Review Crew

Product Review—Journey Homeschooling

July 29, 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.

About six weeks ago, we were presented with the opportunity to do a course from Journey Homeschool Academy, and had to choose between two topics. The children and I spent our science class time for a few days checking out the various sample lessons offered for the two courses, and decided that Experience Astronomy: Elementary looked pretty interesting. We learned a lot just from the two video lessons that were available as samples! We’ve been using this program now for five weeks, and are really enjoying it. We’re watching the lessons with the whole family, while the evening dishes are being washed. We’re only doing one lesson a week, so just one night a week is spent on astronomy. I decided to do it this way so that Gayle and the older boys can learn about the heavens, as well. We haven’t spent much time with astronomy, so this will plug a gap for them.

So far, we have had an overview of astronomy, learned how the earth revolves and rotates around the sun, the seasons, the phases of the moon, and what constellations are. The lesson about the phases of the moon was one of the sample lessons, so for the past month we’ve been observing the moon as it went through a complete cycle. Watching the lesson for the second time was very good to help cement the concept. One thing we really liked about it was that the teacher showed the way the moon appears in the Southern Hemisphere! Almost everything is aimed at the Northern Hemisphere, it seems like, since most educational materials are produced in the United States. This is, too, but he teaches about both. We could really relate to what he was saying, since we’ve observed the differences ourselves when we traveled back for a visit.

Each lesson, as I mentioned, has a video. This is usually about 15 minutes long. It is accompanied by a 2-3 minute Memory Video, with the main points the teacher wants us to remember. There is also a PDF with supplementary material. This always includes some suggested books to read, a craft activity, several pages of handwriting practice, notecards with the memory points, and a quiz. We’re using the notecards (I have them taped to a cupboard door) and the quizzes, and we’ve done a couple of the crafts. Mr. Imagination loved making a “planetarium!” I like the quizzes to help us think about the video lesson again the day after. It also makes a very easy science class!

Another project we did, which the children really enjoyed, was creating a constellation from marshmallows and toothpicks. Can you guess what the favorite part was? Eating the marshmallows afterward!

These lessons are very much based on the Bible. In every lesson so far, we have been taken on a “field trip” to some ancient archeological site where there was evidence of ancient man worshipping or studying the heavenly bodies (the sun, moon, or stars), but the teacher is very careful to point out that worship of these things was not what God wanted. Also, one of the assignments for the course is to memorize Psalm 8. Most of my boys already know it, so they recite it along with him when he quotes a verse.

Looking ahead, I’m seeing more lessons on the constellations, and then some about eclipses and meteors. After that, it looks like we’ll be making a trip through the solar system before a couple of final wrap-up lessons. This looks like fun! I’m really enjoying this course, and I know some of the rest of the family are, too. Some won’t admit it, but they all sure pay attention when I put the computer on the table and turn it on. Since we do this on a night when the big boys are on dishes duty, they are a captive audience, too. We often quit using review products as soon as the review posts on my blog, but this is one that we’ll continue using till we reach the end.

Sixty-seven families have been using programs from Journey Homeschool Academy. If you’re curious what others say about these courses, as I am, click on the image below to read their reviews.

Experience Biology: Elementary Level, Upper Level and Experience Astronomy: Elementary {Journey Homeschool Academy Reviews}

Product Review—Progeny Press

July 10, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I first heard of the study guides from Progeny Press before I even had children. Back then, I had never even heard of using anything for school except proper “schoolbooks,” and the idea of reading a story book and studying it was quite a novel idea to me. I wanted to see what these study guides were like, but never had the chance to look at them until they were offered for review recently. I had the choice of study guides for several books, and chose A New Coat for Anna Study Guide. We don’t have the picture book A New Coat for Anna, but I was able to find it in an online library we use, which made it possible to study the book.

A New Coat for Anna is a delightful story about a little girl who needed a new coat, which was unavailable in the years right after World War II in Europe. I read the story to Mr. Sweetie (age 10), Mr. Imagination (age 8) and Little Miss (age 5), and then we worked through the study guide together. One of the advantages of the downloadable PDF, besides the fact that it is immediately available, is that I was able to print just the pages we actually needed, and as many copies as we needed. Little Miss doesn’t read or write yet, but the other two do, so they each had a set of the pages. We started out by finding definitions for some of the words from the story and writing them down, and then answered questions about the story. The children enjoyed taking their measurements the same way the tailor in the story took Anna’s measurements for her new coat. (Mr. Sweetie was delighted that he is still a little bit bigger than Mr. Imagination!)

After several pages of questions about the story, we did a study of patience. We talked about how Anna and her mother had to have patience, and about some times that we needed to have patience. We also talked about the qualities of a noble woman, from Proverbs 31, and how Anna’s mother displayed those qualities. To wrap up the study, the suggestion is made to have a party like Anna and her mother did in the story. We didn’t do that, but one of my boys wants to make the cake that is suggested! We did do the activity at the end of the study guide. To do it, the boys had to find the missing words in sentences from the story, and then find the words in the word search. At the very end are suggestions for more books to read, by the same author and of related interest.

This guide was laid out very well. It was based on a very interesting story, which my children loved reading. The questions were good ones, and I liked the studies of patience and the noble woman. The study made my children think, but they enjoyed doing something different. I will be happy to use more of these guides in the future; they make a nice change of pace from our normal schoolwork. To read the opinions of 64 other families, click on the image below.

Study Guides for Literature - A New Coat for Anna, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, My Side of the Mountain, Animal Farm & Little Women {Progeny Press Reviews}

Product Review—MaxScholar

July 8, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I was quite interested to see how the MaxScholar Orton-Gillingham Software from MaxScholar works when I heard about it. Nine or ten years ago, I had two boys who were not learning to read, no matter what I tried. I came across some online programs that taught math skills, but I couldn’t find anything I liked that would teach reading. In answer to prayer, I finally found a physical program that worked. It was an Orton-Gillingham based program, so that made me curious about how MaxScholar was set up.

We actually haven’t used this program a lot. Little Miss (age 5) has used it more than her brothers; she really enjoys it. She started out with a test to find out what she knew. It turned out that she knew the sounds of 14 letters of the alphabet—more than I thought she would! She used MaxPhonics for several days after finishing the test, and then discovered Maxreading; both options are available for her when she logs in. With MaxPhonics, a letter is introduced by name, and then a keyword beginning with the sound is introduced (“yawn” for y, for example). After practicing the name, keyword and sound a few times, the student is to draw the letter “in sand” and on a line, using the mouse. Little Miss had a hard time managing that, but she enjoyed it. The last activity with each letter is to choose whether or not a series of words begin with the sound of the letter being studied. If a she got the word wrong, it was given to her again a few words later.

Little Miss was put into Level 0 of MaxReading. In this level, she chooses a “chapter”, which is actually a picture. The program asks several questions about the picture for her to think about, and then she moves on to a series of questions with multiple-choice answers. Each question and answer have a button beside them, which when clicked read the sentence aloud. After she chooses an answer, the program moves on to the next question. She’s really enjoying this section of the program.

Mr. Imagination was put into Level 2 of MaxReading. He chose the first book in the list, “Australia”, and has read the first two chapters. Vocabulary words are highlighted; he is instructed to click on them to read the definitions, then read the entire story. After reading the story, he is supposed to highlight the topic of the story, the main idea, and important details, then write an outline of the story. After that he is instructed to write about the story, choosing either to write a summary, answer an open-ended question, or answer a general question. The final activity for each story is a 5-question multiple-choice quiz. Once again, each question and answer have a button to click to hear it read aloud.

For MaxPhonics, he has the choice of working on consonants and short vowels, consonant blends, or digraphs. There are also several games available. I saw a memory game and one where you are to chose the missing part of a word. There is also a section called MaxWords, which teaches rules for breaking down words into syllables, and also covers prefixes and suffixes.

Mr. Sweetie was placed in Level 5 of MaxReading (out of 12 levels). His stories are more advanced, but follow the same progression for each lesson. His options for MaxPhonics and MaxWords are the same as the ones available for Mr. Imagination. He has several other programs available, though: MaxPlaces, MaxBios, MaxMusic and MaxVocab. MaxPlaces begins with a world map. A lot of cities have green dots beside them, and when you click on the dot you get to read a story about that city and then answer some multiple-choice questions about it. MaxBios contains short biographies of people in many different careers, with a quiz after the story. Based on the categories I saw, this is not a program I want my children to spend much time with. MaxMusic contains the lyrics of songs from many different performers and groups—once again, a program I’m not happy for my children to use. MaxVocab looks fun, though, with three types of games to play: Hangman, Definitions, and Word Search.

The teacher’s dashboard contains a wealth of resources. Of course, there is a section for generating reports of each child’s progress in the program, but I also found a section of materials for the teacher. These are actually lesson plans and techniques for teaching a child to read. They look very useful and doable! This program looks quite useful, however, since we already have the other program and have been using it, I will continue to use it. However, I can see it working well for families that need the extra help of letting someone else do part of the teaching. The games will be fun for my children, too. I like to have access to educational games for the odd time when the children want to play on the computer. This program is put together quite well and high quality. If you want to try it out for yourself, there are some lessons that can be watched to see how it works. Also, be sure to click on the image below to see what 60 other families have to say about MaxScholar!

MaxScholar Orton-Gillingham Software {MaxScholar Reviews}

Book Review—Exploring the U. S. Lifesaving Service 1878-1915

June 18, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We were not overly interested in learning about the U. S. Coast Guard—but when I saw that Exploring the U. S. Life Saving Service 1878-1915, 17 Workshops with 120 Activities, by Rebecca Locklear, included a chapter about safety when hiking or boating, I was interested in reviewing this book. As you know if you have followed my blog for a few months, I have some sons who love to go hiking, and our whole family actually went on a longish hike a few weeks ago. I thought it would be good for the boys to go through some material on ways to be safer. Once we got the book, we found that there are some very interesting stories in it! We spent awhile looking at the pictures and reading the stories together.

We read the chapter titled “Prepare to Stay Alive” in a couple of sittings. The first time, we read the first couple of pages and discussed a scenario in which a lone hiker gets hurt—what should she do, in a cold, wet wind, to stay alive? What will her priorities be? That scenario sparked quite an animated discussion! I appreciated the suggestions given in the book.

We read the rest of the chapter as we were traveling over the mountains (in the safety of our van!) last weekend. We discussed, at some length, what ten items it would be wise to have in pockets for survival in various situations. Because the boys have had some experience in the mountains, they did pretty well at thinking through the most important items to have on their bodies (as opposed to in a backpack, which could easily be lost), but it was good to have ideas for boating excursions, as well. One of the things we hadn’t ever thought about was a way of signaling for rescue. The boys bought several survival blankets, which fold into a very tiny parcel but open up into something large enough to wrap up in. These can also double as a signaling device—they are a valuable little item! One very interesting project suggested in this section was making a solar still, for distilling fresh water from salt water. We’re in the wrong time of year to do this here (we’ve seen the sun for an hour this week), but we built one of these stills just to see what they’re like. Even just sitting in the house overnight, some drops of water formed on the underside of the plastic wrap, so it looks like it would work. Maybe we’ll get some seawater next time we’re at the beach and give it a better try. I hope my boys never need to apply the survival tips we read about and discussed, but it was good to talk about what could happen and how to deal with some possible scenarios.

This book begins by telling the history of the U. S. Lifesaving Service. There are a number of old photos, as well as text that tells the story. The next several chapters describe life at the stations. We enjoyed the skit titled, “The Bird We Didn’t Eat.” We didn’t act it out, but read it together, with different people reading the different parts. The skunk stories were quite funny, too. Several chapters describe rescues. We found that fascinating. We didn’t do the activity in which real-life situations were described and teams were to figure out whether the people involved lived or died—but I think it would be a great thing to do on a trip. This would make for some lively discussions!

At the end of the book are suggestions for art activities and music, and suggestions for topics to research further. They look quite interesting—but we didn’t have time to even explore these areas. There is also an appendix of recipes. This book is crammed full of information and activities—it would make a great summer unit study for the whole family! Be sure to visit Rebecca Locklear’s website and sign up for her emails. She is gifted at putting together projects that groups can use to learn about history by doing things.

Sixty-two other families have been using this book and one about the Mayflower. Click on the image below to read more reviews of these amazing books!

Book Review—Mastering Logic & Math Problem Solving

June 10, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

When we were offered the opportunity to review a product from The Critical Thinking Co.™ , it wasn’t hard to decide that my boys would enjoy Mastering Logic & Math Problem Solving. Several of them enjoy puzzles, and even though the book is advertised for grades 6-9, I knew several of them outside that age range would like to try out the problems in the book.

I didn’t use this book for formal classes. I just printed out several pages at a time and left them lay on the table until someone picked them up and started working on them. Mr. Intellectual (grade 11?) was probably the most interested, followed by Simon. Mr. Diligence (grade 9) is the only one within the range of this book. He isn’t the type to really get into this type of activity, but he did help solve a number of them. (This picture shows Simon working out the first set I printed.)

The first set of pages I printed out had to do with gettting various combinations of people, animals, or things across a bridge, or over a river in a boat, without anyone or anything getting eaten. Simon and Mr. Intellectual spent a Sunday afternoon working out all of those, and quickly discovered that they were all basically the same idea.

Another week, I printed out a bunch of classical brain teasers. Several of the boys spent a couple of days mulling over the “nine dots” problem, in which they were supposed to draw four straight lines connecting all the dots. When they finally gave up and I checked the answer key, the answer was so obvious they were quite disgusted with themselves! Several of the other problems in this section, though were quite easy, and we enjoyed figuring out the answers. With the next several pages, I read out a number of the problems while dishes were being washed one evening, and we discussed them together. What fun to come up with answers to these riddles—the one we couldn’t quite figure out, though, was the lady giving a riddle to the census taker about the ages of her three children. The egg timer riddle was easy for Simon—and a great way to get him to practice his math skills a bit.

There are a lot of different types of math problems in this book. We didn’t get to the ones about ratios, proportions, percents, or even the algebra ones. I took a look at them, though, and they are fairly similar to the ones we get in our math books. That means that this book would be a great supplement for children who need more practice with algebra in real life situations. I can see us using these problems for races—who can solve them first? They would also be good for keeping up with math skills over the summer.

There are 193 pages in this book, and it is packed full of fun activities and puzzles that sharpen thinking and math skills. You can buy either the print version or the ebook for the same price; in my opinion, the ebook is more worthwhile because you can print as many copies as you want, for your own family—and it’s definitely worth getting!

Click on the image below to see what 65 other families are saying about their experiences with products from The Critical Thinking Co.™!

Creative Problem Solving, Dare to Compare Math, Mastering Logic & Math and Who Is This Kid? Colleges Want to Know! {The Critical Thinking Co.™ Reviews}

Product Review—Page A Day Math

June 3, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Every summer when we stop doing school for a couple of months, I start looking for worksheets for my younger boys to do, so they don’t lose all their math facts when they aren’t using them every day. Every year, I try something different, and I haven’t been very happy with anything I’ve found. Now, though, I think I have what we need! I looked at Page A Day Math when it came up for review, and was immediately interested. We’re in the middle of our school year right now, but it looked like just what we needed for extra practice now, and I definitely plan to use these kits in the summer when we’re taking a break. $page a day math 2$

Page A Day Math offers kits for each of the four math operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Each kit also includes some handwriting practice books, which I didn’t use so can’t comment on. You can buy either physical kits or digital ones; we were given the digital ones, which are to be downloaded and then printed. They can be used for as many children as you have—I like that! They are quite easy to print and staple together and make a great supplement to any math curriculum. $page a day math 4$

I printed a couple of the booklets from the Multiplication Starter Kit for Mr. Sweetie. He knows his multiplication facts, but is still pretty slow, so I thought he should get some more pratice. He times himself for a minute every day and does as many problems as he can in that minute. He’s getting faster! Each booklet introduces a new times table. The front and back of one page are to be done every day. First, the student is to trace each fact, and then write the answers. I don’t require Mr. Sweetie to do all the tracing, although he does a lot of the numbers because they are faint enough that he has trouble seeing them otherwise. (I’m guessing that when I get a new drum for our printer, later this week, the pages will print a little darker!)

Mr. Imagination is working through the Subtraction Starter Kit. These each focus on subtracting by one number (-1, -2, etc). As with the multiplication books, each page also has a lot of review of previously taught facts. $page a day math 3$

Little Miss is working with the Pre-K Math Starter Kit. This introduces the concept of addition; Book 1 teaches adding 1 to 0-10, Book 2 adds 2 to each number, and so on. I’m not sure what the difference is between these books and the Addition Starter Kit. Little Miss is doing well with these books. She’s been making up addition problems for me, and then she remembers the answers the next day, quite often. $page a day math 1$

Each kit comes with flashcards to print. I like the looks of them! They are meant to be printed on paper, then folded with the fact on one side and the answer on the other and glued together. Instead of just one fact on the addition and multiplication cards, there is a pair of “twins” such as 0+7= and 7+0=. I like that the facts will be correlated in the child’s mind that way. Of course, the subtraction and division cards only have one fact on each.

Each kit also comes with an assessment, which is useful to determine where to start the child. Based on the results of these assessments, I started Mr. Imagination in the first subtraction booklet, and Mr. Sweetie in the fourth multiplication one.

I really like that the children can work independently with these materials. I had to show them how to use the booklets the first day, and since then I just ask if they’ve done their page. So simple! I’m impressed with this product, and it is one we’ll be using for many years, I believe. Click on the image below to see what 52 other families have to say about it!

Daily Math & Handwriting (Print + Cursive) {Page a Day Math Reviews}

Product Review—Reading Kingdom

May 29, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

When we were given the opportunity to review Reading Kingdom again, Mr. Imagination and Little Miss were pretty excited to use it. Little Miss has been wanting to learn to read, and Mr. Imagination remembered having fun with it a couple of years ago, the first time we reviewed this product.

Reading Kingdom uses a variety of activities to help children learn to read fluently. Each lesson introduces one word. In some lessons, the child must pick the word out from several choices of similar words, several times. Next, she must look at several words with blanks in place of some letters and choose which one would make the word being studied, then fill in the missing letters by typing them from the keyboard. After that, the word is used in various sentences, which are read to the child, who also needs to choose the proper words to make the sentence. After clicking on the words, he/she has to type them, too. Finally, at the end of the level, the child gets to read a whole story! In earlier lessons, the focus is more on learning the letters that make the word. For example, here are several activities from the lesson in which “cat” is taught.

After a week or so, I saw that Mr. Imagination was pretty bored with Reading Kingdom. He is a fluent reader now, and his abilities are way beyond this program’s usefulness for him, so I let him quit. Little Miss, however, is loving it still. She’s been using it an average of 3-4 days a week through the review period (about 5 weeks, I think), and still enjoying it. In fact, it’s a great incentive for her to get her other work done, so she can do Reading Kingdom for 20 minutes! She often does two sessions a day, which is all the program allows, although I allow her to stop whenever she wants to. She enjoys getting to do computer work like the older children, and the activities are just games to her, for the most part. She was quite frustrated at first as she learned how to click in the right places and where the keys are on the keyboard. She struggled with correlating the lower case letters shown her on the screen with the capital letters on the keyboard, but it helped that a picture of the keyboard often popped up with both capital and lower case letters on the keys and the correct one highlighted. I still did have to help her find the correct one for awhile, but for the last couple of weeks she’s been doing great.

Each child has his/her own dashboard, reached by clicking on their name on the main dashboard. The child is to click on a picture of an owl to continue with the program. You can also check their progress by scrolling down a little; here is the chart showing where Little Miss is with it. By clicking on the title of one of the sections, you can see the individual lessons, and also use this area to redo a previous lesson.

Now, the real question is, does the program work? Will it teach a child to read? I think it can. I know for sure that Little Miss is much more aware of individual words on a page; she was picking out words in the Bible one evening last week as we were reading together. I was pointing to the words as we went, and she learned to recognize a few, quickly, which she had never done before. I haven’t spent enough time watching her do her Reading Kingdom lessons to know if she can read all the words she has been introduced to, but the one time I did stop by her and check, she was able to read the sentence fairly easily. One thing I noticed that she’s picked up from it is the skill of moving from left to right on a page, which is quite important for reading well.

Would I buy a subscription to this program? I might, if it was a matter of needing something educational for my young child to do and I was overwhelmed and not able to spend the time to teach her to read. For children with no major learning issues (I have dealt with severe dyslexia, so that colors all my experiences with this sort of program), it would likely result in a child being able to read fairly well. I don’t see it building a very strong foundation in phonics, though; it seems more like sight reading to me. That being said, though, awhile after we used it two years ago, I introduced “ing” to one of the boys who had been using Reading Kingdom, thinking he had never seen it and would not know what it said. He easily read it, and when I expressed surprise, he told me he had learned it with Reading Kingdom! That showed me that this system can work. Maybe I just think it’s too lazy on my part! Anyway, I’m going to allow Little Miss to continue using it as long as she enjoys it, and see how she progresses. It sure helps me out!

Check it out for yourself! If you go to this page, hover over the Resources tab and you’ll see several sample lessons. Go through a couple of those, and see if this program would be a good fit for your child. Also, click on the image below to see what 31 other families have to say about it. Three families have also used ASD Reading, developed for children on the autism spectrum, from the same company. I always enjoy reading other people’s reviews after I have posted my own.

Product Review—Beyond the Stick Figure Art School

May 12, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

I have a son, Mr. Imagination, who loves to draw and wants to learn more about art. When we were offered the opportunity to use the Beyond the Stick Figure Complete Drawing Course Plus 3 Bonus Courses from Beyond the Stick Figure Art School, he was very enthusiastic. This sounded perfect—a step-by-step, incremental guide to art.

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss working on an art project.

The first several lessons went very well; both he (age 8) and Little Miss (age 5) loved doing the projects, and even Mr. Sweetie (age 10) joined us. We learned about circles and dots, and curved lines and straight lines, and practiced looking for these in objects around the house. We drew circles on paper, and made pages of bubbles, then colored them in with markers. We drew designs with each of the other components of pictures, too, and colored pretty designs. Then, we started drawing flowers. I really liked the projects where we drew a flower in the foreground and then more behind it! I have never considered myself an artist, but I could do that!

As we moved on, however, my little ones got bogged down in the repetition. We ended up skipping a large section of lessons so that I could see what the rest of the course was like, in order to tell you in this review, and found a project that they liked better. We got to draw hills, cover the nearest one with grass, and paint the picture with a watercolor wash. Everyone enjoyed that! Unfortunately, because of the lockdown due to COVID 19, we did not have proper watercolor paper. We had to use printer paper, because that’s all we have (we were not able to get more because it’s nonessential), and it doesn’t work well with watercolors.

We also were not able to get the markers that are recommended. I think if we had been able to, the earlier projects would have been much more satisfying. She recommends Prismacolor markers, and they aren’t sold in this country anywhere that I could find, even without lockdown, so I bought the only ones I could find. They were washable, which means the color ran and mixed in ways we didn’t want it to. If you want to use this course, try to find the proper markers (if you live in America, they are on Amazon—shipping is much too high for me to be able to get them that way here).

Anyway, back to the course. The next section, which we haven’t done anything with yet, is about watercolor painting. It looks fun! Even though my little ones are tired of this course, because of the constant repetition, I think I can interest them in the painting part of it. I watched a few of the instructional videos, and in them she was teaching how to create different tones of paint. Once we are able to get watercolor paper, I want to try this. As with all the other lessons, these techniques are taught baby step by baby step.

Further lessons cover acrylic painting and sculpture. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to those lessons. They sound interesting; it’s just that Mr. Imagination feels pretty bored with the lessons we have done. I feel like this course, although it is simple enough for young children to do, would be better for older ones who can understand the need for repetition.

All the lessons are presented as 1-10 minute videos, with the instructor, who happens to be a homeschooling mother herself, talking through what she is doing and wants her students to be doing. She has a lovely British accent (and I can now tell the difference between British and Kiwi!). We did have some issues with the videos. The worst simply had to do with our computer. These videos are from Vimeo, and my computer often freezes when I play Vimeo videos. We had to do a lot of reloading to make them work. Also, the sound is very quiet on some of them, and even with our speakers plugged in, we had to strain to hear her talking. Here is a picture of our dashboard. It is very easy to move from one lesson to the next, although we have to mark each one complete in order to move on. It’s extremely easy to go back to a previously completed lesson!If you have a child interested in art, this might be something to look into. It certainly is easy to use; just watch a video to see what materials you will need for a given section, then move on and watch each instructional video and follow directions. Click the image below to read what 80 different families have to say about this course.

Beyond the Stick Figure Complete Drawing Course {Beyond the Stick Figure Art School}

Product Review—Everyday Education, LLC

May 6, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I don’t know about anyone else, but it seems like writing, and penmanship in general, are very difficult to teach to boys. They just aren’t interested! I struggle to get them to write at all, let alone legibly. Therefore, I was somewhat interested in using Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting ebook from Everyday Education, LLC. The premise sounded great—a simple method for teaching beautiful handwriting, and good reading. I thought I would use it to supplement the Language Arts program we’re using with the boys, and get a start on teaching Little Miss to read and write with it.

When I received the ebook, I was quite interested in reading the introductory pages. The history of our current type of cursive handwriting was fascinating, and I like the premise of this book, which is to simplify writing so that everyone can have beautiful handwriting. I believe the book would work to teach a child to read, as well, assuming the child had no learning disabilities and the mother had enough time to spend with them doing the lessons. For me, unfortunately, it didn’t work well.

I did not end up using this course as a supplement for my boys. This book teaches Italic writing, which is beautiful and simple, but they had already learned the normal cursive. Therefore, I felt like it would be too confusing for them to try to relearn everything. I did use it for Little Miss, to work on letter formation. She loved doing several pages of the letters, and did very well at learning the sounds. Each letter is given a picture of a word that begins with that sound—like A is apple, E is elephant, I is igloo, etc. We didn’t get beyond writing letters, though. The program doesn’t start putting letters together into words until all the letters have been learned. Then, it introduces short vowel words, consonant blends, compound words and plural words. It then moves on to vowel-R words and vowel teams. Each of these lessons has a list of words to learn to read, and then several sentences using the words. Each of the sentences is printed with blank lines under the words for practice writing. This is one of the strengths I see in this book, that the child is expected to write directly below the example, which makes it easy to follow the model.

After thoroughly learning the shapes of the letters, children are introduced to joining them. With the Italic system, most of the letters are actually not joined, as in most cursive systems. I found that quite interesting.

In summary, this book was not a good fit for our family at this time, both because I have already taught my boys to write cursive with a different system and because of the dyslexia that runs in our family. In the introduction, this book states that everyone will be able to read well by going through this system, but I know from experience that some people will not be able to—at least not with someone like me teaching them. I tried systems like this with my older boys and utterly failed, although I’m sure some people would have done well with it. This book would work well to teach most children to read and write, however, and if I didn’t already have a course on hand to use with Little Miss I would give this one a try. Take a look at it and see what you think!

Fifty families have been using Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting over the past month and a half; see what they have to say about it by clicking the image below!

Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting ebook {Everyday Education, LLC Reviews}

Book Review—Not If, But When

April 23, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

As a mother of several boys, I am always happy to find a product that will help in teaching them godliness in their personal lives.

When I saw the book Not If, But When being offered for review by the publisher, Christian Focus, and read the description, I was immediately interested. The subtitle, Preparing Our Children for Wordly Images, really only hints at the content of this book; I was glad that there were some sample pages on the publisher’s website. Looking at those helped me make the decision to request the book, and I’m glad I did. I read this book aloud to all five of my boys yesterday afternoon when the rain kept us all inside, and then talked about it with them during and after the reading.

This book contains two stories, one each for girls and boys. Since my girls are not within the age range for this book, I didn’t read the part for girls very closely. It is very similar to the one for boys. The story begins with a child coming home from a day at the waterpark with his/her class, and coming to a parent with questions about his/her friends talking about s-xual things. The child also had a friend show them some pornography pictures on a phone that day. As the parent discusses these occurences with the child, God’s design for s-x is discussed; God designed it and it is a very good thing—in the right context and timing. During the discussion about the pictures shown, the parent talks about how that type of picture objectifies and disrespects people that God made, and about how viewing it becomes an addiction. The child compares this to an addiction to coffee, which made my boys chuckle! Each short chapter has a scripture passage to read, and some thoughts to help focus the study.

The book is a high-quality hardcover with thick, glossy pages. It is beautifully illustrated with somewhat stylized pictures of children and homes, for the most part. The pictures actually have little or nothing to do with the subject matter of the book. My 5-year-old girl loves looking at the pictures, and because she can’t read, I don’t mind her browsing through it.

I asked each of my three teenage boys what they thought of this book and how it made them feel. One, especially, felt like it was helpful to him. He has struggled some in this area and appreciated the encouragement to keep his thoughts pure. The other two didn’t feel like they needed it so much. One of them thought it would have been a good book for him to read at about age 13. They all agreed that the way the topic of s-x was discussed in this book was pure, and helpful as a reminder to keep their thoughts pure. Because none of our boys has any close friends who have their own phones, they haven’t been faced with a situation like what was described in the story, so they couldn’t really identify with that part of the book. I am hoping that if such a situation arises, having heard this story will help my younger ones know how to handle it. Reading the book together gave an opportunity to discuss strategies to cope with such a situation; the publisher recommends this book for ages 7-11, with a parent reading it with them.

I am thankful to have had the chance to read this book, and plan to go through it again in a couple of years with my younger children. In the world in which we live today, it is truly a case of Not If, But When.

***The publisher accidentally sent me two copies of this book, and I have permission to give the extra one away. If you live in New Zealand, and would like your own copy of this book, let me know and I’ll mail it to you. If more than one person requests it, I will draw a name.***

Fifty-three families have read three different books from Christian Focus. Click the image below to read their reviews!

Psalms for my Day, 30 Prophecies: One Story & Not If, But When {Christian Focus Reviews}