Amy

Give the Gift of Odyssey Adventures!

November 24, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

OAC-Gift-That-Lasts-All-Year-Facebook-Cover

What’s on your children’s Christmas wish list? As excited as they might be about that new toy, as every parent knows, the thrill of the gift will eventually wear off. Focus on the Family and Adventures in Odyssey have created the perfect gift for those who want to give their children or grandchildren a present that will provide year-round fun with eternal impact.

The Odyssey Adventure Club (OAC) offers families 24/7 access to 25 years’ worth of Adventures in Odyssey (AIO) episodes in a safe online environment where children can explore and learn. Christmas really is the perfect time to tap into your children’s imagination while infusing faith and fun into their day . . . and every day of the year.

To celebrate the holidays this year, the OAC is offering free content for everyone, including an Advent calendar, a broadcast download with tips to create a memorable Christmas, AIO cutouts and Christmas stocking stuffer cards. Membership to the OAC costs just $9.99 a month — or even less if parents make a six-month or one-year commitment. Enrollment provides more than enough content to keep kids engaged throughout the year:

Access to exclusive content and first looks at books and select Radio Theatre dramas.
On-the-go access to the OAC app for both iOS and Android users.
24/7 streaming access to nearly 800 AIO episodes.
A new, members-only AIO episode every month.
A subscription to Adventures in Odyssey Clubhouse Magazine, and more.

In keeping with AIO’s rich heritage of teaching children about biblical principles — such as the importance of giving — a portion of each OAC membership benefits Focus on the Family partner organizations. Here are a couple of examples of what has been accomplished through Odyssey Adventure Club members:

Carry the Cure received a sound system they needed to provide after-school programs to children in Alaska.
Mission Aviation Fellowship has been able to provide health vaccines to 65,000 children.

The Odyssey Adventure Club wants to reach beyond fleeting entertainment this Christmas, partnering with parents in helping their kids grow deep in faith and find their place in God’s story.

Speaking of the holidays, you can prepare for Christmas with Thriving Family‘s 2015 Advent Activity Calendar — Tales of Christmas Past: 25 Inspiring true stories of the season. Assemble a beautifully designed Advent poster to help your kids focus on Christ this Christmas. Then read Scripture passages and stories that relate to individual flaps on the poster. You can also create easy-to-fold booklets for each story. Get more information about this year’s free Advent calendar at ThrivingFamily.com/Advent, or sign up to download it.

To learn more about the Odyssey Adventure Club, visit www.oaclub.org, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Spanish Success with FLFK + a SALE!

November 23, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

We’ve been using Foreign Language for Kids for our Spanish curriculum since the beginning of the school year. We watch the videos during breakfast, and a few weeks ago we received print curriculum, stickers, and games in the mail.

The kids haven’t stopped asking to play with those new materials since.

My Little Man still shouts along with certain repetitive parts of the videos. He loves them as much as ever – but both kids are enthralled with the games. They love the idea that we can ‘play’ for school, even though we do lots of unusual things in the name of education.

They love it so much that when the day gets crazy, they’re excited to ‘play Spanish’ after bath time. Just before bedtime. In their PJs.

Does it work?

YES.

The kids continue to randomly mix in their new Spanish words with their English ones.

They get excited when they hear Spanish being spoken in public.

They’re remembering their vocabulary words, they’re playing the games successfully, and they’re happy about all of it.

That’s success to me.

Best of all, Foreign Languages for Kids is running a huge 40% off sale right now! This Spanish program is so much fun and only takes about 5 minutes out of your day! Offer ends on Nov. 30th! Don’t forget to share with a friend! Use code TOSbeginner to get your discount.

How do you teach foreign languages?

“Another Way Home” by Deborah Raney

November 19, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

Grant and Audrey are adding grandchildren to their family left and right, but middle daughte, Danae, and her husband, Dallas Brooks, have been trying for years with no baby in sight.

Though Danae is ready to consider adoption, Dallas will not even discuss it. Despairing of ever having a family of her own, Danae decides to pour her passion and energies into volunteer work with a newly opened women’s shelter in town. Looking for a good cause to fill her lonely days, she never expects to give her heart to the hurting women she meets there. She’s finally learning to live her life with gratitude, but then heart-wrenching events on Thanksgiving weekend threaten to pull the entire Whitman clan into turmoil—and leave them all forever changed.

Another Way Home is the best book in the Chicory Inn series so far! I love what Raney’s done with the characters. Danae and Dallas are the most realistic characters to date. They’re real and transparent and hurting, yet they’re trying incredibly hard to follow after God. I love that aspect of this story.

Danae’s struggle made Another Way Home real for me. I appreciate the way that she fought selfish desires in her marriage, the way that she tried hard to find the good in days that seemed to have none. Danae hung in there and looked for blessings and changed her outlook, and that’s the kind of character that I want to read about.

Raney leaves a great hook at the end of the story for the next book, too. I’m looking forward to reading that story more than any of the others in this series. Raney’s really hit her stride with these characters, and I look forward to seeing what comes next.

I received a free copy of Another Way Home from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.

Hearts for Home Blog Hop – November 12, 2015

November 12, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

A Nest in the Rocks is now one of the co-hosts for the weekly Hearts for Home Blog link-up, which means that every Thursday you’ll find lots of great tips, recipes, and other family-friendly ideas listed throughout this post. If you’re a blogger, we’d love to have you link up your posts and join us. You can find information about the other co-hosts of this hop here.

The most clicked post from last week was 75 Awesome Things to Add to a Lapbook.

Some of my favorite posts from last week were:

– 10 Reasons You Need Tea Tree Oil

– Thanksgiving Writing Activities and Prompts

– How to Create Seasonal Picture Frames ( 30 Prints)

If your post is listed above, please grab one of our ‘Featured Blogger’ buttons! Congratulations, and thanks for writing such inspiring posts.

Link up your family-friendly blog posts below. Please add our button to your post to link back to this one. Happy hopping! Hearts for Home Blog Hop

An InLinkz Link-up

Book Club, Boys’ Edition: “Nick and Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab”

November 10, 2015 by Amy Leave a Comment

This month we ventured where we’ve never gone before – into the field of hard-core science. We read

Then we started building. We started out building this electromagnet. Each boy tested it to see how many big paperclips he could lift, and our top number was five.

When we started building an anti-intruder door alarm. This gadget was definitely trickier, and as science and circuits are not my thing, it took us a while to get it figured out. By the time we got it, our time was running short, and everyone was excited about our last project, so we moved on quickly – to build a rocket car.

Like the intruder alarm, the rocket car was a bit more complicated than expected. We repeated the experiment several times, modifying it each time, each with greater success than the last. (We’ve now figured out how to correct these issues before the girls’ club meets this week.)

While we didn’t get the amazing results we hoped for with the experiments, at least some of the kids went home and did research to figure out how to improve the projects. They loved

India Hartley, a famous and beautiful actress, is now alone after her father’s death and embarks upon a tour of theaters across the South. Her first stop is Savannah’s Southern Palace. On the eve of the second night’s performance, something goes horribly wrong. Her co-star, Arthur Sterling, is shot dead on stage in front of a packed house, and India is arrested and accused of the crime.

A benefactor hires Philip Sinclair, the best—and handsomest—lawyer in Savannah to defend India. A widower, Philip is struggling to reinvent his worn-out plantation on St. Simons Island. He needs to increase his income from his law practice in order to restore Indigo Point, and hardly anything will bring him more new clients than successfully defending a famous actress on a murder charge.

Because India can’t go anywhere in town without being mobbed, Philip persuades the judge handling her case to let him take her to Indigo Point until her trial date. India is charmed by the beauty of the Georgia lowcountry and is increasingly drawn to Philip. But a locked room that appears to be a shrine to Philip’s dead wife and the unsolved disappearance of a former slave girl raise troubling questions. Piecing together clues in an abandoned boat and a burned-out chapel, India discovers a trail of dark secrets that lead back to Philip, secrets that ultimately may hold the key to her freedom. If only he will believe her.

Dorothy Love will rope you in and prove that actresses can be respectable in her newest historical mystery. I love the way that she wrote the beginning. Love starts out with high action and speeds you through a scene, then backs up and shows you the events leading up to that pivotal moment. She uses that technique several other times in this story, and it’s just as effective each time.

India’s story takes a twisted path as she fights not only to clear her name but also to find love and a future for herself. She is faced with one crisis right after another, and there’s rarely light in the distance. It must have been very difficult to put one foot in front of the other during this time, and yet India’s struggle is encouraging in this way. Her determination and persistence in the light of her bleak future and lack of family is inspiring.

Despite the dire possibilities looming before her, parts of the story moved a bit slowly. It’s not that things weren’t happening – Love was setting the stage for higher action later – and much of the story consisted of emotional drama. Still, I was happy when the plot speed increased and the mystery moved along.

The realistic historical setting is my favorite aspect of A Respectable Actress. While I liked India, Love knocked it out of the park with the history that she incorporated into the story. She included references to real events in addition to basing certain characters and places ones that actually exist. I love knowing that these places are real, and Love’s descriptions make me want to take off for Georgia and see what remains.

Dorothy Love is an excellent writer. She breathes life into history and creates feelings from numbers and facts. Her storytelling is smooth and she knows how to build suspense. A Respectable Actress shines the spotlight on a little-known attitude in American history – and it’s fascinating.

Click here to read other reviews in this bloggy hop or here to purchase your own copy now.

A native of west Tennessee, Dorothy Love makes her home in the Texas hill country with her husband and their golden retriever. An award-winning author of numerous young adult novels, Dorothy made her adult debut with the Hickory Ridge novels. When she isn’t busy writing or researching her next book, Love enjoys hiking, traveling, and hanging out with her husband Ron and their rambunctious golden retriever. The Loves make their home in the Texas hill country.

Find Dorothy online: website, Twitter, Facebook

I received a free copy of this book from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.