fun

Notgrass Company: America The Beautiful {Crew Review}

August 14, 2013 by Dana

Last year, as I was planning for school, I added American History to our list of subjects I wanted to teach next year. Over the past year, I’ve searched for books and curriculum to create our own study on this subject. I was lucky in my finds but I was even luckier when this review appeared on our vendor list for the Schoolhouse Crew. Notgrass Company’s America the Beautiful curriculum set was just the type of core program I had been looking for.

America the Beautiful is a year long course on American History. It doesn’t only cover history though. It is also a literature curriculum and geography course in one. Designed for children in 5th-8th grade, this program is designed to provide your child with a full year of lessons that cover various important events throughout America’s history.

Parents can choose to complete this course in one year or expand it to two years if they prefer. Lessons are designed to be completed one per day, five per week or they can be spread to two or three lessons a week as preferred. Lessons take approximately 45-90 minutes. Extra time is required for crafts and other activities. The program is also adaptable to fit your child’s or family’s interests and daily activities can be adjusted to accommodate those interests.

America the Beautiful is a beautifully created curriculum. There is no teacher’s guide, as the program’s directions are provided throughout each of the main texts. This is an added bonus for children who are independent learners so they can follow the program with little parental guidance if capable. Parents, too, can follow along easily without having to flip back and forth to a guide to keep up.

America The Beautiful curriculum package consists of the following:

America the Beautiful, Part 1: America from 1000 to 1877
America the Beautiful, Part 2: America From the Late 1800’s to the Present
We the People: Words from the Makers of American History
America the Beautiful: Student Workbook
America the Beautiful: Lesson Review
Maps of America the Beautiful
Timeline of America the Beautiful
America the Beautiful: Answer Key

Each of the books in this curriculum are beautifully crafted. The first three texts are hardback books, with bright glossy covers that draw the users attention to them immediately. The rich text are filled with gorgeous images of the time period. The accessory books are all paperback with the Lesson Review and Student Workbook having spiral binding to allow them to lie flat for lesson completion.

An additional literature package is available to expand this program to it’s full capability. We did not receive this as part of our review and I did not incorporate this part of the lesson plan at the time of completion of this review. We will be adding it into our future lessons to make this a complete program for our home studies in the future.

The thing I absolutely love most about this curriculum is that it relates everything to God, from the creation of the land to the settling of America on through to today’s times. The curriculum helps bring to life, God’s plan and creation within America. This is a beauty that is often missed in secular history programs.

Something I found tremendously easy to incorporate with this program is science. As we learned about various animals and places in America’s history, it was easy to expand upon our lessons, learning more about the animals and areas themselves. Especially in early lessons, where many of the animals discussed are local to our own backyard, such as the American Alligator which we have seen on various boating and hunting excursions – and yes, we actually do have one living way back in the back of our own backyard. Bottle-nosed dolphins can be seen off coast of our shoreline and Green Sea Turtles come up our coast to lay eggs each year.

Black bear make our hunting club their home and recently part of our hunting club was donated to make a wildlife preserve for the bear to live safely for generations to come. A recent field trip provided a great expedition to see Bison up close. I never realized they roamed our Southern Coastal lands at one time! All these beautiful animals right here where our home is!

We learned a great deal about our American Indian heritage through this curriculum as well. The different tribes and the differences in tribes. This was especially interesting to us, since Winston and Emmalee both have an extensive American Indian heritage on both their biological father’s and my own side of the family. The Susquehanna, Cherokee and Lumbee are ancestors to their bloodline. This curriculum is rich in American Indian history and that was something we greatly appreciate.

We look forward to covering more history using American the Beautiful, particularly learning more about America’s 1st settlements, including our own Charleston, South Carolina. The many battles of the Revolutionary War were fought right around our home of Georgetown, South Carolina so it will be interesting to see where our future lessons will take us on our journey to learn more outside the pages of the text book.

We have been excitedly marking our way through our America the Beautiful timeline, and mapping our path with our Maps of America the Beautiful historical atlas. The kids have really enjoyed working together to complete the activities within the Student Workbook. We have also enjoyed the extra stories and read-alouds from our We the People text. Many of these stories we have never heard before.

The Lesson Review book is probably the least used of everything we have received, along with America the Beautiful Part 2 text but that’s because we haven’t reached that book yet! I have used the Lesson Review to ask questions in an effort to ensure the kids are learning as we read. We, however, are not generally strict to structured learning so we do not normally utilize lesson reviews for homeschooling materials. I simply ask questions as we go along and the kids answer appropriately to allow me to gauge their level of learning from the curriculum itself. Still it’s nice to have a Lesson Review to guide me and provide the necessary questions to ensure they are indeed learning.

I can honestly say this curriculum is one that everyone has loved. Laycie has followed along with us as we have read through lessons. At age 5, she does become bored before we get through the bulk of the lesson. Winston and Emmalee have followed along very well and it’s captured their attention at times. They have enjoyed learning more about the animals and about their heritage thanks to America the Beautiful. They look forward to future lessons that lead to hands-on field trips for us soon.

America the Beautiful, the curriculum package is available for purchase from Notgrass Company for $99.95. It is written for children ages 10-14. This package includes student texts, maps, timeline and the answer key. At additional cost, you can purchase the America the Beautiful Student Workbook for grades 5-6 for $11.95 or the America the Beautiful Lesson Review for grades 7-8 for $9.95.

To read more reviews of this and other curriculum from Notgrass Company, click the banner below!

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Gryphon House: The Homegrown Preschool {Crew Review}

August 2, 2013 by Dana

Gryphon House Publishers graciously offered the Schoolhouse Review crew their choice of two products for this review: Global Art and The Homegrown Preschooler. I must say I was extremely torn over which I would chose. Art is a HUGE deal in our house but so is preschool learning for my younger two.

Weighing my choices, I chose to review The Homegrown Preschooler: Teaching Your Kids in the Places They Live, which actually went very well with my last review, Circle Time by Kendra Fletcher {Read that review here!}. The books complemented each other well for our lessons but enough about that.

The Homegrown Preschooler was a great reminder of many of the concepts I have previously used in our homeschooling. It gives a great explanation of using play and hands-on activities for active lessons with younger children. The Homegrown Preschooler gives examples throughout the book of activities, ideas and games that can be used with children of any age to develop their learning and life skills.

This 204 page book is packed with beautiful images of children engaging in various activities. This fully-colored guide for “Teaching You Kids in the Places They Live”, is jam-packed full with activities dealing with math, science, reading, and much more. It includes great meal planning recipes for kids along with great recipes for play dough and other useful preschool tools.

The Homegrown Preschooler guides you in turning your home into an environment in which your children can learn. This book teaches the parent how to use the things that are available to them to bring learning home, and how to create a safe and educational place for the learning to be done in. Preschool is about play and fun and all the things that children love to do!

Inspirational stories can be found throughout this book from the authors and others who have been there done that. Fingerplays, songs and other fun activities are shared for you to utilize in your own preschool environment. There’s also a great section of printables and design instructions in the back of the book for your personal use.

The Homegrown Preschooler is written for parents of preschoolers between the ages of one and five. I chose to read and use this book with my five year old, who is a bit old for some of the activities. We were able to use much of the books suggestions though since Laycie is slightly delayed in learning due to her Epilepsy.

After reading this book, I decided making my own play dough doesn’t sound too bad. I also started using more hands-on elements with Laycie, creating a few sensory bins using toys, rice and other things we have around our house. Some of these sensory play times have also made it into our bath where Laycie enjoys making a mess and then washing it up, teaching her the skills of homekeeping as she works.

Many of the suggestions in the book, are things we have been doing a long time. We work together and have Circle Times and field trips that allow our family to bond and socialize. We clean together too, learning skills from one another as we work. Sometimes I even let each child teach another the skills they are good at.

The Homegrown Preschooler is a great book for any parent with a young child. I know I will be pulling it out in the future as Jackson grows and I am in need of a reminder for activities to do with him. This book will be beneficial for years to come as it teaches you skills and techniques that can really be used throughout the child’s younger years.

The Homegrown Preschooler is available from Gyphon House for $29.95 plus shipping. For more reviews of The Homegrown Preschooler, please click the banner below!

Picaboo Yearbooks {Crew Review}

July 24, 2013 by Dana

Are you looking for something great to commemorate the end of your school year? Would you like to be able to highlight each student, field trips, great memories from your year all in one place? Then Picaboo Yearbooks may be just what you are looking for.

Picaboo Yearbooks asked the Schoolhouse Review crew to create our own personal yearbooks for our homeschools using their wonderful softcover 20 page yearbook. These 8.5 x 11 yearbooks can be designed in any way you chose. You can add in photos throughout and captions or text to go along with it.

Picaboo Yearbooks can be created for an entire school, a co-op, a sports or other team, or just an individual homeschool family. The options are endless. Color schemes and pre-designed photo pages make the creation process even easier but creating your own idea is just as simple.

For this review, I chose not to create a “yearbook” but instead chose to create a family-book for our family’s life together, since we are a blended family. I thought the uniqueness of our family called for a unique album to share about each member of our special family. With seven children, it did not take long to fill up the pages.

Each page of our family-book yearbook is unique to our family, from the cover to the last page. I chose a photo of the Angel Oak as our cover because it is a place we have recently visited together. The branches of the tree wrap beautifully around our cover making it memorable and drawing attention to our book even while on the shelf.

Our book begins with an introduction to our home. We call the property we live on The Hill and it has been in our family for decades, passed through generations of ancestors. Featured in this section are our large pond and important elements of the logging history of our family. These elements are extremely special to us.

Featured on the next two pages is an introduction to our family. Here I discussed how we are blended and introduced some of our favorite things. These pages are filled with photos of our family together.

The next eleven pages feature each member of our family from Mom and Dad to the kids, Grandma and even our pets. Every family member got their own page, uniquely created with elements of things that interest and are unique to them. For instance, my step-daughter, Debi’s page has a background of turtles swimming since turtles are her favorite animal. Her page also features a sand turtle that she created on a trip to the park a little over a year ago.

To finish out the book, there are six more pages sharing images and important events from within our family. I designed each page from scratch except for using pre-designed photo inserts provided by the Picaboo company in the design process. Every single page is unique and different within the book.

Through the Picaboo Yearbook designer I was able to add in colored backgrounds to represent my children’s favorite colors or choose a background in prints like cow print for my youngest daughter. I was also easily able to add in my own personal images for each child on each of their pages. I simply uploaded the photos and put them into place.

It was also very easy to move around the photo inserts and reposition or size photo boxes to fit my needs. Some pre-designed elements needed to be tweaked to better fit my images. By selecting the corners and dragging or pulling, I was able to make them work best for me.

Text was very easy to insert into each page too. The pre-designed pages came pre-equipped with areas to include any writing that I may have needed. I found myself deleted many pre-included text boxes and adding in others where I felt the text fit my pages best. There were tons of fonts to choose from. I was able to change font colors too but I chose to keep my lettering all the same color to bring together the books design.

I did edit all of my text boxes to have a see-through background in a complementary color for the page it was included on. This was done simply by choosing a color using a digital dropper to select a color I liked from the page. I then adjusted the opacity of the box background to make it blend into the page while making the writing stand out.

It took me two days to fully create my family-book yearbook. One day was spent choosing my pages topics, adding backgrounds and selecting pre-designed photo pages. The second day I spent adding in loads of photos, tweaking pages to fit each family member and adding in text.

It literally took me around 20 hours over a two day period from beginning to end to create this original yearbook for our family. It was well worth the work as contained within the twenty pages of this book are memories that will stick with our family for life, unique and special only to us.

The cover of our family-book is soft. It’s made of a sturdy cardboard and I chose glossy print for the image. The inside pages are made to be sturdy too. The texture is hard to rip but the images are clear.

Many hands have touched our family-book yearbook since it arrived leaving goo and prints on it already. These have easily been wiped clean using a mildly damp cloth without causing damage in the process. Needless to say our family book is well-loved.

You can order a Picaboo Yearbook to fit your family or even your co-op through picabooyearbooks.com! The softcover 20 page 8.5 x 11 yearbook that I received costs $8.95 plus shipping. You can add extra pages for a small fee. It is possible to include as many images as you’d like too. My book contains close to 100 personal images of our family.

To learn more or order your own Picaboo Yearbook, visit picabooyearbooks.com!

Summer Time Ways to Keep Your Cool {Thoughts From Me}

June 24, 2013 by Dana

It’s Summer time in the South and that means it’s HOT. Temps go up into the 100’s down here and the humidity makes it feel much hotter! So in order to beat the heat, we must find ways to keep cool in the Summer heat.

Some ways we like to keep cool in the South are:

1. Water sprinkler fun! Just hook a hose to a water sprinkler or create your own so that the water keeps you cool in that Summer Sun.

2. Take a swim in a river, lake or pond. Only with adult supervision, of course. For swimmers that are still learning to swim well, be sure to use a life vest for safety!

3. Popsicles are a great way to keep cool in the summertime. Make your own by freezer juice, Kool-Aid, pudding, yogurt or another drink of choice in an ice cube tray or a small cup for a cool treat.

4. Water balloon toss. Fill them up and toss them to see whose pops first! It’s a guaranteed way to keep cool while having fun.

5. Drink lots and lots of water. This one is the most important. No matter how you choose to keep cool in the Summer heat, always drink plenty of fresh water. Room temperature water hydrates your body faster, allowing you to cool down without causing that brain freeze headache that comes from drinking ice cold water when you’re hot. Stay hydrated and safe through the summer by drinking lots of water while playing, working and living in the Summer months.

Now that I’ve shared these five ways to keep cool, tell me how you and your family beat the Summer heat?

Facing Atlantic Fears {Thoughts From Me}

May 28, 2013 by Dana

Yesterday, I did something I swore I never would that I found totally amazing, yet I will never ever do again. That’s right, y’all – friends talked me into going on a boat into the great Atlantic Ocean. And it was the most beautiful thing, yet it was the most terrifying experience I’ve had in a long time.

For me, it was akin to giving birth. I received the greatest gift in giving birth – my children. Yet because I had multiple c-sections, it was a terrifying experience even though I knew God was with me all along.

I don’t swim y’all. I can’t even doggie paddle. And floating – that’s a no go too! So for me, being out there in that tiny boat surrounded only by sunshine, water and fish was really scary beyond belief.

I’m proud to say I completely survived. I conquered a fear that day too. And it was nothing like I thought it would be.

The Atlantic Ocean is absolutely gorgeous. I can only imagine that all Oceans are but I’ve only seen this one. I saw my first Sand Shark up close and personal. It was beautiful. White with leathery, grey skin and tiny, sharp teeth.

We were 40 miles out in the ocean for a good part of the day. While the other’s fished, I just hung out around the boat praying it wouldn’t turn over with me in it. They caught lots of beautiful fish: Blue fish, Sea Bass, Sea Brim and three Sand Sharks. I’ve never seen such beautiful fish as they all were and certainly never that close up.

We were out on the water for 12 hours and 2 minutes. It’s a day I will never forget and one I will never experience again. It’s something I will forever tell my children and grandchildren about.

The best part of the day was watching the sun set over the Myrtle Beach coastline. I’ve always wanted to see the sun set on the coast and God surely made that happen for me. Something I thought would never happen came true. God’s simplest beauties shown to me from a completely different angle than I ever expected to experience.

It was something I never expected to do and it happened rather suddenly. It’s something I will choose to never do again but I can promise I will always remember the joyful experience over the fear of my day.

TouchMath {Crew Review}

March 18, 2013 by Dana

Laycie is turning 5 next month and with her impending birth date, comes the realization that it’s also time to start a more structured version of homeschooling with her. As I was researching curriculum ideas, the opportunity to review TouchMath came. Needless to say, I was estatic to be offered the TouchMath Pre-K Homeschool program for product review.

TouchMath is a multisensory mathematics program developed to be used with children in grades Pre-K through 3rd. The TouchMath program uses TouchPoints to teach children important counting skills, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and more. This innovative math program allows children to touch, count and repeat which reinforces the math problem with audio repetition to better establish fact mastery.

Since this program puts all of Laycie’s senses to work, I immediately knew it would be the perfect curriculum to use with her! We began with the TouchMath Pre-K Homeschool program which covers counting, number sense, comparing, classifying, sorting, graphing, patterning, identifying and so very much more. Since we were given this product as a review, we were gifted several of the basic manipulatives to use along with our TouchMath Pre-K lessons. Laycie absolutely LOVED the manipulatives and I must admit that I do too!

Our absolute favorite of the manipulatives has been the 3-D Numerals. These solid plastic pieces are vibrant in color and sturdy for even the most active child to handle. They have the signature touch points on them to be used specifically with the TouchMath program. But even better, they are in the shapes of the actual numerals which allows the child to see and feel the number shape, better allowing them to absorb and learn each specific numeral.

Another favorite manipulative for us was the Texture cards. Being able to touch the numbers and touch points with various textures helps Laycie to learn the numbers through sensory. She loved the cute character drawings on many of the cards. This manipulative really brought learning to life for her and coincided so well with the actual printed lessons from the Homeschool program.

The bulk and best part of the TouchMath Pre-K Homeschooling program is the actual curriculum itself though. As great as the extra manipulatives are, they work best with the program itself, allowing the student to get the maximum sensory learning experience. For purpose of this review, we received the full Pre-K unit download of the TouchMath program.

As I mentioned above, the TouchMath program is designed to teach counting numerals through touch. Numerals one through five have single TouchPoints meaning each point is touched once while counting, and numerals six through nine have double TouchPoints meaning each point is touched twice while counting. As students learn the numbers they also learn the number value by counting the TouchPoints.

The TouchMath Pre-K lessons are broken into 6 lesson modules containing around 15 workmats to be completed in while using each module. Each lesson module focuses on a different aspect of Math. Module one teaches counting and number sense, module two covers comparing and classifying, and so on as the modules are broken down to teach important concepts.

The workmats are blackline masters which is really nice since they don’t take a lot of ink to print out. The programs PDF download itself is in color and black and white but does not need to be completely printed out. It can simply be viewed on a computer and only the blackline master workmats need to be printed out for use off the computer.

The workmats are fairly simple, yet challenging enough for the Pre-K child. Coloring skills are implemented throughout helping the child develop better writing skills and also occupational skills. Simple activities like color one pig pink and color the group with four milk cartons.

Laycie really loved completing her workmats. She enjoys coloring and caught on really easily with the materials, allowing her to work through fairly quickly. I found as she worked that she knew quite a bit of the material in the lessons. Had I begun using this product a year ago when she was 3 turning 4, we would have benefited from it greatly. The lessons were great for me to use with her to ensure that she has learned these important early math skills though and we will continue to use this program for her math for this year and possibly into the future.

The TouchMath Homeschool program is available online. TouchMath Pre-K Homeschool Program cost $59.95 for the program unit download. This includes the implementation guide, workmat activity sheets, module guides, answer sheets and more. It does not include the math manipulatives to use with the program. The manipulatives are a wonderful addition but they are not necessary for completion of this program. If you are interested in using the manipulatives, you can find the links to each specific one at the bottom of each product download page. Many of the manipulatives can be used with each subsequent product download.

For more reviews of the TouchMath Homeschool program and to see other reviews of different Math grade levels with this program, please visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog!