I was greeting friends on Twitter this morning, when a ‘tweet’ came through from another WAHM (work at home mom) about a post she’d made on her blog, Relaxed Homeschooling. She has all kinds of great information on her site for homeschoolers and for all of us parents, really! I like the way she has her book recommendations split up into age groups and I really appreciate all the resources that she provides.

And I’m so very glad I saw the blog post she tweeted, Virtual Fieldtrips! She’s telling us about a really great site! And it’s called, surprisingly enough, Virtual Field Trips. This site is so totally cool, you guys! You have to go check it out! And I’ve only gone on one ‘field trip’ so far, and I’m already this excited!
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KnowMore.com is a fabulous site by an online friend of mine, that is chock full of information for us parents to help our children learn and play and explore in their world - more. I was so excited when I saw that she had put together this awesome site! I meant to tell you all about it quite a while ago, actually, but, you know how life can get in the way of your life sometimes.

You will find everything here from lesson plans to art and crafts projects to articles and other resources to help us teach, inspire, and entertain our children. There’s also a bookstore - and you have to know I love that! Kim loved My Very Own Mail the minute I first told her about it when we first met at The Warrior Forum a couple years ago. She has the same passion for early childhood education that I do, and she has been very supportive of me and My Very Own Mail. And I would like to extend to her the same encouragement with her wonderful education-focused site.

Know More is a work in progress, with more helpful information, guidance, instruction, and articles being added to it all the time. It is fun watching it grow!

This is a really cool book about all about Christmas trees. My favorite part about the book is that the children can learn all about the different kinds of trees. That is very cool, when authors take a fun, fictional story and teach kids good stuff with it!

Now check this out - you and I can look inside the book - before we buy it! It’s a website that I just stumbled across today, called Lookybook.com. Actually, my friend, Drew, who blogs over at Read To Me, Dad, alerted me to it. I am so excited about it! Just click on the book and you can look through it, too!

My friend, Deb, told me about a very cool site yesterday. It’s called Kindersay - Preschool Learning, and it helps preschoolers learn lots of words and their alphabet with online videos! It’s very cool! (Did I already say that?) I just love early childhood education - I get so pumped up about it to begin with, but, then you add the technologies that we are blessed with today - and I just get all geeked up!
Use of the website is free, and it can help not only preschool kids, but, also, English as a Second Language (ESL) students.

Each page is very simple and uncomplicated, with very few buttons to choose from. It is such an easy set up, that after a few tries with help, I’m sure kids can operate the site on their own. When you click to a new page, there is a pause, before the Kindersay lady says the word, so the child gets a chance to guess the word first.

Oh! Somebody send me a preschooler! I want to try this site out! Ok, you guys just go get your preschoolers on it, and report back to me how cool it was!

There is even a section where you can put family pictures in and have them assigned words like mom, mommy, mother. And you can even upload pictures of your pets!

So check it out, it looks awesome and I would love to hear your feedback about it! Kindersay - Preschool Learning!

Combine a library with the internet, and you know you’ve got me hooked right there! Those are two of my favorite things! I just love each new thing that we can do on the internet to enrich our lives. And Questia is definitely a cool one! And with Over 5,000 FREE Books in their public domain index, I’d say that rocks! And they also are running free trial subscriptions for sets of books in one of four selected topics: Psychology, Ethics, Leadership, or Early American History.

There are so many great features to this site, that I’m not even sure where to start. I’m sure I will miss something that I want to tell you and then I’ll just come back and post about them again.

Let’s start with the cost, shall we? It’s very reasonable for the amazing service provided, in my opinion. There are four ways to pay - you can get one month for $19.95, one quarter for $44.95, one year for $99.95, or a lifetime membership for $399.95. I like the way they’ve given a lot of options for payment, that offers quite a bit of flexibility for all of us.

And with the service they offer - those are great prices! So let’s get into some of that now! Questia offers complete books, cover to cover, along with journals, magazines, newspapers, and an encyclopedia! They also provide a listing of over 6,000 research topics!

I have not explored all the forms of media within Questia, yet, but, I have explored the books. And I am totally psyched on this software/program/website! Let me tell you a little bit about what happens when you open a book.

The book opens in a program similar to a PDF and it has a toolbar on the top of it, and a menu to the left, with all of the chapters listed. Just like a PDF, you can hide the chapter menu. The toolbar on the top is so cool, though!

I’ve chosen a book called Stepping Out of the Shadows, Alabama Women 1819-1990, edited by Mary Martha Thomas. The first thing that I did was to highlight some text. This is a great feature - you just highlight the text you want, as you normally would on a computer - then select ‘highlight’ in the tool bar and I can select from six different highlighter colors. And then highlight, as if it’s a real book sitting in front of me!

Oh my, this is getting long - I think I’m going to have to break this up into several posts, to make sure you stay with me!
There are two more features that I want to go ahead and talk about, though. One of them is the ‘bibliography’ button in the toolbar. This is really handy. If I’m working on a research paper, and I want to add a page I’m reading to my bibliography, I just click this tab on the toolbar, and then I’m given a couple options. I can add it to my bibliography within my Questia account, or I can download it and save the file to my computer, and it is already properly formatted. And they even give you tips about formatting, if you need them. My only issue with this feature is that I know that I worked hard, as a kid, to learn the proper formatting of a bibliography. And I learned it by doing it, over and over again. So I’m afraid, if it’s done for kids, they won’t ever learn it. This could be the finickiness of a grammar nerd talking and you might argue, ‘What job besides an editor really needs to know that?’ Well, this grammar nerd thinks that, for reasons she can’t quite explain, kids just need to learn that. I just do. So while it’s handy, it could also become a handicap.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the fact that there are links to all of the social bookmarking sites within the books. I don’t understand that, because, if it is a paid membership to see the content, how would my bookmarking it for others - who couldn’t see it - help them? So I’m a little confused about that feature. I’ll dig around and see what I can find out about it.

And I’ll continue my review of all the amazing features of Questia in another post soon.

I’ve never met a bookworm that doesn’t love animals! Ok, they might be out there, but, I haven’t met them.

This mama bookworm loves this 120lb. beast:

And I just bet my sweet beast would totally love this dog house:

It’s called The Barn, and I think it is so cute! It is from a very cool online pet supplies store, called Internet Pet Emporium.

I don’t know, though, my humongous baby might rather have something like this:

It’s called The Mansion, and might just fit ‘His Hugeness’ better, don’t you think? Heehee!

This store is so cool, though - they have all kinds of wonderful pet supplies! They have a really nice set of stairs for small dogs that I was telling my mother-in-law about, because, she bought a flimsy, crummy, plastic set. And I was telling her how these look really nice in the house, even matching your decor!

Internet Pet Emporium is definitely a fun place to shop for our beloved creatures! Ever since I first saw it a couple weeks ago, I have been telling everyone about it!

GO READ A BOOK!

See?

Ok, ok, those aren’t really my books, and heck! That’s not even my wall! It is, however, the coolest bookshelf I’ve ever seen! And I want one! No, I think I need one. Yeah, that’s it - I need one!

It’s called a Conceal Invisible Bookshelf and you can get it a very cool online store called VAT19 - where they sell all kinds of “Curiously Awesome Products”!!

The guys at VAT19 just started a blog, too! It’s the Vat19.com slash Blog and it is “dedicated to all that is curiously awesome”. And I must say that, so far, I am quite enjoying it!

GO READ A BOOK!

I love my sweet dog, ‘Puppy’, so much! And yes, I have him in my heart! But now - I have him next to my heart, as well! And that is because I just got the nicest and prettiest silver locket with a picture of him in it! The locket is so beautiful! And it is amazing - and newfangled - because it is not an actual photograph inside it. The photo was actually engraved inside it. It is so cool! It came from PicturesOnGold.com, a really nice online jewelry retailer, that could very well drain my bank account! The photos are laser-engraved onto the jewelry and they come out so nicely - I was really amazed! I had never heard of this before, and I am really impressed with the quality of the image!

Let me show you, so you can see what I’m talking about and how nice it is! And I was able to get text engraved on the front of it. I chose ‘Lisa Marie Mary’ and it came out so pretty! Here is the front of the locket (and the back):

And here is the inside of the locket, with my sweet Puppy:

I scanned it to try and capture the wonderful quality, but, the scan doesn’t really do it justice. The image looks just like a photograph, though - it’s really great. And also, Puppy’s photos often look like he has no eyes, because his head is mostly all black with dark brown eyes, so it’s hard to get his eyes to show up in pics.

PicturesOnGold.com really has some gorgeous jewelry! And they even cater to us diehard bookworms, with the 14K Yellow Gold Book Locket! Perfect!

GO READ A BOOK!

I am the queen of locking myself out - of my car and the house! It’s such a rotten feeling, but, locksmiths have always been available to help me out - thank goodness! And I never really thought about it before, but, locksmiths can restore your peace of mind in a number of ways. They are security professionals and they can install and maintain all kinds of things to make us safer and make our homes and offices run smoother. They obviously can do anything with any locks or safes you may have, but, they also can install burglar and fire alarms, surveillance systems, intercom systems, and even phone systems. If you are in the Pittsburgh area, Locksmith Pittsburgh has the best prices and products in the industry, using state-of-the-art technology for your security. With a polite and friendly staff, they are fully licensed, bonded, and insured. They have a contact form right on the site where you can fill in your contact information and list what kind of help you are needing to get a free estimate. But you will also find the 1-800 number all over the site, should you need emergency help. They are continually upgrading their knowledge, expertise and equipment; and are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to assist you with your needs. Their goal is to know that their customers are 100% satisfied, declaring that they are not happy unless their customers are happy! When someone helps me out of my Lucy Ricardo-style jams, I’m definitely happy!
GO READ A BOOK!

I was just reading this cool site that if chock full of resources for all parts of our lives! The site is called The Resources Center, and their tag line is Resources for Life, Business, and Education.

And, of course, my favorite section is their section on parenting. They have some really great articles in there. The first of these that really caught my eye is How To: Family Summer Day Trip, as this is extremely relevant to our family right now. We are going to a canyon with beautiful water falls tomorrow that is about an hour away from here! Talk about perfect timing for me to read this article! I really like the parts about logging it and journaling it!

And you guys all know I love kids’ crafts! I send new ones out every month with my mail - and I almost always do them first with my own daughter! So this article - Five Summer Activities and Crafts For Kids and Parents - is just right up my alley! They have some really special and fun crafts and activities listed.

Don’t forget, though, that this is a resource site for life! They have information for business, career, travel, shopping, health, life, successful relationships and more! They are an educational outreach of the Kamaron Institute.

GO READ A BOOK!