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Sunshine in My Soul

My mission began as a goal to provide you with the resources and support that you need to give children a high quality, Christ-centered education that is affordable. All children deserve that opportunity. My teaching philosophy is that we learn better together, as a family!

But there is also a need for mothers, single and married, to receive their education. Many feel discouraged by this goal when juggling the roles of motherhood, wife, and sometimes sole supporter of a family. But it is possible, with support of a loving Savior, to accomplish the task of completing your education. Heavenly Father wants his daughters to be educated. Whether you are married or single, you never know when you will need a better education. Don’t be discouraged, don’t give up. With the help of my Savior, family, and friends, I did it as a single mother and I’m still doing it. You can do it too. You deserve it and so does your family.

I hope this group will give you wonderful, free ideas for Christ-centered, educational, and creative resources and activities. Use this time at home to grow closer to your family and the Savior. Look for new ideas and videos on my blog, new App, and social media accounts.

I am an Education and Resource Consultant and Advocate. I homeschool my children through the American Heritage School Worldwide Family School. I have a six year old and a seven year old, both little boys. I have a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education from Ole Miss. I am currently working on my Doctorate in Educational Leadership with Liberty University, as well as enrolled in the Leadership Principles Program at the Harvard Business School Online.

If you need free resources and ideas I can help! Especially with ages infant through 8 years old, as well as with resources for mothers desiring to get their education.

President Harold B. Lee stated that “The most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home.” I wholeheartedly agree with this. Not only is giving your children a Christ-centered education invaluable, but an educated mother is invaluable as well.

I reopened and organized my Pinterest account to better keep up with homeschooling and church ideas.

https://www.pinterest.com/NicoleBraden22

Look for an updated blog and my new App with more resources for your children, as well as for mothers soon.

Let me know if you need any help! You may email me at NicoleBraden22@gmail.com

There is no charge for my services. This is my small part to show the Savior my gratitude for all that he has done for me. You are in our thoughts and prayers every day!

Private Facebook Group:

Christ-Centered Learning

Blog: ChristCenteredLearning.com

New App!: https://4371484.igen.app/

Instagram: Christcenteredlearning22

Twitter: @NicoleBraden22

© 2020 Christ-Centered, Educational, and Creative Learning

Although Christ-Centered, Educational, and Creative Learning for Children is inspired by the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The opinions and views expressed herein only represent the views and opinions of Christ-Centered, Educational, and Creative Learning for Children and do not necessarily reflect the view or opinions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

 

Remembering George Floyd Today as We Turn to the Savior

I have prayed about what to say today...a day in our nation when so many are filled with so much pain.  Each morning, I try to share a spiritual thought on social media.  But this morning, the day of George Floyd's funeral, both my mind heart are flooded with so many thoughts that I cannot select just one.  Instead, I want to share this article which pretty much summarizes everything that I want to say.  This article is on the front page of my church's website, ChurchofJesusChrist.org.  It is entitled, Locking arms for racial harmony for America, and the following are some of my favorite photos and points from the article.

Prejudice, hate and discrimination are learned. Thus, we call on parents, family members, and teachers to be the first line of defense. Teaching children to love all, and find the good in others, is more crucial than ever. Oneness is not sameness in America. We must all learn to value the differences.

-Medium.com

We share deep sorrow for the senseless, heinous act of violence that needlessly took the life of George Floyd. We mourn with his family, friends and community. We likewise look on with sadness at the anger, hate, contempt and violence spilling onto America’s streets, devastating cities across the nation, and creating fear and anxiety in citizens across this great land.

-Medium.com

Photo Credit: Medium.com

What is the solution? Whether you are a believer or not, Jesus Christ taught an inspired model that leads to peace and harmony — to love God first, and then to love our neighbor as ourselves. We don’t pretend that either of these pursuits is easy, but we do declare that they yield the fruits the Lord promised.

We agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement, that “hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” It is this kind of love that inspires us to do the rigorous work of building bridges of cooperation rather than walls of segregation and alienation.

-Medium.com

Unitedly we declare that the answers to racism, prejudice, discrimination and hate will not come from government or law enforcement alone. Solutions will come as we open our hearts to those whose lives are different than our own, as we work to build bonds of genuine friendship, and as we see each other as the brothers and sisters we are — for we are all children of a loving God.

-Medium.com

Photo Credit: Medium.com

May Heavenly Father bless the loved ones of George Floyd today and our nation.  May we heal from this, but most importantly learn from this so that it never, ever happens again

again.  I bear you my testimony that the Savior lives and that we are all sons and daughters of a Heavenly King who expects us to treat one another much more kinder than we are.  I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

A Season for Education, Hope, and Peace for All

Today I selected the themes for the Come Follow Me camp and I am ready to announce who will be giving away free gifts at our camps next month.  I am so grateful to all who are helping to brighten the summer of so many children during this quarantine and recent incidences of racism.  The recent racist acts and COVID-19 world crisis were heavily on my heart and mind as I prayed about and selected the topics for the Come Follow Me Camp.  I will also be considering these issues as I select the materials for our Disney Baking and Cooking Around the World Camp so that this can be an opportunity for children to gain an open mind about other cultures.  The topics for for our Come Follow Me camp, which is open to everyone of all faiths, will be:

Love One Another (Two Days)

Joy In Any Season

Sincere Prayer

Opposition in All Things  

My hope and prayer is that these camp days will bring you and your children closer to the Savior and help you love others more freely, embrace kindness to all no matter their skin color, and give you hope and peace during these difficult times.  I will have a site page up soon with a set schedule and who will be our special guests for each day.  You will also be able to access a small list of materials that you will need for each activity each day.  Each camp will be a total of three hours worth of activities and learning, not including the one hour lunch break each day.

There has been some confusion about how to join each event.  Simply go here, and click on the events you are interested in and join!  Please feel free to invite your family and friends to these free events!  As I said before, joining the event is not a commitment to do every activity or be involved every single day.  You can do as much or as little as you choose!  But, you do need to join the event and be present for the drawing each day to win and to receive the free gift!

Learn more about our our special guests here!

Here are the 12 businesses who are donating a free gift for the drawings for the camps! Simply click on their logo to visit their site!  We really appreciate their generosity and for helping to brighten so many children's lives this summer!

The Red Headed Hostess will be giving away two 6 month subscriptions to her scripture study bundles on two different days at our Come Follow Me camp!

Stay tuned for this special surprise!

Latter-Day Books & Gifts will be giving away a lovely 18' by 24' 500 piece puzzle entitled, "Perfect Love" at our Come Follow Me Camp!

Temple Night Lights will be giving some of their beautiful temple night lights at our Come Follow Me camp!

LDzStudios will be giving away a set of Church History Scripture Doodle Dry Erase Cards!
She also has a wonderful collection of free printables!  View them here!

Cookies!! will be giving away a free Frozen cookie decorating kit on the day we learn about Norway with Elsa and Ana!

GutelCo will be giving away bath bombs with Harry Potter toys inside the week of our Harry Potter Science camp!  She has an amazing heart for God and serving missions!  Read her inspiring story here!

Ali Bell Boutique will be giving away a free Disney t-shirt at one of our Disney camps!

Exclusive Allure will be giving away 5 free Disney t-shirts at our Disney camps!  She will be giving away a Beauty and the Beast shirt, a Finding Nemo shirt, a Moana shirt, a Frozen shirt, and a Harry Potter shirt!

The Sweet Pink Olive will be giving away a set of Moana cookie cutters on the day we explore baking and cooking with Disney in The Polynesian Islands!





Fortunately Yours, Inc. will be giving away chocolate dipped fortune cookies on the day that we explore baking and cooking in China with Mulan from Disney!




My friend, Emilie, from the Music Adventure Box will be giving away one free monthly subscription music box to help you learn about and enjoy music with your child!

To enter these giveaways, simple go here, to join the event and then tell how your family helped during the COVID-19 crisis or tell something you are doing to educate your family against racism  Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Reading a book by a black or minority author.  Or a book advocating black voices.
• Making masks for healthcare workers or those in need.
• Watching a movie as a family like Remember the Titans, The Color of Friendship, or Hidden Figures.
• Sending cards to nursing homes or those who are sick.
• Learn as a family about different cultures around the world.  You can use an article like this!
• Decorating the sidewalks with encouraging quarantine messages.
• Talk with your kids about racial differences and the importance of kindness to everyone.
• Donating to a local food bank.

These are just some examples.  You may have better ideas!  Please share photos if you have them, but do not feel like you have to share a photo.  Simply post the act of education or service that you and your family did on the event wall and you will automatically be entered into the drawings for that camp!  (Once you win a prize one time, you may not be eligible to win another prize at that camp or any other.  We want everyone to have an opportunity to win!)  If you haven't done any service or any of these education ideas yet, it is okay!  The camps do not begin until July, so you have time!

Please message me on Facebook if you have any questions!

Go here to join the event!      

Please help me to brighten the summers of children everywhere this season by helping me to spread the word about these free virtual summer camps!  You can post this blog post on your Facebook wall, your Twitter account, text the link, or join the events and then invite others to join as well!  Thank you so much for your support!

Look for more information soon!  

    

Introducing My New Learning About The World with Disney Curriculum!

Image Credit: www.pngitem.com

I am excited to introduce my new Learning About the World with Disney Curriculum!  I researched and discovered which Disney movie corresponds with it's appropriate country, state, or region.  I compiled worksheets, recipes, videos, coloring pages, and activities about each country and Disney movie.  And all of my ideas and resources are free!  I would recommend subscribing to Disney Plus so that you do not have to purchase all of the Disney movies.

Learning should be fun and magical for young children and I hope that this makes learning about the world a wonderful experience for you and your child!  My children are really enjoying it so far!  I am still adding to this curriculum and probably always will be!  So check back in for new ideas and resources!

Photo Credit: https://disneyland.disney.go.com/preschool/

View my new 
Learning About the World 
with Disney 
Curriculum
here!

Making the Most of Church at Home

We love getting dressed up for church at home on Sundays and partaking of the sacrament to renew our covenants with our Heavenly Father.  In our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we renew our baptismal and temple covenants each week by partaking of bread and water.  You can read a great article about it here. 

I am a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was raised in the Methodist church.  I remember learning as a young girl what it meant to make a covenant with God.  It meant to make a promise with him that you would never break.  I taught this to my children this week and yesterday in our Come Follow Me gospel study as we learned about making and keeping baptismal covenants. 

When you look this cute in a mask, you have to take a picture!  

I also gave both boys haircuts this weekend, a new quarantine skill for me!  I have learned so many new skills over the past few months!

We also enjoyed our Hello Bible craft yesterday!  These are such high quality craft projects and the boys really look forward to them each Sunday afternoon.  Each box comes with two crafts (we do one a week) and a book to read with an easy to teach lesson to follow up with.  It is such a wonderful Sunday afternoon activity to do together as a family.  And you do not have to order an entire new box for each child.  Hello Bible simple adds more materials for each child for about $4.90 per child, up to four children.

This Sunday - and last Sunday - we learned about Jospeh in the Book of Genesis.  We had so much fun yesterday retelling the story on scrolls with stickers!  My seven year old likes to do everything in order and very neat.  But my six year old is very whimsical and likes to put his sheep in the trees and his cows in the sky.  There is a 16 month age difference between them.  My seven year old will be eight in four months and my six year old just turned six three months ago.  They are so much fun!  

After we finished making our ancient scrolls, we colored Frozen Disney pages for cousins that live far away.

We are also really enjoying these Virtual Primary Singing Time videos on You Tube by the Primary Music Boss!  They are updated each week and so entertaining!  When we finished yesterday, the boys wanted to watch more.  So they did!  I am going to start using them during the week with our Come Follow Me lessons in the mornings to help us learn our primary songs. 

Above is the one we watched yesterday!

I hope that you are enjoying your Sundays at home with your family!  I miss attending regular church, but we are staying positive and making the most out of it!  Visit my Church at Home Pinterest Board for more ideas on how to spend the Sabbath with your family.

Our Family Home Evening Lesson for Today

The American Heritage Family School is for Everyone

As always, we had such a fun time learning with American Heritage yesterday!  We had our Literature Lesson which is entitled, Growing Up.  We analyzed the story again of Jesus walking on water and learned about theme and characterization.  Then the boys made these beautiful crowns!  I was really proud of my six year old.  My seven year old is really into art, but my six year old is not into art as much.  But he really put a great deal of effort into this and actually spent the most time on his!  His crown is the first one below with the rainbow jewels.  He asked me to show him a picture of the rainbow so he could put the colors in their proper order.  I was so proud of him for his attention to detail!  This is something that we have really been working on.  They loved these crowns so much, and my seven year old even wore his around the house throughout the evening.  Next week we will be reading and studying The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter.

On Thursday I took this great photo of them working hard on their writing...and our Jack Russell Terrior, Charlie, taking a good nap in the background!  He's a sleep at my feet as I type this!  He is usually doing one of three things:

1. Playing Ball
2. Eating

3. Sleeping

He is adorable and we love him so much!  

This spring, we have been using the Scholastic Success in Writing Level 1 workbook and we absolutely love it.  Both boys' writing has greatly improved.  You can get these for $3 or $4 from Rainbow Resource online.  I have found Rainbow Resource to have the best prices online for many school supplies.  

Next year we plan to use The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Course Book.  It is completely free to download!  We will not need their handwriting workbook because The American Heritage Family School gives us so many handwriting worksheets.  

The American Heritage Family School does not offer Language Arts or Mathematics so we supplement with The Good and The Beautiful.  But American Heritage does offer wonderful literature courses and lots of handwriting worksheets!  And The Good and The Beautiful offers their entire Language Arts curriculum for free! 

Another thing that The American Heritage Family School does that I love is to encourage you to make a portfolio of your children's work as you go!  You simply create a binder and divide their work up by subjects.  You just file their work away every day and before you know it they have a beautiful portfolio of all of their work for that school year!  We have only been doing this for a few weeks, and my six year old loves his so much!  He loves to look through it and to show it off to his Grandpa!  He is so proud of his work and accomplishments!  I know that we will always treasure this!  Since we began late in the year, we just made our own, but American Heritage also offers really nice dividers that you can purchase for your notebooks.  Or you can make your own!  It is completely up to you!    

Some people have already ended school for the year and started summer.  We will be homeschooling until the end of June.  Why?  Because that is how long this amazing free COVID-19 membership lasts with The American Heritage Family School and I want to learn everything I can about how to do this program with them so that next year we are really ready to go in the Autumn!  Plus, we really love learning at our house and even when "school" is over we will still be learning, it will just be called, "summer camp!"

The American Heritage Family School is founded on the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I highly recommend it for those of all faiths who love the Savior.  Every lesson is tied to the Savior and invites such a special spirit into our home.  And you are getting so much more than what you pay for.  The tuition - $40 per family a month - is one of the lowest costs that I have seen so far and I am overwhelmed by how much they give you for that!  And, no, American Heritage is not paying me or asking me to write this.  We are just extremely happy with this school and feel so honored to be a part of it.  The curriculum is so high quality and my children absolutely love it.  My seven year old was very skeptical at first about homeschooling, but said yesterday, "Mom, I love my new school!"  He said this while we were doing our Growing Up Literature lesson with American Heritage.  Try it for yourself for free!  You and your family will love it!  And be sure to watch the introductory videos that they offer and take the Foundations course so that you understand how the program works.  Everything was really simple after I did this.  You will also love the community of homeschooling families that you get to be a part of.  Everyone has been so friendly and willing to answer all of my questions.  Let me know if you have any!  Just fill out the comments section on the right side of my site!

I am planning on organizing a fun summer reading challenge and sharing my at home summer camp ideas!  Join my private Facebook group to be a part of these fun activities!

Christ-centered, Educational, and Creative Activities for Children 

Private Facebook Group

Have a Happy Saturday!

  

Busy, Busy, Busy

What a busy week! On Friday we enjoyed the Olive Garden at home in honor of learning about Italy all week!
View our Italy Pinterest Board here.

Henry has discovered this week that he really loves spaghetti and meatballs and Grandpa enjoyed his traditional Tour of Italy! The egg plant parmigiana was one of the best things that I have ever eaten!

My dad and the boys surprised me on Saturday morning with a dozen yellow roses and truffles for Mother's Day! It was so sweet! I love them so much! I am so blessed to have them!

We needed to do our Zoology lesson with The American Heritage Family School on Saturday and it was wonderful!

We love The American Heritage Family School so much! We even found a worm in our driveway and watched The Lion King! (The new, live action version!) They painted tigers and they used their Rain Forest Cafe cups! It was an animal-filled day!

Friday was college day at our house so they wore the t-shirt for their favorite university. We also discovered a second family of baby ducks while we were at the lake! The baby ducks are already getting so big! After just one week!

I read this article about Ahmaud Arbery. I hope as a mother I can teach my children to be kind to everyone no matter their skin color, religion, socioeconomic status, etc. My parents instilled this in me and I am so grateful to them for that. I hope and pray that we all learn something from this. I am heartbroken for his family and friends. I started a Pinterest Board to help parents educate their children against racism. You can see it here.

I also freshened up my Pinterest Board that I created for my youngest child's second birthday party! You can see it here!

We tried Hello Bible for the first time on Sunday and loved it!

I am always looking for Sabbath day learning activities for my little boys and this is wonderful! It comes with two craft activities so we can do it twice a month!

This is such a wonderful way to learn a gospel lesson as a family! And the boys have really enjoyed collecting coins this week for their new wooden bank to donate to our church's humanitarian aid fund! You can learn more about church's humanitarian aid work here!

Subscribe to Hello Bible here!

Hello Bible also donates to the Kilgoris Project. Learn more about the Kilgoris Project here.

On Monday, we went on a Nature Scavenger Hunt with our Nature Notebooks from The Good and the Beautiful! It was suppose to just be a Nature Bingo activity, but we decided to find every item on the page! We love nature!

On Mondays, we bake treats for Family Home Evening. This is our baking lesson for the week! This Monday I taught them how to bake my favorite chocolate cake. It is a chocolate-covered cherry cake that my Grandma Francis taught me how to make.

In my chocolate-loving opinion, this is the best chocolate cake that you will ever eat and so easy to make! You can find the recipe here!

I also started looking for more creative ideas for our morning Come Follow Me Study. We have a 30 minute lesson every morning. I discovered Latter Day Kids and I absolutely love them! We will be doing their lessons twice a week! I also started a Pinterest Board of Come Follow Me study ideas. You can view it here!

Whew!

I told you that we were busy this week! And that isn't even everything! There will be more tomorrow! I will do better next week about more, shorter posts instead of one, long one!

Happy Homeschooling!