Stephen: A Soldier of the Cross
The Cross Triumphant
SAVE $5You all know I’m a HUGE proponent of timelines. I have written 2 books on timelines–one including a pictorial timeline framework I designed, that we feel is the best way to build a timeline, and the other a book on how to make many different types of timelines, one that will be right for you. Timeline APPS are specialty of my friend Terri Johnson of Knowledge Quest.
We have loved the Wonders of Old pre-made timeline apps by Knowledge Quest, and now am really loving the new do-it-yourself timeline app they just released today, Timeline Builder. This app just made making a timeline easier. No wall space needed. No pictures to clip and tape. (Not that we’ll be giving up our wall one, but this will add some great benefits for another option, especially for more specialized timelines.) Our son and I just made a short one of his life, to test it out. How fun!
With Timeline Builder you can make your timelineS portable and take them with you. Yes! as many timelines as you’d like to make, with the information and time span you want on each one. Not only can you carry your timelines with you for you to look at. You can also share them with others through email, or your Photos app, or file sharing in iTunes for sharing with other Timeline Builder users.
Since you are custom building your timeline, you do need to provide the pictures for it. But it is quite simple to do. These can be pictures from your Photos app, or you can grab them from the internet and paste them in. There’s also a button to search Wikipedia and add public domain pics you find there.
You do also need to fill in each information space for each new event you add, or it won’t post the new event. This includes not only an event name and date, but also a “description.” (You can opt out of adding a picture.) The “date” is also quite particular, which is taking a bit of getting used to for me. You must have Month Day, Year Era (BC, AD, BCE, CE) ie. September 11, 2012 AD. If you don’t know the Month or Day, you have to just use Year Era. (You can’t just have Month without Day.) You also must completely spell out each month, no abbreviations or numbers. ie. You can’t put 9/11/2012 or Sept. 11, 2012 or September 2012 AD.
Timeline Builder adds your events along the timeline, just where they belong. Once you’ve added the events, you can move the pictures around as you please, yet they remain anchored to the line where they belong. You can also resize pictures to emphasize specific ones. Double tapping an event will bring up its description. You can zoom in or out, to spread events out or bring them in closer, which is very helpful depending on how long of a timespan you are covering and how many events you are adding. Background music can be listened to or muted. Not happy with your timeline? Edit events, or Delete events you decide to leave out, or even Delete the entire timeline if you choose. Moved your events into weird positions and you don’t like it? Click Snap to Vertical on each to line them back up perpendicular to the line.
This is a fun app that is also very helpful. The only thing better than using a timeline to learn history in context, is making your own timeline! Timeline Builder is easy to use and very versatile. You can make very nice looking timelines that you can save pictures of. I look forward to using this feature to print timelines and add them to our notebooks. We enjoy making a lot of “Closer Look” timelines for specific things, and Timeline Builder will be the perfect tool to make these quick, specialized timelines.
Watch the video below, if you want more information. Then pick up Timeline Builder for your iPad at the iTunes App Store for the introductory price of $3.99. (Will be $6.99) Be sure to leave a review if you purchase this app and enjoy it. Check out the Knowledge Quest website for an added bonus for those that purchase and review this app (for a limited time.)
There’s still time to join the Notebooking Pages Treasury before the Sale is over – but today is the last day!
Join the Notebooking Pages Treasury now during their NotebookingPages.com Back-2-School Fun Sale Event and receive access to thousands of printable notebooking pages as well as their new web-app, The Notebooking Publisher™, designed for creating, customizing, & completing your own notebooking pages! Daily prize drawing for all new and renewing members … and enter drawings for other prizes each day! Ten days only: August 1st – August 10th.
More info? Watch here.
Ready to get rid of the busywork, dry workbooks, or a monotonous course of study, and instead unleash a love of learning in your children that can be found with great books and notebooking?
Join the Notebooking Pages Treasury now during their NotebookingPages.com Back-2-School Fun Sale Event and receive access to thousands of printable notebooking pages as well as their new web-app, The Notebooking Publisher™, designed for creating, customizing, & completing your own notebooking pages!
This is the absolute BEST time to get the BEST price on the Notebooking Pages Treasury Membership. Nearly every month, NotebookingPages.com adds new pages/products to the membership area increasing the value of their memberships. In addition to the 100s of new notebooking pages add in the past year, NotebookingPages.com also added their invaluable new tool, The Notebooking Publisher™ web-app to the memberships… at no extra cost to active members!
To reflect the increasing value of memberships, the cost of new memberships goes up each September. However, right now, during their 10 day sale event, you can get your new membership at a price BELOW their current rate … the absolute BEST price on these memberships before they change. On September 1st, costs of new memberships will go up to $79.95.
Daily prize drawing for all new and renewing members … buy early and be entered into the drawing each day! Ten days only: August 1st – August 10th.
Not ready for a membership?
Save $10 on NotebookingPages.com specially priced bundles, like the History Timeline & Notebooking Bundle or the State Study Notebooking Bundle.
-OR-
Save 10% on ANY NotebookingPages.com order over $10.
Visit their Notebooking Shop for details on these specials.
A Cry from Egypt tells the story of the days leading up to the Exodus from Egypt from an Israelite family’s perspective. In the Bible we see this story from the viewpoint of Pharaoh’s palace and the miracles and pronouncements Moses made there. In A Cry from Egypt we see a fictional account of this story from the perspective of Hebrew slaves, living in Goshen, who aren’t quite sure what’s going on but are trusting God. The author, Hope Auer, leads you to compassion for them from the first page.
The main character of A Cry from Egypt is Jarah, a young Hebrew slave girl. Your middle aged children especially, (about ages 9-13,) will be drawn to her and her family and friends. They’ll see life that isn’t “fair”, a family’s love and struggles, and friends that make even a very hard life enriched. They’ll see the tension in a home where one parent is a believer and the other isn’t. They’ll see prejudice overcome by kindness. They’ll see love blossom and be led aright. Miss Auer shows that family life back then and today have many similarities in the issues it deals with, and packs in a lot of Biblical thought in working through those universal issues. Above all, she shows that universally, God is sovereign, and He loves and cares for His people in all ages and times.
I enjoyed reading this book. It presents a familiar story from a fresh outlook, and has plenty of action to keep the storyline moving. Miss Auer did her research, and documents it, and does a good job of showing what it was like to live in that time and place. I think it would be a good book for either your middle aged readers to read on their own, or for reading together as a family read-aloud. The story is not so deep that it will go over your younger children’s heads, but the action and older characters will keep your older children interested too.
For our studies of this time period in Ancient Egypt, in addition to the Bible, we have read and enjoyed two other fictional works, both written in the 1800’s, The Sign Above the Door, by William Canfield, written from the perspective of an Egyptian Governor’s household during these events, and The Cat of Bubastes, by G.A. Henty, (audiobook) more a story of Egyptian life. Both of those are written at a little higher level of understanding. A Cry from Egypt, written for a little younger audience than those and from a Hebrew slave’s perspective—and as truly Christian fiction, without preachiness or moralizing—is a welcome addition to our recommendations for this time period.
A Cry from Egypt is published by Great Waters Press (the authors of Raising Real Men) and is available from the author here. Book 2 in The Promised Land series is coming soon.
As I told you last night, I have more details for even more excitement to share with you today. Yesterday I announced that we are now affiliate partners with Notebooking Pages, to provide you more great pre-designed Notebooking Pages for your Book of Remembrance Journals.
Today I’d like to invite you to the Launch Party of Notebooking Pages newest resource, that I’m SO excited about.
The Notebooking Publisher™ is a new web app, available to Notebooking Pages Treasury Members, that will allow you to customize, create, and complete your Notebooking Pages online, before printing out. You can use one of their templates, or customize one of their templates, or even start from scratch.
The Notebooking Publisher™ will be unveiled tonight, Tues. May 22, 2012, at 7 p.m. Central (8 Eastern, 5 Pacific) at The Notebooking Publisher™ Launch Party. Not only will you get more details about this new web app, but there will also be plenty of prizes and freebies from your favorite home ed suppliers, including Me & My House ministries.
Here’s a bit more about The Notebooking Publisher™. Click here to learn more. Then join us at the Party tonight!
Why would we create The Notebooking Publisher™?
Top Three Reasons:
#1 So older kids can TYPE their narrations, reports, and other written work.
#2 So kids can be part of the design & layout process.
#3 So there would be no limit to the artwork available — now you can add your own images instead of waiting for us to have a particular topic available.OK, maybe just one more because it’s a biggie…
#4 There’s a learning curve involved in using the various desktop software packages out there, not to mention a hefty cost. The Notebooking Publisher™ is SUPER simple to use. AND, it will come preloaded with 100s of our templates.
See you at the Party!
Journaling or Notebooking is a huge part of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™. It is the method we use for documenting our studies in our Book of Remembrance Journals, as we don’t use workbooks, quizzes or tests. Journaling can be done on plain paper, but we like to make special Notebooking pages. Why?
But, of course, designing Journaling pages takes time and some effort. Since this designing of pages isn’t vital to our education, (I think MyMini Books of Remembrance – Lapbooks – need to be more so,) I’m happy to utilize Notebooking pages that have been designed by others, when they fit the topics we study. And Debra Reed, of Notebooking Pages has designed plenty to fit most of our needs (and perhaps yours too.)
You can buy individual sets of Notebooking Pages from Debra, or for a super deal, you can become a Treasury Member and have access for a full year to thousands of Notebooking Pages that Debra offers (including some 3-D ones for designing your MyMini Books of Remembrance – lapbooks), both current and future (while you are a member.) Debra adds new pages every 4-6 weeks. Inexpensive Annual Renewal will keep you getting everything to come.
But, something even greater is in the works at Notebooking Pages. The Notebooking Publisher™ is a new web app being added to the Treasury Membership site that will help you and your children create completely customized Notebooking Pages, easily. You’ll be able to customize text, photos, clip art, and add pre-loaded embellishments to the 100’s of pre-designed templates there, or design your own! Your students can also type their papers right onto the templates before printing, rather than writing on them by hand. (More about that tomorrow.)
The Treasury Membership is already a super value, at $74.95 for over $600 worth of Notebooking Pages (plus all the new updates over the next year). The Notebooking Publisher™ is no doubt worth this amount also, all by itself. But it will be included FREE for members. But that’s not all. (I feel like a infomercial salesman. But this truly is so exciting!) Debra is giving a 25% discount AND an Additional 3 months Membership to those that join the Treasury Membership (or renew) this month. This is a super outstanding value. And NOW is the time to join, and save yourself a lot of time and headaches trying to design your own Journaling pages.
Me & My House will continue to offer our exclusive Journaling Pages specific to our Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ studies. But, with our new affiliate partnership with Notebooking Pages, these will be of great help for your general studies.
Tomorrow morning I’ll share more about the new Notebooking Publisher™, and a special party to launch it tomorrow night!
Homeschooling Today magazine is celebrating its 20th Anniversary!
HST is a wonderful, helpful homeschool magazine that is probably our favorite. We have continued to subscribe to since its beginning! Along with encouragement and equipping articles for parents, it is packed with plenty of practical application articles for use with your children. One of our favorites has been the art appreciation articles, with pictures.
To celebrate its anniversary, they are doing some GREAT GIVEAWAYS! AND Me & My House ministries has partnered with them by providing some of OUR resources to be included in the giveaways. Click the image or HERE for more info and to sign up for the Giveaways.
