Homeschooling

Product Review—SchoolhouseTeachers.com

January 8, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

For the past three years, ever since I joined the Homeschool Review Crew, we have had a subscription to SchoolhouseTeachers.com. This year, again, we were given the Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. I spent about three hours one afternoon exploring the courses that are available on this website, and barely scratched the surface. There are so many resources here! It’s almost overwhelming. To use it properly, you would need to know what you want, and then search for that, specifically, then branch out into the fun things that you find.

We’re taking our summer holiday right now, so we haven’t been doing much school during this review period. I did find a few fun courses to do. Mr. Imagination loves cooking, so we started using Sue Gregg’s Whole Foods Cooking Lessons Archives. Her cookbook is divided up into 14 weeks of lessons. Lots of topics are discussed; it was a great chance to teach all the children about why I like to soak our grains before we eat them. There are several lessons involving grains, and then the course moves on to beans, and then animal protein. We haven’t gotten very far in this yet, but I like what we have used! The lessons include the printable recipe, and a series of pages showing every step of the recipe in photographs. My favorite feature, though, is the Talking Food Pages, where she teaches the why behind her choices, such as soaking the grains, or using real butter rather than margarine.

Another course we started is American History in Picture Books. We’re working our way through American history right now (we have been for the past two years because we have found so many wonderful books to read!), so I didn’t start at the beginning of this course. Instead, we jumped to Unit 6, which is scheduled for Weeks 22-24 of this 58-week course, and read the books I was able to come up with for that unit. The focus was on Lewis and Clark, the War of 1812, and the Erie Canal. I definitely want to continue using the book recommendations in this course to supplement what we’re already using. These are my favorite type of picture books!

I also bookmarked two geography courses, Trek to the Holy Land and Beyond, and Everyday Explorers Australia Archive, which also covers New Zealand. These look really fun—I’m hoping I can work in time for some geography this year! There are also two more cooking courses in my bookmarks tab. They look fun, too. I like the thorough lessons plans that are included. Each course is broken down into daily lessons, with all the information you need to teach, every day, and boxes to tick off so you can keep track of what has been accomplished.

You can put together a complete curriculum for your whole family from SchoolhouseTeachers.com. They have courses for every subject—Math, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Art…you name it, they have it—and for every grade. The courses are easily searchable by grade or by subject, as well. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time looking, as it’s so easy to get off onto rabbit trails, with all the fun courses there are. And then there is the World Book library, which I haven’t even looked at yet….

We also enjoy the video library. There are video courses for every subject. Our favorites, of course, are the history ones. Some of my boys ask, occasionally, if they can watch a Drive Through History movie (we wish there were more available, but enjoy the ones that are there), or a Torchlighters movie about a hero of Christian history. In the past three years, we’ve watched some of those several times.

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is truly a great resource for the Christian homeschooling family. I’m hoping to utilize it more fully this year than I have in the past—we’ll see if I can remember to do that!

A good many other families are also using SchoolhouseTeachers.com right now, and describing their experiences. Find their reviews by clicking on the banner below!

Online Homeschooling For the Whole Family {SchoolhouseTeachers.com Reviews}

Product Review—Thinkwell

November 19, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I have never requested a math curriculum to review before. We have been using the same curriculum for math ever since Esther started school, 15 years ago, and I have been very happy with it. Lately, however, I was thinking about what to have Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence do for math next year, and coming up with nothing I felt like they would be able to do. Then, I had the chance to review a math course from Thinkwell, and decided to have them do the diagnostic tests. We were offered one year of either their 6th to 8th Grade Math, or their High School Math; there are 20 math courses altogether. After I scored these tests, we watched the solutions for some of the problems that Mr. Intellectual got wrong, and he liked the way they were taught. Both boys were happy enough with what they saw of this course that we decided to request it, and they will use it for their main math course next year. They have each spent a week and a half working with it this month, so we could see how it works in order to write the review. (We normally spend a much longer time on a review item, but we were not given access to this one until two weeks into the review period, and then those two boys went to stay with friends several hours away and help on their farm for a week and a half.)

Mr. Intellectual chose to do Geometry. His results in the diagnostic test indicated that he could do either Honors Algebra I or Geometry. He is just finishing the Algebra I course with our normal curriculum, but he hasn’t done Geometry before, so he thought that sounded interesting. He’s really enjoying it, and says he is learning things already, even from just the first chapter, Fundamentals of Geometry. Here is a screenshot of the titles of the other chapters in this course:

Mr. Diligence has just finished his 8^th grade math, and his diagnostic test results indicated that he was ready for Algebra I, so that is what I chose for him. He is doing well with this course, too. Here is the table of contents for his course:

Each chapter is broken down into a number of subchapters, and a subchapter tends to be one day’s assignment. Here are the subchapters for the first chapter of Algebra 1:

Clicking on a subchapter title takes you to the actual lessons—here is the first one.

The student is to work his way down the page. First, they watch the video lectures, in order (and Mr. Diligence quickly discovered that, for the lecture to show that it had been watched, he had to go back to the original screen to load the next one, instead of just going from one to the next).

There are worksheets to go along with each lesson; what works best for my boys is to print the worksheet before starting the lesson, then do the exercises that go along with each lecture before going on to the next lecture.

After watching all the lectures, doing the worksheet and checking it with the answer key, they do the “Thinkwell Exercise.” This is an assessment with multiple-choice answers. There is an option to print the exercise so it is easy to work the problems on paper, and then choose the correct one on the screen. One of my boys likes to do that; the other does them mentally, most of the time! Each question is graded immediately. The correct answer is given, and whether you got it correct or wrong, an explanation is given as to how the correct answer can be found.

At the end of each subchapter there are two review worksheets, and then a quiz, which can be taken as many times as the student wants to, and each chapter has a test at the end. The test can only be taken once, but there is a practice test which can be taken as many times as you want to.

The lectures average 2-5 minutes long. The teacher discusses his topic thoroughly, and to the right of the screen are several text boxes illustrating what he is talking about. He also writes on a whiteboard to illustrate his points. His voice is quite nice to listen to—something I appreciate! The boys have found it a bit hard to hear, though, either because it is on the quiet side or because my old computer’s speakers aren’t the best anymore, so they use headphones. That seems to solve the problem (and cause less distraction for others in the room!).

I found it fairly easy to figure out how to use these courses. This sidebar is very useful in going from one page to another. The daily schedule can be found in the Resources tab; quizzes and tests are on the Assessments tab.

To see how my sons are doing, I found that I can log in to their account and click on “My Grades” at the top of the screen. It shows me at a glance how well they have done with the Thinkwell Exercises. I have encouraged them to do the exercises a few times if they are struggling with something.

I am quite favorably impressed with what I have seen so far of these courses! It looks like just what we have been needing. Mr. Diligence commented that he finally understands one of the concepts taught, which is something he had been doing in his 8^th grade math but didn’t understand. I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to let them try a different teaching style. If you have children who are struggling with their math, it may be worthwhile to try out Thinkwell. They have quite a range of courses available—look at this list! They offer a 14-day free trial, and diagnostic tests. Either of these would be a good way to determine if this math course will work for your family.
Thirty people are reviewing this company; read more reviews by clicking on the picture below.

$6th to 8th Grade Math (Pre-Algebra) and High School Math (Algebra to Calculus) {Thinkwell Reviews}$

Book Review—Goldtown Beginnings Series

November 5, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

When we were offered the chance to review the first two books in Susan K. Marlow’s new Goldtown Beginnings Series from Kregel Publications, I jumped at the offer. We have read a number of her other books; I reviewed her Circle C Stepping Stones series a couple of years ago, so I knew my younger children would be excited to get these. Sure enough, they were! Little Miss (age 4) was thrilled when she saw them the day they came in the mail, and she spent a lot of time studying the pictures. She also made sure she was on hand to hear the stories each day when I read the books aloud!

Book 1, Jem Strikes Gold, 8-year-old Jeremiah has a problem. Every week, he and his 6-year-old sister have to deliver pies for their mother, who bakes them for the restaurants and gold miners in Goldtown. That wouldn’t be a problem, but the rich boy in town likes to cause trouble for them—and one day most of Mama’s pies are ruined! Then, Strike-it-rich Sam comes home from a prospecting trip with a golden dog. Jem hasn’t found any gold in his claim, but will Pa and Mama let him keep the dog? And what will Jem do about the pie problem?

Jem’s Frog Fiasco, book 2, presents Jem with an altogether different problem. A café owner wants Jem to catch frogs for him. This sounds like an easy way to make some money! The problem with this scheme, though, is that Mama wants Jem to take care of his younger sister Ellie, and when he is mean to her because she makes it hard for him to catch the frogs, she runs off and hides. Can he find her?

I liked almost everything about these books. As with Susan K. Marlow’s other books, these do well at attracting young readers. They are very simply written, but very interesting. They appeal to the 6-8-year-old range especially, but as I said before, my 4-year-old loved to hear them read aloud. The 10-year-old enjoyed them, too. The one thing I noticed that I didn’t like so well was Jem’s exclamation, “Roasted rattlesnakes!,” used 2-3 times per book. I liked the way Jem tried to please his parents. He loved his little sister, even though he was annoyed with her, and admitted his wrong in not watching over her as he should have. I also liked that the stories, though fictitious, are set in a real place and time—the California goldfields during the Gold Rush. Just by reading the story, we learned how gold is panned and that it was rare to actually find “color.” This is a series I will be watching for, so I can buy the rest of the books. We were all happy to have received these books!

On the author’s website, there are downloadable activities to go along with each of the books. These activities include language arts, history, and geography projects, as well as just fun things like mazes. There are also coloring pages to download. When Little Miss learned about them, she wanted one immediately! I made her a coloring book with the pages, which are simply the illustrations from the book. If you have beginning readers in your home and need more books that they can read, that will catch their interest, check out the Goldtown Beginnings Series! The learning activities that are available would make an easy way to get some other learning in, as well.

Jem Strikes Gold & Jem's Frog Fiasco {Kregel Publications Reviews}

Product Review—Creating a Masterpiece 2019

October 22, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

About a year and a half ago, Mr. Imagination began asking me to buy him an art course. He wanted to learn how to draw better. I bought one, but it wasn’t what he had in mind, and he only did the first couple of lessons. He keeps drawing, though, just figuring things out on his own. When the review of Creating a Masterpiece came up, I asked him if he was interested—oh, yes, he very definitely was! So, we signed up and were given a one-year subscription to the online Drawing Program. We had hardly any of the materials needed, so he couldn’t get started for several days till the pencils came, but as soon as they arrived, he was off.

Each lesson is presented in a series of several short videos, with the teacher, a lovely, grandmotherly-type woman, showing each step of drawing a particular picture. Mr. Imagination (age 7) and Little Miss (age 4) both loved watching the videos and drawing the pictures. I loved that they could do the lessons on their own! With a new baby in the house, I don’t have time to sit down with them for art lessons. They were both able to come up with some very good artwork, for their age. Little Miss liked the picture of the pumpkins so well that she drew several more later, without watching the videos. She frequently requests to do an art lesson.

This was the first lesson they did, a cartoon-style giraffe. Even Mr. Sweetie did this one! They were told they could draw just the head and neck, or more of the body if they wished—just have fun. Mr. Imagination drew the entire giraffe. I love his picture!

My children have mainly focused on the pencil drawings, both regular pencils and colored pencils. Because we have no ready access to art supplies locally, I ended up ordering the vellum paper we needed for charcoal drawings from the United Kingdom, and it took awhile to get here. (For those who live in the United States, it will be easy to obtain the supplies; she has links on her website to exactly the items she recommends.) Mr. Imagination hasn’t tried much with the charcoal yet, but I expect him to before too long. He did do quite a few of the other drawings—we had quite the display on our living room wall for awhile, till he took some down to send to a grandma!

Here is an assortment of the other pictures Mr. Imagination drew. I like the wide variety of techniques that are taught with just pencils! The one with white pencil on black paper is a seal, by the way.

I am highly impressed with Creating a Masterpiece. The lessons are presented very clearly, with each step explained and shown. The teacher’s voice is easy to listen to, and it is obvious that she loves art, which is inspiring. I think I could even draw a nice picture by using her lessons! If you have a child who wants to learn to draw, I highly recommend this course. It can be used by all ages, from preschool, as Little Miss has proven, to adults who want to learn how to draw better.

Below are some of the lessons available to us; Mr. Imagination has tried most of these.

This is what one of the lessons looks like. You simply click on a video to get the next steps in drawing the picture!

Click on the picture below to read what 70 other people have said about Creating a Masterpiece!

Learning to Draw {Creating a Masterpiece Reviews}

Egg Animals

August 17, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

A few days ago, we watched a short YouTube video about making kawaii egg animals. This really fired up Mr. Imagination’s imagination! He badly wanted to make some, so the next morning he asked me if he could make breakfast. Mr. Sweetie already had breakfast started, but I let Mr. Imagination boil some eggs to try it out. He had some trouble getting them boiled hard enough; I think I goofed up on the timing somehow. Eventually we ended up with three eggs in good enough shape to make animals from. (The rest got eaten by hungry boys!). These didn’t turn out as cute as the ones we saw on YouTube, but my little people sure loved them. Mr. Sweetie helped make them and take the pictures.

This is a mouse.

This is a dragon.

Left to right: dragon, rabbit, mouse.

I have a feeling he’ll be attempting this again sometime! And, this ticked the “art” box for the day—if I had such a thing on our schedule!

Product Review—Early 19th Century American History

August 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our normal school days have very little variety. We do math and language arts and Bible lessons, and read stories set in historical times, trying to get a grasp on what happened back then. When the chance came along to review a product from Home School In the Woods, I decided it would be good for all of us to do something different, so I requested The Early 19th Century from their Time Travelers U. S. History Studies line. I knew the school holidays were coming up, and while we don’t normally take any time off, a friend was coming to stay a week with the boys, so I thought we’d take time off our regular school and do this course during that time. Since it took longer than that to do the course, we just cut out other things from our normal days for a few weeks and spent a lot of time doing this.

When I received The Early 19th Century, it took a little while to figure out how to use it. There were so many different folders and PDF files I was confused! Finally, I figured out that the first step was to print the text and project PDF for a lesson, and then I would be able to figure out which masters we needed for the particular lesson. That made it much easier! I just printed, each evening, what we needed for the next day. The instructions for the projects are simple and easy to follow. Each morning when we did a lesson, I read the text aloud while the children started coloring and cutting out the day’s projects. We aimed to spend an hour a day on this course, although it often ended up being an hour and a half. This shows us, the night before we started, sorting pages out and getting ready to start.

The course is laid out in 25 daily lessons. Every 5^th lessson is a catch-up day, where you simply finish the projects for the week. Day 23 is another of those, and Day 24 is when you assemble a lot of the things you did into a lap-book. We did that yesterday. On Day 25, you are supposed to have a Chuck Wagon Dinner, and invite grandparents or friends to show off what you learned—we probably won’t do anything for that. We did most of the projects, although there were a few for which I couldn’t easily find the needed materials, so we just skipped them. Each of the catch-up days includes a few recipes for foods that would have been eaten in the first half of the 19^th Century. I’m keeping those in mind for possible future use.

Here we are, during the first lesson, figuring out what we’re doing.

A wide range of subjects were covered in this course. Some were fairly common topics, such as the war between Texas and Mexico, which included the Alamo, or the Erie Canal, and some were things I knew very little about—like the Tripolitan War with the Barbary Pirates. One lesson was devoted to learning about the presidents who held office during the early 1800s, and another briefly covered a number of other famous people from that era. One lesson talked about the mountain men, there were two lessons about the pioneers, and one talked about the gold prospectors. The last lesson talks about slavery in America up to 1850.

Every lesson has copywork, which is sentences from McGuffey’s reader. We didn’t do this, since the boys all have penmanship practice in their language arts books. Almost every day, we also put some pictures on our timeline. Throughout the course we added to a songbook of early American songs. Some were ones we read about in the Little House books, so it was fun to hear them (I looked the songs up on YouTube and we listened to them; if the words weren’t clear, I read the songs aloud.)

A lot of the projects are simply cutting out mini-books and pasting them together; of course, we read the text blocks together. I liked the ones where they had to write something about the topic, but the boys didn’t! We each put together a timeline of American history from 1790-1850, and made a map with different layers to show the growth of the United States from 1800-1850. That was fun; I’ve always liked the maps like that in the encyclopedia, and now we know how we can make them ourselves. We didn’t quite get this project finished; we may come back and do it yet. There were also a few projects like pretending to pan for gold or make a Mexican serape, which we didn’t do. Here is Little Miss’s version of the quilt pattern we colored in.

This project was fun. They each wrote several sentences about the mountain man/explorer inside the minibook, and then added something to the picture to make it 3-dimensional. The suggestion for Jedidiah Smith was to glue fur on, but we didn’t have any—so I grabbed the clippers and cut Mr. Sweetie’s hair!

By far the favorite project was the jumping jack. This was based on toys that early Americans would have made, and everyone had great fun putting theirs together and playing with it! The model log cabins were fun, too. The hardest project we did was a “Daguerrotype Photo Album.” It took us a week just to do that one project! The instructions said to print the pictures for it on ivory paper, but we didn’t have any, so we printed them on white paper. Then, we brewed some strong black tea, dipped the paper in it, and dried it on top of the wood stove. To make the pictures look old, we tore around them. Then, we were to glue them onto foil-covered card stock and into the album, and write about each of the people. Since there are 17 pictures, it took awhile!

There are pros and cons to using this course. Some of the pros, for us, would be that it gave us something different to do in the middle of the school year. The boys all liked that they had only math or language arts to do in a day, not both. They also enjoyed making things from paper. It gave us some art/craft time, which we don’t tend to get otherwise. We learned new techniques for making things from paper (I learned that none of them had heard of scoring cardstock for folding it!), and they practiced coloring and making things look as nice as possible. They also learned what two-sided tape is and how to use it.

We used a lot of 2-sided tape to put together these lapbooks, but it was worth it. The children are all happy with their final product.

See how thrilled she is to show off hers? I’m not sure who took this picture; I found it on the camera this morning!

As far as cons, the biggest one would be all the printing. I spent a lot of time at it, trying to get the cardstock printed correctly (I now know a lot more about the innards of the printer than I did before!). It also cost a lot to do that printing. We went through about a ream of paper, since I was making five copies of everything, and had to buy extra cardstock, which, where we live, is hard to find and expensive. I was glad when Esther found a place we could order it online!

One of the last projects was to make a game with which to review what we learned. We played it this morning for our history time.

Overall, I’m happy that we used this course. It’s not the way we normally do history, and we would have gotten more out of it if we had done it more slowly and read books to go along with the supplied text. However, we’ll be going through that era slowly within the next year, so we’ll be referring to our projects at times. If we hadn’t gone through it as fast as we did, we never would have finished it, knowing us! If you and your children enjoy hands-on activities to go along with historical studies, try out the Time Travelers line of products. They are well-done and we really enjoyed what we did. Or, if you’re not sure whether this type of study is for you, this would be a good way to find out! And, here’s an interesting blog post I found about this series, which explains why the publisher pulled it together and some of their thoughts about how to use it.

World History (Project Passport), U.S. History Studies (Time Travelers) and Timeline Collection: A Collection of Historical Timeline Figures {Home School in the Woods Reviews}

What We’re Reading—July 2019

July 24, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, and if they are, they will benefit Esther.

We’ve been reading just as much as usual lately, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten through as many books as normal. Some of them have been long! We are just finishing Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories, Volume 10—now we need to choose a different Bible story book to read. We finished David Macaulay’s Cathedral, which we were reading when I wrote the last post like this, and followed that with his Pyramid. We found it quite fascinating! One sentence that Mr. Intellectual really liked said something about how this Pharoah (imaginary, by the way) built his pyramid 10 feet lower than the Great Pyramid, out of respect for the great Khufu—but built it on higher ground, which made the peak 10 feet higher than Khufu’s! One thing that made this book especially interesting was that we have been reading Genesis and Exodus lately for Family Worship, so we grabbed this book and referred to it when we read about Joseph being embalmed to see what was done with his body. Since we finished that one, we have started reading Pagoo, a delightful story about a hermit crab from hatching, on through the rest of his life. Our last book each morning has to do with history; the latest one is Drumbeats in Williamsburg. It has to do with the events around Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown. Of course, a lot of the story is predictable—as expected, the main character finds the spy! It’s pretty interesting, though.

After lunch is when we read the books the children choose. We’ve been reading through the Little House Series for over a year now, and to finish it off we’re going through The Three Faces of Nellie, about the three different people Laura based the character of Nellie Oleson on. I’m reading the interesting parts, and skipping over the repetitious genealogical bits. After that, we’re reading Gone-Away Lake, which has been a long-time favorite in our family. Two children who are exploring the woods near their home get lost and find themselves in a dried-up lake bed, then find a row of falling-down houses with only two people living in them. It’s quite a fun adventure! Our third book each day for the past couple of months has been Kayaks Down the Nile, about three men who kayaked from near the start of the Nile River to its mouth at the Mediterranean in the 1950s. This inspired Mr. Imagination to shape a kayak from a blanket, and make a “cataract” from bits of cardboard, which he helped Little Miss to kayak through. We finished it a couple of days ago and started The Great Brain, which seems like it will be a fun story. I’ve never read it, though. I let Little Miss choose our fourth story, since she’s been begging me to read her chapter books. She chose Olive, the story of a foster child, for her first book.

The only other afternoon book we read in the past month was A Pig for Pablo. This is a story about a little boy in Paraguay who rescues a runt piglet, and then works to earn money to buy it. I was rather surprised by the ending—it’s not the normal story you’d expect, with the pig living as a pet forever.

The other books we’ve read for history have all had to do with the American Revolution. Fourth of July Raid had to do with a surprise attack by the British on a small town in Connecticut. This Time, Tempe Wick? is a picture book about Washington’s troops and a mutiny during a hard winter—and a girl who outsmarts them. When I found Swamp Fox of the Revolution on Internet Archive, I wanted to read it to my boys. I remember getting it from the library when I was 9 or 10; it was the only book I had ever read about the Revolutionary War in the South. We found it very interesting—a piece of history that you rarely hear about! We followed that with Traitor, by Jean Fritz—the story of Benedict Arnold. She did a superb job of making us extremely disgusted with the man and his self-centered ways! After we finished that story, we read a picture book titled Bugle, A Puppy in Old Yorktown. It’s a cute story from 1958. We enjoyed the old illustrations.

And what have I been reading? Some very interesting books! Nobody’s Boy really captured my interest; it’s the story of a 3-year-old Mennonite boy who was kidnapped in Mexico in 1926, only a few years after his family had moved there from Canada. He had no idea who he really was for over 20 years. This is a true story, and quite gripping. At the moment, I’m reading another non-fiction, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist. We have this book because I had downloaded the audio book several years ago when it was free, and when Gayle listened to it a year ago, he was so impressed he wanted us to have a print copy. It got loaned out before I had a chance to read it, and now that it’s back I’m quickly reading it before handing it on to another friend. It is amazing—the authors have pulled together many reasons, from all facets of science and life, to show that there has to be a God Who began and is in control of everything.

I also read a library book Esther brought home, Wonderland Creek. It was more a fluffy-style book, but I enjoyed it. The mystery woven through it kept me going till the end. I liked the theme of the story, that we need to live life, not just read books and live vicariously! The romance was nice, too, although I could have done without the distraction of a second man who courted the main character and was fairly physical with her.

Last week, I read The Inn at Hidden Run. I had read several reviews of it, and was intrigued by the differences in opinion about this story, so when I found it available for review, I thought I’d see what my opinion was. Well, it wasn’t a very fast-moving story, but it was certainly unique. There was no romance in it, which I liked. The premise of the story was that a girl showed up in town with some problems, and a genealogist helped her work through them by researching the girl’s family tree. There was a second timeline in the book, from the 1870s (the main story is modern). It felt a little forced to me to put the two stories together and have a family’s problems solved by discovering something from their past.

A couple of weeks ago, I read What a Pair! (Double Trouble Book 1) about a pair of twins in an Amish family. I have been seeing reviews of books by the author, and decided to see what her style is like. I’m frankly not impressed. Most Amish fiction feels fake to me, and this one, unfortunately, is no exception. It didn’t help that, several times, she had her characters stung by bumblebees and then pick out the stinger that was left behind.

Yesterday, I finished The Trouble With Nancy, by Chautona Havig. I wasn’t planning to read it till after the Atheist book, but then I had an afternoon/evening when I didn’t feel good and couldn’t do much. I decided some light reading would be nice, so picked up this one. It was fun, but another fluffy story. What I like about Chautona’s fluffy stories, though, is that I’m never disgusted with them. She does her research, and they are clean. Another thing I like about this one in particular is that, though it is about a girl disguising herself as a boy, she doesn’t “save the day.” She bumbles through what she’s doing and is very glad to get home and be herself again at the end.

Product Review—Dyslexia Gold

July 2, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Sometimes, we end up being assigned a review that I’m not very excited about. Dyslexia Gold was one of those—but I may end up being thankful for it, anyway. When I filled out the form to indicate my interest in a lifetime subscription for the Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle, I gave it a fairly low interest level, but said that I would be willing to do the review if they needed people. I suspect that Mr. Sweetie has a mild level of dyslexia, so I hoped that if we used this program it would help him. The biggest reason for my hesitation is the fact that it is hard for us to fit computer work into our homeschooling day!

Mr. Sweetie has been playing games on Dyslexia Gold most school days since the middle of April. There are four categories of games, Engaging Eyes, Fluency Builder, Spelling Tutor and Times Table Tutor. I told him to do Engaging Eyes every second time, and choose one of the others for the days in between. Engaging Eyes is supposed to help children’s eyes learn to track better, which is what I suspect to be his biggest struggle with reading. Before he started, I downloaded a couple of stories from his grade level and marked the errors as he read while I timed him. His reading speed at that time was 52 words per minute, with 8 errors per minute. I had him read the same story again yesterday, and his reading speed was 61 words per minute, with only 5 errors per minute. When he was tested by the Dyslexia Gold website, his reading speed on April 14 was 66 words per minute, but by May 27, when they tested him again with a different story, it was 71. So, it looks to me as though this program might be working! Also, I noticed yesterday that he sat down and read a story to Little Miss without any prompting. I am going to have him continue to use this program for awhile, and see if it helps.

Engaging Eyes has several different games to help children be able to read better. The one Mr. Sweetie has used the most is Target Practice. He wears 3-D glasses for this one, which were sent to us in the mail. They make red and blue circles converge and appear to be at different levels, and then he uses keyboard arrows to aim at them and move the “gun” up or down. Whack an Alien teaches children’s eyes to move quickly. Speed Fix flashes several sets of letters, and you are supposed to click if you have seen an “a” in the set. Eye Tracking has letters appearing across the screen, and you’re supposed to click when you see a certain one.

Fluency Builder is mostly a phonics program. It doesn’t seem to have been very helpful here, as I have already put Mr. Sweetie through a couple of intensive phonics programs. Spelling Tutor had him write a sentence on paper, then check it. If he missed a word he had to practice it several times. This didn’t seem very helpful to him, either. The Times Table Tutor, however, I believe, will be quite helpful. Mr. Sweetie is having trouble learning his multiplication facts, and this is a good way to practice them. The main point is to get faster, which is what he needs. I’m planning to have him do this frequently, too. (This photo is of Mr. Sweetie doing Fluency Builder.)

When you log on to Dyslexia Gold, you are given the choice of the four types of games. There is also a tab on that page for reports. That’s where I found Mr. Sweetie’s reading speed from the two times the website tested him. It also tells what level he has reached with each game and how often he has used it.

I don’t know if I can say this program is worth paying money for; I’ll have to have Mr. Sweetie use it longer to know that. I do know he doesn’t complain about doing it, and even seems to enjoy it, which is more than I can say for most of his schoolwork! If you suspect eye problems to be at the root of your child’s reading difficulties, this might be a good program to check into, however.

Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle {Dyslexia Gold Reviews}

Art Afternoon

June 29, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One day last week, some homeschooling friends of ours about an hour’s drive away from here hosted an art afternoon for younger children. I took our four youngest. The younger children were to make 3-dimensional hot air balloons from colored paper, and the older ones made airplanes from popsicle sticks. Many of the younger ones, after they finished their balloons, also made airplanes. The creations were then all hot-glued to a large sheet of heavy paper for a collage to hang on a wall at a local rest home.

Little Miss made three balloons! Two went on the collage, and she brought the third one home.

Mr. Diligence made this airplane.

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Here is the finished collage.

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Little Miss came home and made another hot air balloon, using the one she brought with her for a pattern. She really enjoyed the day!

What We’re Reading—June 2019

June 19, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Note: Links in this post may be affiliate links, and if they are, they will benefit Esther.

As usual, we have been reading quite a variety of books! Since we finished Who Am I? from Apologia’s Worldview series, we only have three stories every morning. We start out with a story from Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories; we’re currently in Volume 10, so I’ll soon have to find another Bible Story book to read from. We also read a couple of pages from David Macaulay’s Cathedral—what a fun way to learn a little of medieval history! For American History this week, we have been reading First Heroes for Freedom. It’s quite an interesting story about the Battle of Rhode Island, from the perspective of a teenage slave boy. We’re about 75% of the way through now, and it’s been good so far.

After lunch, we read four books each day. Right now, we’re reading Laura, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Donald Zochert. We just finished the Little House Series, and decided we wanted to know what her life was really like. It’s been very interesting to compare the biography with what she chose to tell young readers about her life! Our next book is The Heart Changer, by Jarm Del Boccio. It’s a retelling of the story of Naaman’s servant girl, from the time of the kings of Israel. It is very well done—watch for my full review in a few weeks! After that, we read for about 10 minutes from Kayaks Down the Nile. I borrowed this book from my mother when we were in Michigan in January; she recommended it also when I asked if I could borrow The Ra Expeditions. It’s a fascinating account of three men kayaking down the Nile River in the 1950s. We’re really enjoying it—but I don’t think I’d enjoy a trip like that! Too many crocodile and hippos, not to mention the tipsy kayaks. Our last book each afternoon is Encounters With Animals. This is the only book by Gerald Durrell that I can recommend, unfortunately. All the others I’ve read by him feature immorality and a lot of evolutionary thinking.

So, that’s what we are reading aloud at the moment! We’ve read quite a few other books over the course of the past month, too. The two afternoon books we read were Treasure in an Oatmeal Box and A Flame Forever Bright. The first of these was one I found at a secondhand shop when we were in Ohio in February. I had seen the book advertised about 25 years ago, but never read it. What a gem! This story is about a girl coming to terms with having a mentally handicapped brother, and learning to love him. The ending caught us by surprise, though. The second is about Dirk Willems, probably the most famous Anabaptist martyr from the 16th century. It is told from the viewpoint of his (fictitious) younger sister, and is very good. I did learn one thing from reading these two books—Little Miss, though she is only four, is listening to and comprehending a lot of what I read!

We have read quite a few books for history in the mornings, as well. Obviously, we are still working through the American Revolution. Danbury’s Burning and Sybil Ludington’s Midnight Ride both tell the story of a teenage girl who rode much farther than Paul Revere, through bad weather, and yet is hardly known! Buttons for General Washington was a very interesting story of a family who spied for the Revolutionary cause. In Aaron and the Green Mountain Boys, a little boy learned that he could be of help even if he didn’t go out with the militia! Joseph Brant was an interesting biography of an Indian who worked for the British during the Revolution. We loved Saving the Liberty Bell—what fun pictures! John Paul Jones, Fighting Sailor was quite an interesting story, but we didn’t appreciate the battle scenes. One of them was fun; in his first sea battle, he outwitted the British Navy and saved an American ship, with no one getting hurt in the slightest. We also got to read The Winter At Valley Forge again.

So, that’s what I’ve been reading to the children. I’ve also read several books for myself. The ones that really stood out were The Pink Bonnet and Blessing Bentley. The Pink Bonnet is historical fiction about a woman who made a career, from the 1920s-1950s, of stealing children from the Memphis, Tennessee area and then selling them to the highest bidder. It was heartbreaking, and very hard to put down, as a mother and a lawyer tried to solve the mystery of what was happening. Bentley is an amazing new book by Chautona Havig. I found it very refreshing to read a romance that didn’t follow a formula! There are so many good things to think about in this book—I can’t say enough good about it! At the moment, I’m reading The Second Yes, a collection of five interlinked books which includes Something Borrowed, Someone Blue, which I mentioned in the last post about what we’re reading. I’m on the fourth book right now. I enjoyed Something Borrowed, and am enjoying this one; the first and third weren’t quite my cup of tea; but I’m looking forward to the last one, which will tie them all together. It’s by an author I always enjoy. Another book I read recently was The Deepest Waters. Even though I pretty well knew what the ending would be like, there were a lot of surprises along the way, and unexpected twists in this book based on a true story from the 1850s.