Schoolhouse Crew

Word of the Year: 2017 {Thoughts From Me}

January 5, 2017 by Dana

FOCUS

It’s been a while since I chose a word of the year for us. Last year we weren’t really online due to not having internet so I wasn’t really able to chose one. This year we do have internet so I’ll be picking our word of the year.

As I’ve thought and prayed over our Word of the Year, I was really torn between two words: Balance and Focus. Balance was my first choice but the more I prayed, the more Focus presented itself. I began to understand that our word of the year should be Focus.

Dictionary.com defines Focus as a noun meaning a central point, as of attraction, attention, or activity. Focus is also described as the clear and sharply defined condition of an image. It can also be a verb meaning to concentrate: to focus one’s thoughts and to direct one’s attention or efforts. Synonyms for Focus are: heart, center, core, nucleus.

Our focus this year will be upon each other as a family. As a Mother, I wish to focus more on my children, enjoying the years we have left before they are grown. I wish to focus on each of their relationships with me and Donald, with each other, allowing them to strengthen these relationships in order to better our family.

I plan to focus on finding a way to sustain our family financially as well. I’m not sure where we are being led yet, but I know that God has a plan and my focus will be on allowing God to put us on the path he wishes for us to be.

As a family, we will also focus on strengthening our relationship with God as well. We will continue to pray together, and for others. We will learn more about God’s plan for our family through prayer, and through building our relationship with Him and with one another as well.

Focus is our main goal for this year and Focus we will do!

We are linked up with the Word of the Year 2017 from the Homeschool Review Crew, a division of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine!

http://schoolhousereviewcrew.com/word-for-the-year-2017-link-up/

Baker Publishing Group: The Adventures of Lily Lapp Series {Crew Review}

June 24, 2013 by Dana

From Baker Publishing Group, written by Mary Ann Kinsinger and Suzanne Woods Fisher comes the story of a kind and mischevious Amish girl you won’t soon forget. Every day with Lily Lapp is a new adventure. Life with this little girl is never boring.

Come see what life with Lily and her family is like in The Adventures of Lily Lapp Book One: Life with Lily. Five year old Lily lives on an Amish farm in upstate New York with her parents and her little brothers. Lily has a new little brother that she isn’t all that sure about.

Seems life has a lot of change in store for little Miss Lily. New baby, a new teacher and her eyes are opening to a whole new world around her. Lily Lapp is growing up Amish. Come see what Life with Lily is all about!

Book two of The Adventures of Lily Lapp series is A New Home for Lily. Sweet little Lily is seven now and moving to an entirely new community. It’s hard being the new girl in town.

See what life is like for Lily now, in a new town where she has to learn to make new friends all while still finding adventures to keep her busy. Lily meets Aaron Yoder, a boy who drives her crazy and later Lily finds heart to help rescue. Lily also receives a new gift: another baby brother to love and grow with in her many adventures, though Lily has yet to understand why God doesn’t give her a baby sister.

The Adventures of Lily Lapp is a wonderful series with more books to come. Each adventure with Lily is better than the last, as readers watch Lily grow up and follow along with her life and her mischief through her story. Lily’s books will be a wonderful addition to homes every where.

These books are written with children ages 8-12 in mind. At 272 pages, they are rather good sized chapter books. Each chapter has a title, allowing young readers to break the stories down into manageable portions. This also allows educators/parents to assign chapters to read a little easier.

My 10 year old could not wait to read about the life of Lily Lapp and immediately jumped into reading these books. I allowed her to read them for leisure. We will definitely be adding more books from the Lily Lapp series into our home in the future as they are released.

You can purchase The Adventures of Lily Lapp books through Baker Publishing Group for $12.99 in either paperback or ebook format. For this review, we had beautifully printed paperback copies that I suspect will be read again and again in the future.

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Memoria Press: Geography I {Crew Review}

June 17, 2013 by Dana

Memoria Press has been creating Classical Christian Educational materials for Western Civilization since 1994. Their products focus upon simplicity, affordability and quality and are designed with flexibility in mind for homeschooling families who know little about the subjects they are learning about. Memoria Press products provide high academic standards for learning.

For this review, The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew was offered a choice between Memoria Press’ Prima Latina and Geography I. I chose Geography I for us because it was more fitting to the ages of my children. It is also a current interest in our home education.

Geography I arrived boxed nicely together in a few weeks. Our box contained a teacher’s guide, student text and student workbook for Geography I and a Teacher’s Key and Student Workbook for the United States. The set is soft-covered with crisp white pages inside. Most of the print is black line master.

Geography I’s teacher guide contains the answers to all of the questions through the Geography I Student Workbook. In the back of this book are quiz and tests for review of the lessons learned. There is no other lesson information in this guide aside from the answers to the questions and the quiz and tests provided in the back.

Geography I’s student text covers The Middle East, North Africa and Europe. The student text breaks each of these continents down into countries. As you work through the text, the student learns a little about each continent. They learn first the Story of the Land which tells the history of the land. Then they learn the Land of the Story which tells specifically about the land itself. Each section also includes Fast Facts to tell you quick facts about the area.

Each of the continents is broken into countries. Each countries page tells the student about the history of that country and then tells what the country is like today. There are also Fast Facts included for each of these countries, as well as a picture of the area, a flag to color in and a map on the opposite page showing the country and area covered. This repeats for every country and continent shared in this text.

At the end of the Student Text is a colorized section of country flags for review and also to help the student know what color to color the flag for the country they are currently learning about. Lessons are approximately two pages long, though they are thorough on information provided about each continent and country.

The Student Workbook is where the work is at. In the workbook, students must identify and label the countries on the continent maps. They must break each country down, sharing capitals and facts. This is repeated for each continent and country covered through Geography I.

The United States set is a review for students learning in Geography I. Just like the Geography I teacher’s guide, the United States teacher’s guide provides the answers to the student workbook and also quiz and tests through the back of the book. There is no lesson guide provided in either of these teacher guides. Lessons are provided through the accompanying workbooks and student texts.

The United States Student Workbook is a States and Capitals Review text. In this workbook, students will review the states and capitals of all of the United States. These are broken down into regions to make the review easier for the student. There is a United States map as a whole included in the front of the workbook.

These books work together to provide a full curriculum for Geography I. Depending upon the teacher and student, this curriculum could be covered in a matter of weeks to a year. The lessons are not long and can be completed quickly and easily. Review expectations were for us to use this curriculum 3-4 times a week through the review, which allowed us to cover much of the curriculum before the review period ended.

Geography I is for students in grades 4-8. My students that used this curriculum were ages 10 and 12. I also did work with my 5 year old, allowing her to listen while we read through the country and continent information and providing her maps to color as we learned about each country.

We enjoyed using Memoria Press’ Geography I in our lessons because the lessons themselves were not long and the information we learned was just the right amount as to not be overwhelming each day we worked on them. Our lesson week began with discussion of the continent and completing the workbook pages to go with it. Then we worked through countries, taking our time to learn more by looking them up online and checking the news to see if they were mentioned recently. After doing this research, the kids were left to complete their worksheets for lesson. I placed the worksheet into dry erase covers so they could both complete the necessary worksheets for this curriculum.

Memoria Press offers Geography I as a part of their 4th Grade Curriculum. It can be purchased as the 4th Grade Geography set for $48.00 plus shipping. This set includes the Geography I teachers guide, student text, and student workbook, along with the United States States and Capitals Review teacher’s guide and student workbook. Geography I covers The Middle East, North Africa and Europe in the text. To view more curriculum from Memoria Press, please visit their website!

Motherboard Books: Let’s Make A Webpage {Crew Review}

June 10, 2013 by Dana

Do you know how to make a webpage? Could you teach your children how? Is this something you need assistance in learning or teaching your children how to do? Then look no further than Let’s Make A Webpage from Motherboard Books!

Let’s Make A Webpage teaches your child, or you, everything you need to know about building your own webpage from scratch. Using CoffeeCup HTML Editor you will learn the basics of webpage building and so much more. Let’s Make A Webpage makes webpage making easy!

The first step in using this e-book is to create an interview to use in preparation for your webpage. The student needs to choose several questions of their own creation to ask someone they wish to know more about. This could be Mom, Dad, the neighbor, their sister, cousin, aunt, the librarian, etc. Whoever the student wishes to interview.

My son chose to interview Dad. These were his questions:

1. What is your job?

2. How long have you been doing it?

3. What exactly do you do?

4. Did you learn anything during school that helped to prepare you for your job?

5. Is this the career you expected to have?

My daughter chose to interview her Grandma. These were the questions she asked:

1. What year were you born?

2. What was life like when you were a child?

3. What were you like at my age?

4. What was schooling like for you at my age?

5. How are things different from your childhood until now?

6. How are you and I different at this same age?

After they both conducted their interviews, we then wrote out a short report explaining all of the things they learned from their interviews. This gathered information was used in the process of creating their webpages. We also saved a photo of each person interviewed to use within our webpage.

The next step was downloading CoffeeCup HTML Editor to use for creating our webpages. After downloading, we input our information, page title, etc. Then we clicked save so that we could work with this file throughout the process.

Then came the fun stuff: learning how to use text boxes, HTML codes, color and all the other fine details that work together to make a webpage a webpage. These details are the simple, yet complicated things that everyone should know when building a webpage. Let’s Make A Webpage made them easy to learn and easy to use!

Through these 10 easy but thorough lessons in the Let’s Make A Webpage e-book, the student learns all the important details in creating their own personal webpage. Once a student completes this program, they should have enough knowledge to be able to build any basic webpage they would like.

In the later chapters of Let’s Make A Webpage, students also learn to use animations, add in photos, how to safely use the internet and much more. These details combine to create a webpage that is catchy and attractive to the eye. And best of all it’s all easier than many people may realize.

Let’s Make A Webpage from Motherboard Books was written to be used with children ages 8 and up. It’s available as an e-book download for $19.95. It is designed to be used with the free download version of CoffeeCup HTML Editor. This program also encourages experimenting and creativity in working with computers. Don’t forget to check out Motherboard Books other programs too!

Math Mammoth {Crew Review}

June 7, 2013 by Dana

Math Mammoth was created by Maria Miller to help homeschooling Momma’s who were completely lost at teaching math be able to provide a better learning experience for their students. Being an ex-math teacher, Maria was able to create an exceptional math program that is easy to use and understand by both teacher and student. Math Mammoth provides a complete math education that makes math easy.

Last year, we used Math Mammoth’s Light Blue series for second grade. You can read our review for that curriculum here: https://www.luvnlambertlife.com/2011/11/tos-review-math-mammoth.html. This year, I chose to review Math Mammoth’s Light Blue series for first grade.

I chose this curriculum for two reasons: to review math fact basics with my daughter who struggles with them and to begin my youngest daughter’s education in addition and subtraction. The first grade level of the Light Blue series worked great for both of their needs. And since it’s easy to use, my older daughter needed little help from me to work through it. She is able to read on her own and follow through with her work. She was also able to help my younger daughter out along the way, when I was unable to.

I chose the Light Blue series because it’s a complete curriculum. This allowed my daughter to completely relearn the concepts she struggles with instead of just working on reviewing facts that she didn’t completely understand the first time. We basically started all over with Math, only this time the lessons were much easier for her to comprehend. And though we’ve only been using the program a short time, she is definitely catching on fast.

Math Mammoth’s Light Blue Series for Grade 1 covers addition and subtraction concepts and strategies, whole number and place value relationships to 100, measurement of length, geometric basics, time and money. Even though we are using this curriculum for a math review purpose, we have started from the beginning and worked through. The program is not boring or overwhelming to my students, and as I’ve mentioned more than once, it’s extremely easy to use and comprehend.

Math Mammoth Light Blue series is available online for $34 for the full set of Grade 1 as a download or on CD for $39 plus shipping. It is also purchasable as individual sectional downloads through the website.

Math Rider {Crew Review}

April 23, 2013 by Dana

The Intelligent Math Facts Game

Have fun and build confidence!

We had so much fun with Math Rider last year that we decided to review it again this year! Math Rider is a fun, interactive math facts game created for kids of all ages and stages learning important basic math skills. Math Rider is a game that children will want to play again and again all the while learning in the process.

Math Rider teaches the basic skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Children create a character who will be riding Shadow the Horse across the Land of Ray. The Land of Ray is a beautifully designed matte-painted fantasy land that children will greatly enjoy.

As children work through their quest they will find magical flowers, gems for elves and they even rescue a princess all while working on their math skills. There are four quests from easy to master to complete. Rewards change throughout the quests as children unlock and complete their missions.

Math Rider allows for more than one child to use the system learning needed facts. This worked well for us since we have three children learning at different levels currently. My oldest daughter truly enjoys this program while she’s working on her math facts simply because there is a horse involved. She is my animal lover. My son loves the simplicity and ease of the program. Because of it’s easy to use programming, I plan to start my 5 year old on it very soon.

Math Rider sells for $47 and includes free software updates for life. A free 7 day full-version trial is available on the website for immediate use.

*Additional photos used were from my review of this product last year: https://www.luvnlambertlife.com/2012/02/tos-review-math-rider.html