Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations is once again hosting the Curriculum Clean-Out! This isn't a sale, it's an opportunity for you to give away (gasp!) your unused items to someone who really wants/needs it! To get all the details check out the Curriculum Clean Out! Details.
The Curriculum Clean-OUT! runs from April 11 - April 24, 2010. So get busy finding all those unloved, unwanted products and prepare to ship them off to a good home!
The Awana games were held on Saturday. Our team (er, I mean Olivia's team) took 2nd place. It was really fun to watch! Some of the games were really silly, and some required a great deal of speed and good balance. I got some really good shots, but most show the faces of her teammates well, and I didn't know if the parents would have a problem with me posting here. So here is a lovely shot of the back of Olivia while she's playing balloon volleyball.
This week was relatively normal, thank God! We were able to dive back into our Cantering the Country program and start working on Connecticut, the 5th state to join the Union. We did a brief overview this week, including coloring and labeling our state map; working on the state coin and learning about the Charter Oak and about the state flag.
Our famous Connecticut native this week was Tomie dePaola. The girls love his books, so they didn't mind a bit learning more about him, and reading more of his work. Our library also had a wonderful video of Tomie live in concert, which was really fun for us all. The girls watched it and worked along with him as he did an mini art lesson.
Books and videos we used:
Tomie dePaola, by Mae Woods
The Art Lesson, by Tomie dePaola
Tomie dePaola's Book of Poems, by Tomie dePaola
Tomie dePaola The Pied Piper of Children's Books, Live in Concert! (VHS)
Connecticut, by Dennis B. Fradin
Connecticut, by Nancy Furstinger
Olivia finished reading Our Kansas Home, by Deborah Hopkinson. This was the third and final book in the series. She's decided to move on to the Little House books now. Both girls are moving through their core subjects wonderfully. Lindsey is starting to sound out much bigger words than her "readers" have her doing. For example, she read the name "Massanutten" this week without help....so I need to bump her up a bit!
Now on to the GREAT news! Standardized tests are done, scores are back and I'm so proud of Olivia. She earned a perfect score on the math section!! If you recall, we had some REALLY rocky times with her in math and to get such a great score is such an awesome turn around! She did great in language arts as well.....but MATH wooohoooo!!
The Performance Awards dress rehearsal was held Friday evening. Isn't she precious?
Immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) after dress rehearsal was baseball practice. Thankfully the park was directly across the street from the rehearsal site. We swapped clothes super fast....and here is what you get when you mix ballet and baseball in the same day. (I noticed she's even standing in first position.)
While Olivia was at practice, Lindsey said she wanted to do something special, so we walked across the road and roamed around the city park. Lindsey found lots of things to investigate, and by the time we left, she had yet another little boy stuck close by her side.
Today was co-op. The weather was yucky so recess was held indoors and everyone was wide open! We only have 6 more weeks, and then our tour of duty there is over.
Be sure to go the Weekly Wrap Up to see how everyone else's week progressed.
We have had glorious weather this week. The temperatures have been in the 70's, which is extremely warm for March in this area. Although, today has been raining and cold, and we are supposed to drop by into the 20's overnight!
Lindsey and I had an opportunity to spend some one on one time this week. Olivia had ballet practice and Lindsey said she wanted to do something "special". Not sure if this is what she had in mind or not. We walked over to our city park and roamed around for a while and checked out the lovely sights and smells.
Isn't this pink dogwood lovely?
Lindsey loved smelling all the blooms as we went along. Thankfullys, she doesn't have allergies like her sister!
Can't you almost smell this next one??
This next photo is pretty interesting. Yes, that IS a full size duck...and a real fish.
As usual, by the time we were finished our trip, we had a new little boy to add to the collections of admirers.
You're probably thinking "oh my gosh, not another math game review"! To be honest, I thought the same thing when I received Math Galaxy as part of the TOS Crew. This particular product is a different blend of bells and whistles vs. plain Jane. During the actual math problems, there are no bells/whistles. However, as you progress, you earn more robots to play games with at your convenience. This cuts out the distraction, but gives kids a goal to work towards.
You can purchase several different programs, based on your child's current math level. Each game sells for $29.95 and is quick and easy to download. Below I've listed the table of contents for each game level, colorful, aren't they?
Olivia enjoyed working on the whole numbers section. Incorporating the computer in math has improved her speed and helped with her fact memorization as well. Although, she (and I) both had trouble trying to figure out what in the world those little robots were supposed to do once we got them. I'm pretty certain they were just sitting ducks for all those crazy snowmen, spiders and boulders.
The good news, is that once you've purchased the product and downloaded it to your machine, you can use if for as many kids as you'd like. The bad news is that at $29.95, the cost can quickly add up if you have different kids on different levels starting out.
To read reviews by other Crew members, click here.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
If you have ever wanted to incorporate nature studies into your homeschooling, then you DON'T want to miss a chance at this give away!
Barbara at Handbook of Nature Study is giving away 6 different items to 6 different winners. In order to win, you must enter by Friday March 26 at noon PST.
While you're there, be sure to check out her new Spring Nature Study (shown above). The new Spring Series Nature Study Ebook includes:
Lindsey has been speaking in complete sentences since before her first birthday. I'm not kidding! The child started talking and just never quit. Seriously, she talks in her sleep. Besides the fact that I never get a moment of peace and quiet, there is one small problem. R's....they sound like w's...so it's like talking to a very intelligent Elmer Fudd at times. R's in the middle or at the end of a word are more r-like at least, but words that begins with R are just weally wough. When I found out that Super Star Speech was sending a free product to review as part of the TOS Crew, I was very interested. Then when I saw that they had a particular book just on R's and L's I almost did back flips!
Super Star Speech is written by Deborah Lott, a licensed Speech Language Pathologist with a Master's degree in Education/Speech Pathology. Deborah is also a homeschooling Mom of four children. During her interaction with other homeschool families, she found that many homeschool parents could not afford speech therapy for their children, prefer not to use speech therapy through the local school systems, or prefer working with their own children.
Super Star R & L ($18.95) will aid you in teaching your child to correctly pronounce the R and L sounds. This manual can stand alone for children with one or two speech sound errors or can be used as a supplement to Super Star Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple, providing additional pictures and activities.
· Specific instructions and tips for teaching R and L
· 168 picture cards that can be used straight from the book or copied onto card stock for greater
durability
· Games, worksheets, and activities for enjoyable practice and drill
· Reproducible lesson plan forms
· All speech therapy materials, activities and games are new and different from those in Super Star
Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple.
· Spiral bound
· 83 pages
Our book arrived on a Saturday. I read it through that weekend and on Monday we added speech to Lindsey's daily work. After several weeks of using the tips and techniques listed, I can tell a noticeable difference in Lindsey's speech when "r" is not the initial sound. I'm also encouraged to know (from the website) that some children don't grasp the "r" sound totally until they are 7. I doubt that will be the case in this instance, but it does give me a 2.5 year window to work with!
For a limited time, the author is offering a 20% discount to my readers when ordering directly from Super Star Speech. Simply go to the site, place your order and enter the discount code of "TOS". This offer is good through June 20, 2010.
We also received a free copy of the game All About Animals. All About Animals is an animal classification game for grades K-5. Players use picture cards or clue cards to categorize animals into the five major groups. Olivia has great plans of becoming a veterinarian when she grows up, so this is a wonderful opportunity to work towards that goal in a fun way at a young age. I suggest printing the cards on cardstock and then laminating them. If your kids are like mine, these cards will get a LOT of use! The Super Star games can be purchased at Curr-click for $3.50 each.
To read more reviews by TOS Crew members,click here.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
Do any of you do "school" pictures? I remember it was always such a nightmare as a kid. Your Mom dresses you "just so", combs your hair "just right" and sends you off expecting you to stay like that all day. Typically, this was always the same day that some teacher had a complete mental lapse and we worked with paint, or markers or some other hard to remove substance. The cafeteria ladies were often in on the conspiracy as well; serving Oreo cookies at lunch with nary a toothbrush in sight.
Yeah, well...co-op had "school picture day" several weeks ago. Since my girls were with the photographer for less than 2 minutes total, I didn't expect much truthfully. I did however know that there were no markers, paint or Oreo crumbs present anywhere on their little faces. What I failed to take into consideration is that my kids are very photogenic...and that the photographer is pretty dang good.
Next thing you know, I've spent WAY too much money on photos. So I'll share them here, and yes I did purchase the CD with copyright release included.
If you would like to get some serious inspiration for hands on activities and learning, check out this weeks Homeschool Showcase.
Kris at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers does an AWESOME job of putting this blog carnival together every couple of weeks. Be sure to check it out, and think about participating in the next Homeschool Showcase. Submission deadlines for the next issue is April 4 at 4pm.
For more info on how to participate click on the button on my sidebar.
As part of the Homeschool Crew, I received a free copy of History Odyssey Ancients, Level 1 from Pandia Press to review. Level 1 is written mainly for students in the 1st through 4th grade levels. History Odyssey brings to life the story of mankind through a comprehensive study of the literature, historical events, and geography of the time period.
This particular time frame in history does not fit into our current history study, so we took a break from our normal curriculum and focused on the Ancient Egyptians section of this study. I didn't purchase all the associated products for this study, but here is a list of the books that we used:
Life in Ancient Egypt; by William Crouch
Into the Mummy's Tomb; by Nicholas Reeves
Look Find & Learn World History; by Linda Williams Aber
Color & Learn Ancient Egypt; by Edupress
We also used resources found at Homeschool Share as well.
History Odyssey Ancients does an excellent job of laying out the step by step instructions for completing a thorough study. Each lesson is broken down into four sections, prep, the "main lesson", additional activities and a book list. This product is meant to be used for an entire year, you do need additional resources to be able to complete the study properly. To see the required book and supply list, click here.
To read about more about our studies on ancient Egypt, see my post of Ancient Egypt Week 1 and Ancient Egypt Week 2. I do realize that two weeks in now way covers the vast amount of information presented, however that is the amount of time I was able to allot for this review.
If you are interested in purchasing e-books, you can do so by visiting the Pandia Press site ($28.95). If you would like to purchase printed copies, there are various vendors who carry these units, including Classical Home Education ($31.00) and Rainbow Resources.($24.95).
To read more reviews of this product by other Crew members, click here.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
Why, you ask, do I say spring break-ish? Well first of all, I typically don't take a spring break however, I'm pretty certain it is supposed to mean "take some time off". Sounds good in theory, doesn't it?
Monday I drove a family member to a nearby town to have surgery, then spent the rest of the day waiting for her to be released into my care for the remaining week. Finally collected the patient, drove back home got her fed, comfy and settled and then took Lindsey to ballet while our patient slept. Olivia stayed home from her extra ballet practice because a stomach bug hit her over the weekend and she wasn't able to get too far away from the bathroom. Then back home to fix dinner, tend to the patient and work on reviews.
Tuesday morning I had to go into work early, because 1) I didn't work Monday and I needed to make up time; 2) payroll needed to be done and 3) I have to leave early on Thursday for another conflict of schedule. Have I mentioned that working 12 hours a week really isn't working into my schedule very well? Back home to take care of my patient and feed the family. Then we started and completed Olivia's end of year assessment test and got it mailed back out for scoring. Sometime right after dinner Olivia's "condition" kicked up a couple of notches and it was a LONG night. Finally went to bed a little after midnight, only to get up at 3am to check on Olivia and find her with a temperature that was reading over 104. Lots of prayer, Motrin and a tepid bath and she was down to 102.5. Sometime after 5am I finally got back to bed.
Wednesday morning Olivia's temperature and "condition" had subsided and she's been fine ever since. I had to drive to the next town over to the Abeka display to order the products I need from them for the upcoming year. Shipping is free when you order at the display, so I needed to take advantage of that. While I was out I also hit the teacher supply store to pick up a few needed items, then swung by the local book fair. Then home to feed the family, care for the patient, do some laundry and get Lindsey off to Awana. Lindsey had show and tell and it had to be green. I refused to make a shamrock, because really everyone is doing that right? So I made homemade green play-doh. Here's the recipe:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbsp. oil
1 Tbsp. cream of tartar
food coloring
Mix all ingredients together in pot. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan and forms a blob.
Thursday was work, I went in early. I had to leave at noon, because activity day starts at 1:30 and I had to have enough time to get home eat and get to the facility and get the class set up by 1:15. This month I taught on the Navajo. Click here to read about it and check out the crafts we did. Then at 5:45pm Olivia had her first baseball practice for this season. In the next two weeks we have five practices and 3 scrimmage games.
Friday was co-op all day; followed by ballet.; followed by laundry and lesson plans for the upcoming week. My patient had her follow up appointment, and was able to return to her own home. So our family "rehab center" has graduated 2 people in the last 3 months.
So the only "break" I got was we didn't do any schoolwork at all. I'm quite certain this is NOT how spring break is supposed to go. It's 9pm, and I'm exhausted and my head feels as though it may split in half at any given moment. Break....yeah, right!
Head over to the Weekly Wrap Up to see how successful the rest of the world was, or was not.
Olivia was very excited when we received our free review copy of "What Am I? A Collection of Short Stories" from All About Reading. As a homeschooling Mom, I was excited to see her rush off to read it before I had a chance to look at it!
Olivia and Lindsey loved the stories, and the drawings. I could hear them giggling out loud as Olivia read the book to Lindsey. I love the fact that the book is hardback, and just the right size for children's small hands. Each two page spread has wonderful pencil drawings that go wonderfully with each story.
Here is artwork from the story "Matt the Musk Ox".
This is the beginning page for "Broken Robot".
"Skunk Hotel" was one of Olivia's favorite stories. There were lots of discussions about the possibility of the aroma in the particular hotel. I believe "eeeeeww GROSS" was mentioned often!
Lindsey like the "Pine Tree Pet Shop" story. Although the snakes "just freak me out Mom".
I love this reader! For those of you who are using All About Spelling Level 2, you'll be glad to know that "What Am I?" follows the same sequence and word lists as Level 2, Steps 1-14
This reader will be available on the All About Reading website on April 1. The cost will be $19.95. To read the opinions of other Crew members, click here.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
I'm teaching a Native American class for our monthly activity day group. Each month I mention it during a Weekly Wrap Up, but I've yet to document the class. I finally thought ahead enough this month to do take the camera (although I failed to take good photos of the FINISHED projects). Each child has picked their own Native American name, and those will be used here.
I'd love to take credit for all this creativity, but I can't. I'm using the Evan-Moor Native American History Pockets as the basis for the class, so all of the credit goes to the folks at Evan-Moor. Below is an example of the cover of the history pocket. This particular one is provided courtesy of "Roaring Bear".
We made faux silver and turquoise necklaces. I colored pasta for the turquoise. To color the pasta place 2 tablespoons of rubbing alcohol in a ziploc baggie. Mix in food coloring until you reach the desired shade is achieved (we were trying to make turquoise, but didn't turn out as I'd planned). Pour in the pasta and mix well, coating all pieces. Repeat steps as necessary to get the desired amount of pasta. Place pasta on a cookie sheet, wax paper or paper towels to dry for roughly 30 minutes (I did this step prior to the class).
For the medallion, I used thin cardboard, covered in aluminum foil (dull side showing), and lots of tape to secure the back. Then I used a hole punch to place holes for the twine to go through. The kids traced a design onto the foil with a dull pencil, to give the impression of metal engraving. Below is a finished necklace being modeled by our lovely "Lily White Deer". And yeah, I'm a doofus and didn't take a single photo from the front of the necklaces.
We also made cute miniature Navajo rugs. I had the kids color the designs in very bold colors; leaving lots of white along the sides. Then we used watercolor paints to add a color wash, and then finalized by gluing it onto heavy black cardstock and cutting "fringes" on the ends of each rug.
Here is a shot of the entire group. From the left we have "Roaring Bear", "Running Panther", myself, "Lily White Deer", "Girl with No Name" and "Wise Owl'. If you'll notice, on the table by "Wise Owl" is a finished necklace. Notice how rich the color is on the pasta once it dried. Unfortunately, our friend "Swift Hawk" was not in class on the day I finally remembered the camera.
Children's Bible Hour Ministries sent me four wonderful books to review as part of the TOS Crew. There was a great amount of squealing as the box was opened and the first thing the girls saw was the cover for Race with Midnight (pictured below). Everything in our world came to a screeching halt as we all sat down to read all four books back to back!
In Race with Midnight, Becky spends spring break on her cousin Sarah's horse farm in Montana. Taking horse rides amidst the beautiful mountains and valleys, Becky tries to share her faith with Sarah as she talks about God's creation. Will Sarah listen?
Adam and his new friend Zack decide to build a tree fort one warm summer day. After zooming down a hill and falling into a muddy pond, Zack asks Adam about going to church and salvation. Will Adam be able to explain his faith to Zack? Find out in You Can't Come In.
Batter up! When Brad accidentally breaks the ice cream shop’s sign, the owner forgives Brad. But when his best friend Doug ruins Brad’s favorite baseball cap, will he be able to forgive Doug? Seventy Times Seven tackles unforgiveness head-on.
When Thomás moves away from his neighborhood and into a mobile home in his grandparents’ backyard, he misses his friends. There’s nothing to do around the apple orchard with no friends, his dad works a lot, and his little brother was hurt in an accident. All his sister wants to do is play with her dolls. Will Thomás be able to rely on God to get through the difficult times? Learn how to Brave the Storm!
Each of these four books are wonderfully written! Subjects of sharing Jesus with your friends, how to be born again, forgiveness and trusting God are written in a way that children can understand. The artwork in all four books is beautiful as well. The last page of each book walks the reader step by step in receiving Jesus as your Savior!
Another HUGE bonus is that each book comes with a CD of the story being read by Uncle Charlie VanderMeer. These are awesome to listen to in the car while out running errands around town!
Each book is a trim 10x8.5 and they sell for $10 each. Click on each book title above for ordering information.
To read the reviews of other Crew members, click here.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
The Schoolhouse Expo is coming in May! Pre-register now and save $5!
As homeschool teachers what do you need to learn? More about teaching multiple grades? All about different homeschool methods? Transcripts? Could you use some help with reading, language arts, math, and more? Are you intimidated by the idea of teaching middle school and high school?those dreaded, advanced courses? Would some encouraging words and motivational Scripture help you on your way?
Get answers when you attend The Schoolhouse Expo, an 3-day, online conference, presented by The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine and The Old Schoolhouse® Speakers Bureau.
Pre-register today for only $19.99 through March 31.
You do not want to miss this unbelievable, virtual homeschool convention! PLUS, you'll receive over $300 in free gifts when you register. Get the details and preregister here .
