Manila International Book Fair – A Book Lover’s Paradise

Ever since this year started, my children and I have been talking about the Manila International Book Fair. We reminisced about the good time we had going there two years ago. That time, it was held at the World Trade Center and there were just so many exhibitors! It took us all of four days to really go through all the exhibitors. The other fun for us were all the freebies that we got. Online casino Ireland. ###

So this year, after attending the OMF Lit opening at BF Homes, Paranaque where I received free tickets to the MIBF, my daughters and I were all giddy with excitement at the prospect of going to the book fair.

Yesterday, the day finally came and we went of to the first day of the MIBF. Here are a few pictures that we got. We didn’t take so much pictures because we were all just busy browsing the books! Hehe!

Book signing and meet and greet with one of our favorite authors, “Tito Dok”, Dr. Luis Gatmaitan. My kids grew up reading Tito Dok books. This is at the OMF Lit booth.

Here is Artsy Princess joining one of

the contests by 702 DZAS. She won

Tito Dok’s new book, “Nakupo!

Hinihika si Hermie”

A storytelling session with

Teacher Melody Remorca

is never boring! OMF LIt

was very generous with

all their giveaways!

We are joined by Tito Dok

Luis Gatmaitan himself

who answered our

questions about asthma

and other health-related

questions.

Anybody who will ask Tito

Dok a question gets a

prize, again. :) More free

books, books, books!!!

First, a picture, before I

asked my question.Tito

Dok and Melody were

doing the scout salute. I

was just holding two

fingers up, never having

been a girl scout myself.

I was really happy to see

these series of books at

the Navigators MInistries

booth. My daughters and I

enjoyed reading the True

Colors series about teen

issues that our teens are facing today. It sparked so many discussions among us at home. Here is my review for these books. If you buy them from the book fair, Navigator Ministries gives a special book fair discount. Standing here with me is Navigator’s Book Store Manager, Ms. Erline Osmena.

Above are some beautiful journals by notesCo. notesCo are owned and distributed by friends of mine. They have journals for devotions, daily planners, weekly planners and small notebooks. The planners are perpetual meaning they only show the months and you can put down the dates and year yourself. The pages have Bible verses printed on them. What makes these journals different from the notebooks already available commercially are the beautiful Italian leather covers with various colors and patterns. You can choose which ones suit you the best. The prices are the best I’ve seen so far. Book fair prices range from P150.00 for the smallest notebooks to P395.00 for the Executive Planners. These are great Christmas gifts if you’re planning to buy early. These journals / planners are also great as corporate giveaways. 

If you missed the previous days, you still have the chance to catch the Manila International Book Fair tomorrow on its last day. It is held at the SMX beside Mall of Asia and is open from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Entrance is P20.00 for adults and P15.00 for children.

You can contact Pastor Cesar Gallarin and Marissa Gallarin through mobile no. 0927 7307636 or email them at gallarinmv at yahoo dot com or thepotterswork at yahoo dot com if you are interested to order.

A Valuable FREEBIE for Homeschoolers

Once again, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine has published another great resource for homeschoolers ~ The New School Year ~ an ebook for planning your school year. The great news is that this valuable resource is FREE!

Go here to download this FREE ebook.

Book Review: Disciple Like Jesus for Parents by Alan Melton and Paul Dean

Publisher: Xulon Press

Disciple Like Jesus for Parents – Following Jesus’ Methods and Enjoying the Blessings of Children, written by Alan Melton and Paul Dean, is a book for parents, grandparents who are committed to seeing that their children and grandchildren grow in the knowledge of the Lord and will obey God’s will for their lives.

The book starts with the reasons and passages in the Bible that show that it is God’s will and command for parents to take full responsibility for discipling their children. Discipleship and the study of God’s word should not be given over to others, but it is the parents who should disciple their own children from birth. Discipleship is also a process that will continue on for the rest of the natural lives of the parent and child.

It then moves on to how parents can go about discipling their children. The example studied is how Jesus discipled his own 12 disciples – he stayed with them, lived with them, taught them, knew them well, prayed for them, and finally sent them out in twos. Even after having sent them out, he prepared them for the ‘wolves’ that they will soon be meeting.

How appropriate that this book was written at this time, when we see so many troubled children – teens and adults alike – all around us. Parents are challenged that if they love the Lord, they will do as He commands and teach their own children about His ways and His will. It takes a comprehensive look at how Jesus took care of His 12 disciples and explains how we can apply this to our own children. The authors are realistic in their writing in that they know that there are so many distractions that parents face today, but they also continue to challenge parents to make hard choices for their children’s sake.

Disciple Like Jesus is a ministry whose purpose is to show parents, grandparents and church leaders that children who grew up in church are not being discipled resulting in children that stray away from the Christian faith when they grow up. It seeks to enlighten, encourage and equip parents and grandparents to disciple their children.

Go here for a Free E-Book Disciple Like Jesus, an Introduction for Parents and Grandparents, by Alan Melton.

Disciple Like Jesus for Parents is available at the following online retail stores:

Barnes and Noble

Book Review: June Bug by Chris Fabry

Publisher: Tyndale

Category: Fiction / Family / General

Pages: 326

June Bug, 10 years old, has always believed everything her dad told her. She knew that their family is different - she and her Dad live in their old RV and travel around the United States, never staying at a place long enough to establish relationships and put down roots; she has never met somebody related to her or her dad; but she also knew and relied on her confidence that her Dad loved her very much.

Until that fateful day in Walmart when she sees her picture on the Missing Children’s poster with a different name on it. She strives to know everything about herself and her dad.In the process, her dad, John, faces his past and confronts the pain that he has run away from as she herself discovers her own roots.

A beautifully written story by Chris Fabry, June Bug, is a story about families – the love, the pain, the hope, the disappointments. It drives home the truth that family is not just those who are related by blood, but family is there as long as you have love, faithfulness, forgiveness and hope. June Bug’s young faith in God carries her through all the events happening in her life as the truth about her past is revealed. The characters created by Chris Fabry are very realistic. The story is humorous, dramatic and heartwarming. Make sure that you have plenty of time when you start reading this book because it is hard to put down. And have some tissue paper beside you because the ending is heart-wrenching.

An Encouragement for Me

“Hi, Michelle! I’ve been reading your blogs and I’ve been so blessed and encouraged by your journey in your homeschooling. Praise God for enabling you to do that! I’m…homeschooling my 11-year old identical twins. I couldn’t say I’m already good at it but by God’s grace learning much especially from moms like you. I’ve had a lot of failures in the past re my sons’ homeschooling but I think it isn’t late to apply what I’ve learned from all of you. Again thank you very much for all your encouraging and educational messages. I’ve included you in my weekly prayer items since what you’re doing is a ministry for the Lord. May God be glorified in all your efforts!”

I was so surprised and blessed when I opened my email this morning and received this message from another homeschooling mom. Thank you so much, CM. Thank you also for including me in your weekly prayer time, I really need that. As a blogger, I am so appreciative whenever my readers leave comments.

I believe that the Lord has given me the ministry of encouragement. I was with a group of homeschool moms before and I heard about the struggles that different families have been going through, the difficulties, the pain, tempting them to give up. This disturbed me and motivated me to start blogging about our own experience. Although I have been educating my children at home for seven years, I’ve never believed myself to be an expert at it. I’m still learning and discovering new things along with my children. Several people have already written me expressing their appreciation and this fuels me more.

Last year, when I applied to become a TOS (The Old Schoolhouse) Homeschool Crew to review homeschool products, one of the reasons I gave was that I wanted to minister to homeschool families here in the Philippines by encouragement and by exposing us all to the many available products that we can use in our own homeschools. God blessed me when they accepted me. Out of 800 applications that came in, they chose 100 bloggers. 95 resided in the US and five of us were internationals. Three are from Canada, one from Dubai, and me. We did not receive any salary doing this, but we did receive the products to review for free. Back then, the blog I used was Multiply – A Life Worth Living, which was a mishmash of our family pictures and blogs, my reviews and my homeschool blogs. Early this year, I decided to open another blog – Beyond The Silver and The Gold – A Filipino Family’s Homeschool Journey, which focused on our homeschooling, some homeschool issues in the Philippines and my homeschool reviews.

When my term ended in TOS Homeschool Crew, I learned that I can review books from Christian publishers such as Thomas Nelson, NavPress US, Zondervan, and Tyndale. To be more relevant to local purchasers, I’ve also started reviewing books published by Navpress Philippines that are locally available. These I added to my blog because the books they sent me are of good quality and written by Christian authors.

At this point I am still writing reviews for ebooks produced by The Old Schoolhouse. Aside from that, I have also contacted several companies that produce homeschool products and have asked to review their products. Some have responded positively which is why I still have homeschool products to review until now. I’m also contacted by others who want me to review their work.

Eventually, profiting from my blogs is also my goal, as I want to keep staying home with my children, but I’m not sure yet how to go about that. I’ve registered as an affiliate with The Old Schoolhouse and Christianbook.com, so if you decide that you’re purchasing something from those two online stores, please do me a kindness and purchase from my links here on my blog.

Thank you to all who have been faithfully reading my blogs and reviews. I plan to continue doing this as long as I can. May the good Lord bless us all!

Our Home Made Student Homeschool Planner Courtesy of DonnaYoung.org

This year, I’ve decided to go eclectic on our school curriculum. I am using a mix of Ambleside Online’s living books, combined with some of our local textbooks. Most of my resources came from the internet. I’ll be sharing my children’s course of study in my next blog. For now, have a look at the student planners that I’ve created for each of my children.

All the forms that I used here came from Donna Young’s website where everything is free to use. I’ve created a student planner for all three of my daughters.

I used board paper to make this cover on Microsoft Word.

The first page is our school calendar July 2009 – June 2010.

Here is the attendance sheet with our name Padrelanan Heritage of Faith Homeschool. Each child has this page in their own planner. I really like this attendance sheet because the weekends are already shaded and Donna Young provided typable PDF’s so I was able to type in our family’s homeschool name and the name of each student. I instructed my daughters to place a check mark on the days that we did school, write an S if they are sick, and FT for field trip. Seeing all those check marks give us all a lot of satisfaction.

The next two pages show the Course of Study where I have listed down every subject that she will study this school year and what books she will be using. The Course of Study can be downloaded as Typable PDF or Word. I chose Word. Since I have most of the resources in my hard drive, I also noted down which file to find them.

I included here Ambleside Online’s Scope and Sequence for all six years, this is just for my reference.

Here is the Subject Planner divider. I learned of this idea from Donna Young where instead of writing her plans weekly, which caused a lot of erasures if subjects are not done for the day, she instead made subject planner forms.

In this form, you simply write down the lessons the child has to do in the order that you want her to do it, thus preventing the erasures. The first subject is Math, but I decided to just print the Content of her Math book, every Lesson representing the lesson she has to do for a week.

This is her Grammar and Composition Planner, we are using World of Language and I’ve written down the lessons here.

The weekly planners for Ambleside Online’s Literature and History that I downloaded and is very organized, no need for me to make a new one. For Math, I just printed out the Contents page of their Math books and included those here.

I made subject planners for every subject that my child is studying. Here is where to get the forms.

Now here is where my student’s work will come in – her weekly planner. Although I’ve done most of the subject planners, I still want her to be responsible for listing down every day the subjects that she has taken up for the day. Right now, I am still dictating the lessons we are taking up daily. In the future though, I want her to take control of the subjects by deciding what she will be studying for the week based on the subject planners I’ve created.

Extras hold their List of Books Read, Volunteer Work and Achievements.

Finally, here is where the grades will be recorded.

I have to admit that this is the first time I’ve created a planner. This is because the past curriculums I’ve used were boxed curriculums so the planning has already been done for us. This year, though, is different for us. I find that having a planner is very helpful for us as it guides us daily. Although, I also don’t allow it to hold us in too much of a vice. By that I mean that we don’t necessarily have to finish all the subjects in a day. If there is really just no more time, and some subjects have not been taken up, there’s always tomorrow. Whereas in the past, we would study till 8:00PM just to finish all the subjects, this year I’ve decided that we’ll finish studying at 4:00PM everyday. It doesn’t matter if we’ve done all the subjects or not.

After I have printed everything, I took it to my neighborhood printer and binder and had it ring bound for P40.00. Not bad, huh? :)

TIP: If you click on the pictures, you'll see a larger image.

Book Review: Preacher’s Kids – Secrets & Salvation by Keleigh Crigler Hadley

Publisher: Xulon Press

Pages: 172

Preacher’s Kids – Secrets & Salvation written by a preacher’s kid (PK) herself – Mrs. Keleigh Crigler Hadley, lets us into the home of one pastor’s family. The author has ably described what it is like to be a preacher’s family living in the proverbial fish bowl through the eyes of our young and impressive heroine – 14 year old Mia.

We see her struggles and her triumphs as she works through her life issues dealing with her twin sister, people in church trying to befriend her to get to her father, her mom’s pressures to appear and act correctly and her relationship with her bestfriend who is not a Christian also dealing with her own life pressures. The ending offers an interesting twist to the story.

Preacher’s Kids – Secrets & Salvation is a very good read. It should be read by teens and their parents. My teen, though, not a PK, was able to relate to Mia. She thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. As a parent to a teen, I too, enjoyed this book very much. It’s an eye-opener for me in knowing the issues that teens have to deal with in their daily lives. My daughter and I have had some interesting and open discussions about the issues presented in the book. I highly recommend this book to teens and parents who want to get to know their teens better.

This book can be bought from the following online retail sites:

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

A Review of Molly’s Money Saving Digest September ‘09: Frugal Decorating

Publisher: The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

Delivery: Electronic or Digital

This is the first time that I’ve had the opportunity to read and review Molly’s Money-Saving Digest published monthly by The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. It also has different monthly themes. This month’s theme is about Frugal Decorating.

Most of the articles in this month’s Digest centers around the theme about decorating your home and still being frugal about it. Sprinkled here and there are tips on using coupons to lower your food bill, parenting, and a listing of September’s special days, and a couple of new recipes.

The articles and pictures on decorating your home on a budget are very inspiring. So is recycling your home décor to redecorate every season.

I live in a country where we don’t use coupons so I don’t find this article useful to me. However, I’d surmise that for people living in the US, this can be very useful, especially the link she provided where you can register for information about the latest grocery sales and promos. The article was also very encouraging if you want to save big on your grocery bill every month. And these days, saving is on everyone’s mind.

I did find the articles and various links Molly included on decorating very inspiring. I’m one of those people who believe that decorating the home can get very expensive. I was able to gather some ideas here for decorating my home without making too big a hole in my pocket.

The most useful article for me in this Digest is Familyman Todd Wilson’s article on parenting. It is short, I must admit, but I’ve applied it immediately to my children and it worked!

All in all, I find this month’s digest good enough. I can’t really say that I’m raving about it and the only reason for that is because of where I’m located.

Ebook Review: College Success Begins at HOME

This year, my eldest is 14 years old. A few years from now, she’ll be entering college. We’ve been talking about it a lot and she already has a vision for what she wants to do with her life. The question now is how can I prepare her for college life and learning and the real life that she will soon be entering. These things plus teaching her the higher levels of math and science have been preying on my mind for months. I have been praying constantly about it, considering that even I had some problems with my higher level math and science, specifically trigonometry and physics. It’s a scary time for me right now and I am constantly on the lookout for articles or books on homeschooling my high schooler and preparing her for college.

I found an excellent ebook published by The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, College Success Begins at Home: Seasoned Homeschoolers Share Their Experiences. This ebook is filled with stories of homeschool families who have successfully graduated their high schooler and sent them to college. The topics covered start from laying the foundation for your child, to preparing transcripts, choosing and applying for colleges, preparing their portfolios, getting ready for interviews. You are also asked to consider prayerfully if you should really send your child to college or not. There are also homeschool graduates here who talk about their college experiences, one doing it the traditional way, and another finishing up their college degrees the homeschool way. Families also share how they celebrated their child’s graduation.

College Success Begins at Home: Seasoned Homeschoolers Share Their Experiences will encourage you and give you the confidence to pursue your own child’s high school education. Throughout all of the stories, one thing does stand out – that is, building your child’s character is still the priority which will help them as they start out on their road to adulthood. Again, another worthwhile read from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine!