Product Review

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

We’re studying ancient history this year, from Creation to the time of Jesus. Therefore, when we were offered a product from Home School in the Woods to use and review, I chose one of the Project Passport World History Studies—the one about Ancient Egypt. We’ve never used a Project Passport study before. They looked too big and involved to me, the other times we were offered products from this company. I’m finding it fun, though, and fairly easy, although it will take us awhile to get through it. Because we’re using it as a supplement to the other history we’re doing (two courses simultaneously—yes, I’m a bit of a curriculum junkie!), we are doing no more than one “stop” a week, and last week we didn’t get anything done on it, due to Mom being sick, a first aid course one day, and dental appointments another day. We have made it through the first five stops, though, and I’m hoping to continue doing one a week. Mr. Sweetie (age 11), Mr. Imagination (9), and Little Miss (6) are doing this study, and I’m doing each project with them.

Each “stop” on our “itinerary” through Ancient Egypt has a few standard activities. We have been adding place names to our map on most stops, and pictures to our timeline. We often get to read and decorate a postcard, and many stops include an audio tour of something (once it was a trip on a boat down the Nile, and yesterday we listened to a man talking about how they were embalming the Pharoah). We also add to a newspaper we’re writing, with a news article or a couple of advertisements each time. Mr. Imagination loves that—he likes to draw! Each stop also includes some sort of craft and a few pages of text that I read aloud.

Some of our projects get hole punched and put into the ring binder we’re each filling up. We spent an entire week working on clothing for an Egyptian man and woman! Some of the pieces of clothing needed to be colored on cardstock, cut out and either put into slits in the person we were clothing, and we also cut out a few pieces of cloth for other items. Another project we really had fun with was the Game of Senet, based on board games found in the tombs. We spent our history time one morning assembling the game from the PDFs I downloaded, and playing it. It’s a two-player game, so we divided into two teams, since three children and I are working on this project together.

We’re also making items in most lessons to eventually assemble into a lap book. So far, we’ve made a mini-book about about the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, a wheel that turns with information on it about jobs in Egypt, a cookbook (which we plan to use!) and a mini book about mummies, coffins, and sarcophagi. Each of these items is very informative. They are also fairly easy, since the instructions in the Itinerary are so detailed.

There are also craft projects that won’t fit in the books! We skipped the first one, since noone was interested in actually dressing like an Egyptian, but Mr. Imagination and Little Miss are working on the second. They are making a mummy and a sarcophagus, from foil, newspaper, masking tape, strips of white cloth whenever I find them some, glue, and a shoe box—and lots of paint! We are given craft cards to print and store in the notebooks about these projects.

I am very impressed with this course. A lot of work went into making it! It has been organized very well, and I’ve found it easy to use. To prepare for a “stop”, I simply open and print the PDFs for the text and itinerary for that stop, and then read through the itinerary to see what needs to be printed for that stop. All the pages we’ll need for the crafts, lapbook, etc, are in one folder, and labeled by the lesson number, which makes it very easy to find the right ones. The instructions tell whether to print the pages on white or colored paper, or white or colored card stock. (I’m thankful that Esther has found a place we can order the card stock and colored paper online—I can’t get it locally!) We’re learning a lot about Egypt from this project, and I will certainly request more of these projects in the future if they’re offered (I would even buy these!). And, the children are enjoying doing this. Little Miss is the most enthusiastic. Mr. Imagination hates cutting and gluing, but he loves drawing pictures. Mr. Sweetie isn’t overly excited, but I don’t hear any grumbling from him. The variety of projects helps to keep up interest.

Home School in the Woods has downloadable timeline sets that look great! They include pictures of many people and events from various eras of history. The Creation to Christ one looks like it would be great for the study we’re doing right now. Click on the image below to read other people’s reviews of great products from this company.

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I’m trying to find ways to make spelling, grammar, and other Language Arts topics more interesting. When we were offered the chance to try out a program from EdAlive, I decided to try Words Rock Online, which includes a spelling course. Mr. Sweetie doesn’t have too much trouble with spelling most of the time, but Mr. Imagination, well, uses his imagination when he spells! It’s a big challenge for him. So, I decided we would try out this program to see if it would help at all.

There are a lot of different types of questions that cover a wide variety of spelling patterns. Some cover high-frequency words, others offer practice with consonant digraphs or consonant blends. The questions are set up as a game, with different ways to answer each one. With some, you have to reorganize letters or syllables; with others, you have to click on the misspelled word and then correct it. Sometimes you add letters to or take them off of words to make other words. The variety helps to keep this from getting too boring! Here is one question:

Mr. Sweetie has been using the Grammar section of Words Rock, as well as the Spelling section. Proper pronoun use is covered, and there is also practice with verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. Farther on, all parts of speech are covered. Once again, there is quite a variety of types of questions and ways to answer them.

I checked out some of the questions in the Vocabulary on my own account, and found practice with labeling objects with the correct word, identifying synonyms and antonyms and homonyms (without calling them those names), and choosing the correct meaning of a proverb. There are also questions in which I had to choose the correct meanings of Greek and Latin words. They made me think!

All these programs use Adaptive Learning. In other words, if the questions seem quite easy for you, you are advanced to a higher level. If they are too hard (and you always have the option to click the “Too Hard” button if you don’t understand a question), you will be moved to a lower level.

The parent’s dashboard is very useful. It shows what the students have been doing, in several different ways and with varying levels of detail. These screenshots show some of the things I found there.

I asked Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie what they think of Words Rock. They aren’t impressed! (Am I surprised? No. It’s school work.) Mr. Sweetie says that “You aren’t taught anything. You’re just expected to know it, and it’s a review. You have to be a good reader to do it. I struggle with reading it.” My response to him is that with this program you learn by getting things wrong and trying again later, in a different way! Mr. Imagination doesn’t like the alien-type pictures. I liked that the concepts they have already learned in their regular Language Arts books are reviewed and reinforced with this program. We’ll continue using it for awhile, anyway, because we need something for Language Arts for Mr. Imagination. I really don’t know if it is doing any good, but extra spelling and grammar practice sure can’t hurt!

One thing that we have not used is the games that are built in. There is the option to choose “Questions Only,” and that’s what my boys always do. The games are typical video games, I think, and we just aren’t interested.

Click on the image below to see what other families have to say about Words Rock Online and two other programs from EdAlive.

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I have heard about Teaching Textbooks for many years. A friend of mine showed it to me back when we lived in Michigan—it must have been at least 15 years ago now! I was mildly interested, but at that time I had never so much as used a computer, so didn’t think about it much. Then, about six months ago, I was offered the chance to use this course for a review. Mr. Diligence needed something for math for this year, so I thought it would be an excellent course to try. The level he needed, Geometry, was one of the courses offered, so it worked perfectly. He started using level 3.0 in October, and after a break over the summer, he went back to it, using Teaching Textbooks 4.0—they upgraded in the meantime.

I’m quite impressed with Teaching Textbooks. It’s working very well for Mr. Diligence. He does his lessons with very little help from me. Once or twice, he has gotten stuck on a problem and asked for help, but otherwise, I don’t do anything with his lessons. Each lesson starts with a lecture, illustrated with animated slides, and then there are, I believe, five practice problems. After that, there are 20-25 problems, some having to do with the new concept taught in the day’s lecture, and some being review of concepts taught earlier. He is doing very well with this course, and really likes it.

Each problem is read aloud, and then needs to be answered in one of several ways. Sometimes there are multiple choices to click, other times it is a true/false question, and other times the answer needs to be calculated and typed in to the answer box. Immediately, the program lets you know if you got the answer right, and then you can choose to try again, or see how the solution is arrived at. A lot of the problems need to be worked out algebraically, of course. There is a “scratch pad” button, which allows you to write on the screen with the mouse. It’s a lot slower than using paper and pencil, but apparently works well with a tablet.

Do you remember doing proofs when you did Geometry in high school? I do, although I can’t remember details very well! This program has a way to do proofs. Some of the statements and some of the reasons are given; for the others, five choices are presented and you have to choose the correct one.

Version 3.0 was entirely online. He didn’t do a lot of lessons with it, because we were going into the summer holiday soon after we received it, but as far as I can tell, version 4.0 is easier to use and clearer. It is also not all online. You install an app on your device and several lessons at a time are downloaded into the computer. That makes it much more useful to us; my computer is getting very old and regularly loses connection with the internet for a minute or two. One of the features I really like about 4.0 is that I can pause our subscription, for a week or more at a time, when I know he won’t have time to use the course. This is very helpful, because we only have it for a year! 3.0 could be paused, as well, but I had to call and talk to someone to do that, and being international, that is difficult. Now, I can do it through the parent dashboard.

I am quite impressed with this program. I like the way the lessons are presented clearly, and that there is plenty of review. I like that I don’t have to do anything with them; I can just turn my boy loose and he can do the program all by himself. (This is something I’m learning about my children with dyslexia—computer programs that include lectures are very useful! I’ve been reading the lessons aloud to some of them all their lives to make sure they get it, but with a program like TT, I don’t have to!) I noticed on the website that you can get a free trial of the first 15 lessons of any level. That sounds really good to me! That would be enough to get a good feel for how the course works and if it will work for a particular child.

I like the Parent page, too. That is where I can manage the subscription (like pause it when needed!), and I can see exactly what scores he is getting on all lessons. The overall score so far for the course is shown, too. Now that we have tried Teaching Textbooks, I will likely have other children use it when we need math courses for high school.

Click on the image below to find reviews by a number of other families who also used Teaching Textbooks 4.0 recently!

Disclosure: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew

One of the perks of being on the Homeschool Review Crew is having access to SchoolhouseTeachers.com every year. Once again, we have been given the Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. I have written a couple of other reviews of this amazing resource, which you can find here and here. Last January, when I planned our school year, I realized that Mr. Diligence did not have a lot of school to do, so I told him to explore the SchoolhouseTeachers site and choose a couple of courses to do. He chose one that he thought would be useful to him, and another that he thought sounded interesting.

Mr. Diligence’s first choice was Personal Finance in Bite-Size Chunks. At first, he thought this would be an accounting course, and figured he would learn how to keep books when he someday has a business of his own. Instead, this course is more about attitudes towards money and being wise with how you spend it. Each lesson gives suggestions for things to talk about, either as a class or with the mother/teacher and student. We talked about topics such as needs and wants, paychecks, check books, savings, interest, and hidden costs of owning a car. This particular son is very conscious of how he spends money, already, and knew most of the things we talked about. I felt like it was valuable, though, to spend the time discussing these things with him and making sure he has a good, solid foundation for how he thinks about money.

The other course he chose to do was Geography of the Bible. This course includes 15 video lessons. Each of these includes a video to watch, a worksheet, and essay questions. I was hardly involved with this course; he watched the videos on his own with earphones so as not to distract his younger brothers who were working on school in the same room, and then printed what he needed and worked his way through it himself. There are answer keys for each worksheet; the worksheets ask questions about what was covered in the video. The essay questions are a lot harder. Each lesson offers five different choices for a compare/contrast assignment. In the lesson about Hebron: City of Promise, he could have chosen to compare and contrast Jerusalem and Hebron, or Abraham and Jesus, Mount Moriah and the tomb at Hebron, the tomb and the city gate, or the shrines at the tomb and the Dome of the Rock. Suggestions are given about the possible spiritual significance of some of these people or places, but the student is expected to think hard about them. Next, comes a research project. Again, five different suggestions are given for each lesson, and you are expected to find information online or in books to answer the questions. Finally, there are three suggestions for research papers. Mr. Diligence never did these. He struggled so much with the compare/contrast assignments and research projects that I didn’t have him do more. Reading and writing just aren’t easy for him!

Mr. Diligence really liked this course. He appreciated the videos, and one thing that really stands out to him is the way the narrator pointed to Jesus throughout the course. Mr. Diligence feels like he learned a lot about the Bible through doing this course, and he says that everyone should watch the videos. Maybe some time we’ll be able to watch them as a family—I would like to see them, and I know Gayle would, too. We’ll likely never go to Israel in person, but this would be a good way to experience some of the places in the Bible.

One thing I discovered when I was looking at the website in preparation for writing this review was that there are printable certificates for each course! I printed the one for the Personal Finance course for Mr. Diligence, and he was pleased to receive it. He hasn’t finished the other course yet, and we’re on our summer holiday right now, so he’s paused for a couple of months. It’s fun to have a way to mark finishing a course.

These are only two of the many, many courses available on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. You can find courses on almost any subject you need, and for any level, from Kindergarten through High School. There is something for everyone on this site! You can get access to all the hundreds of resources on this site for one price for the whole family, and put together a complete curriculum for one child or the entire family. There is even a section for parents, planners, calendars, and record-keeping helps. You name it, it’s probably there—even several libraries from World Book. And, as always, don’t just read my review. A lot of other families have been using SchoolhouseTeachers.com this past month, and they will each probably write about different parts of the site, so read a few of their reviews by clicking the banner below.

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.

I was somewhat interested in 4th Grade—Building Life Castles from Positive Action Bible Curriculum when it was offered for review a few months ago. I’m happy with the Bible course we’ve been using, but I also enjoy trying out new things. So, I decided that I would work through this book with Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination, who are just finishing 5^th and 3^rd grades right now.

The first thing my boys did when we received these books was to study the cover picture. Would you believe, the thing they commented on first was that a cardboard box says, “This end up,” and the arrow points down! The student book is fairly attractive. It has full-color illustrations, and plenty of space to write answers to the questions. Each lesson has four parts—A, B, C and a section on “Building Your Life Castle.” In the first three parts, the student mainly looks up Scripture references and finds answers to the questions from the verse.

The teacher’s guide is a sturdy 3-ring binder with three dividers, for Teaching Material, Testing Material, and Answer Key. There are a couple of pages of teaching helps and lesson plans for each part of a lesson, and then pictures of each of the student pages with the answers written in. The Testing section contains a quiz for each lesson. Each of these quizzes has ten questions, which makes it very easy to figure a grade!

The first several lessons talk about Who Jesus is, and His coming to earth, including an overview of the land in which He lived. Then, several lessons talk about various aspects of His ministry. After that, there are several lessons about the Holy Spirit, and then quite a few about applying Biblical truths to our lives. These topics include trusting God, having compassion for others, the value of humility, forgiveness, and making wise choices. The last seven chapters talk about the Apostle Paul and his ministry.

There is a lot of good in this course. The topics taught are well-worth thinking about, and the questions are well done. However, we struggled to use it in our family, mainly because it is designed for a classroom and that made it a bit difficult to use in our homeschool setting. This is intended as a 4th-grade course. Mr. Sweetie had no problems finding the correct answers; Mr. Imagination did.As I said, they are finishing 5th and 3rd grades, so I would say the grade level is about right. I would guess that it would work well for a lot of families, but for ours it just wasn’t a very good fit. Don’t just take my word for it, though; click the image below to see what other families had to say about it. Oh, one last thing: I was given a code (REVIEW20) which will give free shipping for any customer in the US who is purchasing new curriculum.