RootsTech 2015 (with Giveaway)

Sponsored post in conjunction with RootsTech. Thoughts are honest and mine. 

How much do you know about your family history?  Your ancestors?  The people who came before you?  As a little girl I remember my mom and her sister spending hours and hours writing out family charts and going to the genealogical society library to scan through rolls of microfilm looking for even tiny clues to help them connect us to a line of people that had been forgotten.  Such important work, but painstaking and time-consuming.

How incredibly the times have changed!  All of that paperwork now available with a few keystrokes from anywhere in the world.  Government records are being digitized at amazing speed and viewed with ease.  The boxes of black and white photos people used to have under their beds can now be scanned and shared with everyone in the family.  All the family tree charts that used to take up binders and binders are on the dining room bookshelf are now simply contained in online files for easy reference, sharing, and documenting.  These advances in genealogical technology are what RootsTech is all about!

A 3-day conference held annually in Salt Lake City, UT, there are classes and seminars available for researchers of all interest and skill-level.  This year's events range from an Innovators Challenge, where the world's top app developers compete in creating the most useful new technology solving a family history need, all the way down to classes on simply how to get started with your first ancestral connection.  And if there opportunity for learning and getting deeper into your own family history isn't enough, the conference brings in top-notch speakers and entertainment each year as well.  Last year, Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) was a keynote speaker.  This year the line-up includes Olympian Noelle Pikus Pace, singer Donnie Osmond, and former First Lady Laura Bush with her daughter Jenna.  It will be hard to walk away on Saturday feeling uninspired.

I'm excited this year to be going for my first time! Will I see you there?  Tickets are still available-take a look at the class schedule and the list of exhibitors who will be in attendance.  I think you'll find something on at least one of the 3 days to intrigue you and make the trip in to Salt Lake City worth your time...

Want to try your luck at winning a 3-Day Getting Started Pass?

Click on the banner to enter...

(already have tickets, but still want to enter? A full refund is available if you win)

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Math Needs To Be Fun Sometimes (Product Review)

This is a sponsored post via USFamilyGuide.

Freemples received product to review, 

but shares opinions & information honestly.

I'm a little delayed in sharing my review of the web-based computer program, Splash Math, with you. If you'll remember, we first introduced you to Splash Math right before Christmas and were looking forward to giving it a try. In this instance my procrastination is to your benefit as I can now say with for certain that the game has staying power...

I should start by telling you that our kids are math lovers.  This is bizarre for my husband and I-we both struggled in math all the way through college-but, hooray, go kids that don't know math isn't supposed to be super easy!  Loving math is not a prerequisite to loving Splash Math, though.  The only requirement for that is being a kid who loves a talking hippo...what kid wouldn't think was fun?

Math lovers or not, as a parent it's hard to tell a child his screen time is over when he's pleading with you, "No, Mom, just let me do 20 more problems!"  

But Splash Math is not just a game, and this is what I love about it.  During set-up, you select your child's grade level.  It was encouraging to find the scope and sequence follows very closely with what my 2nd grader knows how to do and/or is learning.  As homeschoolers, that's been great because I can let him play knowing it's not too easy or too hard.  But if your child is in the school system, it's also a great way to look at what they're learning at school and then give them extra practice on that math topic at home.  Once logged in, you can work from the beginning and go straight through, or pick and choose which problems you want to work on.  

This short video will give you a better look at how the program actually works...

As you could see in the video, there is a game aspect with each question answered correctly earning points that can then be used to purchase animals to play with in an aquarium or the jungle.  Honestly, that's the only part of the Splash Math program that underwhelms me.  My 7- and 4-yr-old love it and race through their 20 questions to get to play with the crabs and giraffes again.  But it's pretty elementary, and I can't imagine it stays entertaining forever.  I especially can't imagine that someone using the whole program, K-5, would care much at all about that part once they were in the upper grades.  Also, our introductory session on Splash Math had a 20-question limit per day.  While I love my kids being able to do as much math as they'd like each time they play, I have to pay more attention that they aren't hurrying through their questions, playing in the jungle, and then forgetting to go back and do more problems.

Overall, we LOVE Splash Math.  I'm certainly not going to be the ones to tell my kids that they're really do school work every time they play.  You should let your kids give it a try!

Try Splash Math on the Computer

Try Splash Math in an App.  

Product provided for honest review via USFamilyGuide

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