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We had the pleasure of reviewing several products from Home School in the Woods just a few months ago. Now, we’ve been blessed with another: one of their Hands-On History Lap-Paks, this time on U.S Elections.

When you purchase the Lap-Pak (current price is $18.95 for a family license download; $1 more if you want a physical CD), you’ll receive a ZIP file that needs to be extracted. Once you do that, you’ll see lots of different folders. It can be quite overwhelming to figure out what all’s in there, but my advice is to stick to the folders (as opposed to the web links). All the PDFs you need can be found in those folders fairly easily. The Elections Pak comes with 3 such folders: images, MP3s, and PDFs. The PDFs folder then has three subfolders, but we’ll get to those as we move along here.

If it’s your first time using one of the Lap-Paks, the best folder in which to begin is the PDF subfolder “Introduction and Directions.” Here, you’ll find 4 PDFs to help you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into and how all the different pieces (the main project in this unit is a lapbook, if you and your are so inclined to make one) will go together in the end. The next thing to do, especially if you’re going to make the lapbook as prescribed, is to get all the printing done. I have to warn you: Home School in the Woods requires a lot of printing per child.

Once you, as the parent/teacher know what’s going on and have all the pieces printed, it’s time to get your kids!

The U.S. Elections study is recommended for grades 3-8, so I did it primarily with Munchkin (he just finished 6th grade), but Seahawk listened in a bit too. The last election was so … charged … that they were fairly interested in the process of how that all works and what went into everything that went down almost two years ago.

I started by having him read the “Elections Booklet.” As I mentioned in yesterday’s review (science for little kids), I haven’t had easy access to our printer of late, so I just had him read straight from the computer. Likewise, we didn’t do the full lapbook; instead Munchkin did the reading and wrote a little report for me. I wish we’d been able to do the full lapbook because the different pieces look pretty great, but alas that wasn’t in the cards for us this time. I’ll just have to save my files and use it in a couple of years with Small Fry – he’ll be in roughly 3rd grade just in time for the next election.

Now that we’ve talked about the PDF folders and how we used them, let’s move on to the MP3s. In this folder, there are 2 files, simply called “U.S. Elections Part 1” and “U.S. Elections Part 2.” If you have a child that is a competent reader – both in reading and comprehension simply by seeing the words – then you probably won’t need these. You see, they’re just a reading of the Elections Booklet I mentioned before. In our case, we didn’t need them because Munchkin is a visual learner (much like myself) and does better with reading than listening. If Seahawk had been doing this study more seriously with us, he’d have used the audio files exclusively.

Overall, I think this is a fabulous resource for teaching your children how elections work in the United States. I wish the printing hadn’t been such a burden this time around and we’d been able to do the full lapbook, but despite that, I can be assured that my son learned a lot about the election process just in what we were able to do.

Members of the Homeschool Review Crew are reviewing lots of different items from Home School in the Woods today, including many from their Project Passport series. Speaking of Project Passport, they were able to finish their most recent one early, so the Ancient Rome study is now available for purchase! If you’re studying that time period this school year, definitely check it out! Click the banner below to find out more.

Blessings,

Kids love music. I’ve never met one who didn’t. But the mainstream stations aren’t always appropriate for them. To respond to this need, Smart Kidz Media has developed an online radio station for kids called Smart Kidz Radio.

Much like a traditional radio station, you can listen to whatever is on live. Unlike a regular station, though, there are also prerecorded podcasts with things like fairy tales to listen to. When you go to the website and log in, the radio station starts playing whatever the live feed has going on automatically. If you want one of the other options, it’s easy enough to find using the “menu” button near the bottom of the screen. (It’s a little cut off on my screen shot just because it didn’t all fit in the capture.)

At the time of this post, the live portion of Smart Kidz Radio is available for free, but you do need to sign up for an account. There are absolutely no hidden fees included – you only need an email address and a password, no credit card. The “on demand” service, which costs $3.99 per month, has over 1,000 original songs available covering a variety of topics for kids ages 1 and up. Some of the categories are listed as “all ages.” The on demand includes such topics as life skills, survival skills, bedtime songs, and even baby sign language.

Dubbed “edutainment,” this radio station definitely delivers on that promise. The songs are good for young kids, roughly lower elementary school age, and the station is ad-free. There are times during the live feed that the songs repeat, but it’s not really a problem; regular radio stations do that too. In fact, one might argue that it’s a good thing as repetition can help kids learn the songs. By learning the songs on the Smart Kidz Radio station, they learn lessons.

It does not currently work for mobile devices, even if you’re going through the website. This was quite a problem for us as I don’t have a computer in the house during the day (only iPads accessing wifi), so we didn’t get to listen to it as much as I’d hoped. The little bit we were able to utilize was pretty fun, though. Small Fry and Dragonfly seemed to really enjoy it. I’ll definitely be using it a lot more when they get the apps up and running! (The website has a link to take you to the app store, but when I searched for it on the App Store on my iPad, there was nothing found.)

Blessings,

 

 

Only 6 weeks left!

Blessings,

I just wanted to share a few more pictures of Seahawk wearing the sweater I made for him. Will took them, so they’re a bit better than those I shared in this post. He’s got a better natural eye for pictures than I do 😉

Fun fact: that building in the background is where I went to elementary school. It’s now the “cultural center” in town, and the older two kids used to take a class there called Club Mud where they did pottery. (They’re so little in those pictures! You should totally click through that link and enjoy a blast from my past, especially if you didn’t follow my blog back then.) They still have a few of the projects they made in that class. Will always says that the building looks like Crunchem Hall from Matilda, and he’s glad he didn’t have to go to school there. It wasn’t a bad place at all, though; much brighter and friendlier than the outside looks.

Blessings,

Seahawk (age 14) loves to study logic. Together, we’ve gone through several different courses in the subject that we’ve found online over the years, and they’re always one of his very favorite classes. So when the chance to review Traditional Logic I Complete Set from Memoria Press came up, I eagerly asked for the set for him. Several weeks in, and I’m still glad I did. And based on Seahawk’s eagerness to do this class each day – and high performance on all of the exercises and tests – he is too.

What is Traditional Logic?

This course from Memoria Press (leaders in homeschool classical education), written by Martin Cothran, is all about traditional, formal logic – the kind developed by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. These quotes from the “A Note to the Teacher” at the beginning of the textbook sums it up perfectly:

Traditional logic trains the mind to respect truth, and indeed assumes a Christian view of truth throughout…

And

This book discusses traditional logic rather than modern logic. Traditional logic is the study of the classical syllogism; modern logic is the study, primarily, of the calculus of propositions.

What this means is that if you’re looking to teach your child about the many informal fallacies that many other logic classes focus on (with assignments such as “find an example of this in today’s newspaper), this isn’t the course for you. If you want to teach your child to think about and focus on truth, validity, and soundness, then look no further.

The Course Components

Our package from Memoria Press included 5 items: the textbook, a workbook, a test book, an instructional DVD, and the teacher answer key. Through our use of the program, I can easily say that every single component has been absolutely essential. Here’s how we’ve been using it.

Each chapter in the textbook has corresponding questions in the workbook and a corresponding video lesson on the DVD. The workbook gives clear instructions on what to do when; that is, the series of questions is broken up into 4 days worth of work. Day 5 is the quiz/test each week. The only thing I was unsure about was the DVD; there was nothing to suggest how this fit in with everything else, which seemed very complete. But at the beginning of week 2, we put in the DVD just to see if there was something obvious we were missing by not having used it the first week. Boy, what a difference this tool made for my auditory learner! It’s nothing fancy, just the instructor giving a lecture on each chapter (broken up on the DVD for easy navigation right to where you need to be). But it made such a huge difference for Seahawk to be able to hear the information rather than just read it to himself out of the text that we will definitely not be doing any more lessons without it.

How We Use It

On Monday, Seahawk watches the DVD lesson and answers the Day 1 questions. On Tuesday he goes back to the textbook and reads a short section for review and answers the Day 2 questions. Same with Wednesday and Thursday (but for Days 3 and 4, respectively). On Friday, he does the chapter quiz. When he finishes each day’s questions (all of this work is done independently, which is great because it frees me up to work with my Kindergartener or to do a complicated lesson with my 6th grader), we go over the answers together. I have him read me his answers while I compare them to the teacher guide.

As of today, he has never missed more than part of answer on any one assignment – yes, over the whole assignment he gets every single question correct. This is how I know he’s enjoying the course – he’s paying attention, learning a lot, and even writing his answers in complete sentences (usually it’s like pulling teeth to get more than one or two words on a written assignment from him).

This class is a definite winner for us!

 

 

We sent this photo out to our families, so now that they know I figured it was time to share it here.

He’ll arrive end of August, and his blog nickname will be “Bumblebee,” so you can look forward to more pictures later this summer.

Blessings,

We’ve used some books from The Critical Thinking Co.™ in the past, and they’ve been big hits with my boys. I like how they teach not only things that you need to know, but also how to “think out” how to get there. For today’s review, I’ll be talking about Munchkin (age 11, coming out of 6th grade) and his use of Understanding Pre-Algebra.

The timing on our receipt of this book was perfect as he had just finished up his 6th grade (generic) math book. Understanding Pre-Algebra is a combination textbook and workbook – everything is self contained, which has been nice. The lessons are fairly short (a couple of pages of reading) followed by practice exercises. No different from a traditional textbook except that there are lines on which to write the answers so no additional paper is necessary. Because of this format, the book is quite large – 8.5 x 11 and nearly 450 pages.

It opens with a chapter on number families. The book explains the different types of number groups used in higher level mathematics (natural numbers, whole numbers, integers, rational and irrational numbers, etc). This chapter lists 5 sections in the table of contents, but they were all simple enough concepts that we (me teaching and Munchkin working) were able to finish it in just 2 days.

The second chapter, Working with Integers, has been a lot more new information for him, and thus is taking us longer to get through. Because Munchkin hasn’t done a lot of work with negative numbers to date, it’s a lot for him to try to grasp at a time (he’s a literature kid, not a math kid, so it’s especially tricky for him to wrap his mind around), so we’re taking it slow. I want him to understand the concepts, not just be able to fill out the worksheet today and forget it tomorrow – which he is definitely prone to do with math. But this is just one more reason I really like this curriculum for him so far – some of the questions require more than just a mathematical answer, which helps to cement the information (and its how and why) in the child’s brain. One example of such a question is is this one from chapter 1: “Joan said that 27 cannot be divided by 2. Is she right? Explain your thinking.” Munchkin correctly answered, “Yes. 27 does not divide by 2 because 27 is odd.” That “explain your thinking” part is what will help him remember concepts from one day to the next.

Even though we’re not super far into the book, I can tell that it’s going to be a fantastic fit for my son based on what we’ve done so far. The information is presented well, in an easy to understand way. The chapter titles tell me precisely what he will be learning, and it’s all important as he moves through pre-algebra to prepare for Algebra I. Some of them are things he struggled with in his previous math book (specifically volume and surface area), so I’m glad they will be repeated in this book. Some of the things (inequalities, scientific notation) are in the Algebra I book his big brother (14) is working through right now, which is how I know this book will lead beautifully into that one. All in all, I’m very glad we were chosen to have the opportunity to review this book. It’s definitely a keeper for us!

Blessings,

 

 

I came home from errands one day to be presented with this cool creation the boys made. I found it quite impressive and wanted to document it 🙂

Blessings,

This picture was taken in southern Oregon when I was there recently for Missionary Convention. We came out from the evening session to this, and it was much too pretty not to take a picture of.

Blessings,

I spent the weekend a couple of weeks ago at our denomination’s annual Missionary Convention. I go most years as an elected delegate (meaning I have the right to vote for the new committee members), and this year was no different. I’d like to take some time today to talk about what the convention is like and some of the things I learned.

The Convention moves host churches each year; this year it was far enough away that we (there were a total of 7 from our church) had to stay overnight. It was about a 4 1/2 hour drive each way – our church “district” consists of the entire state. When we arrived, we were just in time for check in, which included picking up name badges, dinner tickets, and event programs, as well as getting the “lay of the land” since we were in a mostly unfamiliar church. Then we headed into the sanctuary for the opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony was a time of worship music and welcome speeches from the district superintendent and district missions president. Then we headed into workshops, which is where a lot of the “real learning” of the convention takes place.

Because I’m the missions president in our local church (a new position for me, and one I’ll try to remember to talk about in the future), I had to use one of my workshop options (there are about 8-10 options, and each person gets to choose 2 to attend) to go to the Presidents’ Meeting. Here, we were told about all the new changes and focuses of the district’s view on missions. In the past, things have pretty all over the place, with most of that focus on fundraising. Now, there are only 5 things they want us to put most of our attention into:

• Prayer
• Actively engaging children and youth in missions
• Connecting with specific missionaries assigned to our church by the district (called Links missionaries)
• Giving to the World Evangelism Fund (a portion of the church’s total income, not a special offering)
• Giving to the Alabaster fund (for building churches and parsonages in areas where they’re needed)

I’m quite excited that the emphasis on money has been lowered a bit. My main frustration with being the trainee missions president over the past year is that we don’t do anything but fundraisers – a different one every month practically. Having new emphases on communicating with active missionaries and figuring out how to get kids and teens involved in missions will be a welcome change.

So that’s my big thing for the moment. 

Blessings,