Category Archives: Kids

September 24, 2013 · 9:37 am

A FUN Play Date!

Well, I must say, before my family moved here to Albuquerque, New Mexico last year, I NEVER thought we would be having an outdoor, swimming play date on September 20th! After all, back in Michigan by that date, we were generally breaking out the hoodies and such!

But THIS year, we spent the day (on September 20th!) with another home-schooling family from our church, who had invited the boys and me to their new home. We ate lunch outdoors on the patio, and the kids spent the day swimming in their (unheated!) pool. On September 20th!

As you can see, the kids had a WONDERFUL time, and they (right along with me!) really, really like the milder weather here! 🙂

Here are “The Artist”, “The Puzzler” & “Mr. Loquacious” . . .

Here are “Mr. Loquacious”, “The Batman” & their friends having fun in the pool . . .

“The Artist”, floating around . . .

The “Artist”, drying off for lunch . . .

“The Artist” back in the water . . .

“The Puzzler” & “The Batman” & “Mr. Loquacious” with one of their friends . . .

All of the kiddos had a great time in and around the pool . . .

Here is “The Batman”, riding the whale!

“The Puzzler” . . . “in? or Out? That is the question!

Apparently the answer was “out” for a bit, but the others were all in, and having a blast!

I had planned to swim as well, but had cut my finger pretty badly the night before. We thought it best for me to stay out of the pool that day. 😦

What a great time we all had, and what a benefit of home-schooling, that once again, we get to work school in around life, instead of the other way around! 🙂

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Filed under 2013, Albuquerque, changes, exercise, family, home education, homeschooling, Kids, Mesa Baptist Church, moving, NM, Transitions

Tagged as children, exercise, family, home education, homeschooling, kids, moving, new life, Transitions

September 24, 2013 · 8:22 am

The Presidential Game . . . a T.O.S. Review

OK, so I’ll be honest, back in the beginning of August, when I requested to be chosen as a reviewer for The Presidential Game,

it was primarily because it looked so interesting to ME. I love to follow politics. I have, however, been trying over the years to teach my boys about elections, and several years ago “The Batman” and “The Artist” even did a lapbook about the presidential election (this was before we adopted “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler”, so we’ll probably do it again during the next big election”).

When the game arrived and I got a good look at it, I got a little nervous, I was at that point unsure if my boys would be able to “get” the concept during game play. I also wondered about the price, and what my husband would think of that. More about that later, however. 🙂

The Presidential Game is a board game, with an online component. The game itself is VERY sturdy and well made! I’ve seen (and had!) a number of board games which were very cheaply made, the fold up boards coming apart, the boxes coming apart. The Presidential Game is going to stand up to a LOT of wear, I think, which is a good thing, because my family is enjoying it very much!

I told you that at first, I was unsure whether my boys would be able to “get” the process of playing this game, because of their various special needs. I guess my friends who keep reassuring me about what home-schooling is doing for them are right though, because it didn’t take very long at all for all four of the boys to start strategizing to try to win the game.

The Presidential Game is intended for players age 11 and up, and for at least two players. We are a family of six, and play it in teams of three players.

This is from the back of the box:

“Think you have what it takes to be America’s next president? The Presidential is a fun and exciting game of strategy where two teams, Democrats and Republicans, battle for control of each state to ultimately gain 270 electoral votes or more. An entertaining and educational family game – it’s great for both students (11+) and adults. Enjoy the thrill of playing to win the most powerful job in the world!”

When your game arrives, it will include the following in the box:

1 20″ x 30″ game board
1 score pad
3 blue dice
3 red dice
80 politics cards (some of these are truly funny, too!)
150 Republican votes (red chips)
150 Democrat votes (blue chips)
1 electoral webmap calculator
Access code for the webmap calculator

Using the interactive webmap calculator was great fun, it helped the boys catch on very quickly to how fast and frequently the lead can change during an election campaign! 🙂

The very first time we set up for play, it took only a few minutes to get started, and the learning curve was slight, much easier than I had thought it would be, as I said above. We played as two teams. My husband, “The Batman” and “The Puzzler” were one team, with “The Artist”, “Mr. Loquacious” and myself being the other.

We got right into the game, which is played as a series of campaign “weeks”, where each team is either fundraising or campaigning. We decided to alternate. Week one (the first found) we decided both teams would fundraise, and on week two (round two) we would campaign, and so on through the game. In your fundraising round, you must choose which one of four states (California, Texas, New York or Florida) you will be going to in order to raise money. You then get to roll your three dice. Whatever your total roll, one half of that number must remain in the state where you chose to fundraise, so for example, if you roll a 12, then 6 votes (chips) in your color are stacked onto that state. You may, of course, put all 12 on your chosen fundraising state, or you can divide the other half between any other states you like. That’s when strategy begins to kick in, because sometimes you can regain a state your opponents control, or gain a new state.

During campaign rounds, your team chooses and must announce three states in which you will campaign. Your team then rolls your three dice, and must allocate your votes (chips) according to the numbers on each dice. For example, if you roll a 3, a 5 and a 2, you must put 3 votes on one of your chosen states, 5 on another, and 2 on the last of your chosen states, but you get to decide which of your chosen states get what number.

The politics cards are fun! Your team gets to draw a politics card from the deck during your fundraising turn. Most of the cards can be used right away OR held to play later, although some will say “play immediately” on them. You can use only one card during a turn, though, so it won’t help to hold a bunch in order to get extra votes! Here is a politics card that my team drew, and used. I thought it was hilarious, because we are originally from Michigan, and the topic on the card was very much in the news during a political scandal in Detroit only a few years ago. 🙂

The counts on the board change frequently, as votes (chips) are stacked on states and taken away because the other team gained or re-gained that state.

As you play, you can keep score of the electoral votes gained by each team either by using the score pad (a lot more work!) or by using the online Electoral WebMap Calculator (a lot more fun!) The online map is visual, and the boys could see immediately how quickly things change and turn around during an election, because at any time during play, states were being won and lost.

This is what the Electoral WebMap looked like when we started the game . . .

And these shots will show you how quickly things can change during a campaign!

It really didn’t take very long for any of the boys to pick up on the strategy of the game, and they got very good, very quickly, at figuring out which states to fundraise and campaign in, and how to best allocate votes (chips) in order to either take over a state or at least turn it neutral again, if the opposite team currently controlled it.

“The Batman” and “The Artist” . . .

“Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” . . .

The Presidential Game is available to purchase here for $35.00, which both my husband and I feel is a good price, especially considering the online component.

Our family is truly enjoying this game, and will absolutely put it into the family game night rotation!

To read about what other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew thought of the Presidential Game, please click the graphic below!

As always, I would love it if you would join me on “My Journeys” by clicking on the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog. Just enter your email, and never miss an update again! 🙂

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Filed under current affairs, education, educational games, family, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Politics, Presidential Game, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, special needs education, TOS Review

Tagged as children, Educational Games, family, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, politics, Schoolhouse Review Crew, special needs, The Presidential Game, TOS Review

September 18, 2013 · 9:06 am

Seed Sowers: Gospel Planting Adventures . . . a T.O.S. Review

I love to read, so whenever a book comes up for review with the Schoolhouse Review Crew I am all over the request form for it!

The book “Seed Sowers: Gospel Planting Adventures” by Gwen Toliver was no different, in fact I especially wanted to read this one! I love stories about missionaries, in fact, I have cousins who have been missionaries to a closed Asian country for many years now.

Gwen Toliver, a home-schooling mother to eight children, and writes about family and ministry on her very interesting blog.

She spent two years interviewing missionaries who have spent years of their lives in the awesome task of translating the Bible into many languages for people who have no Bible, not even a little bit of it! That alone should make us all want to be involved in some way, even if the only way we can help is by giving to, and praying for missions.

Many of the people who the missionaries in Gwen’s book are trying to reach don’t even have a written language, so the Bible translator missionaries would need to spend years with them, just trying to learn their languages first, and then teaching many of the people to read their own language, while translating the Bible into each particular language. Then, generally beginning with the New Testament (and just the New Testament can take twenty or more years of faithful labor!), the missionaries would be able to provide the people with small portions at a time, as it was completed.

One story that touched me deeply was from the chapter “The Whistling Man”, which was about George and Florence Cowan’s efforts to translate the Bible for the Mazatec people. This particular story was that of a young Mazatec girl who would sneak away from her mother in the market place, so she could go listen to the “crazy gringo lady” telling Bible stories. When, in her excitement about the story she had heard, and the Bible verse she had learned, she tried to tell her mother about it, her mother became angry, took her home, and beat her. Yet, week after week, Felicitas would slip away from her mother to go learn about the Lord from the “crazy gringo lady”. Her heart was reached, and she chose to bear the consequences (being beaten by her mother) of going to learn about Jesus, eventually accepting Him as her Lord and Savior. Of course, this did not make her life here on earth any easier . . . she married young, and was widowed young, when her husband died of tuberculosis, leaving her with three young children to care for. Even so, she was hungry for the Word of God.

In her eagerness to be able to read God’s Word on her own, Felicitas eventually asked Florence Cowan to teach her to read. After that, she and her children traveled from where they lived high in the mountains to the Cowen’s hut two or three days every week, whether in nice weather or pouring rain, just so that Felicitas could learn to read God’s Word on her own.

As the Cowans translated God’s Word into the Mazatec language one book at a time, Felicitas sacrificed greatly by using portions of the tiny amount of money she had scraped together to buy corn each week, with which she would feed her family. The Cowan’s would have given the books, but the people didn’t want hand-outs. Felicitas put into practice the words of Job 23:12 “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food”.
The story of Felicitas hit me where I live, because we here in the USA take our Bibles for granted. How many of us have more than one complete Bible in our homes, yet, barely open them, or do our five or ten minutes of Bible reading each day (if that!), and call it done, until church service? Would we sacrifice necessary food in order to purchase a small portion of God’s Word?

There is a wealth of additional information (and pictures that go with the various missionary stories) on the Seed Sowers website, along with an excerpt from the Seed Sowers book, and a sample of how the Mazatec people of southern Mexico speak in a tonal language, and can carry on a conversation by whistling!

This is a WONDERFUL book, for anyone to read! I recommend even that it be a read-aloud, as even young children can hear and be touched for missions, and now that I have read it, and know that my kids will be able to handle it, I will be sharing it with them as a read-aloud. I especially appreciate the effort Gwen went to in making sure to have the correct pronunciations of unfamiliar words placed in parenthesis after the words were used.

Even more important to me is the fact that all of the scripture used in this book is taken from the KJV, which is the only Bible my family and my church uses. 🙂

From the Seed Sowers site, here are some tips for using this book:

1. Family Read-Aloud – Gather the kids or grandkids around and read a chapter together! All ages will enjoy these true adventure stories.

2. Geography/History – Use the book to supplement homeschool or Christian school curriculum to teach basic subjects while giving your students a heart for the lost.

3. Independent Reading Level – 6th grade and up

Seed Sowers: Gospel Planting Adventures is a soft-cover, 165 page book, which includes 21 different stories of brave men and women who labored in far-a-way places for years translating unknown languages, so that they could bring God’s Word, a little bit at a time, to every corner of the world. It also includes a foreword written by Gracia Burnham, whose story I had only learned a couple of years ago during Vacation Bible School at the church we attended back in Michigan, appendix, a bibliography, and acknowledgements to all those behind the scenes people who helped in the creation of this book.

I would love to see this book on every family’s bookshelf, in every church library, and in every church bookstore! It is available here for the current price of $12.50, with the regular price being $13.95.

Click below to read reviews of Seed Sowers by other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew!

As always, I would love it if you would join me on “My Journeys” by clicking on the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog. Just enter your email, and never miss an update again! 🙂

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Filed under family, Gwen Toliver, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, Seed Sowers, TOS Review

Tagged as children, Christian Faith, family, Gwen Toliver, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew, Seed Sowers, TOS Review

September 17, 2013 · 10:15 am

NM State Fair School Days . . . Another COOL Field Trip!

On Friday, September 13 2013, we were able to go to our first EVER state fair! We had never been to the state fair in Michigan when we lived there. It was over an hour away, and when you figure in the cost of driving there, parking, and everything else, we just never could make it work. And then, “On October 30, 2009, Governor Jennifer Granholm cut all funding to the Michigan State fair.[2][3] Attendance peaked at 1.2 million in 1966. In 2009 the fair attracted 217,000 visitors.[4] The state fair was not held in 2010 & 2011.[5]”.

You can imagine how wonderful it was upon moving here to New Mexico last year to discover that the NM State Fair was not only thriving, but is held right here in Albuquerque, where we live! No long travel! 🙂

Not only that, but the NM State fair has a great program called “School Days @ The Fair“, and home-schools are included! So, I emailed the application, choosing Friday as the day we wanted to go, and earlier last week I received our entrance packet via email. We received free admission, which, as a family of six, with everyone being 12 or older, saved us $60.00, and there was free parking.

We entered at a special gate for the School Days program, where they checked off our names, and had bunches of nice cold packages of McDonald’s Apple Slices for the kids to take, which we stashed into our cooler full of blue ice and water. That’s another cool thing, you are allowed to bring in a cooler with your own stuff, which saves even MORE money! Not that we didn’t buy lunch, we did, which I’ll talk about later, but my goodness, the least expensive bottled water I saw was (I think) around $4.00, and just a cup with ice was $2.00!

Because of the School Days Program, there were tons of booths along Main Street with educational displays, and they all had freebies for the kids. We got pencils, posters (including one of the periodic table of elements that “The Artist” especially wanted), coloring books, just all sorts of things, plus information about and from many places with educational content, like the various museums here, the Open Space Visitor’s Center, etc.

One of the first things we saw along Main Street was “The Procrastinators – Strolling Drum Troup”, which we thoroughly enjoyed. It reminded me of the group “Stomp”, which we saw perform on television many years ago.

I wish I’d been able to get a video of them, but I couldn’t remember how to get to the video function of my camera! Do check out their website though, there are some good videos there!

Next, we saw police officers mounted on horseback, something that again, we’d never seen before. Living in the southwest sure is different! They were kind enough to stop and pose for a picture for us. 🙂

Since we didn’t actually arrive at the fair until after noon, we soon decided it was time for lunch. While my husband was ordering, the kids spotted the Chick-Fil-A cow wandering around, and begged me to see if they could have their picture taken with it. So we went over, and the cow’s escort asked if I wanted to be in the picture as well, and was kind enough to take it with my camera.

At lunch, I had my first ever green chile cheeseburger (well, half of one, you all know I eat small now!), and it was SOOOO good! Now, I NEED to go buy a big thing of green chile while they are in season and the stores are doing free roasting, so I can freeze them in little batches for cooking over the next year! I will warn you, it is expensive to eat at the fair. There are six of us, and we each had a combo meal of either a cheeseburger or hot dog with frilly fries and pink lemonade, and it cost almost $70.00! To be fair, the portions were huge, the hot dogs were footlongs, with either red or green chile, and not one of us could finish the fries, the amount was so much!

After lunch, we went to one of the many (free!) shows, “Professor Gizmo’s Fun & Science Show” . . .

. . . where both “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Artist” were chosen from the audience for two different segments.

Here is Professor Gizmo . . .

Here is “Mr. Loquacious” helping the professor out!

And now, “The Artist”, along with another home-schooler, Isabelle, helping with another segment . . .

Isabelle’s mother was kind enough to give me permission to include the video with her daughter in it for this post, and I really appreciate that! 🙂

Professor Gizmo’s show was very funny, and we loved it! We do disagree with his telling the kids that we humans are animals, though, we do not believe that humans are part of the animal kingdom. We believe what the Bible says about humans having dominion over the animals . . .

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Genesis 1:26 (KJV)”

We also saw the Cirque Equinox, which was about a half hour of very good performance! There were two aerial acts . . .

A clown . . .

this woman who did amazing stuff with hula hoops . . .

and last but most certainly not least, “The Dancing Gauchos“.

Oh, my, did they put on a wonderful show for us!

Here are some pictures my husband took when he and the boys went through the petting zoo . . . I waited outside because they would not let us bring in the wagon we had rented to haul all of our stuff.

I couldn’t resist taking these pictures of animals in one of the other exhibits . . . it was so cute to see the baby animals with little playground equipment!

We also saw the Yangdong Chinese Acrobats, another awesome performance!

Here are some of the things they did for us . . .

We had a wonderful time at the 2013 NM State Fair, and I strongly encourage all of you home-schoolers who live in or near NM, or who may be traveling here during next year’s State Fair, to apply for the NM State Fair School Days Program. You will not regret it! 🙂

As always, I would just love it if you’d join me on all of “My Journeys”! Just click the “sign me up button at the top right of the blog, enter your email, and you’ll never miss another update! 🙂

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Filed under education, family, home education, homeschooling, Kids, NM, State Fair NM 2013

Tagged as children, family, home education, homeschooling, kids, NM State Fair 2013

September 10, 2013 · 11:08 am

What we did Last Friday With our Home-school Group

So, our church has a number of home-schooling families, and so we have a pretty good home-school group, too! We try to plan at least one activity per month, and this month, on Friday, September 6, 2013 we had a wonderful Birds of Prey presentation, given by the organization “On a Wing And a Prayer”, a wild bird rehabilitation educational program. The presenters were Mikal Deese, CWR and Steve McKibbin. They can be reached at:

Mikal Deese: POB 29, Corrales, NM
mikaldeese@aol.com
(505)897-0439

Steve McKibbin: smkibbin31@gmail.com
(505)867-8765

Here is most of the group waiting for them to get here . . . they were SO good, having been warned ahead of time that we needed to be in our seats and being quiet when the presenters arrived, so as not to frighten the birds.

I think they did an awesome job staying calm, too! 🙂

We did not know what kinds of birds would be brought, having been told that it would depend upon which ones were being well-behaved that day. MY kids were hoping for owls, as we have had plans to do an owl lap-book. However, I have found a nice (free!) Birds of Prey lap-book here, and since they brought both hawks and owls for the presentation, along with the fact that we’ve done other lap-books from homeschoolshare and had a good time with them, I think we’ll use this one this time around. We’ll also be dissecting owl pellets that I had purchased some time ago, even before we moved here to New Mexico, so the boys are definitely looking forward to that, now that I have also gone to the Dollar Tree for the supplies needed for doing them. Be watching for an upcoming post about the lap-book and the dissection! 🙂

Here is Mikal Deese, laying out a large tarp, just in case, lol!

First up, we had the Swainson’s Hawk.

She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she?

Next, we saw a Red Tailed Hawk . . .

Then the Barn Owl . . .

The children were fascinated by the Barn Owl, which is just gorgeous! They thought it was very cool that the barn owl can fly silently, and were surprised to find out that this large bird weighed only about one and a half pounds, being mostly feathers and hollow bones.

Here we have Steve McKibbin holding the tiny Burrowing Owl, which nests in a hole in the ground.

We very much enjoyed this presentation! Ms. Deese and Mr. McKibbin were SO patient with all of the questions the children (and the parents, too, actually!) asked, and spent a lot of time answering them. I was pleased to see how many questions that our children were able to give correct answers to when the presenters asked them if they had any idea why something was so about a particular bird, and I was told afterward by the mom who organized the whole thing (thank you, Holly!) that Ms. Deese and Mr. McKibbin really complemented our children on being so well-behaved, and especially on the fact that they were willing to ask questions. 🙂

If your home-school group is local to this area, you should give them a call, it’s well worth your time, and the cost was truly negligible. All they asked us for was $5.00 per family to help cover the cost of food for the birds and transporting them. As Ms. Deese said in her presentation, this is NOT a career move, it’s a labor of love, and one does not make a living as a wild bird rehabilitator. And we could certainly tell how much they love doing this, too!

So, that’s what we did for science last week!

After the presentation, we went to a local park to have a picnic lunch and some play time . . .

We had a very good day! 🙂

As always, Please join me on “My Journeys” by clicking the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog. Just enter your email and you’ll never miss an update! 🙂

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September 10, 2013 · 8:39 am

Time4Learning . . .A TOS Review

Well, I was really excited when I was selected to review Time4Learning with one of my children, because over the years, I’ve heard so many positive things about this online educational program.

I was given a six-month subscription to Time4Learning to use with one student, in exchange for giving an honest review, and I chose “The Batman” this time around. Because he was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, mental retardation, and is also on the autism spectrum, he is severely deficient in several areas of education, most particularly in arithmetic. When I asked him questions given by Time4Learning to figure out where to place him, I was primarily asking him simple arithmetic questions. Based on his answers, I chose 1st grade level.

I did later, discover that I could change his level in separate subject area, and while I have left the math level alone, I’ve been raising his level in all of the other subjects.

Surprisingly, “The Batman” is actually really enjoying Time4Learning! He likes the variety of things to do in each subject area, and especially loves that for every hour he does in the lessons, he earns 30 minutes in the “playground” area, which is just really fun educational games. We did have to get past an initial problem with that part of the program though, which was NOT fun for me, because it was so upsetting to “The Batman”. He earned his playground time, but then the program wouldn’t let him into it, not at all. Of course, by then, it was late in the afternoon and we are in mountain time, so I told him we’d have to call tech support the next day. This did not go over well. 😦 The following morning, however, I did, as promised, call Time4Learning. They have very good support at the other end of the phone, and I was told that ever since the internet explorer browser had updated, it has been causing some glitches for some people in Time4Learning. I was advised to install the Firefox browser, as it seems to be much more compatible with Time4Learning, and once we did that, and started remembering to use Firefox whenever we wanted to log into Time4Learning, it has worked just wonderfully! 🙂

One of the things I like about Time4Learning is that once you’ve gotten set up, you really don’t HAVE to do anything other than let the child get on and learn!

Really, the only things I have needed to do is help “The Batman” with printing out the available resources (such as worksheets, poems that go with the lessons, etc . . .)

There are other things you can print out though, which I think would be helpful if you live in a state which requires you to keep records of your child’s education.

You can check out the lesson plans, if you need to have them printed out . . .

You can print out and keep detailed reports for your record keeping . . .

Time$Learning has plenty of tools which are useful to you, the parent . . .

Time4Learning can be used for home-schooling, summer learning, and after school learning. My son has been using it during the review period, along with a few other things, as his home-school program.

I like that it is accessible at any time, it isn’t a regularly scheduled class, so you can, as I like to do, work in school around your life, instead of having to work in your life around school.

The lessons are automatically sequenced, with Time4Learning building on what your child is learning as he goes.

As you can see below, “The Batman” is very intently working through the Time4Learning online program.

In this shot, “The Batman” is using the story starter. He chose the background scene, the characters, and a selection of words for his word bank, then printed it out to get a page to write a story on. He’s still working on the story, though, so no picture of that yet! 🙂

We really like Time4Learning! All of my home-schooling friends who have suggested it over the years were right, it really is a good program, especially for kids who need to work at different levels depending upon subject. And that’s another thing, when “The Batman” sees Time4Learning, it doesn’t say “grade 1” or “grade 2”, etc. It just shows as levels, as far as I can see. I think this is a plus, especially with my special needs child who worries over whether others will see what “grade” he is using.

If I were to consider this for all of my kids, it would be too pricy for my budget, but if we can manage it, and it continues to work for “The Batman”, we may consider continuing with it after our six-month subscription runs out.

You can sign up here, and Time4Learning promises that there are no contracts, if it doesn’t work for your child, you may cancel at any time.

Time4Learning is available as a monthly subscription. For the lower grades (pre-K through 8th grade), it will cost $19.95 per month for your first student, and $14.95 per month for each additional pre-k through 8th grade student. If you want to use Time4Learning with older students, it is available for high school at $30.00 per month.

Overall, we are happy with Time4Learning, and we think you should give it a try!

Other crew members also reviewed Time4Learning . . . please, click below to read what they thought of this online learning program!

As always, I would love it if you joined me on “My Journeys” by becoming one of my blog followers! Just click the “sign me up” button at the top right of the page and follow the instructions, then you’ll never miss another update! 🙂

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Filed under education, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, special needs education, Time4Learning, TOS Review

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August 26, 2013 · 9:07 am

Because You Are Strong: A Study of Godly Strength For Young Men . . . a T.O.S. review

I received a copy of the book Because You Are Strong: A Study of Godly Strength For Young Men from the company Doorposts, to review.

I received the 104 page, soft-cover book, which is available here for $14.00, but it is currently being offered at the sale price of $12.00. Because You Are Strong is also available here as an e-book for $10.00.

Because You Are Strong is written for boys, age 12 and up, although you can also use it with your daughters. Most of the study questions would be applicable to either a boy or a girl, and where appropriate, there are asterisks which will refer you to alternate questions for girls, which are listed in the back of the book. This would certainly be helpful for the home-schooling family on a budget who would prefer to use just one of the two books offered by Doorposts which were reviewed by crew members. While it does say on the website that it is for ages 12 and up, I want to be sure you know that your older teens will enjoy it, and benefit greatly from it as well. This book really does teach good Bible study skills, many of which are, at this time, beyond my kids, but would be good for any teen (or adult, for that matter!) to learn and to apply.

My boys were looking forward to getting started with this book, once I told them we would mostly do it orally, with “The Artist” doing the writing involved, as he really is the most capable of that.

Because You Are Strong is meant to teach your son practical Bible study skills. He will learn how to:

• Use a concordance.
• Study the original Greek & Hebrew words used in a passage.
• Perform a character study.
• Study a specific topic in the Bible.
• Understand and use marginal notes in your Bible.
• Study a verse, passage, chapter, or entire book of the Bible.
• Use free Bible study tools on computers and mobile devices.

There are ten studies which focus on men from the Bible such as David, Samson, and other “mighty men of valor”, and they will also learn about the power of God, the service of Jesus, and the wisdom found in Proverbs regarding strength.

Each of the ten studies is divided into daily segments, intended to be from 5 to 20 minutes each, and each study will teach a different method of study. The book Because You Are Strong contains 74 days of study, as well as 40 more suggested studies. The ten studies in Because You Are Strong include:

1. Strength for the Race: Meditating on Hebrews 11-12
2. Strength with no Limits A Topical Study on the Omnipotence of God
3. Strength and Wisdom: A Topical Study in Proverbs
4. Strength and Temptation: A Character Study of Samson
5. Strength to be Valiant: A Word Study on “Valor”
6.Strength in Our Weakness: A Verse Study on 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
7. Strength in the Battle: A Chapter Study of 1 Samuel 17
8. Strength Serving Others: A Study of Jesus’ Actions in the Gospel of Mark
9. Strength and Gray Heads: A Verse Study of Proverbs 20:29
10. Strength in the Faith: A Book Study of 1 John

The following pictures will show you some of the work involved in study #1, “Strength For The Race” . . .

You can download and view a sample here, and see for yourself what the first study “Strength For The Race” is like.

The Bible verses used are from the KJV and the ESV translations of the Bible. As usual, this is the one area where I wish they had written it differently, and simply used the KJV throughout. We are still able to use this study though, as we simply have our own (KJV) Bibles out while working in this book, and get a lot of good practice looking up every scripture passage for ourselves. Even my little guys, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler”, along with my eldest “The Batman” enjoy looking them up, often competing to see who can get to the verse the fastest! 🙂

Here they all are, looking up the verses in their own KJV Bibles . . .

“Mr. Loquacious”

“The Puzzler”

“The Batman”

“The Artist” also spent time looking up the verses, but for some reason I didn’t get that picture! You can see him up higher in this review, writing everybody’s thoughts down in the Because You Are Strong book.

If you work at the pace suggested in this book, you’ll have at least a good years worth of study! In our case, it will last much longer, because we are doing it as a group, and because I do have kids with varying special needs, so we often divide lessons up to take at least two days for every one suggested day. I would much rather have it take twice as long, or sometimes even longer, and have my boys actually get something out of it, than rush through just to meet the designed schedule. That is one of the beauties of home-schooling though, you can work any curriculum to fit your child/children, and you can take whatever time you need. It also gives me the opportunity to find out how any curriculum can be “tweaked” to fit for a special needs family, since “tweaking” is often our only option, especially when dealing with multiple kids who have different special needs! 🙂

Over-all, my boys are enjoying this study. They enjoy looking up, and hearing about the people in the Bible, and *I* like it when they pick up on how something may apply to their own lives while we are reading. We will continue working through the book Because You Are Strong: A Study of Godly Strength For Young Men, but as I said above, we will take it slowly, so as to get as much as possible out of it.

Other Schoolhouse Review Crew Members received either Because You Are Strong (for their boys) or Beauty in the Heart (for their girls) from Doorposts. Please sail on over to read what they thought!

As always, I would just love to have you follow me by email! To receive a notice each time there is a new post on this blog post, please go to the “sign me up” button at the top right of this page and just enter your information! I hope you will join me for all of my “journeys through life”!

“A Trip to the Library” (In the Hands of a Child Lapbook Review for T.O.S.

I must confess, my kids and I have had previous (a long time ago) experience with the company In The Hands Of A Child“, and had even at one time, had a Super Membership that I purchased when attending a mega-curriculum fair back in Michigan. However, back then, I found many of the Project Packs to be too much for my kids, so we haven’t done any from In The Hands of a Child for quite some time. As you’ll see from my review, I was pleasantly surprised at how much better they did with a Project Pack from this company now than they did several years ago!

In The Hands Of A Child was created and is still run, by a pair of home-schooling moms. You can read about them here. Whenever possible, if I am buying materials for my home-schooling, I do prefer to support fellow home-schoolers, and this is a good one to support, for sure!

When given the list of products to choose from, I chose the Project Pack A Trip To The Library, because when we lived in Michigan, my kids loved going to the library, and even after being here in NM for a year now, we had not yet even found our local library branch, let alone gotten library cards, so I thought this would be a good incentive to get that off of the “to do” list!

The Project Pack A Trip To The Library is written for students in grades K – 3, and is available right now for $5.00! The regular price is $10.00.

I received a download of this Project Pack, which is the format I prefer, as I can then use it for more than one of my children, and can also save it for use in later years.

When you think about A Trip To The Library, you may be just thinking about getting there, letting your kids choose some books,, a story-time hour if your kids are little, and going on home, but as your children will learn while doing this Project Pack, there is a lot of information about the library that they are capable of understanding.

From the website:

“With this unit study you will be able to teach your early elementary classroom about the library. Libraries have a lot of books, but they also have a lot of other information and resources. Teach your students about the types of libraries, common areas inside a library, library rules, how to find a book, librarians, book classification systems, the parts of a book, and more. Make your lesson planning easy with the Trip to the Library Curriculum from In the Hands of a Child. This pack includes a 5-day Planning Guide, Related Reading List, 11 Hands-On Activities PLUS 6 Fun Extension Activities, and a 7-page Research Guide to complete a project all about the library!”

You may even download a sample here.

I knew my children would enjoy doing this, because over the past few years as their skills have improved, we have added in more and more lap-booking materials to our educational experience. I am a scrap-booker/card maker, and my kids watch me, and like to take whatever materials I end up not using to create on their own, so it was fun for them to do the cutting, putting together, and laying things out in their file folder books we made.

Here are “The Puzzler”, “The Batman” & “Mr. Loquacious” gluing the definitions to their vocabulary words, which we then put together with brads from my scrap-booking stash . . .

and here is “The Artist” working on his . . .

We made quite a mess, with all of the cutting! I decided to just let it all fall to the floor and clean it up at the end of each session. This is just a SMALL part of the mess . . . it grew and grew!

As I mentioned above, one of the main reasons I chose this particular Project Pack was to use it as an incentive to get moving on finding the library here in our new city, and get library cards. So, one day while we were in the middle of working on A Trip To The Library, since I had some errands to run that morning, we decided to just include a trip to OUR library, once I had searched it on Google so I could use the gps on my phone to get us there (as my husband is fond of saying, I am completely geographically challenged!).

Once we found that there was a branch of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library fairly close to our home, we decided to go on our way home from the errands. What I planned as a QUICK stop turned into a couple of hours, but that was OK, the boys had fun, and we all have our new library cards now. 🙂

Here are the boys, signing their new library cards . . .

“The Batman”

“The Artist”

“Mr. Loquacious”

“The Puzzler”

All four of the boys working intently on their layouts . . .

Here is part of the inside of a finished Project Pack . . .

. . . and the other part of the inside is here . . .

You can see in the first example above, the boys added the pictures of themselves signing their new library cards. We had also saved all of the little extra illustrations in the Project Pack print out, and they used them to decorate the empty spaces in their file folder books. In this case, it helped with covering the manufacturer’s printed material that was showing on the insides of the folders.

I took all four of their brand new library cards and scattered them onto the copier part of my printer to make a picture for the covers of their file folder books, and then used a cute font I have to make a title for them. This is how we decided it should look . . .

And here are all four boys showing off their finished Project Packs!

We did not need to purchase anything extra at all to do this, and you probably won’t, either. I always have a box of file folders on hand. For each file folder book, we took two file folders and folded each into the middle, making it gate-fold into the center. Then, we attached the two together with double-sided tape, which I also keep on hand for various projects. I could not find the brads I had bought at an office supply store the last time we did a lap-book, so I let them use the ones I had in my scrap-booking stash. Of course, we already had on hand pencils, glue sticks, colored pencils & a stapler, so we were good to go!

My kids and I think you should give Project Packs from In The Hands Of A Child a try. They really are a fun, hands on way to learn about a topic, and this company has a TON of topics for you to use! In The Hands Of A Child regularly offers free Project Packs here, so you can even try before you buy!

There is an ever-growing list of their units here, and it ranges from pre-school all the way through the 12th grade, in differing styles from lap-book Project Packs to Note-booking Packages.

Way back at the beginning of this review, I mentioned having had a Super Membership at one time. A Super Membership is a good value, in my opinion. It includes two free Project Packs each month that you are a member, plus 15% off all e-book lap-book units and $10.00 off of the price on custom ordered units. It’s a good deal!

There is a newsletter you can sign up for here, to receive the latest updates, money-saving deals and free tips.

In The Hands Of A Child also has their own blog which you may find helpful as a home-schooling parent.

I do recommend the company In The Hands Of A Child, and not just for home-schoolers, either! They make fine supplemental packages for kids in public or private school, as well as fun, hands-on educational projects for summer vacation or any time your kids would be interested in learning more about a given topic. But when it comes to home-schooling, you really could just about build a whole year curriculum from Project Packs written by In The Hands Of A Child! Take a look at their curriculum page, and just see if they don’t have pretty much any topic you (or your kids!) would like to cover, and you’ll see that learning doesn’t have to be drudgery. It can be fun, hands-on, and relatively inexpensive!

Now that my kids are better able to handle these projects, I absolutely plan to delve back into my stock-pile of downloaded Project Packs from many years ago. I think they will be much more able to do them now, and we do enjoy it when we can learn about a variety of topics in a hands-on, fun way! 🙂

My fellow crew members reviewed a variety of products from “In The Hands of a Child” . . . please click below to discover their thoughts!

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Filed under education, family, Hands of a Child Curriculum, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Lapbooking, paper crafting, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, scrapbooking, TOS Review

Tagged as children, family, Hands of a Child Curriculum, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, Lapbooking, Schoolhouse Review Crew, TOS Review

August 19, 2013 · 2:54 pm

Understanding Child Brain Development: Family Hope Center . . . A T.O.S. Review

As the parent of multiple children with special needs, I was interested in reviewing the DVD “Understanding Child Brain Development” from Family Hope Center by Matthew and Carol Newell, for the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

This DVD runs about two hours, and is a LOT to go through in one sitting, but you can watch it in sections by using the chapter menu, thereby managing to take breaks without needing to leave your DVD player on pause for any length of time.

This DVD is a recording of a live presentation given by Matthew and Carol Newell. I had some issues with the sound quality ( I needed to turn the sound up quite a bit on the TV in order to hear it clearly ), and was unable to read the visual aids they used, but with the DVD you’ll receive a link for an e-book with all of the slides in it for use while following along.

The Family Hope Center’s purpose (and their belief in the possibility) is to help special needs children and their parents to overcome and “correct” brain dysfunctions and disabilities. Both Matthew and Carol Newell are certified in Craniosacral and Myofascial Release Therapy. They have been trained to work with special needs children, and they also used these theories with their own daughter.

The first part of the program gives a TON of really good information about child brain development, and how different things affect it. Things like getting more time to crawl around, instead of being put mostly into walkers, bouncers, car seats, and cribs. They also talked about how much better it is for the development of the brain for babies to be put to sleep on their stomachs, which surprised me, as I’ve been hearing the phrase “BACK to sleep” for years now, referring to the need to put babies on their backs when putting them to bed. We are told on the DVD that sleeping on their stomachs helps the baby’s digestion, and also aids the baby in learning to creep and crawl, which, as I mentioned above, is important in aiding the brain development.

While I found all of the information on child brain development to be fascinating, and am in complete agreement with the idea of limiting TV, electronic games, etc . . ., and that children should spend much more time playing, eating more nutritious foods and drinking a whole lot more water than they generally do (the water thing is a constant battle with our kids!), I did have issues with some of the things recommended to help and treat children with developmental disabilities.

I felt that this was yet one more time of being criticized if, as parents, we have chosen to allow our children to be put on medications. I do believe that for many children, medications are definitely called for, and that their disabilities cannot simply be treated and cured with alternative methods. There were things that I have heard before, such as not using microwave ovens, not allowing the use of cell phones, etc . . . that I, personally, have never seen any real proof of their scientific value. Admittedly, I have a bias when it comes to cell phones, as our income comes from my husband’s job with a major cell phone company, but truly, I don’t believe the theories that cell phone use causes medical problems to have been even close to proven. Nonetheless, our children don’t have them. Not because we believe these theories, but because we don’t believe children need to HAVE cell phones! 🙂

I will say that my oldest child, who has fetal alcohol syndrome, was the main reason I was interested in reviewing this DVD. He was adopted at age two, and is developmentally delayed. He also has some mental retardation and is on the autism spectrum. I got the impression from the Family Hope Center that developmental disabilities can be “cured” with their treatments, and I simply don’t believe it to be true. I do believe that they give a lot of good information that parents can do on their own to help their child, in fact, a lot of the ideas were things we did way back when “The Batman” was much younger. I agree whole-heartedly that we should be working with our children to help them be all that they can be, and to progress as far as they can, however, at the same time, I know that even as my son has progressed much further than the “experts” told us he would when we adopted him, he is very unlikely to progress past a certain point, which is why we have been given legal guardianship over him that will never expire now that he is over the age of 18.

Even though I do have more trust in medical science than I do in alternative medical advice, I know many people who absolutely swear by alternative healthcare, even some who will ONLY use alternative methods. If you fall into that category, then I think this DVD may be something you will want, if you have a child with special needs. In fact, if you don’t have a child with special needs, and even if, like me, you don’t believe quite so firmly in alternative methods of healthcare, I think you’ll find all of the information on child brain development to be very informative and interesting.

If you would like to view the DVD “Understanding Child Brain Development”, you may order it by calling (610)397-1737, or you can order directly from the Institute for Excellence in Writing, for the cost of $19.00

Other Schoolhouse Review Crew Members also watched and reviewed this DVD. To read what they thought, please click the graphic below

A Fun Way For My Struggling Readers To Learn: Reading Kingdom . . . A T.O.S. Review

I wasn’t sure how well the online program Reading Kingdom would go over with my twins “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” when it came to us for review, but so far, they are really liking it!

Reading Kingdom is an online subscription program that is individualized to each student, so your child will not be competing with his or her siblings, rather, they will move along at their own pace and ability level.

While it is not as flashy and exciting as other educational games they have used, they are enjoying the process of moving along at their own pace. “Mr. Loquacious”, however, does have a strong competitive streak, and frequently tries to get me to tell him where his twin is in the program, most likely because “The Puzzler”, being more interested in reading, has, on his own, taught himself a lot of reading just by pushing himself and asking for help, even before we began this review. “Mr. Loquacious” would rather just be read to, and often pretends he cannot read.

Here are some of the things your child will see at different points in the Reading Kingdom program:

I really have always liked phonics based reading programs, but have come to agree with Reading Kingdom in believing that more than just phonics are needed. The American English language is not the easiest to learn, considering that so much of it has roots from so very many other languages! Add to that the fact that the phonics “rules” simply don’t always apply, and there are a significant number of words which cannot be “sounded out” using those phonics rules, well, it proves that phonics just isn’t enough for many people.

Reading is a NECESSARY skill, for anything one wants to do in life. Therefore, why not use whatever will help our children get there without the frustration often associated with using a solely phonics based program?

Here is a snippet of information from the Reading Kingdom website about their approach to learning to read:

“It’s because of these problems with phonics and whole language that schools across the nation show only 30% of children reading at a “proficient” level, while a staggering 35%-40%, across all socio-economic backgrounds, are failing to master this crucial skill (Source: US Dept. of Education) and those who are succeeding are taking longer to learn than they need to.”

My husband and I both grew up reading for pleasure. In fact, the first purchase we made together when we were getting married were bookcases, to hold our many books, after which, we also had to go through and cull out all of our duplicates! I mention this only to explain why it is so important to me that my children learn to read, not just foe educational purposes, but also for pure enjoyment.

When we first received our login information from the Reading Kingdom company, I got the boys all set up, and they were chomping at the bit to get going.

When a child first begins the program, there is an assessment phase, which helps the program decide where to place him/her. This program is completely customized to the individual student, beginning with the Skills Survey:

“This customization process begins right at the beginning with the Skills Survey. It assesses each student’s skills in reading and writing, and based on the results, the program places each child at the point that is just right for his or her skill level. This prevents students from becoming bored and wasting time learning something they already know or being frustrated by tasks that they are not yet ready for.”

Interestingly, considering that “The Puzzler” has actually pushed himself to read, while “Mr. Loquacious” has mostly resisted learning, the skills survey actually put “Mr. Loquacious” further along in the program. Upon further investigation, I discovered that this is because “The Puzzler” needed help with keyboarding skills, so the program started him in the “Letter Land” format. “Mr. Loquacious” was also placed in Letter Land, but progressed out of it rather quickly, while “The Puzzler” is at this point, 84% completed with this level. I’m fairly sure it’s mostly because “Mr. Puzzler” is developmentally much younger than his twin, so he isn’t quite as quick when it comes to these skills. “Mr. Loquacious” is currently in “Reading/Writing Level 1, with 14 % completed in this level.

By the way, there is another great thing about this program, the online (and emailed!) reports for me, the parent! You see, the program information states right away that other than helping the student get logged on, the parent/teacher is to stay hands off, and not help in any way, other than technological assistance. I like this aspect, and so do the boys, although at first, “Mr. Loquacious” did not, wanting me to tell him if he had the right answers before he would type them in. 🙂

According to the information from Reading Kingdom, their program is “the only system that teaches the following six skills. When children are taught all six skills, they easily master both reading and writing. By focusing on these skills, Reading Kingdom teaches children 4-10 years of age how to read and write at a third grade level. So teach a child to read today and give the gift that lasts a lifetime.”

Reading Kingdom offers information on their site to help you decide if your child is ready for this program, with topics such as early readers, accelerated readers, and struggling readers.

To learn more about how Reading Kingdom is fundamentally different from other reading systems available today, you can download this very informative pdf

My twins are enjoying Reading Kingdom very much, and frequently ask to do it. In fact, “Mr. Loquacious” often asks to continue on after his official session is done! This is a win/win for me, since he, especially, doesn’t like to stick with one thing for very long.

If you’d like to check it out, there are tons of sample lessons here, including part one and part 2 of the skills survey. There are also a good number of other resources, including printable worksheets to help re-enforce what your child is learning.

Reading Kingdom is an online, subscription based program, which can be purchased for $19.99 per month. You can get the entire year at once, for $199.00, and additional students are $9.99 per month or $99.00 for the whole year.

Furthermore, for those who truly cannot afford it, Reading Kingdom has a scholarship program! To apply, go here.

Other Schoolhouse Review Crew Members are using Reading Kingdom with their children as well . . . to find out what they think of this program, please click below.

As always, I would love it if you follow my blog via email! Never miss an update by clicking on the “sign me up” button at the top of the page and entering your information. Hope to have you join me for all of my “Journeys Through Life”! 🙂

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Filed under education, family, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Learn to Read, Reading Kingdom, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, TOS Review, Uncategorized

Tagged as children, family, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, Reading Kingdom, Schoolhouse Review Crew, special needs, TOS Review

Category Archives: Kids

A FUN Play Date!

The Presidential Game . . . a T.O.S. Review

Seed Sowers: Gospel Planting Adventures . . . a T.O.S. Review

NM State Fair School Days . . . Another COOL Field Trip!

What we did Last Friday With our Home-school Group

Time4Learning . . .A TOS Review

Because You Are Strong: A Study of Godly Strength For Young Men . . . a T.O.S. review

“A Trip to the Library” (In the Hands of a Child Lapbook Review for T.O.S.

Understanding Child Brain Development: Family Hope Center . . . A T.O.S. Review

A Fun Way For My Struggling Readers To Learn: Reading Kingdom . . . A T.O.S. Review

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