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Product Reviews

Product Review–BibleMemory.com

February 22, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

After we bought an iPad in December, I asked Esther if she knew of any good Bible memory apps that I could use with it that would help me with memorising scripture. For many years I’ve been working on memorising large portions of the Bible, but I’ve been frustrated with how hard it is to actually learn them. I have been just using my Bible, running a card down the page to cover up what’s coming next and trying to recall the passages and recite them that way. However, when you can read nearly an entire verse a glance the way I can, it is too easy to just read the passage instead of reciting it. I wanted an app that would help me to learn the words of the Bible. She found me one, and while it had some fun games it didn’t really do what I wanted. Then, I was given the opportunity to try out a subscription to The Bible Memory App–Bible Memory PRO from BibleMemory.com. I jumped at the chance. I’ve been using it now for about six weeks and I am impressed. Memorize Bible Verses with BibleMemory.com

It took me a week or two to really learn how to use Bible Memory PRO, and at first I wasn’t sure I liked it. It didn’t have the fun games that the other program had, and there were a few facets of the program I had a little trouble wrapping my head around. However, the more I have used it the more I like it. Setting up an account was the first step. With a Pro account four different people can have their own account. For this review I was allowed a few more than that. Esther and Elijah and I all signed up and so did Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination. You have the choice when adding verses to add single verses or entire chapters. Each verse or chapter can be put into a collection. The collections make it easy to find what you need, although it took me a couple of weeks to figure out how I wanted to organise my collections. It’s very easy to change the names of collections, or even move chapters from one collection to another. Each chapter becomes a sub collection of its own.

After adding a chapter it’s time to learn the verses. You learn one verse at a time. First read the verse, then type the first letter of each word. Do that twice, or more often if you did not get 90% of the words correct. The first two times through you can see some of the words flickering on and off which gives hints to what all the words are. After those two times through you have to type the first letter of each word without seeing any of them to test your memorisation. You also have to remember the reference. If you got 90% accuracy you are considered to have memorised that verse and are ready to move on. I like to learn one verse a day from the passage I’m currently working on.

Each day you are told you need to review certain verses. The program pays attention to how well you know the verse when you review it, and decides from that how often you need to review it. If you did not get 90% of the words correct it suggests that you swipe the verse off the screen and redo it. I like to use the setting to combine all verses needing review which shows me the text of the verses that the program doesn’t think I need to review that day and leaves blanks for the ones that need to be reviewed. You can also choose to review the entire chapter in one go, or you can review individual verses – whatever works for you.

There are two other options for reviewing verses besides typing the first letter of each word, but I have not used them. One is flashcards; I just looked at it but I could not see how it was supposed to work. The other is drawings; I am guessing that you may need an Apple pencil to draw on an iPad and I do not have that. Like I said, this program does not have a lot of fun games for reviewing verses, but it is very effective. I am remembering the chapters I’m trying to memorise much better than I was before. Esther said it is helping her to learn better as well. Elijah quit using it soon after he started. He didn’t feel like it was the right program for him. Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination used it for a short time, but they are not fast enough at typing for it to work very well for them. If you don’t know the keyboard very well, you lose too much time hunting for the correct keys. I may try them with it again sometime in the future. And speaking of finding the keys one thing I appreciate is that if you hit any key that touches the correct one it counts it to be correct. Since I’m using it by tapping the on-screen keyboard, with usually just my index fingers, it’s very easy, when going fast, to hit a nearby key instead of the one I want. Of course, that also means that if the correct word is different from what I thought it was but begins with a letter very close on the keyboard to the one I was trying to hit the program thinks I know the verse better than I actually do.

Bible Memory PRO can be used on any device. Esther and Elijah have used it on their iPhones. I am using it on my iPad. It can also be used on a computer or an Android device. As long as the device is connected to the Internet it syncs with wherever it was used last. Overall I am very impressed with this program and I intend to keep using it. I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to review Bible Memory PRO because it has given me the tool I really needed to memorise scripture more easily. Click on the image below and have a look at other families’ experiences with the program.
Memorize Bible Verses in Your Homeschool with BibleMemory.com

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

Review Crew—Blue Ribbon Awards

November 24, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Every year, the Homeschool Review Crew asks for votes on favorite reviews. I didn’t manage to get my votes in this year, but when I looked over the list of reviews we did this year, I realized this was our best year yet! I wrote 20 reviews, and 9 of them were for products that I liked well enough to continue using or use again. The Crew just posted their list of Blue Ribbon Awards, and I noticed that several of the winners were also among our favorites!2021-blue-ribbon-awards-pinterest-683x1024-1

I have been pulling Superstar Spelling out periodically to help Mr. Imagination practice spelling. I like that I can make up my own spelling lists for him with it, using words that he misspells in his regular work. When he’s using Superstar Spelling, he’s definitely more careful with writing his answers!

Teaching Textbooks turned out to be a perfect fit for Mr. Diligence for this, likely his last, year of high school. He did Geometry, and the video lectures worked well for him. By the end of the year, it was taking him two hours to work through one lesson, but he maintained a 92% average all year. I remember struggling with Geometry, even though math, in general, was easy for me, so I was very glad to have a course that worked so well for him. Teaching Textbooks is a math course that I will be happy to pay for in the future, for high school math. Teaching Textbooks was voted the favorite Middle School resource this year by the Crew.

My younger children loved One More Story. They spent a lot of time for awhile listening to books on it, and Little Miss was asking if she could use it again a few days ago. I like the selection of older, wonderful picture books on this site.

We’re still working our way through Sparkling Bits of Writing, from Creative Word Studio. I really like this creative writing course! Lessons don’t take very long, and they are quite varied. Each one is fresh and new, and requires creative thinking! We’re doing a lesson, on average, once a week.

We’re also still working through Project Passport: Ancient Egypt from Home School in The Woods. We started using this course in June, and are up to Stop 13 by now. We’re doing a stop about once every two weeks at the moment, which seems to be about right for us. I am liking the variety of activities that are used to teach about different aspects of Egyptian life, history and culture. Home School in the Woods was voted the favorite history/social studies resource by the Crew.

The Fallacy Detective is a very good book. We haven’t quite finished it; the goal was to read one lesson each evening, but after I got the review written we let life get in the way. We read one this week, though! It has made a difference in the way several of us think. We were talking to a friend a month or so ago, and twice during the conversation, as she was relating things other people had said, we identified fallacies. We also, now, more easily notice and identify fallacies in things we hear in the newspaper and from the government. This book is the favorite elective with the Crew.

Little Miss is still enjoying Beginning Thinking Skills from The Critical Thinking Company. We’re almost to the end of it now. She most enjoys the pages we can do on the computer; the ones that I print out for her to do something with are less popular, because they require work. She likes figuring out the puzzles.

I’m planning to use the Wagon Wheels Progeny Press guide again when Miss Joy is old enough. The trick will be remembering we have it! I really like that kind of study. Progeny Press was voted the favorite literature resource of the year by the Crew.

MathRider will continue to be used as extra practice for math facts, too. Even the speed drills and flashcard practice built into our regular math program isn’t enough to really get my children fast with their math, so I’m hoping MathRider will be a help. This was the favorite math supplement with the Crew this year.

From other years, there are a few review products that really stand out. We reviewed Let’s Go Geography twice, in 2017 and 2020. We’re still working our way through that course, a lesson every couple of weeks. We’re using Page a Day Math here during our summer break, for more practice with basic facts. As a family, we’re working our way through Experience Astronomy from Journey Homeschooling—we only have a few lessons left. I think everyone is finding it very interesting! We just finished going through Bible Unearthed from Drive Through History. When we first did the review, those of us who are at home every day went through most of the lessons; later, we started watching them in the evening so Gayle and the older boys could see them. Grammar Planet was also a winner. Elijah and Mr. Diligence both made it through the entire program, and I’m planning to buy it for Mr. Sweetie next year.

I’ve always had trouble fitting in “extras” like history and geography. A couple of months ago I changed tactics and, instead of trying to fit them all in every week, we’re rotating through them. We’re using Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics for science right now; it has 14 lessons, which are each a chapter of the book. We spend several days or a week working through one of those chapters, then do a writing lesson from Sparkling Bits of Writing. Then, we spend three days doing a geography lesson from Let’s Go Geography, then another writing lesson. Next, we spend a few days or a week doing a lesson about Ancient Egypt, and then another writing lesson. Then, the cycle starts over. So far, this is working well. We get in all the extras I want to do, and are able to focus on each subject for an entire lesson, but don’t get burned out on one subject. I don’t know if it would have worked with my older children, but with the three I’m teaching right now, it’s fairly popular!

To see what other programs or products won the Blue Ribbon Awards, check out this post. Also, if you have a blog, public Facebook page, YouTube channel, or Instagram page, and want to join the Homeschool Review Crew, fill out the application here. New members are always needed as families age out!

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Reviews, Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

Product Review—Progeny Press

November 2, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

I have been intrigued by the study guides from Progeny Press ever since I first heard of them, before I had children. A couple of years ago, we had our first chance to use one, for review, and enjoyed it. When I was offered another study guide recently, I knew it was something we wanted to do. I chose the Wagon Wheels Study Guide. Wagon Wheels is an easy reader we have had on the shelf for years and a wonderful story.Wagon Wheels 1IMG_0176

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Miss is the only child I have who was in the correct age range (grades 1-3) for this study, so she was the one who got to go through it. The guide is sent as a fillable PDF, so it can be completed entirely digitally, but I chose to print it. For our family, something on paper is much easier to use than something on the computer, in general. I do appreciate having the PDF, as I can use it again when Miss Joy is old enough.

Before we started reading the book, we read a page of background information and talked about some of the issues that affected the family in the story. We also looked up maps to find where they came from and where they lived.

There are four chapters in Wagon Wheels, and after a few pages of studying some of the more uncommon words found in the book, the child is directed to read the first two chapters, answer questions about them, and then read the last two chapters and answer questions about them. Instead of doing it just like that, I chose to have Little Miss read one chapter a day. After reading the chapter, we answered the questions that went along with it, and studied the words that were from that chapter. The book is just enough more difficult than most she’s reading right now, and the chapters are long enough, that it worked best to spread out the reading over four days.

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After the questions about the chapters (which included studying a few passages from the Bible and discussing how they related to the book), there is a page about Fact or Opinion, and Little Miss had to identify which one each of 15 statements was. She had fun with that! Next, she had to go through the book and find compound words, writing them down on a page. After that, she got to draw pictures to illustrate several compound words. The last activity in the book is a crossword puzzle, which she was quite excited about.

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After all the activities about the story, there are hands-on projects and research projects suggested to extend the learning. At the very end of the book is a list of other books by the author of Wagon Wheels, and other books that have similar topics.

We really enjoyed this study. Little Miss enjoys reading, and she enjoyed thinking about the book. I believe I’ll be looking into doing more literature studies with her in the future; this seems to be something that will work well for her. Be sure to click the image below to read reviews of other Progeny Press study guides!

Progeny Press Literature Study Guides

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

Product Review—LightSail for Homeschoolers

October 19, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

One thing I decided to do differently with school this year was to try out different ways of doing Language Arts. I’m not totally happy with the course we’ve been using for several years now, so I decided to phase it out and, instead, use programs I get for review, instead. When we were offered a subscription to LightSail for Homeschoolers, I thought this sounded perfect. Lots of reading practice, writing practice, spelling…everything included. For the first week we had access to it, Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss all loved it. They spent a lot of time exploring the books that were available to read. Since then, their enthusiasm has petered out a fair amount, but they are still using it several times a week.

LightSail for Homeschoolers

The core of this program is Reading. The Premium subscription, which is what the two boys have been using, contains more than 12,000 books! That means that anyone should be able to find books that appeal to them. I have found it fascinating to see what my boys have chosen. I knew that Mr. Imagination was interested in animals, but I had no idea how much he would be interested in books with lots of factual information about unusual animals. Most of the books he chose to read were picture books with lots and lots of information in short snippets. His favorite was Nature’s Ninjas: Animals With Spectacular Skills, and he wished there were a lot more like that one! Mr. Sweetie had a harder time finding books that appealed to him. It did help when I reset his grade level, from Grade 6, which he is currently in, to Grade 3. That helped him find more books that were a bit simpler; he struggles with reading. Both boys very quickly found the feature that reads books to them—they liked that much better than reading for themselves!

LightSail is “lexile driven.” This means that each book is rated for the exact reading level, based on vocabulary. The first thing that each of the children did when they started this program was to take a test to determine their exact reading/comprehension level. They would read a sentence or two or a paragraph, and then select a word, from four choices, to complete a summary sentence. This let the program know what type of books to offer. Throughout the books they read or had read to them, they frequently ran into what LightSail calls “clozes.” These are places where a blue box replaces a word in the book, and four choices are given. The child has to select the one that fits best. Based on their answers, the program updates their Lexile level every 15 days. I just checked the data on my three children; two of them went up and down over the course of the six weeks we used this program! Here is a screenshot of one of the questions one of them had.

LightSail 1

The parental controls are very good with this program. Many books require permission from a parent before the child can read them; this frustrated Mr. Imagination because he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to read a book about wolves, for example! Many times, that was simply because LightSail hadn’t yet checked out the book to make sure there was nothing objectionable in it. However, once it was actually about werewolves, so I was quite glad that I could decline permission on that one.LightSail 6LightSail 7

Other than reading books, there are three other areas that LightSail offers instruction for. We didn’t end up using these areas. One is Writing. There are several different kinds of writing that are offered, but I couldn’t figure out how to assign them. One is apparently accessed by clicking a button when completing a book, but I was never in the right place at the right time to get anyone to do that (imagine… my boys didn’t choose to do a writing assignment!).

Vocabulary is another area of study. This seems to only be activated when a child chooses the wrong answer when doing a cloze. The correct word is studied in several different ways. Once again, we didn’t use this feature much at all—I think I had Little Miss look at it one day, and she couldn’t make heads or tails out of it!

There is also Fluency. From what I saw about it in the information, the child reads a passage into a microphone, and then the parent listens and marks their mistakes. I didn’t even try doing this, because we don’t have a microphone that works with my computer. Anyway, we do oral reading practice every day, anyway.

Little Miss had a different subscription than the boys did. Hers is called World Book Kids, and is for her age group. She has had access to all sorts of fun books about animals. She enjoyed books about pandas, platypuses, flamingoes and many others, and also some books about a dog who gets himself into trouble and learns lessons. In addition to choosing the correct word for a cloze, she also has comprehension questions. She struggles a bit with those, since she hasn’t been able to get them read aloud to her and she doesn’t understand all the words yet. She still loves using the program, and hearing all sorts of fun picture books read to her! Here are a couple of screenshots from her pages.

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There are many other resources available on this site that we haven’t used. The World Book Encyclopedia is on here, and timelines and maps from World Book, as well. One tab has thousands of videos on all sorts of topics, and another has livestreams from places around the world. We decided not to use these, because we were running out of data on our plan, and the livestreams we did look at were pretty boring. That was because of time zones—it is night where most of them are when it’s day here!

So, what do we think of this program? Mr. Sweetie has made it clear that he is no longer interested in it. He would rather read to himself from other books than try to use this program; he wants simpler books than he is offered here. Mr. Imagination likes it, but he has a hard time finding exactly the right book. Little Miss loves it! I think there is a lot of potential here, but it’s not for us. As I keep learning, over and over again, computer programs don’t work as well for us as print books or PDFs that I can print out. I am glad we used this, because it taught me a lot about Mr. Imagination’s interests in books! Now I know better what kind of books to look for at secondhand shops, to catch his interest. Have a look for yourself; this program might be just what you need! Read more reviews by clicking on the image below.

Improve Reading Skills with LightSail for Homeschoolers

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

Product Review—One More Story

May 27, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

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

I had never heard of the website One More Story before the opportunity came up to review it. I knew, when I looked at the site, that my younger children would really enjoy this. They love having stories read to them, and after hearing research about the importance of reading picture books to children, I was very happy to have more for them. It’s hard to find time to read lots of picture books!

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I really like the selection of picture books that are on One More Story. A lot of them are older books. There are several by Ezra Jack Keats! We have always loved his The Snowy Day; that one is included, as well as several others. I had wanted to read Stellaluna to them, too, but had never been able to lay hands on a copy, so now they have heard that story. This site is especially valuable to us because of the poor selection of books in the libraries in this country.OMS 3

Little Miss (age 6) is the one who has used this site the most. She learned very fast how to use it (very simple—you basically just click the green arrow when it shows up!), and can spend a hour at a time listening to stories. Mr. Imagination (age 9) usually joins her; the two of them spend most of their time together these days. Miss Joy often sits and listens in, too, although she gets bored pretty soon and wanders off, only to come back and check out the next book they open.1-IMG_7597

There are three ways to read each book. Children can have the book read to them with the pages turning automatically, or they can have the book read to them and turn the pages themselves, or they can turn the sound off and read the story themselves. When the story is read to them, the text is highlighted word by word. This helps children to see how we read text from left to right, and helps to make the connection between written and spoken word. I can’t say how well it works, because Mr. Imagination and Little Miss both read already, but I can see that it would work if children spent a lot of time using this site. You can switch between modes of reading for each book. There is also a vocabulary button, which brings up a list of words from the book. A definition and sample sentence is given for each word. And, after you leave a book, you are asked if you want to listen to one more story!OMS 4

The text has been taken off the pages of these picture books; instead, it appears in the bar below the pages of the book. Sometimes, the text from one double-page spread is stretched over several page turns; in those cases, different parts of the pictures are zoomed in to go with the text that is being read.

There is a parent’s dashboard, which is useful if you want to keep track of the books your children have been reading or hearing. It shows which books they have read in the past week. This is a great site for young children who can’t get enough stories read to them! I especially like it on wet days when my younger ones can’t be outside but I don’t have things for them to do inside. They can entertain themselves quite well for a long time with these stories—if I let them, they will spend an hour at it!

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To see what other families have to say about One More Story, click on the banner below!
One More Story Online Library Reviews

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Product Reviews, Review Crew

Product Review—Home School in the Woods

March 26, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

Last month, we were offered the opportunity to use and review a product from Home School in the Woods. Untitled 2We really enjoyed doing a history study from them six or eight months ago, and the children were fairly enthusiastic about doing another project now. I gave Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Little Miss the choice of two Lap-Paks, one about Knights and one about Benjamin Franklin. They decided they would like to do the Knights K-2 Lap-Pak, so that’s the one we requested. We’ve been working on the projects in it ever since receiving our download. We haven’t quite finished, but almost. We put the lapbook together yesterday, and got a start on coloring the picture for the cover.
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There are 12 different little projects to do for the lap book. Each one gives more information about knights. The first project talks about the feudal system in general and how it was organized. There were also projects about the knights’ armor and weapons, and how a king knighted a man (that one was very fun!).

Each project required printing from one to five pages, each on its own PDF, on either white or colored paper or cardstock. I was thankful to have a supply of these on hand from the last time we did a similar-style study! Each project was a little different. Most of the projects have some sort of flaps to lift in order to read information underneath, and a couple of them have several small pages stapled together. One project involved drawing a coat of arms for yourself or your family. Mr. Sweetie remembered seeing a coat of arms that related to our family in a book we have about the Middle Ages, so he based his on that—fun! 5-IMG_6192Two of the projects used paper fasteners to make moving parts, and another has a little “puppet” to show a tournament happening.

This project is a really fun supplement to a study of the Middle Ages. It was something different to do in our school days. We learned a fair amount about knights, and in such a way that the children will remember what we learned. They did get pretty tired of coloring pictures by the end; there is a lot of coloring involved. I had them work on coloring while we read aloud, and that helped. This project was good for developing fine motor skills, and, as one of my boys learned the hard way, it is good for learning to follow directions! I had to reprint one or two projects because they weren’t done correctly.

Pros—fun way to learn
easy way to do a little art
very little preparation time required
all printing is black and white, with one page per PDF
Cons—lots of coloring, which my boys struggle with
quite a few pages to print2-IMG_37012-IMG_61893-IMG_61904-IMG_6191

Will we do more of these projects if they are offered to us? Yes, indeed! We would love to do the Benjamin Franklin lapbook next! Would I buy one? Yes, to use as a supplement to a study we’re doing. These projects are well-thought-out and easy to work into our school days. And by the way, if you’re interested in how the elections work in the United States, this publisher has a Lap-Pak about them. Check out this page if you want to know more about it. Also, if you are curious about lapbooks, I found a very informative blog post about them, here. Click on the link below to see what 79 other families experienced with various products from Home School in the Woods!

Home School in the Woods Collections - Lap-pak, Timeline Figures, History Studies & Activity-Pak {Home School in the Woods Reviews}

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

Product Review—Lets Go Geography, Year 2

February 25, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

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

A couple of years ago, we had the privilege of reviewing Year 1 of Let’s Go Geography. Mr. Imagination loved it and badly wanted to continue doing it, but last year it was one of the things that completely went by the wayside when I was pregnant. This year I decided to make a point of getting back to it—and then had the opportunity to review Let’s Go Geography,Year 2! He and Little Miss were very excited about getting to be part of this review. I have Mr. Sweetie join in, too, although he isn’t nearly as enthusiastic. We’re really enjoying it, although I didn’t get quite as far during the first few weeks of having it as I would have liked.

So far, we have studied the North and South American continents in general, and created dividers for our ring binders for those continents and Europe. These dividers are something new with the program, which I really like. Having the binder makes it easy to keep the pages together, which was something we struggled with when we did Year 1 awhile back. I gave each of the three children their own binder, and we 2-hole punch all the pages to put in the binders (3-ring binders are almost non-existent in this country—we have to order them online if we want them!). We have also studied the Pacific Northwest states and the Mountain West states. One of the videos we watched for the Pacific Northwest study was about Mount St. Helens. Mr. Sweetie was so intrigued by that that he wanted to write about the volcano for our writing group. He didn’t know enough about it, though, so we’re reading a book I had on the shelf. I love it when their interest in something is sparked by a lesson like that! One of the videos from the Mountain West states was about potato growing in Idaho, and Mr. Imagination wrote about that for his summary of what he learned about those states. He shared that story at our writing group. 30-IMG_3615 As we worked through the next lessons, we’re looking forward to studying Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela and several other Central and South American countries, and then move on to Europe, where, among others, we’ll study England, France and Germany. I’m not sure what contries are studied in the second half of the year, because I haven’t looked ahead at that semester yet. It sure looks fun to “travel” around the world this way, though!Fullscreen capture 2252020 40431 PM Each lesson is laid out in the same format. We start with map work. On a map of the continent, we color the country we’re studying, and then color a flag of that country and glue it onto a page with another map of the continent. We listen to the national anthem and a song from the country, and watch several videos on safeYouTube about the country or region, then write on a notebooking page that’s provided about what we learned. Then, there is a coloring picture, and a craft. Mr. Sweetie’s favorite part of each lesson is watching the videos, and I think Mr. Imagination and Little Miss love the crafts best. So far, we got to do some painting for the first one, with a mountain scene (which inspired Mr. Imagination to paint his own version immediately afterward!), and then we cut and glued paper to make a desert sunset with cactuses silhouetted in front. 28-IMG_3613The day we were working on that one, we had just started when we had a surprise visit of a few people, including two young girls, from a local, very restrictive religious commune. The girls were very shy, and I was praying desperately about what we could do with them, and got the idea to include them in the craft. It was the perfect thing to get them doing something with our children, and they seemed to enjoy it. So, the timing was perfect with that—praise God!24-IMG_360329-IMG_3614 I’m loving Let’s Go Geography for several reasons. The most obvious is, of course, that we get some geography lessons in and learn about different parts of the world. Another benefit is that we sometimes get a story for our writing group out of the lesson! This program is also providing some art lessons for my children, which is something we have really lacked. I’m excited to be able to provide my little ones with more ways to be creative, since I don’t have the imagination to come up with projects on my own. If you would like to include geography into your homeschool, check out Let’s Go Geography—it’s great for the primary grades! Forty-nine homeschool families have been using this program lately. Click the image below to read what they have to say about this great program!
Geography for Kids - Year 2 {Let's Go Geography Reviews}

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

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.

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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!

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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.

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20-IMG_604121-IMG_604222-IMG_604323-IMG_604424-IMG_6045I 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.

Cam 1CAM 2This is what one of the lessons looks like. You simply click on a video to get the next steps in drawing the picture!CAM 3

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

Learning to Draw {Creating a Masterpiece Reviews}
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Filed Under: Activities at Home, Book Reviews Tagged With: Art, Homeschool Review Crew, Homeschooling, Product Reviews

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.Time Travelers cover

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.6-IMG_5828

The course is laid out in 25 daily lessons. Every 5th 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 19th Century. I’m keeping those in mind for possible future use.

Here we are, during the first lesson, figuring out what we’re doing. 02-IMG_583303-IMG_583404-IMG_5836

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.

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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!

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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!2-IMG_5881

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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. IMG_5897IMG_5898IMG_5899

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!IMG_5907

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. IMG_5912

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}

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Filed Under: Activities at Home, Book Reviews Tagged With: History, Homeschooling, Product Reviews, Review Crew

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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}

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Filed Under: Activities at Home, Book Reviews Tagged With: Book Reviews, Homeschool Review Crew, Homeschooling, Product Reviews

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