Homeschooling

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.

What We’ve Been Reading Lately Part 2

May 14, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

When I did a post like this in March, I was hoping to do another in a month. Here we are two months later—and I’m shocked by how many books we’ve read since then!

Links in this post are probably affiliate links that will help to finance Esther’s website if you buy a book through them.

Right now, in the mornings, we’re reading these books.

We start with a chapter from The Bible Story, Volume 9. We’re almost finished with this one, and then we’ll move on to Volume 10. Next, we read a page or two from Who Am I? and then a couple of two-page spreads from Mosque. This has turned out to be fascinating! We have finished learning about the actual building, and are now reading about how they decorated the mosque. Someone commented this morning that it’s a work of art! After we read these books, we read a history story; right now we’re reading Hoofbeats of Freedom, which I found on Internet Archive. It’s a story about the Battle of Long Island during the American Revolution. Internet Archive, by the way, has turned out to be a wonderful resource for us. We don’t have access to a very good library, but we can borrow digital books from this site for two weeks at a time. They have many, many titles published between 1950-1990, which have been scanned from libraries in the USA, especially the Boston Public Library. So, as long as the electric and the internet are working, we have quite a range of books to choose from for our schooling.

After lunch, we have been reading these books.

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We finished the Little House books with These Happy Golden Years and The First Four Years, and then started reading On the Way Home on Internet Archive. We also finished the Living Forest series with Beloved Rascals, and then started The Best of Ernest Thompson Seton, a collection of all-too-real animal stories. They tend to be rather sad! Little Miss shed a few tears as we read the story of Wahb, the grizzly bear who had a very sad life. Everyone was on the edge of their seats during the battle between Foam, the razorback hog, and a different bear (and could understand much better when a friend of ours here had two dogs cut up by a wild pig last week!), and we could hardly wait to hear the ending of the story about a little boy adopted by a badger. We loved hearing about how Annie Sullivan helped Helen Keller come alive, in Helen Keller’s Teacher, and Mr. Imagination was happy to hear The Little Woodchopper. Probably the most popular of these books, though, was A Tale of Gold, which I picked up at a second-hand shop when I was in Ohio in February. It’s about the Yukon Gold Rush in 1898. Simon heard a couple of chapters of it, and made his brothers keep him up-to-date on what I read each day—and whenever he had the chance to ask me to read aloud, that was what he—and they—all wanted until we were finished! It’s a lovely tale of a boy learning what is most important in life (although it had no Christian influence).

Here are a lot of the books we’ve read for history in the past two months. Many are from Internet Archive. As you can see, we do a lot of reading aloud!

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georgedrummerboy00nath gunsforgeneralwa00reit

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And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? has always been my favorite about that famous historical figure. I like Jean Fritz’s way of telling a story! Adam and the Golden Cock told about the arrival of the French to help the Revolution. Of course, Alice Dalgliesh’s 4th of July Story tells about signing the Declaration of Independence, and Betsy Ross is the story of the woman who sewed the first American flag. It focuses on her girlhood as a Quaker girl in Philadelphia who loved to sew. George the Drummer Boy and Sam the Minuteman both tell the story of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, but from opposite points of view—British and patriot. Guns for General Washington and Henry and the Cannons describe how Henry Knox brought artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. Guns is based on diaries kept by the people who made this incredibly difficult trip, and other contemporary documents. Poor Richard in France tells about how Ben Franklin went to France with two grandsons to try to get aid, and Powder Keg gives a plausible story for the mystery of how the gunpowder that was stored in Bermuda made its way to Boston to be used in those guns that were brought across the mountains by Henry Knox. Samuel’s Choice is a picture book about the Battle of Long Island. My favorite book of all these, however, is A Drop of Mercy, about the Mennonites during the Revolution. It is a very good story about the people who simply wanted to live in peace and honor God with their lives during those turbulent years.

We’ve also read a number of other books. These three go along with the history curriculum we’re doing right now, which I reviewed last week. In the Days of Noah is a great picture book about what the world before the Flood may have been like, and about the Flood itself. Genesis: Finding Our Roots is an in-depth study of the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis, and Adam and His Kin fleshes out those chapters in a novel. I’ve read it aloud several times, and am enjoying it again.

We read The Great Dinosaur Mystery and Dry Bones and Other Fossils to go along with Cross-Wired Science, which was also a program we got for review and have really appreciated.

In the evenings when the whole family is home, I read a chapter or two from Whistle-Stop West, based on the true story of a boy who rode the Orphan Train. I have always loved this series, by the author of the Grandma’s Attic books. We also recently read Ben & Mark, a photo story of two boys growing up in the high country of New Zealand. This is especially interesting to us, since we pass the turnoff to their home when we go to Christchurch, now. We read Black Boots and Buttonhooks a few weeks ago, too; it’s a very interesting story about a family pioneering in the King Country in the North Island in the early part of the 20th century.

I’ve been reading a lot of interesting books myself lately, too. We needed more schoolbooks to finish out the year, so when I ordered them from Christian Light Publications, I added some other books to the order. Armor of Light discusses lust, and how lust for anything opens us up to temptation in that area, and how to overcome it. Very good for anyone! I’m still reading God, Our Children, and the Facts of Life. It’s excellent! I also got Fingerprints for myself, and am loving the stories in it. It’s great for any mother. Lots to think about, and it makes me chuckle frequently. Thomas Edison, Wilbur and Orville, and The Great Gilly Hopkins are ones I picked up at a book fair last August. They’re all right—nothing special. I just started Island Nurses, from the same place, so I don’t know what it will be like.

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I was excited to get to read A Forgotten Truth, the fourth book in The Agency Files series. This was a hard one to put down! Not only is it a good mystery, but there is a lot of truth contained in it. Joseph, Rachel’s Son is a great retelling of a famous story. I really appreciated how the author stuck to what is recorded in the Bible but fleshed it out so that it is a very interesting story. I finished Shadow Among Sheaves today; it’s all right, but not great, in my opinion. There are more kisses than I like, and a few swear words showed up. It is a story based on the story of Ruth in the Bible, but set in England in about 1850. Legends of the Vengeance is the first pirate story I have ever enjoyed—only Chautona could write one like this! It’s a good story for boys. Something Borrowed, Someone Blue is her latest book. There’s a lot to think about in this one. The ending isn’t totally a surprise, but it happens suddenly. I can’t give you a link for that one, because I got an advanced reader copy! I think it will be published in a collection in June.

Yes, I read a lot myself. It’s my way of maintaining sanity and taking a break.

Product Review—Pathway to Liberty

May 8, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I’ve always been quite interested in studying history, and for the past several years have been enjoying looking over various history curricula to compare them. I’m always looking for the perfect history course, and have pretty well come to the conclusion that I’ll never find exactly what I’m looking for. I keep looking, though, because it’s interesting to see what people put together. When the opportunity came up to review a course offered by Pathway to Liberty Homeschool Curriculum, I decided I would like to check out one of their levels. I chose Year One, Universal History of Pathway to Liberty’s History Curriculum, the first of four years that take students of all ages through the entire scope of world history. I chose this level because one of the first books studied in this level is one that I have been wanting to study with my children, and also because, when I’m comparing history courses, I like to look at the beginning of time.

Pathway to Liberty level 1

Universal History starts with Genesis 1. After studying the first 11 chapters of Genesis in some depth, we will move on to studying the ancient civilizations. After studying Abraham, a couple of weeks are devoted to Egypt, and then the main focus is the history of the Old Testament, spending a little time with Babylonia and Persia as they enter Biblical history. A couple of weeks of the history of Greece wrap up the year.

So far, we have gotten through the first four weeks of this course. I requested two of the four levels, so I have Mr. Diligence doing Level Two and Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination doing Level One. Level One is intended for K5-3^rd grade. Mr. Sweetie is in 4^th grade, but struggles enough with writing that I decided the lower level would be best for him. Level Two is for 4th-6^th grade; Mr. Diligence is in 8^th grade, but he, too, struggles enough with academics that I thought the lower level would be a better fit for him. (Levels Three and Four are for grades 7-9 and 10-12, respectively; they do the same reading and watch the same YouTube videos as Level Two, but do more in-depth research and writing.) Levels One and Two are quite different, but at the same time they correlate well with each other. For the first three weeks, Level One was a study of the days of creation and the character of God. Meanwhile, in Level Two, Mr. Diligence watched a video on YouTube each week and we began working our way through Ruth Beechick’s Genesis: Finding Our Roots, which I had been wanting to study ever since I borrowed it from a friend a few years ago. In Week Four, we all started studying Noah, and the younger ones are studying In the Days of Noah with me (I make Mr. Diligence sit in on reading that one, too!). One thing Level One includes that the older ones don’t is coloring pictures for nearly every lesson. My boys didn’t want to do them, but Little Miss loved coloring several. She also loved helping to make this poster of the days of Creation. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, but it’s something that I don’t get done without something pushing for it to happen, like this review.

I have really enjoyed this study, so much so that I plan to go through the rest of the course that we were given. The boys grumble about taking time to do it, but they are learning and enjoying what they learn all the same. One thing we picked up on when we were reading the Book of Adam, from the 2nd-4^th chapters of Genesis, was that the tone of the writing is that of an eyewitness. I was reading chapter 2 aloud, and Mr. Intellectual challenged me on what he heard; he was sure I had misread something. When he looked it up in the Bible, however, we were all rather excited as we talked about the rivers of the Garden of Eden. The wording could hardly have been anything other than an eyewitness account—read it for yourself if you’re dubious. Then, of course, as we worked our way through Beechick’s book, we came to that same conclusion.

The videos we have watched so far on Pathway to Liberty’s YouTube channel have been good. The first few didn’t really stand out, but the one we watched for Week Four about Noah and the world that perished, which we watched all together one evening as a family, was absolutely fascinating. The younger children probably didn’t get much out of it, but we stopped it to discuss points with the older ones a couple of times. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes up in the future!

This curriculum is available either as hard copies or digital. I received the digital copies, which means I can print as many as I want for my children. I three-hole punched the paper, then tied the books together with yarn, which is working well.

One part of this course we have done some, but not as much as recommended, is word studies. The recommendation is to choose five words every day to find definitions for from the Webster’s Dictionary 1828. We have done a few, but not that many. We also haven’t done the writing assignments recommended. We could go to a lot more depth with this study. It could easily replace a lot of Language Arts, tying it together with history, which would be great. I just don’t have the energy for that right now!

My conclusion about this history course? So far, it is very good. It looks like the entire year that we were given is going to be great. Looking ahead farther, I would guess that I, personally, would not do well with the slant of the year in which American History is studied; having moved away from the United States I don’t share the same view of US history that it looks like this author has. However, I do greatly appreciate the way she ties history into the Biblical framework. The study we did in Level One about the character of God was absolutely great. I will admit that it was hard to figure out what answers she was wanting for some of the questions; if I hadn’t had the answer key handy for the first three weeks of that level, I would have had no idea how to answer some of the questions.

Be sure to read some of the reviews that other people have written! All four years of this curriculum have been use and reviewed by various families, so there will be a lot of different points-of-view. If you’re looking for a Bible-based history course, this may be one you want to check into.

Universal History, The Middle Ages, US History & World History Curriculum {Pathway to Liberty Homeschool Curriculum Reviews}

Product Review—CrossWired Science

April 17, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I wasn’t overly excited about reviewing CrossWired Science when the opportunity was presented, but we watched all the sample videos before I made the final decision, with input from my four school boys. We all agreed that the videos were fascinating—and one of them answered a question I had vaguely wondered about before (how do animals get their Vitamin D?). We decided to request this online program for review and give it a try. Am I ever glad we did! I am loving it! The children are enjoying it, as well, some more than others.

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We have been given access to both of the global topics that CrossWired Science has come out with so far, Sound, and Fluid Dynamics. So far, we have mainly focused on Fluid Dynamics, since the majority vote from the boys was for that one, although I would like to go through Sound as well. It has been fascinating to learn about how air and water work. We have watched videos on a number of subjects that all have to do with air and water movement. For example, one was about Dog Slobs & Cats. It showed, in great detail, how both animals lap water and why dogs make a mess while cats are tidier (although our cat manages to splash milk all around her dish, somehow). After we watched that, Mr. Imagination checked out our cats’ tongues to confirm that they have the texture that the video said they did. Other videos talked about dolphins, boxfish, penguins, nose aerodynamics (now we know why our cats are so lazy!), carburretors, and the alulas on bird wings (another lifelong mystery cleared up for me), among other topics. Each video has a worksheet with questions from the video, as well as a true/false online quiz. We have not done any of these worksheets, because they were not available when we started the course, but have done the quizzes. There were a few discrepancies between the quizzes and the videos; this is a brand-new course and is a work in progress, so I expect to see these problems resolved soon. (It’s very good already, but once these issues we noticed are corrected, I believe this site will be great.)

Worksheet #1

Besides the videos, there are many other suggested activities. There are a lot of options for experiments. I somehow neglected to get any pictures of my boys trying out the matchhead rockets, but they spent several days playing around with them. They had loads of fun building and shooting off these miniature rockets, and Mr. Intellectual discovered a new-to-us YouTube channel full of fun experiments (I think it includes a fair number of explosions, which he loves!). They also tried out the paper airplanes and figured out how to make a loop of paper fly very well across the room.

One page suggests many books to read. We have a few of them, so we added them into our read-aloud day. I was happy to be reminded to read The Great Dinosaur Mystery and Dry Bones and Other Fossils with my boys. The wide range of books that are recommended would make a great library. They suggest several biographies by Janet & Geoff Benge, one of which (Alan Shepard) we read in the past year. They also recommend Creation magazine, so I told Mr. Intellectual to spend his science time one day summarizing what he had been telling us about from the most recent issue the day before.

Right now, we’re working our way through the Gold Dig section. This is six pages about bones. The first page had a video and a quiz; we’re currently on the next page, which talks about all sorts of subtopics having to do with bones—just look at this outline!

Bones #1 There is a worksheet which goes along with this. Each day, I’m reading through about three sections of this page with Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie, and Mr. Imagination, and we answer the questions that go along with those sections. It takes about 15 minutes to do that much, and that’s about all the time they can handle doing something like this, since we usually don’t get to it till after lunch and they are ready to run outside! Mr. Intellectual is doing this part by himself, since he is a strong reader. One thing we really enjoyed about this page was a photo of the International Space Station. What we really loved was that New Zealand, and the top part of our island, was in the background! It’s a very clear photo, and we could almost see where we used to live!

I’m also looking forward to learning about sound. So far, all we have done there is to watch one video, which was about the larynx and the vocal cords. It looks like the Global Topic on Sound is laid out similarly to the one we’re working on. All the Digging Deeper pages have something to do with sound, in humans as well as the animal world. We had started the year using the same series of science textbooks we’ve been using and loving for the past several years, but I’m thinking we’re going to finish what we want to use in CrossWired Science before we go back and finish that book. There is so much to love in this course! We’re enjoying the variety of ways to learn about the topic, and we love the way it points to the Creator. One thing we’ve noticed is that the videos don’t actually mention God, but what we read on the screen does. The videos do talk about how things are designed to work the way they do, very definitely giving glory to God if you think about it a little. I am very slow to buy an online program for school, but this is one that is worth the price they ask for it, even for us. I like it and am very glad we were put on the review.

If you are interested in trying out this fascinating website, here is a coupon code that will take $5 off every order—no matter how many times it is used: loh12.

One thing I had a bit of trouble figuring out is how to schedule CrossWired Science. There is so much information here, in a variety of styles, but it’s not laid out in lessons, although I have heard that there is a suggested schedule somewhere on the website—I haven’t found it myself. The intention is that a student will choose what appeals to him, and work through most or all of each project (Fluid Dynamics is one project) in any order. The way it’s set up, you click a button labeled “Finish Quiz” at the bottom of each page, and then you can tell by looking at a bar at the top of each page how many more pages there are to complete. All ages can do this course together. Of course, older children will go more in-depth than younger ones, but even Little Miss, who is four, enjoys the videos. Also, there are two levels. We’re using the First-Timer course, but for those who have been through it once as a younger child, they can do it again using the Second-Timer course. I haven’t looked at it yet, so I can’t say how it is different. Here are screenshots of the menu on the Lesson Page. You can see that they have made it easy to tell which lessons are completed.

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Each project is intended to be a full Science curriculum for a month or two. The plan is to have enough projects up to provide six years of Science! I’ll be very interested in following the progress of this course to see how it develops. Of course, not only can it be used as a stand-alone curriculum, it could also be used as a supplement to any other science curriculum. Be sure to click on the banner below to see what the rest of the 80 reviewers have to say—I’ll be checking out some of those reviews, because I’m curious to know what others think of this!

Sound, and Fluid Dynamics {CrossWired Science Reviews}