I'm a full-time mummy

(** Article first published as Book Review: The ABC's of Homeschooling by Laura Ann Huber on Blogcritics.)

I really appreciates more materials (whether books, apps etc) that relates to educational topics. So when I received an email pitch from the author of this book and upon checking out further info on this book, I decided I must review this! So here goes my review for the "The ABC's of Homeschooling" book:

Title:  The ABC's of Homeschooling
Author: Laura Ann Huber
Publisher: Laura Huber an imprint of Telemachus Press, LLC (November 24, 2011)
ISBN-13/-10:  978-1937387914 / 1937387917
Paperback:  130 pages
Dimension:  8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches

Description from the product page:
" The ABC’s of Home Schooling is an alphabet book with a twist. It is a guide for parents – not their children. Each letter is assigned a basic principle necessary to educating your kids at home with confidence and success. Incorporated with gentle life lessons and quotes from Aristotle to Einstein parents will learn how to bring out their child’s God – given gifts and natural talents in a cozy, comfortable, and orderly atmosphere.

E – teaches parents the importance of being a shining EXAMPLE at all times.
D – examines ideas for getting your children to help with household DUTIES.
U – states the usefulness of UN-SCHOOLING yourself to become a better teacher.
C – prepares the way of order by learning how to: COMBINE, CONDENSE, and CONTAIN.
A – reminds us that a good ATTITUDE and AUTHORITY will carry the day.
T – tells of the gift of TECHNOLOGY and how to use it to your advantage.
I – will enhance the IMAGINATION of you and your children.
O – is the leverage you need for overcoming OBSTACLES.
N – will show how easy NESTING makes learning, and ensure proper NUTRITION for you and your child."

Firstly, I love guide books like this! It explains to you from A to Z on what you need to know if you are contemplating your journey into homeschooling and I would have to say this book helped me understand more as well.

I received this book a few hours before we left for our short weekend family trip up north and I decided to bring it along so I can read it in the car when our kids nap (and yes, they did for 2 hours!) The book is not too thick and just at the right size to be easily carried around (I slot it into my diaper bag during my family trip)

When I read about Laura's experience and methods in using TV and other children's bad behaviour to teach her children about the importance of good behaviour, I can't help but to agree completely, as I use the same methods. 

For example, sometimes I need my mother-in-law to watch my kids for a while when I need to rush some accounting and invoicing for my hubby and if it is night time, she will definitely be watching TV in the living room. When I see them watching fight scenes (like a policeman fighting with robbers), I will explain to my boy that he must not get into fights like these people, and I will also explain the consequences of doing bad things, which lead to police catching and putting the bad guys into prison.

Of course, some of you might think too much TV is no good for children. Yes, everything in moderation. I have cut down TV and iPad time for Ben (currently TV only during mealtimes and after 6pm, sometimes no TV during daytime too)

It doesn't mean that everything is bad, we as parents must know how to make use of the opportunity to teach our child. There are times I even use scenes from TV shows to remind my boy not to misbehave or to maintain his cool and I can clearly see him thinking back (mind running hyper speed, no doubt!) before he nods his head in agreement and understanding.

I also appreciated the brief history on how schooling came about.

I love some of the key points shared by the author, such as "W=We The People" (page 103). As I wrote in a post in early September,  Ben threw a tantrum in Sunday school, and a friend suggested we send Ben to a preschool or kindergarten so that he could learn discipline and not easily throw tantrums. I would like to take this opportunity to explain that my boy does not throw tantrums without a reason and I do trust that being a 3.5-year-old, his actions were justified though yes, I do believe my boy needs to learn to control his tantrum outburst (but then again... he's just 3.5?!)

So anyway, what about social skills for my child? When I read this book, I couldn't help but agree as well that things weren't like this long, long ago. I feel children need to mix with people of all ages, not just with the same age group. My 13-month-old girl learns everything by observing her surroundings, her brother, my hubby and I, her grandma, her cousins, through our Bible action songs video on TV and people around us. Every moment she is learning things. Iif she is placed with children of the same age as her, what can she learn? Think about it...

I do appreciate the inspiring quotes that comes with every keypoint and the author's personal experience and her sharing of her childhood memories. Reminds me of my own childhood memories too!

One thing that I would like to recommend is to include some illustrations in this book as I personally feel all text and explanations will not keep my attention for long. I need books with pictures so I can rest a bit from reading too much text.

Another observation I noted (which I have also highlighted to the author as well) is one of the websites she suggested, pbskids.com, cannot be found. I can only see pbskids.org Turns out it is a typo, which the author said she will be rectifying.

In summary, this is a must-have book if you are contemplating homeschooling or having doubts whether you are going the right path in your homeschooling journey.

HIGHLY recommended!

You can get this book from Amazon.

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! THREE of you lucky people are going to win a copy of this awesome book! And it is open for worldwide entries! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

I received a pitch from Tidy Tots asking me whether I am interested in reviewing their Potty Chair Liners and as they are happy to ship their products all the way to me in Malaysia, I went ahead with my big 'Yes!' in reviewing their products! So here goes my review for the "Tidy Tots Potty Chair Liners":

Description from the product page:
"From personal experience one of the biggest challenges of potty training a child is cleaning and sanitizing the potty chair bowl each time your child successfully uses it. For many parents, cleaning a potty chair bowl is easier said than done. Tidy Tots™ disposable potty chair liners provide a mess-free solution to potty training. No more pouring or dumping a potty chair bowl in the toilet. No more cleaning poop residue from the potty chair bowl. It's easy as 1-2-3!

1. Cover the removable bowl of your potty chair for toddlers with a Tidy Tots™ liner and smooth it into place;
2. Add a Tidy Tots™ super-absorbent pad;
3. When your child is finished, simply remove the liner from the removable potty chair bowl, pull the drawtape closure and tie it closed and discard the liner as you would dispose of a diaper.

No more yuck!!!"

After reading through the step-by-step instructions on how to use the potty chair liners, I gave it a go, all ready with a newly clean and dry potty. You can see the size of the absorbent pad is quite small, like my palm size. It's a few millimetres thick and does not smell. The potty chair liner is a plastic bag which fits into most potty chairs according to the website.

Firstly, I covered Benjamin's potty chair with a Tidy Tots™ liner, making sure to smooth it into place before adding in the super-absorbent pad by positioning it right in the middle. Then we wait... and wait.

Then Ben decided it's time for him to pee and I happily told him to pee into his potty and I observed how the super absorbent pad works. It soaked up Ben's piss really fast but it soaked through as Ben's piss is really a lot. My 3 years old boy drinks water like there's no tomorrow. I left the potty as it is and waited, hoping he might decide to poop too. And it happened an hour later. Yes!

I was a bit worried Ben might not feel comfortable sitting on his potty now that it is lined with a plastic liner but surprisingly, he sat on it as he poops and did not mentioned about the plastic liner.

This is the part that I love the most! Once he finished pooping, I just remove the liner from the potty, pull the drawtape closure string and tie it closed and discard the liner just like what I normally do for my kids' diapers. No more scrubbing off mess from the potty! Easy peasy!

You can check out Tidy Tots website at http://www.tidytots.com/

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! ONE of you lucky people is going to win this too! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the product by Tidy Tots in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.

(** Article first published as Book Review: Money: How to Be Richer, Now by Super Fast Guides on Blogcritics.)

I received an email pitch asking whether I will be interested in reviewing this book and yes, anything that helps with my knowledge to save more, earn more, waste less, is totally welcome! So here goes my review for the "Money: How to Be Richer, Now" book:

Title: Money: How to Be Richer, Now (Kindle Edition)
Author: Super Fast Guides
Publisher: Super Fast Guides (August 27, 2012)
ASIN: B009385CLW  
Paperback:  49 pages
File Size:  133 KB

Description from the product page:
"Would you like to have a Money Machine that gave you an extra $10, $100, or even $1,000 every month? Do you realize that big businesses are taking away your hard-earned cash every week so that they get richer while you get poorer? Would you like to change this and learn how to get rich like them? Do you know why the rich get richer? Do you want to learn how to make money too?

This guide will answer all of these questions and more. It shows you in easy, simple steps how you can unlock the amazing potential of the Money Machine so that you can learn how to get rich by reducing your expenses and increasing your income so that you have significant amounts of extra cash each and every month. This guide also shows you how you can stop giving away your dollars to big businesses, how to make money and become even richer."

This book comes with advices and tips on how to start making money for yourself by reducing your expenses, increasing your income and how to make your money works more so that you can get the reward by having more money. On each chapter, we understand a little bit more on how to reduce our expenses and increase our income and what are the tips we can apply to do so. 

I particularly like the tips on looking at cost per unit when we shop for things, for example groceries. We have only started applying this tip few years back and realised we do save more and get the better value when we shop for things this way! I also enjoyed the 'Extreme Money Machine Tip' which give additional tips that we can try for more drastic action!

The only thing that I would like to recommend to make this book better is to include some illustrations for better visualization effect. Other than that, this is an easy to read book that offers practical and easy approach to ways you can implement and apply in your life and family for your way to financial freedom.

You can get this book from Amazon .

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! TWO of you lucky people are going to win a softcopy of this awesome book! And by softcopy I mean, e-book in PDF format, OK? Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a PDF copy of the book by the author in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"