Thankful Thursdays - 4/3/14 - The Body Of Christ

I just want to take a moment and say how extremely thankful we are for The Body Of Christ in action. Both our local church and the extended family of believers have gathered around us and supported us so well during this time of Kurt's illness. 

I am also thankful Kurt is starting to feel better.

The church in action is a beautiful witness of Christ's selfless love for us. We have been uplifted in prayer, given meals, had our girls loved on (& sometimes pleasantly distracted,) received cards, calls, texts, fb messages and e-mails to cheer and encourage us. Kurt had a lot of visitors while in the hospital, and the sacrifice these friends made to come see him will always be remembered.

(BTW- our family is great too!)

If you're ever wondering if it makes a difference when you pray for your friends, let me assure you -IT DOES! Each day brings something that is bigger than we can handle ourselves, and God has faithfully shown Himself providing for all of our needs. He has so often shown His love for us through the hands, arms, and feet of His followers that I feel I could be writing "Thank You" cards for months.

Thank you for your love of us! Please continue to cover us in prayer, as Kurt is scheduled for gallbladder surgery next week.

The word thankful seems so small to describe our feelings about the great work that God has done, but it is a start!

Moms worry too much - part 1

If you keep up with us via our Facebook page, you might remember that I've mentioned that Moms worry too much. I've been ruminating on this thought for a few weeks now, and I have to tell you, I can't do it justice in just one post. So here is part one of (many?) posts about Moms and worry.

Photo credit: Emily :)

Let's start here:

Philippians 4:5-7

English Standard Version (ESV)

5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Bible commands us to 'not be anxious about anything,' but to pray to God for help. 

That should be simple right? Except we all know it's not. 
Life is hard, joyous most days, but hard. 

I'd like to tackle the things I see Moms worrying about the most, one by one. 

Moms worry about not doing enough for their children.


My computer's dictionary has two definitions for worry as a verb.

worry |ˈwərē|verb (worries, worrying, worried)1 [ no obj. ] give way to anxiety or unease; allow one's mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles: he worried about his soldier sons in the war | [ with clause ] : I began to worry whether I had done the right thing.• [ with obj. ] cause to feel anxiety or concern: there was no need to worry her | I've been worrying myself sick over my mother.• [ with obj. ] cause annoyance to: the noise never really stops, but it doesn't worry me.2 [ with obj. ] (of a dog or other carnivorous animal) tear at, gnaw on, or drag around with the teeth: I found my dog contentedly worrying a bone.
Either of them could often be used to describe Moms today. That should NOT be who we are or what we do. The first definition describes allowing our minds to dwell on difficulties. Life can be extremely difficult, but dwelling on our difficulties does not improve our situation (or our attitude!)

God is in control of our lives. If you are a Christian, you need to trust that God knows each of your days and each of your needs. Those verses in Philippians remind us that He is 'at hand' (near) and we can always, repeatedly, tell Him our concerns. 

Moms are emotional, that's what makes us such great Moms! But, when you let emotions focus you on the wrong things, you worry. (I know, I've been there!)

So today's dot to STOP focusing on is how much we do for our kids. I see this as a particularly difficult prospect for two kinds of Moms: homeschooling Mom and working Moms. 

Moms who work outside the home can often let feelings of guilt overcome their knowledge that God is working through them. They worry about how to balance all of life's demands. Let me tell you a secret: ONLY GOD can balance all of your life's demands! That is why He is 'at hand.' God is handling your every need (& a lot of your wants) and you do Him a disservice if you think you can better handle this world than He can. So choose carefully how you respond each morning and each night to your life's demands. Choose to give it all over to God through prayer and then trust Him to guide your choices. If you feel like you're not hearing His will, you might want to evaluate how much time you're spending in His word.

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness

So, do you need help? Pray, read. Just like Matthew tells us "Ask, seek, knock."

The second group of Moms I see struggling with how much they should be doing for their kids are homeschooling Moms. Hear this: if your child can read, and you've taught them how to learn (read for comprehension, look things up in a dictionary or encyclopedia) then you've got the basics covered for education. 

What you might be missing is joy! Are you sharing your faith with your children? Are they seeing a Mom who finds joy when she reads her Bible or sings hymns? Do your children see a Mom that enjoys fellowship? If any of these things are missing, it's probably because you're too busy worrying about which science book or handwriting curriculum to use next year. Maybe you're so focused on worrying about college that you forget your kids are still under 10.

How do I know this? I've been there, done that. I see Moms at the exhibit hall at homeschool conventions looking overwhelmed and talking about "not doing enough." Are you loving your children? Are you loving your husband? Are you providing educational materials and experiences (even if they don't look like everybody else's)?! Then you are doing enough. Don't fall into the trap of focusing on the dot (worrying) about needing a particular curriculum/ planner/ manipulatives, etc. to be able to teach your children at home (or in the car, at the park, or at Grandma's house.) There are a lot of great resources out there to help you teach your children, BUT you don't need to use every one of them!

Worry in a homeschool Mom often looks like that second definition above - the one where the dog gnaws at or drags a bone. You are NOT a dog, you are a child of the King, a Mom who is called to love your husband and children, and to share Christ's love with those around you! Don't just act like it, be THAT MOM! God is able to supply all your needs. I have seen Him time and time and time again bringing just the thing we needed at just the right time. God is not late.

The opposite of worry is trust.

Can you join me in asking God to help you trust HIM for each day? Do not be anxious, give it all over to Him, He is able. He is able. HE IS ABLE! Christ Jesus wants to guard your heart and mind. You cannot be in better hands. The hands that created the world are holding & molding you!

I'll be praying for you to find peace, comfort and joy in His presence, and direction in His Word.


Need more encouragement? Check out the Homeschool Blog Link up 

Thankful Thursdays - 3/20/14 & 3/27/14 - Nurses!

We are SO very thankful for great nurses! Kurt spent several days in the hospital recently with an attack of pancreatitis. The nursing staff was absolutely wonderful. The Doctors oversee your care, they prescribe tests & medicine, but the nurses are the hour-by-hour caregivers. There were so many great nurses that helped care for Kurt. I'd like to nominate all of them for a "Nurse of the year" award. I'm sure I'll forget someone, but thank you, thank you, thank you to: Nick, Joanne, Ethel, Erin, Karen, Alex and all the others!

The care they lavished on us was more than just doing their job, it was ministering to Kurt's needs, physical and mental. The cafeteria staff was super great too!

We are thankful Kurt is back home, and thankful for the excellent care he received from his nurses at the hospital.

Be thankful for all nurses do,go hug a nurse today!

Who is this little girl? Throwback Thursday :)

Mango Languages: Mango Homeschool Edition - A Review

As parents, we are often on a quest to find the one product or service that best fits our children. Because I am NOT fluent in any foreign language, I am intrigued by how many foreign language programs are available, and often wonder "Do they really work?" We were recently afforded the opportunity to review the Mango Homeschool Edition from Mango Languages. You may be familiar with Mango Languages from their work through libraries. Mango has been around for more than 6 years and is the #1 language learning program in libraries across the US.

If you've seen Mango's library program, you may be familiar with their approach to language learning. All of Mango's programs focus on teaching conversationally. This means that instead of first learning a lot of vocabulary words, and then learning how the language is put together, you begin with the most common phrases, and then Mango includes grammar and cultural points in each lesson.


This was a whole lot different from any language program I had used previously, but I can appreciate their approach. Our girls both worked on Mango languages during the review. I also tried out the program.

The first point I want to make sure you understand about the Mango Homeschool Edition is that you learn ANY of the 60+ languages available. You choose. If you want to, you can learn more than one language at a time, or you can switch your mind and change to a different language at any time. This was really important to us. Both girls thought they would want to learn Scottish Gaelic. It is REALLY hard to learn Gaelic. So after a sincere effort to try Gaelic, each girl individually asked me if they could switch to a different language. Thankfully, I could say "yes" without having to invest money to change languages.

Arlene switched to Spanish, and Emily switched to Italian. I think this point alone would be enough for me to recommend Mango as a viable option, but it has some other features I want you to learn about as well.

Each subscription to Mango Homeschool Edition is a 'seat in the class.' Thus, each girl needed their own subscription. Because I also wanted to try to learn, I had myself listed on a subscription as well. One major difference between the Homeschool edition and the library edition is this: the library edition ONLY allows you to use the first level (Journey) in each language. In the Homeschool Edition, Arlene can go through three levels (Journey 1, 2, & 3) of Spanish. Several of the languages have embedded/ downloadable files that you can print out for reference or practice when your child is not online in their lesson. Because I wanted to be able to encourage Arlene, I downloaded the Journey 1 file for Spanish, and printed the first several pages. Even though Arlene said her brain is "not wired for learning a foreign language," she WAS able to correct me when I said something wrong from her lesson. I think that means she is learning more than she thought!

There are several parts of how the program works that I thought were well planned (even though my older brain has a hard time switching from the traditional style of language teaching and learning this way.) These seems to help the girls as they worked their way through the lessons.

I have added arrows to many of my screenshots to help point these out.

To start with, let's take a look at Arlene's first Spanish lesson:

First, you obviously need to choose a language! I set up Arlene's 'space' for Mango Passport Spanish  (Latin America.) Yes, that's right, you can choose Spanish (Castilian) if you're planning to visit Spain, or study abroad in Europe. Notice that Arlene's first Journey begins with 'Greetings, Gratitude, & Goodbyes.' Each lesson cover quite a bit, but begins with the most used phrases first.

During the actual lesson the lines of text switch back and forth from Spanish to English as the speakers move through the conversation. This reinforces to the student that they DO already know how the conversation would sound in English, and helps guide them line by line through the new material. Also, if you look at the brown bar at the bottom, you will see the student's progress through the lesson. If you need to stop partway through a lesson, Mango will return them to the part they were working on when they next log in. (This little bar was good for Arlene, it showed her that there WAS an end coming, that she could work as fast or as slow as she needed, and that she WAS progressing.)

On every screen where Mango is talking to your student, there is a lovely "Replay" button in the top right. This was important for me, because it takes a long time for my brain to wrap around foreign pronunciations. This shot also shows you how Mango includes Grammar notes (the parts your teacher used to draw on the chalkboard) during each lesson. Remember, Mango's goal is to make language learning fun. If it can't be fun, at least it's relatively painless.

Mango does a quality job of teaching cultural norms during the course of each lesson. The Mango program will read the screen to you, which I think is particularly  great for younger students who are typically slower at reading English. Remember, there is always the lovely 'replay' button.

Mango is most definitely NOT all listening, it teaches a small part of the lesson, then it reviews it with the student, then it quizzes them. The beginning quiz is just a time for the student to say the word or phrase they have just learned. Later on in the lessons the quizzes ask them to do more, asking the student to choose the correct words from a group of Spanish words to make phrases like "Have a good day" (formally.) This program tries to make sure the student understands both the words and the situations that call for formal or informal replies. (Like the difference between saying "Hi!" to your friend, or saying "Hello, Sir.")

While Mango does not teach you how to write the language (their goal is speaking it,) they do include the correct spellings and punctuation on each screen. See the double question marks by the red arrow? I really, really like the switching of each line back and forth from Spanish to English and back again. Of course, there is always the replay button at your disposal. Why am I spending so much time on the replay button? Because my kids learn best when they hear it over and over again. Mango covers the short conversation, and then the words line by line, with lots of review, however, having a replay button the student can use puts your child in control of their pace.

Now here is a shot of my screen. I come here to check on my students (see the yellow arrow,) to send an eNote to Josh (who is the Mango Homeschool Admin guy with all the answers to my techy questions- see the blue arrow,) or to check the help section. 

I have 3 spaces myself. Each 'space' you have represents a different language you are learning. No, I'm not really learning 3 languages at a time right now. But I want to tell you about the three you see listed below the red arrow. Latin IS for me (more about that in a minute.) Scottish Gaelic was because I wanted to try it out myself when the girls were having problems learning. Gaelic is just a difficult language for a midwesterner to learn. Not impossible, just difficult. Since both of them had gotten a lot further than I was able to manage, I had no qualms about having them switch to a different language. The third language listed is Spanish. I added that to my subscription so that I could learn some and help encourage Arlene. Emily seems to be doing fine with Italian on her own. 

Since I have all of our passwords, I can logout of my account and into Emily's to see how far she has progressed. Mango is working on an enhanced tracking and progress monitoring system which they hope to have available by this summer. I will look forward to that as it will make my job easier, plus they hope to include a 'seat time' tracker option which would be great for parents who live in states where they must record minutes spent on each subject, not just the number of days spent in each class.




Now here is a little more about Mango's Latin. I signed myself up for Latin because I had been learning Latin alongside the girls last year, but had set it aside and wanted to get back to it. Since Latin is considered a 'dead language' because it is not actively, routinely spoken today, it is easy to forget how to speak in Latin.

This language may not be the best one to learn from Mango because it focuses on having you learn enough Latin to READ parts of ancient Latin literature. Thus, your child will not be learning 'hello' and 'goodbye,' but rather the words necessary to read about the Gallic Wars. (Rome's attack on the area of modern day France for those of you who haven't had world history in a few years.)

So you probably don't want your younger students learning Latin through Mango, but it can be a help to your older students. If your older student has spent time in a more traditional approach to learning Latin, this can be used as a reinforcement of what they have learned, or a stretching to learn more.

Latin has the same features I mentioned earlier about Spanish, like the progress bar.

Cultural notes in Latin have a lot about the history of the 'Roman World.'

This part of Latin looks more like what I am used to, where it is explaining to the student subject-verb agreements and noun declensions. I would NOT recommend Mango if you have not had any other introduction to Latin, as I think the process of declining nouns and conjugating verbs to be essential to truly understanding Latin, and I find it easiest to do on a whiteboard.

This replay button was used again and again. MY goal was to HEAR the Latin spoken, so for me, Mango is working to reinforce what I had previously learned.

Josh and Ryan at Mango Homeschool Edition were happy to answer our questions about current and future features. Currently, there are features you can choose which we did not utilize. One of those that many of you may choose to use are the Language Forums and dashboard features. In the Language Forums you can have up to 16 people online working in a study group (like you might want for a co-op class.) I can see how this might also be used by students who live in rural areas to work with someone else who is about the same level in their language but lives in another town or state. On the dashboard you can see a calendar, and add events (like a reminder to go to your language forum meeting on time) or see questions  and answers that other users have posted in your languages.

You may be wondering how this fit into our daily life? Pretty easily. Since it is an online program (as opposed to a scheduled class) the girls could work on their lessons whenever I wasn't using the computer. The girls left a set of headphones on the computer desk so they could hear their lesson, without all the distractions that come from someone else entering or leaving the room. I wanted them to spend at least 30 minutes each day they logged on, or to get to the end of a lesson.  If you use the replay button a lot (like I did,) you might hit 30 minutes before you end the lesson. That was perfectly fine with me because I wanted them to learn the language lessons, not just spend time in the chair. Since Mango would return them to their same spot during the next session, I didn't fear they would always be doing the first part of a lesson and never actually finish it.

Mango Homeschool Edition is for ages 6 to adult. Since younger kids usually learn languages easier than older ones, I would encourage you to NOT wait until High School to start your child with a foreign language. Mango makes it easy to learn a lot in one language, or some of several languages, or a lot in a many languages, you decide! Mango currently has 2 options for payment, either by the month, or the year. With a yearly subscription you will save money over the cost of purchasing 12 individual months. Remember that each student needs their own subscription. One student can use Mango for $18/month or $125/year. Two subscriptions cost $28/mo or $175/yr, three are available for $38/mo or $225/yr. If you have 4 students, the cost is $48/mo or $275/yr, five students would cost $58/mo or $325/yr. If you have a large family, contact Mango for their 6 or more student discount pricing. A parent needs to be the responsible person to set up and pay for the account, but you do NOT need to purchase a subscription for yourself if you have no interest in learning a language. To me, it would be worth it to spend the extra $10/mo or $50/yr to have my own account. I think working through at least a few of the lessons your students are working on will give you a better appreciation for what they are learning, and how much the pacing will vary by student.

Like I said earlier, Mango is NOT your traditional approach to language learning. For most younger students, it will probably work better than traditional textbooks and long vocabulary lists. For older students, you will need to evaluate your student's desires and needs. If they MUST learn to WRITE a language, then Mango may not be for you (although I could see the benefit of getting a month-long subscription to give them a good start on pronunciation and cultural norms.)

The downloadable guide for Spanish Journey 1 is 168 pages. We chose to only print selected pages, but you could print the whole thing (may I suggest black and white as a money saver?) How you use Mango will vary from family to family, but I think it is worth your time to investigate further. The upcoming features should take a solid program and make it even better. Mango does offer a 'free trial' that you can find out more about on their website. If you have a question that doesn't appear to be covered on the website, you can call and talk to them! You can also visit with Mango on Facebook.

Overall, I give Mango a B+. I think the upcoming features will push it to an A-.
I would like our girls to learn a foreign language, but I will want time spent on speaking, reading, and writing. If we stick with Mango, I'll want to supplement with something that will teach them at least the basics of how to write down what they are saying. I think this is important for High School level classes.

If you have Elementary or Middle School aged students, I would recommend Mango as a great homeschool curriculum for language learning. In a sea-full of options, Mango rises to the challenge for younger language learners.

Thankful Thursday - 3/13/14 Pineapple

Around here we love fresh fruit. I think we spend more money in the produce department than anywhere else in the grocery store. So imagine how thankful we were last week when they had pineapple for $1 a piece!!!

Most of the time, the pineapple at the store is not fully ripe, so you have to wait a few days before eating it for the best flavor. I like to purchase ours with just a hint of yellow starting to show near the bottom, and wait until it has turned all golden, sunshiny yellow before cutting it.

Today is the day we're going to be MOST thankful for THIS pineapple, because I think it is just about perfect for tonight's dinner! Maybe there will be a little bit left to be thankful for tomorrow for breakfast.

So what are YOU thankful for today?