homeschooling

Homeschool Curriculum Review: Hewitt Homeschooling

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I mentioned in a previous post, the one where I talked about what we’d accomplished in the 2013-14 school year, that I wanted my kids to take the summer “easy” rather than “off” in order to keep their skills sharp. When the option for reviewing items from Hewitt Homeschooling came up, I thought this was just the ticket for the writing portion of our “summer school.” I chose My First Report: Sports (retail price $8.95) for us to work on because both boys enjoy sports (although Seahawk more so than Munchkin). I knew they’d be interested in learning more about a variety of sports and games. After all, knowing the hows, whys, and rules of games will make them more fulfilling to play. The age range for the My First Reports were perfect for both of my kids, too – grades 1-4. Seahawk just finished up 4th grade, but he can use a bit of remedial work in a few subjects (including writing), so I had him use this product, even though he was on the very edge of the age range. Munchkin was right in the middle of the age range, and this was a good product for him. [Read more…]

Homeschool Curriculum Review: Moving Beyond the Page

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Do you love books? Do you love teaching your children about all sorts of subjects using “real” books instead of textbooks? Are unit studies your cup of tea? Then Moving Beyond the Page might be right up your alley! We recently received for review two of their unit studies in the 7-9 age range. The first was the Language Arts Package – The Whipping Boy, which included an online teacher guide and a physical copy of the novel. The second was the Science Package – Sound. This included a physical teacher guide and a life-size model of the human ear.

Let’s dive into the literature package first. I remember having read The Whipping Boy as a child, and I thought my boys would enjoy it. They typically love books set in the middle ages. They love anything to do with “knights in shining armor times,” actually. Had we made this book a read-aloud like we normally do with our school literature, I’m convinced they would have loved this one too. But part of the focus of Moving Beyond the Page is building kids’ reading skills, not just “getting it done,” so I did the program the way it was designed and made the boys do their own reading. They weren’t thrilled with that, but it was good for them.

Because the literature unit was an online guide, I didn’t have an actual book to teach from. But that was okay because the guide was mobile-device friendly, so I was able to use our Kindle Fire and wi-fi to get the job done. The online guide includes everything you need to teach the unit. You get the online teacher manual (this resource is completely online, not a downloadable PDF), a physical copy of the novel, and a 3-month license to print the downloadable student pages, all for $18.92.

The teacher guide has comprehension questions and several different activities to choose from. These range from worksheets to discussion topics to doing research related to what was read and more. Normally I create the boys’ worksheets by hand (no printer at home), but this coincided with my tendinitis, so we ended up getting them printed this time.

Execution of the program was very straightforward each day. The boys would read the book – sometimes together, but usually one would read and then the other. The chapters in The Whipping Boy are very short, so they were assigned three per day. We would go over the questions very briefly (more on that, and why we did them only briefly each day, later) and then do as many of the activities from the guide as worked for us. The boys’ favorite was when they got to design a crest (coat of arms) for each of the main characters. Most of the activities in the literature unit were worksheet-based, so I bought them each a folder (the kind with metal clasps in the middle) to hold all of their papers in. This worked really well for us; it’s a lot more budget-friendly and space-friendly than binders.

Each unit in the Moving Beyond the Page curriculum package concludes with a final project. For The Whipping Boy, this was a monologue. The boys each planned out what they would say and then recited them for Will and me. They were instructed to include all the different kinds of speech patterns they’d learned about during the study in their monologue – idioms, similes, metaphors, and hyperboles.

Remember before when I mentioned that we did the comprehension questions only briefly? That’s because I saved them for the end of the unit study and we played a Jeopardy! style game with them. I split the questions into five categories (Vocabulary, Chapters 1-5, Chapters 6-10, Chapters 11-15, and Chapters 16-20), and chose five questions – or words, in the case of the vocabulary category – for each category. I wrote one question on the lined side of an index card, along with its answer (the kids never saw this part, so having the answer there was just fine). Once the questions were all written out, I mixed them up within their own categories, and then assigned each card a number, 1-5. With the cards all laid out, we played the game just like Jeopardy! except that we did questions and answers instead of answers and questions. At the end of the game, we surprised the winner with the ability to add his points to his “good behavior point chart.” (Seahawk won, 27-25.)

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Along with our Language Arts study of The Whipping Boy, we learned all about Sound and the Human Ear with our science package. The boys absolutely loved this unit! They asked every single day if we could do our sound unit. This package was a little different because we received the physical teacher manual instead of the online version, as well as the required manipulative. The price for the physical unit on Sound is $37.99. The physical teacher guide is pretty much exactly like the online one, but there is one main difference: the student pages are included right in the teacher guide, and the copyright doesn’t allow you to make photocopies for multiple children. This wasn’t really a problem for the unit we selected, though, because almost all of the activities were hands-on. That’s why my kids loved it so much. We did some really cool things in our quest to learn how sound works and how our ears hear and interpret sounds. On the first day, we built a large-scale model of an ear. This one was made from things around the house and didn’t really look like an ear (compared to the actual model we received as a manipulative), but it was very effective in showing how the ear works. (Don’t mind the messy kitchen behind the boys; this was before the big meltdown that resulted in stricter tidying up policies.) ear

The baseball glove represents the outer ear, the toilet paper tube is our ear tube, the cottage cheese container is the eardrum, and the hammer, spoon, and bracelet are the bones deep down inside our ears. We used a marble to represent a sound wave, and the boys watched in fascination as the glove “caught” it and sent it through the tube where it hit the drum and caused the bones of the inner ear to vibrate.

Another day we tested different sounds by tying a spoon to the center of a piece of yarn, and the ends of the yarn to the boys’ fingers. With the spoon hanging free and their fingers in their ears, I tapped the spoon with objects of varying hardness – another spoon, a plastic fork, and the skein of yarn. Then I had Seahawk tap the spoon for me so I could see what it was like. Let me tell you, it was fascinating! The sound was the same, but different, simultaneously.

After we spent several days learning about our ears, we spent a few days learning about different sounds and how things make sounds. Then we learned all about different instruments, which led into the final project: designing an instrument. The boys were pretty basic with their instruments. Munchkin made a drum using an old shoebox and some plastic wrap. Seahawk made a guitar using an old shoebox and some rubber bands (which apparently I didn’t get a picture of…).

drumOverall, I think this was a pretty great curriculum resource. Moving Beyond the Page is designed to be a full homeschool curriculum – they have 12 literature units and six each science and social studies units per age level. Each literature unit corresponds with one science or social studies unit (I chose two that weren’t specifically designed to go together, but it worked well anyway), and they estimate that it should take you roughly 3-4 hours per day to get through it. I found that it didn’t take nearly that long. One and a half to two hours and we were done.

Add a math curriculum (and any “electives” you want your kids to have) and you’re done with the basic education. It can get quite expensive to go that route, though – several hundred dollars for the full year curriculum. That can definitely be a problem for many homeschooling parents; I know it would be a huge deterrent for us. If price isn’t an object for you, I would definitely recommend that you investigate Moving Beyond the Page for your homeschool curriculum. If, however, you can’t afford the full-year package, I would still recommend taking a look at one or two of the individual unit studies to get your feet wet. I’ve listed the prices for the units I received in this review, and there are ways to make it even cheaper – pass on the physical book and get it from your library, for example.

If you make the plunge into getting this curriculum (Moving Beyond the Page has packages for ages 4-14, not just the 7-9 I received, so there’s something for nearly everyone!), the next step is deciding whether you want to get the physical guide or the online version. Both have their pros and cons. The main pro to the physical version is, of course, you don’t have to have a computer or mobile device right with you while you teach. The con is that you can’t make copies of the worksheets for your kids; you have to purchase a second copy of the consumables. The online copy allows you to make copies, but you lose your access after three months. The physical book is yours to keep.

As for which I’d recommend, it’s really a tossup. I don’t feel like there’s a right answer. If the access for the online version didn’t go away, I’d recommend that one. But since it does, that makes the decision a lot harder. You’ll just have to decide which way would work better for you. (And honestly, I’d be a little frustrated as a paying customer to have my access revoked; the price isn’t that much cheaper than the physical version to be so limited, even if it is easy to complete the unit in the time they give you. That’s probably my biggest criticism of the program.)

There are loads of other reviews for this program besides mine. Different members of the Crew got a variety of items for all different age groups. Make sure to click over and check them out!

Have you ever used Moving Beyond the Page? Let me know in the comments!

Blessings,

Wendy

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2013-14 Homeschool Year in Review

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hs year in reviewThis school year was an amazing one for us, and I want to take a few moments to document it here.

As you may (or may not) know, homeschooling is something I always knew we would do with our kids. For the first several years, however, I didn’t know how to do it well. Sure, my kids learned how to read and what a noun was and the basic concepts of mathematics. But they learned all of that stuff in what was probably the driest way possible: from workbooks. During Munchkin’s Kindergarten year, which was Seahawk’s 2nd grade year, they each had 5 workbooks, and we did all five every. single. day. (Don’t even get me started on Seahawk’s early years.) I’d heard all about these homeschool kids who loved school, were ahead of their peers in pretty much every subject, and didn’t “do school” at home. But I didn’t know how to make that happen. So we bought the workbooks for $9.95 apiece. And they got the job done.

But none of us was enjoying the process.

Last summer, leading into this school year, I spent some time online doing research and found a great resource that provided an awesome curriculum outline for homeschooling in the Charlotte Mason method, Ambleside Online. I wrote about it in my Homeschool Prep post last August, and we faithfully used that program until January of this year, and used it off and on from January to June.

In November, I was accepted as a part of Schoolhouse Review Crew, and that has opened up countless opportunities for the boys that we a) wouldn’t know about otherwise and b) might not be able to afford to give them. Since I got that gig, we’ve split our time between Ambleside and doing review products.

Here’s what we accomplished this school year:

  • We read the New Testament in its entirety.
  • We read most of The Burgess Animal Book for Children. (We’ll finish that either this summer or next school year.) We looked at pictures of the animals we learned about on Wikipedia.
  • We read Understood Betsy aloud together.
  • We read 40-something chapters of An Island Story: A History of England for Girls and Boys. To go along with this, Will watched a British history documentary that we got on DVD from the library with the boys (he’s a huge fan of British history).
  • We read kid-friendly versions of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet.
  • The boys read Tree in the Trail by Holling C. Holling.
  • We went on several nature walks.
  • We learned/are learning French with Mango Languages.
  • The boys learned all kinds of things in the “science” world from Science4Us.com including but not limited to: Earth and Space, Physical Science, and Life Science.
  • Seahawk worked on his spelling skills with Spelling You See. He still has a lot of work ahead of him, but he’s getting there.
  • We learned about several different kinds of sea creatures and where some of our produce comes from with Curiosity Quest DVDs.
  • We replaced our math workbooks with a similar-but-different program, CTC Math.
  • Munchkin learned to write in cursive, and just as importantly, to read it.
  • We learned why and how to be good stewards of what God has given us.
  • We read Little House in the Big Woods and did a study on it. We are currently about a third of the way through Farmer Boy.
  • We read Around the World in Eighty Days.
  • The boys mastered their multiplication tables with Learning Wrap-Ups.
  • The boys read The Whipping Boy and did a unit study on it.
  • We did a unit study on Sound.

Whew! We had a productive school year!

Normally we take the summers off, but this year we’re taking it easy instead of off.

  • They’ll keep their writing chops up by doing one report per week on a different sport. Seahawk is starting with basketball (of course!), and Munchkin has chosen badminton.
  • They’re earning prizes for reading through the library’s summer reading program.
  • They’re going to keep their math and language arts skills sharp with Learning Wrap-Ups and Learning Palettes.
  • We will continue our study of French.

For more on any of these topics, head on over to Ambleside Online or to my Reviews page.

Blessings,

Wendy

Essay Contest Winner

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Back in April, the boys both entered an essay writing contest through the local public library. The topic/title of the essay was “What I Liked About {title of book} and What I Would Change About It.”

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Seahawk chose Bone: Volume 6. Munchkin chose Elmer and the Dragon. In addition to the topic of the essay being assigned, there were also word count restrictions, which were assigned based on age/grade. Seahawk, being in 4th grade, had to have between 100 and 200 words. Munchkin, in 2nd grade, was to write between 50 and 100 words. Here are their essays. Munchkin:

I read Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. I liked the part where The Canary King was sick of curiosity. In that part, Elmer got a secret treasure chest. That’s what the King was so curious about. He wondered what was inside it. I really liked it. I also liked the part where Elmer and The Dragon were on Tangerine Island. I would change the ending. I would have ended it with Elmer saying good-bye to the Dragon.

Seahawk:

I read Bone Volume 6: Old Man’s Cave. It is not the best book Jeff Smith has ever written. It was sort of cool though. I liked it because it tells you who The Hooded One is. It is very chaotic. Everyone is deciding who to choose for their team, and meanwhile Phoney Bone is making bad decisions. His decisions are causing the other characters to hate him. I would change the fact that Rock Jaw the huge lion is trying to kill Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone and capture Thorn. Instead of this, I would have Rock Jaw on their team. That way, they could all work together to beat The Lord of the Locusts. Overall, I liked the book – in fact, I love the whole series – but this one little change would have made this volume better in my opinion.

A few days after we submitted their essays, I got a phone call letting us know that Seahawk had won 3rd place in his division! We were very proud of him. The library had a ceremony the first week in April where all of the winners had the opportunity to read their essays. There was also a local published author there who made a presentation, which I found interesting. (Her topic was “where do authors get their ideas?”) On top of bragging rights, he won a gift certificate that was good at any number of stores in town; the only catch was that it all had to be spend at one time, at one store. After a trip to the toy store yielded no satisfactory results, he decided to take his prize to the bead store. In the past year or so, he’s decided that he really likes beading. Unfortunately for him, I don’t really know how, so I can’t teach him beyond a single strand threaded version. But that’s okay – he’s happy with that for now. And as he improves, we’ll get him some library books to learn more. The gift certificate was for $10, which as you might imagine bought a lot of beads! The first thing he made was a bracelet for our neighbor across the street. She’s like a grandmother to the boys, and her birthday was about a week after the essay celebration. bracelet

He has plans to make a bracelet for each of his “real” grandmothers, too (my mom and Will’s stepmom). We’d hoped to have them done for Mother’s Day, but that didn’t happen. Will’s stepmother is recovering from surgery, so perhaps we’ll make hers a “Get Well” present later this week. And my mom has a birthday coming up in August, so that’ll likely be when she gets hers.

Blessings,

Wendy

 

Reading: It’s Not Just for the School Year

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I’ve mentioned before how reading is important to us. In fact, I’d venture to guess it’s important to most families. But how do you keep your kids reading outside of the school year?

Well, sometimes you just have to make them do it.

We give our boys some extra incentive with a little bit of help from the public library. We’ve been regular participants in the annual Summer Reading Program for years – since way before Seahawk could read. Some years we use only the library’s prizes as motivation and some years we add extra stuff. We haven’t decided yet for this year. We’ll probably use just library prizes – there were quite a few good ones included in the sign up packet, which we’ll distribute as the boys reach milestones. These include a trip to the zoo, a dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory (one of our favorite restaurants), and a free ticket to a basketball game of the local NBA team. In addition to these signup bonuses, the library has more prizes that kids can earn for reading 20 minutes or more per day for a certain number of days (this year, the guaranteed prizes are at 20, 50, & 70 days). I think those, along with me telling them that reading daily isn’t optional, should be motivation enough.

Going through the library isn’t the only option for children’s summer reading programs, either. I know that the prize I mentioned above from The Old Spaghetti Factory isn’t just through our local library; they work with several libraries, so find out if yours is one. It’s not too hard for the kids to earn their prize, either. When they’ve finished 5 books, they get a free meal (with the purchase of an adult meal). Pottery Barn has a summer reading program too, but I’m not sure of the details.

So that covers incentive, which is especially important for children who don’t love reading. And honestly, it doesn’t hurt to help motivate kids who do like reading, too.

What about what to read? Well, like prizes, we’ve done different things over the years. When the boys were young, we read to them or picked up audio books from the library. As they grew, we did some of us reading, some of them reading. About 3 years ago, we made the full transition to them reading. We still read to them, but for summer reading to “count,” the reading has to be done by them. (This is our rule, not the library’s.) What do they read? Well, we’re stricter than the library on this, too. We require our children to read chapter books, at least one chapter a day. Fiction or nonfiction doesn’t necessarily matter to us. This year we’ll do a combination of assigned reading and their choice. The library gifted each child who signed up with a book, so those are the first kids’ choice books of the summer. Munchkin chose The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, and Seahawk chose Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen (although, he hasn’t read Hatchet, so he’s working on that, and Brian’s Winter will immediately follow). As soon as they finish those, they’ll have assigned books: The Cay for Seahawk and  The Sign of the Beaver for Munchkin. We’re also reading the Little House series as a family right now.

What does summer reading look like in your home?

Blessings,

Wendy

Lots of other bloggers are exploring the topic of Summer Reading for Elementary Students. Make sure to check them out! (You can do so simply by clicking the banner below, anytime on or after Wednesday, June 11, 2014.)

 

Favorite Curriculum Choices

Homeschool Curriculum Review: Learning Wrap ups

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I have a positively superb product to share with you guys today. In the few weeks we’ve had it, it has become hands down one of our favorite school manipulatives. What is it? Well, it’s more than an “it.” I received for review from Learning Wrap ups all of this great stuff:

These products, which are ideal for children in all elementary grades – Kindergarten through 5th – became high use products in our homeschool, especially the math wrap ups. You see, the boys have been struggling with their facts for a long time. They still counted fingers for adding and subtracting and barely knew the multiplication tables at all (past the 3s, that is). Their inability to master these was weighing heavy on me; I knew that they should have known them by now (at least Seahawk should have, since he’s nearing the end of 4th grade), but worksheets and flashcards just weren’t working, no matter how often we did them. Will had Learning Wrap ups when he was a kid and thought they would be the right answer (pardon the pun) for the boys, but he couldn’t remember what they were called. When our package arrived, he was happy to have these in the house! (And that’s really saying something since we strive for minimalism.)

So, what is a Learning Wrap up, anyway? Put simply, it is a set of 10 “keys,” connected together with an attached string (not attached with the string, but the string is also attached). The child separates the one they’re working on – they don’t come apart, but you rotate one to work with and hold the others together out of the way – and wraps the string around the key. There’s a list of numbers down each side and the math family (+1, x5, etc) in the middle. The goal is to take the numbers on the left (in top-to-bottom order), add, subtract, multiply, or divide by the family they’re working on, and match them to the correct answer on the right. Each key is self-correcting; there is a raised pattern on the back, and if all the answers are correct, the string will cover those lines. The ultimate goal of the Learning Wrap ups is that the student will learn the facts and be able to complete each “key” in 30 seconds or less.

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They come in an incredibly wide variety of topics and problems. The math set that we received includes addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. The Vocabulary set we got includes synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and compound words. In addition to all of these, there are Wrap ups for ESL (English as a Second Language), Geography, Spanish, Music Theory, Science, Advanced Math, and Preschool subjects.

To supplement the Learning Wrap ups, we received the addition and multiplication mastery workbooks. These included such exercises as “rapid writing” and “math family fun pages.” They worked very nicely with Wrap ups. Seahawk used the Multiplication Mastery, and Munchkin used Addition Mastery during the review period. I fully intend to purchase one more copy of each (individually, the workbooks are only $4.99 each and are consumable, so you need to buy one per student) and have them switch for further mastery this summer.

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We haven’t done a whole lot with the Vocabulary Wrap ups yet (at least not formally – they’ve still gotten lots of use!), but as we continue to study various types of words, they will be great tools. They work exactly the same way as their math counterparts, but you’re matching words instead of numbers.

The Learning Palettes are really cool, too. The basic design is that of a painter’s palette, but instead of paints all around the edge, there are spaces for colored discs. You place a question card in the center of the palette, which has 12 problems to solve. Each problem is assigned a colored disc – there are six colors, and each one has a solid disc and one with a hole. There are a variety of answers along the outside of the card, and the task is simple: place the disc from the question into the spot with the correct answer. Like the Wrap ups, the Learning Palette is self-correcting; after the discs are placed, the card is turned over and the answers are revealed. The method is the same regardless of the grade level you’re using.

The highest grade level for the Reading Learning Palette is 3rd, so it was primarily used by Munchkin during our review period; we did get 4th grade math, though, which Seahawk used. The Learning Palette Kits each come with lots of curriculum cards (which are also available separately in both math and reading). The 4th Grade Math kit comes with 6 packs of curriculum cards, and the 3rd Grade Reading comes with 5 packs. Each pack has 12 cards, and each card has 12 questions. For those of you who aren’t so into math, that adds up to (well, multiplies to) 720 questions in the reading category and 864 in math. Talk about a lot of information!

Let’s talk pros and cons.

The pros are clear and strong. First of all, the programs are fun for kids. Way more fun than flash cards. And when kids are having fun, they learn more. My boys absolutely loved the Wrap ups, and guess what? They’ve very nearly got their multiplication tables memorized, and they only rarely have to use their fingers for adding anymore. That makes me one happy mama! It’s taken us a bit longer than the 10 Days advertised, but you know what? I don’t mind. At least we’re finally making progress, which is way more than I could say two months ago. They really enjoy the Learning Palettes, too. They don’t like them quite as well as the Wrap ups, but I think that’s just because they’re bigger and more cumbersome than the hand-held Wrap up.

The main con with this program is that things are never mixed up; the Wrap up is the same every time. I don’t think that hurts the kids’ ability to master the facts in the short term, though. I’m confident that my boys were learning the facts, not the string pattern. Seeing the facts in a different order than they were on the Wrap up did slow them down a little bit, but not too much. And this is where the combination of the Wrap up and the Mastery workbook are necessary. The workbook (almost) completely counteracts the con of the sameness of the Wrap up.

While the two products (Wrap ups and Palettes) are quite different, the pros and cons are the same for both. The Palettes are super fun – even Small Fry loved playing with them! (They kept him occupied quite nicely while we were working on other lessons.) The questions don’t change, but there are enough of them that it probably doesn’t matter. By the time your child has worked all the way through the cards, the “old” ones will feel fresh again.

Would I recommend this product? In a heartbeat. In fact, I’ve already done so several times. I also plan to buy some of the lower level Wrap ups for my nieces and nephews as they start hitting their “school age” birthdays this year and next – that’s how much I believe in this product. It worked wonders in my boys, and I’m telling anyone who will listen about them!

Blessings,

Wendy

While not a part of my review, there is an online version of the Learning Palette, too. Make sure to click the banner below for other crew reviews about that aspect of the product.

Connect with Learning Wrap ups on Facebook and Twitter.

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Homeschool Curriculum Review: Progeny Press

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We love books in my house. (Well, most of us do; Seahawk might be the exception.) We especially love reading books together, and if we can make it a school lesson, all the better. When the option for a review of a Progeny Press study guide was offered, I was super excited. When I found out one of the options for my kids’ age range was Little House in the Big Woods, I was even more excited. Will had read this book to the boys a couple of years ago, but I had never read it. Ever. As a child or as an adult. Can you believe that? Me neither. So I expressed high interest in getting my hands on this guide.

What is Progeny Press? I’m glad you asked! The short answer is that they are a company that provides “study guides for literature, from a Christian perspective” (quoted from their website). They have study guides for over 100 books available on their website, ranging from classics like Little House in the Big Woods and Charlotte’s Web to current popular novels like The Hunger Games.The guides cover a wide age range, starting in lower elementary (grades K-3) and going all the way up through high school guides (grades 9-12). Because of the age of my kids, I obviously chose one in the “Upper Elementary” range – grades 3-5.

Their prices are quite reasonable – most of the guides are between $11.99 and $21.99. Little House in the Big Woods, the one I am reviewing today, costs $16.99. What you get for that price is a digital download, available immediately. You have two choices of what to do with your download. You can print it off and bind it, which is what I did, or you can have your student(s) type right into the PDF. That’s right – it’s fully interactive! (This option is available for many of the guides, but not all of them.) For older students or families who aren’t worried about their kids’ computer time, this would be a wonderful option to save the cost of printing. I went ahead and printed ours for two reasons: first, because we want our kids to limit their screen time, and second because I was having both boys work on it. Printing multiple copies is allowed within a single family, so this was the perfect solution for us. After printing, I used comb-binding to hold them together (this was done for free at my church) into “official” workbooks. For an extra dollar, you can have a pre-printed workbook instead of the digital download that you print yourself. For the same price as the interactive PDF, you can get a CD with the study guide on it mailed to you for printing on your own. The benefit to the PDF or CD is, of course, that you can use it with multiple students within the same home. A pre-printed workbook would require one per student.

Progeny Press study guides take between 4-10 weeks to complete, depending on the complexity of the book. It took us about six weeks to work through our study. They recommend that you have your student read the book in its entirety during the first week of the literature unit and then work through the study guide for the remainder of the weeks until it’s done. We didn’t do this. We chose to do the book as a read-aloud (remember when I said I hadn’t read it before?), and I knew that it would work better with my kids if we did the questions and activities as we read instead of bulking up on one and then the other. The study guide is split up into two-chapter chunks, except the very last section which covers the final three chapters of the memoir. So we would read one chapter a day (occasionally two, if the boys were “feeling” it and my voice wasn’t too tired) and then spend three or four days working through the questions, vocabulary words, and activities in the guide.

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A sampling of one of the questions pages.

I really liked the questions they asked because they pushed the kids to not only be able to regurgitate what they’d heard, but also to think through why certain things happened in the book the way they did. Additionally, there were Bible tie-in questions included in each section, hence the “from a Christian perspective” tagline that Progeny boasts. After the questions that deal strictly with the text, there’s a Bible verse or two (printed right in the study guide) and questions about how the kids think that section of Scripture applies to the chapters read. For example, in the chapter that shows us Laura being jealous of Mary’s golden curls, the study guide reminds us of 1 Peter 3:3-4 (Your beauty should not come from outward adornment…) and 1 Samuel 16:7 (The Lord does not look at things man looks at…). Then students are asked to ponder what beauty is.

So, you read a book and answer a bunch of questions. That’s it, right?

Nope!

Progeny Press study guides also offer several activity options to go along with each section. Our favorite thing to do with our study guide went along with the chapter that describes Pa whittling a shelf out of wood for Ma. The boys got to try their hand at whittling! Instead of wood and a sharp knife, they used soap and a butter knife. They absolutely loved this activity!

progeny whittling

Soap whittling

Their grandfather (Will’s dad) is big into whittling, and they’ve seen him do it loads of times, so they were pumped to try it themselves, especially Seahawk. In the end, Seahawk made a boat and Munchkin made a car.

progeny 2

Seahawk and his soap-whittled boat

Other activities that corresponded with the book included going sledding (we never get enough snow for that, and besides, it’s spring!), making butter (ours never got firm enough to “wash”), watching a video about cheese making and honey collecting (thank goodness for YouTube!), and making Johnny cake (still on our to-do list).

The long and the short of it is this: this study guide was absolutely amazing. If the others are as good as this one – and I have no reason to doubt that they are – they are definitely worth getting, especially if you try to run a literature-rich homeschool like I do. My recommendation would be to get either the PDF download or the CD over the printed workbook, though, especially if you have kids in varying age ranges. This way, one purchase covers you for all your kids; you can keep the files and print new ones as younger kids “grow into” the books. Oh, and one other thing you need to be aware of: these guides do not come with the literature. You have to provide that yourself. But most of the titles are easily found in a well-stocked public library.

Now, what are you still doing here? Head on over to Progeny Press and find yourself a study guide to do with your kids!

Blessings,

Wendy

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Prices quoted in this post are current as of Monday, June 2, 2014

Homeschool Curriculum Review: What on Earth Can I Do?

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apologia kids

A few weeks ago, the boys and I finished reading the New Testament and were slated to dive into the Old Testament when I was offered for review What on Earth Can I Do? from Apologia Educational Ministries. Because of this offer, we’ve been working on this instead of strictly reading the Bible; the program allows us to use and think of the Bible in “real life” ways, which has been really helpful.

As part of this curriculum, I received four books: the What on Earth Can I Do? hardcover textbook ($39); the What on Earth Can I Do? Notebooking Journal ($24); the What on Earth Can I Do? Junior Notebooking Journal ($24); and the What on Earth Can I Do? Coloring Book ($8). (Everything but the textbook is softcover.) What on Earth Can I Do? is the fourth part of Apologia’s biblical worldview training program “What We Believe.” We haven’t done the first three parts, but that wasn’t a problem; they don’t build on each other. What on Earth Can I Do? focuses on having a biblical worldview of stewardship and is geared toward kids in elementary school – roughly grades 1-6.

apologia books

The Bible is a very important book to our family, but it’s one that I struggle to teach. Reading and teaching are two very different things, and the latter is difficult. Because of that, and the fact that we’d just finished the New Testament (as I mentioned earlier), the timing of this program was perfect for us. I love it when that happens! And having this be “open and go” curriculum was frosting on the cake.

Use of this product is really easy. There are 8 lessons, and each is designed to take about two weeks with three lessons per week (we went a little slower and used it 4-5 days per week, but still finished each lesson in a two-week span). There’s a suggested schedule in the front of the two Notebooking Journals, which we followed loosely. Each session starts with some sort of read-aloud. Some days it’s pretty short – a couple of pages of introduction to the lesson. Other days it’s quite long – 10-12 pages of story (some fictional, some retellings of Jesus’ parables) that demonstrates the heart of the lesson. The long days didn’t feel long, though, thanks to the great writing of John Hay and David Webb. I found this to be a good time for some read-aloud time with the boys, but you could easily have older children do the reading on their own, so long as you’ve also read the material so you can discuss it with them. Discussion is very important to this curriculum.

Once the reading and subsequent discussion is done, there are activities in the Journals for the kids. These range from coloring pages to note-taking pages to crosswords and more. Because we were blessed with both the regular Journal and the Junior version, Seahawk and Munchkin each got their own. Seahawk got the regular one since he’s older. This one has a lot of required writing. There are questions for both comprehension and critical thinking for both of the longer stories of the lesson (the fiction and the parable). There are complex crossword puzzles and word searches. And there are lots and lots of blank pages for taking notes. You may recall from an earlier review I wrote that Seahawk isn’t a strong speller (and dislikes writing because of that – we’re still working on him), so I did a lot of the writing for him. But rest assured, all of the answers were his!

The Junior Notebooking Journal is very similar to the regular one, but everything is easier. There are coloring pages instead of questions (but the questions are also in the text book, so if you have only younger kids, you won’t miss out on the discussion possibilities by using only the Junior Notebooking Journal). The crosswords and word searches are only a fraction the difficulty. The mini-book activity is the same in both. Because Munchkin’s Journal had coloring pages already, Seahawk was the main beneficiary of the Coloring Book, although both Small Fry and Munchkin helped him on occasion, as you can see from my photo at the beginning of the post.

The  lessons we’ve finished so far have followed the fictional Edwards family, who live in England during World War II. I like this because we get some “recent” history in with our Bible lesson. This series of stories has opened up quite a bit of discussion about that time in history. Each lesson also includes several one-page articles about relevant people and places. We’ve had mini-lessons on Maria von Trapp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lou Gehrig, and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, to name just a few.

But our favorite part of every lesson is the retelling of Jesus’ parables. These are much longer than their biblical counterparts, offering a few made-up details that don’t appear in Scripture (primarily giving names the characters). They are so well done, though. I look forward to reading those each time. Part of the discussion/written questions (depending on how you choose to do them) includes having you go back to the Bible and read the real parable that the story was based on and doing a compare/contrast. I loved that. It’s fabulous that they don’t just give you “their version” of a piece of the Bible without making sure you go back to the source. It’s clear that the folks at Apologia are “Bible first” kind of people.

I can say without a doubt that I recommend this series. The books are very well put together, both in content and workmanship. The activities go well with the lessons, and the lessons are a good length (we spent between 30 and 60 minutes per session). If you’re looking for a great way to implement the Bible in your homeschool, this is definitely something worth taking a look at. Still not sure? You can access the first lesson in its entirety (two weeks worth of curriculum!) for free on the Apologia website. You do this by clicking “What on Earth Sample” from the page I just linked to. It’s available as a PDF download. Additionally, you connect with the Apologia people on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Pinterest.

Blessings,

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Simplicity: In the Homeschool

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simplicity

 

Homeschooling our children is very important to us. It’s something we knew we wanted to do from the time I found out I was pregnant with Seahawk. We never considered any other option, and now that we’re ten years (almost eleven!) into parenthood and five years into homeschooling, I’m so glad we made this choice. I wrote on the “School at Home” page of our 2013 family yearbook that teaching our children at home is one of my greatest joys as a mother, and I truly mean that. Of course there are days when I wonder what it would be like if the older two were off at school for 8 hours a day. Then I come to my senses and remember why I wanted to be a mom! (Hint: It wasn’t so I could ship them off somewhere the minute they turned five so I wouldn’t have to “deal” with them until they were 18.)

So, how do we balance living simply with homeschooling? There are so many different styles of homeschooling out there – almost as many styles as there are homeschooling parents – and it’s all just a matter of finding a balance. I’m going to go over the way I teach today. This is not a tell-all, do-it-this-way-or-you’re-awful kind of post. This is just what works for us, and if you can take some or all of what I say to make your homeschool day easier or better for you, then that’s awesome. If not, that’s awesome too. But enjoy a little glimpse into our day.

We wake up between 8 and 8:30 each morning. I prefer to be the first one up so I can have a little bit of quiet time before the day starts. That doesn’t always happen though. I’m working on getting the kids into a routine that involves them getting dressed, making their beds, and reading a chapter from their Bible before they come out for breakfast, but that’s still a work in progress. We eat breakfast around 9 (typically just cereal or toast, but sometimes biscuits or pancakes). On the days he’s working from home, Will takes Small Fry out in the mornings so the older kids and I can do school more easily and efficiently. (He works in the afternoons on those days.) Ideally, by 9:30 we’ve started our school day.

I’m a visual person, so I need my kids to “do” something for school, not just read a bunch of books and call it a day. I do know that they can learn so much from reading different books – and we run a very literature heavy school – but it still gives me an odd peace of mind when they do paperwork or projects. We’re somewhere between “school at home” and “natural learning.” The first thing we do is bring out the schoolbooks. After reading a blog post last year on homeschool organization by Jamie at The Unlikely Homeschool, I totally took her idea and bought magazine racks – one for each kid. These have been worth their weight in gold for the simplicity it’s brought not only to our school day, but also to the bookshelf in my sewing room where I keep all the school stuff.

schoolbooks

 

Everything we need for a given day (except for the read-aloud books and pencils) is in those racks. Right now, our main focuses are:

  • Spelling – Spelling You See
  • Bible – Apologia’s What on Earth Can I Do?
  • Literature – Little House in the Big Woods study by Progeny Press
  • Cursive Handwriting – This is different for each kid. Munchkin just finished up Logic of English’s Rhythm of Handwriting, so he’s been writing a letter to someone each day; so far this week he’s written to his pen pal in Utah and his great-grandmother in Southern California. Seahawk is working through Patriotic Penmanship, a practice workbook that we received for another review. He likes it because the lessons are very short.
  • Math – Learning Wrap-Ups

We’ve been working our way through An Island Story: A History of England for Girls and Boys and The Burgess Animal Book for Children this year, too, but we’ve got so much other stuff going at the moment that we’re taking a break from those for a while.

On a normal day, we manage to finish all but one of our subjects before lunch – which one varies from day to day. I don’t let the kids choose what they learn per se, because they’re still young enough that there are tons of things that are non-negotiable (times tables and proper spelling, for instance). To help them feel like they still have some control over their own education, then, I let them help decide what order we do the subjects in.

At the end of the school day, all the books get put back in their magazine racks and the racks put away on the shelf until the next day. And that’s how we keep things simple – and organized! – in our homeschool.

What’s your favorite homeschool organizational trick?

Blessings,

Wendy

Homeschool Curriculum Review: Logic of English Rhythm of Handwriting

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Rhythm of Handwriting 2

 

Cursive handwriting is something I learned in the third grade. As a parent who didn’t really know anything about homeschooling or what it should look like, I assumed that that was when kids were mentally and physically able to handle the task of writing in cursive. So color me surprised when I was assigned the Rhythm of Handwriting Cursive – Complete Set by Logic of English to review. The folks over there recommend teaching kids cursive before teaching them manuscript. There are several reasons for this, most of which are based around the idea that “it’s just easier.” (For example, all the lowercase letters begin at the same place and spacing within and between words is more easily controlled.) The one that stuck with me the most, though – and the one that made me wish we’d had this program for Seahawk two years ago – was that when writing in cursive, it’s hard to mix up the B and the D. Think about it: what does a cursive lowercase B look like? Nothing like a lowercase D, unlike their manuscript counterparts.

But Seahawk did learn cursive as a third-grader, and he (rarely) mixes up his Bs and Ds anymore. So we used this program with Munchkin, who has been desperately begging me to teach him cursive for about a year. He was positively thrilled when the package arrived, and even now that it’s been several weeks, still loves his cursive handwriting lessons.

The complete set includes everything you need to get started teaching your child (recommended age for Rhythm of Handwriting is 4 to adult) cursive handwriting. You get a softcover workbook ($15), a white board for practicing ($12), cursive tactile cards which are like flash cards, but the letters on the front are a sandpaper-like texture for the child to feel how the letter goes ($28), and a cursive handwriting chart which details each letter along with the steps for forming that letter ($10). You can purchase the items separately at the prices listed above or as a complete set for $65. The only things you need to provide are a dry erase marker, a pencil, and a student.

rhythm of handwriting items

Inside the workbook are several suggested schedules for teaching the letters. It all depends on the age and enthusiasm of your student. Because Munchkin is a solid reader and writer, we moved pretty quickly through the workbook; he learned 4 new letters a day on the “learning” days and moved even faster through on the “review/word” days.

We started the program using it exactly as prescribed. This involved going over the letter names and sounds on the flash cards, having him trace the texture of the letter on the card with his finger, having me describe exactly how to form the letters to him, and then finally having him write the letters in the workbook.

He quickly grew tired of this.

He’s the strongest reader of the two boys, so he already knew the letter sounds; that made that portion of the lesson unnecessary. The workbook includes large versions of the letters that he traced with his finger when he felt it was necessary to “figure it out,” so we didn’t end up using the cards all that often – the book alone was enough. The same was true for the white board. He was competent enough to just dive right into the workbook, using a pencil. I’m not saying this to diminish the necessity/quality of those products – they’re fabulous. They just weren’t necessary in our situation. For a younger child, or one who isn’t a super strong reader/writer, they would be invaluable assets.

I think this program was great. It was easy to teach, and I felt like it was easy for Munchkin to learn the letters. And he’s so excited to be able to read and write in cursive now.

His thoughts?

I really like it. My favorite part was learning the capital letters because they’re more complicated. I liked the challenge. Learning to combine letters into words was exciting too. It’s awesome because you can clearly read cursive when you learn to write it.

Logic of English has loads of other products, too – not just the handwriting program we used. Make sure to click the banner at the end of this post to read reviews of all the different products Crew members were blessed with! Additionally, you can find them on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Twitter.

Blessings,

Wendy

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