The Christmas season marks a special time of year for my family. Not only do we get to practice special traditions that are important to our family, we also set aside time to intensely study the life and sacrifice of our Saviour.  While this study is appropriate all year round (indeed, it should be studies all year round!), we find it especially necessary during Christmas to keep our hearts and thoughts focused on Him.

Our family likes to follow along in a book or resource to  this end. We have always used another book on advent but I found it lacking in that it was not designed to include the younger set. Supplementing coloring pages and whatnot was necessary in order to give them visual aid. This year will be a bit different as Kimberly Eddy has graciously provided me a copy of her newly finished 2nd Edition Advent: Preparing for the Coming of the Lord eBook to review.

[quote]

First off, I would like to tell you a little bit about this eBook and then I’ll share what I thought of it.

Advent: Preparing for the Coming of the Lord contains:

• Wonderful, kid-pleasing artwork throughout the book
• Memory verse and advent calendar cards that are printable
• Ideas on how to create an Advent calendar and wreath for your own family
• A month long devotional for each day that will draw the whole family in!
• And more

This eBook is 122-pages long and is very economically priced at $12 for the downloadable, straight-from-the-site version. If you wish to have it on CD you can do so for $17.

What do I think?

I love this quote from Mrs. Eddy because it describes why our family practices Advent:

“. . .I view the season of Advent as a teaching tool to use with my children. It serves a two-fold purpose: first, it gets our eyes and minds onto Christ, in a season when materialism and consumerism is being thrust upon us at every side, and secondly, affords us a season of focusing on the imminent return of Christ, and talking about it. Advent is a season for remembering the Lord’s first coming, as a baby in a manger, while looking towards His second coming, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, coming in the clouds.”

Mrs. Eddy gives examples as to how the Advent wreath and calendar can be set up and created. She also gives personal glimpses into how her family does Advent, as well as give links to resources on the Internet. I appreciate this because I was able to gain creative ideas as to how to use them. I also felt much better knowing that I was not the only one who uses small pillar candles and a plain wreath as opposed to something more elaborate.

The meat of any Advent book is the devotionals. These help you guide your family into important discussion about the whys and hows of the Christmas season. Each day’s devotional includes an illustration, coloring page, and a Scripture verse. Each week also has its own memory verse. I like this because one week is generally enough for our little ones and my husband and me to learn a Scripture. The devotionals cover much more than Jesus’ birth. In fact you will find many, many Old Testament references that help show our little ones how much Jesus’ arrival was anticipated.

This book has done what other advent-focused books could not: draw in people from very young to adult. Our family is at the point of life where our children are all very young and visual aids are necessary to draw the point home. Instead of having to search for our own supplements, Mrs. Eddy more than adequately includes coloring pages that help us avoid this.

Other things I want to add that I just loved are the list of prophecies from the Old Testament and how we can see that Jesus fulfilled them. And I was absolutely elated to see that there were coloring pages that include dotted-line words that my Dory can use! She is very, very big into lined words to trace over and as she is a hands-on person this will help her feel included during Advent study. In fact I would purchase this eBook for that alone, if nothing else!

There is just so much more I could rave about Advent: Preparing for the Coming of the Lord. I think you can tell that I love this book and I highly urge you to visit JoyfulMomma.org and purchase it for your own family. With Advent starting just tomorrow you can download it right away and have it ready in time to celebrate this most important event! Let Kimberly know I sent you there.

AVKO is a

“non-profit, 501(C)3 membership organization that focuses on the development and production of materials and especially techniques to teach reading and spelling, handwriting (manuscript and cursive), and keyboarding.  AVKO is dedicated to the teaching everyone how to read and spell, regardless of their mild to moderate learning disabilities, dyslexia, poverty, or opportunity.”

Their mission statement says

“The AVKO Educational Research Foundation, founded in 1974, has as its mission the following:

1. To determine what makes the learning of reading and spelling so difficult for some and so easy for others.
2. To determine what it is about our language that good readers learn without being taught that poor readers don’t.
3. To determine whether or not that which poor readers don’t learn is ever systematically taught and if it isn’t, if it can be.
4. To devise techniques and materials to enable teachers (or parents) to systematically teach poor readers and/or poor spellers that which schools presently are not teaching.
5. To widely disseminate its discoveries of techniques and materials that enable dyslexics to learn to read and to spell.”

While I do not usually quote such a large amount of material in my reviews I felt this was necessary in order for you to get an adequate feel for what AVKO is trying to accomplish.

Services offered by AVKO include parent training, free training, free downloadable eBooks, and other materials. These were designed to help your struggling reader learn to read in a way that will help them succeed. I do not personally have a special needs child so I was unable to get a feel for if these materials are helpful in that area or not.

Prices are:

$25 for basic membership which includes discounts on their printed materials, many free eBooks, workshop recordings by Don McCabe, and more.

$100 for their deluxe membership which includes everything included in their basic membership access to some of their newest eBooks.

To be honest I really did not get the site. Their website was very hard to understand and navigate. That may have been most of the problem. There are many supplemental curricula that may be helpful for homeschoolers or parents of special needs learners such as their vocabulary illustration worksheet or advanced vocabulary flashcards. There are also some learn to read and spell eBooks that come with the membership that might work for families: Starting from Square One: The Teaching of Reading and Spelling or The Reading Teacher’s List of Over 5500 Basic Spelling words.

I really feel that I cannot share any more about this site. I really did not agree with how they approached teaching spelling and reading and so I did not use any of their curricula. Feel free to check it out yourself and see if you may benefit from any of their offerings or memberships.

I was recently given for review a box of Gerber’s 8 Grains & Yogurt cereal for babies. In my mind I was ready to not like it from the start. After all it went against my “no convenience foods” rule of thumb. What food would I willingly feed my baby from a box?

I was wrong.

First off, this cereal is made with eight grains:

• Oat
• Rice
• Millet
• Rye
• Sorghum
• Corn
• Wheat
• and, Barley

This was huge for me because we are trying to raise our children up on more than the standard wheat grain. And since I do not always have many of these grains on hand it was a huge blessing to give Boo these items.  She is getting a good introduction without me having to search all over my area for nearly impossible items.

Of course I was also pleased with the fact that my baby was getting some yogurt into her diet. These live and active cultures will help give her a healthy digestive system as well as promote overall health. Boo doesn’t care for cold yogurt so this was the perfect way for her to eat it. Another great thing about this cereal is there is no refined sugar. None. While this cereal has a slightly sweet taste I am confident putting it into her mouth knowing that her little immune system is not being weakened by processed sugars.

I also could not leave out of this review the fact that this contains protein, vitamins (including Vit D which is great at building one’s immune system), and iron.

What about the taste?

Boo loved this cereal! Even though this was technically designed for a younger baby she ate it as a breakfast cereal still. All I did was make it a bit thicker than I would have for an infant. It was pleasantly sweet (even without the refined sugars!) and easy to make in the morning. It was also a nice change of pace for her because she is not a big breakfast eater so tempting her with our usual oatmeal or toast generally does not work.

Allergy-wise I want to make you aware that this product does not contain any artificial colors, so there is no need to worry on that front! You will, of course, want to introduce this cereal slowly to your baby if he/she has not yet been given wheat products.

Would I recommend this?

Yes. Plain and simple, yes I would. I believe this cereal is generally healthy and provides adequate nutrition. It is easy to find in stores, contains important grains that you may find hard to attain, and is pleasant-tasting.  I wish I could remember how much this box cost but I can’t so as soon as I found out I will update this post. You can view more information about it or purchase it at any of your local grocery stores.