Bringing Nature Study Inside with Canvas Factory

This post is sponsored by Canvas Factory! I was given a canvas for free, but not required write a positive review.  I am happy to share these great canvases with you!

My children and I have enjoyed some great nature walks this summer! We have discovered birds that we had never seen before, explored shells in a small local river, and caught a garter snake, in addition to taking in all of the beauty right in our own back yard! Have you made time for lots of outdoor time this summer?  I hope so!

The weather is still fantastic where I live, but with the new school year starting soon I know that means the temperature will start to drop.  My children still enjoy going out in the winter and playing in the snow, but the reality is that they cannot be outside for nearly as long and there just isn't as much nature to explore.

I thought a great way to foster our love of nature during the winter months would be to bring it inside!

Perhaps you collected leaves, insects, or rocks this summer.  Why not display and study them this winter? If your kids were too active to sit and make a nature journal page during your walks, winter time is a great time to really look at the items that you collected or took pictures of and make some great journal pages!

Another idea is to go to the library and check out books on different aspects of nature for your children to peruse during the colder months.  The only problem that I have found with books like this is that even if they look great at the library, unfortunately they are often forgotten once they are home.

Then I came up with a great idea!

About a month ago, the good folks at Canvas Factory contacted me and wondered if I would like to offer you all another canvas.  I jumped at the offer because I am so pleased with the two canvases I have from them (they are still prominently displayed in my family room!) and want you to benefit from them as well!

A canvas holds so many possibilities.  I took the opportunity to create the 5 Solas and Gospel in a Minute prints to fit what is important to my family.  These canvases are obviously also fantastic for printing a family photo.  This time I went a different direction.

I wanted a way to bring our nature study indoors, that wouldn't get hidden away, and that would bring beauty to my home.  I wanted my children to continue to wonder at God's creation even when it is covered in snow =)

I did a little research online and discovered that many old nature prints are now available for free! I fell in love with these Natural History prints by Adolphe Millot.  I also noticed that the Audobon Birds of America prints are now available, which is amazing.  Maybe I'll chose one of those next time!

I also love the idea of deeply looking at one thing over and over.  We live in a culture of many, fast moving things.  Our attention is pulled from one thing to another, never giving one thing adequate attention.  

I chose a print filled with butterflies.  I think it is beautiful and I love looking at it every time I am near it...Noticing something different each time...Remembering something better each time...Each time more excited to get outside and find some of these butterflies on my own.  I will be thrilled if this print is working even just a bit of the same magic in my children's hearts.

Imagine your homeschool room, hallway, or kitchen lined with beautiful Natural History Canvases!  Your child will be growing in their attention to detail and appreciation for beauty without you having to plan it into a lesson!  Let their natural curiosity lead them and their wonder grow deeper. 

Let Canvas Factory Help You!

Practically speaking, these prints are simple to order on CanvasFactory.com, they ship to your home in no time, and are super easy to hang.  I love canvases because I do not need to fuss with the hassle or expense of getting a frame.  Frames can be beautiful additions to your home, but the reality is that for me, the simpler something is, the more likely it is to actually get done!  Once I saw the package on my porch, it was opened and hanging on my wall within just a few minutes.  That works for me!!!

Canvasfactory has so many great options. They even have a huge database of images that you can choose from if you are just looking for pretty art to fit your room.  Check out their website to see all of the options.  Here are a couple of ideas to inspire you:

Would you like to have a canvas for your home?

You will always get a great deal at Canvas Factory, but I've got the best deal for you this week!  Enter below to win your own 16x20" canvas!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winner must be 18 years or older and have a mailing address in Canada, or The United States.  Winner has 48 hours from being notified to respond with their mailing address or else another winner will be picked.

 

Get Ready for Next Year with a FREE Homeschool Portfolio!

It's planning time!

Are you standing knee deep in papers and books, getting your homeschool plans ready for next year?

Well, I've got help for you!

FREE Homeschool Portfolio Pack 

The Build Your Bundle homeschool sale is coming next week (yeah!) and they are offering a free Homeschool Portfolio pack for you right now to help you get excited about planning for next year!

The Homeschool Portfolio will not only serve as a scrapbook of your child’s year, it provides practical sheets and a place to record goals for the next school year. 

Pages Include:

• About Me
• Attendance Sheet
• Basic Daily Schedule
• Extra Curricular Activities Sheet
• Curriculum and Resources List
• Book Log
• Goals
• Field Trip Log
• Report Card
• Subject Evaluation
• Subject Binder Divider Sheets

So, head on over to the Build Your Bundle site to grab you Homeschool Portfolio pack!

While you are there, make sure to grab your BYB coupon to use next week and enter the giveaway to win FREE bundles!

Giving a Gift that Will Last with Canvas Factory

This post and giveaway are sponsored by Canvas Factory.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone.  Did you get all your shopping done?  How about something for free now?!

Gifts for children get played with and enjoyed, but gifts for other adults often get unwrapped and set to the side.  If you have an adult to buy for this year, how about trying something meaningful that will be appreciated all year long!

For the past two years I have gotten a picture printed from Canvas Factory. We are not big picture people around here, but there are a few things that my husband had expressed interest in wanting displayed in our home, so I decided they would be great printed onto canvases! I love that both times I was able to surprise him with the canvas and they they are able to be displayed and enjoyed all year long!

Here is what I had printed, but you could also give a picture of your kids, a favorite landscape scene you captured on your last vacation, a collage of picture from the past year, or anything else you want to be remembered!

(If you like these two designs, I'd be happy to share them with you, just enter your email address here and I will send you an email with the download links!)

Give a Canvas this Christmas

Ordering from Canvas Factory is simple and shipping is fast!  Simply upload your image (or choose one of their 25 million wall-art images), choose you size and material, customize details like solid edges or wrapped images, and you are good to go!

Order now and you will be ready for Christmas, or enter the giveaway below to win a 16x20 inch canvas of your choice! Need some inspiration or want to know more about what Canvas Factory has to offer? Check out these posts and then scroll down for the giveaway!

Canvas Factory Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Winner must be 18 years or older and have a mailing address in Canada, or The United States.  Winner has 48 hours from being notified to respond with their mailing address or else another winner will be picked.

Trivium Tuesdays + Plan Your Year Giveaway

This post contains affiliate links.

Welcome to another week of Trivium Tuesdays!  For those of you who are new here today, this link-up is hosted by Living and Learning at Home (that's me!) and Classically Homeschooling and is aimed at encouraging and informing other homeschoolers who use the Classical model of teaching.  Here we can share with each other and learn from one another.

Plan Your Year Giveaway

There's nothing like the sweet smell of summer and the frantic planning of the next summer praying you haven't missed something. Pam at Ed Snapshots has a wonderful planning kit which guides you through everything single detail of planning your year. So instead of worrying that you've missed a critical part of your planning, use Pam's Plan Your Year to peacefully walk through the planning process. After all a peaceful school year begins with a well thought-out plan now.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Featured Post from Last Week

Principles like Multum non Multa made me fall in love with the classical model of education even more!  Check out Sara's post over at Classically Homeschooling to learn more about what exactly it means and how you can use the idea in your homeschool!

This Week's Link-Up

Here are the rules:

• Your post must have to do (in some way) with classical homeschooling (any age children).
• Your post may be from your archives as long as you only post it one time on this link-up.
• Please link to your direct post, not your blog in general.
• Please link back to this post in some way. You can use my Trivium Tuesdays button (found on my right sidebar) if you'd like so others can learn about this link-up! Button code: <ahref="http://www.livingandlearningathome.com/search/label/Trivium%20Tuesdays" target="_blank" title="Trivium Tuesdays"><img alt="Living and Learning at Home" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6y8pMMmK-PuaiwV-fmISajX_7Bd6HYHA-Y64a4HgIYpE7qH4_NGNb9i2qxBsRFEJTyVoF-_MQUjmItgwNxTr3KxC1OKNo-MnBEkxM89HSuSpsoGpYXfkg84eOhSCVnfxDbup3pbghuusI/s200/Trivium+Tuesdays+-+2016+Button.png"/></a>
• It may be helpful to state in your link description what stage of the trivium or what subject your post is about, if applicable, so others can easily find posts they are interested in looking at.
• Remember, everyone loves comments =) So don't be shy, and tell someone if you liked their post!

I reserve the right to remove any link-up that does not have to do with classical homeschooling.         

If you are a regular here at Trivium Tuesdays and have something to share that is a little off topic, but still would be an encouragement to the readers here, please still share it =)  I'm referring to people who are just trying to get their blog more exposure without following the rules above.

If you want to be reminded of this link-up each week, make sure to sign up below!

Learning about Handel with Music Appreciation from Zeezok

This school year I have really been focusing on cultivating a love for beauty in my children and in myself.  This is not something that I gravitate toward naturally, but I am slowly learning that appreciating beauty can be just as valuable as understanding truth.

We have been casually turning on classical music, putting up art prints in our home, learning how to play the violin, observing nature, and doing other really simple things to help cultivate our taste for things that are beautiful.  Those kinds of things are easy enough to add in to our days, but beyond that, I am clueless!

Music Appreciation Help for Homeschoolers

So, I was really excited to be given Music Appreciation from Zeezok Publishing to review. Thank you, Zeezok, for helping my children and I along in our journey to love that which is beautiful! (I was provided this curriculum for free and compensated for my time.  Nonetheless, all opinions are my own!)

My familiarization of this curriculum actually began last spring.  A friend of mine decided to teach a music appreciation class to a few homeschool children.  I just dropped my kids off for these lessons, so I didn't really know what they were doing other than that they were using Music Appreciation from Zeezok.  My children enjoyed going to these classes and my friend raved about the biographies that came with the set, so I was intrigued!

When I got my hands on my own set of these books, biographies, and CDs, I was excited to jump in!  It was nearing Christmas time when we started, so I thought that learning about Handel would be fun, since my kids were already familiar with parts of his Messiah.

Music Appreciation in the Morning

I decided to incorporate Music Appreciation into our morning time.  I typically read to my children while they eat breakfast and then we move on to other activities as they finish up (memory work, geography, etc.), so reading the biography book about Handel was a natural thing to do.

These biography books are wonderful!  They read like stories and will keep the attention of your children.  I love that they begin telling about the musicians when they were children.  My kids loved hearing about what Handel was like when he was their age!

One of my favorite parts is how the book includes written music right in the midst of the story.  When the story talks about a musician writing a certain piece of music, it includes it right there for you!  You can pause from your reading to play the music (included on the CDs) or come back to it later.  Sometimes we would go right to the piano and play the song that we had just been reading about!  My kids thought it was so neat to connect the music with what we had been reading about.


The set comes with 7 biography books:

• Bach, The Boy From Thuringia
• Handle at the Court of Kings
• Haydn, The Merry Little Peasant
• Mozart, The Wonder Boy
• Beethoven and the Chiming Tower Bells
• Paganini, Master of Strings
• Schubert and His Merry Friends

Each musician is covered in a section in the Student Activity Book.  The activity book is broken down into weeks, giving each musician 4 weeks. We chose to work our way slowly through the lessons, so it took us longer than that, but you can go at whatever pace is best for your children!

The Student Activity Book has a variety of different worksheets for aiding in understanding. Each chapter has comprehension questions for what you read in the biography, and then also covers topics like character traits, geography, basic music theory, and lots more including more information about the lapbook pieces.

(If you have young children that will be tagging along in the lessons, you probably wouldn't want to get them their own workbook, but there is a great coloring book that I bet they would love!)

Music Appreciation Lapbook

My kids and I both enjoyed the stories so much, but what they really looked forward to was adding pieces to their lapbooks!  This is the only part of the whole curriculum that takes a little effort on mom's part.  The lapbook comes on a CD, so you have to take a few minutes before you begin to print out all of the pieces.  I printed out all of the pages before we began, so each time we needed a new piece, it was all ready to go.

The lapbook pieces mostly added new interesting information about things that were mentioned in the book.  I think visuals will explain better =)

 

 

I printed everything out in black and white, but if you want a prettier lapbook you can print it out in color.  I'm pretty sure that we didn't put the pieces in the right places, but that is ok with me.  My kids enjoyed the process!  Here is what they had to say about it:




They didn't remember all the details perfectly, but I was really happy with what they learned! They are young enough that we could go through this again in a few years and I'm sure they would pick up more details to add to what they learned this time around.

All in all, I am very happy with this curriculum and we will be picking out a new composer to start learning about soon!  I like going in order, so it will probably be Haydn, but it is nice because you can really learn about the composers in any order.

Music Appreciation Discount and Giveaway

Are you looking to help your children appreciate music more?  I encourage you to check out all of the great music appreciation products that Zeezok has available, especially this Music Appreciation for the  Elementary Grades curriculum.

From now until March 25, 2016, you can get 10% off the Music Appreciation for the Elementary Grades curriculum with code: ihomeschool16

You can also enter to win your very own music appreciation program by filling out the form below!

If you purchase the curriculum and then win the giveaway, no worries because you will be refunded the purchase price.  So, take advantage of the coupon code right away!

Stay connected with Zeezok:       Facebook  ---  Twitter  ---  Pinterest  ---  YouTube

Entry-Form

Let Your Creativity Flow...With Canvas Factory

This post is brought to you by canvasfactory.com.  They sent me a canvas to review and I am happy to share my thoughts with you!

Last year, while preparing for our annual Reformation Day party, my husband came across a picture of the 5 Solas that he really liked.  He mentioned that it would be neat to have a print like that hanging in our home one day.  The problem is that the coloring of the one we found didn't quite work for our home, it didn't come in as large of a size as we wanted, and you could only get it as a paper print.

Fast forward a few months and canvasfactory contacted me asking if I would host a giveaway for you wonderful people.  I thought for a few minutes about what kind of picture I would want printed on a canvas and then it hit me that I could create a 5 Solas image that would work perfectly for my home!

So I set to work and came up with this image (that I LOVE!)  If you would like this image too, just sign up for my newsletter and I'll email it right to you!

I was so pleased with the whole process of ordering at canvasfactory.com.  You simply upload your image (or choose one of their 25 million wall-art images), choose you size and material, customize details like solid edges or wrapped images, and you are good to go!

One of the many pre-designed
images at canvasfactory

Of course you could get a canvas picture of your kids or a picture you took of the mountains on your last vacation, but you can also think outside the box like I did and create something unique and beautiful especially for your family.  I just used Microsoft Paint to create my image, but I'm sure there are a hundred other programs out there that would be just as good or better.

Here are some ideas that I came up with that might be perfect for your family/homeschool. (Imagine them in pretty fonts, creatively across a canvas...check out Pinterest for inspiration!)

• Family Rules (ex. Be Kind, Say Thank You, Always Try Hard) 

Get his beauty from
The Modest Mom Blog

• Last Name Plaque (ex. Robertson Family, est. 2008)

• Bible Verse (ex. The fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control - Galations 5:22)

• Homeschool Maxims (ex. Festina Lente - Make Haste Slowly) 

• Motivational Quotes (ex. I am, I can, I ought, I will)

Those are just a few ideas to get you thinking!

If you just want one of your family photos printed, canvasfactory has so many great options.  Check out their website to see all of them, but here are a few highlights:

Would you like to have a canvas for your home?

Would you like THIS print?  I will give you this image for free and you can make your own canvas with it at canvasfactory!  Just subscribe to Living and Learning at Home's newsletter and the file will be sent right to your inbox.