Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Getting ready for school plus a Music Giveaway

The give away info is at the end and has nothing to do with the homeschool portion of the post.

I spent most of the day getting our extensive book collection into my tracking program. I use the free version of Homeschool Tracker to keep the records I need for the State of Colorado. It offers much more than I need right now but we can grow into it and there is a paid version if we ever out grow it. It is simple to use and while I wish it would let me have a bit more flexibility in bulk entry it works great for the price. ;)


Now the iPad apps that I have download so far. I'll start with the ones that The Boy is willing to play with before we even 'start school' they are all created by Dan Russell-Pinson and he LOVES them.
  1. Rocket Math It covers everything from counting, money, time, patterns, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. But in doing that you get to build rockets and use the 'money' you earn to buy different parts. He loves experimenting with his rockets and building new ones. I'm going to use this to help him get his basic math facts into his head.
  2. Stack the States I downloaded this tonight and The Boy and DH are playing it right now as I type this up. He is learning interesting things about the states and it will tie in with my geography lessons for this year. I'm so happy he is engaged with it enough to learn the facts as well as trying to stack the states up high enough to cross the 'finish line' 
  3. Presidents vs Aliens You take out the Aliens with the Presidents. How freaking cool is that! Really cool that is how much. He was not as interested in the President facts, but he did love shooting aliens with the president heads. ;) 
The great thing about all 3 of those is they have a free version to try it out and even if you want to buy the full version they are less than $2. I can't beat that with anything else I can get my hands on right now.

In the productivity category I have loaded Evernote on my laptop, my Android phone and the iPad. Right now I'm using it to put my lesson plans in including websites I want to use during specific lessons. It doesn't matter what platform I'm on I can access all of it and I can update it from any of them as well. I will say that it is easiest to update lots of type.

Science I have found an app called Science 360 it has many videos on lots of different science subjects. Good content and even better it is free.

That's enough of that, I need to wrap this up now, so now on to the giveaway.

I love music, it lifts my soul up and makes me happy. I can't play it, I can't discuss it technically, and I certainly can't sing but I love listening to it. That said one of my favorite artists is Suzy Bogguss. We saw her in concert last fall with some friends and I bought her CD called Wildwood Flower that is her singing traditional American Folk songs. I love it, I knew she was going to try to get it sold in Cracker Barrel  restaurants. I forgot I bought it, it is called something else now, and well I bought it again. So I have a brand new never opened copyt of Suzy Bogguss American Folk Songbook to give away.
The cover with bonus cleavage.


To get it leave a comment by noon on Friday August 12 and I'll pick a random person to get it.

Also, trust me none of this is sponsored by anyone, well the iPad was sponsored by my Parents but the apps and the CD are all me. 

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Tried to comment on your blog, but blogger is down right now and won't let me comment. I love Suzy Boggess and that would be a fabulous thing for the kids' music appreciation class Daddy is teaching. And I'm going to have to check out those iPad apps. Both the girls could use some math help right now.

Place holder for VS so I don't forget.

Clyde said...

Are you sure?? There are 10 songs on Wildwood Flower, but there are 17 on American Folk Songbook. I won't be giving any of my copies away!

Clyde

Unknown said...

Clyde is correct there are extra songs on the American Folk Songbook. So you will win more songs than I have now. :D

tyumenqueen said...

Those programs sound like just the ticket for my grandchildren and helping keep them engaged! I sing in a Sweet Adeline Chorus and love music. Thanks so much for a wonderful give-away! ..Vicki from Oklahoma