TOS magazine focus group

This week has been pretty exciting for me. As a homeschooling mom, my days usually consist of directing wiggly children back to their tasks, cleaning up after said children, running the household in Proverbs 31 fashion (and often failing miserably), trying to squeeze in a little home-business time on the side, and barely having the energy for much else. It's a busy life but often routine in the type of busyness I encounter on a daily basis. Then, suddenly life throws an unexpected but pleasant curve, which just happened to me a few days ago.

I had just subscribed to The Old Schoolhouse magazine; many of you will know of it. It is one of my favorite homeschool magazines due to the sheer amount of knowledge and information packed into each issue. Its one of the few magazines where I actually read not only the articles but also the ads and procede to follow the links.

I had gotten two issues almost back-to-back and hadn't even gotten to savor them when an email arrived inviting me to "try out" if you will, to be part of The Old Schoolhouse magazine's focus group. If I am accepted, I will be able to use free homeschool products throughout the upcoming school year and get the chance to share my opinions in my blog and with my homeschool group friends. This is very exciting for me because I tend to be a curriculum collector of sorts, buying, buying, buying, and then becoming dissatisfied because the text or unit study just wasn't what I had expected. Getting the chance to review items could certainly save money, which is becoming increasingly important to me as I am learning to be a good steward of the blessings God has provided us.

For me, the chance to try loads of free products is a dream come true. I am the type that gets excited when it's back-to-school shopping time and all the glossy textbook and classroom supply catalogs arrive in my mailbox (never mind that we don't have a classroom in the normal sense). I enjoy reading all the item descriptions and trying to visualize whether the textbook, computer game, or website in question would transform our year from routine and complicated into beautifully easy-to-understand and miraculously thought-provoking educational bliss. If I get particularly interested an in an item, I might go poking around online at 2 AM reading reviews of the product and still be left wondering if it will affect my family in quite the way if affected the reviewer's family. Now I have the chance to be that reviewer.

I need your help friends and fellow homeschooling parents. Read my blogs when you get the chance. Let me know what you think.

I look forward to sharing not only curriculum views with you, but snippets of my life journey as well.
-Lynn