Review of When Lightning Struck! The Story of Martin Luther

Today's review is from author, Danika Cooley, who has written the new historical fiction novel When Lightning Struck! The Story of Martin Luther. If you are looking to delve further into the upbringing, background, and struggles that Martin Luther dealt with, then I would highly suggest you pick up this book. What better time to be studying about Martin Luther than right now as we just passed Reformation Day.

When Lightning Struck! is the story of Martin Luther, the Father of the Reformation, written for young adults.

As an older adult, I have often picked up a book to try to learn more only to come away feeling like I never really understood the background of Luther because of the way the books were written. That is definitely not the case with When Lightning Struck! The flow of Ms. Cooley's writing style often kept me on the edge of my seat to find out what was going to happen to Luther next. This is a wonderful read aloud book for families. My children also waited impatiently as our next reading time drew near. 

I had no idea of the tragedies, passion, fiery spirit, and true desire to follow God and not man that Luther possessed. His own struggles are captured so clearly in this book and make him even more real.  I came away after reading this book knowing more about his life and dedication than from anything I have ever read before. I'm passing it on to my husband next. I kept reading him excerpts and now he wants to read it too!

Martin Luther's life was too exciting not to be written for teens and younger readers! In this fast-paced, action-packed novel of Martin Luther's life, readers will be introduced to a fascinating time when princes ruled Europe and knights roamed the countryside. They'll learn about a time when powerful forces lined up against each other and believing the wrong thing could get you killed. When Lightning Struck! is far more than just an adventure story, of course. It also tells a theological story. Drawing carefully from Luther's own words, this book introduces readers to a kindred spirit who struggled with what knowing God through Scripture means for daily life. They will understand what was at stake and how powerfully liberating Luther's idea of grace through faith was—in his time and in ours! In crisp, enjoyable prose, author Danika Cooley conveys both the drama and the meaning of the Reformation for younger readers like no one before her!

When Lightning Struck! is designed to be read by middle and high school students, and is a great family read aloud for grades 3 and up. You can also download a free discussion guide and unit study guide to aid in your studies as well.  

To help celebrate this book launch, all Bible Road Trip & Cobblestone Path Products are 50% off through November 11, 2015.  Find out more about those here. 

Also don't forget to enter the amazing giveaway with a value of over $500 in prizes to be given away!  To keep the party going, join us on Facebook, November 10th, 2015 at 9:00pm for even more giveaways!  Can't wait to see you there!

About The Author

Danika Cooley is a married mother of four, a grandmother, a curriculum developer, and a writer. Danika's three year Scripture survey for preschool to high school, Bible Road Trip, is used across the globe. She blogs about godly parenting and homeschooling resources at Thinking Kids.

Blogging Through The Alphabet - With God's Word, A is...

Sharing a little ABC's of the Bible!

I'm teaching these to my preschool class and if 3-4 year old preschoolers can memorize them, surely we can too!

A is.....All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God - Romans 3:23

We are all a hot mess!  None of us has bragging rights because we all are in a constant battle with our very own flesh but one thing I know is my God sent His only Son to take the sins of this world straight on and with Him on my side, I can and will overcome one day too!!  Thank you, Jesus, for loving me so. Lead me by your Spirit!

Join us as we begin a new session of Blogging Through the Alphabet.  You have 1 week for Letter A - go!

Plan With Me!

Top 5 for this week

1. work on next year's budget calendars
2. work on Christmas calendars
3. Basketball games begin so even crazier schedules begin too!
4. put away Halloween decorations
5. decide on YTMM Handmade Holiday item

Menu Plan 

Dinners: I changed the menu so much from the plan last week so I still have these on hand.

• chicken pastry, green beans, yams
• pork roast, cabbage & potatoes, slaw
• beefaroni
• chicken quesadillas
• breakfast of some sort

Reading goals (affiliate links)      

• Longing For Paris by Sarah Mae
• Priscilla Shirer's Discerning the Voice of God
• Mark study with Hellomornings

Fitness goals

• try to get at least 5,000 steps daily  

New Habit for this Interval until 11/22/15

• water, water, water (at least 32 oz per day)

Review of Last Week

Top 5 for the week

1. set up cleaning plan in planner
2. finish marking hubby's days off
3. file bills
4. work on next year's budget calendars
5. work on large monthly grocery list and shop

Menu Plan 

Dinners:  We ended up having soup and fish sticks instead of those two.

• Tostados (from last week)
• Pasta, salads
• Cheeseburger steaks with onions and gravy, garden peas (from last week)
• Meatball subs, chips, cut veggies (from last week)
• dinner with Grandma       

Reading goals (affiliate links)  Read goal amounts and finished the two struck out - great reads and reviews coming soon!  I will be finishing up Priscilla Shirer's this week - sad about that!!

• Longing For Paris by Sarah Mae
• Priscilla Shirer's Discerning the Voice of God
• Money Making Mom by Crystal Paine
• When Lightning Struck: The Story of Martin Luther by Danika Cooley
• Mark study with Hellomornings

Fitness goals    I missed 1 day hitting the 5,000!

• try to get at least 5,000 steps daily  

New Habit for this Interval until 11/22/15

• water, water, water (at least 32 oz per day)

Scripture & A Snapshot

Cast your fears to Him and hold on to His promises so you can remain calm in the unknown. What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Romans 8:31

Review of The Ultimate Homeschool Planner

Hello, my name is Melissa and I am a planner junkie! I love planners! I don't know what it is but I find myself drawn to them and have used so many different ones over the years and honestly liked them all for one reason or another. I do know when I am feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, taking the time to put a plan on paper helps me to release that overwhelmed feeling even if those plans don't always go as planned.


So, when the chance came to review The Ultimate Homeschool Planner - Orange Cover from Apologia Educational Ministries I did not hesitate. I have drooled over this planner for a while and now it comes in three fun colors -  Blue, Orange, and Yellow!


You can purchase The Ultimate Homeschool Planner alone for $29.00 but it is designed to be a part of The Ultimate Homeschool Planning System which includes The Ultimate Weekly Planner for Teens (for 7th-12th grades) and The Ultimate Daily Planner for Students (for 4th-8th grades). The whole concept is to gradually teach your student to take responsibility for their own schedules and planning.
We do not own the student or teen planners so I just dug into this one for moms by itself. It can stand alone as a mom planner too.
My first glance at this planner, I saw that the covers doubled as folders on the inside and it is bound together with a sturdy spiral coil. The covers were a little flimsy for my taste but it has held up well so far. I really like the vibrant color choices available for the cover. I have stuck basketball and CAP schedules in the folders and they have stayed in as I have transported my planner from place to place.

Inside you will find a full array of planning goodness including:

• 4 years worth of yearly calendars at a glance
• 12 full pages on suggestions and guides for how to use the planner (which I LOVE)
• one year planning grid
• student goal setting pages
• pre-planning guides
• monthly planning pages
• weekly planning pages
• records, grades, and activity pages
• teaching tips
• high school planning pages
• year in review pages

Included also was a suggested planning schedule to help you plan for peace and it is pretty much exactly what I already do!  It gives times and suggestions for yearly planning, monthly planning, weekly planning, Monday morning tutorials (where you sit down and show your child the weekly plan), and Friday reviews.  Ms. Bell, author of the planner, gives great detail and suggestions on each one of those planning areas.
My favorite part of the planner and the one I utilized the most were the 4 weekly planning pages.  Each weekly plan begins with 2 pages of review from the previous week and planning for the upcoming week. Those 2 pages include an encouraging quote, a place to record areas that didn't work well the previous week and scripture verses to help you through, places to record the most memorable moments, and a place to record evidences of God's grace. 

After those 2 pages you begin your weekly 2 page spread and you can customize it to fit your needs. I gave each of my children a section, schedules and reviews a section, and my weekly cleaning goals a section. There is also lots of room to record notes, supplies, and appointments. 

Overall, I think this is a wonderful planner for any homeschool mom. A few things that I would love to see added or changed to this planner are tabs for the different sections to make finding my place easier. Each section is color coded and that helped but I think tabs would be a better option. I would also love to see a sturdier cover as an option. Check out these sample pages and the table of contents to find out more.

You can find out more on the many homeschool products Apologia offers by visting them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.

2015 Homemaking Ministries Online Conference

I stumbled across this conference one day before it began and thought the price looked extremely affordable for what was included so I decided to join.  The cost is $34.95 for 12 video sessions with several bonuses as well.

Well, let me tell you, I just finished watching today's 4 sessions and I would highly recommend this if you are looking for a way to get your homemaking back under control and really just encouragement from other's who have been where you are!  Today's sessions were on bringing the focus back to why homemaking is important.  Here is a sneak peak of my favorite session from today.

Recovering Biblical Homemaking - Session #2 Sneak Peek! from Jami Balmet on Vimeo.

This conference is for you IF:

• You want to dive deeper into your greater purpose in cleaning toilets and doing laundry
• You want to create a Gospel-Centered home but don't know where to start
• You need some encouragement that what you do MATTERS
• You need practical tips and advice for managing your home
• You feel burnt-out and overwhelmed within your role as a homemaker
• You've lost that joy and spark in your homemaking and so desperately want to get it back...

The great thing is all the sessions are there for you to go to at any time if you can't make them live. Go to Homemaking Ministries Online Conference 2015 to find out more about signing up.  (affiliate link)

Review of IEW's Phonetic Zoo - Level A

Spelling, spelling, spelling. If you've been a reader here for a while you will already know that Spelling is our struggle subject. Not one, not two, but all three of my children struggle with spelling. We have tried just about every curriculum there is for spelling so why not one more, right? So keep reading for which one we tried this time.

 
Institute for Excellence in Writing also known as IEW offers a unique approach to spelling in their Phonetic Zoo courses. They come in three levels, A, B, or C and is recommended for grades 3 and up. After taking the placement test, I decided it would be best for Sarah to begin with the Phonetic Zoo Spelling Level A [Starter Set].

IEW approaches spelling in a sequential and phonics based manner. It also includes CD's for an auditory approach to learning as well as the visual approaches of flashcards.

Each level includes:

• five audio CDs, labeled Disc One through Disc Five (Level C has six CDs.)
• set of large flash cards
• set of small Zoo Cards
• link for a PDF teacher's ebook  (sample)
• link to a streaming seminar of Spelling and the Brain

The printed materials sell for $99 or you can purchase downloadable materials for $79.  Once you purchase a level, you will be sent a link to download the teacher's ebook.  You will only need to add in a CD player, headphones, notebook paper (or the printable sheet included in the teacher ebook), and pen to begin.  If you are not familiar with IEW's philosophy on using pen, you can read more about that here. We are still rebels and use pencil most of the time.  
The flash cards include word lists for all three levels making them very versatile in using with multiple grades. Implementing this curriculum into your current schedule is extremely easy and we had it up and going quickly.  It takes Sarah no more than 15 minutes each day to complete and on average we complete a lesson per week.  There are 47 lessons and no time frame is given to complete them because the program is set up to completely master a lesson before moving on.
How We Used This In Our Homeschool

• First step was to watch the Spelling and the Brain Seminar which explained a lot of the struggles I see often in my children.  It was such an informational seminar and eye opening.
• I printed out the lesson pages from the teacher ebook and placed them in their own binder.  This step is not necessary because you can read it off of your computer but we are doing a lot of car schooling lately so I wanted to do it this way.  
• I placed the little flashcards in baseball card protectors (from my couponing days!) and stuck them in a folder for Sarah.  That folder was for her to look back on and study the rules and animals that went with the rules. There is also an option in the appendix to make a Phonetic Zoo board or a lapbook which looked fun too!
• I placed the large flashcards in a small notebook with half sheet page protectors.  You could also place them on a ring because they already have a hole punched in them for that purpose.

Day 1 - We would sit together and go over the words on the large flashcard along with the rule for the lesson.  There is an animal on the flashcards that correspond to the rule as well.  The teacher's ebook gives you information to help explain the rule further to your child.  We would go over spelling each word together on the white board the first day.  
Day 2 - She grabs the CD which tells her the spelling words in a sentence to write for the lesson.  She writes them on notebook paper and then checks them along with the CD too.  I always check her corrections to make sure she marks them correctly.  You can listen to a sample of the audio lesson here.
Day 3, 4... - She continues the same process as Day 2 until she gets all 15 words 100% correct two times in a row.  Once she accomplishes that, she moves on to the next lesson so you can see that a lesson might take 2 days or all week depending on the words and if she is familiar with them or not.
Every 5th lesson, there is an opportunity for review.  For this lesson, you will collect any words that were spelled with errors in the previous lessons and you can also include words from writing lessons in other subject areas as well. 
Sarah really enjoys the independence that this program gives her.  I like that aspect too because it frees me up to work with my high schoolers.  She likes checking and correcting her own work too.  The rules are repeated often on the CD during the practice so she's really picked those up pretty quickly and it gives us a hint we can use with one another if I notice a word misspelled on one of her papers.  For instance, I might say "what's the rule for i-e words?" and she can work through what she remembers about that rule.  
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