Continuing Education for Marriage

If you want to excel in any area of your life, especially your career, you are often required to take Continuing Education classes.  For those of us who homeschool, we attend workshops and conferences to get our continuing education.  When I was in sales, I took many workshops and training classes to continually increase my abilities and make me more valuable to my employer.  

Why should our personal lives be any different?  If we want to excel at our marriages, we should take the time and make the effort to continue to educate ourselves about how to be the best wife we can be to our husbands.  However, there are very few "Continuing Education" opportunities for marriage.  There are a few weekend retreats for marriages around the country and individual churches sometimes have classes for married couples.  For those of us whose husbands work odd hours and can't even attend church regularly, these opportunities just don't work.

So I was very interested when I received "To Have and To Hold" Marriage Bundle from Eternal Encouragement.  This "bundle" includes 2 mp3 audio sessions, 5 ebooks, 7 ebooklets, and 2 full back issues of TEACH Magazine.  If you bought these items separately, it would cost  $100, but you can get this entire bundle for $39.97 for the instant downloads or $49.97 if you prefer to receive the hard copies of the materials.

There are so many wonderful articles, tips, ideas, encouragements, and lessons in this bundle that I have never seen such a collection put together in one place before.  Here is a list of what is included:

• 5R's Session 2 - Rekindle 
• One Life to Live, One Man to Love 
• Loving Your Knight in Shining Armor Even When He Doesn't Shine 
• Roadmap to a Marvelous Marriage 
• Marriage Tidbits to Treasure 
• Quotes Not Quibbles 
• Marriage Report 
• 31 Daily Biblical Prayers for Wives to Pray for Their Husbands 
• Encouragement Report 
• Don't Settle 
• SHIMLY 
• What God Says about Marriage 
• 75 Inexpensive Romantic Rut Cures
• It Happened One Afternoon 
• 2001 Summer Issue TEACH Magazine "Loving Your Husband"
• 2009 Spring Issue TEACH Magazine "Marriages Made Marvelous"  

Once I began reading through the "bundle", it was very hard to stop!  There are longer, more in-depth articles as well as short articles with tips and other tidbits of information.  I really enjoyed browsing through "75 Inexpensive Romantic Rut Cures".  After almost 29 years of marriage and with 2 teenagers in the house, I needed some fresh ideas to spark romance again in our marriage. 

I also LOVED "SHIMLY"!!  It is such an endearing story of love through the years - made me want to begin leaving little notes around the house (I guess I would have to explain it to my husband, though:-)

The two issues of TEACH Magazine are packed full of great articles about marriage.  And the article "Loving Your Knight in Shining Armor Even When He Doesn't Shine" was challenging and a great reminder about what is really important.  And the "31 Daily Biblical Prayers for Wives to Pray for Their Husbands" is a great one-page sheet that you can print out and keep handy to help you every day in praying for your husband.

"To Have and To Hold" Marriage Bundle is definitely great Continuing Education for marriages.  You can get yours by visiting The Shop at  www.eternalencouragement.com.

You can check out what other Gabby Moms had to say about
"To Have and To Hold" Marriage Bundle over at The Gabby Moms Blog.  One of my fellow Gabby Moms also suggested this would make a great wedding present and I agree!

 I received this product for honest review from Eternal Encouragement Magazine as a part of The Gabby Moms blogging program. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

TOS Review: WonderMaps from Bright Ideas Press

No matter what you are studying, whether history, literature, science or Bible, maps can be an incredible asset to your homeschool studies.  Maps can make the material more comprehensive and put things in perspective.  But, too often, the exact map that you need is hard to find.  You either have to scour the internet or pour over books to find just what you are looking for.  Well, WonderMaps is going to change that for you!

WonderMaps is a new product from Bright Ideas Press that is a customizable collection of over 350 different maps.  WonderMaps includes:

• 60+ maps of the world
• 60+ maps of the USA
• 125 historical maps, including 25 biblical maps
• The complete map sets from The Mystery of History vols. I–III and All American History vols. I & II

WonderMaps is designed with easy-to-use layers that allow you to enjoy great customizable features with just a click. Select:

• historical or modern-day maps
• outline, reference, political, or topographical maps
• black-and-white or color maps
• features including:  names, borders, rivers, cities, physical features

WonderMaps software requires Adobe Reader v. 9.1 or higher, which can be downloaded for free from Adobe.com.

All of this is available as a download for the price of $49.95. You can also get the download plus a CD.  That includes just about every map and type of map you could possibly need to aid in your homeschooling.  You can choose simple outline maps or add layers with cities, topography, physical features and more.  It is a lot of fun to create maps and print them out in just minutes that exactly meet your needs.

There is a video tutorial available on the WonderMaps website so you can get an idea of exactly what you can get from this incredible product.

If you would like to read more review of this product, just click here to read other reviews by the TOS Review Crew.

I received this product for free in return for an honest review. I have not received financial reimbursement for my review of WonderMaps by Bright Ideas Press.

TOS Review: Yesterday's Classics

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be—
I had a mother who read to me.                             —Strickland Gillilan

I believe that homeschoolers can never have too many books and there will always be a list of books you wish you had had the time to read with your children.  Just looking through the list of the 225 ebooks from Yesterday's Classics has given me a long list of books that I wish I had known about when my children were young.  And it has also provided some wonderful books for us to still read in the coming years.  

The books that were written during the golden age of children's literature 1880-1920 are some of the best classic literature ever available for children.  And until now, many of these were out of print and very hard to find.  Thanks to Yesterday's Classics, you can now own all 225 of these wonderful books for one reasonable price of $99.95!  This is a special discount off of their regular price of $149.95 and is only available until May 31, 2011 by clicking here.

Of the 225 books available, you will find history books from several civilizations, including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, and Great Britain. Works of classic literature include poetry and hero tales. A number of nature books round out the offerings. 

I was very excited to see some books that are familiar, such as The Burgess Bird Book for Children which we read when my children were young. I looked at this one in particular to see if they included the beautiful drawings that were in the original and was very pleased to find them in color!!  And they also have The Burgess Animal Book for Children which I didn't even know about until now.   They also have The Iliad for Boys and Girls and The Odyssey for Boys and Girls which bring these wonderful classics down to a level that is more understandable for children. 

You can purchase these books either individually or in a package that includes all 225 titles.  You have the option of choosing paperback books or ebooks, in either Kindle or EPUB format.  If there were illustrations in the original texts, then there will be illustrations in the ebook versions.  And if the illustrations were in color, they will also be in color in the ebook versions.  In the paperback versions, they are in black and white.

Another great advantage of Yesterdays Classics, is that once you purchase the ebooks, you may download them onto as many different devices as you like (there are no restrictions).  So you can download a book to your child's iPod so they can read the book on their own without needing to be on the computer.  You can also print out any books that you would like to have on paper.

Each ebook has a Table of Contents to help make searching for a specific chapter much easier.  And ebooks are available in 22 different genres, as follows:

World History (9) 

Children of the World (6)

Nature (27)

Early Civilization (5)

Ancient Greece (29)

Fables (5)

Ancient Rome (18)

Kindergarten (14)

Fairy Tales (12)

Britain (9)

Shakespeare (2)

Poetry (5)

Middle Ages (17)

Legends (14)

Renaissance and Exploration  (9)

Science (7)

Readers (4)

American History (18)

Faith (10)

Christmas Stories (6)

Literature (5)

Biography (10)

At www.yesterdaysclassics.com, you can search through the books by author, title or subject.

Yesterday's Classics is truly a treasure trove of incredible literature for kids and you will be so blessed to have these books for your children to read.  They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, as well as a sample book that you can download to see what the books are like.  And you don't have to have a Kindle, you can get Kindle for Mac or PC for free and then download the books to that.

Also, if you use Ambleside Online, Heart of Dakota, Living Books Curriculum or Tapestry of Grace, they have dozens of books used in these curricula.  They provide all the information you will need to decide which format is best for you and how to go about downloading the files here.

I encourage you to go and read what other TOS Crew Members have to say about Yesterday's Classics here.

I received this product for free in return for an honest review. I have not received financial reimbursement for my review of Yesterday's Classics.