Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The Great Homeschool eStore Giveaway

I'm on their list, so I knew about the Mother's Day special. I tried yesterday to download some of their ebooks and was proud that I actually got four. On many of the homeschool lists I'm on, there were people who couldn't get any. I think I was lucky because I loosened up my security so I didn't have to wait for a second connection.

This morning I sat down and got a couple more of their free ebooks.

The book I liked the best was Great Pioneer Projects You Can Build Yourself by Rachel Dickinson. I liked the fact that it gave information as well as projects. I liked it so much I went to Amazon and did some searching. There are a few books in their Build Yourself Series that piqued my interest.

The only thing about this book -- I would prefer it in book form as opposed to ebook. I'm not going to print the thing out, it would take too much ink and I'm cheap.

I had to try to download this book about six times. Each time I got it the file was corrupted. Finally, this morning within minutes of their promotion being over, I got it. Small victory for me.

I liked this free giveaway because it gave me a chance to see things beyond their teasing previews. It enabled me to figure out what I could use and tweak and what was just out of the question. We'll actually use two of their free ebooks. The others were nice to view.

One of the books I got was the Hands of a Child Mythological Creatures lapbook. Cute book, information provided at the beginning about creatures, but what can I say -- as cute as I think lapbooks are -- and I really do think they're cute -- we have tried to do lapbooks on three different occasions and failed. Why? Because for us, we just don't see the point. I think in the early elementary grades they're perfect and would have suited Thomas well. Thomas thought it was just a bunch of busy work. And I tend to agree -- for him. I'd far rather him write a report than cut and paste and all that.

So Thomas and I will continue to admire the photos of lapbooks that we come across on the web, but we won't partake.

I think it was great that the Homeschool eStore had this giveaway. I know it blew their servers, I know people got testy about it, but they didn't have to give them out in the first place and they are moving to a better more accommodating server in the very near future. Kudos to them. Thanks, we'll enjoy our Pioneer Projects very much.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Luckily, for those that didn't know about the promotion, they'll be running it again due to the server problems.
"Mother's Day Event Delayed
Due to our web host's inability to meet the traffic demand generated by this promotion, we're going to talk with the participating publishers, and try to run the event again in the very near future (as soon as we can arrange to move the site over to a new host). Once we have made this transition, the site will have well over ten times the capacity that it does now. Our next newsletter will contain information about the new date of this promotion, and we will also post the information here on the front page as soon as we have it. We thank you for your continued support and patience.
"

Appletini said...

Hey, I got a bunch of those books: Anti-coloring book Masterpieces; Happy Scribe Weather Sayings; Basic Notebooking Pages; Great Pioneer Projects, Mythological Creatures; Literature Study on Rabbit Hill; one on Positive Teaching (or something like that) and one on organizing.

I did it during the wee hours of the morning. Web traffic was less then, I guess.

Gerkin Pickle said...

I only got three of them. Without highspeed internet at my MIL's house things didn't go well at all. Bummer! Wowio on the other hand rocks...I have been getting books off there for a while. How are things going?