One More Story (review)

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

Reading aloud is a magical time for many families, but there are times when it’s just not possible. Those times are the basis for One More Story. They’re here to help get your kids some literature time when you just can’t for one reason or another.

One More Story is available as a website or an iOS (Apple) app. For ease of use, I downloaded the app to my iPhone and our iPad. This way there was no issue with trying to remember log in credentials every time it was time to use the program.

When you first open the app (after the very first time, when you have to log in), the bookshelf is the main screen. You can easily choose a book to read, or have read to you, and off you go. It’s really that simple.

There are currently 87 books available, and each one has original music composed by Robby Merken, who used to work for Sesame Street. There are 30 different narrators, so this keeps the books fresh. You’ll find many different types of books here, but they are all high quality stories. Some are well-known (The Snowy Day, Stellaluna, and Pete’s a Pizza, for example), and others are not (Kiss the Cow and Sidney Won’t Swim). All are good.

There are two options for using the app: Read Aloud or I Can Read. In Read Aloud, the app does all the reading to your child, along with the original music I mentioned before. You can choose to have the pages turn automatically, or do so manually. In I Can Read mode, there is no music or narration. Children do the reading all on their own. If they don’t know a word, they can tap on it and the app will read it aloud to them, which helps to build confidence in reading.

We had a lot of fun with this app. My little kids really enjoyed the audiobook aspect of it (they love audiobooks!), and having the original illustrations to go with the music and narration was a nice bonus from the typical audiobook they’re used to.

You can connect with One More Story on Facebook or Twitter.

Make sure to head over to the Review Crew website for more information and links to other reviews as well.

Blessings,

Mickey Mouse sweater

I’m finding myself following a similar knit/crochet schedule as I did last year! I spent the winter making blankets, then did a few toys in the spring (I have a post planned for showing off some of those in a few days), and now I’m working on kid sweaters.

Using the Strange Brew sweater “recipe,” just like I did last year, I made a sweater for Bumblebee, who is 2 1/2 now. I didn’t end up liking this one as well as other things I’ve made recently, but my son really likes it, so that matters a lot more than me liking it.

To create the design on the sweater, I first printed the Strange Brew planning worksheet from Tin Can Knits. I drew out the words first, because I knew I wanted those to wrap around the bottom and I prefer to knit sweaters bottom up whenever possible. When I finished knitting the words and the body, and attached the sleeves to begin the yoke, I took a pause to create the yoke design on my worksheet. In the tiny size of 1-2 years, there are only a few rows of yoke design allotted, divided into 3 sections. The shorts and the Mickey Mouse head were easy enough to sketch out, but the middle portion was a bit trickier. I wanted to do the gloves, but I just didn’t have the stitches available. Instead, I went with a paper-cutout-doll style design. What I mean is that I did a sort of “body” with the arms all connected the entire way around the sweater.

For this sweater, I used JoAnn Big Twist yarn in the colors Medium Gray and Varsity Navy. I really love this yarn for crocheting, but I didn’t love it for a knitted sweater. I’m not sure what it was about it, but it just felt… “cheap,” if that makes sense. But again, Baby loves the sweater, so I’m okay with it.

Blessings,

Cross Seven Musical Memory Tool (review)

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

It’s no secret that one surefire way to make memorization easier is to use music. Cross Seven has created a program that utilizes this fact with their Cross Seven Ventures – Homeschool Musical Memory Tool. My younger kids and I have been practicing some of the basics in a variety of subjects with this program the past few weeks.

Cross Seven is divided up into weeks, and from there into individual subjects. Each week has a series of short videos, and the videos give little songs to help children memorize different things. You can use the website for accessing the videos, or there is also a Roku channel so you can put it right on the TV, which is what we did. Each morning after breakfast, I’d turn Cross Seven on for a little while and we would work our way through the subjects I wanted my kids to work on memorizing. We focused primarily on geography, grammar, and science. There are loads of other subjects included, too, though: Scripture, history, Latin, math, hymns, and timeline. Grasshopper thought the Latin was rather interesting, but I didn’t push it too much because that’s not something we’re focused on in our family.

The songs, as I mentioned, are quite short. Each one is only 1-2 minutes long, which is perfect for small children. It gives them the important information without much else. For example, in the geography song that deals with the continents, it pretty much just lists the continents and oceans to music. There aren’t a lot of extraneous lyrics. This keeps things super streamlined.

We did the grammar songs as a supplement to our regular grammar curriculum, and the short songs helped Grasshopper (8 years old) keep track of the different types of words he’s learning – nouns, verbs, adjectives, et al. It really helped him to focus on the different types of words, as well as giving him hooks to hang information on (what a noun is, for example, not just its name).

There are also quizzes available, but I didn’t worry too much about those.

I found the Cross Seven program to be quite popular with my children. I was a little surprised, to be honest, because the songs are so very short and don’t have any “extra” information in them. It’s quite literally just listing the things to music. But it really works! Just a few times through each song and my 8-year-old was singing along. That tells me that the method is sound.

Make sure to read more reviews on the Homeschool Review Crew website, especially if you’re interested in learning more about the quizzes we didn’t utilize.

Blessings,

 

Benjamin Franklin (YWAM biography review)

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

We are no stranger to the Heroes of History series from YWAM Publishing. I read two of them with my older kids when they were younger (C.S. Lewis and Jacob de Shazer), and now I’m reading a new (to us) one, Benjamin Franklin: Live Wire with Grasshopper (he and I also read Corie ten Boom last year). The biography reads like a novel, and that’s part of what makes the Heroes of History series so good. You’re getting great history without it feeling like a history lesson. 

The book, like all of the YWAM biographies, starts with a “chapter one” that would be better named a “prologue,” not a “chapter.” In the case of Benjamin Franklin, we first meet him during the famous kite-flying experiment when he proved that lightning was a source of electricity. In chapter two, we are thrust backward in time to the time of Franklin’s youth and then move forward from there.

In the book, we learn all about Benjamin Franklin’s troubled relationship with his father, and how he didn’t want to work in “the family business” (soap- and candle-making). We take a trip across the Atlantic with young Ben as he travels to London on official business with the guarantee of the governor of Pennsylvania, William Keith, only to find out that the governor was a swindler when he got there – Keith didn’t send Franklin with the paperwork required to purchase the printing equipment he was sent for. This setback left Franklin in London for over a year, scrambling to get the printing press so he could bring it back to America.

A few chapters later, we learn all about Franklin’s civic “duties” – how he developed and created the very first fire station, library, and hospital in the colonies. In his position as one of Pennsylvania’s VIPs, he met many inventors who inspired him to explore science himself. Both Grasshopper and I found these chapters (the science ones) quite interesting. It was fascinating to read about how, before they fully understood electricity, the scientists would put on “magic shows” where they shot sparks out of their fingers (and other places) to impress the crowds. One time, Franklin himself was planning a show in which he used electricity to kill a turkey for the town festival (they planned to eat the turkey at the festival), but something went wrong and he ended up electrocuting himself instead! He nearly died that day.

Benjamin Franklin retired from his printing shop in his 40s, and from that point forward he focused a lot on his scientific pursuits, as well as continuing to be a “mover and shaker” in the Pennsylvania colony. He was made the postmaster general, which gave him quite a bit of power. He personally guaranteed the bonds that were used to pay for the French and Indian War (though he was able to recover those funds from the government). And he went back to England.

This is the point where Grasshopper and I are now (we have 4 chapters left in the book to read). Because we’ve been reading about 3 chapters a week, we’re not quite done, but we should finish it up by the middle of next week, if not before.

In addition to the book itself, YWAM offers complete study guides for all of their biographies. Benjamin Franklin: Live Wire is no exception.  The unit study guide follows the same outline of the other unit studies, having students explore key quotes from the topic. In the case of Benjamin Franklin, there are a few quotes from he himself, as well as some from other notable scientists (Sir Isaac Newton, Aristotle), politicians (FDR), and authors (Ralph Waldo Emerson). On their surface, the quotes don’t seem to apply to the book, but when you discuss them and dig deeper, you can see the relevance.

There’s a guide for helping students create a display (poster-style) using the information they learned in the book. There are lots of reading comprehension questions, split up by chapter. And then there are options for expanding the study to include subjects beyond reading/literature and history. Overall, the study guide is a very good way to turn a simple book into a much more intense learning experience, especially for older children.

I am the only one reviewing Benjamin Franklin this time, but there are lots of other YWAM biographies being talked about on the Homeschool Review Crew website this week. Click through to find out more!

Blessings,