Lots of Helpers

Product Review—Circle C Stepping Stones Books

March 16, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Mr. Intellectual, the only boy in our family who reads much of anything, has really enjoyed the other Circle C books we have (most of each of the Circle C Beginnings and the Circle C Adventures series). When I had the opportunity recently to sign up for review copies of the first two books in Susan K. Marlow’s newest series, Circle C Stepping Stones, published by Kregel Publications, I knew he’d love them. I read both Andi Saddles Up and Andi Under the Big Top aloud to all the children, and the boys really enjoyed them. Mr. Sweetie badly wants me to get the rest of the books in the series. Mr. Intellectual really likes them, and so does Mr. Diligence, although I can’t get any more out of him than that! Even Mr. Imagination enjoyed them. Here he is holding them:

Book #1: Andi Saddles Up. Andi (her real name is Andrea) is nine years old now, and finally able to ride her beloved filly Taffy with a saddle! She desperately wants her very own brand-new saddle for her birthday, but there isn’t one with her pile of gifts when she arrives at the breakfast table. Not only that, but an irate neighbor shows up in the kitchen, yelling at Andi’s big brother Chad, who runs the ranch since the death of their father many years ago, about a boundary dispute. During the next few weeks, Andi faces a couple of temptations to disobey. What happens to her when she directly disobeys an order given by Chad? The results are surprising! I asked one of my boys what he didn’t like about this book. He answered that he didn’t like the yelling and arguing. We all liked the conclusion of the story, though!

Book #2: Andi Under the Big Top. A circus is coming to town! This must be the most exciting thing Andi has ever seen. All the children of the family go to town to watch the parade, and the whole family attends the afternoon show. Andi is enthralled with what she sees. Then, she talks to Henry, a young boy who is part of the circus. It turns out that there is another side to the circus, which she hadn’t seen before. Is there any way to help Henry? And what about when something very dear to Andi disappears? I appreciated the way the circus was portrayed so realistically, and not held up as something glamorous. I was slightly apprehensive about reading it to my children, since we don’t do things like going to circuses, but it turned out to be fine, in my opinion.

There is a study guide on the author’s website to go along with these books. Although we won’t be using it, it would be a great resource if you want to do a unit study based on these stories. There are also coloring pages which can be printed. I printed a set for each of the four children ages 4-7 who are living in our house right now, and they have really enjoyed them. There are six pictures for each book. They are the illustrations in the book, each one in a full-page PDF. We really enjoyed doing this review, and I’m hoping we will have the chance to review more books for this author. We also loved that Kregel Publications was willing to mail physical copies of them to us, even though we live in New Zealand!

Read my full review here.

For 60 other reviewer’s opinions on these books, click on the banner below:

Product Review—Creative Freewriting Adventure

March 15, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One of the products we have been able to try out lately in order to review for The Homeschool Review Crew is Creative Freewriting Adventure, from the Home School Adventure Co. I requested this item for review because we often have a hard time coming up with ideas for writing stories for our homeschool writing group, Dead Boring. I thought maybe this book would help with that. Well, it has—but not for everyone, as I was hoping. It was a bit too involved for most of the children, but Mr. Intellectual is doing very well with it.

I downloaded both the basic Creative Freewriting Adventure book and the Creative Freewriting Adventure Coloring Book Edition. They are the same except that the Coloring Book Edition has a coloring picture to go with each assignment. Mr. Intellectual was not interested in that, so we didn’t use it at all.

There are ten exercises in the book. Each one gives you a story to set the stage, and then suggests several things to incorporate into your story. After studying these two or three pages, you are to set a timer and write for 15 minutes. Use your imagination and come up with a continuation of the story you were given in the beginning, putting yourself into the scene! After reading the first assignment, I was inspired to write a story, and it was quite fun. I don’t normally do fiction at all; I’ve never been able to come up with much of anything. This was different, though. It was very easy. I’ve been wanting to do another of the exercises, but haven’t had time. Maybe someday soon. I typed my story into the computer, rather than handwrote it. Here is my story:

Mr. Intellectual has now completed four of the exercises. He is spending a lot more than 15 minutes per story. Each day he works on it for 15-30 minutes. He started out typing, but his speed is still pretty poor, so I had him dictate into the computer. Esther found a program, some extension of Google Chrome, which converts speech to text, so he’s using a microphone and “writing” that way, then correcting what comes up on the screen. He still has so much to write for each story that it takes him several days to write each one! Here is one of his stories:

And, what are these assignments like? The first four feature famous Greek philosophers. A little of their life is described, and then you are assigned a scene to put yourself into. Several questions help you think about what might happen next, and you are asked to think about your senses. What do you see, hear, feel, smell? The next four follow the same format, but have to do with the book The Wise Woman, by George Macdonald. The last two have to do with eternity and Jesus’ birthday. It will sure be interesting to see what Mr. Intellectual comes up with for some of these exercises!

I’m glad I chose to use Creative Freewriting Adventures. Stacy Farrell has done a superb job of making writing fun. I don’t know if I’ll ever use this product again (it is a digital download, so I will have it available as long as it is in my harddrive), but it is certainly worthwhile for my budding writer.

Funny Boys!

March 15, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The day we took family pictures, we also got individual pictures of the children. It was hard to get a good one of some of them. We finally managed it, though; you can see the best results on the sidebar to the right. In between, they had fun climbing this monument. There used to be an obelisk on the top, but it toppled in the November 14 earthquake. The boys took turns being a statue on top!

Mr. Diligence

Mr. Intellectual

Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Intellectual

Mr. Sweetie

Mr. Inventor. He insisted on being up in a tree above our heads to have his picture taken.

Garden Stuff

March 12, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I sliced a bunch of zucchini for the freezer one day, and decided to try dehydrating some. I sprinkled them with salt, and they are quite good! I did learn that it’s best to oil the trays before putting the zucchini on, or they stick tight. A couple of the children had fun putting the slices of zucchini on the first time.

I had never seen a head of cabbage like this one! It had many small heads growing out around the stem, between the leaves.

One of the little boys was quite impressed with the bumblebees on the sunflowers.

One day’s harvest of cucumbers and squash.

Little Miss helped me fill jars of green beans one day. She did a good job of it.

We did an experiment this year with the tomatoes. After reading on the blog of one of Gayle’s cousins how she fertilized her tomatoes with sour milk and had very good results, I decided to try diluting the whey from cheesemaking and the buttermilk we couldn’t use up from making butter, and water the tomatoes with it. To make it a good experiment, we only did that with half the patch. The tomatoes on the right came from the milk-fed tomatoes, and the ones on the left came from the others. I would say the experiment was a success!

Children and Kittens—February 2017

March 8, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One day when I was hanging out laundry, Little Miss found this headdress that her daddy wears at work to cover his hair and beard. She thought it was great fun to try on!

Little Miss wanted me to take a picture of Princess’s feet!

Bandit going out the living room window.

What fun! A box with a hole in the side!

Mr. Inventor bringing the little ones in for dinner.

One cool morning I lit the fire in the coal range. Princess spent a lot of the morning on this stool in front of it, soaking in the heat.

Little Miss was excited one morning to find a kitten asleep in the dirty laundry pile. She covered the kitten up, so I carefully picked up the pile of laundry and put it in a basket so no one would step on the invisible kitten. Then, both of them ended up in the soft “bed”.

Little Miss is playing with dolls more and more. Here, she was carefully covering up her baby’s toes. When I put her in bed at night, and she has a teddy bear with her, she wants me to cover its feet, too!

Mr. Inventor’s latest project: a recumbent bike. It’s still in the process of being made, but he rides it around a lot.

Trying to sync the front wheels so steering is easier, and fix the chain.

Family Picture Outtakes

March 6, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After church yesterday, we asked a friend to help us get a family picture. What a mission! She said she enjoyed it; I hope she did! It turned out to be quite the adventure, trying to get nine people to all look at the camera at once, and look pleasant! We had a lot of trouble with lighting, since the sun was so bright. We did discover, last night long after we reached home, that there were little fingerprints on the lens, so that was part of the problem. Oops. Here are some of the failed attempts, with the final, best one, at the end (there were only 20 of them to sort through!). Thank you for your help, Kathryn!

Trying to figure out the lighting.

Product Review—Math Mammoth

March 1, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It’s turning out to be an interesting school year, with the opportunity to review products for the Homeschool Review Crew! When Math Mammoth came up, after studying the available products, I decided to request a couple of titles from their Blue Series. I chose Subtraction 1 and New Zealand Money. I was especially happy for the money unit; the curriculum I’ve put all my children through and have no plans of switching away from uses American money. One thing I appreciated about this review is that these are digital downloads, which means I’ll be able to use them over and over as needed.

Mr. Sweetie has been working through these two books. I printed them, except for the answers at the back of each one, and had someone drill holes through the edge, then sewed them together. I put both books together, back-to-back, with one upside-down to the other. That has worked well. Since the last week of January, or so, I’ve been having him do a lesson in one of the books each day, alternating between them.

I chose the Subtraction 1 unit because Mr. Sweetie was having trouble last year with subtraction and I thought he could do with some reinforcement. I liked how this book started out very basic, defining what subtraction is and showing it with crossed-out pictures. The next lesson showed counting down on a number line to subtract, and then several lessons showed the relationship between addition and subtraction. There is a lot of drawing circles or shapes, then crossing out, and there is lots of illustrations with simple little pictures. I like all the story problems, which help math relate to the real world. Mr. Sweetie is about halfway through this book now, and I’ll have him continue working on a page or two most days, along with his regular math. It gives him some real good practice.

I also had Mr. Sweetie do the New Zealand Money unit. He knew the values of our money, but putting it together and praticing it was very good for him. One thing that was fun was counting out real coins to illustrate an amount on his page! He had the option of using real money or drawing it in the box, so we did it the easy way. Coins worth less than a dollar were introduced first, and then the dollar and 2-dollar coins, followed later by $5 and $10 notes. There are a lot of story problems, and exercises with making change. The most recent lesson we did had a picture of a number of coins, and he was to pretend to be buying certain things, then figuring out how much he had left. That was quite challenging, so we did the lesson over several days. I’m going to put this book aside for now, though, since we seem to have reached a point where he is having a hard time. The next lesson covers rounding when getting change at a shop, and I’m not sure he’ll be able to handle that yet.

I liked the way Math Mammoth is set up, and thought it was very thorough and good at getting the concepts across. If I wasn’t so happy with what we’ve been using for 12 years already, I would be tempted to switch. As it is, if I need something for extra reinforcement, I might well look to see whether there is a booklet about the specific topic we need. I’m also thrilled to have a resource to practice using our country’s money! One criticism of it, though, is that the picture of the 20c coin is wrong. The picture in the book shows the old 20c coin, which is no longer in use. Believe me, my children studied all the other pictures carefully to make sure they showed the new $5 and $10 notes! (They do!) Other than that, though, I was impressed with it.

Would you like to read what about 50 other reviewers have to say about Math Mammoth? Click on the image below to find their reviews:

Kubb

February 27, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We have learned a new game this year. It’s very fun, everyone can be involved, and it gets people outside and active. Win, win! This game is called Kubb, and apparently originated in Sweden—possibly as far back as Viking times. Basically, you throw batons to try to knock over pieces of 2x4s, while avoiding a larger piece of wood set up in the center. It’s very easy to make the game—just get yourself a length of 2×4, a length of 1-inch dowel, and a chunk of 4×4. Read the rules on the Wikipedia page here. We’ve learned that Mr. Inventor is the man to have on your team; he almost invariably wins. This game is addictive. I’ve found that you want to keep going, hoping against hope that eventually you’ll actually hit a target! Here are pictures of the game we played together last week.

The spectators. We had to keep moving them out of the playing field. Once, they were stretched out on their tummies, watching us throw!

Sometimes you get to stack up several Kubbs. That makes it easy to knock them down!

We were all amused when Princess chased one of the throwing sticks!

It can be very difficult to get the stack to balance sometimes!

Walk Around the Kaikoura Peninsula

February 20, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had visitors from America last week, so on Sunday after church we took them to the Peninsula and walked around from the carpark at Point Kean (the north side) at sea level to South Bay. Before the earthquake, we had to time such a walk carefully to coincide with low tide—no more. The tide was at least halfway in, maybe more, when we finished our walk, and we were still high and dry.

Starting out from Point Kean—not too different from before. When you look closely, though, there is no life in the cracks, as there used to be, and the rocks are dry and dusty.

A seal, seagulls, and a shag.

Immature seagulls—we inadvertently walked through a nesting ground, although there were no eggs or tiny babies. The young are almost as big as their parents now.

Climbing this rock—irresistible!

Mr. Inventor with Little Miss on his shoulders, Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie

There were a lot more rocks laying at the base of the cliffs than there were last time we did this walk. This one had split open with a very interesting pattern in it. Mr. Sweetie for scale!

This erect-crested penguin is visiting Kaikoura at the moment. Normally, only very small Little Blue Penguins live there. What a treat!

At the toilets at South Bay, the end of our walk. Mr. Inventor must have had sore feet! He walked all that way, over rocks of all shapes and sizes and sharpnesses, barefoot!

Mr. Diligence and Little Miss playing between the pillars.

Book Review—Baggage Claim

February 15, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I was not going to help launch this book. I decided I was busy enough that Esther could help Cathe Swanson launch her books, and I’d stick to helping Chautona Havig with hers, and Esther was happy about that. Of course, since she got Baggage Claim to read in advance of publication, she sent it to my Kindle when she sent it to hers, and I started reading it a couple of weeks ago. Oops! I ended up wasting a lot of time reading it instead of getting right back to work when I should have. And now, Esther hasn’t even had time to finish the book, so guess who volunteered to write a review and help promote the book! It’s a good one—you won’t regret buying this book and reading it. It published today, so you should be able to get it immediately.

I don’t know when I’ve read a book I’ve enjoyed as much as I enjoyed Baggage Claim. I loved all of it. Cathe Swanson is one of my very favorite authors! I hope she keeps writing. This is only her second published book, but it’s a winner.

Ben Taylor is a young widower with four children, and he has a nanny who keeps his life in order. Teresa Cooper not only takes care of the children, she also keeps the house tidy and meals on the table. Ben has never had life so easy since he got married at 18 after Anneliese got pregnant. Now, though, he is searching for his birthparents. What a mess he finds!

One thing I love about this book is the many stories interwoven skillfully into one. Teresa has a fascinating story; Ben’s history is mysterious and I absolutely loved what he ended up finding; Ben’s life ends up full of intrigue and possible danger. I also love the setting. Ben lives in Chicago, but he ends up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan a few times. One thing I really liked was the mention of Bond Falls in the U. P. I had never heard of it until our family was traveling through that area a number of years ago and saw a sign pointing down a side road toward Bond Falls. It was the most spectacular waterfall I have seen in my life, and is a very special memory, so I was delighted to see it in a book. It was also fun to see the mention of Ontanagon, just because it’s an unusual name for a place, and it’s real. I think I would love this book just for the portrayal of my home state, even if the story wasn’t quite so good!

Besides simply enjoying the story, there were some very meaty parts to it, too. One scene that really stands out in my mind is when Teresa is telling the story to a friend of her experience in a women’s shelter. She describes another woman who was in there, and says that she was the reason that Teresa became a Christian. It wasn’t because she told Teresa about Jesus, but rather that she was a “living testimony” that other women could build on to explain salvation to Teresa. I shared that passage with my husband one afternoon when he was talking about his frustration with himself and not sharing Jesus with the world as much as he wants to. Teresa’s friend’s response was just what my husband needed that day, “Some plant the seed, some water and some harvest. God put it all in place for you. He’s just amazing that way.”

I highly recommend Baggage Claim if you’re looking for a great story that’s perfectly clean and pulls you in. It is a long book, but keeps moving. I’m hoping for a sequel—Ben had some unfinished business at the end, although Teresa’s story had a satisfying conclusion! Oh, and my favorite quote from the book? “And Jonah couldn’t find the outhouse at all.” You’ll have to read the book to find out who Jonah is and how an outhouse comes into the story.

Note: I received a free copy of this book, and chose to review it.

WARNING: When Ben is searching for his birth parents, he hears a fairly detailed story from his teenaged mother’s best friend. Later in the book, a girl who is babysitting Ben’s children hits a man over the head with a gun to knock him out so she can tie him up.

Note: The links in this post are Esther’s affiliate links, so if you purchase the book through them you’ll be helping to support her website.