Attn: Homeschooling Mamas - Mardel is having a sale

I was at Mardel last night picking up some of my kid's homeschooling curriculum and they had signs all over the store. Next Thursday, July 17th, they are having special hours 8 AM to 10 PM with 20% of all the education stuff. They carry a lot of HS books I was looking for like Handwriting without Tears and Wordly Wise and Easy Grammar. They had others like Saxon math. Lots of other stuff too. If anybody knows if they carry Singapore Math, post in the comments. I did not find it and they were closing so I didn't have time to ask, but I'm thinking of trying another one to see if they carry it, I had heard they did carry it.

I'm not sure what's not included in the sale, but it's all education and office stuff on sale. They do have an ad on their website for this sale.

Also, I don't know if it is a well known thing, but Homeschool Buyer's Coop is a great place to buy discount programs in a co-op. I purchased a subscription for Mr. E for Click n Read phonics. He LOVES it. He just started and he's already learning to read his very first words. He's 4 yrs old and has been dying to read for quite some time, but was not into doing phonics with me. He wanted something he could do himself, and this program is wonderful for that. At the co-op, it is only $29.99 for a lifetime subscription for 1 child. Additional children are cheaper to add.

Anyway Homeschool Buyer's Coop is free to join. You can even print off a homeschool teacher ID for yourself so you can get discounts where educators get discounts. They don't charge a membership, just fees for when you buy products. So far I am really impressed.

And Miss Em wanted to go ahead and start school, so I was going to sign her up for Big Spelling Time, but they now are called Big IQ Kids and have spelling, vocabulary, math, and states and a special price of $59.99 for a 1 yr subscription to all 4 and I think I read that was a limited time price. She loves it, everything but math. The math is hard without writing stuff down, so we are going to do math in workbooks, but the vocabulary and spelling are fun, and when you finish a lesson, you get tokens to go play games. I had Em do the demo lessons and she really enjoyed them before we purchased it.

FYI - Dollar Tree and cheap t-shirts and homeschooling

So if you got a Dollar Tree, I highly suggest going. Today mine had some really nice t-shirts for $1, like Hane's Just My Size and some nice Beefy Ts with several different styles from sleeveless to regular t's to even long sleeve. I got some cute pink ones for $1/ea. And if you live near Rockwall, TX, the manager told me he was putting out 5 more boxes full of t-shirts tomorrow. All sizes, all kinds. I grabbed a few for me and the kids to applique. I also picked up some onesies for my niece who is turning 1 yrs old. I'm going to applique something adorable for her and hopefully I can remember to take pictures and sew and show.

And I finally chose my curriculum for each child. I was originally wanting to do a packaged curriculum, but I didn't like the constrictiveness of it, so I created my own, lol. I'm such a control freak (that's my big secret, lol).

Anyway, so here is what we are going to do for the school year:

Ms Em will be a 4/5th grader -

Spelling - www.Spellingtime.com - this one is $38.88/yr for 1 child for 12 months

Math - Teaching Textbooks - www.teachingtextbooks.com - this starts in 5th grade math, I think they are starting a 4th grade soon though, but Ms Em passed the entrance exam to take 5th grade math. This one goes all the way up to precalculus.

Handwriting without Tears - www.hwtears.com

Wordly Wise - vocabulary workbooks (unless I like the new vocabulary website that the spellingtime people are launching this summer called http://www.bigvocabtime.com) - http://www.epsbooks.com/dynamic/catalog/series.asp?seriesonly=2431m

Grammer - Easy Grammer - workbooks for grammer/english - http://www.easygrammar.com/index2.html

Reading - Book Adventures - This is FREE - http://www.bookadventure.org/ - you chose your grade level, if you want easy , medium, or hard, and what kind of books interest you and then it gives you a giant list of books. After you have read the book, you come back and they have a quizz to take for your book.

History - Story of the World - http://peacehillpress.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=2 - I love this series of books. It's made to read history to your child.

Science - Young Scientist Club - http://www.theyoungscientistsclub.com/ - this can come monthly or bimonthly and kits build upon each other.

Art - http://www.meetthemasters.com/homeschool/index.html - they are moving to a completely online curriculum this summer


Mr E. - He is supposed to be PreK 4, but we are going to do kindergarten

Click n' Read Phonics - https://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/index.php?option=com_epp_offer&Itemid=570

Handwriting Without Tears

Singapore Math - Kindergarten - http://www.singaporemath.com/

Meet the Masters

Young Scientists Club