Life Prep (Third Edition) Now Available as EBook

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Barbara Frank

My first book, the homeschool curriculum Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers, still sells after 15 years and three editions, but it’s always been a print book. Now I’m excited to announce that the expanded third edition of Life Prep just became available in EBook form.

This new eBook version is a “print replica,” which means it looks exactly the same inside as the recently expanded print version does. So it includes every single feature that the print version has. Of course, you can still buy the print version if that’s what you prefer. (If I were still homeschooling, that’s what I would prefer.) But many people like the convenience (and lack of clutter) that you get when you buy eBooks instead of print books.

The print version costs $24.95, and the eBook version costs $9.99, so there’s some significant savings if you choose the eBook version.

In either case, preparing your homeschooled teen for life on their own is an essential task, and one that Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers will do, over the course of 1-4 semesters, depending on just how much preparation you want to offer to your teen. Learn more HERE. See the rest of our books and eBooks at CardamomPublishers.com.

The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering

Posted on January 12, 2018 by Barbara Frank

Cardamom Publishers announces the publication of Claire Middleton’s new decluttering handbook, The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering:

Conquer Your Clutter Without Losing Your Nostalgic Memories

How can you have the organized home of your dreams when you’re emotionally attached to almost all of your stuff?

In The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering, Claire Middleton offers a plan that you can work through, step by step, to turn your home into the welcoming, roomy haven you’ve always dreamed of, filled with charm, personality… and none of the mess you live with now.

In this book, Claire shares tips that will help you give up the bulk of your sentimental clutter while keeping your most precious treasures to use and display. Learn how to shrink your collections of nostalgic items like:

Your children’s baby clothes and toys
Mementos from your own youth
Clothes you’ve kept for decades
Heirlooms you inherited
Books you’ve kept for years
Holiday decorations
And everything else that brings back happy memories.

You don’t have to live with overflowing closets, an attic full of boxes and a basement packed with more of the same, just because it’s so hard for you to sort through and give up belongings linked to your past.

The truth is, you CAN finally free yourself of clutter while keeping your most treasured belongings. Read The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering now, and start on the path to conquering clutter without giving up happy memories.

An Essential Step for Your Homeschooled Teen: Getting a Checking Account (and a Debit Card)

Posted on May 20, 2017 by Barb

If you’ve decided to homeschool your teen for high school, I hope that in addition to all the educational products you plan to use, that you’ve considered getting your teen set up with a checking account and a debit card.

That thought might scare you, but learning to responsibly use a checking account linked to a debit card is an essential part of your teen’s education and something they should be comfortable with before going on to work or college post-graduation.

There are definite hazards in having a debit card, but it’s important that you help your teen navigate that path now instead of waiting for them to naively run up the inevitable overcharges and fees once they’re away from home.

On June 1, the updated and expanded third edition of Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers will be available for purchase at most online and brick-and-mortar book sellers and from Cardamom Publishers. It includes six new projects. Two of them, the Checking Account Project and the Debit Card Project, will teach your teen how to keep a checking account balanced while avoiding hundreds of dollars in fees due to debit card usage errors.

More details about the latest edition of Life Prep will be forthcoming. If you have questions, please let me know!

Happy 2016!

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Barb

I spent much of the last part of 2015 working on two quilts that were Christmas gifts (photos to come). I managed to finish them in time but I must have been crazy to put myself under such a deadline. There were several interruptions, including emergency surgery on one of my kids (she’s OK now, thank God), the purchase of a car and a broken part on my sewing machine.

The Christmas season was full of surprises, the best of them being the announcement by our daughter and son-in-law that they’re expecting their first child this summer. We are very excited about this wonderful news! This will be our third grandchild; we were blessed to spend some time over the holidays with our first two bright and gorgeous grandchildren, and they are a delight 🙂 We Skype with them every week and love it, but there’s nothing like being there in person.

The holidays gave me an opportunity to reconnect with some old friends, which is always nice. Some were also homeschooling parents, so we have much to talk about. I continue to find it interesting that some of their kids are doing very well as adults while others continue to find their way. I mean this in terms of their faith lives, not their work or personal lives, as all seem gainfully employed and/or busy raising their own children. These things are also true of my own children. It appears to me that homeschooling creates wonderful family lives and good educational experiences, but cannot create an adult who handles everything perfectly, no matter what the speakers at homeschool conventions may tell you! That said, it’s a privilege to watch our adult children navigate the world with all of its joys and challenges.

In 2016, I hope to update Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers with additional projects and information. We also have a couple of eBooks in the pipeline at Cardamom that will hopefully be published this year. And of course, there will be more quilts….and a new baby to love!

Wishing you a blessed 2016,
Barb

My New Book is Almost Ready!

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Barbara Frank

Last year I wrote about how I was buckling down to finish the book I’ve been working on for a long time. Well, it was worth it: the book will be out next month!

It’s called Thriving in the 21^st Century: Preparing Our Children For The New Economic Reality, and I wrote it to explain what has changed in our economy and what specific things we can do to help prepare our children for a world of work much different than the one we grew up in.

Here’s what it will say on the back cover:

Today’s children will reach adulthood in an economic environment unlike anything the world has ever seen. The 21st century global economy is powered by an increasing rate of technological change as well as growing foreign competition; both are contributing to the high U.S. unemployment rate and stagnating American wages. How can we as parents prepare our children for success in this growing maelstrom that many are now calling “the new normal”?

In Thriving in the 21st Century, Barbara Frank demonstrates that we must move beyond the common wisdom of the 20th century that emphasized a college diploma and lifelong employment with a large company as the only way to success. Instead, we need to set our children on a new path, one that will help them not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century.

In this book, you’ll learn:

The Seven Strengths your child will need to prosper in the 21st century, why they’re needed and how you can develop them in your children

The most efficient (and increasingly popular) way to give your child those Seven Strengths

Why public education has failed to prepare our children for the 21st century

How we can help our children become the lifelong learners needed in a rapidly changing global economy

The surprising truth about today’s colleges and universities

How economic change is affecting a variety of career areas, and which of them are projected to grow dramatically in the coming years.

This book is packed with ideas and resources for raising our children to become adults who respond proactively when faced with economic challenges, and who can prosper during times of great change. We can help our children reach young adulthood ready and able to tackle the future with all its challenges. And that, of course, is the key: we must prepare our children for the future…not the past.