Category Archives: Uncategorized

In between illnesses, Vacation Bible School, and an emergency surgery on my part, we have been reviewing a new to us online math program called LearnBop For Families, from the company LearnBop.

For the purpose of review, we were generously given the pre-paid version (12 month subscription), which we could use for up to four students. So far, I have been using it with “Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler”, with different results, because “The Puzzler functions much younger than “Mr. Loquacious” does. They are both special needs children, so I was worried over whether or not they would be able to handle this one at all.

LearnBop For Families is an adaptive,  interactive, self-paced math program meant for grades three through twelve, although I have been able to use it with the twins, neither of whom is at that level. This is because, although you can, when setting them up, simply put a student into a grade level, you can also choose what Learnbop calls “Learning Roadmaps.” Therefore, even though neither boy is really at even a third grade level in math, I was able to set them at the lowest grade, but then choose lower “Roadmaps” for each of them.

Once I got their accounts set up (super easy! I discovered I could do that using my phone!), they each got to choose their avatar for themselves. After that, they began by doing something called a “warm up”, which is basically an assessment to check for any missing knowledge they may need to catch up on. They will do this for each unit. The program will them personalize their units in order to focus on the concepts they most need to work on.

All through, there are videos to watch to help break down whatever concept the student is working on, in an easy way to understand. The student always knows when to watch a video or to do a “Bop” (math problem), because once they have done their warm up for each unit, the student’s dashboard tells him what to do next. If they get the problem wrong, then LearnBop goes over it with them step by step, so that they can learn how to do it the next time.

One thing I like very much is that whenever we need it done, I can go in and change their grade level and/or roadmap, as we attempt to place them where they need to be. I also like that I, as the teacher, have my own dashboard, where I can check on how they are doing at any time.

“Mr. Loquacious”  had a bit of trouble at first, because this was a different way of learning math than he had don before, but once I went over it with him a few times, he was fine on his own.

As you can see above, he was using a small tablet to work in LearnBop, which he really enjoyed! This is an android tablet, as is my phone, the one I  used to set them up with.

Here you see “The Puzzler” doing his work on the desktop, which he seemed to prefer . . .

As I said above, “The Puzzler” functions much younger, and he had a lot of trouble, even with basic addition and subtraction. To help him, I finally gave him a printed number line. After I showed him how to use it, he began doing better, and enjoying the program more. He actually ASKS to go on LearnBop now!

I do think this is a very well done program. I really like that it is adaptive and is able to adjust to what the student needs intuitively. I think this will help a lot when it comes to bringing the twins further along in beginning math.

To read 99 other honest reviews of LearnBop For Families, please click on the banner below!

As always, I would just love it if you would join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life.” Just go to the subscription box at the top of the blog and enter your email, and you will always know when something new is going on here. Hope to see you soon!

So, I’ve been missing in action, haven’t I?! Here’s what’s been happening . . .

On June 11, “The Artist” and I went to a long awaited and anticipated class with our Zentangle teachers  along with noted author Suzanne McNeill, who has written many zentangle books!

This was a class based on something very new to “The Artist” and me, called Florabunda. We made BEAUTIFUL 3D flowers to put onto cards, and everybody’s came out different, as is the usual!

Here are all of the different completed pieces . . .

Here is a class picture of everyone . .

and here is one of “The Artist”, me, and Suzanne McNeill!

Unfortunately, 3 days later, I was in the emergency room, and having surgery to remove my gall bladder! I’ve been working on recovery ever since, but be watching, because I will have some upcoming reviews of a couple of Suzanne’s books!

As always, I’d love to have you join me on all of my journeys through life. please go to the sign me up box at the top of the blog, and you’ll always know when something new is going on!

As an avid reader for as long as I can remember, it is very important to me to try and encourage a love of reading in my children. Because of this, I was very glad to be chosen as one of the crew members to receive for review a book from Shiloh Run Press called The Glass Castle, written by Trisha White Priebe and Jerry B. Jenkins.

This is not a terribly long book.  In fact, though there are 41 chapters, they are all fairly short, and the book itself is only 251 pages long.

You may recognise the name of one of the authors, Jerry B. Jenkins. He co-authored the Left Behind series of books with Tim LaHaye, many years ago! He has written over 180 books, and 16 of them have reached NYT bestseller status.

The co-author of this book Trisha White Priebe, has had the desire to write ever since she was in the 6th grade, and says that she still loves writing for sixth graders! Priebe has worn a lot of different hats during her life. She is a wife, mom, writer, editor, teacher, reader, and as she puts it, former water polo queen. She has also worked as an editor for the Meredith Corporation, and has published several magazine articles and blog entries. Priebe is a frequent speaker at retreats and conferences, and enjoys assisting her husband in youth ministry.

The Glass Castle is book one in the new “13” series. The setting and action are very much like a cross between the Narnia books and Alice in Wonderland.

The story begins in book one, telling of a king who is growing old, and is worried about who will take his place. His new wife wishes to give him a child who would be hei to the throne, but the king’s first wife gave birth to a son and nobody knows what happened to him.  The solution? get rid of all the orphans in the kingdom!

Avery, Kate, Tuck, and Kendrick take charge of an underground network of kidnapped children, pledging to reunite the children with the homes they lost.

You can read some of The Glass Castle here.

I gave this book to “The Artist”, and once he got into it, it really did not take him long to finish the book. He even brought it along to read in the waiting room when I had a doctor’s appointment. Here he is at home, reading.

He says that he’s really enjoyed the story and is looking forward to the next book, The Ruby Moon, which will coming out in October 2016. I do think it fair to warn you though, that The Glass Castle does end with something of a cliff hanger, so be prepared!

To read 89 other fair and honest reviews by fellow crew members, please click the banner below.

As always, I would love it if you would join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life.” Please go to the subscription box at the top of the blog and enter your email so that you will know whenever there is new content posted here. I really hope to see you join me! 🙂

I am beginning to think I should change his blog name to “The Dare-devil”.

This past Thursday, I had to take him to the emergency room, again. Two weeks exactly since the last time, which was exactly two weeks since the time before that. Here he is, waiting to see medical personnel after getting his xrays.

And this time, instead of a possible concussion, he got a definite concussion, and a sprain to the neck area.

Here is how you can tell he’s in pain . . .

And sad, too, because he’s on some serious restriction for a minimum of two weeks. We are trying hard to work with him on this “risk taking” behavior, believe me.

Please join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life” by going to the subcription box at the top of the blog and entering your email. Hope to see you here!

This review is all about the homeschool mamas! I have been checking out the current Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner 2016-2017 from The Old Schoolhouse and boy, is it ever nice!  I think this is the biggest one I have seen, it has 196 pages. It is 9″ x 11″ x.5″, has a glossy, sturdy cover, and is all bound together with silver wire – o binding.

While I am not much of a “planner” person, as we tend to be mostly a relaxed homeschooling family, there are a good number of things I really like about this particular planer.

As you can see in the picture above, the theme is old fashioned looking this year. I LOVE vintage looking things! Scattered through the planer are vintage, sepia toned pictures of the homemaking tools pictured on the cover, along with an explanation of their uses. It does give a mama cause to consider how much easier we have it when it comes to doing these tasks!

Starting right out of the gate on the inside front cover, there is a very nice letter of encouragement from Gena Suarez, publisher of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. At the beginning of each month, there is a small devotional, encouragement note, and/or Bible verse. Speaking of Bible verses, my very favorite thing is that with the exception of just one page, all scripture used in this planner comes the King James Version of the Bible. You all know how I feel about that one, right? 🙂

What does the Hey Mama! Schoolhouse Planner have in it which makes it so good for you to use, you might ask? Well, let me tell you, because I think this planner could be used no matter what style of homechooler you happen to be. First, here are the things you will see in this planner:

• year at a glance calendars for 2016, 2017 & 2018
• Monthly calendars, each with a Hey Mama! letter and a page for notes
• A plethora of forms, which I’ll describe below

Homeschool Forms:

• Weekly Planners
• Monthly Goals
• Semester Goals
• Yearly Goals
• Attendance Chart (if you are required to keep track of how many hours or days per year that you homeschool, this will help you track it.
• Books read this year
• Curriculum planning sheet
• Homeschooling Contact List
• 36 General Writing Prompts (enough for one per week if you follow a 36 week schedule)
• Story Starters
• The 13 Colonies by Date
• Timeline of Inventions
• U.S. Presidents and Their Wives
• Branches of the Federal, State and Local Governments
• United States and Capitals
• Creating An Academic Transcript
• Checklist and Skills Learned
• Other Courses

While there will be sections that I won’t likely use as designed (again, I’m not much of a pre-planner when it comes to school), I think it will be a very simple twist to use the planning pages in reverse, as in, logging what we DID instead of what we are going to do. I tend to feel as if I failed if we don’t cover everything in “the plan” when it’s written down to be done, but feel more of an accomplishment when I can write in all the things we did do, instead. 🙂

I like the general writing prompts. I have four kids, and I think if I give them each the exact same writing prompt for the week, I will get four completely different stories.

There are only four “Books Read This Year” pages, and i hope they will read more books that the spaces allow, so I will, if needed copy the page and keep it in the planner. Same with the actual planner pages, as we school year around, so I will need more of those pages. There are also a couple of pages of story starters, such as “What is the best birthday present you ever received and why?”

The pages I think are good for a jumping off point in creating a study would be “The Thirteen Colonies by Date”, the “Timeline of Inventions”, the “U.S. Presidents and Their Wives”.

The pages giving the branches of the Federal, State and local governments are also a great jumping off point, especially in this, an election year!

The United States and Capitals gives them in the order they became part of the United States, which is a choice i would have also made.

Finally, should you need to create a transcript in your state, there are very good instructions for doing so, and there is also a page for “other courses”, which I would consider to be electives, along with a”Checklist and Skills Learned” page.

I think a family who follows a “regular” school year could use this planner just as it is, especially if they are required to keep records and attendance. I also think however, that this planner is useful for those of us who school all year, who are very relaxed, who unit study, or even who unschool, Why? Because as I said above, instead of putting in ahead of time what you will do each day, you can instead wait until after you’ve finished the day, and then log what you did!

All of this to say, I really, really like this planner!

As you can see below, click on the picture and use the coupon code, and you will receive $10.00 off of the cost of the Print Planner. What an excellent deal!

To read what 124 other crew members had to say about the Hey Mama! Print Schoolhouse Planner 2016-2017, please click on the banner directly below.

As always, I would love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life!” Just go and enter your email into the subscription box at the top of the blog, and you will always know when a new post goes up. Hope to see you here! 🙂

Over the past week or so, we’ve had a few fun things going on. A week ago last Saturday, my husband sent me out for some me time, and I went to my stylist Jody who gave me the works. I make the birthday cards she sends out in exchange for credit towards hair care, which is a win/win for us both!

This is the best I could do at replicating the way she styled it, but I’m practicing!

One day last week, “The Puzzler” walked to a new park in our community with some of the neighbor boys. It’s called “A Park Above,” and on that day was the “official” grand opening, which we didn’t know. So, “The Puzzler” and his friends got to take their picture with New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez while they were there! He’s been proudly showing it off ever since. 🙂

Until next time, always know that I would love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life.” Just go enter your email into the subscription box at the top of the blog, and you’ll know whenever there is a new post. Hope to see you here!

“Mr. Loquacious” and “The Puzzler” have been using a new to us online program called Complete Home Learning Suite, very generously provided to us by the company Essential Skills Advantage for the purpose of this honest review.

We were given a one year online subscription, for our choice of one or two students. I wanted to use it for both of our twins, so I chose to receive it for two students.

I don’t want to give you the false impression that this is a complete curriculum, when I don’t see it as such. It is, however, an excellent supplemental program! 🙂 This program has over 43 individual programs which cover the following:

• Reading (grades K through 6)
• Spelling (grades 1 through 6)
• Language and Grammar (grades 3 through 6)
• Math (grades k-1 through 6)
• Geography (grades 3 through 5)
• Science (grades K through 3)

Within those six programs, you will find 998 learning units, which all together contain more than 14,000 interactive learning activities. That’s more than enough to keep any kid busy, having fun computer time, and (shh!) learning at the same time!

The Complete Home Learning Suite from Essential skills Advantage also allows you to view the progress  and performance of each student, on every activity they use. The student activity tracking system will show you the  highest score, average score, number of attempts and time spent for each activity.

This system also allows you to print certificates for unit completion, as well as detailed report cards for every program separately, giving a description of the program and unit content with the student’s average score throughout each section.

Since It is easy to move between subjects and levels, I found it worthwhile to spend the time in the areas where each of my twins struggle. I then put them in front of the computer and had them try different levels until I was able to decide where to have them work.

“Mr. Loquacious” is a struggling reader and speller, so naturally, that would be what I have had him working on. He is working his way through the spelling section at this time, and is wanting to also work on the reading section. We settled on beginning with the third grade program.

Now “The Puzzler” is, during his time on the computer, working in the beginning math program. He really, really struggles with even simple addition and subtraction, so this is the best place to start with him.

Because we had to leave for a doctor appointment one day, right in the middle of what they were doing, I have actually had both boys asking when they can go back onto Essential Skills Advantage and do more of it! That is exciting to me, because all of their neighborhood friends are out of school now for the summer, and mine are not being balky about doing educational things.

Just as long as it doesn’t take the whole day, and they can still hang out with their friends, lol!

To read about what 99 other crew members thought about Essential Skills Advantage Complete Home Learning Suite, please click on the banner directly below!

As always, I would just love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life.” Please go to the subscription box at the top of the blog, and enter your email information. After that, you’ll always know when there’s a new post on the blog.

The boys and I have been having fun with a new educational game called Sunya – The Magic and Wonder of Math and Science Adding & Subtracting, from Sunya Publishing.

This new game is intended for ages 7 and up, and that really means “and up!” I enjoy playing it right along with them!

We received for the purposes of this review the following:

• The game instruction book
• 30 playing cards which included single digit cards, the plus, minus and equal signs
• 30 math and science riddle and fact cards
• a custom number line

As you can see, I chose to keep the cards separated into two different lunch size zip baggies.

Sunya, according to the instruction book, is a word from Sanskrit, which is the ancient, classical language of the Hindus. The word means empty or void of any quantity. In this game, the player who goes out first by playing his last card in making a number sentence is the winner, and says Sunya.

To be honest, the instruction book was somewhat confusing for a little while. I finally decided that in an effort to cover all possible playing ideas, the writers made it more complicated than necessary.

We sort of figured out what we were doing as we played, and at one point, discovered we had already gone beyond the basic game. In the basic game, the idea is for each player to draw a card to add to his or her hand, and if they have the needed cards, they may play on top of the existing number sentence for example, 5 + 4 = 9. A player could, if he or she had the cards, place a 4 over the 5, and an 8 over the 9, changing the number sentence to 4 + 4 = 8. That would be the basic beginner game. There is also a minus sign so that you can work on subtraction if you want to.

One suggestion given, which we chose to follow, was to lay our hands out in full view so that anyone who needed help could receive it. Because two of the boys, “The Batman” and “The Puzzler” struggle mightily when it comes to arithmetic, I thought this was a good suggestion. Not only that, but even if you know your addition and subtraction, sometimes you may not even SEE that you already have the cards you need in your hand, and someone else will point that out. It happened to me, at least once! 🙂

When I say I think we went further than we were supposed to, that would be because we began using digits that equaled a double-digit answer. At that point, we had two card piles in the answer spot, giving us even more options. That was even more fun for us!

The player who plays all of his cards first and says Sunya is the winner, and draws a card from the riddles and facts card and then he or she gets to ask the other players the riddle and see if they can answer it.

As I said above, this is a brand new game. Our instruction book was printed for the most part in black and grey scale, with two pages in color. we were asked to let Sunya know which we preferred, and in my family, we liked the color much better. One other thing I would do differently would be to have either a different color, or a different pattern on the backsides of the number cards and the riddle cards, so we would remember which is which when they are face down on the table.

All in all, we are enjoying this game. It can be played at home, and it is portable, so we can also take it with us when we have to be out of the house for appointments and the like. The only changes I’d make have already been discussed above in this review, but we would encourage this as a good game for fun math practice. Sunya also is producing the game Sunya – The Magic and Wonder of Math and Science Multiplying & Dividing, which a number of other crew members have been reviewing. To see the honest reviews of 99 other crew members, please click on the banner below.

As always, I would love to have you join me on all of “My Journeys Through Life.” Just go to the subscription box at the top of the blog and enter your email. after that, you will always know when new content goes up on this blog. Hope to see you here! 🙂

Science Shepherd is a company that I had never heard of,but I thought it looked like it would be fun, especially for “Mr. Loquacious,” who has always been reluctant to “do school” as he puts it. I only recently discovered that this is because although he has been with us since he was age 8, and is now age 15, he has never been able to let go of the mindset that it isn’t really learning if you don’t have to do workbooks or worksheets!

“Mr. Loquacious” is, in fact, truly enjoying the curriculum we received. We were given for purpose of review the 383 page Science Shepherd Introductory Science student workbook Level B, the answer key for level B, and a one year membership to the online portion of the curriculum. Level B is aimed at ages 9 through 11, but with some of the difficulties “Mr. Loquacious has had in education and development, I decided this would be a good fit for him. Turns out, I was absolutely correct! 🙂

This program is SUPER easy to use!  “Mr. Loquacious” simply goes to the week and day he is to study. He watches the video if there is one, and then goes right to the workbook to answer the questions. Each week is intended to be used one day at a time, covering an entire week in the book, and I have been having a hard time holding him back at all!

Along with the videos and the pages in the workbook, there are optional hands on activities. Thus far, he has not been super interested in the drawing activities. He tends to stack his drawing ability up against his brother “The Artist”, no matter how much I tell him that the two of them are different and so will their drawings be.

As you can see above, “Mr. Loquacious” is diligently working in his student book. In fact, he makes me get the answer key out after each and every section and tell him if he got anything wrong. If so, he re-does it on his own because as he says “I want to be sure I do it right, Mom.” What mom doesn’t love hearing those words, right?

Above, you can see “Mr. Loquacious” watching online videos in full screen, using my desktop computer. As he really does have attention difficulties, I was very pleased to note that so far the videos are running between two and five minutes, just about right for him.

If you would like to see a sample of this workbook, you can go here. For a sample video, please click here. To see the complete scope and sequence, it is available here for you to take a look at.

So, “Mr. Loquacious” is liking this so much, that we will definitely continue on until he completes the entire program. And *I* feel good that he is really, really enjoying an educational product, and not having to be cajoled into working on it. 🙂

To read about what other crew members thought of this and other curricula from Science Shepherd, please click on the banner right below!

As always, I would just love to have you join me on all of “My journeys Through Life.” Just go to the subscribe button at the top of the blog and enter your email, then you will always know when new content goes up on this blog!

So, my kids are still “doing school” as they call it, though their friends are done for the year. As a member of the Review Crew, we receive review products almost year ’round, so even during the summer months they are doing something educational.

They do, however, only have to spend a short time each day for educational work, so really, they can do it and be done and playing with their friends fairly quickly. For example, today “Mr. Loquacious” worked with a review product which you’ll read about in my next post, and we all played an educational game that you’ll hear about by tomorrow! And both were fun!

So, this was just to wet your appetite, and make you want to keep turning in, lol!

As always, i’d love to have you join me on all of my “Journeys Through Life.” Just go to the subscription box and enter your email, then you’ll always know when there’s new content on the blog.