These Are A Few of Our Favorite Things

We are starting to wind down school for the season...how about you?

Our oldest is headed home for a week from college so we will take all of next week off to just spend time as a family, then we will hit the books for three more weeks in December before we take a Christmas break for a few weeks- or three! ;)  This crew needs a break, and honestly, so does this momma.

We have been super busy since we moved here and it is time to slow down and enjoy the holidays and some quiet family time.  It is also time for me to reevaluate our school schedule and what has been working for us and what has not.  Because I had the awesome opportunity to review for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine this past year, much of what we do comes by way of reviews.  Not surprisingly, you will find most of our favorites there!  (Did I mention I love reviewing?)

That being said, here are a few of our favorite things!

Homeschool Spanish Academy- I will just tell you that I was VERY nervous about starting this one.  The idea of Skyping with someone in another country took me way out of my comfort zone.  The idea of keeping an appointment each week did as well.  haha  WE LOVE IT and it is the highlight of our week now.  After our review period was over, we signed up again, and again, and have no plans to quit anytime soon.  It certainly eats a little more from our monthly homeschool budget, but it is worth every penny.  CJ is learning so much!  We love the teachers and cannot recommend this program enough.


Flip Flop Spanish- Yes, another Spanish product and another review item.  And yes, we use both! I loved this the minute it arrived at our door.  It comes with everything you need to pop into a 3 ringed notebook and you are off.  Because my oldest son is an auditory learner, he loves the CDs and is doing very well with this program.  Plus, because it can be used with multiple ages together, it is convenient to do with both boys.  After lunch each day we work for about thirty minutes- a little friendly competition to see who can remember the most words or who can make the best sentences is a plus!





ABeCeDarian- When we reviewed this reading program, we used the Level A and really enjoyed it.  At the time I did not feel my then 5 year old was ready to tackle the second book.  Now that he is six and his reading has taken off we have begun book B and I am reminded of why we liked the program so much.  It has a great combination of writing, listening and reciting, and tactile activities to keep my spirited child on task.  Enough said!

Notgrass- America the Beautiful-  We were doing another History with my 6th grader we have used for years, so our plan was to do this just for the eight week review period.  Oh well, plans change, right?  We love this curriculum- for its beautiful pictures, well written chapters, and numerous activities that can be added to it.  If you want, you can use the suggested activities to incorporate writing, bible, literature and geography.  My son liked it so much he asked to abandon the old stuff and keep using this, so we have.  Looking forward to using their Uncle Sam curriculum next year.

Apologia- Need I say more?  They have our hearts with Science AND Bible!  For science we are using the Exploring Creation Series.  Actually, two separate levels- Their newest Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics and Exploring Creation with Zoology 3- Land Animals.  Both boys enjoy the reading (the 6th grader does his alone) and they LOVE the experiments.  As I have shared with you before, experiments are NOT my thing, but I learning to be bold and try new things.  If you haven't read the links to either book, I encourage you to- lots of fun experiment pictures are included.

As for their Bible curriculum- after reviewing the Who AM I? series I fell in love with it.  I  bought the two others we did not have and are do are currently going through Who Am I? And What Am I Doing Here? with my 6th grader.  We plan to finish the two remaining books in consecutive years.

Bible Study for All Ages-  This is also a program I was not sure we would stick with, and even stopped using it for about two weeks after our review period ended.  Then I saw a difference in my 6 years old's behavior throughout the day and decided to try a little experiment.  We started each morning with this bible curriculum and things improved.  hmmmm.  I am not THAT slow of a learner!  I ordered the next two sets of worksheets and we begin each morning studying the word of God.  Oh what a diffeerence it makes when we start out day focused on God!

Of course, we do study other subjects, and have been blessed with many other books and fun products,  but- these are a few of our favorite things!

Want to see some from others?


Each year the TOS Review Crew votes for our favorite products we have had the privileged of reviewing. These Blue Ribbon Award winners are then announced and today is the day!  I would encourage you to check out the winners and see what other people are recommending.  I was excited to see that a few of my favorites won!

Oh, and did you hear the news?  I was accepted back onto Crew for 2014!  I am so excited to once again be a part of this amazing blogging and reviewing team and cannot wait to share new products with you starting in January!

Blessings,

Are you a curriculum junkie?

Hi, my name is Michele, and I AM a curriculum junkie.  Seriously!  We have boxes in our garage labeled for each year, K-12th grade.  In each box are things I hold near and dear in our schooling journey.  Books, workbooks, papers, schedules.  Some have been around since I started this journey 15 years ago.  Others are brand new.  Each are loved for different reasons and all I could spend days telling you about- the good and the bad!  That is really the reason this blog started.  Curriculum.  I saw a friend getting to review all kinds of curriculum and I was hooked.  For the past year and a half I have had the wonderful opportunity to review curriculum and other family friendly products for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.  Each month I have tons of options to choose from!  They arrive at my door and we dive in for 6-8 weeks, exploring the good and the bad.  Then I get to come back here and share what I think with you.  I pray continually that people are blessed and I wish that I had had someone "older and wiser" (that is funny!) to help guide me through the enormous amount of stuff out there.  

As my year is winding down (4 more reviews left this year!), TOS is gearing up for a new Crew year to begin in January 2014!  If you are a home school blogger and curriculum junkie and think you would enjoy writing reviews, then you might be perfect for the Crew!

The Schoolhouse Review Crew will be taking applications for the 2014 Review year from October 24 - November 8

Some requirements for being a part of the Crew include the following:

*First of all you must be a homeschool mom or dad. You don’t have to homeschool all of your children, but you must homeschool at least one.

*You must be willing to use the review products for about six weeks in your homeschool, before writing your review. Review periods have deadlines and requirements for the reviews. You must be willing to follow these requirements. No, that doesn’t mean you must write a positive review. But it does mean that there are certain elements that are required. And the deadlines are firm. If you are often late for deadlines, the Crew is probably not for you.

*You must have a blog on which to publish your reviews, and be sure you have an active blog with a following. By active blog, I mean that you should be blogging regularly, at least weekly, about your family and homeschool (in addition to your reviews). Your blog should have followers —  RSS feed or email subscribers, as well as in social media. The Crew does not accept brand new bloggers who just set up their blogs for the purposes of applying to the team.

*Are you using social media to promote your blog? Activity on at least one social media platform is a requirement to serve on the Crew. Which one is up  to you — Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google Plus are the options. You will need to be willing to promote your reviews there and post a widget or plug-in publicly on your blog, indicating how many followers you have in social media.

*You must be willing to check into the Crew's Review Management forum. This is where information is disseminated to the team. The leadership does everything possible to make things easy for us, outside of writing the actual review, but you need to be willing to participate by checking in almost daily.

*Sample reviews are helpful. If you’ve never written a review on your blog, go ahead and write one for curriculum you are currently using in your homeschool. This will help the leaders see how you approach writing reviews.

Why should you want to be a part of the TOS Crew?

Our Crew of over 250 review bloggers has been serving the homeschool community for more than 5 years. As a respected review team, we take this job very seriously and will insist you do as well. The leadership provides an incredible amount of assistance to help us be the best bloggers, homeschool parents, and of course, reviewers we can be. They provide a mentoring program for new members, a social media networking group, many blog and social media tutorials, and lots of incredible opportunities for our team, including blog carnivals, the opportunity to guest post on the Crew blog, and the blessing of some incredible friendships.

How can you apply?

After making sure you meet all the requirements, if you believe you would to an asset to the Schoolhouse Review Crew and wish to join us, please click over to the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog to apply.

Hard work?  Yes!  But oh, so worth it!  I have been blessed a million times over by this opportunity and know you will be too!  My boxes are now a little more full, my heart a little more blessed, and my friends a little more spaced around the globe.  Want to join me, fellow curriculum junkie?

Blessings, 

Schoolhouse Review- Reading Street

Pearson Publishing has been providing quality materials for schools for a while now.  They have now joined the ranks of homeschooling families and offering homeschool bundles of their products as well.  Take a few minutes to check out their website!  One of the things I loved about their website was a section called Resources.  Under that tab you will find a map link for each state's homeschool requirement, a must for this military moving family or just someone new to homeschooling.

Pearson makes it easy for you to inspire a joy of learning by tailoring homeschool programs to fit your child’s unique learning style.  This built-in flexibility lets you set the schedule and the pace that works for you and your child.  You can rest assured that all the fundamentals for success are included because our lessons are created by experts and scientifically developed and tested.  Plus, our award-winning homeschool curriculum is at an affordable price for your family. 

We invite you to explore the various homeschool programs we offer, to see how Pearson can help you build a rich foundation of learning in your home.- from Pearson's website

With our new CREW year beginning, our first vendor to review was Pearson!  Being the book lovers that we are, we were excited to be chosen to review their Scott Foresman Reading Street for 5th graders.  The homeschool bundle that we received included:

Student Edition Package

Teacher Resource DVD-ROM

Guide on the Side

ExamView Assessment Suite CD

The bundle can be purchased here for $124.99.

Let me tell you a little about each product.

The Student Edition Package is really two hardback books.  They are beautiful!  Think back to your school days.  Each book is divided into themed units and each unit broken down into 6 weeks.  Each week features a type of reading; in our case:

Week 1- Novel

Week 2- Tall Tales

Week 3- Novel

Week 4- Biography

week 5- Expository Text

Week 6- Reader's and Writer's Notebook.

At first glance, there is a lot to take in!  The thing I had to constantly remind myself was that under one cover were four subjects- grammar, literature, writing and spelling.

That takes us to the Teacher Resource DVD.  On it you will find any materials you will need to teach each unit, and then some!   From worksheets, to vocabulary flash cards, to lesson plan charts, Pearson has you covered.  This is a well organized and easy to navigate program. My only complaint- worksheet overkill.  I quickly found that we had to pick and choose the ones we wanted to use, hard for some of us to do, or it would completely overwhelm my child.

The Guide on the Side is basically a teacher's handbook full of instructional how to's.  It is the one component I quickly perused, set aside and did not pick up again.

ExamView CD is exactly that.  Test, tests, and more tests.  Again, well organized and easy to use.

So would I buy it?  That is a hard one for me.  I really love the way these books look and the stories in them are fantastic, but it does concern me that a child at this age needs to read a little more- a novel, not just an excerpt.  On the other hand, my son loved the reading. The worksheets, not so much.  A page on a subject was fine, but after that it seemed like busy work to us both.  One thing I would add though- if you are new to homeschooling, or if your child has come from public school, this is a great value for the money and probably much more of what your child is use to.  It may lead to an easier transition into homeschooling.

Disclaimer- I received the Reading Street Homeschool Bundle in exchange for my honest review of the material.  All opinions are my own and were not influenced by the company in any way.

TOS Review- Christian Kids Explore Biology

We had the pleasure of reviewing another science curriculum, this time geared for grades 3rd-6th. Christian Kids Explore Biology by Stephanie Redmond hit our mailbox a few weeks ago and I have to say, we have devoured it. Now, we do like science in this house, but this book is easy to like even if science is not your thing. It is well laid out with large units covering Biology Basics, The Plants in God's World, Birds of the Earth, Mammals in the Wild, The Human Factor, Reptiles All Around, Insects High and Low, and Water Creatures. The units begin with a vocabulary list and materials needed for any activities suggested, a plus for this busy momma!

Each unit is then broken down into smaller sections that include the lesson, review questions and a section called Hands On Time.  This section directs you to do further research on the topics or often a fun experiment.

The lessons seemed a little short to me at first glance and I worried that there was not enough "meat" there, but with the additional activities listed I found that my son stayed engaged and learned a lot.  A bonus was that he ended up doing his own search through books we had or the Internet, guided of course, to find out more information on the things he was really interested in.  We used the appendices a lot- they contain book lists, coloring pages, reproducible notebook pages and experiment forms.  If you need any more to do, additional activities can also be found there.  Using the resources available, you could easily have a beautiful notebook at the end, if your child enjoys doing that.  If you prefer, there is a Christian Kids Explore Biology Student Activity Book (Download) currently on sale for $7.95 to make multiple prints easier.  The book itself costs $34.95 and can be purchased here.  While you are there, check out additional titles in this series.

Here's what my son had to say, "It was really fun, especially since I love animals.  My favorite section was definitely the reptile one.  After reading that section I did a lot of research on snakes!"

If you are looking for a good first year Biology course from a Christian view point, I would recommend Christian Kids Explore Biology...no evolution here!  This one is a keeper!

You can see what my fellow CREW members had to say about this product here.

The Bright Ideas Press website describes their Christian Kids Explore science titles as the following:
“This user-friendly, unabashedly Christian science curriculum includes teaching lessons, gorgeous coloring pages, hands-on time, review sheets, and an awesome supplemental book list! ”

Disclaimer- I received a copy of Christian Kids Explore Biology and the Activity Book Download in exchange for my honest review of this product. The views expressed are my own, and were not influenced by the company.