Thursday, November 19, 2020

CrossTimber Review



Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.



 
We tried out a fun product from CrossTimber  that would make a great stocking stuffer. CrossTimber is a company that offers Name Meaning products. They do book marks, plaques, activity sets etc. We received and 8x10 plaque print and a printable activity sets.  You can take a look at some of the different products they offer here:

The first thing I did was go to the website and browse around a little. They have several fun and beautiful things to offer. I loved the book marks and the name cards but ultimately I decided on the 8x10 plaque print with 2 names. I chose the Celtic design that you can find here http://www.meaning.name/NG/8x10/Celtic1.html. I really just loved the cross design and thought it would go well in my home. I choose to do each of the girls first names on the plaque. Then I used my oldest name for the activity set because she likes that sort of thing. Ordering was very simple and only took a few minutes once I settled on a design. From the time I placed my ordered it only took about 10 days for my to arrive at my home. It came packaged in a heavy envelope that had two sheets of cardboard on each side to be sure nothing got bent in shipping. I did not order a frame with mine because well I have a stock pile of frames that I have just waiting to have a use for. 

This is what ours looks like across the top it has both of the girls names, then below that it has each names origin and then what the actual name means. Alyssa means highborn, regal, noble woman: Joy and boldness for Christ. Savannah means From the Treeless plain, cherished: One of an Open Heart. Down below that you see two bible verses. Both of these choses versus were beautifully chosen. The printing quality of the plaque is very crisp and clean. The one we received has an aged look which reminded me of an old bible page. 

Next we have the activity set we were sent. This is a great product for younger kids learning to write and use a pencil. This set was packed full of mazes, copy work, coloring pages, matching games etc. The activity sheets we received were printed in color and that was really nice. It gave them a good quality feel. The pages are Bible themed and most have a scripture quote. I would say the age range for these would be kindergarten to about 3rd grade or so. My oldest is in 8th grade and while she said they were neat they did not hold her attention for long. My youngest enjoyed the color pages and the mazes even thought they had her sisters name on them. 

CrossTimber products would make a beautiful Christmas gift for a loved one this Christmas Season. Click the link below to take a look at some of the other beautiful product options that CrossTimber has to offer. 

Name Cards, Bookcards, Activity Sheets & Plaque Personalised Gifts {CrossTimber Reviews}

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

MathandAlgebra.com review


Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.



We were given the chance to try our MathandAlgebra.com which can be found at https://mathandalgebra.com/.  This is an online math program that Covers Basic Math, Advanced Math,  Pre-Algebra, and Algebra.  We were offered the Annual Plan which is good for a year.  It offers you 4 full courses to choose from, program console, student reports, course transcripts, chapter quizzes, and Awards and Certificates. For roughly $99 a year. 

To get started I created my account and logged in. Once logged in you go to the my students tab and ad your student enrolling them into the course that you want them to take. It will have you create a user name and log in. From there you will assign your student and they are off and running with the program once they log in. From the parent dashboard you can do things like enroll your student, purchase another course, view your students progress report etc. I feel like it is simple and easy to navigate. The only issue we ran into was that there is no print button on the student report. To get around that I have been able to highlight right click and hit print selection to get a printable copy of the report. As the parent you can also use the dashboard to view the lessons incase you need to help your student with anything. I would like the option to switch my child to a higher or lower level if necessary. Because some times a child just needs to take a step back or forwards. 

My kiddo is currently working her way through Pre-Algebra. Each level offers video tutorials, and lessons to better help them understand how to work through the problems. Each video is some where in the ball park of 6-10 minutes. So not incredibly long but not super short either. My daughter watches the videos then prints a work sheet that she then uses to practice the skill taught in the lesson. They will download both the work sheet as well as an answer key for each lesson. My daughter reports that the method of explaining how to do the problems is a bit different from other instructors. She likes that the instructor does the problem as they are explaining it. The quizzes will be scored and recorded for the parents records. To help keep your student motivated they can earn badges as they work through the program. How ever my 13 year old does not seem to care much about receiving the badges. Each chapter seems to have approximately 2-9 lessons per section. Some of the other grade levels have a few more lessons per chapter.  Pre-Algebra covers the following chapters: 

  • sets
  • integers
  • fractions & decimals 
  • exponents and square roots
  •  operations properties and scientific notation
  •  ratios and proportions
  •  percents
  •  number theory
  •  number lines and coordinate systems
  • equations 
  • probability and statistics. 
These topics are standard pre-algebra and I am pleased with the selection of lessons. Depending on how fast your student picks up new math concepts this course may or may not last your student a full year. I like the work sheets although I do wish there was a way to enter the worksheet scores into the reporting system. As far as I can tell only the quiz grades get recorded. This might possibly be an issue for a student that has text anxiety. The scoring is only taking into account the quiz score and not an overall assessment of the students completed work.




You can take a look at some of the attached pictures and screen shots to see what lessons might look like and the type of worksheets your student might encounter in the program. To get a look at some of the other grade levels offered by MathandAlgebra.com you can click the banner below and see how some of the other homeschool review crew families used the program.



Math & Algebra Family Subscription {MathandAlgebra.com Reviews}

Friday, October 30, 2020


 Happy Halloween y’all 



 Finally got a chance to get away from the office. We did a little homeschool at the campground. This cute little dude came to sit by me while I was enjoying a camping nap.

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Fall has arrived

It’s fall in our home state. Which means hiking season. Take a look at the beautiful fall colors we are beginning to have. If your experiencing fall colors in your home state share a picture in the comments 





Friday, September 25, 2020

I made this in honor of the 911 systems birthday. This was my first 3D Mandela And I think it came out fantastic. 

 

Saturday, September 5, 2020


 Found this guy at the office today anyone know what it is?

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

We grew something new in the garden this year. The girls chose Sunflowers as our new plant. We chose to do sunflowers that produce edible seeds. Two of the flowers were ready to harvest this weeks. The plants are about 7ft in height. So the girls has to climb up to cut them.  We sat them in the sun on the deck for about 3 days when the seeds began to loosen we gave them a rub to knock them loose. Next we will roast them in the oven and package them to be eaten this fall and winter. This is how many seeds we got off just two sunflower heads.


Sunday, August 9, 2020

The girls wanted a Harry Potter themed birthday party. So I found a fun svg cut file online and then I customized it for each of them. I used a opaque black and a gold screen printing ink instead of HTV.  Both colors are metallic which does not seem to show up In the photos. 

 

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Wordless Wednesday


Journey Homeschool Academy Review

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.



For summer school we tried out Journey Homeschool Academy we used the Experience Biology: Elementary This course can be found by clicking here Experience Biology: Elementary.  The course is geared towards kids that are 6-12 years of age. The program does acknowledge God as the creator but does not seem to go much farther than that. The program currently has 16 lessons and they are adding additional lessons as they are completed. There will be 30 lessons in total when the program is finished. This course can typically be completed during 1 school year is you are doing 1 lesson per week. Program cost is $129 and covers the entire immediate family.

Current completed lessons offered are:
Lesson 1: What is Life
Lesson 2: The building blocks of life
Lesson 3: The secret code of life
Lesson 4: Fueled up
Lesson 5: What's in a name
Lesson 6: Biomes Everywhere
Lesson 7: Itsy bitsy teeny tiny creatures
Lesson 8: The junk drawer kingdom
Lesson 9: The fungus among us
Lesson 10: What is a plant
Lesson 11: the wide world of plants
Lesson 12: Mean green energy making machine
Lesson 13: Roots and shoots
Lesson14: The reason for flowers
Lesson 15: It begins with a seed
Lesson 16: Amazing animals

This is probably one of the simplest programs to use. First your child watches the video lesson. There is only one log in for both parent and student. So you log into your online portal and let your kids watch a video lesson about basic biology principles. Next they will do a fun activity or assignment to help them connect the video to the world around them. If you need a little more your child will then explore books from the recommended reading list. You can do some or all of them. You can use them as a read-aloud or for independent reading assignments for each child.


There are 30 videos in the Experience Biology: Elementary and tons of hands-on activities to help your child bring the lesson to life. You will also find some memory work extras and copy work to use as needed. Lessons take around 15 minutes to complete, they are quick enough for those kids that loose interest quickly yet packed full of information. The girls dove right into these videos' and work pages. The girls enjoyed the video lessons the most but felt the worksheets were a little to easy for them however they are both at the upper end of the age range for this program. I felt like the videos were engaging and covered a decent amount of information for the given age range. You can take the lessons a little farther by using the resources and supplemental items that each lesson offers.

Some of the activities were activities that we had done in previous years so the girls felt they were not challenging enough. They said they would like to see more activities and maybe offer some activity options that would be a little more challenging for the kids in the upper age range of the program. For us I don't believe the program would last us a full school year. Just because we do science 4-5 days a week. For a family that just does maybe a weekly science lesson or stretches out the lesson over a full weeks time you could get it to last a hole school year.  Over all I feel like this is a great budget friendly program for kids that are close in age and grade level. I hope you will click the link below and see the other programs that the crew members used.




Social Media Links:



Instagram: @intoxicatedonlifeblog







Experience Biology: Elementary Level, Upper Level and Experience Astronomy: Elementary {Journey Homeschool Academy Reviews}

Monday, July 27, 2020

CTCMath Review

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way


 CTCMath has become our go 2 math program. Over the last few years we have reviewed many different levels of CTC and we have loved them all. CTCMath can be found by following this link https://www.ctcmath.comWe received a a 12-month Family membership which you can find by clicking here CTCMath.  The family membership subscription is currently selling for $148.50 for homeschool families. This package allows you to use the program with multiple students making it a great budget friendly program for families with multiple children.

CTCMath is marketed as a complete math curriculum. This math curriculum is completely online. Your student will log in and view a lesson video. This video will give you student step by step instructions for each lesson. The videos are around 4-9 minutes in length depending on which lesson you are in. It seems as thought the higher the grade level the longer the video which makes since because the problems are more complex. They may watch the video lessons as many times as they wish. They can also pause, rewind and fast forward as needed. Once they have completed the video they will move on to completing interactive questions and worksheets. The interactive questions and worksheets are designed to test your child's understanding of concepts taught in the lesson. When you child submits an answer on the interactive questions the system logs the answer and stores the results for each student. As the teacher or parent you can then view and print a report of how they are doing. The student can attempt the interactive questions multiple times. Your student also has the ability to print a paper worksheet. For this your child sill complete the worksheet with pencil and paper the traditional way and then submit his or her answers into the program for grading. Once the solutions have been submitted a printable fully worked solutions becomes available to show every step that should have been taken to reach the correct answer. Something new that was added this year is called a one page summary. This is a single page summary that provides the student with concise and complete notes from the tutorial video. My girls love this new feature. We have taken a binder and made a CTC Math Notes binder to store all the summaries that they are printing off. Now they have something to go back to if they have trouble remembering how to do something down the road. On the teachers side of things the parent will find reports. There will be a report built for each of your students. Every lesson they attempt is logged and the results are compiled into a report along with statistical information that details when they passed a lesson. It tells you what they scored and how much time they used to pass that particular lesson. Also as the parent/teacher you can assign task to each student. You can use this as a way for you child to know what they need to work on each day or as a way to remind them they need to do a lesson over.

Since I reviewed Grade 6 not to long a go I thought we would take a look at Elementary Geometry and Elementary Measurement since each of the girls worked through these lessons for summer school. Both of these courses would last roughly a semester give or take how many days a week your student works and how quickly they master it.




Elementary Measurement has roughly 29 lessons in it.  It covers lessons on parts of a circle, circumference of a circle, perimeter of a sector, finding a hypotenuse, finding a shorter side, composite prisms, volume of prisms, capacity, introduction to volume, area of Rhombus and Kites and many more.

Elementary Geometry has about 42 lessons in it. It covers topics like angle sum of a triangle, special triangles and their properties, mixed examples on angles, exterior angle of a triangle, test for congruent triangles, measuring angles, bisecting a line, bisecting an angle, constructing angles I and II, transformations, solid shapes, nets of solid shapes, faces vertices and edges.

The girls seem to do ok with the video lessons most of them were easy enough to understand. The video part of the lesson is quick and we love that we can pause and rewind as needed. The interactive questions take them about 20 minutes give or take depending on how well they understood the lesson. The printable worksheets take them about another 15 min. I ask them to complete both the interactive questions on the computer as well as the printable worksheets. If they don't score well I will back track watch the lesson with them and we will try again with what ever additional explanation I can offer. If that still doesn't work we resort to an internet search for additional explanations which doesn't happen real often but we do need to do this from time to time. We would love a way to send a message to the instructor when we run into question or something we are just not understanding from the video.

Navigation is easy for the kids. You can use the task feature if you wish. This is where you will go into the parent account and assign what you want them to do each day.  If you do this they will go to the task tab and it shows them which lesson you would like them to do for the day. I don't use this feature very often because its time consuming for me to go in and enter each assignment. My girls are old enough now where they can start with the first topic and just move through each lesson in order with out much difficulty. I can see the task feature being helpful with younger kids that need a little more help with what do each day.

I love the reports. We have been using CTC for several years now and each year is saved for me on my account. I can select which grade level I would like to view from the drop down for that student and bam it gives me all the stats for that level. Everything is downloadable and printable for long term storage. I will eventually download all of the girls scores for past years onto one flash drive. Since they work more independently now I use the reports to quickly tell me what they need to go back and work on a little more. It makes things efficient and I use less paper by being able to view scores and stats digitally.
Over all we are still very happy with CTCMath and I am impressed with the improvements and additions to the program. We would love for you to click the banner below and see what the other crew members think about CTC.
From Kindy to Calculus CTCMath 12-month Family membership {CTCMath Reviews}

Saturday, July 25, 2020

My new River Shirt. I found this great svg file on etsy and a youtube video on how to do a hombre screen printing in one step. I think it came out great for a first shirt using this method. I got the image a little low on the front of the shirt so next time I will do it 3in from the neck line instead of 5. But other than that I am very happy with it and I cant wait to try it agian.