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Our Homeschool Nick - Age 9, 4th Grade
- Ray's Primary Arithmetic
- McGuffey's Second Reader
- All About Spelling Level 3
- Copywork
- Prima Latina I (Latin)
- Typing Instructor for Kids
James - Age 6, Kindergarten
- Ray's New Primary Arithmetic
- McGuffey's Primer
- Peterson Directed Handwriting
- All About Spelling Level 1
- Rime to Read (Phonics Readers)
- Explode the Code 1 1/2 (phonics)
Together we do:
- Johannes Vermeer Picture Study
- Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers by John Burroughs
- Indoor Science Experiments and Outdoor Nature Study
- Stories of the Civil War
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Awards I Have Received From Friends
Thank you,
Shauna and Vickie!
Thank you, Karen!
Thank you, Rita!
Thank you,
Coconut Palm Designs!
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I have some exciting news! My husband and I are beginning a new business venture called A Homemade Heritage. We’ll be visiting fairs and festivals in West Virginia to sell handmade items like -
- Candles
- Old-fashioned lye soap
- Glycerin soap
- Laundry soap kits
- Bath crystals
- Crocheted potholders and dishcloths
- Crocheted hair scrunchies
Our whole family has been working together to make the different items, and we’re having lots of fun doing it. Even little Robert helps to put the finished soap into boxes. 
Here is a photo of the super cute Garden Friends glycerin soap that we made.
I wish the picture were better, but I had to take it with my cell phone. I think some little boy walked off with my digital camera. Here’s another one of a box full of soap ready to go to our first fair.
I’m expecting a shipment of candle-making supplies tomorrow and will be spending time making up candles later this week. Visit our new website if you have time – A Homemade Heritage (It’s currently under construction, but I hope it looks nice by this time next week.)
My family likes to travel. In the past year, we’ve been to Washington, D.C., the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, Pipestem Resort State Park in West Virginia, and Jeffersonville, IN/Louisville, KY – along with a few day trips nearby.
As all parents know, traveling long distances with kids can be more of a nightmare than a dream vacation. I was delighted to receive a free copy of Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others for a TOS Crew review. This ebook details an inspired way to make car trips more fun for everyone involved. The premise of the book is to use these “travel kits” to bless other families, but I used them to bless my own family.
Travel Kits arrived about three weeks before we planned to leave for Jeffersonville, IN, about six hours’ drive away. Perfect timing!
The idea is rather simple at its core – small, inexpensive gifts are gathered with individual family members in mind. Each gift or prize is wrapped in wrapping paper, comic newsprint, or tissue paper. All the gifts can then be packed into a bag or box that will fit easily in the car.
At various intervals during the trip, family members are allowed to open gifts – they should be spaced so that they’ll last the whole trip and just far enough apart to stave off the, “I’m bored! When will we be there?” cries.
How did it work for us? Wonderfully!
Jon and I used some leftover wrapping paper to wrap up a number of items, some of which I had bought at K-Mart the day before we left for our trip.
- Pop Tarts
- Hot Wheels (one car for each boy)
- word search for Nick
- doorknob hanger to color for James
- candy bars
- granola bars
I bought some chips too, but they were too big for us to wrap. (We were running low on tape.) I packed everything into my two Homeschooling with Heart tote bags (one blue, one pink) and put them in the front of the van.
We used different methods to decide when it was time for another prize. The first prizes got handed out when we passed the first toll booth. (We have to go through three toll booths on the interstate north of our house.)
The boys were all very excited, but you should have seen the look on little Robert’s face. His eyes got kind of wide and he looked at me like, “Really? I get a present?” So cute!
I made sure to give the boys the toy cars I had gotten them for these first prizes. I was pleasantly surprised by how long they played with them.
During the rest of the trip, we used other milestones:
- When we crossed the state line into Kentucky, everyone got a prize. (I got Reece’s Pieces, yum!)
- The first person to see a cow got to pick a prize from the bag.
- First person to see a tractor, etc.
- When we changed over to a new interstate, prizes were passed out again.
Some of the prize giving resulted in lots of laughter. In Kentucky, we told the kids that the first person to see a cow would get to pick a prize. Then we entered the only stretch of Kentucky interstate where there aren’t any cows! James declared that there weren’t any cows anywhere in the whole world.
Jon finally said that he saw a cow, but no one else saw it so we didn’t give him a prize. (Ha!) I then changed the rules to “first person to see a cow, horse, or tractor.” James spotted a cow (miracle of miracles!) shortly after that, and we were all trying to help Robert see a horse. That left Nick to spot a tractor.
We passed a tractor in a hay field, but Nick remained silent. A mile later, we passed a red tractor with a hay rake behind it. Still no word from Nick. A few minutes later, Nick said, “There aren’t any tractors around here!”
We laughed and told him that we’d already seen two tractors, so he began staring out the windows harder than ever. Just a few moments later, we passed a very big green tractor driving down a road that ran parallel to the interstate. It couldn’t have been more than 50 feet from us.
Still nothing from Nick.
I looked at Jon. Jon looked at me. I burst out laughing, and Nick said in an incredulous voice, “What? Was there a tractor?”
I laughed so hard, I almost wrecked the car. A highway patrolmen happened to pass me on the left right then, but I still couldn’t stop laughing. (Fortunately, I retained enough control that he continued on his way.)
Nick did see a tractor soon after that, so he got his prize.
As we came into Lexington, KY, (‘horse capital of the world’), we started seeing horses. Each of us kept encouraging Robert to say horse so that we could give him a prize. Typical two-year-old, though, he wouldn’t say anything that we asked him to. I gave him a prize anyway.
That was Saturday. On our return trip on Tuesday, we had been driving about two hours or so when Robert suddenly shouted, “Horse! Mommy, horse!” and sure enough there was a horse in a field by the interstate.
I said, “Good job, Robert, it is a horse!”
He looked right at me and said, “Prize?”
I am very glad to have read Travel Kits and been able to put its ideas into practice. It definitely made our six hour drives much easier and more fun.
Travel Kits contains many ideas for the types of prizes to select, how to present them, when to give them out, and more. Much more than I could possibly have mentioned here! I highly recommend this book for any family who travels.
Travel Kits is available in e-book format from The Old Schoolhouse Store for $12.45.
Thank you to The Old Schoolhouse and the TOS Crew for sponsoring this review.
I recently had the opportunity to use a complimentary copy of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Travel the World. As you may expect from the title, this ebook is a stand alone study on geography, but it’s also the June 2010 Module to accompany the Schoolhouse Planner. (You don’t have to own the planner to use Travel the World, though.)
I’ve always loved geography, and we have lots of maps and atlases around the house so the boys have developed an enjoyment for examining them and talking about the places they find as well. Travel the World is full of colorful, clearly labeled maps that both children and adults can enjoy. The ebook starts out by explaining simply the basic features of the earth – equator, eastern and western hemispheres, seven continents, five oceans, etc.
Along with the informational pages, Travel the World contains quiz pages and fun things like a word search and a rebus puzzle. Many printable pages allow kids to color the world and each continent, label them, and even create their own “My Travel Book” as a lapbooking project.
For older students, the book contains a High School Expansion section with definitions of more technical terms and instructions for further study – including writing a magazine article and studying the “Father of Oceanography.”
The ebook also includes numerous links to free resources on the internet – games, informational sites, biographies, and even public domain books. Though it naturally focuses on geography, Travel the World pulls in a little history, science, and language arts to round out this mini unit study. I think it would make a fun and educational lesson for just about any family.
One thing that surprised me about Travel the World is that the continent “down under” is called Australia … and Australia is the only country mentioned. This is exactly the kind of misinformation I received during my years in public school, and I was surprised to see a homeschooling resource ignore the 13 other countries in that continent. The continent is more appropriately called Oceania or “Australia & Oceania.” It includes 14 countries, the majority of which are small groups of islands. The largest countries are Australia, of course, and New Zealand. Only Australia appears on the map shown in Travel the World.
Travel the World is available from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine for $7.95.
It’s been one of those interesting days where a number of things have gone wrong (according to my human thinking). Three main things, really: 1) My computer starting messing up – It won’t power down all the way, wouldn’t let me access the programs on the start menu, and the screen kept flickering. 2) I needed to fax some registration forms to meet an ‘early bird’ discount deadline but couldn’t get them to fax for some reason. 3) My legs have itchy red bumps that slightly resemble mosquito bites all over them, and the itching has been driving me crazy.
Now that the day is nearly over, I have the three problems mostly solved …
Problem 3) One of Jon’s clients came by to pay today. (I love when she comes over, by the way.) She mentioned seeing poison oak or something near my deck. I commented, “Maybe that’s why my legs are itching.” I later looked up poison ivy on the internet. (Poison oak, it turns out, looks like oak leaves and the plant near my deck definitely does not.) I read through the symptoms and looked at some photos – sure enough! that must be my problem. I have never had poison ivy at all before and had always assumed that I wasn’t allergic to it.
Problem 2) After a suggestion from my dear husband, I checked the phone cord on my fax machine. Uh, it wasn’t even plugged up. Problem solved. Thanks, Jon!
Problem 1) So far I have uninstalled the two Firefox add-ons that I installed yesterday (and am very much missing my Colorful Tabs), uninstalled every program except the absolutely essential from my hard drive, run two different anti-spyware/adware programs, run an antivirus program, and run CC Cleaner.
The anti-spyware programs removed almost 300 malicious files, whew! My computer problems persisted, however. CC Cleaner seems to have done the trick – I can now access programs on the start menu, and that flickering stopped. I haven’t yet tried to shut it down, though, so I’m not 100% certain.
I deleted probably half the total files that were on here, which means that my current attempt to defrag the drive is taking a long time. Once that is finished (hopefully this evening!), I’ll try to shut things down. Hopefully it will all be back to normal tomorrow.
I’ll still be itching, but at least I know why now.
Here is a song I enjoy singing at church …
Abraham’s Son, Chosen One, Zion’s cornerstone
Passover Lamb, Son of man, seated upon Your throne
Hail to the King, Hail to the King,
Hail to the King of kings
Oh Promised Seed, beneath Your feet,
Sin and death shall fall.
Now through us tread the serpent’s head
’til You are all in all.
Hail to the King, Hail to the King,
Hail to the King of kings
The world has yet to see your glory
But you’ll be revealed in power
And you will reign with the bride ordained
For your consummating hour
I couldn’t find an audio version of it to share with you here. The melody is lovely and somewhat slow, making it a great heart realm worship song. If you have a song to share this week, post your link below. Blessed Sunday!
Preschool is a fun time – young children are usually so eager to learn, and lessons will them can be full of music, storybooks, and enjoyment. I recently had the opportunity to use an Ideal Curriculum Monthly Kit for preschool to review.
The kit is in digital format and contains several files in various formats. One file is titled “Read This First.pdf.” I actually started to open “Overview of Monthly Kits.pdf” instead, but I decided to actually follow directions. The file explained the purpose behind Ideal Curriculum kits, saying that they “are designed to thoroughly cover early academic concepts in the areas of literacy, oral language, math, calendar, science, and social studies” with “activities and lessons … based on music, play, art, and movement.” Sounds pretty good, I thought!
The various files included in the curriculum are clearly organized in an easy-to-understand manner. There are “Month 1 Print Files” that need to be printed for use with specific lessons. Other files are designed to be viewed on the computer without being printed, and the curriculum also includes mp3 audio files related to the lessons.
Three teacher’s manuals cover literacy, science, and math/calendar in combination. Instructions are given in the manuals to help a parent decide what level of work the child should be doing and to guide the parent in scheduling lessons throughout the week, whether the parent/teacher prefers formal or more casual lesson time.
One thing I appreciate about Ideal Curriculum’s approach is that they freely admit that all children are individuals and learn in their own unique ways. They also admit that all teachers are individuals who need to teach in their own ways. With that in mind, they advise parents to use the curriculum at a pace that is comfortable, yet challenging, to the individual child. I never like feeling pressured on boxed-in by a curriculum, and Ideal’s Monthly Kids are definitely pressure-free.
Some of the lessons use a song to introduce and reinforce a concept. For example, the Letter Lines Song teaches about vertical, horizontal, curved, and diagonal lines. The parent and child both move their bodies to mimic each type of line as it is sung about, making this type of lesson very effective for both auditory and kinesthetic learners. (And visual learners, too, since the child would see the parent demonstrating each line type.) All of the Monthly Kit lessons are written in a way to appeal to all learning channels.
In some ways, Ideal Curriculum’s Monthly Kit reminds me of lessons designed for large groups like day cares or preschool classes. If you can imagine a teacher marching around the room, playing a tambourine while a line of preschoolers follow along behind – that’s the picture I got from reading many of the lessons.
At the same time, though, the lessons can be easily adapted to use with just one child in a homeschool setting. I did find them difficult to use in my own home on a regular basis for a couple reasons. James is really beyond the stage of learning that this particular kit focuses on, and Robert is too young. Also because I’m teaching multiple ages. With a 9-year-old, 5-year-old, and 2-year-old (in a 1200 sq.ft. house), marching around and shaping myself into lines or pretending to be animals just doesn’t work well for me.
I understand that other moms may love that type of exuberant learning activity, and I think Ideal Curriculum will make a great fit for them. The “Overview of Monthly Kits” that I mentioned early lists all nine Monthly Kits from Ideal Curriculum and details the topics covered in each one. As their titles suggest, each kit is intended to last for one month, but a parent/teacher’s preferred teaching schedule may make a kit last longer than this.
Each Monthly Kit is available directly from Ideal Curriclum – in print for $55 or in a downloadable format for $30. I received a complimentary download of Month 1 for this review. Discounts are given if you purchase a three- or nine-month package.
You may sign up with Ideal Curriculum to receive a free week from the curriculum for free.
Thank you to Ideal Curriculum and The Old Schoolhouse Crew for sponsoring this review.
The second voyage of The Old Schoolhouse Crew has officially come to an end. I am very blessed to have been a part of it. I have gotten to know several new friends and have grown closer to some of the Crew Mates I met during the first voyage.
As I did last year, I’d like to list all of the products I reviewed this year for the Crew. During the 2009-10 voyage, I reviewed a total of 50 products ranging from Latin to HTML design.
- Bible
- Complete Curriculum
- Computers & Technology
- Foreign Language
- Geography
- History & Government
- Household
- Language Arts
- Literature & Other Books
- Mathematics
- Miscellaneous Resources
- Music
- Science & Health
- Toys & Games
I posted my top ten favorites here. I’m happy to report that I’ll be sailing with the Crew on its third voyage as well, and I’m very excited that my sister will be joining the new Crew as well. Her blog is called Living for Jesus!
Bon voyage, Maties!
 Last year, I posted my Top 10 Most Used Crew Review Items from the 2008-09 year. I’d like to carry on that tradition this year with a new list taken from the items I reviewed during the Crew’s second voyage!
Of the 50 items I reviewed for the Crew this past year, these are my ten favorites. We will continue using each one in some form or fashion for many years. Some of them filled a need in my children’s studies that I deeply appreciate, and one of them revolutionized our homeschool!
I’ve always wanted my children to learn at least one foreign language, preferably more than one. Since I took both French and Spanish in school, I figured these would be the languages we would focus our studies on. They would be the most likely languages to actually be used, after all. After being introduced to Latin studies a little over a year ago, I can see the value of having a strong grasp of the old language for many reasons – historical study, medical terminology, scientific and botanical nomenclature.
I was given the opportunity to check out Level I of The Great Latin Adventure (GLA), a comprehensive foreign language curriculum written by Katharine Birkett. Classical Legacy Press, the publishers of GLA, sent me a complimentary copy of the Level I teacher’s manual and student book.
To say that The Great Latin Adventure is comprehensive is an understatement. The teacher’s manual is over 450 pages long and contains 12 chapters in three units, an introduction, a “Master Chapter Plan,” and a glossary. I would be remiss if I didn’t confess that I found the sheer size of the teacher’s manual to be overwhelming.
The introduction and Master Chapter Plan, which the author recommends reading before beginning to teach any of the lessons, make up almost 30 pages. I usually prefer a curriculum that I can “jump into” right away instead of one that I have to study for several days before I can teach it to my children. However, I do know from past experience that curricula which require me to thoroughly educate myself before beginning are sometimes very, very effective.
Chapter 1 of The Great Latin Adventure Level I covers Latin pronunciation. The author advocates ‘classical pronunciation’ as opposed to ‘ecclesiastical.’ Even after reading most of the explanation, I still found myself confused about the two types of pronunciation and how they differ. (Fortunately, no Romans will be sailing over from the old country to correct our pronunciation.)
The chapters then move into First Vocabulary Words, First Conjugation, and so on. A full chapter of review is built into the material periodically. Students complete study sheets, translation worksheets, grammar lessons, and quizzes, along with other reinforcement exercises. Teaching Notes are frequently included to guide the parent in teaching the lesson to the student.
Overall, I feel that The Great Latin Adventure is a very thorough and well laid out program. The parent/teacher is thoroughly instructed in how to instruct the student, leaving virtually no room for confusion or difficulty teaching the lessons.
Level I is written for beginning Latin students in grades 4, 5, or 6 and is available directly from Classical Legacy Press. Both the teacher’s manual and student book are available in binders or in ‘loose leaf’ format. The Level I Teacher’s Manual costs $40/bound or $30/loose, while the Student Book is $22/bound or $15/loose. You may view sample pages of The Great Latin Adventure here.
Thank you to Classical Legacy Press and The Old Schoolhouse Crew for sponsoring this review.
My first ‘run-in’ with Circle C Adventures was last winter when some of my homeschooling friends posted about the book series on Facebook. The Circle C Adventures series, by Susan K. Marlow, revolves around Andrea Carter – a girl who is more tomboy than little lady – and is set in late 1800s California. Because the main character is a girl, I figured the books would appeal more to girls than boys … so I dismissed them for my house o’ boys.
Recently, though, Kregel Publications sent me a complimentary copy of Andrea Carter and the Trouble with Treasure for review. Nick read it first, as he does any book that comes into the house, but he didn’t make any comment about what he’d read. A few weeks later, I picked it up for myself and was hooked by the first chapter.
The Trouble with Treasure starts out easily enough with the characters’ being introduced, but by chapter two, Andrea Carter has been arrested and put in jail – by chapter five, Andrea’s friend has been injured by a horse – chapter eight is full of gun shots – in chapter ten, Andrea saves her brothers life – and chapter fourteen reveals a twist that I was not expecting!
In short, the book is full of action and excitement. Thought it’s written with a juvenile audience in mind, I found book 5 of the Circle C Adventures series to be a real page-turner. At the end of every chapter, I found myself wanting to keep reading, to find out what happened next. I definitely think it’s a book boys and girls both would enjoy.
I hope to get other books from the series for my family. Book 6 – Andrea Carter and the Price of Truth – will be released later this summer. Andrea Carter and the Trouble with Treasure is available directly from Kregel Publications for $7.99.
Thank you to Kregel Publications and The Old Schoolhouse Crew for sponsoring this review.
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