Review Crew

Book Review–Farmyard Faith

May 10, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

I’m always delighted when an author is willing to ship a physical copy of a book to us! Because we live in New Zealand, and it is very expensive to mail books from the United States to us, almost all of the books I review are digital copies. Kinsey M. Rockett, who sells her books under the name Whatsoever Stories, sent us a copy of her most recent release, Farmyard Faith. We just received it about a week and a half ago, again because of shipping internationally, so it has been one of our read alouds for only about a week. I did skim through most of the book myself, though.

Each of the 26 chapters in this book tell a story from the author’s life. When she was nine years old, her family moved to a small farm in Eastern Washington and began learning about rural life. They quickly learned that animals can make life very interesting—either hectic or funny! With goats and geese being among their first acquisitions, there were some very fun stories to tell. Because we have always had a variety of animals and know them pretty well ourselves, these stories are especially fun for us. We can really relate to little things like the geese racing frantically after their human “parents” with their stubby little wings flapping, or the goat who could find holes through which to escape where a human can’t imagine anything getting out. The chicken escape artist was another story that rang a bell with me, although the one I remember from my childhood didn’t have such a happy ending.

Kinsey has found spiritual lessons to be gleaned from many of the stories she tells. The stories about the chicken and the goats who wanted to escape all the time illustrate why we need to be content within the boundaries set by God and our human authorities. The goose story I mentioned wraps up with a few paragraphs discussing the need to imprint on God our Saviour. There are a few short chapters I noticed that just tell a funny incident from the farm, so there is a nice variety. Each chapter is illustrated with a photograph of the animal(s) that the story is about.

I asked the children what they thought of Farmyard Faith this morning after we read a chapter. They all said they were enjoying it, and Mr. Sweetie, who is 12, enthusiastically mentioned that he likes the spiritual lessons that are brought out. Because of those lessons, I decided to add it to our morning read alouds, when I like to have Bible stories and other devotional-type readings. As I mentioned earlier, this book is especially interesting to my children because they can relate so well to Kinsey’s experiences with her family’s animals, but I think any child who likes animals would enjoy it, too. The stories are very well-written, with a nice amount of descriptive words but not excessive. I am happy to have this book by a homeschool graduate on our shelf, and look forward to reading the rest of it. Click on the image below to read reviews from 34 other families who received this book and two others that Kinsey has written (which I would also love to read!).

Book Review–Corrie Ten Boom

March 22, 2022 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

Several months ago, some friends of ours borrowed a large box full of books from us. A week later, their house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Everything in it was destroyed. We had some money in the bank in America, so we decided to replace the books that had been burned, and buy some more. A number of the books that were destroyed were from the Christian Heroes: Then and Now series, by Janet &Geoff Benge. For about 15 years, I have been collecting these books, buying them wherever I can find them used. We decided that since we needed to replace several of them anyway, we would splurge and buy the entire set, as well as the Heroes of History series by the same authors. What an exciting day when a box of 80 books arrived here! (Each stack in the photo is five books!) We’re all looking forward to reading the ones we haven’t read before.

Not too long ago, I was offered the opportunity to to review one of these books and a study guide that the publisher has produced to go with it. Because I’ve been curious about the study guides for a long time, but didn’t want to spend the money to buy one because I wasn’t sure if we would use it, I signed up for the review. Of the books offered, there were three that were possibilities, ones that we hadn’t reviewed yet, and that were not loaned out. I let my three school children vote on those, and they chose Corrie Ten Boom: Keeper of the Angels’ Den. We read through this book for morning history time, and used the discussion questions for each chapter from the study guide to talk about what we have just read each morning. All three children were eager to hear more each day, although it may have been almost too much for my seven-year-old daughter. One morning she told me she had dreamed about being in prison!

Chapter 2 of this book tells the story of Corrie’s life up to the beginning of World War II. There are 15 chapters in the book and, except for the last chapter, the rest of the book tells the story of the Ten Boom family during World War II. The last chapter tells about how Corrie travelled around the world sharing her message of love and forgiveness for the rest of her life after the war. Basically, the contents of this book are almost the same as The Hiding Place, although there were a few things added in. I appreciate the way these authors tell the story of a persons’ life.

As far as the study guide goes, most of it doesn’t work very well for us. There is a section of key Bible verses which are good to read together and discuss how they apply to Corrie’s life. Suggestions are made to form a display corner with a long list of things you could put in it about the Netherlands and Corrie’s life. We don’t have room in our house for something like that so we didn’t even consider doing it. The chapter questions are what we used the most in the study guide. As I said before, after reading the chapter we used the questions to discuss various aspects of the story. Then there are suggestions for essay questions to help older children think more deeply about the story, creative writing suggestions, hands-on projects, audiovisual projects, and some arts and crafts that children can do to go along with the story. There is a chapter that gives suggestions for field trips or people that you can talk to to add to the study. Another chapter suggests map activities and vocabulary studies. More miscellaneous activities are suggested in another chapter and then the appendix has suggestions of books and resources to go along with this book interest. Interestingly, we had just started watching the movie The Hiding Place when we were assigned to this review; because we don’t spend a lot of time watching movies it took us a few weeks to get through it. Watching that along with reading this book made both more meaningful to the younger children. The study guide comes as a PDF download. I printed it and made a cover, so that it would be easy to use.

If you are wanting biographies for your children, I highly recommend Janet and Geoff Benge’s books. These are the best children’s biographies I have ever found. They’re accurate and interesting. Our entire family, from Gayle down to Little Miss, who is seven, enjoys listening to these books, either when I read them aloud or when we listen to an audiobook of one. As far as the study guides I’m not sure I will be interested in using any more, simply because that type of study doesn’t work very well for me personally. I’m glad I have had the chance to look at it, and I know it will be a good fit for a lot of families, especially those with high school children that are academically inclined. There are lesson plans and a schedule for using it as a group that meets periodically, so if you have a homeschool co-op it would be a good way to study the book together.

WARNING (things to consider when thinking about letting children read the book): The Germans mistreated people in chapter 7, 8, 11 and 12. Corrie’s sister died in Chapter 13.

Click the image below to read other families’ reviews of this and other books by the Benges!

christian-biographies-from-ywam-publishing-bring-heroes-to-life

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.

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.

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!

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!

Product Review—I Know It

November 16, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

We finished our math books for the year early, in October, and we won’t be starting our new books until February, so I was happy to try I Know It to fill in the gap so that Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Little Miss won’t forget everything they’ve learned! I Know It has math lessons for grades K-5, so it worked perfectly for us right now. It is intended as a supplement to any math curriculum; I just picked lessons that reviewed or reinforced concepts that I felt each child needed a bit more practice with before we drop studies altogether for the summer.

I Know It is very easy to use. We were given a Family license. With this license, there is only one login/password for everyone in the family, and when we login, we simply click on the picture with our name. I like that, because it can be tricky to have a different password for each child! It’s very easy to switch users with this system. There are two ways to approach lessons. You can let each child choose their own lessons, or you can assign lessons. I chose to assign lessons, which is also very easy. I simply got onto my page, browsed through the topics and looked at the sample problems, which appear when I hover over a lesson. Then, if I want someone to do that lesson, I click the check to the right of the lesson title. A box pops up which allows me to assign the lesson to any or all of the children. I can also choose how long the lesson stays on their home page, how many problems I want them to work (1-40), and whether they need to redo the lesson if they get less than a certain percentage correct. Then, click Assign Now, and the lesson is on that child’s page for them to work through when they next login! After I showed each of my three students how to use the program, I didn’t have to help them much at all except for assigning more lessons when they had completed the ones I had already given them. I did find out that Mr. Sweetie can’t remember what add, subtract, and multiply mean. He gets them mixed up! Oops. (I think he’s slightly dyslexic.)

The parent dashboard gives all sorts of reports about the children’s progress. One tab shows fun graphs of what they have accomplished. Another shows the lessons they have worked on and the scores they got. Obviously, one of them is struggling with decimals!

Children are given immediate feedback for each problem. If they got it right, a banner shows up across the problem, saying “Good Job!” or something like that, and the robot in the lower right corner of the screen does a dance. If the child doesn’t like the robot, it’s easy to switch to an emoticon or nothing by clicking the arrow beside the robot. Mr. Sweetie, doing 5^th grade work, was automatically given the emoticons, because the program figures that older children like them better. He was delighted, however, to figure out how to get the robots that the others had! If the answer is incorrect, the correct answer is shown and explained—and the robot acts very disappointed.

Little Miss enjoyed this program. She did very well with it; school is easy for her. She just finished 1^st grade, so that is the level of lessons I assigned to her. She found all that I gave her quite easy, especially since directions can be read aloud so she didn’t have any trouble understanding them. Mr. Imagination didn’t have any trouble, either; he just finished 4^th grade, so that’s the level I assigned to him. The first day or two, he had to learn the terminology that was used. He was working with place value, and the wording was different from what he was used to. He soon picked up on it, though, and had no more trouble. Mr. Sweetie, however, had a lot of trouble. I assigned him to work with decimals, and it turned out to be adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing with decimals, which he struggles with. He has just finished 6^th grade, and I gave him 5^th grade work, but it was still quite a challenge for him.

I Know It is a great way to supplement a math curriculum. It does well at giving more practice in areas in which a child is weak, and for keeping in practice through holidays. Each lesson, except the decimal ones Mr. Sweetie struggled with, took about 10-15 minutes to complete, so it’s a quick, easy way to keep up skills. Click the image below to see what other families have to say about it!

Product Review—MathRider

November 9, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

One thing I am always on the lookout for is a way to make practicing math facts fun and easy. When we were offered a license to use MathRider recently, I jumped at the chance. This program makes it fun to practice facts. In fact, for the first several days we had it, Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss all competed to be able to play it first! The enthusiasm has lessened somewhat as the facts are getting harder, but they still enjoy it, for the most part.

The basic idea is that you and your horse Shadow go on a quest. You might need to find a flower to cure your mother, a gem that some monkeys have stolen, or the place to which a kidnapped princess has been taken. To meet the goal, you must ride your horse through a series of beautiful and mysterious lands, and the horse must jump one obstacle after another. The only way he can make the jumps is if you answer the math facts correctly before he gets to them. The faster you answer, the faster he runs and the more points you get, which means you finish the quest sooner. Each quest contains as many rides of 30 math facts each as it needs to so that you can get the number of points needed for that quest.

Players only answer facts for one function at a time. It is recommended to do the addition quests first, and then subtraction, followed by multiplication and division. Each function has four levels, and the recommendation is to do the Starter level first, then Intermediate and Advanced, finishing with Master. That last one appears to be just one ride. I’m the only one who has reached that level yet here, and it seemed that finishing was based on speed and accuracy. After every ride, you get to look at the map to see how far through the quest you have gotten. From that, you can see how much farther you have to go to reach the goal.

Each player has their own dashboard with statistics. The “top challenges” are the facts you have missed.

Except for one thing, I really like MathRider. I hadn’t been actively looking for a program to make math practice fun, but I am glad to have this, and we’ll be using it until we stop for our summer break, around Christmas. I like that the children can use this without any help from me, and I like that they are only racing themselves, not other children or the computer. I like that the program adjusts itself quickly to the child’s speed; Shadow walks or runs according to how fast the answer is entered. I really like the simplicity, yet attractiveness, of this program! I also like that the program is offline. You simply download the installer, install the program, and enter the registration key that has been emailed.

The one thing I don’t like is the magical aspect. In one of the quests, there is a wizard who gives you directions for the quest, and the ending is always somewhat magical. It’s such a good program otherwise, though, that we’ll use it for awhile anyway.

Little Miss really likes MathRider still. Mr. Sweetie says it’s “ok.” Mr. Imagination says it’s awful. He has tried the same quest six times and still can’t achieve mastery! I think all three are stuck on the Intermediate level of Addition. It is certainly exposing their weak areas! Mr. Sweetie, for example, doesn’t know 5+7=12 very well. Mr. Imagination has still been counting on his fingers to add, even though he’s in fourth grade; I noticed that by now, after a month of using MathRider, he’s not using his fingers as much. I think that, if we’re consistent with it, he’ll learn the facts a lot better.

Click on the image below to read other people’s reviews of MathRider!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Product Review—Teach Sunday School (Bible Breakdowns)

October 12, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

Over the last year or two, I have, several times, seen advertisements for Bible Breakdowns. No, this is not the kind of breakdowns that my mechanic son would think of! Rather, the meaning is more like breaking something down into its parts to make it more understandable. I was attracted to the idea, but not sure enough that we would use them to want to buy them. When Teach Sunday School offered the Old Testament and New Testament breakdowns for review, I decided to give them a try.

I printed the cards as soon as we were sent the PDF. It took awhile to figure out how to use them, but I finally gave Mr. Sweetie the ones for the books of the Bible he is reading in his morning quiet time. He checks off the passage he reads each day. Knowing the theme of the passage helps him get a little more out of his devotions.

I also printed several copies of the cards for the book of the Bible we are currently reading as a family in the evenings. I gave these to Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Little Miss. Before we read our chapter together, one of them is to find it on the page and read us the theme for that chapter. That helps us all to understand it a little better, I think, and see how the chapters fit together in the book.

There are several parts to each card. Of course, the title of the book is at the top of the page, along with which Testament it is part of and the number of the book—for example, Ephesians is the 10^th book in the New Testament. A paragraph talks about the theme of the book and why it was written. Then, there is some general information, like number of chapters, type of book (historical, law, etc), when and where it was written, and who the author likely was.

The main part of each card is the outline of the book. There is a line for each passage—sometimes only one verse, often a whole chapter, or sometimes multiple chapters. For example, here is part of the card for I Kings (chosen at random):

(In case you’re wondering, the stories highlighted in blue are the most well-known stories, the ones that appear in Bible story books all the time.)

At the bottom of the page is a list of the most popular verses in that book of the Bible, and their rank, as far as popularity, both in that book and in the entire Bible. We did wonder where this information came from. Did the Teach Sunday School people search books to find these verses? Or take data from Bible apps? We’re finding this information interesting, anyway.

If you are looking for a way to help your children understand the layout of the Bible better, Bible Breakdowns might be a good tool. If you have any more ideas of good ways to use them, please leave a comment—I would like to hear what you suggest! Click the image below to read what other families have to say about this interesting product.

Product Review—Spelling Ninja from Reading Kingdom

October 8, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

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

A couple of months ago, I was offered the chance to review a program from Reading Kingdom again. We have used programs from this company in the past, and while the children had fun with them, I didn’t find them overly helpful for us. One of the choices offered this time, though, was Spelling Ninja. Mr. Imagination tends to be imaginative with his spelling, as well as in daily life, so I thought maybe this program would help him. He has been using it now for about six weeks.

There are 15 levels in Spelling Ninja. Each level has 10 pages. Each of those pages has a sentence, with a picture to illustrate the sentence. The sentence are progressively longer as the child works through the program.

Each sentence is read to the child, and then he can read it to himself. When he is ready, he clicks a button or hits enter to show he is ready to move on. Then, he is supposed to type the sentence. In the first level, only one word is blanked out at a time to be typed, but gradually the number of words that are blanked out is increased until, in level 9, where Mr. Imagination is currently working, most of the sentence is blanked out! The idea is to increase his capacity for remembering the words and how they look. He is given a certain amount of time to type each word, and if he can’t get it in that time, the program shows him the word again, and then he has to give it another try. If he has too much trouble with a sentence, he has to type the whole thing again. He can’t move on until he has typed each word perfectly.

When Mr. Imagination first started using Spelling Ninja, he got very frustrated, to the point of tears. He was having trouble finding the keys he needed on the keyboard, and it was also moving too fast for him. I got into his settings and changed it so that he had more time, and that helped. It also helped when he finally learned to check that Caps Lock was off! He has been spending ten minutes a day using this program. To be honest, I haven’t seen much progress in his spelling abilities. I think it’s good practice for him, and maybe someday he’ll learn to pay attention to the spelling of the words he writes. It’s not a magic cure, but hopefully will be a piece in the puzzle of teaching spelling! It is definitely helping his memory for words, since he has to remember eight or ten words of a sentence to complete a page correctly. It should help him learn to use punctuation better, too, since he must type that in correctly to finish a sentence. I really like that he can use the program by himself; I only have to be involved if he runs into trouble.

Click on the image below to read reviews from other families of this and two other programs from Reading Kingdom! I plan to read a few to see if Spelling Ninja helped their children, and if I can pick up some tips to make it work better for Mr. Imagination.

Review Crew

Thank you!