Miss Opinionated

I love reading your blogs because I love to hear your different perspectives. Over time, I've befriended many of you and now I also love to read your blogs because it's like catching up with a friend over a cup of coffee.

Hmmm. That sounds good right now. I'm going to brew a pot and finish this in a minute.

Sorry I took so long. I decided I was craving tea instead. I tried an experiment and put my PGtips through the coffeemaker. Don't tell my husband, but I adulterated his coffee pot with tea.

Where I was I? Oh, yeah. Catching up with friends over a good cup of tea. When one of you shares about a favorite book read or a favorite recipe tried, my ears perk up. I love hearing about tried and true stuff. I love hearing another person's take on things.

As you run across my reviews for The Old Schoolhouse crew, I hope they are as interesting to you as your opinions are to me. I was, at first, thrilled to have this opportunity to try out new products first-hand and for FREE! But, for a brief moment, I became concerned that I would need to sound like an advertisement for the vendors. That would not at all have fit the journey God has taken me through these last couple years.....learning to brush off the desire to please others and mold to their standards, but to instead find out who God created me to be and use the voice He gave me....to embrace whom He created me to be. My voice is not an advertisement. But The Old Schoolhouse Magazine knew this when they chose me as a Review Crew member. I am happily reviewing now, and I know that all that is expected of me is to give an honest opinion about the products I try. Share my opinion? I can do that.

This review thing has been a huge blessing. The products I'm receiving are products I would have personally chosen to purchase, had I unlimited resources to do so. They are fitting right into our age ranges, interests, and even our history rotation schedule. We are having fun with it. Here is a list of the different stuff currently on the plate for the next two months. This list is mostly for my benefit; feel free to overlook it:

1. 11/12/08 Help Me To Teach (finished)
2. 11/17/08 Media Angels (finished)
3. 11/17/08 Homeschool Library Builder (finished)
4. 11/26/08 One 2 Believe
5. 12/06/08 Trigger Memory Systems
6. 12/08/08 Rime to Read
7. 12/10/08 Spears Art Studio
8. 12/10/08 Salem Ridge Press
9. 12/15/08 Time 4 Learning
10. 12/15/08 Man in the Map
11. 12/17/08 Aleks
12. 12/19/08 Crayola Art
13. 12/22/08 Motherboard Press
14. 12/22/08 Puppetools
15. 12/24/08 All About Spelling
16. 12/29/08 Alphabet Alley
17. 12/30/08 Peterson Handwriting
    
18. ??/??/08 Knowledge Quest
19. 01/02/09 KidsWealth
20. 01/05/09 Kinderbach
    
21. 03/03/09 Sonlight
22. ??/??/08 The Latin Road (for Honor)

Through it all, one vendor was optional and I turned it down. It was hard to turn down, but Auralog has an awesome foreign language curriculum that I could not foresee fitting into our schedule at this time. We're focusing pretty hard on our Latin lessons and I hate to interrupt them or confuse the boys. There were two products I was not chosen to review and I wish I had been! Critical Thinking and Deeper Roots are two programs I am very interested in. But where would I have fit them into the schedule?

So yes, you will see some reviews on the ole blog, but I hope you enjoy them. There will also be plenty of my regular nonsense on here. And I'm sure that, even if you aren't the least bit interested in reading about homeschoom material, you can celebrate with me the really cool way God has used this TOS Crew as a very exciting way to bless my family!

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