The family that shoots together stays together

 Spring is in the air and its finally warm enough to get out and shoot. Me and my oldest spent some time out side before dinner getting back into the grove of things. We looked into different lessons and shooting groups in the area and we found out that there is not much offered. We checked the local conservation center. They have an archery in schools program. We were disappointed to find out that Homeschools don't qualify. We don't feel that its fair but such is life. We heard that 4H has a shooting group but there are no other kids in our area that participate and last I checked they didn't have anyone to teach it. So the girls shoot on there own and I teach them as much as I know. Hotrod girl is improving each time we venture out. We basically have fun together and try to at least hit the bag.

Yup Hotrod girl made that shot.

She shot better than I did this time around.

                                                                                               

EdTechLens Rainforest Journey Review

A new science program has been welcomed into our home. This time we are excited to use Rainforest Journey 1st and 3rd grade by EdTechLens. This is another great Crew Review folks.  Rainforest Journey is an e-learning science program grades K-5 that covers life science for elementary  school levels. It covers the same concepts but get increasingly complex. That means the second grade level will be a little harder and more detailed than say the first grade level. It is a media rich interactive digital learning program. The program consist of 34 lessons, assessments, and activities including hands on activities. It is an internet based program.

First I created an account then I logged in and bought the levels that I would be using. We are doing 1st Grade and 3rd Grade since that is the girls current grade levels. I got two single user courses since I am doing two different grade levels. Once you make your purchase you then assign the grade level later. Each of the girls has their own log in. 

From your teacher account you can edit class information. You can get a course outline you can control class content which means you remove things from your kids lesson that you don't want them to see. There is also a Teacher Resource section. In this section you can access answer keys, get lesson reviews, and lesson plan templates, user guide, support etc. Under the Manage Class section you will find a progress report that show how much they have done in each section as well as quiz results. When you log in as teacher you get little alerts that show if there is something that is waiting to be graded. Its easy to navigate and I found it to be self explanatory.



When the girls log in, it brings up a page and at the top it says begin lesson you just click it. The girls figured out how to navigate through the lesson quickly. There is a magnifying glass that opens up the captain that you read for the lesson. It even has a speaker you can click that will read the caption to you. I love that they have the option to have it read to them. It's great for beginning readers. They then click a button at the bottom to go to the next page in the lesson or to advance to the next lesson. It also gives them a button to click for work pages they can print out. Then at the end of the unit it gives a test.  


My first grader is in love with Rainforest Journey. She is enthralled by anything that has to do with animals. The pictures etc. are so vivid and bright that she can't get enough of them. Every day its Mama can we do another lesson can I can I can I please.... So we end up doing this more than just 3 days a week. Which is perfectly fine with this Mama. She is really enjoying the work sheets that they can print at the end of the lesson. I love that they are printable because it gives me something to put in the portfolio. For my first grader I would like to see a bit more discussion about each lessons topic. I felt it was a tad short in the information department on the lessons. I did how ever appreciate the activities they really add a little more to the program and give them some fun things to do that are not just on the computer. 

My third grader did the third grade level. She has also enjoyed the program. She says the pictures and the videos are really great and they show her some Cool stuff, but she wishes it told her more information about the topic. She likes the printable "stuff" at the end. Meaning the work pages and activities. She has done well on the work pages but says she would like to see more hands on activities. We are only part way through the program so there could be more hands on stuff that we just haven't gotten to yet. They are hands on kids so they really enjoy experiments and think they need to do them every week.

This is a supplemental curriculum with 34 lessons. It is a great supplemental curriculum for a semester study. It covered lots of Life Science topics and I feel that my girls have learned a lot from it. We will be finishing out the program because the girls have really enjoyed it. It offers great lessons, reviews and quizzes. I cant wait to see what else EdTechLens comes up with. Check out what the other Crew Reviewers are saying about EdTechLens they have tried out other grade levels and can give you more information on different ones.

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Logic of English Foundations Level A Review

Logic of English has made its way into our home.  We are so excited to have gotten a chance to try out and review Foundations Level A. My little one was the lucky winner of trying out this program.  Foundations level A starts readers of with phonemic awareness. It teaches them to read and write lowercase letters and how to decode short vowel words and consonant blends. By the time your little one finishes Foundations level A they should be able to do these things and more.

Foundations Level A includes 48 lessons 8 of them are assessments and review lessons. You will find 6 student readers, 22 phonemic awareness games, 28 phonogram games, 10 reading comprehension games, 2 high frequency word games.

To teach Foundations Level A you will need the Level A Teacher's Manual, Level A student Workbook in either cursive or manuscript (we went with cursive). You will also need the book Doodling Dragons: An ABC Book of Sounds.  It is also recommended that you purchase phonogram and spelling rule quick reference(in cursive or manuscript) Rhythm of Handwriting Quick Reference Chart (cursive or manuscript), Rhythm of Handwriting Tactile Cards (cursive or manuscript), Phonogram Game Cards, Student Whiteboard, Basic Phonogram Flash Cards, Phonogram Game Tiles, and Spelling Analysis Card.  Sounds like a lot right! well it is kind of a lot but everything is reusable for future levels except for the workbook and teacher book.

I requested foundations level A. I used the Help Me Choose section on the website. Turns out that it was a little too easy for my 6 year old. I should have chosen Foundations B. Apparently I didn't realize she was reading and sounding out words as well as she is. I thought she needed more work. That is beside the point though, this is a nice program I wish I would have found it sooner. The work books are full of color and fun pictures. They helped to keep her interest in what we were working on at the time. We found readers in the back that you pop out and get to assemble. She thought those were "Super Fun". The lessons are short and to the point and I think they are wonderful for kids that cant sit still for long lessons. 

I am going to recommend going with the cursive set if you have a little one that seems to struggle
with writing. For some reason writing in cursive is easier than print for some kids. Both of the girls are learning cursive and I am wishing I would have just started them out on cursive. The Cursive Tactile Cards are amazing. One side shows the cursive letter while the other side tell them how to make the letter. I have the girls draw a card each morning and that is the letter they practice for the day.

Then we have the Basic Phonogram Flash Cards. These cards have the letter on one side with the phonogram on the other. Example h is on the front and on the back it has /h/ then below it, there is an example word hat with the h in bold. Some of the more complicated ones like i will have all the different phonograms listed on the back with examples. I love that its teaching all the sounds a letter can make at one time instead of one sound at a time. 

While she liked the work book and the flash cards but she LOVED the games and activities. You get a set of phonogram game tiles, and two sets of game cards one is the blue bookface the other is green cursive. The games are another way to help your kido remember the phonograms. She didn't seem to have a favorite game she just thought they were all fun. The games make it more hands on and that is something she responds to well.

The teachers book has a scope and sequence and a list of common core standards it covers in case you need it. The lessons are broken down into an easy to follow format. I felt like it was a scripted type of teachers book. This is great for those of us that who find this a difficult subject to teach. It even has speech tips on the side to help you help a student who is having trouble articulate the correct sound. You will also find little boxes for things like book list and multi-sensory fun. I even discovered some great teaching tips. Throughout the teachers book you will see areas that tell you when to use the white and when to use what cards and what games to play and how to play them. This is probably one of the easiest to follow Teachers Manuals that I have used.

Some Crew Reviewers tried out Different Logic of English products so be sure to click the banner and check them all out. You will also find some social media links and I would love for you to show Logic of English a little Social media love.

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Demme Learning's Math-U-See Review

It's that time of year where we all start looking for great math programs. This time we are trying out Demme Learning AKA Math-U-See. We will be using the Gamma level books as well as the Digital Packs. Since we are using the Gamma level books we are also using the Digital Pack for the Gamma level. The goal of the Math-U-See programs is to help produce students that are confident problem solvers that enjoy doing math.

This was our first try at a Math-U-See program. We went with the Gamma level because my oldest struggles with memorizing her multiplication tables. I gave her the online assessment and it suggest starting with Gamma. We used Math-U-See Gamma as a supplement 3 days a week. Demme Learning really blessed out family with the box they sent us. We received the student work book, the test book and instructional manual and instructional DVD as well as the digital pack for 12 months. We also received the Integer Block Kit which has 133-pieces.

The student work book has work pages that helps to reinforce the lessons, that are taught on the instructional DVD or the Digital pack. Each lesson has multiple pages. How ever we found that for some lessons she didn't need to use all of them. Like when she practiced her 1's and 0's she got those memorized quickly and didn't need the extra practice. But when she got to the 3's she used all the work pages and got in extra practice. Great workbook its easy to follow and she doesn't have trouble finding the work pages for the lesson she is working on. I am loving that the workbook had review areas where it refreshes what was learned in earlier levels.

The test book is, well self explanatory its a book with all the test for the Gamma level in it. I like the separate test book because I can toss it in the portfolio box  and its all together. Then I can easily select random workbook pages to be put in the portfolio box.

The Instruction Manual is handy it helps you teach the program as well as giving you the solutions to the test and work pages. I like having the solutions because lets face it math is not my strong point. I found teaching from the instruction manual to be simple enough. It makes the lessons easy to explain everything is in order and it provides examples and explanations to help you teach it.

The best part is if your having trouble explaining the lessons you can always defer to the Video Lessons. I am told the videos are more for the teacher to watch to see how to teach the lesson. But for my daughter the Video lessons make the program. She much prefers to hear the lesson and see a demonstration from the Videos. We love how he explains each lesson, he covers everything thoroughly. He is quick and to the point and that is important to my non math loving daughter. She can watch the lesson over and over if she needs to. We can watch the DVD or we can use the Digital Pack.

The digital pack is something new from Demme Learning. The digital packs include 12-month access to the level you choose in our case Gamma. It has streaming instructional videos and a PDF instruction manual which has lesson and test solutions, skip counting songs on MP3,a PDF songbook. The digital pack also includes Digital Manipulatives but you need to use Chrome or Safari. It does not include the student work book or test book. The digital manipulatives are basically the Integer Blocks but on the computer screen. You can move them around and manipulate them like you would the physical blocks. We use these when we have to do math on the go. Another bonus to the digital pack is the work sheet generator and online drill. The work sheet generator is great for making extra practice pages. You can make more work sheets for any of the lessons covered in the level you purchased. Online drill is exactly that, a way to drill facts with out having to have physical flash cards. You can drill for addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Then there are some selections you can make under each one. 

We finished our main math curriculum several weeks a go. So we have been using Math-U-See Gamma 3-4 days a week, to go back and try to master Multiplication tables. Along with the student workbook and video lessons, my daughter is using the online drill at least one day a week now. Its not her favorite thing to do but she likes it better than standard flash cards. We have used lots of pages from the work sheet generator. We have been using them to review addition and subtraction and simple division as well as multiplication. It great to be able to brush up on the things we covered earlier in the year. 

Other crew members have reviewed different levels of Math-U-See and I would love for you to click the banner and see what they have to say.

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Spring is in the Air

Spring is in the air everyone our night time temps are now staying well above freezing. This weekend me and the girls expanded the garden this year. We added two 8ft by 4ft beds. We will now have a bed for root type vegetables like carrots and turnips. The second on will be for peas and possibly some corn I hear you can use the corn stalks for the peas to grow up. Then we will have one big bed for cucumbers and one big bed for green beans.  Since growing the lettuce on straw bails worked so well the last two years we are doing the same this year. The bails we used last year have composted over the winter and have been added to last years garden bed. New bails were bought in the fall and now have a nice layer of Cow Pow on them and the lettuce seeds have just sprouted a day or two a go.

We are also looking for a place to plant the blueberry bushes. We have three bushes that need to go in the ground this year. We will also need to construct some sort of fence around them to keep the deer out so they don't eat them before they have a chance to grow and start producing they are 3-4 year old plants now they produced a few blueberries last year so we are expecting to get more this year.

Worm Tube update: The worms are doing wonderfully. The girls put in about 50 worms or so that they found crawling in the lawn after a rain last year. When I turned the beds two weeks a go we found more than 100 in each bed. The beds are just crawling with them.

Heirloom Audio Productions The Dragon and the Raven Review

My family has been enjoying The Dragon and the Raven from Heirloom Audio Productions. Our family received the 2 CD set and a digital download of the study guide. This is an audio adventure based on the Extraordinary adventures of G.A. Henty. G.A. Henty was an amazing story teller I believe some even consider him a Master Story Teller. The Stars of The Dragon and the Raven are John Rhys-Davies, Helen George, Brian Blessed, Sylvester McCoy, John Bell, and Katherine Kellgren. You might recognize a few of those names.

The Dragon and The Raven takes place back when King Alfred was king. Way back before England was even a country around 865. It tells of a time when the Danes ran wild through England, leaving devastation in their path. If not for one man taking a stand with King Alfred against the invading Danes. It takes them time to realize that the entire nation must turn back to God in order to win the war.

This is a 2 hour audio adventure. After much debate the girls decided that we would listen to in the evening as our bed time story. We listened for several nights in a row and it was so captivating that we had a hard time turning it off for the night.  I was thinking an Audio story would be a great way to help them relax, boy was I wrong. It was so exciting that the girls were wound up and wanting to talk about it. G.A.Henty told about some amazing adventures. This is a wonderful way to learn History through Fiction. I never thought history could be so much fun. We have listened to it twice now and its just as good the second time around. The Cast of The Dragon and The Raven did an amazing job bringing the story to life. They were so expressive we could close our eyes and really feel like we were there experiencing it for our selves. If you listen hard enough you can feel the wind in your hair and smell the salt air on your skin.

The Dragon and The Raven eStudy Guide. Its a Pdf file that you have to download. We downloaded ours to the Ipad and just worked from it. The study guide is 30 pages long it has discussion points, history-learning guides and story-related Bible study. It covered things like Alfred the Great, some Bible study lessons I believe there were three, as well as a chapter lessons. Its a great study guide and we liked the enrichment activities. My girls were a bit young for the all of the study guide but they were able to participate in some of the discussions and we just fit it to there needs and abilities. The study guide is a great bonus to the Audio.  You can also get The Dragon and the Raven on MP3 download. This would be really great for listening on a tablet or the like.

I love that The Dragon and the Raven has a biblical message and it teaches about an important time in history. If you want to inspire your kids to have a love for history you will want to pick up The Dragon and the Raven.

I would love for you to check out what the other Crew members are saying about The Dragon and the Raven.

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Zonderkidz Faith Builders Bible Review

This weeks review is from Zonderkidz. We are reviewing the Faith Builders Bible. The Faith Builders Bible sells for about $24.99. Its a fairly priced kids bible and has some super cool kid friendly features. It is a hard back bible so its probably a little more durable than a leather bound. It has a cool brick building theme to it. Reminds me of Lego's. You get 24 full color pages of illustrations. This is a NIrV,  for those of you un-familiar it is the New International Reader's Version of the Bible. It comes in a 9 point font which is a bigger font than most Bibles come in. 
The girls stalked the door all morning for the UPS man. They were very excited when they pulled it out of the box it just looks cool. I usually buy leather bound bibles. But I was surprised at how happy I was with the hard back for a kid.  It feels kid tough and I like that, I want the girls to handle it a lot and that means it needs to be durable. The cover has building blocks all over it and the theme continues throughout the Bible. If you have little builder this is going to be the Bible for them.
At the beginning it has building with books of the Bible. This teaches kids that each book of the Bible is like a layer and it gives kids a task to help them remember the order of the books. I had never thought to explain it to my girls that way. It actually uses colored pictures of the building blocks to demonstrate the layers or books of the bible.  
Next I want to mention Building Block Verses You will find these through out the Bible. These are great memory verses above each verse is a little lesson that goes along with it. Super helpful for younger kids. We also discovered a small dictionary in the back its only about 5 pages long but it has a lot of words in it that your child might not know as they are reading through the Bible. We also found a list of Bible stories and get this it tells what book they are in so finding them is easy. 
Hotrod girl wants me to mention the font. She says she prefers the bigger print to that of the small print in her other Bible. She tells me it makes it easier to read and helps her to keep her place. She also likes how it helps her learn the order of the Books of the Bible.  Snoopy would like me to talk about the colors. She loves the design on the cover and the "super cool" pictures that are throughout the bible. She says the pictures make it fun and helps her to remember the story and the verse.  They took it to Sunday school this past Sunday and it was the talk of the class.  Zonderkidz has some really great items they never seem to disappoint me. I would love for everyone to read what the other crew reviewers have to say about the Faith Builders Bible.

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Maple Syrup

The time has come to start turning our sap into maple syrup.  First you need to build a fire and find a big pot the biggest you can get. We used out camping pot since its been over an open fire a lot any way. I didn't feel like building a fire pit today so I improvised with an old BBQ. You basically have to get the sap boiling and let it reduce. As it boils down you just keep adding more sap to the pot. Eventually you will run out of sap to add to the pot. At this point you continue to let it boil down tell it fits in a standard kitchen pot. At this point you can take it in to the cook stove to finish the process. Ours took from 7 am to 9 pm to get to this point. The next day we started the second part of the process. You have to continue to boil the reduced sap eventually it will turn into a syrup. We know our syrup is done when it sheets off the back of a spoon. Then you need to filter it and put it in a jar. 

We had about 8 gallons of sap which cooked down to this one lovely tasty jar of homemade Maple Syrup. 

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is on sale

Breaking NEWS everyone SchoolhouseTeachers is on SALE for today and tomorrow only.

coupon code (all caps) - SHORTOFFER, Come grab it today for $83 instead of $139.

Use SHORTOFFER when checking out either today or tomorrow. This is for a full year for the entire family, no matter how many kids take the classes.

I would love for everyone to use my affiliate link. By using my link it helps me to buy curriculum and pay for field trips for my girls for next school year. Each and every one of you that order through my affiliate link are a blessing to my family, and we are grateful. 

http://schoolhouseteachers.com/dap/a/?a=31603

I use SchoolhouseTeachers with both my girls I wouldn't recommend it if we didn't love it. They have added a lot of new things this year. They now have a video section (the girls are digging the videos by the way)  and a lot of new courses I believe there is a photography course now and music courses and a hole host of other things to take. So if you haven't checked it out yet now is a great time to stop bye and take a look around. 

SimplyFun Archery Dice Review

Game NIGHT !!!! That's Right Its FAMILY GAME NIGHT and we have a new game, this one is courtesy of SimplyFun and I’m reviewing Archery Dice, one of four of SimplyFun new releases. We are honored that we get to be some of the first to try it out. This game is geared for ages 7 and up. 

In this game you Stack your dice, aim and FLICK! If you hit the bull's-eye you immediately get to bank a target, You get to knock over your opponents stack of dice or even steal their targets. At the end of the round the player that has the most dice claims the target. You have to try to keep a claimed target for an entire round and bank it. The first one to bank four targets wins the game.

The Game comes with 16 targets, 12 Dice three of each color, 4 wood disk, 1 rule book.
This game got caught in the storm and we delayed getting to us for 4 days. When it finally arrived the girls practically tackled the UPS guy trying to get it from him. They tore it open and wanted to play right away.  We have had quite a few game nights with the new Archery Dice game.

The Directions are fairly simple to understand for an adult. I had to explain how to play to the girls a couple of times before they got all the rules of playing. But we were quickly on our way to flicking dice, and stealing targets.

This is what is in the box minus the direction sheet, because I forgot to put it in the picture. The game is well made, the targets are sturdy feeling and the colors are nice. So far they have held up nicely, and I think they will last a long time. The small colored disk are made of wood. I would be careful if you have small kids as the dice and small disk could be a choking hazard.

The main idea of the game is to shoot your dice at the round targets and get them to land on top. The person with the highest number die on the target at the end of the round gets the target. They then put it under the stack of dice that they are shooting. At the end of the next round if someone has not shot a dice at that target and stolen it you get to bank the target. First one to bank 4 targets wins.

Sounds easy right! WRONG at least for me. I got beat by an 8 year old twice in a row.When I could hit the target with the dice they always bounced off. Apparently Hotrod girl has better hand eye coordination than I do. She could usually land the dice on the target. She even had the ability to knock my dice off the target. The more you play the better you get at landing the dice on the target the first flick.

Archery Dice is a 2-4 player game. I think the more people you have the better the game is to play.Me and the girls play this quite often when the cousins come over. Even my little 4 year old niece gets a kick out of it. We have had so much fun with Archery Dice that we cant wait to see what SimplyFun comes up with Next. I would love for you to click the link below and see what the other Crew reviewers are saying about SimplyFun Games.

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Home School in the Woods U.S. Elections Lap-Pak Review

Hey everyone I'm kicking off the new year with my very first Crew Review of 2016. The first product comes from Home School in the Woods . We have had the great pleasure of reviewing HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections. Like everyone else the girls have notice all the election stuff on TV, who could miss it right. They have begun to ask questions, about why we have elections and how they work. This lap-pak has been a great way to introduce it all to them

HISTORY Through the Ages Hands-on History Lap-Pak: U.S. Elections will introduce your kido to the United States presidential election process. It uses hands-on activities to briefly take your kido through how our country's government was established and through different aspects of a presidential campaign and how to pick our president here in the USA. It comes in CD format or you can get a downloadable version. We received the downloadable version right now it sells for $18.95. Not a bad price for a cool lesson that really has a lot in it.

The LAP-PAK ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

Definition of "Election"

Different Forms of Government

The Presidential Campaign: stump Speaking

The Presidential Campaign: Media-News Sources

The Presidential Campaign: Campaign Advertising- Spreading the Word

The American Experiment

The Three Branches of Government

Suffrage

Raising Money 

Who Do We Vote For?

Statistics 

Election Day

Terms of Office

A "Handful" of Political Parties

The Electoral College

Caucuses and Primaries

Inauguration Day

National Conventions

The Presidential Campaign: Platform

The Electoral Rage

The "Vocabinet"

See I told you it had a lot of great stuff in it. Downloading was simple. It came with directions on how to unzip the file. I just saved it to a folder on my computer. Then I printed off the Instructions and Directions page, Lapbook Project Masters, and Reading Text pages. Then I realized that a Lapbook meant that we would actually be making a book out of a file folder. We had to make a trip to the local store to get some file folders. Our store did not have the cool colored file folders so we just got plain ones. Be sure to get a lot of double sided tape. We made two of these Lapbooks and we used 2 roles of double sided tape and ended up gluing some things on because we ran out. So pick up extra you can always use it later.

You have some different option when printing the lap-pak. I choose the pre-printed formats instead of the blank lines to write on. Both of the girls are younger and I was afraid it would be too much to write everything out. Even with the pre-printed options there is still some writing to do. Turned out to be a good choice for the girls.

When you first take the stack of papers out of the printer it seems a little over whelming, but don't fear there are great directions. I took the papers for each lesson and stapled them together. This made them easy to find when we got to that lesson. We started off at the beginning and just worked our way through each lesson reading explaining and discovering as we went. As we completed each lesson piece, we stored in a ziplock bag to assemble into the lap book at the end. The girls found most of the explanations easy to understand. Though there were one or two that were a little over their heads. Of course they are only 1st and 3rd grade, so I don't expect them to remember everything we talked about right now. They loved how hands on everything was. We did cutting, pasting and taping basically every day. Lots of coloring too. I would like to mention there are a couple things that need to be cut out with an X-Acto knife. I am going to recommend an adult do this part. Some things were suppose to be printed on colored paper but if you don't have any just color the pictures. I only ever heard one complaint through the entire lap book and that was because it was 60 degrees out side and they just wanted to play.

There is also a booklet that you make for the kids to read. Its made to be printed double sided on on single sheets of paper. I went for the double sided option just because it seemed like a good idea. It has all the information that is needed to fill in those blanks on the lap-pak lessons. Its a great booklet, It was well written and most of it was fairly easy for my 8 year old to understand.

Assembling the Lapbook was easy with the directions that were included. The directions even include pictures on how to assemble the hole lap book. Big bonus since this was our first lap-pak and I had no idea how to assemble the thing.  You have to do a little cutting and taping of the file folder but that's probably the hardest part of the hole assembly. You will want to pay attention to which side of the flaps things are stuck to. Since we clipped all the completed lessons together in a bag it went fairly quick. Now the girls have a great resource to look back on if they forget any of the information. The Lapbook also makes a great item for portfolios.

So this is what part of your Lapbook should look like. Nice right ! 

Now this is ours. As you can see we are not quite finished with it we have just a couple more things to do. We didn't have any colored paper to print some of the things on so the girls opted to color in the pictures to jazz it up a little and they are still working on coloring in everything.

If you have a child that does better with hands on learning. One of these lap-packs is the way to go. They offer so much information and I can see us doing a more of them in the future.

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I want everyone to click on the link below and see what all the other Crew Reviewers are saying about these great Lap-Paks.

Just a Girl and her Snow Plow!

Just a girl and her Snow Plow! 







We finally got a little snow. New plow works great only took 6 months to get it here. Two hours to install it and 30 min to clear the drive way. 

My Soap Making Adventure

My great grandma used to make soap and I always wanted to learn how. I prefer to make and grow what I can. Making and growing our own stuff gives my kids an appreciation for where the things we have come from.

I read up on different methods and decided I would use the cold process method that my great grandma used.

There are lots of options for molds. Wood, silicone, acrylic, etc. I'm on a budget so I opted to make mine its something similar to what my grandma would have used. I dug around in my scrap pile and pulled out some 1x3 took some measurements from various molds I had seen online and came up with this one that you see on the right.

It has pins on each end so that I can pop the sides off to get the soap out. With a wood mold you will need to line it with freezer paper do this before you ever start to mix your soap.

I bought my coconut oil and lard at the local grocery store when they had it on sale. Then I ordered the lye on amazon. I could have made my own lye from wood ash but I opted to buy the lye this time. I may try making my own some time in the future.

When you work with lye you have to be careful it can cause serious burns. When lye mixes with water it get very HOT. You need to make sure you have good gloves and eye protection. Always pour your lye into the water. Never pour the water into the lye. Always do it in a well ventilated area i prefer to do it out side. Keep a bottle of vinegar handy in case you accidentally splash it on your self vinegar will help to neutralize the lye.

Measure all your oils water and lye by weight.

I first measured my fats my lard and coconut oil into my stainless steel pot. I set that on the stove and began to heat on medium low. Put on your gloves I used chemical resistant ones just because that's what we have in the shop. Then I measured out my lye and my water placing them in separate containers. I took them out side and pored the lye into the water. I used a glass mason jar for this step. Then you need to watch the temperature of the lye mixture and the temperature of your fats. You want them both to get to about 120 F. Once they reach the same temp or close to it. You will slowly pour the lye into the oils while mixing with a spoon. Now get ready to stir. If you are mixing by hand this could take up to an hour or more to reach Trace. Trace is when your soap gets thick enough to leave a trail on top when you drizzle a little off the spoon. If you are lucky enough to have a stick blender than this will go much faster. You can reach trace in as little as 15 min. I do not have one but I do have a half worn out blender so I used that. It took about 30 minutes before it reached trace. My fats went from runny and clear to milky white and a pudding consistency when I reached trace.

Once your soap hits trace you can put in what ever additives you want. I infused vanilla in my oils while they were heating. I didn't put enough in so it really has no smell just some cool speckles.

If you are using a wood mold you should have pre lined it with freezer paper. Once it hits trace you dump it all into your prepared mold and level it out I banged mine on the counter a little to be sure I got the air bubbles out and to level it. Or you can leave swirls on the top with you spoon what ever you like. Put your top on wrap it in a towel and let it sit for 24 hours.

The next evening I pulled the pins and took the sides off. My soap came right out very easily. I used an old knife to cut it into blocks. Once your soap is cut it will need to cure for 3-6 weeks. You want to be sure your soap cures long enough so that the lye has time to finish converting the fats into soap. According to my great grandma he longer you let your soap sit the milder it will become. This soap will sit for about 6 weeks before we start using it. Next I will be making a shampoo bar and some summer time soap to help repel the ticks.