Giveaway Winners!

Congratulations to our winners! Due to a glitch there are six winners instead of five! Remember, if you didn't win, you can get our guides for a special price this week. Check out our Summer Promotion below for details. The readers listed below have each won a copy of our History of Science Study Guide. 

If you won you should have received an email by now with instructions on how to claim your prize. If you haven't, give us a call at 800.889.1978 and we'll send you your prize right away!


If you did not win, you can take advantage of our Summer Promotion! This week only we're offering 15% off all BFB products: study guides, timelines, maps, books! If we publish it, you can get 15% off.  Exceptions: packs and collections.

For one week only, you can get 15% off all BFB products! So if you've been wanting to check out a study guide or two, stock up on some titles for summer reading, or get some timelines, this is your chance! Simply enter BFB15 in the promotion code box when you place your order. This is valid on all items published by Beautiful Feet Books including study guides, timelines, books, and maps! 

ALL ORDERS OVER $200 SHIP FOR FREE!

We value YOU! And here's our Summer Promotion!!!

Here at Beautiful Feet Books we have been in your shoes. We know how important each dollar is and what it's like to homeschool on a single income. We also know that your time as homeschooling parents is limited and valuable. It is with these experiences in mind that we seek to make your curriculum buying process as easy, efficient, and cost effective as possible. Whether it's keeping the prices of our study guides low or assembling book packs to make shopping as quick and easy as possible, we think about you, our customers, every step of the way. And we guarantee that we can beat any price out there. For example, if you've thought of purchasing your Beautiful Feet Books curriculum through Amazon, here's some price comparisons.

Early American History Primary Jumbo Pack

BFB's Price: $209.95  Amazon's Price: $236.20

BFB SAVINGS: $26.25, save over 11%

This reflects purchasing all the available books at Amazon and purchasing the missing items from another source.

History of Classical Music Jumbo Pack

BFB's price: $163.95  Amazon's Price: $194.12

 BFB SAVINGS: $30.17, save over 15%

This reflects purchasing all the available books at Amazon and purchasing the missing items from another source.

When you order directly from Beautiful Feet Books you benefit in many ways. First, because we value your time we have put together our book packs with all the correct editions of the titles needed for each study. If an edition goes out of print, we include amended notes to make the change easy for you! When you order elsewhere there is no guarantee that you will receive the correct editions.
Secondly, our packs are complete! You do not need to place another order for additional supplies. We're a one-stop-shop! Your pack will contain all the required materials. Order from Amazon and you will have to place another order with another company because they do not carry all the items required for our studies. And lastly, you will save money. We have priced our packs to beat Amazon every time. Yes, sometimes it's only by a few dollars, but we want you to know that we value you and your business and are committed to helping you in your homeschool journey. And we also offer an incredible $10.00 best-price guarantee. If you find a Jumbo Pack listed for less, just let us know and we will happily match the price AND give you a $10.00 credit on your order! And to save you even more time, we've done the math and here are the Amazon price comparisons on our packs!

Early American Intermediate Jumbo Pack

Our Price: $200.00  Amazon's Price: $208.64

BFB SAVINGS: $8.64, save over 4%

Ancient History for Sr. High Pack

Our Price: $204.95  Amazon's Price: $229.18

BFB SAVINGS: $24.33, save over 10%

Ancient History for Intermediate Pack

Our Price: $183.95  Amazon's Price: $190.41

BFB SAVINGS: $6.46, save over 3%

Early American and World History for Jr. High Pack

Our Price: $127.95  Amazon's Price: $145.23

BFB Savings: $17.28, save over 11%

Medieval History Through Literature for Intermediate and Jr. High Pack

Our Price: $209.95  Amazon's Price: $228.38

BFB Savings: $18.43, save over 8%

Medieval History Through Literature for Sr. High Pack

Our Price: $168.00   Amazon's Price: $170.89

BFB Savings: $2.89, save over 1%

Teaching Character Through Literature for Primary Grades Pack

Our Price: $99.95  Amazon's Price: $108.17

BFB Savings: $8.22, save over 7%

Teaching Character Through Literature for Intermediate Grades

Our Price: $102.95  Amazon's Price: $107.07

BFB Savings: $4.12, save over 3%

Geography Through Literature Pack

Our Price: $63.95  Amazon's Price: $67.49

BFB Savings: $3.54, plus the ability to purchase additional map packs at an additional discount!

California History Through Literature Pack

Our Price: $124.95  Amazon's Price: $132.95

BFB SAVINGS: $8.00, save over 6%

The History of the Horse Pack

Our Price: $112.95  Amazon's Price: $114.74

BFB SAVINGS: $1.74, save over 1%

Our US and World History Parts I & II and Parts III & IV packs and History of Science Pack are all the same or slightly less than Amazon. 

If you are thinking about purchasing one of our Exclusive Author Collections from the D'aulaires, Albert Marrin, James Daugherty, Genevieve Foster, or Brinton Turkle, the savings are exceptional!

The D'aulaire Biography Pack

Our price: $84.95  Amazon's Price: $107.95

BFB SAVINGS: $23.00, save over 21%

The Genevieve Foster Collection

Our Price: $85.95  Amazon's Price: $111.24

BFB SAVINGS: $25.95, save over 22%

The Albert Marrin Collection

Our Price: $71.95  Amazon's Price: $77.78

BFB SAVINGS: $5.83, save over 7%

The James Daugherty Collection

Our Price: $49.95  Amazon's Price: $58.59

BFB SAVINGS: $8.64, save over 14%!

The Obadiah Trio

Our Price: $18.95  Amazon's Price: $20.61

BFB SAVINGS: $1.66, save over 8%

 And now, just for you we are offering an additional savings!

For one week only, you can get 15% off all BFB products! So if you've been wanting to check out a study guide or two, stock up on some titles for summer reading, or get some timelines, this is your chance! Simply enter BFB15 in the promotion code box when you place your order. This is valid on all items published by Beautiful Feet Books including study guides, timelines, books, and maps! 

ALL ORDERS OVER $200 SHIP FOR FREE!

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Giveaway! 5 Winners!

Today we're doing a little giveaway to celebrate the fact that our Summer Promotion is going to be announced on Monday!! Woot!

Today we're giving away our five copies of our History of Science Study Guide, one each to five lucky winners! To enter, simply use the rafflecopter widget below! There are all sorts of ways to earn entries so share away! Giveaway ends on Monday, so be sure to get your entries in over the weekend!

Our History of Science program is one of Cathy Duffy's Top Picks for Home School and is a great way to introduce scientific principles to your students. It's also a fun summer school program as it includes lots of hands-on experiments and activities.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Summer Reading for Moms!

As summer settles in and swim lessons, soccer camp, and VBS are starting to gear up, I thought it may be fun to share some of my favorite adult reads. After a school year of reading children's literature and feeding our children's academic appetites, it's time to read some books that feed our own souls. To that end, here are a few books I  keep extra copies of so that I always have one to share with a friend.

I've lately been reading a couple of books that I've found wonderfully encouraging in that they celebrate bookish childhoods. Booked by Karen Swallow Prior and When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson will speak to any parent who has worked to create an atmosphere of literary inquiry in their homes. Both Robinson and Prior were voracious readers as young girls and these books speak to the role that literature played in their personal development.

Booked, subtitled Literature in the soul of me, records Prior's precocious appetite for books, often with mature and difficult subjects. Growing up in Maine, Prior's childhood was one filled with farm animals, strange characters and neighbors, and frequent trips to the library. Her book, an ode to reading for pleasure, tells how literature led her to question her childhood faith and then, eventually, to come to the understanding that "there was no essential conflict between the tenets of my faith and freedom of the mind." Each of the eleven chapters gives tribute to a specific work of literature and its role in her developing understanding of faith. Whether she's speaking of the affirmation of life in Charlotte's Web or sexual ethics in relationship to Gulliver's Travels, Prior makes powerful statements on life, faith, secular culture and, of course, literature. Her essay on censorship in relationship to John Milton's provocative Areopagitica gives one much to mull over in terms of whether or not one should limit a child's exposure to certain books. Often poignant, sometimes gritty, I have enjoyed the time I spent with this book and know I will be returning to it often. Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, summarizes it well: "Ever wish you'd had a teacher who made you want to read the classics? Your wish has come true in this beautifully-told book. Karen Swallow Prior movingly and honestly tells a compelling story of self-discovery and coming to faith through some of the greatest books ever written."

Marilynne Robinson's When I Was a Child I Read Books is a thought-provoking collection of beautifully written essays that force the reader to slow down and contemplate each superbly crafted sentence. As one of the foremost thinkers of our time, Robinson has an uncanny ability to distill academic and cerebral thoughts into beautiful and approachable prose. If you are feeling that you need a little mind workout, this will provide you with the stimulation you're craving. Whether she's meditating on the central role of generosity in the Christian faith, or addressing the global debt crisis, Robinson pulls on the literature that has formed her soul. If you've read and enjoyed her fiction (Housekeeping, Gilead, and Home), you will undoubtedly be touched and moved by this collection of essays. And if you have not read any of Robinson's fiction, I cannot recommend it highly enough. These are books that deserve your time and attention.

Ever felt like you missed out on reading the classics when you were younger and now feel overwhelmed by the idea of tackling a "Great Books" reading list? Invitation to the Classics is one of the best resources available for anyone who is considering picking up War and Peace, The Odyssey, The Scarlet Letter or any of the books that have formed western culture. Louise Cowan, literary critic and professor, worked with Os Guinness to produce "a guide to books you've always wanted to read" and accomplished this goal beautifully. Featuring authors from Homer to Nietzsche, Chaucer to Calvin, Aristotle to Kierkegaard, this book will provide the background notes that make classic works much more accessible. This is a wonderful resource that should be in the library of every homeschooling family.

I hope you enjoy these books. If you have any favorite summer reads, fiction or non-fiction, please share below in the comments.

If you want to order any of these books from BFB, feel free to give us a call at 800.889.1978 and we'd be happy to help you.

Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Pinterest pages. And if you've enjoyed this, please feel free to share using the buttons below!

Online courses through BFB

Here at BFB we are considering the option of offering online courses! Is this something you would be interested in? We are excited about this possibility and are in the exploratory phase. In order to help us develop courses that you would love to enroll your student in, would you take a few minutes to fill out our short survey? It's only 8 questions and will take less than five minutes. We greatly appreciate your input as we explore this opportunity. Here's the link to the survey:

The blessing of siblings

This post is a bit off track from our usual topics of education and learning, but I thought it was worth sharing a wonderful article by Frank Bruni that I think many of you will find relatable. I highly recommend the article while understanding that my experience is not universal. This is not intended to offend or hurt anyone who does not have siblings or anyone whose relationships with their siblings are a source of hurt. But for those of you who are raising a brood of children, be encouraged that you are giving your children the opportunity to develop relationships that will mean the world to them. 

Among home schooling families there is a tendency for family size to be on the larger side of average. Many of the families I knew growing up in our home school coop had three, four, five, or six children. Being the oldest of six, I did not really give a lot of thought to the size of my family herd. Yet, as I have grown older, I have come to realize that having five siblings is decidedly not "normal" and that realization has caused me to grow to appreciate my siblings in ways I never have before. And this happened to coincide with a shift in the relationships I share with my siblings. Over the past couple of years, I've witnessed a sort of tightening of the sibling circle. As my siblings and I settle more and more into our adult lives the bonds between us have strengthened. Maybe its celebrating one another's weddings. Maybe it's the addition of two adorable nephews. Maybe it's the fact that we're becoming more comfortable with who we are individually. Whatever it is, I'm intensely grateful for my three sisters and two brothers. So when I came across this article, I was thrilled to read about the experiences of another group of siblings.

Frank Bruni, in his excellent column entitled "The Gift of Siblings", speaks about his relationships with his three siblings and celebrates the strength and meaning he draws from those friendships. In so many ways he was able to articulate something that I have been pondering and several points he made stood out to me.

"We marched (or, rather, crawled and toddled) into this crazy world together, and though we had no say in that, it’s by our own volition and determination that we march together still. Among my many blessings, this is the one I’d put at the top." I could not agree more. One of the greatest blessings in my life is my friendships with my brothers and sisters. We've formed strong bonds through years of playing together, working in the BFB barn packing up boxes of books together, traveling together, making it a priority to spend time together. As Bruni states, "I’m convinced that family closeness isn’t a happy accident, a fortuitously smooth blend of personalities...It's a resolve, a priority made and obeyed." One of my siblings is especially good about making time with family a priority. My brother Solomon flew over to Scotland twice (in the dead of winter!) to visit me while I was living there. He's the first to book a ticket to visit his nephews. And his commitment has influenced all of us to seek out times when we can be together.

With a twenty-year age gap between the oldest and youngest in my family we have been navigating a shift in relationship from childhood playmates to adult friends and confidants. It's not always smooth and there have definitely been hurts and misunderstandings, but I found that Bruni explains one of the benefits of having multiple siblings so well: "I’m also convinced that having numerous siblings helps. If you’re let down by one, you can let off steam with another." This ability to reduce the pressure helps ensure that hurts don't simmer and build over time, leading to estrangement and broken relationships. There is an unspoken recognition that no matter what one sibling tells me about another, it will not change the way I feel about the offending party. That sort of trust is hard to come by and is formed over years and years of interactions and cultivating a practice of giving one another the benefit of the doubt.

Bruni also states, "With siblings to help shoulder the burden of your parents’ dreams and expectations, you can flail on a particular front with lower stakes and maybe even less notice. Siblings not only pick up the slack but also act as decoys, providing crucial distraction." I love this point! Helicopter parenting is not possible in large families. There is a certain benign neglect that happens in big families and I know that I benefitted from the fact that my parents' attention was not solely focused on me. There was a little more room to make mistakes and we definitely got away with more than we would have if there had been fewer of us. And when we were caught, we bore the punishments together.

"For each of us, a new home, a new relationship or a newborn was never quite real until the rest of us had been ushered in to the front row." This rings particularly true for me. As I've moved from home to home and country to country over the past six years my husband and I have come to appreciate the moments when we can share these new places with our families. The first time my dad and brother visited me in Scotland made me feel like my husband and I had truly made a life for ourselves there.

Bruni does remark upon a little thought-of consequence of smaller families: "I sometimes wonder, when it comes to the decline in fertility rates in our country and others, whether the economic impact will be any more significant than the intimate one. For better or worse, fewer people will know the challenges and comforts of a sprawling clan." I remember speaking to a girl from China and asking her about her family. She reminded me that China's one-child policy ensured that she didn't have siblings and it struck me that for the people of my generation in China, most of them will never know what it is like to have a sibling. This young woman assured me that because no one has siblings, they have become very good at creating groups of close-knit friends who fill that void. While I have not experienced this myself, I do know only-children who have cultivated sibling-like relationships with a select few friends or who have been absorbed into a large sibling group. And I am reminded that life has a way of filling in gaps, whether familial or otherwise, and providing us with the companionship we all need. As Psalm 68:6 so beautifully states: "God sets the solitary in families."

And finally, Bruni sums it all up beautifully in this passage: "My siblings have certainly seen me at my worst, and I’ve seen them at theirs. No one has bolted. It’s as if we signed some contract long ago, before we were even aware of what we were getting into, and over time gained the wisdom to see that we hadn’t been duped. We’d been graced: with a center of gravity; with an audience that never averts its gaze and doesn’t stint on applause." I cannot state it any better, I have been graced. 

Photo credit: Kori Lynn Photography

Summer Reading

Oh, the long days of summer are here! Most of us are finished with school or are quickly approaching the end date. And a whole lot of us are looking forward to time to read for fun. For those of you looking for a little guidance when it comes to helping your children choose books to read over the long break, here's some suggestions.

1. Check out our "Read-Aloud Favorites" series. While these books make great read-alouds, they're also great for kids to read on their own. The series features dozens of authors and hundreds of titles, so it's a great resource. Check it out here:

Books for Youngsters
Books for Middle Schoolers
Books for Jr. High Students
Books for High School Students

2. Consider doing an enrichment curriculum. Ensuring that your students are still engaging with literature and academic activities is a great way to protect against summer learning loss. The following programs are great for relaxed summer days.

Teaching Character Through Literature for PreK-2nd Grade

Teaching Character Through Literature for 4-6th Grade

The History of the Horse

Geography Through Literature

If you decide to do one of these programs over the summer, remember to have fun with it. Don't get too caught up in getting everything done but take it at a pace that's relaxed, allowing time for exploration of topics that particularly pique your students' interest. Many families find that they reduce the written work in favor of group discussion. If your family just likes reading together, focus on that. If you have kids who love activities, give more time to working on assigned projects. Remember all our study guides are just that, guides! They're there to make your life easier.

Also, remember the lots of free time is a gift to your children. As you think about the summer try not to over-schedule your children's time with too many enrichment activities, swim lessons, ballet and baseball camp, soccer camp, and VBS. While all of those things are good, one of the best gifts you can give your child is time to be bored. You can read more about that here and here.  

Related Posts: 

Mitigating Summer Learning Loss...While Still Enjoying Your Summer!

Boredom Leads to Creativity

Unstructured Creativity a.k.a Boredom

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