E-book Review: Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others by Donna Rees

 

It’s summer here in Manila, Philippines and all of us are experiencing the hot glare of the sun everyday. Our whole family is planning a long, road trip to a province in the South where we can swim in the ocean to cool off. This trip could take somewhere between 10 – 12 hours depending on how many stops we make. We’re all looking forward to this. Especially for me who grew up taking various road trips with my parents all throughout the year. My dad loved to travel and he loved to take all of us kids to travel around the country. I have so many memories of our road trips which is why I love road trips.

So when I was asked to read and write a review of Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others by Donna Rees, I immediately signed up for it because I knew that it was something I would enjoy reading about. While reading it, I was amazed with the idea of creating travel kits for your children or for another family. In my mind, travel kits are just bags of generic toiletries to bring when you travel. Now, travel kits have a totally different meaning and it’s meant to bless others. Travel kits are items you put together in a nice “kit” that a family or your children can open up during the travel. The purpose of each kit is to make the road trip more pleasant and filled with more memories. For someone like me who have no idea how to put together a travel kit, Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others by Donna Rees is definitely a necessary and a good read.

Ms. Donna Rees teaches us the how’s and why’s of putting together a travel kit. She explains the reasons for creating a kit, and gives a very detailed explanation of how to put it together, how to choose items, how to wrap it up and finally, how to present it. She also added a lot of thoughtful ideas such as including a trash bag with each kit. The ebook is filled with graphics that gave me more ideas on how to create a travel kit. Towards the end of the ebook, she includes a list of useful websites to visit. Also included are ideas from other people that further enhanced the ideas that I learned from the book.

I’m excited to travel with my children this time. We haven’t done that in a long time. This time though, I’ll be sure to prepare my own travel kit for my family so that the long road trip will create better memories for me and my family.

Note: I received a copy of this ebook for free from The Old Schoolhouse Store in exchange for my honest review.

Home Appliance Review: Sodastream – Your Home Soda Factory

As I was reading through my reviewing friends’ blogs about two weeks ago, I began to see a certain product that most of them were writing reviews about: Sodastream. At first, I just skimmed through most of the blogs because I thought that it was an appliance that was sold only in the USA, thus, reducing the possibility of my ever receiving this product for review.

Imagine my delight when I found out that Sodastream was actually being sold here in Manila. My delight was doubled when I became the recipient of the Sodastream itself to test and review at home.

I received the Stream Drink Maker with the CO2 pump, two hermetically-sealed bottles, two bottles of syrup and 3 single-use syrups. Upon watching the demo and tasting all the other flavors, hubby and I bought two other flavors as well.

Sodastream is indeed your home soda factory. This wonderful appliance can turn ordinary tap water, or in our case, mineral water into soda in less than five minutes! It is so easy to use and doesn’t need batteries or electricity to run it. After watching me work the Sodastream once, and they are now able to make their own sodas. It’s that easy to use.

These are the bottles of syrup that we have at home. The flavors are Orange, Lemon Lime, Honeydew Melon, Pineapple Grapefruit. So far, my personal favorite is orange, next is the Honeydew Melon. One of the benefits of making your own softdrinks at home is that you can control the flavor and the carbonation of your soda. Although we were taught to pump the CO2 three times, we felt that this made it too strong for our tastes, so we only pumped it twice. As for the syrups, we were instructed to use a capful, but we also felt that was too sweet for so we only put it about 3/4 of the cap. This made our soda taste just right.

Using the Sodastream at home not only benefits your family, it benefits the environment as well. With these hermetically-sealed, reusable bottles, waste pollution is lessened considerably. Did you know that throwing away the plastic softdrink bottles we use will pollute our earth for 150 years? With Sodastream, we simply clean and reuse these bottles every time we want softdrinks. At night, I would refill the bottles with water, pop them in our refrigerator, ready for the next day’s use.

We’ve been enjoying our own Sodastream for about a week now, making our softdrinks daily. Next week, I’ll be updating you more about how else we’ve been using Sodastream.

Sodastream is available at all SM Snack Exchange, Gourdo’s, Hobbes and Landes, Automatic Center, Robinson’s Dept. Store Sta. Lucia, Metro Gaisano Ayala Cebu.  For other inquiries, please check out their website here.

Amazing Grace’s 1st Blog Anniversary Contest

I am indeed blessed through blogging because I have met several online friends already. One of the bloggers I’ve met and admire is Amazing Grace. Her name is indeed Grace but she does not refer to herself as “amazing”. The amazing One is God and she blogs about how the Lord works amazingly in her life and in the lives of her loved ones.

As it is her 1st blog anniversary, she is running a contest on her blog and I am happy to join. I may just win one of those bags…

Here are her giveaways:

Everybody’s welcome to join to win one of these. Go here to join this contest. 

You may also want to check out her other blogs:

A Walk to Remember

Gracia Fashionista

A Bucket of Wisdom

An Invitation to Discuss “For The Children’s Sake – Foundations of Education for Home and School” by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

The children and I have been enjoying our summer vacation, but now that it’s almost up, I’ve been considering the coming school year. In doing so, I decided to read again For The Children’s Sake – Foundations of Education for Home and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay.

For The Children’s Sake – Foundations of Education for Home and School by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay was first published in 1984. At a time when educating children at home was still coming into form, with hardly any resources available for parents, homeschool parents digested this book and put into practice the ideas presented in it.

As Susan Schaeffer Macaulay herself describes in the book’s introduction, it was their search for the kind of rich education for their creative, singing child that led them to a school that followed the philosophies brought forth by Charlotte Mason. This book talks much about Charlotte Mason and her methods. The writer also tells us that her book is also based much on Biblical teachings but that these are also very practical. The ideas, therefore, presented in this book is not only meant for Christian families, but for every family that wishes to have a rich and meaningful family life.

Charlotte Mason was a British educator back in the 1800’s. She observed the children that she was teaching and made several discoveries about them. She started sharing these discoveries to parents. In turn, these parents found her ideas to be so fruitful that Charlotte Mason not only started giving a series of lectures, her teachings were also published so that more parents and children could benefit from them. Eventually, groups of parents formed schools based on her methods. Then Charlotte Mason herself opened a teacher training school for young women.

This article explains how Susan Schaeffer Macaulay was able to bring to life once more the teachings of Charlotte Mason 25 years ago.

I have been reading this book for some time, but still have not finished it. I’ve read so many blogs about Charlotte Mason and have already tried out some of her methods such as narration, dictation and copywork. In fact, I started making my own Filipino copywork for my kids last school year.

I thought it will be good to have an ongoing discussion of the CM methods according to For The Children’s Sake – Foundations of Education for Home and School. I am so used to the way I have been educated - textbooks and workbooks - that I still find it hard to digest her ideas.  I’m inviting you, my readers, to participate in this ongoing discussion so that we can share ideas on how we can make it work for us here in the Philippines. Of course, this discussion is open to everyone interested in this method of homeschooling, Filipino or otherwise.  It’ll be good if you can also read the book, but if not, I’ll also be sharing some of the main points I’ve learned from the book which can then be the springboard for discussions.

To participate, simply post a comment after my blogs. Please do post a comment here if you would like to participate in this discussion. If you have a blog, I won’t stop you from sharing your thoughts on your own blog. Just be sure to leave your link here so that we can have an ongoing discussion.

Things Have Been Quiet Here Lately…

And here are the reasons why. A few weeks ago, I blogged about hubby having high blood pressure for the first time. The doctor recommended that he should take a rest. So off we went for five days to Tagaytay. We borrowed a relative’s home and spent time with the children.

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After coming home from Tagaytay, we spent a week or so in Manila, then off we went again to Bicol. This time, it was with other members of our family. This trip has been planned for some time. We had fun there with our family. We bonded, played games, swam in the beach, tried wakeboarding and caught up with our balikbayan relatives. It’s a memorable trip for all of us.

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After staying there for more than a week, being burned by the sun, it was hard for us to go home. But go home we must, we have to face reality next.

So now we are back with darker skin tones, and I’m back on my blog. You can catch me soon with more on homeschooling (but it’s still summer for us), and more reviews!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Being such a busy mom, I don’t have enough time now to write anything memorable. However, I would still like to greet my mommy readers a Happy Mother’s Day! Mothers are a piece of heaven on earth. Online casino Ireland. ###

Here are some cute and funny mother’s day videos that I got from YouTube, none of these are mine, just want to share them. Enjoy your day!

I thought this one’s quite funny!

This is cute!

And this one’s so true for most moms. Kids, if you think your mom is suffering from this disease, give them love today!

Mothers Are the Place That We Call Home

Mothers are the place that we call home.
On them we rest our heads and close our eyes.
There's no one else who grants the same soft peace,
Happiness, contentment, sweet release,
Erasing nighttime tears with lullabies,
Restoring the bright sun that makes us bloom.

I got this beautiful poem from this link:http://www.poemsforfree.com/mohome.html

Giveaway: A Free Ticket to The Ultimate Homeschool Expo 2010

Cindy Rushton is giving away a free ticket to the Ultimate Homeschool Expo 2010 valued at $39.95. Don’t know what the Ultimate Homeschool expo is? Read about it here.

I have been attending this virtual homeschool convention since Cindy became my friend three years ago. Despite the lost hours of sleep, I have come away energized and motivated to homeschool.

Can’t afford to purchase the ticket? Then join this giveaway for a free ticket to the expo. All you need to do is to leave a comment here and on May 8, I will draw a winner through Random.org. Winner will receive the full set of audios and freebies from the speakers through email.

Again, just leave a comment here for a chance to win a free ticket to the Ultimate Homeschool Expo 2010.

This contest is open to everyone worldwide.