Category Archives: Kids

August 12, 2013 · 4:32 pm

America The Beautiful . . . a T.O.S. Review

Oh my, were the boys and I excited when we opened the box from the Notgrass Company containing the complete American History curriculum we were going to review!

Book after book came out of that box, beginning with two thick hardcover books containing 75 lessons, which are put together in a series of 30 units between the two. “America the Beautiful: Part 1” covers the year 1000 to the year 1877, while “America the Beautiful: Part 2” covers the late 1800s to the present. We also received another large, hard cover book, “We The People: Words From The Makers of American History”, a wonderful collection of excerpts from biographies, articles and pieces of American literature. Next, we found the America the Beautiful Student Workbook, a very nice wire bound book, and the America the Beautiful Lesson Review, also a very nice wire bound book, which we will use in later years when we re-do this curriculum at a time my boys can do more in-depth work. Next out of the box was the book “Maps of America the Beautiful“. This book is full of very nice outline maps to be used in the different lessons. We are liking that we don’t complete a whole map at one sitting, in fact, we go from map to map, depending upon the lesson we are in. Next, we have the “Timeline of America the Beautiful” book, which I just love! I’ve wanted to do some form of timeline work in our home-schooling, but really wanted it to be in a book, and this perfectly fits what I wanted, and what my kids can handle. Last, but not least, I found the “America the Beautiful Answer Key” book, with answers to everything. From the website:

“America the Beautiful by Charlene Notgrass is a one-year American history, geography, and literature course designed for students in grades 5-8. It combines the flexibility and richness of a unit study with the simplicity of a textbook-based approach to history. Daily lessons guide your child chronologically through American history, highlighting key events, people, and places.”

This curriculum is absolutely beautiful, and so very easy to use! I really don’t have to do any teacher prep, other than to make sure we have the materials for the family activity listed for each unit, if we choose to do it. So far, we’ve done just one of them, because the others either didn’t interest us or were a bit overwhelming for our household.

We’ve chosen to work on this as a group, since my boys are at different levels of ability due to ages and varying special needs, and we take from two to four days per lesson. I read the actual lesson out loud, while we all look at the illustrations and photos given (which takes perhaps more time than it’s supposed to, because my boys love to ask questions and discuss what is in the lesson as we go). Then, there is generally a selection to read from “We the People: Words From the Makers of American History”, which is also a read-aloud. After that, we do the various end of lesson activities, which range from “thinking biblically” (for which they each have their own 3-ring binder), to vocabulary (which we often do orally), to a map page, and a page in the Student Workbook. All of this, as I said, usually takes us anywhere from two to four days, but we stretch it like that primarily because I have found that for my boys, the knowledge will stick better that way. The author of this curriculum, Charlene Notgrass, makes a point in the introduction to tell us not to be a slave to the written schedule, but to make it work for us, so that’s precisely what we are doing, and it’s working! Therefore, although this is written as a one year curriculum, we will be stretching it out for as long as it takes to go through it, and then, perhaps go back and do it again, using the “America the Beautiful Lesson Review” Book when the boys are older.

There are ten novels assigned at different times during the course of this curriculum, beginning with Unit 4. They are:

The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare (Units 4-5)

Amos Fortune: Free Man by Elizabeth Yates (Units 6-7)

Brady by Jean Fritz (Units 9-10)

Bound for Oregon by Jean Van Leeuwen (Units 12-13)

Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt (Units 14-15)

Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Units 16-17)

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor (Units 19-20)

Blue Willow by Doris Gates (Units 21-22)

Homer Price by Robert McCloskey (Unit 25)

Katy by Mary Evelyn Notgrass (Units 29-30)

The first five books go with “America the Beautiful: Part 1”, with the second five going along with “America the Beautiful: Part 2”. To get us started, I purchased the first three novels, and will get the rest as we get close to needing them. All are easily available at bookstores or your library, with the possible exception of the final book assigned, which was written by the daughter of the author of this curriculum.

I was a little bit nervous about whether or not my boys would (a) enjoy this curriculum, and (b) be able to do the work involved, but they really do like it, and because we are doing it together, and they are taking turns on each map lesson and student workbook lesson, they are handling the work quite well. Of course, if anyone looked at either of those books, they would immediately be able to tell that four different people had written on each and every page! 🙂 Doing the workbook and map book this way makes it much more manageable for my children. We do the timeline book orally together, and then “The Artist”, who has the easiest time with writing things down, actually writes the entry into the space provided.

If you would like to view samples of the different books in this curriculum, you will find them here. You will find the table of contents and a sample unit from “America the Beautiful: Part 1”, the table of contents, a sample unit and the index from “America the Beautiful: Part 2”, sample pages from “We the People”, sample maps from ” Maps of America the Beautiful”, sample pages from “Timeline of America the Beautiful”, and you may view the “America the Beautiful Answer Key”.

The Notgrass Company also offers a family newsletter, for which you can sign up using your email address here. It is emailed every couple of weeks, and includes “family activity ideas, articles, information about our products, and special offers.”

Here is “The Artist”, copying an entry into the timeline . . .

“The Batman”, coloring in a section of one of the maps . . .

“Mr. Loquacious”, also doing map-work . . .

and “The Puzzler” working with “The Artist” on one of the Student Workbook pages . . .

One of the end of unit family activities was to make Navajo Flat bread, which we did one evening when my husband had offered to make “breakfast for dinner”. It was very easy, and the boys and I all worked on it together.

This is all that we needed to make a batch of Navajo Flat Bread . . .

Here are pictures of each of the boys taking a turn at hand mixing the dough . . .

First up, “The Artist”

“The Batman” . . .

“The Puzzler” . . .

and “Mr. Loquacious”!

Then, I kneaded the dough . . .

after which we were instructed to let it rest for ten minutes. Then, we divided it into ten balls and began rolling!

“Mr. Loquacious” . . .

“The Artist” . . .

“The Batman” . . .

and “The Puzzler”!

Here are the boys with all ten circles rolled out . . .

and finally, a piece of Navajo Flat Bread in the process of being fried!

The bread was soft, and tasted very good with butter and honey on it. It was a tasty addition to our scrambled eggs with sweet onion and ham!

The “America the Beautiful” curriculum is available to purchase here for $99.95, and includes the following books:

“America the Beautiful: Part 1”
“America the Beautiful: Part 2”
“We The People: Words From the Makers of American History”
“Maps of America the Beautiful”
“Timeline of America the Beautiful”
“America the Beautiful Answer Key”

The “America the Beautiful Student Workbook” is available here for $11.95, and “America the Beautiful Lesson Review” is available here for $9.95.

For the most part, “America the Beautiful” is definitely a hit in our house, and we highly recommend it! The only thing I wish would be different would be to have (especially in the workbook!) Bible verses to be from the KJV. That’s the only Bible my family, and my church uses, so when a workbook page uses a different version, I either have to re-create the page, or go ahead and do it, using it as a lesson in why we believe as we do. I chose to do the latter here, because the only way the rest of the page worked was by using the verse as given.

Other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew reviewed this and other products from the Notgrass Company. Please cruise on by and see what they thought!

As always, I’d love it if you follow my blog via email! Just go to the “sign me up” button at the top of the page, click it and follow instructions to never miss an update! 🙂

1 Comment

Filed under cooking, education, family, food, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post

Tagged as America the Beautiful, children, family, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, literature, Literature based education, Notgrass Company, Schoolhouse Review Crew, special needs, TOS Review

August 8, 2013 · 12:49 pm

Transitions Part 5: A 1700 Mile Adventure

Well, we’ve come to Saturday, August 4, 2012 now, and have left Republic, MO to head toward Owasso, OK, where an old and dear friend of mine lives with his wife. When he found out we would be driving cross country to move to Albuquerque, he was wonderful enough to offer their hospitality to us, inviting the boys and me to come there for the night. Owasso is a suburb of Tulsa, OK, and I found it quite pretty during our drive to Chip and Sheila’s home.

We arrived to find Chip and Sheila preparing a wonderful cookout dinner. Chip was grilling burgers, while Sheila had made really good potato salad, and all sorts of other things I don’t remember, but it was all very good! They made us feel very welcome, and were very patient with my boys.

The boys especially loved the pool in the back yard, and because their swimwear was packed separately since we’d begun our trip at Torch Lake in northern MI, I was able to easily get it for them. They spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in the pool.

Here, all four boys are playing in the water . . .

Here is “The Puzzler” jumping in . . .

and now, “Mr. Loquacious” taking the plunge as well!

They had, as you can see, a great time!

When we noticed that there was something floating in the air, Chip and Sheila explained it was ash from the wild fires. Heading west, this was our first real experience with the wild-fire season, and they told us that we might not even be able to continue on the next day, as the freeway we were taking to Oklahoma City had been closed because of the fires, and could get closed again. I had seen signs on the freeway warning about not driving through smoke, something I’ve never seen on freeway signage before! All was well though, and we were able to continue on the next day.

We were so glad we got to stop and spend that time with our friends, I hadn’t seen Chip since his nephew’s wedding, about eight years ago, so it was great to see him and to meet his new wife. All to soon, it was time to get on the road for our next stop, Oklahoma City.

Here we are, getting our good-bye pictures!

We continued on our adventure, stopping in Oklahoma City, OK. There, we were meeting up for lunch with a friend of mine from an online home-schooling group called CCU (Christ Centered Unschooling). This was exciting for me, we’d never met in person, and it’s just the second time for me to meet a friend from the list who lives far away. Deanna doesn’t actually live IN Oklahoma City, I believe she drove about 80 miles to meet us! We met at this really cool fast food place called City Bites. It was not your usual fast food place though. They had fabulous salads and subs, with lots of mix and match ingredients. My kids really loved the décor in the restaurant, it was all sort of a jungle theme! Here are some pictures . . .

Here we all are, with my friend Deanna West Piercy, from CCU. You can get to know her at one of HER blogs, Tea With Dee. She actually has a few different blogs, I imagine they can be found through Tea With Dee. 🙂

It was so much fun to spend this time at lunch with my friend, and I’m very glad we made the stop.

Eventually, it was time for City Bites to close for the day, so it was time to hit the road again. We said our good-byes, and headed toward Texas, where we would spend our final night on the road. I’ll tell you about that, and about our arrival to our new home, tomorrow, in my last post for this year’s Summer Blog Hop, so be sure to come back!

And as always, if you sign up to follow by email using the “sign me up” button at the top of the blog, you’ll never miss another post! I’d love to have you join me on my journeys!

Hop on over to the main Summer Blog Hop post to see what 89 other bloggers are talking about! You can go through the topics and find things to inspire, to learn from, or just fun things to enjoy!

1 Comment

Filed under Albuquerque, Blog Hop Aug. 5 - 9, Christian faith, family, Kids, Transitions, Travel

Tagged as 2013 Summer Blog Hop, children, Christian Faith, family, journeys, kids, moving, new life, Schoolhouse Review Crew

August 7, 2013 · 8:53 am

Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura . . .a T.O.S. Review

I was really pleased to have the chance to review the DVD Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura, as I’ve been a long-time fan of Little House On The Prairie. I am old enough to have watched the television show every week when it was first broadcast, and now my children enjoy watching as well! My children and I are also going through all of the books as read alouds, and we began with Farmer Boy in preparation for this review.

This documentary is produced by Dean Butler and Legacy Documentaries, who portrayed Almanzo in the TV series, and has for nearly 30 years had an ongoing association with the series and the Laura Ingalls Wilder community.

From the website:

“ALMANZO WILDER: Life Before Laura” is an all-new documentary produced in partnership with the Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder Association in Burke, NY. The program offers a unique look at Almanzo’s early life through original footage and re-creations shot on location at the Wilder Homestead, supported by visual and text excerpts from Farmer Boy”

This DVD documentary runs almost an hour, and is hosted by Dean Butler. Some of my kids were excited that we were going to sit down and watch it, although “The Batman” wanted to forgo this in favor of playing his Nintendo 3-DS. Mom prevailed, and we settled in one afternoon to view Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura.

It really didn’t take very long before even “The Batman” was enjoying it, because we had, as I said, prepared by reading Farmer Boy. The documentary is filled with re-enactments from the book, and my boys were quick to point them out, talking all throughout the program about each one as it was shown, and what they remembered from the book.

Three of my boys are very literal children, and the two younger ones, “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” kept asking how come “Laura” didn’t look like Laura. I had to explain several times that this was not the TV show that they watch, but that it was a program telling us about the “real” Almanzo when he was a boy, and (briefly) the “real” Laura, when she first met Almanzo.

Being boys who love to eat, they loved all of the descriptions of food in the documentary, as they had loved them in the book. One of the narrators talked about that as well, saying that most likely, a lot of those descriptions were exaggerated by Laura in her writing. She and her family had been poor, while in comparison, Almanzo’s family would have been considered rich by her, most likely.

The boys were really interested to see that the incident in Farmer Boy, when the new teacher restored order in the school with a big whip, was also in the documentary. As Dean Butler commented during that portion, it may seem harsh to some readers, but it certainly was a time when young people were held accountable for their actions!

My children enjoyed hearing about Almanzo’s growing up years, his longing for a colt of his own, how he spent his days. The descriptions of barn chores and such made them realize they are not as overworked as they sometimes make out to be, LOL!

The documentary Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura is available for $21.95.

My boys and I absolutely recommend this DVD to you! It would be a good addition to home-schoolers studying American History in the mid-1800’s, or doing a unit on Laura Ingalls Wilder. It’s great for learning about how people lived during that time! Beyond that, it’s a good, wholesome, family DVD! I will not hesitate to let my children watch it without me, anytime they like. In this day and age, that’s kind of a rarity, and we have to be careful of what we let them view on their own. I would say that this DVD would be good for any age, beginning with children who are old enough to sit and listen to the book Farmer Boy being read to them.

All in all, we really enjoyed this documentary, and now the boys are ready to finish reading the book and move on to reading the rest of the series. I think you will enjoy it, too!

To read what other crew members thought, please click below . . .

2 Comments

Filed under Almanzo Wilder, education, family, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post

Tagged as Almanzo Wilder, children, family, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, literature, Schoolhouse Review Crew, TOS Review

August 7, 2013 · 8:01 am

Transitions Part 4: A 1700 Mile Adventure

Well, I should have mentioned this yesterday, but I didn’t even realize it until I was going to bed last night! Yesterday, August 6, 2013, my kids and I had officially been here in NM for a whole year! Honestly, it doesn’t seem like it’s been a whole year since we arrived! It’s been a year full of change, and has had its ups and downs. My husband and I have, between us, gone through three surgeries, we found a wonderful church family, my kids and I got booted out of the first home-school group we joined (which turned out to be a good thing, but I digress!). Our first winter here was the best winter I’ve ever been through, as you can guess, having come from Michigan. We really do like being here! So now, let’s get on with our journey from Michigan to New Mexico, with our day in St. Louis, MO!

We had a very nice sleep Thursday night, in our beautiful room that my cousin Anne had gotten for us, and woke ready to have a great day in St. Louis! After everyone was showered and dressed, we went to the very good breakfast that came with our room. I think the hotel lost money on the breakfast that my boys had that day, lol! Then, while waiting for Anne to arrive, we went ahead and got packed back up and put our belongings back into the minivan.

When Anne arrived, we piled into the minivan and headed to the St. Louis Arch . . .

Which is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and is a National Park.

We parked on what I *think* I was told is a levee, right at the river, where we saw this riverboat cruise boat.

Stretched across the area where we parked were many of these very heavy chains. You can see in the picture of the riverboat that they are used for mooring. The boys found them interesting, and were pretending to try to lift them (they were, of course, way too heavy!)

So, we walked along the river front to a point where we could get to the Arch, which is really quite beautiful, as you can see in the picture higher up in this post. There are a TON of steps to climb to get to the Arch!

Here is “The Artist” stopping on the way up . . .

and here am I, with “Mr. Loquacious”

I’m going to stop right here and tell you, I was really nervous about this excursion! My improved health from my weight loss was still relatively new, and I worried over whether I would really be able to handle all of the steps, etc. Well, as you can see, I did! I was also able to get through all of the little turnstiles inside, as well as fit into the tiny little carriers that we went to the top in. Here are pictures of each of us inside the one they have set up for photos . . .

First, “The Artist” . . .

“Mr. Loquacious” . . .

“The Batman” . . .

“The Puzzler” . . .

And me!

Now, you can see how small those things are, right? Now imagine all six of us, crammed into one for the ride to the top. A year previously, I would never have managed, not at 320 pounds. I also would have been quite miserable upon moving to Albuquerque, where we are almost a mile higher in elevation than we were in Pt. Huron. The weight loss journey is one I am so glad to have taken, for many reasons!

Anne went and got our tickets to go to the top of the Arch, and then we had a little over an hour before our scheduled ride, so we used that time to walk through as much of the museum as we could. We really enjoyed it!

All of the boys in front of one of the exhibits . . .

all the boys with Anne . . .

Anne and me . . .

one of the views through the windows at the top of the Arch . . .

After we had finished at the Arch, we drove back over to the hotel to pick up Anne’s car, and then went to eat an early supper at a restaurant nearby, for BBQ. It was very good, I’d never had BBQ done the way they do it! I don’t recall the name of the restaurant, but it was right across the parking lot from the hotel, and we loved it!

After our dinner, we said our good-byes. Anne headed off to her home, and we headed on to Republic, MO, where we spent the night at a motel and then the next morning, Saturday, we spent the morning visiting with another cousin, Anne’s brother Ed and his family. Unfortunately, I forgot to have my camera with me during that visit, so I have no pictures. 😦

From Republic, we headed toward Oklahoma, where we would be spending the night at the home of a long time dear friend of mine, which I will tell you about tomorrow, if you come back! 🙂

As always, I’d love it if you would follow my blog by email! Never miss an update by just going to the top right of the blog and clicking on the “sign me up” button. Just follow the directions and you’ll be notified of new posts by email!

Meanwhile, please, hop on over to the main crew post to see what the other Summer Blog Hop participants are up to!

Transitions Part 2, A 1700 Mile Adventure!

Hello, my blog reading friends! You may recall that back on July 10, 2013, I began a series of posts called “Transitions“, promising to continue the series a little later. Well, the continuation begins today, as part of the Review Crew’s Summer Blog Hop! I think you’ll find the Summer Blog Hop to be a fun ride, with 90 bloggers and 450 posts on a wide variety of topics. So, without further ado, let’s get on with the Hop! 🙂

If you went back and read the first Transitions post, you will recall that we had finally gotten our belongings loaded up, and were about to set off for our big move to Albuquerque, NM. And so we did, rather later in the day than we planned, after the delay of waiting for the moving truck to arrive until much later than expected. But, finally, we were ready to go, on the afternoon of July 30, 2012!

We headed west out of Port Huron, MI to Flint, MI, so we could make a brief (hahaha, as if brief visits and good-byes EVER happens in this family!) stop at my brother’s, to say good-bye to him, my sister-in-law, one of my nieces and her beautiful little girl.

Here is “The Batman” playing with my great-niece, Penny before we left to head on to another little side trip . . .

And here are all of the boys and Penny together!

From there, we headed to Northern Michigan, more specifically Rapid City and Bellaire, MI, to see my mother’s last surviving siblings, Aunt Marge and Uncle Jim, and their respective spouses, Uncle Leon and Aunt Ann. They are all elderly, and I wanted very much to see them before we moved so far away, so my husband made it workable for us. I’m so grateful to him for doing that for me . . .

With our late start, and then a longer stop than we planned in Flint, we didn’t get to our motel (The All Seasons Motel in Bellaire) until about 10:00 p.m., but they were ready for us, after my husband had called them to say we were delayed. It was a small, basic room, which was fine for us. We just needed a place to sleep, shower and change, as we spent most of our time there either with my aunts and uncles, or swimming, or roaming around the village of Alden, showing the kids some of the places we went to when I was younger.

“The Batman” and “The Artist, bedding down for the night . . .

Mr. “Loquacious”, sound asleep . . .

And the “Puzzler”, totally zonked out!

Spending the morning at Torch Lake, in Rapid City MI . . .

“Mom! Are you SURE this water is warm enough?!” (Torch Lake is a spring fed lake, and cold when first going in, lol!

They soon decided it was worth it, though!

In Alden, MI wandering around before heading back over to see the aunts and uncles one final time before heading west . . .

This sign is right at the edge of the lake in the village of Alden . . .

Torch Lake has been rated by National Geographic as the cleanest lake in America, and the third cleanest in the world!

One of the shops we like in Alden . . .

Carter’s Candles, I still have a Petoskey stone magnet from this store that my husband and I bought on our honeymoon 23 years ago!

Love the new Alden sign posts!

At this point, we’d checked out of the motel, and gone back to see my aunts and uncles one last time. Here are the boys with my Aunt Marge and Uncle Leon . . .

And here is the only picture that came out of me with them, I look half asleep, lol!

After saying good-bye one last time, we headed down the road to my Uncle Jim’s house to see him and his wife, my Aunt Ann, one final time . . .

It was a difficult good-bye for me. As I said before, my Aunt Marge and my Uncle Jim are my mother’s last surviving siblings, and they and their spouses are all in their late seventies and eighties, so this was very likely my last time I will ever see them. It was very quiet in the car for a while after we left . . .

We then headed west, and as we were going through the area of Holland Michigan, I phoned my Aunt Carol, who lives there with her new husband. She is my Uncle Keith’s widow, and I so loved him, and her, so I was hoping we could meet up briefly. She didn’t answer her phone, but called me back shortly after we passed Holland. We turned back, and met her at a road-side farmer’s market.

Here are the boys, entertaining themselves while we wait for Carol to meet us . . .

We followed her over to the beach on Lake Michigan, someplace we’d never been, which meant we’d now driven from the east coast of Michigan (Port Huron) to the west coast of Michigan!

Here are the boys with my Aunt Carol . . .

and here’s one with just me and my aunt!

And now, we were truly leaving Michigan, on August 1, 2012, with our next stop being a quick night in a motel in Indiana. Stay tuned tomorrow for the next leg of the journey, because it starts out super FUN (see the sarcasm there, lol?)

As always, I’d love it if you’d sign up to follow my blog via email! Just click on the “sign me up!” box at the top right of this page and enter your email address! 🙂

Hop on over to the main blog hop post, so you can check out all the other participating bloggers!

2 Comments

Filed under 1700 Mile Adventure, Blog Hop Aug. 5 - 9, family, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post, Transitions, Travel

Tagged as children, family, kids, moving, new life, Schoolhouse Review Crew, Transitions, Travel

June 30, 2013 · 10:14 am

Moving Beyond the Page . . . a TOS Review

During the past few weeks, my boys and I have had the pleasure of reviewing a “new to us” curriculum from Moving Beyond the Page.

Each reviewer from the Schoolhouse Review Crew was given two different unit studies, a language arts unit and either a social studies or science unit. One was a physical copy, and the other was an online unit study, with the necessary books being mailed to us.

My family received Unit 3, “American Heroes” (Language Arts), and “People Change the World” (Social Studies). These are both geared for ages 7 – 9, and are designed to work together, although any of the units sold by Moving Beyond the Page can also be stand alone products. In our case, the language arts unit was the one we received as an online unit, and the social studies unit was the physical copy mailed to us. This way, we would get a good look at how each works, and be able to tell you what we thought of each method.

Here is a picture of what we received, for use with both units.

As you can see, we received the printed copy of the social studies curriculum “People Change the World“, and the accompanying story books “The Starry Messenger” by Peter Sis and “Miss Rumphius” by Barbara Cooney. The Social Studies unit we received sells for $32.97 if you want the physical copy mailed to you, and $28.91 if you wish to purchase the online version. We also received a physical copy of the book “50 American Heroes” by Dennis Denenberg and Lorraine Roscoe. As I said before, we received the online version of the language arts unit, which sells for $ 27.88, while the physical copy sells for $$31.94.

The only big differences between the online version and the physical copy were that with the online version, the curriculum and worksheets are online, so I read the lessons on my tablet and then printed out whatever activity sheets were necessary for each lesson, whereas with the physical copy, all of that was in the printed curriculum book. Because of copyright issues, you cannot make copies of the activity sheets from the book, which is the one downside to the printed version. However, the one downside to the online version is that you have access for only three months. Now, each unit is designed to be finished within about three weeks, so of course, that does give you plenty of time to complete your unit, but personally, my whole goal in purchasing online, downloadable material, is so that it can be used again with younger siblings. With access being given only for a few months, it feels more as if it’s a rental than a purchase. At the same time, because the download version is licensed to a family, you may print out activity pages for each child doing the unit, while the printed version doesn’t permit that.

In our case, we do a LOT of things as a group, because I have special needs children. Between that, and the fact that I am STILL recovering from surgery, and mostly stuck on the couch with my feet on pillows, we did this as a group, and mostly orally, which is one way I tweak a lot of curriculum to fit the abilities of my children. When there was an activity page that could be printed out that they were able to handle, that’s what we did.

Each day, my boys would gather around in the family room and listen while I read to them from the lessons. I read the story books out loud to them as well. Although most of the actual activities were too much for them, we WERE able to go through them orally, as a group, which led to lots of good discussions, and questions. In fact, pretty much every day when their dad got home from work, all of the boys went on their own and told him all about what they had learned, and talked about that day while doing these units. 🙂

Here are all of my boys working on an assignment . . .

In this assignment, they were matching contractions to the words they were made from, and then writing sentences that went with what they had learned that day, with each sentence containing one contraction from the list on their activity page. Off to the side, you can see a stack of drawings. They had each drawn three pictures of inventions or discoveries they felt had changed the world, an assignment from that day’s social studies lesson. Not surprisingly, each and every one of them chose television as one of the inventions! 🙂

From the website:

“All children can benefit from our unique approach to education. This is especially true for hands-on, creative, and gifted learners. A traditional or classical approach will often leave these children bored and uninspired.”

Now, my children are not considered “gifted” children, but even so, they did get quite a lot out of both of these units. I was actually very surprised, frankly, because I wasn’t sure at all that even with major tweaking (which I often need to do with purchased curriculum), that they would be able to handle it. But, I am very pleased to tell you that even with a curriculum that states right up front that it is at least in part geared to “gifted” students, if you take the time to do it in a different way, your special needs children can learn from this, too. My children learned more in-depth about several people (Harriet Tubman, Galileo, etc) than they might have otherwise, BECAUSE we did these units orally, and because I was stuck on the couch and couldn’t do much of anything else, we had the time to devote to their questions, and their discussions. My children were interested and eager each day to get to these units, which makes me happy, because as most of you already know, I am a firm believer that there is no reason at all that learning cannot, or should not, be enjoyable, if that is at all possible. My boys enjoyed this, so I enjoyed it, too.

To read what my fellow crew mates thought of this and other units from Moving Beyond the Page, please click the graphic below!

1 Comment

Filed under education, family, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post

Tagged as children, family, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, literature, Moving Beyond the Page, Schoolhouse Review Crew, social studies, TOS Review

June 23, 2013 · 10:27 am

Baker Publishing Group, a Review of The Adventures of Lily Lapp, for the Schoolhouse Review Crew

At least in part because I’m currently recovering from surgery on both of my feet, and (mostly) stuck on the couch with my feet elevated, I was very glad to be chosen for this review. Also, to be honest, I have always enjoyed reading Amish fiction, and this is the first time for me to be reading Amish fiction centered around a child.

Baker Publishing Group has thus far published two of the expected four books in a series called The Adventures of Lily Lapp, and we received both of them to read and review! Book one is titled “Life with Lily“,

and book two is titled “A New Home for Lily“.

These books are geared toward children aged 8 – 12, and you might think they are written for girls, but don’t let either of those things stop you! As most of you know, I have no girls, I have four boys. Every one of my boys came drifting out to the living room, as I lay on the couch, feet propped on pillows, to hear me read these charming stories out loud,

and every one of my boys sat on the floor while I was reading, and did the coloring pages and word searches that go with each book, and can be downloaded from here.

Here are some of the finished pages . . .

The books in this series are a combination of the real life childhood memories of Mary Ann Kinsinger, who was raised Old Order Amish but chose to leave as an adult with her husband, and the best selling writing of Suzanne Woods Fisher. Mary Ann Kinsinger now writes the popular blog A Joyful Chaos, while Suzanne Woods Fisher, author of several Amish novels which include the Lancaster County Secrets series and The Keeper, is the host of the internet radio show Amish Wisdom.

We have very much enjoyed reading both of these books! It was so funny, one of my boys, “Mr. Loquacious” was constantly saying “uh oh”, at different times in the book, because he KNEW that whatever Lily, or one of her younger brothers, was about to get up to was going to get them into trouble. 🙂

My boys were consistent throughout the book in pointing out things like “you say that all the time, mom”, when one of Lily’s parents would give them a bit of a talking to about something. While the Amish don’t necessarily believe EXACTLY the same in all ways as we do regarding matters of faith, there were many areas where my kids spotted right away that it was the same, such as their belief that it wasn’t God honoring to celebrate Halloween, for example.

In “Life with Lily” (you can read an excerpt here), we meet five-year old Lily, who lives in upstate New York and who is learning to deal with lots of new things. She gets a new baby brother (although she really would like to have a sister!), she begins going to school for the first time, she has to learn to deal with having a girl at school who is pretty mean to her, and to others. She also loses her much-loved teacher, after she (the teacher) is badly injured in an accident, and then she and the other students must deal with a new, mean teacher. Because of the way the new teacher treats the students, she is not asked back, and the students end up home-schooling the following year while waiting to find a new teacher for their school. Lily also turns six during this time.

My boys were surprised to find out in the story that Amish children generally go to school only through the eight grade. A lot of other things surprised them, like having no electricity, no cars, etc. They kept saying it was “the olden days”, and having to be reminded that it really wasn’t, that the Amish live this way now.

Toward the end of book one, “Life with Lily“, Lily has yet another difficult thing to deal with, her family decides to move to another Amish community in Pennsylvania. Now Lily has to watch many of their belongings be auctioned off before the big move, which struck a chord with me, and with my boys, remembering less than a year ago when my husband’s job caused us to have to move 1700 miles from everything and everyone we’d ever known. My boys pointed out that it was like when I was sorting through deciding what to put into our moving sale, how hard that was.

In book two, “A New Home for Lily” (an excerpt is available here), we see the family move into their new home, a place Lily really, really dislikes. She doesn’t like the color of the house, or the kitchen counter. She learns that different Amish communities have different rules about dress (Lily’s mother must make all new clothes for them, and new head coverings for both herself and Lily), about technology (here, they are not allowed to have the refrigerator (which is not electric) kept in the kitchen, so they must put theirs on the porch. And Lily discovers that no matter where you go, there will still be disagreeable people to deal with, when she meets yet another mean girl in school.

This book carries us all the way through when Lily is promoted to the fourth grade. In this school, she once again has a teacher she can love, and makes new friends. She and her brothers do continue to get into mischief, though, and she also gains yet another baby brother.

I very much enjoy the writing in these books, it is so descriptive! A favorite sentence is toward the end of the second book, “A New Home for Lily” . . .

“The sun went down and darkness crept over the land like a big velvety blanket that was coming to tuck everything in for the night”

These stories are just full of descriptive writing like that!

There are two additional books planned for this series, “A Big Year for Lily” (read an excerpt here), due to be released in July, 2013, and in September 2013, book four, “A Surprise for Lily“, for which there is no excerpt available as yet.

I have already had to promise my kids that we’ll order the next two books, so that they can find out what else happens to Lily, and her brothers Joseph, Dannie and Paul! 🙂

The books are available for purchase at the cost of $12.99, which is a very fair price. These are not little, thin picture books. “Life with Lily” has 280 pages, and 39 short, easy to read chapters. “A New Home for Lily” is 266 pages, with 36 chapters. In both books, each chapter can stand alone as a self-contained story from Mary Ann Kinsinger’s childhood.

To read more reviews of The Adventures of Lily Lapp, please click below!

Relaxed Homeschooling . . .

So today was a good example of one of those “relaxed homeschooling” days . . . as you know, I am currently recovering from surgery on both of my feet, five toes total, three on the right foot, 2 on the left, and am coming to truly realize just how much your toes are involved in supporting the weight of your body. Yes, they still hurt.

Lately, we’ve been working on a unit study from Moving Beyond the Page which I am reviewing. this is actually fitting into our “relaxed” homeschooling we’ve been doing, especially during my recovery, because as is usual with many professional curriculum, I am adapting to fit my special needs kids. So, we do a bit of this each day, and the kids are enjoying it, so far.

This morning, after breakfast, the boys watched a couple of educational shows on pbs (Super Why and Dinosaur Train), then we did a read aloud from another book I’m reviewing for the review crew (review will be posted within the next few days!). Then, they got to watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood (which I didn’t at first realize was a spin off of Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood), and then Sid The Science Kid.

After Sid, we had a simple lunch, followed by watching four more episodes of “Watch Mr. Wizard”, a DVD I am reviewing. I asked for that one because of my childhood memories of a Mr. Wizard science book from the library, in which there was an experiment using charcoal, bluing, food coloring and I don’t recall what else, to make a crystal garden in a goldfish bowl. 🙂 And now, my kids are being introduced to Mr. Wizard, which is fun for me. They are really enjoying it, too, so tomorrow we’ll finish watching the second DVD I received.

We then did more of the read aloud from the morning, while the boys colored pictures and did a word search based upon the book.

They are now watching Word Girl, and after I post this, I intend to get a couple of things downloaded, and then go get these poor sore feet back up on their pillows for a little while!

So, that’s what a “relaxed Homeschooling” day looks like around here . . . how about at YOUR house? 🙂

2 Comments

Filed under education, family, health, home education, homeschooling, Kids

Tagged as children, family, health, home education, homeschooling, kids

May 31, 2013 · 11:35 am

Cartooning with Pat Knepley . . . a TOS Review

As a member of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I was given an opportunity to review one of several Art Projects DVDs from See The Light. Even though there were a number of good choices, I had no trouble at all deciding what would be a good fit here, and chose Art Projects: Cartooning with Pat Knepley for “The Artist” to work through, because he can often be found curled up somewhere with paper and pencil, drawing something. 🙂 I was dead on with this one, too! When I told him I was filling out the interest form to request it, his reaction was an immediate “oh, I hope we get that one!”

As it turned out, “The Artist” was not the only interested child in this house during this review . . . “Mr. Loquacious” asked if HE could do it as well! Of course, I said yes, he was welcome to join in. 🙂 He did eagerly watch the DVD along with his brother, and did some of the assignments, however, he got bored with it part way through and quit. While he was participating, though, he did improve his drawing, and even went off the lessons to create his own idea at least once, which I will show with pictures later.

See The Light Art Projects is a series of DVDs that can be used as stand alone DVDs, or with the complete box set, as a school year’s worth of lessons drawn from the work of nine famous artists. As I said before, we chose Art Projects: Cartooning with Pat Knepley, but there are several other choices in the Art Projects line, all of which you can read about here.

The Art Projects: Cartooning with Pat Knepley DVD is an enjoyable way for anyone of any age to learn cartooning basics, though it is designed for anyone age 5 and up. With this DVD, you and/or your children will learn:

ART HISTORY – Classical Cartooning

ART ELEMENTS – Line, Space and Shape

ART CONCEPTS – Exaggeration and Movement

And you’ll learn these things with very little financial investment. All you will need to buy is the DVD, priced at $14.99. As far as supplies, you will need very little, most of which I would bet you already have around your home! From the website, the supplies needed are:

•Several sheets of plain white paper (any size)

•A #2 pencil

•A pencil sharpener

•Good white or gray kneaded eraser

•A fine point black marker

•A thick black permanent marker

We already had everything except the special eraser, which “The Artist” ended up not even needing to use, he simply used his regular school eraser!

The instructor on the DVD was very personable, and seemed to be very easy to follow as she led the student in creating basic cartoons, using ideas as simple as different vegetables for characters.

Here is “The Artist” watching and creating along with the DVD . . .

Unfortunately, the one picture I managed to get of “Mr. Loquacious” did not turn out, so I can’t show it to you. However, I did get some photos of the work both of the boys did, and I CAN show them to you! 🙂

Ms. Knepley starts the student off with the first segment being devoted to creating parts of the face, showing how to make eyes, noses, and mouths in ways that will turn something as simple as the aforementioned vegetables into funny characters. Here is “The Artist’s” practice page . . .

And here is the one that “Mr. Loquacious” did.

She then continues on with making cartoon characters out of simple vegetable shapes, as I mentioned before. Here are some that “The Artist” did . . .

And here are “Mr. Loquacious’s” veggie characters!

Next, Ms. Knepley had a segment on making cartoon faces. Here is what “The Artist” got from this part . . .

And, since “Mr. Loquacious” was still participating at this point, I have the page he did, as well . . .

Next, the lessons go into drawing cartoon style people. These are “The Artist’s” practice pages . . .

And since “Mr. Loquacious” was still participating at this point, I also have his practice drawings of cartoon style people . . .

It was at this point that “Mr. Loquacious” said he didn’t want to do the DVD anymore, and since I had not originally planned on having him do it at all, I figured that it was a bonus just having him doing any of it, and allowed him to stop. He did, however, do one more thing, he made a cartoon drawing on his own, using one of his toy cars, which you can see below.

After learning to draw cartoon style people, “The Artist” went on to the segment on drawing cartoon style animals. Here we have what he did after watching that part of the lesson.

Next, “The Artist” learned about using numbers to create cartoon faces. Here is what he did with the numbers 2, 3, 4 & 5 . . .

The final segment was on making a comic strip. Here is what “The Artist” did with it . . .

“The Artist” enjoyed learning how to do all these things so much that after following along with all the segments on the DVD, he went on and created his own characters using a variety of fruits and vegetables, as you can see below. 🙂

I asked “The Artist” to write down for me what he saw as the pro’s and con’s of the Art Projects: Cartooning with Pat Knepley DVD, and this is what he wrote:

Pros:

I liked all the tips for cartoon speech and thought bubbles for when I plan to make my own comic.

Cons:

Would be better if the whole lesson was separated into multiple segments.
Would be better if you went a little slower when you were showing how to draw the cartoons and characters.

So, overall, I believe this was a pretty good fit for us. I do think that “Mr. Loquacious” would probably have stuck with it to the end if, as “The Artist” pointed out, the lessons were actually separated into segments using a menu and chapters, instead of just one long lesson. The DVD is about 70 minutes long, which was just too much at one time for either of the boys. While “The Artist” was able to go back and forth and finish it, “Mr. Loquacious” became overwhelmed and chose not to finish. With that one change, I think this could be a really good set of lessons. I don’t know if the other DVD’s in this set are arranged as one long lesson the way that Art Projects: Cartooning with Pat Knepley is, but if so, then changing that is the one thing I would suggest to make the series just right. At $14.99, I think this would be a good fit for any homeschool family which includes a budding artist or two!

Check out reviews of this and other See The Light Art Projects by clicking the graphic below!

1 Comment

Filed under education, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post

Tagged as art lessons, children, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew, TOS Review

May 21, 2013 · 4:50 pm

Budding Authors Workbooks & 6 Weeks to Understanding Grammar . . . a TOS Review

Three of our four boys have been helping me to review some products from author Joyce Herzog for a few weeks now. My twins, “Mr. loquacious” and “The Puzzler” have been using the Budding Authors Workbooks, and one of my older boys, “The Artist” has been working with the book 6 Weeks to Understanding Grammar.

I’m going to talk first about the Budding Authors set. This set was different from what I expected it to be, as it is simply a set of workbooks with minimal instruction for the parent/teacher. Don’t let that scare you off, however, because they are quite easy to use!

I had my twins working in the first book, which is titled Step Into Writing. In this book, children will be taking first steps in writing sentences and stories. Since my twins have some developmental delays, along with educational delays that resulted from several years in foster care before coming to us for adoption, this was an appropriate beginning point for them. You may download a sample from this workbook here.

At the very beginning of the book is a page and a half section of instruction for the parent/teacher, primarily describing the kinds of pages you will find in the workbook, and how to use them. The first one listed is Copywork, which is exactly what you would expect it to be. Your child will have a short story to copy, the first one consisting of just one easy sentence. Eventually, the short stories for copywork will be five sentences in the Step Into Writing Workbook. Each day, the student’s work should concentrate on perfection, not on time spent. The idea is that the child is to use his or her very best printing, spacing of words for ease of reading, and remembering to include all capitals and punctuation. The author says that at this level, 10 minutes is a reasonable working time for the copywork each day.

The second type of workbook page in this workbook are the dictation pages. There is a page at the beginning of the book for the parent/teacher which will give you the short story to dictate to your child for each page. In my copy, the page giving me the dictation to read to the child began with dictation for page 9, but the first dictation page for the student to complete was actually page 6, so we skipped that and began with the next set of pages. You will be given a very short, simple story to read to the child, and they will then copy it on their workbook page. My boys really had a problem with the way the writing pages are laid out, though. I like them, they are formatted with two lines, similar to another handwriting program I’ve used with my oldest son, but the twins just couldn’t grasp how to write with this type of lines, and asked me to please allow them to use regular primary paper, so that’s what I did. Each workbook page has thin column sections at the far right with the headings “C” for capitalization, “P” for punctuation, and “S” for spelling. There is a fourth column that you can use for whatever other category you feel your child needs to work on. For my twins, I used a ruler to make the columns on their primary paper.

Next, there is the “Experience Story” page after each dictation page. For this page, you and your child discuss the picture at the top of the page, and decide what the story would be about. Then, your child will dictate the story to you, as you write it down for him or her.

My book says there is also a dictionary page, but it was missing from my copy. It is included in the second workbook “Step On Into Writing”, which we will move on to when we have completed Step Into Writing.

This set of workbooks is very nice, although as I said before, my boys didn’t care for the format of the lines for writing. If we continue using it, we will use regular primary paper for their writing. This set of workbooks is, in my opinion, perfect for anyone who enjoys the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling. In our family, we use a mix of Charlotte Mason, unschooling, unit study and lapbooking, so the idea of this set is one that works for us at this time. You can purchase the set of Budding Author Workbooks at the following prices:

Step Into Writing – $10.00

Step On Into Writing – $10.00

Adventures In Writing – $10.00

Then And Now – $12.00

Writing US History – $15.00

As I said before, I had “The Artist” going through Joyce Herzog’s 6 Weeks to Understanding Grammar.

This is a small book, 40 pages in length, and much to my surprise turned out to be mostly review for “The Artist”, so what I ended up doing with it was to read it myself, simply to learn how to teach basic grammar to my younger boys when they are ready. The author has made it extremely simple to teach using this little book and some writing paper! You may download a sample of this book here. From the website, This book “follows the teaching style of a hundred years ago: state it simply and give an example.” This little book very easily clears up grammar confusion, and is available here for $12.00.

I think these books are at a good price, and will help your “Budding Authors” on their journey as writers!

Here is “The Puzzler” doing copywork . . .

And “Mr. Loquacious” doing the same!

And a quick shot of “The Artist” working on grammar! 🙂

To see what other crew members thought of this and other products from Joyce Herzog, please click on the graphic below

2 Comments

Filed under education, home education, homeschool products, homeschooling, Kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew Post

Tagged as children, home education, homeschool product review, homeschool products, homeschooling, kids, Schoolhouse Review Crew, TOS Review, writing

Category Archives: Kids

America The Beautiful . . . a T.O.S. Review

Transitions Part 5: A 1700 Mile Adventure

Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura . . .a T.O.S. Review

Transitions Part 4: A 1700 Mile Adventure

Transitions Part 2, A 1700 Mile Adventure!

Baker Publishing Group, a Review of The Adventures of Lily Lapp, for the Schoolhouse Review Crew

Relaxed Homeschooling . . .

Cartooning with Pat Knepley . . . a TOS Review

Budding Authors Workbooks & 6 Weeks to Understanding Grammar . . . a TOS Review

Email Subscription

Archives

Categories

Blog Stats

Category Archives: Kids

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Email Subscription

Archives

Categories

Blog Stats