Homeschooling

Product Review—Drive Thru History Adventures

March 1, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Last year when I joined the Homeschool Review Crew and was given access to SchoolhouseTeachers.com, one of our favorite resources was the Drive Thru History videos. Mr. Intellectual watched all of them that were on there, and wished he could watch the new series, The Gospels. We were in the wrong part of the world to get on the review team for that one last year, though, which really disappointed him. This year, he was very excited when the Drive Thru History Adventures review came up and it was available worldwide! He had been rewatching the American History videos, along with Mr. Sweetie, and was thrilled at the thought that he could now watch the Gospels ones, as well. He was delighted when we were chosen to review Drive Thru History, and spent some time with it immediately, although, because of our move, he didn’t have time to get back to it for a couple of weeks. Since then, though, he has been using it every school day.

Mr. Intellectual has been working his way through the lessons labeled Bible History. These go through the life of Jesus. The narrator, David Stotts, goes to places such as Nazareth, Jerusalem, or Bethany, for example, and tells the story of what happened in the life of Jesus. The story really comes to life as you see the place as you hear the story. He also shows or talks about artifacts related to the subject quite often. My boy feels like watching these has helped him to understand the Bible better. The main that stood out to him was the artifacts that help to confirm the Biblical account.

There are 18 lessons in the Bible History Adventures part of the curriculum. Each lesson includes a 30-minute video, artwork and photos relating to the topic, Scripture readings from the part of the Gospels that are being discussed here, “Side Roads” about related topics, discussion questions, worksheets, and Digging Deeper articles (which Mr. Intellectual has just admitted he doesn’t read). The lessons are supposed to be spread out over a week, but we’re doing one a day, as the amount he’s doing only takes about an hour.

We haven’t had time to use the lessons for American History Adventures or Ancient History Adventures yet. He has watched all the videos, about a year ago, and will probably watch them again sometime. There are 12 lessons for American History, starting with the discovery of America and going through the signing of the Constitution. The lessons are laid out the same way as the Bible History lessons. There are also 12 lessons for Ancient History, also laid out the same way. These include the founding of Rome and the persecution of Christians by Rome, the spread of Christianity, the beginnings of democracy in Greece. There are also trips to what is now known as Turkey as we follow the spread of the early church. I noticed that a number of these videos are 45 minutes long.

Besides the main site, there is also a section titled Adventures TV. Apparently, this is an app you can use on a phone, and be able to access all the videos that way. There are also extra videos on a wide variety of subjects, such as Christian special days and special events in American history, as well as behind-the-scenes peeks at the new Museum of the Bible. These seem to be around 5 minutes each; Mr. Intellectual is using them as an incentive to do his school work faster. (When he finishes a subject within a given time, he gets to watch one of those short clips.)

If you need a way to make history come alive, Drive Thru History Adventures might be the perfect fit. Not only are these videos very informative, they are also entertaining. Boys will especially like the parts where Dave Stotts goes off on a rabbit trail, talking about his wonderful vehicle! I’m not much for vehicles, but it is funny sometimes. Apparently, he was telling once how wonderful his Land Rover was, and dropped the keys. Another time, he did a Car-B-Que, using his engine to cook his meal. (I’m not sure I want to try that one, judging by what I was just told about it!) I’m very glad we got to review this site, and we will be going back to it throughout the year.

Oh, one more thing—we got some fun mail from Drive Thru History this week! Living where we do, it is rare and exciting to get mail from America, so it was an extra-special thank you for being part of this review. They sent two iron-on badges and two large stickers, as well as a large post card. What fun!

Product Review—Starfall Education Foundation

February 28, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Most of the time, I don’t allow my little people to spend much time looking at screens. When I was asked if I wanted to review the program offered by Starfall Education Foundation, I decided we would give it a try. We were given a one-year subscription to The Starfall Home Membership. Unfortunately, because of our move soon after the review program began, we were not able to utilize it as fully as we could have. It did save the day, the day before we moved, however! It rained all day, so the little ones had to be in the house. Because I was trying to finish packing and cleaning everything and get the cow to her new home and wrap up all sorts of other odds and ends, I let the youngest three play with Starfall for a couple of hours. The rest of us kept an eye on what they were doing on the floor in the living room, and they were enthralled, listening to a voice read picture books as they clicked to turn the pages.

There is a lot for children to listen to and learn from on this site. For some reason, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss loved the introduction to colors—they played with that one over and over! They also loved the storybooks. There are simple books to introduce letters of the alphabet, and another set of folk tales. They listened to all six of them one day, and the next day went through all the nonfiction stories. I like the way these books are presented. If a child is able to, they can read them for themselves, but if they aren’t sure of the words or can’t read yet, there is a button on each page to click to hear the story read to them.

The audiovisual resources are available free to anyone. I wondered, when I gained access to the one-year Membership, what advantage it was, but when I started looking closer, I found a wealth of resources in the Parent-Teacher Center. There is a complete curriculum for Kindergarten and Pre-K, as well as a wealth of supplementary resources for 1^st grade. The curriculum pages I looked at were scripted, so you don’t even have to think about what to say! This isn’t my style, so I didn’t do anything with it, but it’s there if you want or need it.

I did use some of the printables. When Mr. Imagination learned the short /u/ sound, I printed out a story featuring many words with that sound, and several worksheets he could use to practice writing it and sounding out words using it. He loved them! The story was easy for him to read, since he had gone through it on the computer a few weeks previously. He was excited to be able to read it for himself!

I also printed a few worksheets for Little Miss. Even though she just turned three, she has been talking for a long time about things that are the same or different, so I thought she might enjoy doing a page of that. She did! She was absolutely thrilled to get to circle things, and she got them all right. I also printed her a page of circling the longest of a group of pictures, and she got all of them right, as well.

For our family, The Starfall Home Membership is probably not worth paying for, as little as I use it. However, the resources that are available free are good when you need something educational to keep little children occupied for awhile. As I said, it was great the day before we moved, when it was pouring rain and they couldn’t play outside, and all their toys were packed and things were in an upheaval! And, if you need a complete curriculum for Preschool or Kindergarten, it would be good.

Product Review—Bytes of Learning

February 21, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It was exciting to start another year with the Homeschool Review Crew and get to begin choosing more products to review! One of the first ones this year was the UltraKey Online Family Subscription from Bytes of Learning. I have been trying different typing programs for several years, trying to teach my boys to touch type. The one we used for the last couple of years was expensive, although it seemed to work, but it was time again to either pay for another year or find something else to use for the 2018 school year—and then the opportunity to try UltraKey came up. Just what we needed, and at the right time, except that we had to move during the review period, so that we didn’t get to try it for very long before writing this review.

I have seen enough of this product to be fairly impressed. There are a lot of instructional videos, and the option to have all directions read aloud. That makes it easy for younger children to use on their own, and the older ones were glad that we could turn that feature off by clicking the Auto button. After watching a video once, you are allowed to skip it; if you select Off for the Step-by-step Learning setting you can skip all of them if you want to. I allowed Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence to turn off that setting, since they already have a fairly good foundation for touch typing. Mr. Sweetie is still required to go step by step through the program, since he is still learning the basics.

After a video about posture and an introduction to the course, there is a lesson on finger positions, and then the proper lessons start. After learning several keys, the student has the opportunity to practice words and then sentences. After that, it’s time for a skill check; the student chooses to type either a certain amount of text or a certain number of minutes. Once he has passed the skill check, he can move on to the next lesson. Passing is determined by reaching the preset goal. I was able to set goals for the boys myself. The goal I have set for Mr. Sweetie for this year is to become accurate; the other two boys are supposed to increase their speed. One thing I’m liking is the ability to see a report of what the boys have accomplished; here is the report from Mr. Sweetie.

After completing the lessons and skill check, if you need more practice, you can redo lessons or skill checks, or use the Typing Forum or Game Zone. The Typing Forum offers more passages to type to increase your speed and accuracy, or you can select Free Typing and just type anything you want to. The Game Zone offers practice with grammar and spelling as well as speed and accuracy. As typing games, they aren’t very exciting, but they are good practice.

We haven’t used this program long enough to really know if it works, but it looks to me like it is a good one. For the price, I believe it is worthwhile. I appreciate that they are offering subscriptions for various-sized families. After our free subscription for review expires, I will probably pay for a subscription for next year. If you are looking for a systematic way to teach your children touch-typing, look into UltraKey!

Edit: As of September 2024, it appears that this product is no longer available.

What Are We Reading Right Now?

February 17, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We often have quite a number of books on the go at any one time. We read some books for morning history time, others for afternoon storytime, and still others for bedtime.

We have just started a trip through American History for the three elementary-age boys, Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie, and Mr. Imagination. We read a chapter about Leif Ericson and the Viking discovery of North America, then the book Viking Adventure, and now we’re learning about Christopher Columbus. Pedro’s Journal is our story to go along with the history book for this one. We read the history selections and fiction to go along with it in the morning while breakfast dishes are being washed.

We also read a couple of pages from this book in the morning before we start on school, too. Fascinating!

In the afternoon, while lunch dishes are being done and I hold Little Miss to try to get her asleep for a nap (which only happens once or twice a week now), I read other stories. Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie take turns choosing one, Mr. Imagination chooses one, and I usually have two different series to read a chapter each from. I also have Little Miss choose a picture book to read. Today, she chose this one.

Next, I read a book from a series about children somewhere. Right now, we’re reading the series, The Adventures of Lily Lapp. We’re on the third book, and everyone is enjoying it. Esther loves Lily’s comments about her brothers—both Esther and Lily are oldest sisters with lots of brothers and no sisters (Esther didn’t have a sister till she was 16). Little Miss loves the story because it’s about a girl; she wants Lily to come play with her.

These are the other stories we’re reading in the afternoon. None of them have chapters that are too long, thankfully. Mr. Sweetie chose Whom Shall I Fear, and Mr. Imagination wanted All on a Mountain Day. I’ve been reading the Burgess books to the children for several years now; I think this is the last one, and then we’ll start a new series about animals.

Sometime during the school day, we read from this book. I am loving it, as I have all the Apologia textbooks we’ve used! We had quite an interesting lesson a couple of days ago about vascular and nonvascular plants. The boys did a leaf rubbing to illustrate vascular plants (they were supposed to draw a leaf, but I said to rub it instead), and then drew a picture of a bit of moss to show what a nonvascular plant can be like.

Depending on the evening, we often read a chapter or two from another book while the evening’s dishes are being washed. We started this book before we moved, because I try to read ones Gayle wants to hear when he’s home. Now that he isn’t with us on weeknights anymore (he’s working at his old job still, and coming to be with us for the weekends), we’re going ahead and finishing it, but recording it so he can hear it later. It’s a great book, and we’re all really enjoying it.

We started this one before we moved, too; we’ll finish it in the evenings after we’re done with the one above. Mr. Intellectual had chosen it for morning readings, but now that we’ve started school again I’m reading history books for that time. This is quite a fascinating glimpse at Russia just before the Revolution.

I’m reading a couple of books for myself, too. A friend just loaned me Large Family Logistics, and I’m enjoying the encouragement I’m finding in it. My other one is Love, Amy, a memoir formed from many years of newsletters written from China. I am thoroughly enjoying this book, including her tips for writing newsletters sandwiched between each year’s collection of letters.

Port Robinson

December 13, 2017 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

One Monday afternoon a few weeks ago, we needed to be out of the house for awhile because our landlady was showing a potential buyer through the house. We decided to go out to Port Robinson; a few weeks before that date, Gayle had taken Mr. Diligence out for a picnic and fun time together, and they discovered the trail leading down to the old harbor. The rest of us wanted to see it, too, so we went there on that beautiful, sunny afternoon.

The path down to the beach parallels the old slipway for awhile. It’s pretty overgrown.

Gore Bay from the trail.

Port Robinson

This is what’s left of the bottom of the slipway. Approximately 120 years ago, the way I understand, this was about the only way to get goods in and out of Cheviot. They had a surfboat which they lowered down the slipway from the top of the cliff and out into the bay to where ships would anchor, to ship wool out. Supplies were brought back up in the surfboat with a winch.

Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Sweetie

That red blob is a sea anemone.

I was intrigued by the swirls in some of the rocks.

When we saw this flock of seagulls feeding just offshore, we wished we had brought our fishing poles! There would have been big fish there, too, feeding on a school of small ones.

There are two paua, known in California as abalone, in this picture. Can you find them?

We enjoyed finding these two large starfish!

Mr. Diligence was fascinated by the way the starfish held on to him.

Mr. Sweetie

Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Sweetie, with Mr. Imagination in the foreground.

We even got to see a jellyfish!

Another starfish!

When it was flipped over, we discovered that it was feeding! A couple of the children were able to see its stomach being sucked back inside after it let go of the snail.

This was a very fun afternoon—don’t tell the children it was a field trip! We ended our time with a stop at Gore Bay to play in the water for 15 minutes. I’m so glad I didn’t twist my ankle until after this trip and the one to Hurunui Mouth several days later.

Book Review—Exploring Creation With Astronomy

December 6, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We just finished science for the 2017 school year. This is the fourth year in a row that we have used Apologia’s Elementary science, and we’re still loving it. This year, we used Exploring Creation With Astronomy. I thought Jeanne Fulbright wrote great books before—but in this 2^nd Edition she outdid herself! This was a very fascinating course. I’m glad I decided to buy the new book instead of borrowing the old one from a friend.

Since our school year began in February, we have traveled through the solar system and beyond. We began with a quick overview of astronomy and the solar system, and then took more in-depth looks at the Sun and each planet, as well as the moon. There was also a chapter on Space Rocks, tucked in between Mars and Jupiter. The section about the Asteroid Belt was especially fascinating to me; the hypothesis presented for the existence of the asteroids sure made sense to us! The second-to-last chapter was also very fascinating for me, as it presented information that has been discovered recently, so it was all new for me. I think it’s rather sad that Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet, but it was very interesting to learn about such things. The Kuiper Belt, too, was new to me—and so interesting! The last chapter talked about stars and space travel.

As we have done before, I bought the notebooking journals to use with the textbook. We get a lot more out of the course by using these workbooks. Every day as we read, the boys narrate a sentence or two (or more, if they enjoyed the section) about what they learned, and there are activities to do as you go through each of the chapters. Each chapter has anywhere from one to three minibooks to make, to help with review, and there is also a vocabulary activity. We liked the way the 2nd edition notebooking journal was laid out much better than the others we have used. Instead of having to find the pages for the minibooks in the back, they were right in each lesson, where we needed them. Also, these activities were interspersed with other things in the lesson, rather than always at the end. The book was a bit more attractive, too.

We didn’t do all the activities, but some that we did were great fun. Probably the most memorable was the time we made a “scale model” of the distances in the solar system if the sun were the size of a dime—so incredible!

As always, I highly recommend Apologia’s science! We love that God and His Word are honored all the way through, and we enjoy the very interesting way in which facts are presented.

You can see pictures of a couple of our projects from this course here and here.

Product Review—Innovators Tribe

November 8, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I had never heard of Innovators Tribe before, but when the opportunity arose to use and review the course Thinking Like an Engineer, I knew Mr. Intellectual would be interested. Sure enough, when I showed it to him and we watched the introductory video together, he was immediately excited about the possibility of getting to do it. He was absolutely thrilled when we got the word that we had been assigned this review, and he has been working very fast with his regular school work so he will get to work on this course. It’s what he looks forward to most, each school day.

This course alternates between video lessons and hands-on projects. After watching the introduction, What is Engineering, the assignment is given to build a tower out of only paper and tape—and strictly limited amounts of both. It took awhile, but Mr. Intellectual figured out how to do it, and had great fun in the process.

Lesson 2 talked about different types of engineers, and then the students were given another challenge assignment, to stack books one inch off the floor, using only one sheet of paper and some tape. I thought this was impossible; I couldn’t figure out how to do it at all. No hints or tips of any kind were given, just the assignment. My boy was stumped for awhile, but he eventually figured out what to do and made this impressive tower of books! (And no, I’m not going to tell you how he did it, because if your child does the course he or she needs to figure it out, too! However, if Grandma wants to know, we’ll tell her.)

The second unit focuses on 3D design, using special software you can download to your computer. That’s what Mr. Intellectual has been using for a few weeks now. He loves the excuse to play around with designs on the computer. I asked what he was working on a couple of days ago, and the assignment was to take a piece of household furniture and improve the design. He was working on a kitchen table. I’ll be quite interested to see what he ends up with!

This course isn’t quite what I was envisioning; it’s actually much better. I thought the students would be walked through designing specific items, but actually they are taught how to figure out problems themselves. An engineer takes a need and figures out how to meet that need using the materials available. This course teaches students how to do that, which is why the tower and the stack of books were assigned with no hints.

Each unit has a printable journal to fill in as you go, which helps to cement the concepts you’ve learned, and keep a record of your accomplishments—how tall was your tower, how many pounds of books did you stack on top of your piece of paper, etc. If you run into difficulty, you can contact the author of the course and he’ll give you personal help. We haven’t needed any help, but some of the other people who did this course reported that they asked for some input and got quick, thorough answers. For children who can read at least some, Thinking Like an Engineer can be done totally by the student, without any help from Mom. In fact, I’ve had a little trouble writing this review because I was involved so little! I had to keep reminding myself to look over Mr. Intellectual’s shoulder and ask questions about what he was doing, so I’d have at least something to say! That makes it even more valuable to me, because I don’t have time for extras most days, so doing something that requires teacher input would have been difficult. I believe this would even work for people with dyslexia who have a lot of trouble reading, because most of it is in video format.

Mr. Intellectual says he would highly recommend this course for other people who are interested in building things and figuring out how they can be made to work better. We’re thankful to have had the chance to use Thinking Like an Engineer, and looking forward to the rest of the course! (It will be very interesting to see what he gets to do in the units about designing rollercoasters and bridges! Maybe that’s when we’ll use the packs of card stock we were told to buy?)

Videos for Grandma

October 6, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Just for my mom, here are two videos of the little ones.

This first one is of Little Miss counting to 22 when she was playing hide and seek with Mr. Imagination.

This is Mr. Imagination reading me his list of words. He has only learned six sounds so far, but he’s doing quite well at sounding out words. In the background you can hear Little Miss and her incessant questions and comments!

Product Review—Let’s Go Geography

September 20, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I’ve always felt like geography was the weakest subject in our homeschooling. I’ve tried various ways of incorporating map work into our school days, but everything I tried was hated. Finally, I just hung a world map from the bulletin board beside the chair I sit in to read aloud, and when I think of it I’ll point out the location of the story we’re reading. When Let’s Go Geography came available for review, I decided it looked like something we could really use. Because it was described as being good for approximately grades K-4, I decided to have Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination use it. No one older wanted to, anyway.

Each week, we get to study a different country. The first two weeks were actually regions of the United States, first the Northeastern States, and then Hawaii. After that, we spent a few days with Canada, and then Haiti and Nicaragua. We’re going to Belize on our next adventure. My little boys are loving this course! Especially, Mr. Imagination cheers when I say it’s time for geography. A few days ago, we were reading a biography in the evening and it mentioned that the person had gone to Hawaii. I didn’t even know Mr. Imagination was listening, but he got quite excited and pointed to Hawaii on the world map, telling everyone that we had studied it! That was fun to see. And just look at the list of places we get to “go” in the future! (Do you see what the last one for Year 1 is?)

Each lesson has a lot of variety. It’s set up so you can spend five days per lesson, so one section of the lesson each day of the week. We ended up doing each lesson in only 2-3 days, and skipping a few days each week. It’s just hard to fit something like that in every single day. We did the map work and colored, cut out and glued the flags one day. Another day, we listened to the national anthem from the country and watched the YouTube videos linked to in the lesson, and then each boy dictated to me what he remembered about the country and I wrote it on a notebooking page for him. Sometime later, either that day or another day, they each colored a picture of something from the country. Little Miss always had to have a coloring page, too, and she usually wanted a map to scribble on as well! There are crafts given for each lesson, but we never did any of them. They would have been fun, but we didn’t have the needed supplies on hand. It’s not that they are hard to find, but just things that we don’t keep, such as white and red plastic disposable cups to make into a lighthouse, or paper lunch bags to make into a puppet. I keep hoping we’ll come across a craft that we have the supplies for.

Built into the year’s study of geography are three review lessons, one after each two continents have been studied. This review lesson looks like fun! I know my boys are going to love matching flags with the correct countries, and we’ll spend some time learning about latitude and longitude as part of the first review lesson. There are also some pages to match pictures with the country in which they were taken.

Here is Mr. Sweetie with some of his pages.

And this is Mr. Imagination, with some of his pages!

We’re saving all our pages, and at the end of the year I’m planning to have someone drill holes in them so I can sew the books together. Then, each of the boys will have his own book of world geography. When years 2 and 3 are available, I will probably buy them; this is a program we have really enjoyed. All you need to use it is an internet connection and a printer! I am trying to get a few books from the library with more pictures of the countries we’re studying, but our local libraries are pretty small. This is when we’re glad for YouTube and someone who has taken the time to find links for us!

School Days

September 19, 2017 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We spend a lot of time at the kitchen table in the mornings, doing lessons.

The day Mr. Sweetie learned about borrowing when subtracting, we got out the Base 10 blocks to illustrate what was happening. As soon as I was done with them, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss started playing with them—no wonder I sometimes have trouble finding all the pieces I need!

Mr. Intellectual loves building towers with the blocks, then taking a video of the tower collapsing.

Mr. Diligence is required to spend some time reading something—whatever he wants to—every morning. He’s been reading the Circle C books lately, and really enjoying them. He read the entire Circle C Beginnings series, and now he’s reading the two Circle C Steppingstones books that have been published.

Mr. Imagination isn’t officially doing school yet. He’s quite capable, but he doesn’t want to most of the time. He’s just 5, so I’m not pushing yet—but some days he does things like this! He wrote the numbers to 28, just for fun.

Little Miss spent a lot of time one morning sorting this tiny animals by color. Sometimes she sorts them by kind of animal, or just stands them up. They came inside a Mancala game someone bought at a secondhand shop, and they have been played with a lot more than the game!