Art History for All Ages: A Review of Have I Got a Story For You! Downloadable Art History Video Series (Renaissance)

 

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this digital download from Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page. Thank you.

Are you looking to incorporate art history into your homeschool curriculum? We found Have I Got a Story For You! to be a wonderful way to introduce art history curriculum into our homeschool lessons without too much muss and fuss. And because Have I Got a Story For You! is designed to be used with children across multiple age ranges, I am able include both our children in the lessons. 

"Mrs. Beth and her animated drop of paint, Gasfy, will introduce your students/children to artists that influenced these art periods. Through creative storytelling and silly antics, Mrs. Beth and Gasfy make the artists and their masterpieces come alive."

About Have I Got a Story For You! 

There are four different art history curriculums from Have I Got a Story For You! available through Timberdoodle, including the Renaissance Series, the Baroque Series, the Impressionist Series, and the Post-Impressionist Series. We were able to review the Renaissance Series in our homeschool. 

The Renaissance Series includes:

• One introductory video, "Who Needs a Flea Collar?" 
• Five videos on da Vinci
• Four videos on Michelangelo
• Two videos on Raphael
• 12 lesson plans that align with the videos 
• "Name that Artist" PowerPoint Game
• Downloadable Flashcards (da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, instructions for the Flashcards, and Flashcards cover)

How We Used Have I Got a Story For You! in Our Homeschool 

I have introduced this art history curriculum into our daily routine a few days a week. We watched the video one day and worked on one of the suggested art activities. I then choose other activities in the lesson plan to do throughout the week. 

Our Thoughts

I remember taking an art history course in college to fulfill my art requirement. We studied ancient art from prehistory through Roman history. We spent a lot of time reading about the pieces, but I don't really remember a lot from the course itself. The things I remember the most are those which brought life to the art pieces, which included two field trips that students took on their own to local museums (without the teacher).

Have I Got a Story For You! art history course jumps to life with the powerful stories shared by Mrs. Beth and Gasfy. Even though our children are not seeing the Renaissance works in person, they are seeing a variety of pieces through the video lessons, and we have the opportunity to further research using the lesson plans. 

I also appreciate the fact that this course is not just about art history. There are also plenty of opportunities for our children to learn new art techniques and put those skills into practice. For example, one of the first activities we did was to draw pictures after we learned about perspective. 

Lesson Plans 

What do the lesson plans bring to this art history curriculum? They are a valuable part of this fun video series! 

• Great table of contents in the Lesson Plans PDF 
• Objectives included for each episode
• Multiple art and extracurricular activities to pick from (including group activities and activities for advanced students) 
• Vocabulary word list (great for spelling lists) 
• Critical thinking questions that could even be developed into essays
• References to the HiGASFY Pinterest board in the activities 

Art and Extracurricular Activities 

Just what types of activities can you find in this section of each plan? How can you incorporate these questions into your homeschool day? 

• For those students who want to practice art skills, there are multiple art activities, including drawing, painting, sculpting, and even creating a fresco! 
• Hands-on activities are included, such as creating a buckler, making paper airplanes, and more. 
• History-related research projects
• Geography 
• Science activities that ask your students to make their own play dough, make a slingshot, or examine the illnesses of the 15th century. 
• Writing activities that include critical thinking questions with each lesson.

Video Component 

One of the best parts of this particular art history curriculum are the videos with Mrs. Beth and Gasfy. They are delightful and engaging. The videos are clear and easy to watch. I previewed the first several ones before sharing with our children. I found that the second time I watched them, I picked up more information. I love homeschool curriculum that allows you to learn more the second time you go through it. 

Final Thoughts 

Our children are really enjoying this art history curriculum from Timberdoodle. They think Gasfy is just the cutest thing. I really appreciate that Mrs. Beth is introducing difficult topics (studying the Black Death is no easy task in elementary school) in an interesting way. Our children have been able to learn about the Renaissance time period while incorporating new art techniques into their repertoire. 

I would recommend Have I Got a Story for You! (Renaissance Series) for families who are both homeschooling and those who have children in public or private school. The work is fun and interesting while teaching art history. The lessons are easy to add into your regular homeschool schedule, or they would be perfect for a summer break where you want to continue schooling on the light side. Your children will learn more than they realize by watching the videos and completing activities you assign them. This is a very easy art history curriculum to make your own. 

Book Club: Book Review of The Time-Saving Mom

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page. Thank you.

Everyone wants to be more productive during their day. How often do you turn off the lights at the end of the day and think: I wish I had time to clean the living room, fold the laundry, or take the car for maintenance today? (Or whatever tasks did not get checked off on your list.) Crystal Paine shares insight into how she manages her time to be more productive in The Time-Saving Mom: How to Juggle a Lot, Enjoy Your Life, and Accomplish What Matters Most. 

About the Book 

The Time-Saving Mom is a hardcover, 248-page book published by Bethany House. There are eleven chapters, including an introduction and an appendix of practical tools for the Time-Saving Mom. Those chapters are further subdivided into four steps: pray, prioritize, plan, and prep.

At the heart of The Time-Saving Mom are practical tips described with specific examples from Paine and followers of her website and Instagram account. The 4-Step Plan involves: 

1. Pray: Starting each day with prayer, recognizing how much she needs God each day. 
2. Prioritize: Looking at long-term goals and mapping them out using her 6 x 2 Priority System.
3. Plan: Paine uses a Google Calendar and a written to-do list to plan her days and weeks. 
4. Prep: Pain discusses putting together morning and evening routines that work. 

Sprinkled throughout the book are time-saving tips and quotes pulled out from the chapters, and each chapter ends with Two Truths for Time-Saving Moms and Time to Pray sections. So after reading the book, you can easily navigate each chapter to find just what you are looking for. 

About the Author

If you are not familiar with Crystal Paine, you can find out more about her at MoneySavingMom.com or in her other books: Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, Money-Making Mom, and Love-Centered Parenting. She also has a popular Instagram account (@themoneysavingmom) that I have been following for a while with a business account, and I now follow her with my blog's Instagram account. 

While reading The Time-Saving Mom, you will learn a little more about Paine's life as she shares about raising multiple children, including a medically fragile foster child, running her business, and staying active in her church and community. Paine really offers a unique perspective as a mom who is very busy.

My Thoughts 

I was very excited to read The Time-Saving Mom. After all, who doesn't want to save time? I also enjoy following Paine on Instagram and getting a look into her life and her family's life. And while I feel that this book is very well-written and well-organized, I don't think it is the right fit for me. I will be pulling a few tips from it for my own life, but at this season of my life, many of the tips are not practical. 

I also am concerned about relying so heavily upon an electronic calendar – especially the Google Calendar. I prefer pen-and-paper for numerous reasons. I do realize that many enjoy the ease of having their tasks and schedules online so they can share them with family, but that isn't for us. So while I won't be using the Google Calendar, the tip to "develop the habit of writing down everything that comes into your mind that you need to do or remember" (81) is a great one. I can do this in a notebook or a planner. 

Another piece of advice I liked was when Paine compared a schedule and a routine. "A routine, on the other hand, can seem more like a helpful personal assistant, there to serve you and provide a framework for your success. It helps you stay on track but doesn't cause you to feel stressed" (155). How many times have our to-do lists or schedules stressed us out? Too many for me to count, personally. 

And the biggest piece of advice I am taking away from The Time-Saving Mom? "Don't live hoping for the next season or trying to survive until that thing you're hoping for happens, or think, I'll finally be happy when..." (174). One of the things that often talked about while taking care of my mom during her final year with Alzheimer's was, "I'll have more time when this is all over." Do I actually have more time now that she has died? No, not really. I have new tasks ahead and problems to solve. All I did was exchange one set of responsibilities for another. As Paine said, "The only life we have to live is this one." 

If you are looking for a book to help you better organize your time, figure out your priorities, and be more productive, The Time-Saving Mom is one you should check out. It would be helpful for moms in a variety of seasons. I really believe that Paine wants you to succeed. 

Book Club: Book Review of What Happens Next

 

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page for more information. Thank you.

I share often about extremely good books. Books that I can't put down because they are page-turners. I recently had this same experience with What Happens Next by Christina Suzann Nelson. I received the book in the late afternoon and started reading it that night. By the next day, I had finished the book. Such a great novel!

"Everyone has a story, and maybe everyone needs a little help toward healing." 

What Happens Next tells the story of a popular podcaster, Faith Byrne, who is suffering. She may feature individuals on her podcast who have overcome tragedies, but she is facing a number of difficulties herself and struggling with how to overcome them. She is facing a summer without her daughters as they are going to Hawaii with her ex-husband and his new wife. She is also facing tragic news. She learns of the disappearance of Heather Crane. During the summer of 1987, Faith and her family stayed in Deep Valley. She was befriended by Heather during the summer. They were inseparable until Faith and her family moved before the start of the new school year. It was shortly after that move that Heather disappeared. And Faith was never told of her friend's disappearance. Sadly, she thought Heather refused to answer any of her letters. 

Faith is approached by Heather's older sister, Brooke, to assist in putting closure on the disappearance. Dora Crane, the girls' mother, did not handle the disappearance of her daughter well. In fact, it tore the family apart. By the present day of the book, we learn that Heather's brother, Greg, has moved away and not returned home. Heather's father, Paul, has left Dora. While Dora keeps Heather's room as it was the day she disappeared, the rest of the family is trying to move on with their lives while still being respectful of their lost family member.

We learn about Faith and Heather's friendship through flashbacks shared from Heather's point of view, as well as Faith's own memories shared with the other characters. The details are also filled in by Dora, Nathan (who had been a friend of Faith and Heather during that summer), the original detective on the case, and Faith's grandmother.

The novel is written from three different perspectives. The chapters of What Happens Next change from Faith, Dora, and Heather as we learn more and more details about the night Heather disappeared. This is done in an easy-to-follow manner as the title of the character is featured at the end of each chapter. 

What Did I Think? 

This was another book I picked based on the cover. It looks like an ideal summer day. A purple child's bicycle is tossed in the path. Perhaps its owner is enjoying a hike through the woods or a swim in the nearby stream. As a reader, you don't know that the bike belongs to Heather until many chapters into What Happens Next.

I felt that Christina Suzann Nelson provided a wonderful sense of suspense as I read from chapter to chapter. I wanted to know what happened to Heather. I felt her come to life in the book. I was eager to know if she had come to harm or had merely gone off on her own. The title of the novel is very appropriately named! 

The characters were all very believable. I felt the sorrow and agony of Dora, the hurt and pain of Paul, as well as the hope of Faith. The hope was that she would be able to help the Crane family. They made her welcome during that summer. She wanted to return the favor to them by providing closure. 

I would recommend What Happens Next to those who enjoy contemporary Christian fiction. While the characters' relationship with God was not central to the story, we can see how each reached out to God to find their way. This would make a great gift for those who enjoy mystery and suspense Christian novels. 

Read my review of More Than We Remember here: Book Review. 

Book Club: Book Review of See the Good

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page. Thank you.

One of my more considerable challenges has been moving from being overly pessimistic to being optimistic. I have spent time working on gratitude journals and found those to be helpful in seeing the good in each day. Because of this challenge, I thought reading and reviewing See the Good: Find Grace, Gratitude, and Optimism in Every Day by Zach Windahl would be useful for my own personal journey. I was looking forward to reading See the Good because I do believe "perspective changes everything," as the back of the book reads. In the end, I do not think this book was the right fit for me, though.

About See the Good 

"After almost losing his mother to cancer and wrestling with his own faith, Zach Windahl learned to take whatever life threw at him and chose to be joyful." 

This inspirational paperback book is 234 pages long with twelve chapters and an appendix of 52 gratitude journal prompts. Windahl addresses his ideas in two parts: changing the way we see and how to live it out. In the first part, he discusses changes in technology, our roles on Earth, the differences between creation stories, celebrations, and what Jesus was really like (according to the author). In the second part, he offers several concrete examples through his own anecdotes. He shares several lighthearted stories in his quest to help you make changes in your personal life. 

While See the Good offers a few specific and direct quotes from the Bible, the author often just shares stories without direct quotes. One example he gives about how we can change our perspective is from the Old Testament. In this example, he demonstrates that the worth of God's people changed as He brought them out of Egypt. 

My Thoughts 

I shared earlier that I feel that this book was not right for me. I went into reading and reviewing See the Good with an open mind, but after a few pages, I found myself writing down things I did not like or I did not agree with. But first, let me share what I did like about See the Good: 

• The font choice and size made it very easy to read. 
• As someone with limited time, I found the layout of the book (chapters, subheadings, etc.) made it easy to pick and read. 
• Zach Windahl shares personal stories with no hesitation. By the end of the book, even if I didn't agree with him, I felt that I knew him and could speak with him in person. 
• If you are looking for a way to think about your perspective of the world, See the Good asks a lot of questions which get you thinking. 
• There are some clear, specific ways listed to help you change your perspective. 

My problems with See the Good revolve around references to individuals, sources, and popular topics in the news and world. I do not necessarily agree with the perspective offered by the author on each subject, and I find some of the sources are not credible. These are my personal opinions, so others may not have the same issues as I did.

There was also one instance where I was amazed at a word choice. From the book: "You can quote Bible verses all day, but if you have a crap creative story, it doesn't matter" (95). While I understand that 'crap' is not the worst word ever written or spoken, I was taken aback by its use in a Christian book. As I wouldn't want my children using it, I don't want it in a Christian book I am reading, either. 

Another point of difference is in regards to the author's perspective on pranks. He shares two pranks that he and his friends did when they were teenagers. I don't think pranks are very funny. They don't really fit into my sense of humor. The pranks mentioned were not really harmful, but I still don't think that Jesus would be laughing along with them, as the author suggested. Again, this all comes down to perspective.

In the end, did I find the book interesting and useful? Yes, See the Good made some good points. I think it would be helpful for other Christians who, while they need to look for more optimism, have a different outlook than me. I do believe that Windahl really wants his readers to change their perspective. As the back of the book states: "But choosing to put our focus on the good leads to profound benefits that come from seeing life as an amazing gift from the One who loves us best." Through the whole book, he directs us back to God and Jesus, and that is very important in any Christian inspirational book.

Book Club: Book Review of Where the Blue Sky Begins

 

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. For more information, please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page. Thank you.

I've been steering myself away from fiction – other than children's fiction – for a while now, except for historical fiction. Why? After my mom's death, I found that most modern-day fiction was too close for comfort. I decided to give Where the Blue Sky Begins by Katie Powner a chance, mostly based on the cover (which is quite lovely). Maybe I should have read the book description. This one definitely tugged at my heartstrings.

About The Book 

Eric Larson is sent to a rural Montana town, Tukston, by his uncle to work in his uncle's financial company. This is supposed to be the stepping stone for Eric's advancement within the company. Eric thinks he will work there during the summer and then be recalled to Seattle and the larger branch of the company. Of course, everything does not work out the way the confident and handsome Eric thought it would. Things move beyond his control after an accident. 

The second main character of Where the Blue Sky Begins is Eunice Parker. At forty-six years old, Eunice has given up on her dreams of becoming a veterinarian or animal rescuer as she comes to terms with a terminal illness. One of the things she has determined God wants her to do before she dies is to seek the forgiveness of several people. She created a bucket list of names and sought to meet with each of them.

Before Eunice can meet with those she wishes to, she is run off the road by Eric on her scooter. Through some good fortune and fast-talking, Eunice convinces Eric to drive her to her destination. These trips – both long and short – help a bond between the two form. As a native of Tukston, Eunice knows everyone in town, whereas Eric is a likable stranger.

Everything does always work out for Eunice as she seeks forgiveness, but through her attempts, Eric learns more about faith and God. He begins to change his outlook on his own goals with his uncle's financial company. Things change for both Eunice and Eric and those around them. 

My Thoughts 

The very first chapter of Where the Blue Sky Begins pulled me into the story. I wanted to know more about why Uncle Jack wanted his nephew Eric to see the town of Tukston. What was so intriguing about this small rural town? Who would Eric meet in the town? How would they change each other's lives? 

From Eunice's first appearance on her scooter, I didn't really think she would play much of an integral role. (I really need to start reading the book jackets.)  I am very glad that Eunice turned out to be Eric's next-door neighbor, and that she had the courage to ask him to help her accomplish the tasks on her bucket list. The friendship that developed between the two of them was a delight to read about – even with all its bumps.

The declining health of Eunice was difficult for me, as most illnesses and deaths have become over the months since my own mom died. I also find I get really attached to well-written characters, so I did not want to see Eunice's failing health or Eric having to cope with it. The author, Powner, did a fine job of handling these difficulties. 

One thing I realized after I started to write this review is that this book did not mention or incorporate the events of 2020. For that, I am very grateful. So many fiction books (and non-fiction books) that I have read published since 2020 have had to make mention of or incorporate the events into their book. It was so nice to read a book that didn't discuss masks, lockdowns, etc.

I really enjoyed Where the Blue Sky Begins. I would recommend the book to those who wish to read a good story that revolves around relationships strengthening and those who find themselves. We also see characters grow and develop into better people. Personally, I would love to see what happens to Eric. Does he stay in Tukston? And what about some of the other minor characters in the novel? How do they change after the end of the novel?