Cadron Creek

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.



Can I tell you a secret? The mere mention of Anne of Green Gables simply warms my heart. I have imagined cuddling with my girls and reading this series with them since before I had daughters. I have watched the movies more times than one should probably be allowed to...actually, they are my favorite movies. So was I excited to find out that Margie Gray from Cadron Creek had created an entire in-depth unit study based on the Anne of Green Gables book? Um, you could yes!

Where the Brook and River Meet is written with the Junior/Senior High Student in mind and can be completed in one to two years. Using this study, your student will be taught with a classsical approach, as this is how Anne learned. Students will not only study literature, but also about the "personal challenges of growing up" and the Victorian Era.

The unit study covers such subjects as:
Bible/Religion/Character
Literature/Language Arts
Social Studies
Economics
Fine Arts
Occupational Education
Physical Education
Health

The author suggests having a separate science, mathematics, grammar, Latin, and possibly spelling curriculum. She also includes suggested methods of grading and evaluating high school credits, which I thought was quite helpful. I also really liked her idea of letting the student decide what grade they would like to earn in each of the included subjects and signing a "Reading Contract".

For example, in order to obtain an 'A' in Bible, the student would be required to read a total of 12 books (which are listed). Reading 7 of the books would be the minimum requirements for a 'B', and 4 for a 'C'. There are 'Reading Contracts' for the subjects of History, Literature, and Occupational Education as well. I like that the student will know up front what is required of them and I like the challenge of them choosing a goal and going for it.

Where the Brook and River Meets includes 9 units, each covering a few chapters of Anne of Green Gables each. A unit has a suggested 4 week plan, including research topics, assignments, suggested field trips, and memory work. Honestly, there seems to be way more than any one family could possibly do. I actually appreciate that. I would rather have a myriad of activities and assignments that we could pick and choose what worked best for our family from, than a few activities that left me feeling like the study was lacking.

I also think its important to mention that this is a study that does not require a parent to be heavily involved. With a mature, independent student it would be easy to sit down with them once a week, choose the assignments you want her to do, and let her complete them on her own.

It should also be mentioned that this is not a buy-the-manual-and-you've-got-everything-you-need type study. As stated before, there are MANY more required reading materials than just Anne of Green Gables, so you should expect frequent library trips. There are also other supplies, such as craft supplies that will be listed at the beginning of each week's planning guide. And I have to tell you, I was a little shocked to see 'a sheep heart' listed as one of the week's supplies in Chapter 30. This is for a dissection project! There are also four other required resources (in addition to Where the Brook and River Meet) that you would really need to purchase. These include Anne's Anthology, The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, The Green Gables Letters, and Writers INC. All of these can be purchased from Cadron Creek.

Where the Brook and River Meet can be purchased for $65 or you can purchase Anne's Daily Pack which includes the other four required books for $150. Cadron Creek also offers a unit study based on the Narnia books for 4th-8th grade students called Further Up and Further In and a unit study based on The Little House on the Prairie for younger elementary called The Prairie Primer.

You can see reviews of all of the Cadron Creek studies on the TOS Crew Blog.

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Heads Up!

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.

The first time I was introduced to Heads Up! was at the Midwest Homeschool Convention last year. (Heads Up! will be back in Cincinnati this year as well.) From their website:

"Heads Up! is a company designed to provide expert information and products for special needs children. Our items have been selected to accommodate various learning styles and strengths, regardless of curriculum used. These special needs products have been found to be especially helpful for children who are distractible or hyperactive. "

They specialize in products designed to help students with ADD/ADHD, Aspergers, and Autism. While I don't have any children who have been diagnosed with any special needs, I do have one particularly "distractible" and "hyperactive" five year old who just started Kindergarten this year. I poured over the catalog I got from last year's Heads Up! booth at the convention, ooohing and awwwing over the ingenious products they offer.

Just check out Heads Up! and I'm certain that you'll find as I did that any child would benefit from the products they offer. Seriously, which one of your students wouldn't jump at the chance to do homeschool on an inflatable ball?! And what kid wouldn't love a bag of fidget toys?!


Heads Up! has also created a line of products to help with with staying focused visually while reading or working in a workbook.

Heads Up! Top of the Lines have a see-through colored strip at the top to help keep your place while reading. The blue or yellow color helps to focus your attention on the sentences being read. I actually enjoy using these myself! I have also found the Heads Up! Double Time (same product except the colored strip is double the width) quite helpful for my little ones' beginning readers which tend to have bigger type.



The Heads Up! Frames come in two sizes and several different colors. I have used these especially with my distractible five year old to keep him on task. Because I have several colors, he can choose which color he wants to use (this is all my kids favorite part), and the colored block helps him to stay focused on the workbook he is suppose to be looking at. When he does look away, he can easily find his place again without any effort.


Heads Up! Readers have a thin see-through strip in the middle to block a single line of text while reading. Interestingly enough, this can be helpful for anyone with reading disorders, as all of the surrounding text can be distracting. I've noticed that my oldest son particularly likes these. Like all of the above products, the Heads Up! Readers also make great bookmarks. I have a soft spot in my heart for bookmarks, so I think that's my favorite part.

I would totally recommend stocking up on these as they are only $1 each. All of my children have loved having their own and having plenty of colors to choose from depending on their mood that day. You can purchase them as well as many other cool products from the Heads Up! website.

Read more reviews at the TOS Crew Blog.


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Little Helpers

I have such wonderful helpers around here.

Today E2 decided to help Momma out by fixing his own cup of chocolate milk. He proudly brought it to me while I was checking my emails.

In case you're wondering, yes it is indeed missing a key ingredient...milk.


This is what E2 looked like as he was showing off his accomplishment. Apparently he had already taken several drinks of his chocolate milk....er, powder.


This is the mess he made while making his drink.

Yes. He is quite helpful.

No use crying over spilled....oh, never mind.

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Math Tutor

Is there anything more likely to strike fear in the heart of a homeschool mom than the subject of math? ...Well, I guess that depends on the homeschool mom. But universally, we all know that "math" is a word that makes many of us tremble.

Now, I'll be honest. Since my oldest is only in 2nd grade, I've yet to feel unequipped to handle the subject of math. Thankfully, I am actually prepared to teach 3 digit addition and beginning multiplication. However, I know the day is coming when tears will flow in frustration over the inability to understand a new math concept...my tears that is.

Luckily, I now know that I will only need to take a deep breath and pop in a Math Tutor DVD. Math Tutor offers affordable DVDs on many math subjects from basic math to calculus to physics (um, am I the only one who thought that was science?). The average length of a course is 8 hours and most of the courses cost $26.99.

Here are the two DVDs that our family received and what they include:


The Basic Math Word Problem Tutor
Disc 1
Section 1: Adding Whole Numbers
Section 2: Subtracting Whole Numbers
Section 3: Multiplying Whole Numbers
Section 4: Dividing Whole Numbers
Section 5: Adding Decimals
Section 6: Subtracting Decimals
Section 7: Multiplying Decimals
Section 8: Dividing Decimals
Disc 2
Section 9: Adding Fractions
Section 10: Subtracting Fractions
Section 11: Multiplying Fractions
Section 12: Dividing Fractions
Section 13: Percents, Part 1
Section 14: Percents, Part 2
Section 15: Ratio and Proportion


The Algebra 2 Tutor
Disc 1
Section 1: Graphing Equations
Section 2: The Slope Of A Line Section
3: Writing Equations Of Lines
Section 4: Graphing Inequalities
Section 5: Solving Systems Of Equations By Graphing
Section 6: Solving Systems Of Equations By Substitution
Section 7: Solving Systems Of Equations By Addition
Disk 2
Section 8: Solving Systems Of Equations In Three Variables
Section 9: Simplifying Radical Expressions.
Section 10: Add/Subtract Radical Expressions.
Section 11: Multiply/Divide Radical Expressions.
Section 12: Solving Equations With Radicals.
Section 13: Fractional Exponents.
Section 14: Solving Polynomial Equations.
Section 15: The Quadratic Formula.

Jason Gibson is the very competent instructor (read his credentials here). He slowly and effectively explains each problem, using many examples without lecturing. There's no fancy cinematography or animations here. The camera stays in one place: directly in front of Mr. Gibson and his whiteboard.

Honestly, I figured my son would find this video quite boring. Surprisingly, he didn't. He actually enjoyed sitting in front of the screen, notebook in hand, working the word problems along with the instructor. Really. Enjoyed. I'm looking into the possibility of him being switched at birth.

We've yet to be able to use much of these DVDs in our homeschool since our kids are really too young for them just yet. But for now I am simply breathing a sigh of relief that this product is out there. I can certainly use all the math help I can get.

Math Tutor DVDs can be purchased from their website individually or in bundles. You can read other reviews of this product at the TOS Crew Blog.

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Bible Story Songs

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.


Despite the fact that my husband and I have no talent in the area of singing...trust me, I'm not being humble...still our children all love to sing. They catch on to words, and even occasionally melodies, quite easily.

Bible Story Songs is a company creating wholesome CDs that are perfect for little ones like mine. They've got an entire line of CDs each themed to different books of the Bible.




We received Bible Story Songs: Matthew Volume 1 to review which focuses on the first 8 chapters of Matthew. Most of the songs are set to tunes that are already familiar to kids like "This Old Man", "Turkey in the Straw", even "Chopsticks". New words replace the old, familiar words to teach the children bible stories, bible facts, and (my favorite) scripture memory.

The songs are sung by a children's choir, which in my opinion gives the songs a bit of an "old" feel. Simply put, there is really nothing modern or contemporary in the arrangements of these songs. That's not necessarily a bad thing...actually I suspect some of you will consider this a bonus. It certainly had no bearing on my children one way or another. They come running every time I pop this CD in, ready to dance and sing along. Sort of like this:


Unfortunately, they inherited their dancing skills from us too.

Check out Bible Story Songs for more information. Matthew Volume 1 CD sells for $9.99. You can also purchase sheet music that accompanies each CD for $9.99 each and even puzzle page ebooks and song books for $4.99 each. Listen to sample music here.

For more reviews of Bible Story Songs, including some of their other CDs, check out the TOS Crew Blog.

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Guess what?

Let the countdown begin...Baby # 7 is due to arrive next September!

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The Bridge to the Latin Road

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.

While attending a classical cottage school for homeschoolers for four years, I became quite excited by the idea of my children learning Latin. I believed that it truly would give them an advantage with the English language. I have to admit though, that I was quite confident in leaving the teaching of Latin in the hands of the "Latin experts" at the cottage school. When we decided that we would continue homeschooling apart from the cottage school I was surprised that my dream of Latin-learning children did not dissolve completely. I just didn't exactly know where to turn.

That's why I was quite grateful to learn that we would get the chance to review The Bridge to the Latin Road. This is a one year program designed for 3rd through 6th graders to introduce them to Latin and prepare them for another 3 year program...The Latin Road to English Grammar. Basically The Bridge to the Latin Road prepares your student for further Latin studies by building in them a solid foundation of English grammar. Here is a quote from their website:

"The best preparation for Latin is not only a study in Latin roots, but solid basic skills in English grammar. The ability to identify the relationships of words in a sentence both by part of speech and sentence structure provides the student with the foundation for Latin translation work. And since no other language in the world affects English as much as Latin, learning Latin prefixes and root words not only prepares him for later Latin translations, but strengthens English vocabulary and spelling."

I'll be honest...I was a little intimidated by the kit that arrived in the mail: Two large binders (one for the student and one for the teacher), complete with 6 instructional DVDs, color-coded cards, 3 pencils, and a scaffolding ruler for diagramming sentences. However, when I began to watch the DVDs, I found that everything was laid out fairly simply for me with examples for each lesson on the DVDs.

Since my oldest son is still only in 2nd grade (one grade younger than the recommended age) I decided to take the program a bit slower. We only use it two days a week which is plenty as some days do require quite a bit of writing which is still a bit tiresome to him. It is a labor of love however knowing that when the program is completed his student binder will be an English handbook to use as a reference during the The Latin Road to English Grammar course.

I was pleasantly surprised that the lessons were broken down into bite sized pieces. Most of the lessons really only take about 20 minutes to complete which is very doable for us. There is a bit of flipping back forth to figure out exactly where we are supposed to be in the student binder. And though I find the instructional DVDs very helpful, I was disappointed that the instructions in them were not written anywhere in the Teacher's binder. After all, it's not always convenient to watch a DVD in the middle of our homeschool day and my memory capacity is quite limited, so watching the DVD ahead of time is not exactly ideal.

Nevertheless, I'm happy to have a program that actually makes it possible for me - of all people - to begin to teach my children to learn Latin. I have no reason to fear the English language or the Latin language when I have a thorough, but simple to tool to guide me. The Bridge to the Latin Road is that tool.

You can order the complete kit for The Bridge to the Latin Road for $139 or see more reviews of this product at the TOS Crew Blog.



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Louie Giglio Laminin

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More Yuck.

Wow. This is the year for sicknesses around here. It seems we've been alternating between one healthy week and two sick weeks since the week before Christmas.

This week's attack: strep throat. This ugly little creature has done its damage on 5 of the 6 kids and wiped me out for a full two days. Seriously. Two days of not moving.

Also, in case you were wondering I deleted my All About Preschool post with the Mr. Linky after I had two...um, questionable links added. Maybe I'll try it again when I can figure out how to make Mr. Linky safer. Too bad. :-(

I really wish I had more to update you on, but I've really done nothing but sleep and drink lots of water the past couple of days. Maybe I'll be more interesting tomorrow. Pin It Now!

Alphabet Notebook

I'm pretty sure H3's favorite part of homeschool is on Friday when we add a new page to her Alphabet Notebook. She also loves to show her book off to family members and friends and occasionally takes it off the shelf just to look at it herself. The idea and almost everything we include in the book comes from Homeschool Share.
My favorite part about the 'A' page is going through her mini book of 'Things that start with A' booklet and hearing H3 say 'astronaut'. It's too cute.


We just so happened to have some cute bear patterned fabric for this page.


The site suggested use cornmeal for the textured C, but I only had an oatmeal....I know, it doesn't begin with a C, but it was fun anyway.


The D is made from denim...yup, that one begins with the featured letter!


H3 practiced writing her E's.


This one was really fun. We traced H3's foot for her foot book and decorated 'Four, Fat, Funny Fish'.



An accordion book features G words.

A pretty picture of H3 on the H page.


Yes, that's chicken pox all over the letter I. Why? Because he 'itches', of course. The site suggested dabbing the red dots with calamine lotion, but we didn't have any...does that make me a bad mother?



The Jack and Jill puppets were a HUGE hit!

And finally the K page...we've done a few more pages since I last took pictures of it...it's a work in progress but has really helped to reinforce the letters we're learning.

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How we Preschool

This is the first year that I have really included preschool in our homeschool. If you've been reading for a while, you may remember that up until this year our children attended a cottage school two days a week. My oldest two had two years of preschool there before each entering Kindergarten. Though it was always my intention to work with them on their preschool studies at home as well, we just never got around to it.

When I was preparing for this school year, I had a few goals in mind. I wanted our children to be well educated this year, but it was also important for me to find ways to make homeschool as simple as possible. After all, I would be teaching a 2nd grader, 1st grader, Kindergartner, and preschooler while managing a toddler and nursing infant! I had to decide if I even wanted to start any formal lessons at all with H3 or just let her play with E2 while I was teaching the older three. Deciding to go ahead plan preschool lessons for her was the best decision I could have made.

I heard a speaker at homeschool conference say once that if you are teaching multiple children you should start with the youngest and work your way up to the oldest during your homeschool day for 2 reasons. The first being that it is easier to procrastinate with youngest and never get around to their lessons, thinking "I have plenty of time to teach them that". And secondly, because they thought that teaching your child to read would be the most important thing you taught any of your children and it deserved the first part of your day. I have found another reason to teach your youngest first thing in the morning...they are usually the ones who ask over and over in their best, whiny voice, "When is it my turn to do school?" Because I teach H3 first each morning, she usually has no problem playing contentedly later while I'm working one-on-one with the older ones.

I have taken very simple and um, cheap, approach to preschool. It usually only takes about 30 minutes to do our preschool lessons. My very basic goals for H3 this year were as follows:

Recognize and Recite all the letters of the alphabet.
Recognize and be able to count 1-20.
Recognize basic shapes and colors.
Further develop fine motor skills in areas of coloring, writing, and cutting with scissors.

In addition to these specific things she is learning so much more as she participates and listens in to the lessons I am teaching to the older ones such as Scripture memorization, Calendar skills, History and Science lessons, memorizing the sounds of the letters, and simple math skills. Just keep your little one in the room while you are teaching your big ones and I can assure you they will learn!

Following the ideas from the free preschool lessons at http://www.letteroftheweek.com/ I teach one letter, one number, and one color or shape each week. A year's worth of lessons would look like this:

Week 1 - square, A, 1
Week 2 - green, B, 2
Week 3 - diamond, C, 3
Week 4 - Review
Week 5 - blue, D, 4
Week 6 - octagon, E, 5
Week 7- Review
Week 8 - red, F, 6
Week 9 - star, G, 7
Week 10- yellow, H, 8
Week 11 - Review
Week 12 - circle, I, 9
Week 13 - black, J, 10
Week 14 - crescent, K, 11
Week 15 - Review
Week 16 - white, L, 12
Week 17 - rectangle, M, 13
Week 18 - Review
Week 19 - brown, N, 14
Week 20 - oval, O, 15
Week 21 - purple, P, 16
Week 22 - Review
Week 23 - heart, Q, 17
Week 24 - pink, R, 18
Week 25 - triangle, S, 19
Week 26 - Review
Week 27 - orange, T, 20
Week 28 - pentagon, U, 21
Week 29 - lavender, V, 22
Week 30 - Review
Week 31- hexagon, W, 23
Week 32 - tan, X, 24
Week 33 - parallelogram, Y, 25
Week 34 - grey, Z, 100
Week 35 - Review

Each day I read a picture book to her. She has a sticker chart where she is tracking the number of books we have read this year. Then we review what we are learning that week and she completes 1 or 2 worksheets that pertain to letter/number/color/shape we are learning. On Friday she makes a new page in her Alphabet Lap-N-Note from Homeschool Share. It's really that simple.

I actually found the following two preschool workbooks years ago at the Everything's A Dollar store and use these for her worksheets.





They have pages for all of the letters, numbers, colors, and shapes we are reviewing with a few exception. If I we are learning a color or shape that week that does not have a corresponding worksheet in these books, I usually just print one from www.enchantedlearning.com .

Well, I'll be posting more preschool ideas throughout the week. Don't forget to post your ideas and sign my Mr. Linky. I'm not begging...yet, but the Mr. Linky is awfully lonely over here! Pin It Now!

Midwest Homeschool Convention

Oh, how I am counting down the days.

Last year my husband and I attended the Midwest Homeschool Convention in Cincinnatti, OH. It was my first homeschool convention and I have to tell you, I am officially addicted. I loved everything...the inspiration and practical ideas from the speakers, getting to search through and talk to the creators of the products in the vendor hall, the weekend away with my husband away from kids and responsibility. It. was. wonderful.

This year the Midwest Homeschool Convention will be April 16-18 and they've just extended their early bird discount. It's only $35 for an individual registration and $55 for a family registration. They have a huge, HUGE vendor hall and an awesome speaker lineup including Susan Wise Buaer, Amanda Bennett, Mark Hamby, Dr. Jonathan Pennington, and Karen Braun. Won't you join me?

This is the time of the year when I really need a boost to keep me up and going and remind me of all the reasons I actually love homeschooling. This is also the time of year when I just really need to get away from it all for a couple of days to recharge. I am so looking forward to that April date.

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WriteShop Storybuilders

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out the products and giving you my honest opinion.

I can still remember it so clearly. I was in third grade and sitting quietly at my desk. My teacher excitedly announced that she had finished reading all of the class stories and that there was one that was so good that she wanted to share it with class. My heart started to beat. I had worked hard on my story and thought it was good, but could it really be the best in the class? When she began reading my story that day I knew in my heart what I wanted and what I still want to this day. I wanted to be a writer.

I have been hesitant to encourage the kids to write stories yet. After all, G8 and A6 still grimace at the mention of spelling and copywork. I was concerned that they wouldn't enjoy writing stories because they really don't enjoy the physical act of writing yet. Even still, when I began looking through the Storybuilders Series from WriteShop, I felt confident that this was something the kids would have fun with it.

There are currently 4 different Storybuilders ebooks from WriteShop:

World of People Storybuilders
World of Animals Storybuilders
World of Sports Storybuilders
Storybuilders Christmas Mini-Builder

I received both the World of People and the Christmas Mini-Builder to review. Each Storybuilder ebook includes instructions, ideas for use, and two decks of 192 printable cards (the Christmas mini-Builder has 96). The cards are divided into four categories: Character Cards, Character Trait Cards, Setting Cards, and Plot Cards. You can use the black print cards and print the different categories on different color cardstock. Or you can use white cardstock and print the color-coded deck.

The ebook suggests different ways to use the cards such as letting your child blindly pick from each of the four categories or let him search through and choose. It is suggested to play a Round Robin game with the cards which I think would be especially fun during a long car ride. There's also suggestions for Daily Timed Writing that would be helpful for those students who think writing is a chore.

I introduced the Storybuilders to the kids in December when we were working on our advent studies and making Christmas notebooks. We used the Storybuilders Christmas Mini-Builder and I let them pick out a card from each deck randomly. The deck included Character Cards like: St. Nick, Candy maker, and store owner. Character Trait Cards included: cheerful, worried, and angry. Setting Cards included icy castle, enchanted forest, and snowy field. And the plot cards included "snowed in", "tries to stop Christmas", and "unexpected visitor". G8, A6, E5, and H3 all excitedly took turns drawing cards. They had as much fun finding out which cards all of them would draw as they did writing the stories. I let G8 and A6 write their stories on their own and I let E5 and H3 narrate their stories to me as I wrote them in their journals. There's really nothing that beats the imagination of children and I loved hearing the stories they came up with.

I've used the World of People Storybuilders several times as well with the oldest two. Last Friday I let them search through the cards and pick their own instead of randomly drawing them and was pleasantly surprised with G8's story. This is what he wrote:

The Lost Hunter
by G8

Once there was a hunter. He is very imaginative. One day he found a tree house. There was a gadget. He pressed a button. Whizzzz. He was in the jungle. He heard a sound. It was a lion! He took out his gun a shot it. He missed! But he was happy. It was his dog! He was home!

The end.

I thought the sound effects and elements of surprise were quite clever! You can read more stories that my children wrote using the Storybuilders cards at their blog, Crew 6.

You can purchase the Storybuilder ebooks from WriteShop or TOS for $7.95 each. (The Christmas Mini-Builder is only $3.95.) That's almost pocket change even for us one-income, budget conscience homeschool moms, so I consider that a great value!

For more reviews of this product visit the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog.

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Procrastination

It is 10AM and I have not started school yet. The only reason the dishes are done is because we used paper towels for breakfast this morning. I have a review due today and I haven't started writing it. Co-op starts tomorrow. Supplies have not been bought. I'm teaching two classes. Lessons have not been planned. My living room floor needed to be vacuumed two days ago.

And yet here I sit typing this post.

I am the Queen of Procrastination. Pin It Now!

Six More Weeks of Winter Blah

It only took a week of can't-go-anywhere, my-bones-are-cold ice and snow for me to become officially tired of winter. Where is spring already?

Don't go looking for any hope from Ol' Punxsutawney Phil, either. The best he has to offer is an excuse to take a break from regular subjects today and have a little "fun learning" all about Groundhog's Day.

Wanna have a little fun, too?

Check these sites out:

Official of Punxsutawney Groundhog
Enchanted Learning Groundhog Resources
Teacher's Corner
Kaboose
Education World
Adventures in Our World Pin It Now!