Refer a Friend or Yourself to Sonlight and get a great gift...

I hope your summer [the photo is a picture of summer in Kentucky] has been a great one and that you have had an opportunity to do something you love in the past few months.

I have been able to do two of my favorite things this summer:

• Encourage and talk with homeschooling parents
• Read great books

That is why I LOVE being a Sonlight Consultant—the parents and the books! As I was thinking about my favorite Sonlight book- The Great and Terrible Quest--which is one I never would have read [or even heard about] had I not been using Sonlight with my kids; I thought of you and all the other parents who love great books.

The Great and Terrible Quest is a wonderful book because while being mysterious, it conveys some important values that are missing in many books. It drives home the message of selflessness, honor, courage, looking out for others, sacrifice and so much more. The characters seem very real and symbolize the best and worst of society.

At any rate, because of my love for books and homeschooling parents I have decided to make this offer:

If you have any NEW-TO-SONLIGHT friends** that are interested in Sonlight, please refer them to me so I can be their personal consultant. You can either email me their names and addresses or they can contact me directly [via email or phone] and let me know that you referred them.

When they place a Sonlight order of $50 or more I will send you The Great and Terrible Quest*  or the Norman Rockwell print "The Land of Enchantment" as a thank you gift and I will become their personal consultant so they can email or call me year round with questions and concerns. It is a win-win situation for everyone.

As always, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help or encourage you. I have many helpful tips and suggestions regarding homeschooling and parenting on my Sonlight web page at www.sonlight.com/jillevely. Feel free to peruse it when you have a chance.

Thanks for using Sonlight and may you have a great school year.

If you are not yet a Sonlight customer and have never signed up with a consultant at a convention, and want to refer yourself that is allowed!
Just let me know your name and address and after you place a $50 or more order, I will send you either the Great and Terrible Quest or  the Norman Rockwell Print.

[Norman Rockwell's "The Land of Enchantment" from The Saturday Evening Post. Full-color 12.75" x 23" print on heavy art stock.]


Take care,

Jill

Email me at BluegrassJill@gmail.com



**A New to Sonlight Friend is one who has never ordered from Sonlight or signed up with another consultant. They are also new if they ordered only a catalog or if they ordered under $100 (total lifetime) worth of Sonlight materials.

I'm on a Quest...

I hope your summer [photo is a picture of summer in Kentucky] has been a great one and that you have had an opportunity to do something you love in the past few months.

I have been able to do two of my favorite things this summer:


* Encourage and talk with homeschooling parents
* Read great books

That is why I LOVE being a Sonlight Consultant—the parents and the books! As I was thinking about my favorite Sonlight book- The Great and Terrible Quest--which is one I never would have read [or even heard about] had I not been using Sonlight with my kids; I thought of you and all the other parents who love great books.

The Great and Terrible Quest is a wonderful book because while being mysterious, it conveys some important values that are missing in many books. It drives home the message of selflessness, honor, courage, looking out for others, sacrifice and so much more. The characters seem very real and symbolize the best and worst of society.

At any rate, because of my love for books and homeschooling parents I have decided to make this offer:

If you have any NEW-TO-SONLIGHT friends** that are interested in Sonlight, please refer them to me so I can be their personal consultant. You can either email me their names and addresses or they can contact me directly [via email or phone] and let me know that you referred them.

When they place a Sonlight order of $50 or more I will send you The Great and Terrible Quest* as a thank you gift and I will become their personal consultant so they can email or call me year round with questions and concerns. It is a win-win situation for everyone.

As always, please let me know if there is anything I can do to help or encourage you. I have many helpful tips and suggestions regarding homeschooling and parenting on my Sonlight web page at www.sonlight.com/jillevely. Feel free to peruse it when you have a chance.

Thanks for using Sonlight and may you have a great school year.


If you are not yet a Sonlight customer and have never signed up with a consultant at a convention, and want to refer yourself that is allowed! Just let me know your name and address and after you place a $50 or more order, I will send you either the Great and Terrible Quest or Home Price with our 100 year old family doughnut recipe [at least I think it is that old!]


Take care,

Jill


*If you would rather have Homer Price along with a copy of our 100 year old family doughnut recipe, let me know. I will have to limit this to two books per person, no matter how many friends order.


**[A New to Sonlight Friend is one who has never ordered from Sonlight or signed up with another consultant. They are also new if they ordered only a catalog or if they ordered under $100 (total lifetime) worth of Sonlight materials]

Preschoolers...gotta love a little kid

Well, I know I am not really full-time homeschooling anymore, but I do have my little niece and nephew [ages 2 and 5] come over one morning a week to play, sing songs, have snack and have Aunt Jill read to them.

I really love little kids. They are so funny in so many ways that I find myself laughing right out loud a lot when they are around. I also love watching how they play and find it amazing that their natural curiosity leads them to do the very things they should be doing to develop their fine and large motor skills.

I have been doing a lot of research lately about what kind of things you can do to help your child develop in this area. I have read state standards, researched various activities, become very familiar with the Montessori method and gleaned ideas from various websites.

And, after all this research I have come up with the top three things to help your child develop as they should. So, for those who are interested, here goes:

• Limit TV and computer games. They not only steal time, but they rob of children of imaginative play and of taking personal responsibility for entertaining themselves.
• Read, Read, Read to your children. Reading teaches them a lot about language, it excites their imagination and broadens their world. READ!
• Have classic toys available. These include [but are not limited to] balls, paper, crayons, scissors, blocks, toy cars, dolls and riding toys. With these simple toys a child can master many activities and have lots of imaginative play.

During my research I found an excellent resource for developing fine motor skills in preschool to first grade age children. I looked at many, many books and a lot of web sites, and talked to early child development teachers and this one book incorporates nearly every single idea that I found everywhere else.

It is called:

Activities for Fine Motor Skills Development, published by Teacher Created Resources. It has simple ideas, recipes, finger play games, black line masters to copy and much more. It is an amazing resource that I wish I would have had when I did my licensed home day care and when my children were young. It is well worth the price.


So if you have preschoolers I encourage you to get this book, limit TV and computer games, read to your children and have classic toys available.

Pictures from top:

• My oldest child as a preschooler. You may think he is napping, but I always think of it as recharging his batteries.
• A reminder of my hardest year--three preschoolers and temperatures that winter that were below zero most of the time. That was a looooong winter!
• Scotty--he loved hats and I particularly love this picture because it seems to capture all the fun and seriousness that is bound up in a preschooler.
• The best resource I found--very parent friendly!

Take care,
Jill

For more of my Pre-School thoughts and suggestions:

• Results of a Scientific study-Why you should keep your pre-schooler home
  
• Play is work-Is Preschool Necessary?
• Tools or Toys? A lesson from my Dad
  
• How to tame your toys--Some practical advice
  
• Ideas to Keep Preschoolers happily occupied
• The Top Three Things You Need to Know if You Have a Pre-schooler

Be Prepared...

I have an acquaintance who is a RN and recently went to an Emergency Preparedness workshop about pandemics in general. She had some great advice that I thought I would share with you.

I am not an alarmist, but I am very practical and I like to be prepared. When we had the ice storm here in February, my father-in-law's power went out and we had to put two kerosene heaters in his house to keep the pipes from freezing [he stayed with us, and also was in the hospital part of the time]. We had matches, but only one box, so I thought I would pick up another box to keep at his house. Do you know I could not find ANY matches at Kroger, Wal-Mart, Dollar General or our local IGA? They were totally sold out. So, after the storm when things were restocked, you can believe I stocked up on matches.

So, that leads me to this list of what you should buy now, to have on hand if you need it. Because, if you do need it, and lots of other people do too, you may not be able to get it.

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS [Electrolyte formula and essentials]

I recommend that everyone get a stash of these supplies and keep them in a plastic tub or bucket in a handy place. I put mine in a 6 gallon bucket with a lid, labeled it, and put it in my basement. Most of these things you probably have.

* Thermometer
* Soap (I have a lot of this)
* Box of disposable gloves (They sell these at Wal-Mart and pharmacies; a 50 count box was about $5.50]
* Acetaminophen (Tylenol)
* Ibuprofen (Advil)
* Bleach (REAL...chlorine bleach--UNSCENTED)
* Alcohol-based hand sanitizer (those little pumps are great next to a sick one's bed)
* Paper towels
* Tissues
* Surgical face masks ( Wal-Mart or pharmacies; 20 count for under $3.00)

Ingredients to make homemade electrolyte fluid:

* Sugar (I bought a plastic container with a screw lid so it will not get clumpy)
* Baking soda (I tucked this into a large Zip-Loc)
* salt
* sugar free (not unsweetened) Kool-Aid packages (I tucked these into a zip-loc)
* Salt Substitute(highlighted because most households do not have this on hand.) It is sold next to the salt. I paid $4.52 for a rather large canister, smaller salt shaker size was about $2.50. (This gives the drink potassium, which is essential)

Electrolyte Recipe:

1 qt water
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp table salt
3-4 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt substitute

Mix well. Can be flavored with lemon juice or sugar free Kool-Aid.

If a family member is having trouble keeping down any fluids, this can be spoon fed. Some will prefer it cold...others just room temperature. KEEP SPOONING.

This is the mix that is used in crisis situations world-wide, when IVs are not available. It can save lives.

NOTE: Check with your pediatrician or other MD regarding their opinion on the situation. In normal circumstances...a MD will want to see a child who is dehydrated. This mix is for when things go bad in society or the weather is too bad to reach medical help or when there is an epidemic...and a doctor visit may not be possible.

To make a good disinfectant...mix 1 gallon of water with 1/4 cup of bleach. Make a fresh batch every time it is used.

Compile these supplies and keep the two recipes with the supplies...and you will be prepared to help others...It is not too expensive and not a difficult thing to do.

My old Girl Scout training comes to mind: Be Prepared

Take care,
Jill

Shannon R won the book drawing!

Hi Shannon-

Congratulations! You won the Sonlight Cookbook. Contact me via email jill@graceevangel.org with your mailing address and I will get it sent out to you ASAP! You commented on this thread: High School Credits for Sonlight Cores.

Narration for High School Students?

If you are homeschooling a high schooler [or two or three] this year I want to encourage you to use the time tested method that you may have used when you students were younger--narration. Many people who saw the value of this method when their kids were little forget all about it when their students are older.

Narration, as I am referring to it, is the practice of asking your child what they have read after they have read it. You can just ask for a summary of what they have read, or ask them their favorite story they read that day and why, or ask them to list the three most important points in today's reading, and so forth. I love using this with older students--and here is why...

When we did Sonlight Core 300 I had a hard time knowing what to discuss with my son. Sonlight provides tons of questions and answers, but there are so many that no one could possibly remember or understand all of them. When I asked my son the questions, many times he gave me a blank stare. [You know that deer-in-the-headlights look?]

So, I tried giving him the written questions [without the answers] and then asking him the answers later in the day. Well, being a smart student, he did what your student would probably do. He didn't read the book, just hunted for the answers-often without having much understanding of what it all meant. Not acceptable!

I tried just asking him to tell me what he had learned that day, and the blank stare again. Ugh!

Then I remembered narration. I asked him to take a highlighter and highlight the most important events/topics he read each day. He could not highlight whole paragraphs, just key words. Then, with my trusty Sonlight questions [with answer key] in my lap, I would say,

"So, what are the most important topics you read about today?"

Scotty would look at his highlighted key words [did I mention, this is a great skill to have in preparation for college] and tell me about that event. Then he would go to the next one. He would generally hit about 80% of the major topics and showed understanding of them. I would fill him in on anything he missed that was significant and tell him about topics that were in my study guide but may not have been in his book. This discussion/narration took about 15-30 minutes a day.

I think it accomplished many things:

• It taught him to find major concepts and to weed out those that were not so important.
• It taught him to make highlighted notes which most students don't learn to do until they are in college.
• It gave him the opportunity to take what he had read and re-phrase it into his own words, giving his interpretation and opinion. I think this is a very important life skill.
• It gave us a structured time to connect, review and talk about our core beliefs.

So, if you want to accomplish any of the above tasks, you may want to consider using narration with your high school student. I was amazed how much we both learned using this age-old technique.

Take care,
Jill


This worked great!

For More High School Helps

• High School Credits for Sonlight Cores
• Grading High School Work-Contract for Grade
• High School Transcripts-What's a mom to do?
• Dictation for High School Students?