vista. (I don’t see a link to it in Michelle’s book, and am not taking the time to look it up since I’m a Mac user.) I am a Mac user, and Michelle didn’t have a recommendation, so I went on a search. Here’s what I’ve found so far, and I’ll write more after I experiment with them a bit. ‘Yep‘ and ‘Yojimbo‘ seem to be the best options. There is also a way to use iTunes, which would be Free, but I’m not finding it very viable if you have a lot of pdf’s/ebooks. ‘Papers‘ is another option, but is specifically for scientific articles so has features applicable to that, and may be too genre specific for your general home ed use.

Michelle also recommended the Kindle, eInk ebook reader. I have ignored it up until now, but am giving it another look. Even though I’m now intrigued, it is still way too pricey for me to think seriously of getting it. Perhaps the next gen will come with a reduced price.

More about Michelle’s ebook:

Do you find you enthusiastically download the latest ebook deal or free offer, then promptly forget you have them? Do you even wonder how ebooks can benefit your busy homeschool life, especially when you have a growing library of print resources already?

Learn how to manage all those elusive files and actually use them! You’ll be astonished at how easy it is with a free downloadable tool you’ll find all about in this helpful resource from Yes, You Can! Publications.

http://www.yesyoucanpublications.com/manage-ebooks.html

For Me and My House ~ At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @ Me and My House ~ Discipleship for Life!
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