Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where I Publish My First E-Book

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Happy Friday!  It’s been an exciting week at my house — mostly blog-related, though.  School has been rather monotonous.  The biggest bit of excitement, school-wise, is that today is April 30 — that means that we only have three weeks left!!!  Woo hoo!!  I don’t know who’s more excited, me or the kids.

All I’ve got to say is, thank goodness for workboxes!  When I got the book to review the workbox system, I really didn’t think it was going to be for us.  However, our tweaked version has made my life so much easier this spring!  I love that Josh and Megan can do at least half their work independently these days.  Can’t wait to really ramp it up for next year.

Speaking of next year, it’s finally started happening – I’ve been thinking about next year’s curricula.  I’ve got several things on my list of things I want to look at for next year.  I’ve sent out a few emails to do some reviews, but haven’t had any replies yet.  Can I just say that’s a big pet peeve of mine?  I’d rather someone reply and tell me no than to simply ignore me.  Maybe I should give the benefit of the doubt, though, and assume the messages got caught by spam filters.  It’s still frustrating, though.

I’ve also been giving some thoughts to summer reading programs.  I’m seriously thinking of hosting my own for the kids.  My thoughts, at this point, include making reading-level appropriate book lists and offering dollars for books.  I just want to work it out so that it’s enough money to be an incentive for my kids who would rather do just about anything other than read, but not so much that it’s going to break my bank.  Have you ever done anything like this?  If so, what’s worked for you?

As for the exciting things in my world, the first big exciting thing this week was the response to my post, The Public School Parents’ Guide to Homeschooling Parents.  Wow!  I’ve been blown away.  I just thought it would be a fun little post to write.  I never expected the massive response it’s gotten.  I’ve gotten more page views for that one post since Monday than I typically get for nearly an entire month on my blog.  It’s been crazy!  And, so far (knock on wood…except I’m not superstitious) it’s all been positive.  It’s been a surprising, but fun, wild ride this week.

The other really exciting thing has been the publication of my first e-book, Get Your Hands on Learning!.  I’ve thought, many times, about writing an e-book, but it took the lure of going to my first blogging conference to get me to do it.  The proceeds from the book will, I hope, help to fund my trip to the Savvy Blogging Summit this summer.  If you’ve ever wanted to add some fun, hands-on learning into your homeschool, but have been unsure quite how to do it, I hope you’ll purchase a copy of my new e-book.

hands-on homeschooling

Other than that, it’s been a pretty quiet week at our house, just wrapping up year end stuff and counting down the days (15) until summer break.

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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.

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13 Comments

  1. Congratulations on the ebook and the response to your post earlier in the week. Wow! Headed over to read Finishing the Homeschool Year Strong. Thanks for the great resources.

  2. Hi Kris, We did a summer reading program for the kids one year. They could choose whatever they wanted to read that was within their own reading abilities. They were each given a notebook to record a brief review of the book when they had finished reading it. We couldn't just assign them rewards per book since my daughter is a much stronger reader than my boys so to even it out, they were given their "reward" based on time. Each 1/2 increment amounted to a certain amount of $$$ (how we chose to reward them). They read so much that we had to cut our program short for fear we'd go broke! LOL

  3. Congrats on the e-book & all of the blog hits! That really was a spot-on post you did for public school parents!

    As for the book reading thing….we're doing something similar with piano practice. I bought Chuck E. Cheese tokens (with a coupon of course) and the girls get a token each day they practice piano. The stipulations are they can't throw a fit about something during practice (that was a big problem), they can't wait until right before bed to practice, and ideally they practice without being told to do so. It's working BEAUTIFULLY!! (they are ages 6-1/2 & 9)

    We've planned a family pizza parlor day for a day in June so that they can have fun using their tokens. We've found if you do Chuck E. Cheese at lunch time on a week day, it's not bad at all. Anyway, just my two cents. 🙂

  4. Congrats on pulling together your first ebook…hope it works well and you can make your trip to the conference. 🙂

    I posted my link, thanks for hosting.

  5. I have been thinking of a reading program too for June. I was thinking of having the kids work towards a goal together. Like I pick three prize options and depending on how much they read they can earn one of three prizes. Not sure yet, but thinking the grand prize would be chuckie cheese. The kids love that place dh and I not so much 😉

  6. What an exciting week for you! Congratulations.

    We avoid summer reading programs because our kids read way too much anyhow. I'm trying to figure out ways to keep them from reading! Although I do keep buying books. Duh! Different kids, different problems!

    Annie Kate

  7. Here's something I found on someone's blog a week or so ago. https://bookadventure.com/ I haven't REALLY checked it out yet, but it looks promising. If you try it, I'll be curious to see how it works.

    I was also going to suggest alone time with the kids as a reward. I don't often take time with each of the kids alone and when I do I find that we both really enjoy it. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's a grocery trip or ice cream…but maybe for a reward doing something more that getting groceries with Mom might be a better incentive!

    Whatever you come up with…happy reading! And congrats on the ebook!

  8. I want to know what you decide on the summer book reading incentives. It is so hard to get my oldest to read and it is a real dream of mine that she might actually enjoy it as much as me.
    Let us know.
    This is my first time on your blog – I really enjoyed it!

  9. Congrats on your ebook! How awesome! I have been thinking about a summer reading list for my kids as well. I think i want to require at least 2 -3 books then anything they do over the 2 or 3 I will give them an incentive. Also I loved your post on what public school parents should know about us. i posted a link on my facebook. Have a great week!

  10. Congratulations on your e-book! I hope you raise a ton of money 🙂

    BTW, I'm curious about your writing to companies asking to review their curriculum. Have you heard anything back yet? (I'd love to know who you asked as well. I was thinking of trying the same thing, and if they didn't respond to you… well, I doubt they'd give me the time of day:) You can e-mail me if you prefer.

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