Mood:  d'oh

I messed up! I really did. I could say that ministry got in the way, and it kind of did, but really I have no excuse. I just didn't get around to posting a new Men's Monday Meme question this week.

So, this week I'm posting two questions that will cover this week and next. You can choose which question you want to answer which week. The only difference is I will leave this Mr. Linky up for both weeks. You just sign the Mr. Linky twice if you want to answer both questions. So, without further adieu, here are the two questions.

Question Number 1 - Because this is Mother's Day, I thought I would put a question up that is, in a way, in honor of mothers. The answer may not be a mother at all, but since there are folks in life whose mother was not active in their growing up years, then I thought I would phrase the question a little differently. Here goes.

Who is the woman that has made the most impact in your life and why?

It could be your mother, your wife, a sister or other relative, a teacher...whoever.

Question Number 2 - I've been thinking a lot about life lately. I guess reading about the Vogel's bicycle trips have got me to thinking about priorities. The Vogel's are a homeschooling family who just decided to get out of the rat race and live their dreams now instead of waiting for their twin boys to grow up. They wanted to share the adventure with their boys and make real memories that they could cherish forever. Their first adventure was taking a year to bicycle through the United States and Mexico. They bought a three seater bike called a triple (yes they make such things) for Dad and the two eight year old boys (yes I said EIGHT) and a single touring bike for Mom. Both bikes had bicycle trailers attached. After that was completed, they decided to leave a year later for an even bigger adventure - taking two and a half years to bike the Pan-Am highway from Alaska to Argentina! They wrote a journal of their first trip that you can find here and they are almost two years into their Pan-Am trip. You can follow that trip by clicking here. 

The Vogels really promote family adventures. They encourage you to live your dream now, whether it's a little dream like to plant a large garden or a larger dream like building a cabin in the woods or hiking the Appalachian trail or, even traveling across the country. 

So, I've been thinking a lot about what our dream is. Of course, you know that the Tinkel's are a very unconventional family to begin with. We are full time missionaries who have three very unique son's, so thinking about these types of things isn't out of the ordinary for us. However, it is still thought provoking. In the weeks to come, I'll be writing about what our Great American Dream is and how we are preparing for it. In the meantime, I want to know what yours is. So, here is question number two.

What is your American dream? What is it that you have always wanted to do, but always put off until "after the kids are grown" or "when I retire"? Tell us why you don't think you can live that dream now.

Okay, now that you've read the two questions, let me remind you of the rules:

1. This is a man's meme, so the answers must be the answers from a man. Either the man can answer on his blog, or a wife can interview her husband for her blog. However, if the wife puts it on her blog, she must stay true to what her husband said.
2. You are encouraged to put one of the Men's Monday Meme buttons found to the left on your blog. Just copy the code below the button of your choice. The more folks who link, the more readers you may have to visit your blog.
3. You may answer the question any time during the week up through next Monday. After you answer the question, add the address to your post to the Mr.Linky below. If you could, please only add the direct link to the post to make it easier for readers to find the entry.
4. My answer along with a new question will be posted next Monday. The new Mr. Linky will be added at midnight Monday night or sometime within the next couple of days after that .

And here's the new Mr. Linky:

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Mood:  a-ok

Yesterday's post on the Compassion Blog was about the very village that Somi lives in. It is a great example of how Compassion's money works. Here's the link - http://blog.compassion.com/access-to-clean-water-community/#comment-16447

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Mood:  a-ok

Do  you wish that there was something more for you kids to listen to other than the ridiculous gibberish that's on the TV and radio these days?

Do you long for yet another way for your children to hear and internalize the Word of God?

Never Fear - Call A Story is here!

Many years ago, BCM Canada (the Canadian branch of the mission we are with) began working with a man from California who for years recorded and made available Bible stories that you could put on a small answering machine type device to be played after children dialed a number. He called it "Call-A-Story". When the old tape machine type answering machines became obsolete, BCM Canada began putting the stories on CD's to be put on computer answering devices. They realized, however, that even that had it's limits.

Now, they have reworked the stories to be a little more modern and have put them on the internet! And, it used to be that you were at the mercies of the people programing the answering machines as to when a new story was put out. Now you can listen to as many stories as you want, when you want them! They are totally neat. Hear is the web address - http://www.bcmintl.ca/CallAStory.php Dial...er...I mean click in today for a new and fun way for your kids to hear Bible stories.

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Mood:  a-ok

I've learned to never say never.

I used to say things like, "My kids will never act like that!" or "If I ever caught my child doing that I'd...".

Anyway, I found out long ago that God has a sense of humor. Don't ever say "never".

That also carried over to those non-controllable things. It's not that I thought it was impossible for one of my kids to have cancer or to have autism, it's just that I never thought about it or put it out of my mind. It was like I was living in a state of denial.

Well, guess what. John Allen did have cancer when he was a baby, and Joshua is on the autism spectrum, and, more recently, we found out that Jacob has severe speech problems.

Now, with the cancer that John Allen had, there was absolutely nothing that we could have done at home to prevent it or help cure it. It was just one of those things that happened. With Joshua, although no one truly knows what causes autism, there are ways to combat it and we are doing our best to do that.

It used to be with speech problems you just loaded them up to take them to speech therapy, or perhaps, if they went to public school, they went to speech during school hours. There was, however, very little you could do at home except for some mouth exercises or something like that...until now!

It just so happens, that at about the same time that Jacob was diagnosed with his speech problems, that the TOS Homeschool Crew was given a program called "Super Star Speech" written by Debbie Lott. Debbie Lott is a speech therapist and just happens to be a homeschooler. She recognized that there were many speech difficulties that is best left up to professionals to help, but there are many minor speech problems that can worked on successfully at home.

I was really wanting to dig into this with Jacob to see how much we could help him during our homeschool hours, but with his frequent testing, and recent tonsillectomy, I wasn't able to get very far. I have fudged and put off writing it until we could work more with it, but I really feel that in order for this review not to be totally drastically over due (it's already well over a week - maybe two - overdue ) I need to get at least a description of Super Star Speech written, and then give a more thorough update after we have used it for some time.  

I can however view Super Star Speech with somewhat of a trained eye because, as an educational therapist, I did work with many children who had minor speech difficulties. I will tell you that what I have noticed from reading through Super Star Speech and using it briefly is that it is very well done. 

The first thing that Ms. Lott recommends, if you haven't had formal testing done of course, is to give your child an informal test at home. Everything is laid out and explained in very laymen terms as to what to do. You test how well your child can say sounds at the beginning of a word, in the middle of a word and at the end of a word by having them look at a picture and tell you what it is. You then mark on a sheet if they said it correctly or if they had difficulty with that sound. 

Depending on your child's age, there are going to be some sounds that he is expected to know and some sounds that he may be too young to be expected to say correctly. That is all taken into consideration when scoring the results.

After discovering their weak areas, the work begins.  There are complete instructions, again in laymen term, on how to write a therapy plan and how to proceed with therapy. There are even specific instructions for when a child is having difficulty differentiating between two different sounds such as P/B, T/D, or K/G, among others. She explains all aspects of the therapy session from using a mirror to help you child see the correct and incorrect way to form letters, to making the session fun and using games.

Nothing is left out and nothing is left to chance. Everything is laid out and very well explained. From the testing, to the planning, to the therapy. i really like what I see and what I have used thus far, and am really looking forward to getting more into the meat of the program and writing to you all about our experiences. 

To find our more about Debbie Lott's Super Star Speech program, you can click here or on any one of the hi-lighted links above. To find out what some of the other TOS Crew Members thought about the Super Star Speech program or some of Debra Lott's other fantastic homeschool products, you can click here. Happy home educating!

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I was given a free download of the Super Star Speech program in order to try out and review on my blog.

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Mood:  happy

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