Alphabet Beats dvds

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

Some of my children have picked up handwriting quite easily while others have struggled (and whined) their way through it. However, with Alphabet Beats, handwriting instruction has suddenly become quite easy around here.

The Alphabet Beats Handwriting program is a set of two dvds that instructs your 2 1/2 - 8 year old how to write the alphabet. We received the 'lowercase letters' dvd and I immediately began using it with my daughter H4 and nephew N5. Now H4 actually enjoys handwriting and does copywork all on her own, but N5 is quite typical of boys his age...and does not enjoy handwriting at all. But do you want to know something funny? He does enjoy Alphabet Beats.

You wouldn't be so surprised after watching it though, because Alphabet Beats is more than just handwriting. It is 26 mini-units on each letter of the alphabet and includes vocabulary words, shape recognition, life skills, and more. Miss Marnie is the instructor who sings her way through writing each letter with easily memorized chants and an engaging personality. Each lesson is only 5 minutes in length and very reminiscent of a Sesame Street video. It is no problem for my kids to sit through 3 or 4 lessons and fill up their whiteboards with neatly printed letters.

Each Alphabet Beats dvd sells for $35 or $64.99 for both. I'm not jumping up and down over that price, but I can tell you that I will definitely be getting a lot of use out of our dvd. Other dvds and workbooks are available for purchase from Alphabet Beats. More reviews can be found at the TOS Crew blog. Pin It Now!

Super Star Games

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

A couple of days ago I told you about the Super Star Speech books, but we also had the opportunity to review Super Star Games.

Now if you have been hanging around my blog for awhile then you probably know that we are File Folder Game junkies around here. They are such an easy and inexpensive way to make learning fun.

Super Star Games offer a variety of games that can be used with your elementary or middle school aged children. I think it's worth it to list the description of each game below so that you know what they have to offer.

Silly Snail: Review parts of speech (common noun, proper noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, and adverb) with Silly Snail: Parts of Speech Game. 3rd to 6th grades.

Planets, Moon and Stars is a game for children in third grade and up. Players answer trivia questions about space while trying to be the first to collect all the planets in the solar system.

Road to Revolution: Reinforce your study of the American Revolutionary War with the Road to Revolution board game. Includes 48 multiple choice questions cards and game board. Players try to be first to the finish line while answering questions about famous people, events, and causes of the Revolutionary war. Designed for grades 3-8.

Explorers of the World: Learn about 24 world explorers and their contributions to American and world history. The 72 game cards can be used to play two different games-- a matching game and a time line game. Have fun while reinforcing your history and geography studies! Explorers of the World is appropriate for 3rd to 8th grades.

The Inventors Game will teach your child about 24 famous inventors. Instructions are included for two different games, with variations for difficulty. Children have fun matching inventors to their inventions or playing a timeline game using the dates of different inventions.

The object of Covering the Continents is to "settle" more continents than any other player. Covering the Continents includes a game board/ map and game cards that ask questions about each of the seven continents. Players try to be the first to answer three questions about a continent to "settle" it. Fun for ages 6 to 10.

Colony Quest is a game that will teach children about the thirteen American Colonies and map skills. Children will answer questions about the colonies while trying to "settle" more colonies than the other players. A fun way to reinforce your American History curriculum! Ideal for 3rd through 5th graders.

Players of the Exploring Egypt Game will race to be first to the top of the pyramid by answering the most questions about ancient Egypt. Game question topics cover geography, politics, daily life, and religion of ancient Egypt. The game can be adjusted to accommodate players of different ages and abilities. Designed for 3rd to 8th grade students.

Climb the Vine: All About Plants is a question and answer board game that will reinforce your science curriculum. Players answer multiple choice questions about plant types, pollination, photosynthesis, trees, and more while racing to the finish line. Designed as a file folder game for grades 3-6.

Play The Insect Game to learn all about insects or to reinforce your current study of insects. Players answer questions to earn insect parts, attempting to be the first player to build a complete insect. This game is designed for 2nd to 6th grades.

All About Animals is an animal classification game for grades K-5. Players use picture cards or clue cards to categorize animals into the five major groups.

These games are the perfect supplement to your studies to help reinforce your student's learning. The games have colorful, but simple illustrations which is helpful for printing and each game is SO affordable at only $3.50! Plus they're available for INSTANT download at Currclick. I've got nothing bad to say about this one!

For more reviews visit the TOS Crew blog. Pin It Now!

Super Star Speech

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

I can very vividly being called out of my first grade class and sitting in the hallway with a speech therapist as she patiently taught me to curl my tongue when I pronounced the 'r' sound. I had been teased and teased by my sisters...they would laugh and say, "Say 'car' again!"...."Caw!!!" I would say. I just couldn't hear the difference. Thankfully, after a few months of weekly visits with the speech therapist, I was pronouncing my r's correctly.

H4 (who will be 5 in May) has also always pronounced her r's incorrectly. To be quite honest with you, this hasn't bothered me much. I always felt like it would eventually go away and if it didn't, I could sit down with her and help her to 'curl her tongue'. However, as she has gotten older with no signs of loosing this speech error I have begun to wonder if really could help her. Add to that the fact that we have had great concern for our littlest Baby L...since he was born with some health issues that caused overall low muscle tone, we have been seeing a speech therapist since his first month.

All this to say that I was quite pleased to have the opportunity to review Super Star Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple by Deborah Lott. Deborah is a homeschool mom and a licensed Speech language pathologist a with Master’s degree in Education/ speech pathology. She had found that many parents needed a more affordable option to helping their children overcome speech errors and wanted to work with their children at home prior to seeking professional therapy which is why she created Super Star Speech.

Deborah has made it so easy for a parent to work with their child who is having speech issues. Super Star Speech includes clear instructions on how to teach sounds that your child is struggling with and how to give an assessment test to your child to see which sounds he/she needs to work on. She will also walk you through how to set up a lesson plans to work through the sounds. Also included are flashcards and games to play. H4 especially enjoyed these games. I can remember feeling embarrassed as a child that I wasn't pronouncing sounds correctly and I was concerned that H4 might feel this way as well. But making a game out of correcting her sounds has been so helpful and we are already seeing improvement with her. (Note: I should also mention that H4 is still young to be concerned about speech issues. From the Super Star Speech website: Errors are a normal part of speech development and many children do not have perfect articulation until around 7 or 8 years of age. )

Super Star Speech is so affordable at only $22.95 for a ring bound copy and$18.95 for Spiral bound. You can also purchase a downloadable copy at Currclick at up to 40% off the print versions.

You can also purchase additional Super Star books that specialize in certain sounds: Super Star R & L, Super Star S, Z, and Sh, and Super Star Ch, J, and Th. These books have additional games, activities, and flashcards and are well worth it in my opinion!

For more information, visit Super Star Speech and for more reviews of this product visit the TOS Crew. Pin It Now!

E3 and the Blue Crayon

He's carried the crayon around all day.


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Preschool with T4L

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.


Time 4 Learning is an online curriculum for preK-8th graders. This site requires a monthly subscription for each student but gives you a full language arts, math, science, and social studies curriculum. This is our second time around using Time 4 Learning as we had the opportunity last year to use it with all of our kiddos.


This year we received a month-long subscription to Time 4 Learning's Preschool Curriculum. H4 was so excited to have a website dedicated just for her use. (Plus she didn't need the 'help' of her big brothers and sister...which always frustrated her as their 'helping' is much more like them 'taking over'!) As a matter of fact she really didn't need help as this site was actually too easy for her. Luckily though there are two different levels of the T4L Preschool and one is slightly harder which was closer to the level that H4 is at.


The curriculum offers many themed topics to choose from for one day's lessons (above). Once a student clicks on a topic they work their way through 5 or so lessons about that topic (below). T4L offers fun animation that is engaging and entertaining. H4 asked over and over again to play (as did the rest of her brothers and sisters - they didn't care that it was for preschool!)

T4L also keeps track of your students' progress with printable reports.

A Time 4 Learning subscription is $19.95 a month for one student and $14.95 a month for each additional student. I find this a bit pricey as a supplemental curriculum, but reasonable if you were using it as a core curriculum. Personally, using an online curriculum as a core is not the first choice for our family. T4L offers a free 14-day trial and online demos if you're interested. Plus there's no reason to just take my word for it...there's over 100 homeschool moms offering their opinions at the TOS Crew Blog.

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The Terrestria Chronicles

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

There are few things in life that I enjoy more than curling up to a good book. I'm currently reading through a series I received from Ed Dunlop Ministries called The Terrestria Chronicles. The following descriptions from the first two books are from their website:


Young Josiah is a slave to Argamor, the powerful warlord who has plans to seize the throne from King Emmanuel. When Josiah fails in his attempt to escape slavery, Emmanuel not only sets him free forever, but adopts him into the Royal Family. The book presents an unforgettable picture of our salvation and reminds the reader what a wondrous thing it is to be redeemed. Alive with fast-paced action in a medieval setting, Book 1 of the Terrestria allegory series encourages the reader to live as a child of the King.

When King Emmanuel sends Prince Josiah on a difficult journey to various castles across the kingdom, the young prince is unprepared for the dangers and temptations that he will face. As Josiah grows in the knowledge of his King and strives to become like him, he learns the importance of following his Book and listening for the voice of the Dove. Book 2 of the delightful Terrestria allegory series challenges the reader to examine his/her relationship with the King.

There are seven books total in the series. The Terrestria Chronicles allegory series was written with a three-fold purpose: to honor Jesus Christ as King, to challenge young readers to love and serve Him, and to teach them to guard their hearts for Him. These books are much like Pilgrim's Progress geared towards ages 10-14.

As much as I would like to tell you that I have devoured through these books, the honest truth is that I am reading them through bit by bit but enjoying them nonetheless. This isn't a genre that particularly interests me, but I love what the books stand for and think that there should be more books like these for teens and tweens. I plan to add this series to our Read Aloud list but will probably wait a year or so when the vocabulary and allegory won't be such a challenge for for our younger ones.

The books sell for just $7.99 and can be bought on their website where you'll free excerpts of the books and even other free ebooks by Ed Dunlop to download. For more reviews of this series, click over to the TOS Crew.

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Another beautiful reader from AAS!

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

You may remember me raving about The Beehive Reader from All About Spelling a couple of months ago. So imagine my excitement to find out that I would be reviewing an advanced copy of the second book in the All About Reading series: What Am I?

This soon-to-be released book is just as beautiful as the first one and challenges beginning readers with slightly longer stories and bigger words. I found that a couple of the stories were hard to follow with not much of a storyline, but my little ones didn't seem to mind. We both especially loved the addition of poetry and riddles as well as eight stories.

What Am I can be purchased from AAS for $19.95 who have big plans to release two readers that will correspond with each level of their spelling program. But whether or not you use their spelling, you're sure to love their readers. Keep an eye on the AAS website for new books.

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Language Arts from Critical Thinking

As a 2nd year member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I have been given the wonderful opportunity to review many homeschool products over the next several months. The only compensation that I receive for my review is the free product. I feel truly blessed to be participating in this review group and I'm looking forward to trying out more products and giving you my honest opinion.

This is the second time I've had the opportunity to review a product from The Critical Thinking Co. and once again, I am thoroughly impressed.

Language Smarts Level C is geared towards 2nd grade students which made it a perfect fit for A8. Generally A8 would rather walk across hot coals than participate in any subject that requires a significant... no, any amount of writing, but she has been totally won over by the bright colors and fun illustrations that she actually finishes pages (note the plural) of this book quickly.

Language Smarts Level C has 320 pages of vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, reading, and writing skills. I love that I can simply hand A8 the book without preparation and generally she can do the lessons without needing assistance from me.

The book does cost $39.99, which is pretty standard with all of The Critical Thinking Co. books and I have to admit, does make me cringe a little. If it weren't for the cost, I would be ordering up a whole boatload of their books for all of my students because they offer quality workbooks in many different subjects. Check out their website for more info and the TOS Crew for more reviews of this product.

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Another month, another birthday.

Our oldest daughter turned 8 last month and I'm just now getting around to telling you about it...Tsk, tsk.

A8 celebrated with a sewing themed birthday and her very first slumber party. Boy was she excited!

Each of her sweet friends brought her something to fill up her sewing basket with...so she received lots of fun fabrics, ribbons, threads, and buttons. I showed the girl's how to cross stitch with a small cross stitch kit that each of the girl's got to take home.


Here are our three beautiful girls: H4, A8, and L1.

January started our back to back birthdays with E3. February was A8. March was Chad...he just turned 30. (Don't worry, honey. Not that many people read this blog.) Mine is this month (I'll be 28.) H4 in May, L1 in June. THEN we take a break! Well, for a couple months anyway.

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