I’m sure you guys know by now that Home School in the Woods is one of our FAVORITE vendors. I get so excited when I see them listed for review. We absolutely love the materials they’ve created for us to use, including the one we used for this review, History of Holidays from their Hands-On History Activity Studies. They are hands-on history at it’s best!

I really wanted something different to review this time around since we’ve done a great many studies for Home School in the Woods already. I’ve been looking for a study on Holidays that I could do with the kids at home. Something that wasn’t extensively hard to use but was fun! History of Holidays fit what I was looking for.

History of Holidays is a study of American Holidays which can be used throughout the year. It contains over a dozen American Holidays for you to learn about. It provides over 30 projects for your students to create in order to learn more about the Holidays it covers.

The Holidays this study covers are:
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Valentine’s Day
President’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Passover
Easter
Memorial Day
Flag Day
Independence Day
Labor Day
Columbus Day
Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Day

Each of these Holidays are interesting and unique in their own ways. They are the most common Holidays to study and represent a variety of events and people. They are a great place to start learning more about the reasons behind these events.

This study is designed to be used to cover all these holidays, working for a few days on each. You can expand your lessons simply by researching more information on each Holiday online or creating additional activities for each Holiday you cover. This is an Elementary course but you can use it with older kids and simply expand the lessons through more research.

Now I did look over the lessons in this course thoroughly but I did not want to use this course in it’s entirety as a study. I was looking for a course that I could use to teach my children about these Holidays as they happened, so that we learned about them as we celebrated them. That was easy to do with this course from Home School in the Woods. Though it’s suggested to complete the course as a Unit Study type lesson plan, it is adaptable to be able to be covered just at each Holiday through the year as well.

The thing I like about these studies is that they are simple to print and put together. The projects are really interesting and fun, like all of the Home School in the Woods studies are. They really bring hands-on learning to the forefront of the learning process.

Each study has a project to print out and create. Each also has an information page that shares pertinent information about the Holiday itself, the date it falls upon, the history of the Holiday, and why it is that we celebrate it each year. This is the main part of the study.

Then there is a Projects and Activities sheet which tells you how to put together and use the projects that are specifically for the Holiday you’re learning about. This sheet is thorough in it’s directions and expectations. Here you will find links to learn more about the Holiday and additional activities to complete as well. A recipe is also included for a little extra fun.

For our review, we went over Labor Day as a study since it’s the next Holiday to come up. We discussed the meaning of Labor Day and why we have it. It falls near Jackson’s birthday so it’s special to us for that reason as well.

Labor Day is always the first Monday in September. It’s the last Summer celebration we do. It begins the tearing down of our Summer decor and starts our preparations for Fall and our Holiday seasons beginnings.

The project for this Holiday included making a kind of bookmark with flaps that featured Famous Labor Leaders. We had to print it, cut it out and fold it. The flaps created a door so the name was on the outside and information about that person could be written on the inside.

The other project for this Holiday was to make an Illustrated Book of Occupations. A list of occupations is included in the study to help you choose which you’d like to learn more about. There is a series of pages to print for this project which allow you to create the booklet. Then you can write more about the occupations on the booklet pages as you explore them more. Both of these projects were very simple and easy to create. The suggested recipe was a one pot dish of something similar to Spaghetti. Instead of making the dish, we simply had spaghetti for this one.

I also printed out the work for Columbus Day since it’s the next Holiday on the list. This study contains information on Christopher Columbus and some fun projects for it as well. The projects for this unit are simple enough but they do require me to grab a few things I don’t have on hand.

One is a yard stick for the Quadrant we are to make. I think Jack will greatly enjoy making this soon. I’ve thought about grabbing a plastic protractor from the store to use instead of the paper printed one it calls for in the project. I think that will last longer for Jack to play with.

The other material I need to grab is Acetate or something similar to create the map overlay project for the lesson. I think Jack will also really enjoy putting that together as well. He’s really into learning about sailing right now, especially Pirates.

The Columbus Day study is set up the same as the Labor Day study. There are more projects for this study: those mentioned above and a Spice Collage project which I think Laycie is going to love since she’s very into cooking right now. This study also features two recipes for both a Spanish and an Italian cookie to make… yum, cookies! Those are always a huge hit!

The other units in this study are equally intriguing and we really look forward to diving in to them all and learning more! I want to just add that I’m really looking forward to using the Thanksgiving portion of this study where we will make corn husk dolls! And Christmas is going to be a lot of fun as well!! This study is really making learning about the Holidays fun for all of us and the projects are completely unique and fun to complete. The kids LOVE it, just as they have all the Home School in the Woods projects we have completed over the years.

You can purchase History of Holidays online $18.95 for the Family license to print at home.

Be sure to check out the newest product, Project Passport: Ancient Rome as well. This is a great study you will not want to miss! It’s part of their Project Passport Collection as well.

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I was really wanting a simple but fun Science curriculum to use with Jack this year. He’s turning 6 next month and he’s suddenly the budding scientist so I really want to embrace that for him. When I saw WriteBonnieRose on the crew review list I was really intrigued. I chose Learning About Science Collection, Level 1 for us to use at home. Since Jack is younger, I thought it would work best for him.

This level is perfect for 1st-3rd graders but really I think you could use it with Kindergarten too if you have an advanced learner who comprehends well. There are 172 pages in the course. It contains 7 books on science topics that you can work through beginning with whichever book interests you most.

The books (worksheet sets) are:
Familiar Plants and How They Grow
Fruits and Vegetables Around The World
Animal Habitats of the World
Our Senses and How They Work
Learning About Life Cycles
Earth: Layers, Earthquakes and Volcanos
Exploring States of Matter

Each of these books vary in length from just around 12 pages to 51 pages for the Animal Habits unit. The sections are interactive as they learn. There is provided copywork throughout each study and questions to answer, activities and review work at the end to recall what they’ve learned in the course. We were easily able to print these to work on for our review and Jackson enjoyed having the paper that he could hold which showed what he was learning about that day. You could even laminate some of these so that your student can practice writing the words over and over again to learn them.

Familiar Plants and How They Grow discusses the parts of plants that kids can recognize easily. They learn about each part in this short but thorough section. They learn about how plants grow as well.

Fruits and Vegetables Around The World discusses 28 fruits and 28 vegetables that are commonly known. This unit shows your child where the fruits and veggies come from and how they grow and get to us. It’s a great unit for learning about the food we eat.

Animal Habitats of the World discusses 78 different animals and the 18 habitats they can be found in. This is an extensive unit that focuses on location of the animals and also what they eat. It’s a great unit for learning more about the creatures that inhabit Earth along with us.

Our Senses and How They Work discusses the body and what the systems that comprise of our body consist of. We learn what happens inside us and how it works together to bring us to life. This is a great study for young kids.

Learning About Life Cycles discusses the changes that animals go through and how they work to help our environments. If they didn’t have certains transformations they could never do the jobs they are here for. This unit focuses on how they change and the reasons behind these changes.

Earth: Layers, Earthquakes and Volcanoes is an introduction to what lies below the grass and rocks we find outside daily. It shows what Earth is like at it’s core and what you find as you dig down through the layers that create our planet. It also teaches about why we have Earthquakes and Volcanoes and how those work because of the layers of Earth we are on.

Exploring States of Matter is a brief introduction to Chemistry and Physics by showing what matter is and how it works.

I love the simpleness of the program as well. It wasn’t complicated to read the pages with Jack and to encourage him to write the words, which he didn’t always want to do. He enjoyed the subject matter we read about and he learned a lot while we worked through the course for the review period.

I did find that it was best to stick to one book at a time for the program, and not easy to skip around since the pages are written to continue from one to another in each section. It’s best to work through one at a time but you don’t need to go in any particular order for them. If you’d like to do the shorter books first and save the longer ones for last that would work well. Or vice versa. Or just pick a section that you feel would interest your child.

We really loved learning about the plants and fruits and vegetables, especially with everything in bloom right now. The life cycles section is pretty neat, too. We worked on some of the shorter books and will be working more in the future, especially on the Animals Habitats part of the curriculum. Jack loves learning about animals but for the sake of this review, I felt the shorter books would be best to go through. I really look forward to reading through this more with him and seeing his love of Science grow through what we are learning together.

We will definitely be purchasing the other levels of this curriculum as well. You cannot beat the price of the course either. You can get the entire Learning About Science Collection, Level 1 for $12! That’s 172 pages of Science that is simple and easy to use with your student. Level 2 and 3 are also available and many other products can be found at WriteBonnieRose!

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About the Book

Title: This Freedom Journey

Author: Misty M. Beller

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release Date: July 11, 2018

Adrien Lockman is through with the political unrest and bloodshed in his home country of France, so he sets off to the Canadian territory’s mountain frontier, in search of a place where a man can live his own life in peace. The last thing he expects to find is a woman, half-starved and half-frozen in a shack nestled among the towering peaks of the great Rocky Mountains.

Mary Standish thought she’d finally found a place where she was accepted, trapping with her husband for the Hudson Bay Company. But when he dies after a gruesome grizzly fight, she determines to carry on their work. After all, life in these remote mountains is better than enduring the scorn and snubs of “civilized” folk. When she’s forced to face a winter harder than any she’s endured yet, her stubbornness may just be the death of her. Until a stranger appears at her ramshackle door.

Adrien had planned to explore the mountain country all winter before he settles down to build a farm in the spring, but he can’t leave this woman to die in the elements. Even though she seems desperate for him to go. As Mary regains strength, she’s torn between wanting to save her dignity, and craving the respect of this man who’s slipped past her defenses. As the winter worsens, the truth becomes all too real—the only way they’ll survive is together.

Click here to purchase your copy!

About the Author

Misty M. Beller writes romantic mountain stories, set on the 1800s frontier and woven with the truth of God’s love.

She was raised on a farm in South Carolina, so her Southern roots run deep. Growing up, her family was close, and they continue to keep that priority today. Her husband and daughters now add another dimension to her life, keeping her both grounded and crazy.

God has placed a desire in Misty’s heart to combine her love for Christian fiction and the simpler ranch life, writing historical novels that display God’s abundant love through the twists and turns in the lives of her characters.

Guest Post from Misty Beller

A Inside Look at the Cover for This Freedom Journey

My book covers are one of my favorite parts of the creative process! With most of my books, I have the cover done early, usually as I’m first brainstorming the story. I love to have the heroine on my cover, and I work hard to make sure the woman on the front matches the heroine I’m envisioning for the story. That way I can describe her in the novel the way she looks on the cover. Sometimes I even work in the outfit she’s wearing on the cover!

This Freedom Journey is a novella in my Heart of the Mountains series, so I wanted the cover to be similar in layout and style to the other books in that series. The setting is winter in the Canadian Rockies, so I knew Mary (the heroine) had to be bundled warmly! Funny story: Mary is mentioned in the other two books, although they’re set later in her life. When I first described her in the other books, I imagined her with amber brown eyes. When I chose the final cover for This Freedom Journey, I had to go back and change the amber brown eyes in those other manuscripts to the riveting blue on the cover. 😊

Blog Stops

Blog Stops
Reading Is My SuperPower, July 19

Bigreadersite , August 1

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Misty is giving away a grand prize of a $50 Amazon gift card!!

Click below to enter. Be sure to comment on this post before you enter to claim 9 extra entries! https://promosimple.com/ps/d13f/this-freedom-journey-celebration-tour-giveaway

My Review:
Misty Beller is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Her books are refreshing and greatly enjoyable. She speaks to your heart with her stories.

This is the story of Mary, who is determined to survive and continue doing the work she and her now deceased husband started out to do by moving to the great Rocky Mountains. Mary is strong-willed but sometimes that’s not the best thing, especially when the odds are stacked strongly against you and you’re struggling to survive. Still Mary prevails and overcomes the struggle she faces in territory that she’s still coming to learn about. It’s better than where she started and she refuses to go back.

Adrien is strong and capable of survival in these great mountains but he never expected he’d come across this waif of a woman struggling to make it through the brutal winter they faced. He couldn’t just walk away and leave her. He knew she faced ultimate death if he did. She may even face it with him there helping her but helping was better than just moving on. There was plenty of time to move on in the Spring and start that farm he’d been dreaming of. But really what good was it without someone to enjoy it all with?

The story of Mary and Adrien is one of survival that builds in to love. They need one another and they come together through struggle and strength like no other. You’ll truly enjoy reading there story. Just another of Misty’s wonderful novels bringing characters to life.

I was really excited when I saw this review for Northwest Treasures come up this year. Dinosaurs are life at our house, thanks to 6 year old Jack. I knew that Dinosaurs and the Bible would work well with our family. We were also given access to Taking the Mystery Out of Geology as a bonus. It was a perfect fit.

Emma, the all knowing family professor of knowledge, often asks about the relation of Dinosaurs to history and the Bible. I knew she would learn a lot from viewing and discussing these videos as well. And the rest of the family could greatly benefit too.

I have to admit that I’m a huge Dinosaur fan as well so these kids really get it honest but I could never understand how Dinosaurs fit in with Biblical times. I mean I know there were giant beasts at one time but were those really the Dinosaurs? Did we co-exist with the Dinosaurs in the early days of man. The Bible tells us that man was in charge of all the Beasts and wouldn’t Dinosaurs have been part of those Beasts? Where did they all go? These are things I hoped to personally find out.

Dinosaurs and the Bible is a 6 week course presented on Vimeo for 5th grade to adult. Additionally, we were also gifted the 20 minute class called Taking the Mystery Out of Geology, also on Vimeo, which should be used a prerequisite for the course. This class covers 13 important terms for Geology which you’ll need to know when working through the Dinosaurs and the Bible course. It’s full of interesting information on land and rock formations as well. We really enjoyed it.

Each of the lessons in the course are 20 minutes long or less. The last lesson is the longest at 21 minutes and 38 seconds. Each lesson also features a simple formatted worksheet about the lesson with questions related to what was discussed to ensure your student was following along and listening. You can find these by clicking on the video box on Vimeo for each lesson separately and then clicking the download link which opens the form in PDF. There is one file for all the answers though it is featured separately on each lesson. Lesson 6 features an extensive exam for review of the full course.

The lessons are easy to use. You simply go to the course through the provided link to Vimeo and you click to listen. You can do this on a laptop or connect to your television if you wish. I prefer to use my HDMI cable to connect my laptop to my television for a larger projection for our family to follow along with. This makes it easier for us all to view together.

In Lesson 1, students learn about the word Dinosaur, who gave the name to them and why. They learn about Charles Darwin, Megalosaurus who is a favorite around our house, and why he’s a notorious dinosaur. Students learn the difference in Earth Science and Earth History and so much more.

Lesson 2 covers Taxonomy, the Linnaean classification system and why it doesn’t work for Dinosaurs and it also talks about the secular belief of the group of dinosaurs that birds supposedly derive from.

Lesson 3 teaches about the Great Dinosaur Rush which was a new idea for me. It discusses O.C. Marsh and the famous museum that housed his finds. It also discusses Edward Drinker Cope and the relationship between Marsh and Cope, all information that was completely new to me as well.

In Lesson 4, we learned about disarticulation, extinction and historical reports that support the existence of dinosaurs during the human age. This was a really interesting section to me. I can’t imagine living at the same time as Dinosaurs.

Lesson 5 brought in the Ice Age. We learned about the Father of Modern Glaciology and the original terms used for the Ice Age. We learned about historical views of Earth’s past. We also learned about Earth’s great flood and it’s relation to this period of time.

Lesson 6 is the final lesson. In it we learned about fossils and how they are time-markers. We learned about radiometric dating used for figuring out a time period. We learned about the Biblical time frame for all of this as well.

This whole course was extremely fascinating and taught us a lot about the life of dinosaurs and how they fit into the Bible. As a family, we learned a lot and enjoyed the videos shared. The course was really extensive but it was really easy to implement into our home and style of learning.

Dinosaurs and the Bible is only one of many courses offered by Northwest Treasures. The cost of this course runs $39.99. Sometimes there are sales offered for it as well. There’s an additional kit that can be purchased to go along with the course as well if you’d like but it’s not needed to complete the course’s lessons. It does look like a lot of fun though!

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1. On Fortune’s Wheel by Cynthia Voigt – This introduced me to romance as a genre.

2. A Walk To Remember by Nicholas Sparks – because the book is always better than the movie and love stories are the best!

3. Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle – because a good mystery is hard to find and there is no one like Holmes.

4.Shakespeare – a true mastermind at his craft.

5. Poe – poetry that leaves you breathless.

6. Twilight – not all vampires are bad.

7. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants – the bond of friends are better than family sometimes.

8. The Third Eye by Lois Duncan – learning to live with the gifts life gives you.

9. How to Have a Heart for Your Kids by Rachel Carmen – this change my parenting life.

10. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – dreamers have a story to tell as well.

Each of these holds a special meaning for me. They’re timeless and I could read them again and again and again.