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Friday, February 29, 2008

More Language Shopping Sites

Here's a couple more sites where you might find language materials.

Alphabet Garten

Language Lizard

Thursday, February 28, 2008

To Do Today

I'm going to post today's "To Do" list here. I'll update at the end of the day with what I actually accomplished.

  1. Read the 30 books to the kids. (Sounds like a lot but isn't that much when you consider we can go through five at each nursing session.)
  2. Make Fin's learning poster and review.
  3. Review Dul's learning poster.
  4. Write meal list for the week.
  5. Clean boys' room.
  6. Do four loads of laundry. (I wish the washer would clean more than one blanket and towel per load!)
  7. Clean kitchen.
  8. Clean bedroom.
  9. Clean bathrooms.
  10. Clean dining room.
  11. Sew five diapers.
So, that's the list. Not too much to do but still quite a bit if you consider that Belle won't let me put her down very much during the day without crying.

*Update* It is 10:27 a.m. and I haven't been to sleep all night. So far I've only made two diapers and neither of those are very good. One I sewed the soaker in wrong, it is still usable but it is ugly. I messed up the elastic on both. Again, they are still usable but ugly. The diapers also seem kind of big so I'm holding off on making anymore. I've got to find my measuring tape and then I'll measure the baby when she wakes up. Then I'll cut the pattern down to be a better fit. I want it to have room but this looks like way too much. I'm going to try and nap with the baby (which means that she'll be up soon and I won't get any sleep.)

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Still Hibernating But Shopping

The baby is almost three weeks old. We are doing very limited schooling right now, basically we're just reading books and going about daily life. I plan to get back to homeschooling when the baby is a month old, so a little over a week more of "time off" for us.

We love books and reading and since I'm trying to raise the children bilingually in German and English, I want to build a library for them in both languages. I've got a few sites that are good for buying books in foreign languages.

Multilingual Books This site sells more than just books and offers a diverse selection of materials.

Books Without Borders Specializes in children's materials with a few different languages. They sell videos and audio cassettes as well which is nice if you are looking for those type of materials.

Schoenhofs Has more materials for adults but there are some offerings for children as well. Very diverse in the languages that it offers.

German Amazon This is where I've bought my children's DVDs in German. This is Amazon's German site and it is all in German so you need at least a basic knowledge of German to navigate here. Keep in mind that the prices listed are in the Euro which means that if you are in the U.S. you'll pay around double the price listed for the item. Shipping is HIGH here, I once bought two DVDs and paid over $20 in shipping.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Free Educational Songs

As a child I always loved "educational" songs. Really I had a deep love for music in all it's forms and educational music was an extension of that. Learning the fifty states in a song was a thrill. So now that I'm homeschooling my children I'm always on the lookout for new educational songs. I've recently found a great site. You can't save the songs but it has a variety of topics and clear, well-sung lyrics. Kids Know It

Another great site is Kiddie Records . It has songs taken from old kids' records and made into mp3 format. I've yet to check out all they have to offer but it seems like an excellent source for hard to find kids' songs of old.

Songs for Teaching is another great site. It has the lyrics for the songs so if you know the tune you can sing the song. As an added bonus they have songs in German (and a few other languages). Unfortunately they don't offer the full songs for free. You can either buy the cd or buy it in mp3 format. I've yet to buy any songs from them so I'm not sure of the quality but we like to listen to the clips.

NIEHS has patriotic songs, songs from movies, and children's songs along with the lyrics.


Kindersite is a page of songs from different sites. Some educational, some just fun songs.

Have Fun Teaching has just a few songs but they are originals that I have yet to find elsewhere.

Music Moz is a bunch of links to music sites. Some are good, some not so good but it is a good resource all the same.

Mama Lisa's World has a great collection of nursery rhymes and songs from around the world. It is the biggest collection of various language songs that I've run across to date.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Library Thing

I'm going to try out Library Thing. Basically I'm going to use it to keep a running list of the books that we read. I'm starting from today as it would be much too big a project to go back over every book we've ever read. I've added a widget to the side that shows the recent books we've read and also a search function so you can search my "library". It seems really cool! Something I didn't know about Library Thing: You can access it from your cell and search your library. That is great because I often find myself at the book store not knowing if I already own a book. Now if only there were a way to separate books you've only read from books that you've read AND own!

Ah, I just read that you can only add 200 books for free, after that you need to buy a membership. The lifetime membership says that it is $25, however it also has an option for $19. I'll probably be buying that soon as we'll get to 200 books in no time.