Schoolhouse review

Preschoolers and Peace: Circle Time {Crew Review}

July 31, 2013 by Dana

Growing up in Public School, one of my favorite daily activities was Circle Time. When I decided to Homeschool, Circle Time was one of the first things I implemented into our homeschooling. My kids have loved it as much as I did, even though we do this in a completely different type of environment than the one I grew up in.

Circle Time for us has always been a bonding experience and has worked great to provide together time for me and my children. We do most things together and we enjoy doing them. There isn’t a lot of arguing during this time but there is a whole lot of fun. Sometimes, it gets hard for me to come up with new ideas for our Circle Time activities though, especially as my children age. That’s where Kendra Fletcher’s book, Circle Time from Preschoolers and Peace comes in!

Circle Time teaches the homeschool parent how to plan for Circle Time in their daily routine and how to make Circle Time flow smoothly. Throughout this book, Kendra explains how she uses her Circle Time period to teach all of her children important Bible Scriptures, stories, memorization skills, copywork and so much more. Kendra discusses how to keep younger children occupied while older children learn, all while maintaining life.

As Kendra explains throughout Circle Time, this wonderful addition to your homeschooling day can be arranged in any way that best fits you. You can do Circle Time in the mornings, midday or night. You can teach all kids at once or groups of children as needed, though the goal is to have as many children as possible join in at the same time. You can teach as many subjects as possible together through Circle Time and the book provides plenty of suggestions for making this happen.

Since we already use Circle Time in our homeschooling days, I wasn’t looking for a how-to in this book but instead inspirational ideas to spruce up our daily routine of Circle Time. In Circle Time the book, I found so much more!

Kendra provides great printables to organize your Circle Time planning like a Wish List of activities to include in your own Circle Time. She also includes a work sheet for listing Independent and Group work for your student’s daily activities. There are more great things to help with Circle Time on her website Preschoolers and Peace too!

Circle Time can be arranged to fit your family and is a great tool to bring you and your children closer together. The time they spend with one another brings positive attributes out within them, as well as stronger bonds between them. It also allows them to spend extra time with you that may be missed in other learning settings.

Circle Time is an important part of our homeschooling days. Kendra Fletcher’s book, Circle Time will teach you how to make it an important part of your homeschooling day too! You can purchase Circle Time today as a PDF file for $4.99 through Kendra’s website Preschoolers and Peace. I promise you it’s worth every cent!

To read more reviews of Kendra Fletcher’s Circle Time, please click the banner below!

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Homeschool Programming, Inc: KidCoder Web Series {Crew Review}

July 26, 2013 by Dana

If you are looking for a great way to teach your student Web design and programming then look no further than Homeschool Programming, Inc. Homeschool Programming offers quality products to provide a thorough education in programming with it’s KidCoder and TeenCoder product lines. These programs are created to be easy for the student and teacher to use and understanding, making web creation easy to do.

For this review, we were given the KidCoder Web Series program to use at home. This digital download came with everything needed for my student to learn web programming in the comfort of our home. Our download included the program needed to complete this study along with the student workbook and videos that explained what we needed to do to learn how the web works and even create projects of our own.

The KidCoder Series is created with the 4th-8th grade student and parent in mind. These courses are not overwhelming, yet they pack a lot of knowledge into their wonderful program. This series is a great introduction for students who may be interested in further web creation later on.

Students who use this program, or any program from Homeschool Programming, Inc. should have a basic knowledge of how a computer works. They should be able to create save files on their own and also be sufficient in using a keyboard. It would be appropriate that they have a basic knowledge of using a web browser and searching online as well.

The awesome thing about the KidCoder series is that once you purchase this curriculum you can use it for life. There is no online membership that runs out or limited license with the program, with the exception of schools in which a separate license would need to be purchased for each student. The basic workbook purchased will work for any student at any time within a homeschooling family and a student can take as long as needed to complete the program. It can be used with multiple students within a family as the same time as well.

Since this course is set up to work with your students pace, it can be completed in various ways. What may take one student an entire semester to complete will only take another half a semester to work through, while yet other students may take a year to finish the basic first semester portion. How you chose to work through the program is up to you and your student’s personal needs.

By design, the course is created to be completed in one semester with 13 chapters in the KidCoder Beginning Web Design series textbook. Each chapter contains 3-4 lessons, Work With Me’s, a lesson review and an activity to complete. The final chapter requires the student to complete a final project using what has been taught in each lesson of the program. Weekly dedication to this program should be at least 3-4 hours or longer depending on the student’s abilities.

This series does include instructional videos for the instructor and student to view. These videos are designed to be a tool but not to teach the entire course to the student. They explain the techniques used within the chapters to help the instructor and student better understand the program as they work through it.

Due to medical issues in our family over the course of this review, we did not get as far with it as I would have liked to with the program but what we have completed we have enjoyed. We were only able to work through part of the Beginning Web Design series. I’ve used this with both my daughter who is 10 and my son who is 12, working together with them through the chapters and lessons. Each have come away with a new opinion on web programming and how their computers work. They look forward to completing this program, as do I along with them.

Homeschool Programming, Inc.’s KidCoder Web Series is available for purchase. The KidCoder: Web Year Pack combines both the Beginning Web Design and Advanced Web Design programs for a $120 for courses only or $145 for both courses and videos. KidCoder: Beginning Web Design and KidCoder: Advanced Web Design each cost $70 separately per course or $85 for the course with video instruction.

For more reviews on Homeschool Programming, Inc., please visit the Schoolhouse Review Blog by clicking the link 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!

IEW: Teaching The Classics {Crew Review}

July 8, 2013 by Dana

Teaching The Classics DVD Seminar and Workbook from the Institute for Excellence in Writing is a full curriculum designed to help the user learn how to learn best from classic reading materials. Providing a literature style that brings literature understanding to everyone, Teaching The Classics makes understanding literature elements easy. This curriculum is sure to help everyone from teacher to student.

Teaching the Classics uses the Socratic approach to learning. Through provision of short classical materials this DVD seminar breaks down literature elements of plot, theme, character, conflict and more. This program begins with an explanation about Literature, taking the student all the way through each of the elements.

Lesson 1 prepares the student to analyze literature providing samples of some of the greatest authors known. It begins explaining the structure of the Five Elements of Fiction. It also discusses literary styles in writing. The Socratic Method is also taught and thoroughly discusses right away through this lesson.

Following lessons teach and break down Plot and Conflict, Setting, Character, Theme, and more. Each of these topics are backed up with short story models, charts explaining the information learned, and questions to provide a thorough understanding of the materials taught. The DVD seminars work with the materials to help the educator/student better understand the lessons throughout the book.

I personally used this curriculum to learn more about using the classics in our daily education. I try to use classics with my children because I feel they are rich in educational content and truly heartwarming books. I want my children to learn to enjoy classical books as much as I do. Teaching the Classics has helped me to provide a better education of the classics for my children in working as a reminder of the important elements I need to teach through the process of teaching them about the classics. This program would be excellent for an advance middle school or a high school student to work through on their own. It’s also excellent for a parent, like me, who needs that little extra reminder of these important elements in writing.

Teaching the Classics DVD Seminar and Workbook by Adam and Missy Andrews is available from the Institute for Excellence in Writing for $89. This program was written for parents of children of any age and for High School aged students. It can be purchased through the Institute for Excellence in Writing.

Birdcage Press – Art Up Close: Museum of Modern Art {Crew Review}

June 14, 2013 by Dana

Birdcage Press specializes in unique books and games for children. Brilliant museum-quality images are presented on every product, allowing children to learn about some of the greatest creatures and works of art in the world. The award winning products at Birdcage Press are unforgettable.

The Schoolhouse Review crew was given their choice of products from Birdcage Press to use for this review. Games containing photos of great works of art, animals and Ancient Egypt were available for choice. Each game allowing a different form of play and lessons unique to itself.

I personally chose Art Up Close: The Museum of Modern Art for our review product. I thought my oldest daughter would greatly enjoy this particular game. Since she wants to be an artist, I thought this game would be a great way to introduce her to different artists and artworks that we may miss normally. Needless to say, she really loved viewing each of the cards during this review period.

Art Up Close is thus named because the game presents the cards as the “normal” art piece complete with the Artist’s name, the pieces name, and the year created. The accompanying card match shows an up close piece of the artwork which allows the player to see more detail in the artwork. It also makes the player think about the details to figure out which piece of art the up close piece belongs to.

Art Up Close can be played as a game in 5 different ways. You can play memory with them, where the players match the cards to create pairs in order to finish the game. You can play Old Master which is Old Maid without the maid. You simply chose a card to be the Master and go from there. You can play Painting Pairs which is a lot like Go Fish. You can also play Treasure Hunt, where the players are dealt works of art and must try to find the matching pieces.

My youngest child’s favorite game was Memory, while my oldest two enjoyed playing Painting Pairs and Old Master. My artist took the cards and thoroughly went over them detail by detail. She laid them out and worked on creating her own works of art by examining the details on the cards she had chosen. Each time she chose a new piece, we researched the piece online to learn more about it. She enjoyed having the artwork to get her started in learning more about the artist, artworks and year.

This card game was able to be used in so many enjoyable ways by all of our family. My children are ages 5-12 and each one benefited from it in some way. Even I enjoyed learning more about the art pieces portrayed throughout the game.

Art Up Close: Museum of Modern Art is available through Birdcage Press for $10.95. This art deck includes 48 cards featuring artists like Picasso, Monet, Klee and more. The recommended age is 5+.

Christianity Cove {Crew Review}

June 12, 2013 by Dana

Christianity Cove brings Jesus to life for children all over the world. Their unique Sunday School curriculum can be found in many Sunday and Christian School classrooms. They strive to make Jesus real, not just a person children read about in books, but someone they can personally know in their lives.

Christianity Cove offers many products that can be used with children in many age groups. The Schoolhouse Review Crew was offered our choice of two of these products to review in our homes. I personally chose to use their Bible Science Experiments and their Make and Take Bible Craft curriculum with my children ages 5, 10 and 12.

Bible Science Experiments provides lesson plans for 25 different and unique science experiments that show the glory of nature through God’s vision. Experiments ranging from optical illusions, shadows, using a color wheel, harnessing the power of air, and much more are provided in this Bible Science Experiments downloadable PDF.

This curriculum begins by telling the reader that every child is a natural scientist. Children are provided fun, hands-on experiments to complete that show the world through God’s creation. Lessons are backed up with scripture related to the experiment being completed. Every lesson has a different verse to accompany it.

Lessons also begin with a list of necessary materials. The steps to complete the experiment are listed next, followed by an answer to the experiment questions. An explanation of the experiment from the scientific viewpoint is also provided. The last section for every experiment is the Understanding God section which provides reasons for God’s plan in nature. This is repeated for each of the 25 Bible Science Experiments.

We randomly did experiments throughout this PDF throughout our review period. My children enjoyed the process of following the provided steps, listening to the answers and explanations for each. Most of all they enjoyed having these experiments related to bible verse and God’s intentions for these instances in nature.

For extra work, I printed the verses as copywork for the kids to remember. We looked up videos of other experiments like these to see if our results were the same or different. We also did research online about different aspects of many of these experiments.

The experiments use many things that can be found already in the home so there isn’t a lot of extra cost to complete them. They are easily implemented and don’t take a lot of time to complete. They can be used with school-age children from Kindergarten through High School. Children in younger grades should be accompanied by an adult before attempting any experiment.

We also worked through the Make and Take Bible Crafts curriculum from Christianity Cove. I pulled several of these crafts to work on throughout the weeks of our review. There are 47 crafts provided in the Make and Take Bible Crafts PDF. They each take approximately 20 minutes to complete and are appropriate for young children. All three of my school age children enjoyed the projects though.

Make and Take Bible Crafts provide fun and simple crafts to complete for the basic stories of the bible like Noah’s Ark, Moses at the Burning Bush, Jonah and the Whale and much more. There are 20 specific crafts that go with the story of the life of Jesus. There are also 7 crafts that reinforce the basic christian values. A table of contents share the craft’s for each important biblical story and what page to find it on.

Lessons begin much the same as the Bible Science Experiments PDF does, with a list of materials needed provided. These are common items that can be found around the home or can be easily obtained at low cost. They are needed to complete the project for each lesson and differ per lesson.

The next section provides scripture related to the lesson. The full text is provided so that the teacher and student don’t have to locate the story within the bible. This makes the lesson easy to complete and keeps the information in one place. A short explanation for preparation of the project is provided next, followed by the instructions to complete the project to be completed.

These lessons were quick and easy to complete. The kids really enjoyed them and the lessons learned. My older children new many of the bible stories but had not done some of the projects provided in the Make and Take Bible Crafts PDF. My 5 year old greatly enjoyed hearing the stories and completing the projects. Noah’s Ark and the Fruits of the Spirit Charm bracelet were two of her favorites.

My favorite was the Sermon on the Mount “Blessed Are” Wreath. We used the handprints of all the kids to create this project so that we could use it to view the Beatitudes together. We have this hanging in our classroom area to keep them where we can view them often.

We greatly enjoyed reviewing both of these products from Christianity Cove. I recommend them for using in a Sunday School classroom or a Christian Homeschool or even just for extra bible lessons at home. They provide a fun way to learn more about the Bible.

Bible Science Experiments is available as a PDF download for $25. Make and Take Bible Crafts is also available as a PDF download for $29. There are lots and lots of other products to choose from at Christianity Cove so be sure to take a look around while there!