Reading Kingdom Online Review

I come from a family of readers. I found a love for reading at a very young age. I am proud to say my girls have also found a love for reading at a very young age. Even though I didn't use one to teach the girls how to read. I am a sucker for a good reading program and I wish I would have had Reading Kingdom when they first got started. When Reading Kingdom Online came up for review on the Crew I knew I had to try and get it. Reading Kingdom site can be found here at http://www.ReadingKingdom.com. Reading Kingdom is easy to use online reading program that teaches kids ages 4-10 to read and write up to a 3rd grade level. A yearly subscription for one child is $19.99 a month, and each additional child you add to the account is $9.99 a month. There is also a Free 30 Trial so you can try it out before hand.

Reading Kingdom uses Dr. Marion Blank's approach to reading. It teaches children 6 skills that help them to become good readers and writers. The six skills are: Sequencing, Motor Skills, Sounds, Meaning, Grammar, and Comprehension. These main skills along with elements of phonics and whole language skills are designed to help your child become a successful reader and writer.


Reading Kingdom is a self adjusting program. This means that the program automatically adjust its self for how well your child is doing. To ensure your child has all of the skills necessary to be successful at reading and writing. You will start out having your child take a placement test. This gives them a starting point for the program. You are not allowed to help your child while they are taking the placement test. You are only allowed to encourage them. The girls do well working on there own. My only issue with the placement test was that its timed and the girls do not type well yet. So they would run out of time before they could type the answer. This small issue made it so that they were placed in a much lower level than what they read at. We tried the levels that the program placed them at but they quickly became frustrated that the reading and assignments were too easy. They were asking me to make it harder! Every homeschooling moms dream right. To solve the problem I simply accessed my dash board and turned on the move student feature. This allowed me to bump them up to harder levels. They are now happy with the program. You can also adjust how long they get to answer questions. I bumped this up to allow them a little more time to find the keys.  As their typing improves I will lower the amount of time they get back down. At the end of each level your child is given a progress check to see if they have mastered that level of the program. If they are on track then they move to the next level. But if they are not it gives them a set of review lessons to help get them back on track.

Reading Kingdom also offers reporting so if your child is like mine and likes to go solo on the program you can still keep track of what they are doing and if they need any help. You can also get reports emailed to you on a regular basis. I love reports they make tracking work and grades so much easier. The reports also leave me with more one on one time for the things they really need help with.


Reading came easily for the girls they were both reading simple books by the time they were 4. They were in first grade before I ever tried an actual phonics program. Because I though they have to learn the phonics rules or they will never be able to spell or write. The girls quickly became frustrated with the rules that the programs wanted them to memorize. I remember being frustrated with this when I was a child. Reading Kingdom does not ask them to memorize the phonics RULES. They are so happy about not having to memorize The RULES any more. Instead they learn sequencing, sounds, meaning, grammar and comprehension. Every lesson builds on its self and before you know it there reading and writing is getting better and better. They learn to read real stories that flow and make since. By the way the girls actually enjoy the story's. I love that it doesn't use books where all the words rhyme. In real life not everything you read is going to have the same ending sound. Reading Kingdom's books are based on sentence structure instead of word sounds.

Each lesson is around 15 minutes or so. You can pause the lesson but the amount of time is limited. I believe it can only be paused for 12 minutes. You can also stop the lesson if you need to and go back to it later. We usually complete the lesson in one sitting and they are usually asking if its OK to do another lesson. Yup, its that fun for the girls!  They actually ask to do more than the required one lesson a day.



Both of the girls read well above there grade levels. So I am having trouble judging if there has been an improvement in there reading or not. They just love the program. We were around week 5 of the program using it 4 days a week. When I realized Hotrod Girl's spelling is improving.  Praise the Lord her spelling is getting better, I so did not expect that to happen. I was in complete shock today when she passed a spelling test. Out of 16 words she only missed one, One that's it one word. Something in this program is working where all the phonics rules didn't. She is also starting to enjoy writing. This week she ask to write a letter to an old friend of her great grandma's. I read the letter before she sent it so we could make corrections if needed. I was so excited to see that her sentence structure is getting better. Her sentences flow like they should. Her spelling was so much better she only needed to correct a few words. This program ask them to write a lot. I think that all the writing is really helping to improve her spelling. 





 Snoopy girl's ability to figure out words and there meaning has improved. Since she reads at a higher level than most 6 year old's she some times comes accost a word that she just has no idea what it means. With Reading Kingdom she is learning skills to figure out the meaning of those words. She is my graphics kid. She absorbs the information so much quicker if she has that visual. Reading Kingdom gives her lots of visuals and it also offers auditory learning. If she cant figure out a word she can click it and it tells her the word. It talks to her. She says she feels like "My Owl is teaching me and helping me when I get stuck." 
She has recently moved to the next level in the program. 




Hooray for fun reading programs that actually work!
I want to encourage everyone to get Social and check out Reading Kingdoms social media Pages

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I also want everyone to click the banner below and read all the other great Crew Reviews. If you have a child with Autism be sure to check out the Reading Kingdom for ASD reviews. 

We are going on a Jungle Adventure !

We are going on a Jungle Adventure! OK not really we are looking for healthy maple trees. Why are we tromping through the forest looking for Maple trees you ask.  That's because if we don't find and mark them now while they still have there leaves me and the girls wont be able to find them when it comes time to tap them. That's right we are going to explore the world of Sugaring.

In case you are not familiar with Maple Sugaring. Its is a process where you extract sap from a Maple tree and boil it down to make Maple syrup or sugar. Its quite a lengthy process and must be done when the nights are below 32 degrees and the days are above 32. That is the prime time for the sap to begin flowing in the trees. You only have about a 6 week window to collect your sap. Unfortunately there are no leaves on the trees during that time of year. So that means you either have to tromp around in the forest and mark your trees before the leave fall off in the fall. Or you have be able to identify the trees by the bark or the branches. I can identify a maple by looking at the branches but when the branches are 10 ft or more above your head they are kind of hard to see. So me and the girls have spent the last two days tramping around in the woods with a can of bright orange spray paint.

During this Maple tree finding process we have discovered several things.  First of which is that before we bought the property someone logged it and when I say logged I mean they basically clear cut it. I figure it was about two generations a go judging from the tree growth we have now. Thankfully they left enough trees so that they could reseed. The only trees that have been cut since then are the dead and damaged trees we take down for fire wood. So far we found 4 good candidates for tapping. We have also marked the saplings and Maples that are still too small for tapping. We marked them because when we begin clearing underbrush this winter we want to be sure we save the maple trees for the next generation. Second of all me and the girls learned that we need to do some serious brush clearing this winter. We ventured to the back side of the property where hardly anyone ever goes. The saplings and underbrush has gotten so thick I had to leave the girls on the other side of the creek so I could hack a path big enough to get through just to mark the tree.

So this winter I will be clearing paths to the Maple trees. I will clear a paths for both the ones that are ready to tap now and the ones that we will probably tap in the future. I may even bribe the girls into helping.

Stay Tuned for our Maple Sugaring adventures!

USAopoly Game Review

Game NIGHT!!!! Friday nights are official game nights in our house. Me the girls and the grandparents gather around the table. For the past few weeks we have been playing more often. That's because we received two new games from USAopoly ~ http://USAopoly.com. I would love to introduce to your family to Wonky: The Crazy Cubes Card Game, and Tapple: Fast Word Fun for Everyone. Both games arrived at the same time, and they just so happened to arrive on a Friday. We had to take a vote on which game to play first. Wonky won the vote. 

Wonky is a crazy game about building wobbly towers with funkie shaped blocks. The goal is to be the first one to get rid of all your cards and not be the one to knock the tower down. Its geared for ages 8+ and its made for 2 or more players. It sells for about $19.95. It comes it a cool looking box and don't worry its got easy to understand directions. It comes with 9 irregular shaped blocks, 54 strategy cards, a storage bag and the directions. I unpacked the box on the table read the directions through a few times and then explained it to the girls. We passed out the appropriate number of cards, and started to play. We quickly learned that these oddly shaped blocks were not so easy to stack. The game is simple enough that my 6 year old plays it. She can read the cards and follow what they ask her to do. She doesn't always get the blocks to stack with out falling over. This frustrated her at first and she wanted me to take them out to the wood shop and sand them all square. Now she has gotten better and she loves that she gets to play. We all end up laughing our heads off as we end up making it tumble down. So far we have only managed to stack it 7 blocks high. We are determined to stack all 9 blocks before winter is over. This game has been so good for their find motor skills. I also love that they are using it to learn team building. I watched the two of them play the other afternoon. Instead of trying to place blocks so the other would rumble it over. They were discussing which card each of them could play to help build the tower taller with out it tumbling over when the other one played a card.

We played Tapple the next night. I know your thinking what in the heck is Tapple right? I wondered the same thing when we first got it. Tapple is a word game that is designed for ages 8+ and 2-8 players. It takes around 10-20 minutes to play and it sells for around $19.95.  The basis of Tapple is to select a category say a word that fits tap the timer and pass it on to the next person. The catch is you cant use a word that begins with the same letter more than once. So if i go first and the category is toys and I say car. No one else can say a word that starts with C. One side of the cards are red and one side is blue. The blue side has easier categories than the red side. We use the blue side so that both the girls can play. Snoopy is only 6 but she can hold her own at this game. She reads and spells well enough that she can give me a real run for my money. We usually play a couple rounds at a time. I have found that it really gets the girls thinking and using their vocabulary. I love it when they start using all those words I've been feeding to them for the last 4 years.  

our Tallest Tower to date

We have played these two games so many times since they arrived I have lost count. We are getting ready for a family camping trip and both of these games will be tagging along for some extra fun. I want to encourage everyone to click the link below and see what the other crew members are saying about these fun family games.  Social Media:
Twitter https://twitter.com/USAopoly
Instagram https://instagram.com/usaopoly/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/usaopoly
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/usaopoly/

Retractable Screen Door's

I have found the greatest invention known to man. Ok its not that good but it is a wonderful invention. Our up stairs front door swings inward but has a low hanging eve. So if you have a screen door it hits the eve of the house and only opens about 2 ft wide. The house came this way when my parents bought it. Recently when my grandmothers health started getting worse we had to remove the screen door so that I could get her in and out of the house. It was so nice not having to fight the screen door just to get in. How ever as spring arrived I began to miss opening the front door. Now fall is hear and I still miss being able to open the door. This is where the trip to the home improvement store came in. Shopping for a new screen door I discovered that they make a retractable version. Holy cow batman the thing essentially roles up and out of the way. Needles to say we snatched that baby up.

So now the new front door is completed and its time to install the new screen door. I haul the box up stairs rip it open and stare at the parts for a while. The box says installs in 30 minutes. I am thinking this is more like a two hour project. I hate reading directions but it was clear this was going to be one of those projects that I was going to need the directions for. I quickly glanced over the directions and declared I knew what I was doing. The hole thing turned out to be fairly easy. You basically snap the top and bottom tracks on to the sides. Then stick it against the facing of your house and screw it on. We have a deck and our door threshold is slightly lower than the deck. I did not want the bottom track of the screen to stick up above the deck. I was thinking older parents and tripping hazard.  Out comes trusty drill, wood chisel, and my favorite ball-peen hammer. It took me an extra 15 minutes to chisel out the space I needed on the deck boards. Now out beautiful retractable screen sits flush with the deck and it actually works. If you are looking for a new screen door definitely look into one of these. Check out this handy work. Now that's one good looking screen (ignore the cut out you see on the top left that was for the old screen door to open i'll fix that one day)

Super Teacher Worksheets Review

For the last 6 weeks or so, I have been supplementing the girls curriculum with Super Teacher Worksheets. I received a one year Individual membership you can find the sign up page here: https://www.superteacherworksheets.com/individual-membership.html?t=bn. This site is packed full of work sheets for math, science, reading, phonics, writing, grammar, social studies etc. You can find worksheets for grades pre k-5th grade. It also includes a worksheet generator to help you create more worksheets. All for a great low price of  $19.95 for a one year membership.

You get a good bang for your buck at Superteacherworksheets.com. There is a huge variety of worksheets on Super Teacher. I have been using first grade and 3rd grade work sheets with a few pre k tossed in when I baby sat my niece . I have been taking advantage of the science work sheets and the math worksheets. My oldest has been using a lot of multiplication worksheets. She has been having a tough time memorizing her multiplication tables. So the extra worksheets have been good for her.  I was unable to get the work book for our science curriculum this year. But so far I have been able to find at least 1-2 worksheets for the lessons we have been covering over the last 6 weeks. I found the web site its self easy to navigate. Subjects run down the left hand side. Under each subject heading you will find different sub categories. You click on what you want and it brings up worksheets under that category.

The pages download and print nicely. I use google chrome as my browser. I did try using it in the new browser that windows 10 provides. I think its called edge. I had issues getting the worksheets to open with it. But I have had lots of issues with that browser and other sites. So I simply use it on Chrome, and it works great.


I am very pleased with the variety of worksheets. I am also very happy with the content on the work sheets. All of the ones we have used are well written and easy for my kids to understand. I would like to mention that some of the work pages are aligned with common core and they are clearly marked. Some worksheets also have Spanish versions available. We have not used them but I wanted to mention it in case that is an important feature for someone. All work sheets also come with an answer key. I love a good answer key. When you are schooling two kids on your own I just don't have time to solve all the problems my self.

I am also in love with the File Cabinet. It is a place where you can store the worksheets that you are going to want to use at a later date. When I am planning my week out, I skim through the work sheets and find anything that goes along with what we are going to be doing. There is a icon of a little file folder below each worksheet listing. I simply click it and it sticks it in my file cabinet. So later when I get ready to print, I don't have to go back through all the listing to get to the ones that I want. I love anything that makes doing my job easier.

I would love for everyone to click the link below and check out what the other crew members are saying about Superteacherworksheets.com.

Thoughtful Wednesday

Someone ask me this week when homeschool parents have parent teacher conferences.  First I had to explain that as a homeschool mom I am both the parent and the teacher. I do have time when I look back over test and things and do a little evaluation to be sure I am not missing anything. At any given time I know how the girls are doing in each subject. Because I teach them, I know there strengths and weaknesses.  So do homeschool moms have parent teacher conferences. Not in the same since that public school parents do. But I can just imagine my teacher self talking to my mommy self. Can you?

The door is in

After a few set backs and figuring out how to level off the threshold the new door is officially in !
It closes and opens, it even looks darn good considering its only got one coat of paint on it. It will take a few days to get it painted. We decided to try the new Marquee paint in Chocolate. Doesn't the color sound yummy.  This is quite possibly the oddest paint I have ever used. I only have the first coat on and its been drying for a while now. But paint appears to be slightly rubbery and has an odd texture to it. The can says it is UV resistant and that's why we bought it. The door gets direct sunlight all day and the stain on the old door just didn't hold up for a full year. I am hoping this new paint will hold up and look nice for a few years.  I will post a picture of the new door as soon as I finish the painting.

The wonderful world of home repair!

We have been having trouble with two of our out side doors for some times now. They were old and splitting and they didn't shut or lock. We finally decided that it was time to replace them. Off to the home improvement store we went. We came home with two doors they don't quite match the other two doors in the house but it was the closest thing we could get.

We set off to tackle the first door. Upon removing the moldings we discovered the rough opening was 1 1/4 inches smaller than the actual door. Apparently the original doors had no frame. They used the rough opening as the frame for the door. Time for a major renovation project shhh don't tell my mom we are trying to keep the hole we are going to rip out the wall on the down low.

The last major home renovation project me and my dad did together left us with out a kitchen for two month. Yup that's right my mom cooked for us on a BBQ in the back yard for two month. So I am sure you can see her distress at finding out the new door wasn't going to be a quick 3 hour project.

OK never mind she caught me with the claw hammer in mid swing with a gaping hole in the dry wall. Guess the secret is out of the bag. We are ripping down the wall. Well at least part of it.  (picture half sobbing half laughing mom here)  Then we turned off the electrical had to re route a double light switch and an outlet. Opps its getting dark guess we will board up the hole so the raccoons cant get in and try to finish it tomorrow.

Fast forward about 4 days we are finally getting back to the door project. (Hey I had 10 acres of lawn to mow and a birthday party to host) We since this is essentially a three story house and the door is on the middle floor. We had to jack up and support the top floor so that we could install a new king stud. Rip out the to shore header. Build a new header and install new jack studs. All while keeping the top floor from falling through to the middle floor.

I am proud to announce that the TOP flood DID NOT fall in !!!!! The header is safely back in place and our wall now sports two extra studs.

Next up actually installing the new door in the hole lets hope this doesn't take a week.

Dark Rising a Book Review

Last year I reviews a book called Dark Hope I was the first book in the Archangel Prophecies series written by Monica McGurk. It was an amazing book and I spent all year waiting for the second book to come out. Well book two is hear and it is called Dark Rising and you are going to want to buy it.

This what the Back of the book says:

Hope Carmichael is on the run. The only question is, from whom?

The mark on her neck has branded her as part of an ancient prophecy, the Bearer of the Key. But the Fallen Angels have misunderstood and think Hope is their long-awaited way to regain Heaven by force. Now Hope is chasing down the artifact that could open Heaven’s Gates, while seeking to destroy it before the Fallen catch up with her. Will the Triad crime ring track Hope and exact their punishment before she gets the chance? Is the ragtag band of angels surrounding her now there to protect her, or imprison her? And will Michael, the Archangel sworn to defend Heaven at all costs, be forced to deny his love for Hope and take her life, instead, so that the artifact won’t fall into enemy hands?

The epic narrative introduced in Dark Hope continues in Dark Rising as Hope crisscrosses some of the most ancient sites in Europe and plumbs the depths of history in search of the truth about the Key, herself, and love. Exploring themes of identity, fate, jealousy, trust, and forgiveness, Dark Rising’s mythological scope and moral urgency deepen as we come to understand the choices and consequences faced by a young woman determined to follow her heart and chart her own destiny.


Sounds totally cool right? When the book showed up in the mail a few weeks a go I couldn't wait to get my grubby little hands in it. Unfortunately I was already working on a review so it had to wait a little bit. But as soon as I got started on it I couldn't put it down. It took me about three days of reading in the evening to finish it. Dark Rising is a great addition to Dark Hope book one of the series. Dark Hope left me wondering what was going to happen next. Dark Rising continued that story as Hope traveled the world looking for the Key. On her journey she discovers how strong she is. She learns of love, loss and what the meaning of sacrifice is.  Like the first book I was very pleased with Dark Rising. It drew me in to the story I could picture my self as Hope. I love a book that allows me to do that. The language was clean, I do not recall finding any bad words which I appreciate greatly. There was one or two sexual references but nothing descriptive. There were a quite a few scripture references but I didn't check to see if they were all accurate. 

In the back there are questions & topics for discussion. These are great if you are doing a book club of if your teen will be doing a report on the book. The author also included an Author Q&A section which I found interesting. Last but not least is a teaser, the very first chapter of book 3 Dark Before Dawn. I love that she included this its got me all excited for book three to come out and I am sitting here wondering when it will be released.

You can order the book in either kindle version or paperback HERE on amazon. The Kindle version is $ 7.99 and the paperback is $14.32. I found the price to be in range of other paperback of this size.

If you read book 1 Dark Hope you are going to want to order Dark Rising as soon as possible.


Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the Author so that I am able to review the series. I may have received some monetary compensation for the review.

Happy Birthday

Today is Hot Rod Girl's Birthday. She is turning the Big 8. I cant believe she is already 8 years old. We had both the girls party on Sunday and I though I would share a picture of Her cake.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl I hope your day is Amazing.

Alpha Omega Publications Review

I have been looking for a first grade phonics program for snoopy. When I received word that I would be reviewing Horizons 1st Grade Phonics & Reading Set. I jumped up and down and squealed like a 3 year old getting candy. Horizons 1st Grade Phonics & Reading Set is a Alpha Omega Publications product. It can be found at http://aophomeschooling.com/TOS.  The first grade phonics and reading set currently sells for $106.95. The set includes a teachers guide, two student work books and two readers. There are 160 lessons in the set. It utilizes a spiral learning format and teacher led learning. Both the work books and readers are in full color. You can find the scope and sequence by clicking this Horizons 1st Grade Phonics & Reading Set. Scroll down toward the bottom of the page and you will see it.

We have been using 1st grade phonics with my now 6 year old. We do the lessons daily, and She is absolutely in love with this set.This is the very first things she grabs when we start class. Each daily lesson is several pages long. A daily lesson is 4-6 pages long and they hold her interest well.  She is workbook kind of girl especially if the pages have color on them. I like that it uses a spiral approach so that she is constantly building on what she already knows. We have just reached our second test and she has done well. I am so proud of her.  The test has given me a good idea of how well she has understood the material we have covered so far.  So I feel safe continuing on with the program at the pace we have been using. I have noticed an improvement in her ability to sound out words. She is using the phonics skills she has learned so far to figure out those tricky words.

The set comes with two student readers. These readers are another great benefit of the program. Each daily lesson has a corresponding story. Each story is labeled with the lesson, so your child can match up the story with the lesson that they did for the day. Snoopy is already reading well on her own but these stories have helped to reinforce the phonics lesson of the day. Each days story uses the phonics lesson that they learned in the work book. So they are getting lots of practice and she loves the stories. She says they are funny and enjoys telling us all about them.

This set also includes a Teachers guide. I haven't had many teachers guides, so I don't have a lot of experience judging if one is good or not. But I found this teachers guide to be very helpful. It offers teaching tips on one side of the page and the other shows an answer key for the student work books. The answer key is in the form of little pictures of the student workbook pages, with the answers filled in. I personally like the teaching tips. I am good with phonics, but some times I like to have a different way to explain something just to be sure she is really getting it. I have no real complaints other than the little pictures of the student work book pages could be slightly larger. So that I don't have to put my glasses on to see the answers.

Snoopy has really enjoyed the program and nothing makes me happier than to see my kids enjoy learning and reading. Please click the link below to see some other great Alpha Omega product reviews from the Crew Members.



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Birthday's

Its Snoopy Girls birthday! My baby is turning the big 6 in the morning. She has been excited about turning 6 for weeks now. But tonight as I tucked her in to bed and reminded her I was headed down to start her birthday breakfast. She pulled me in real close and whispered mommy "I just don't think I am ready to be 6 just yet. But I sure do want those cinnamon roles you are making for me in the morning."

The Lord has blessed me with an AMAZING daughter. My days would not be the same with out her.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SNOOPY GIRL!

Windows 10 installed and nothings smoking

I bit the bullet and downloaded Windows 10 today. This was a scary download for me. I was worried one of my older homeschool programs would not be compatible. But I hated windows 8. The download and installation took forever about 5 hours. Downloading and installing was straight forwards it just took forever. But we are up and running again and so far nothing has crashed. It appears to be a blend of windows 7 and windows 8. Its is much easier for me to navigate than windows 8 was. I am not sure I like the new Microsoft Edge yet only time will tell. So far I am a little frustrated that Norton will not work on it. I am hoping Norton or Edge will come out with a fix for the problem soon. All in all I just though I would tell everyone that I made the upgrade and nothing blew up or started smoking.

Funtastic Unit Studies Review

 

 

School is in full swing here in our home. The girls are getting back into the grove of it all and I am back to trying to figure out what cool bonus science project we are going to do for the week. This is where the Science Unit Studies For Homeschoolers and Teachers book comes in. It is a Science Unit Studies book For Homeschoolers and Teachers. The vendor is Funtastic Unit Studies and at the time of this review the book is selling for $16.95. You can get it at several different places just go to the vendors site above and they have the links to order. This book provides science unit studies for children ages 4-13. The first 4 chapters are units designed for ages 4-7 and the second 10 are for ages 8-13. The book contains 20 chapters in all. Each chapter teaches basic science concepts that use items you most likely already have in your house. Some chapters also have worksheets and test.

 

Chapters are:

1. Our Senses

2. The Human Body

3. Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life

4. Animals

5. Insects and Their Kin

6. Fun with Magnets

7. Stars and Planets

8. Health

9. Beginning Plants

10. Animal Ecology

11. Insects

12. Microscopes and Invisible Creatures

13. Atoms and Molecules

14. Matter

15. Chemistry Fun

16. Weather

17. Forces and Motion

18. Simple Machines

19. Light and Color

20. Plants II

 

The book has quite a few unit studies in it and I had to explore the book before deciding which we wanted to do.  My sister got the girls dino dig kits a few weeks a go. They have now gone dino crazy so we chose do to the Dinosaur and Prehistoric Life unit study. It is geared for ages 4-7 so it fit the girls age range. We spent around a week on the unit and the girls really enjoyed it.

 

At the beginning of each unit the book will give a list of materials that will be needed to complete the unit. I love the list it makes it easy for me to get everything together before hand. So far most of the items are things we have already had in our house. I did have to buy cream cheese because well I made cheese cake with it before we got to that part of the unit. Who can blame me though its cheese cake right.
There are 6 parts to the Dinosaur and Prehistoric Life unit. Each part has some directions and several activities that you can do with your kids. The unit also gave some suggestions for additional learning resources. Like movies that might go along with the unit or finding books at your local library. We were able to collect books from the library and located the Magic School Buss movie that this unit suggested. We did all the activities suggested in the unit. We found the activities to be easy to follow and understand which is great for my younger kids.  
We did all the activities in the unit but these two were our favorite. The #1 favorite was the Bagel Stegosaurus. We cut a bagel in half then used carrots for the head and tale and apple pieces for the spines. Cream cheese held it all together. The girls have made these several more times for breakfast since we did this unit. We also made dinosaur eggs using small plastic dinosaurs that I just happened to have in the prize box and some grated soap. We used Ivory left over from a previous experiment. They formed it around the little dino's and then they used it to wash their hands. The more they washed the quicker they got to the dinosaur.

  

  Over all Funtastic Unit Studies offers a good amount of unit studies for its Price. I like that I can use it for more than one grade level. The author does offer some freebies on her site I would like to suggest you to try them out because they are fun:   

  Freebies:Here's a link to a page  that has two free pdf units from the book:http://funtasticunitstudies.com/science-unit-studies-book/

And here's a link that has some other, unrelated, freebies:http://funtasticunitstudies.com/lessons-and-activities/
Historical Chapter Book   I would like to invite everyone to click the link below and see what the other Crew Members had to say about Funtastic Unit Studies. There are so many different unit studies I am sure they all tried something different.                          

DIY Project

The girls love making crafts. So when my sister sent me a picture of these cool little sun catcher spinney things I knew we had to make them.

These little beauty's are made out of recycled water bottles. Basically you peal off the label and then color them in with sharpie markers. Once they are colored you snip off the bottom and then cut around the bottle in a spiral tell you get to the neck. Then tie a string around the top to hang them. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeeze. Our tree in the back yard is now decorated with them. I'm not sure how long the color will last hanging in the direct sun. But for now they look cool and It was a great rainy day project.

Loose Teeth

Today my daughter lost a tooth. This is her third loose tooth and the event is still a dramatic one. Her teeth take forever to fall out once they start getting loose. The top front tooth has been loose for months now. She wiggles it but it does no good they just come out when they are good and ready. Today she is blaming it on the sandwich. Yup that's right she lost a tooth in a sandwich a turkey sandwich to be precise.  She is all in a panic about the tooth. Running around the kitchen yelling what do I do what do I do!!!!! Little sister is chanting PULL IT OUT PULL IT OUT ! over and over again at the top of her lungs as I am trying to get her to calm down and let me look at it.  I finally catch her and the offending tooth is just dangling. When I say dangling I mean she can exhale and it flops around. I tried to convince her to let me take it out the rest of the way but she wont budge.  The dentist told her when they get that loose she has until bedtime to yank it herself or mom has to do it. I offered her an extra dollar to let me yank it right now but she is standing firm and wont let me do it. I told her she has 15 minutes to decide then the offer is off the table. If she waits tell bed time and I still have to yank it no dollar. Little sister is currently trying to convince her that the dollar is totally worth it.

What funny tooth stories do you have?

Homeschool Buyers Co-op Review

 

Are you are in the market for a online homeschool planner/tracking program? I have a great product that I want to share with you. It comes from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op  ~  http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/ and its called Homeschool Planet. I think this program does everything but the dishes. It is a online program, at the time of this post you can buy either a yearly or monthly subscription. Monthly it goes for $6.95 or you can go for the yearly subscription for $65.00. I received the yearly subscription for this review.  Homeschool Planet offers a truck load of features. Well not really a truck load but it does offer a lot of great features. Hear is a quick over view of what the program does.  First off are the feature for running a house: To Do List and Shopping List that you can text or email. Calendar sharing, widgets to do research or send text messages. There is also a mobile version so you can access things on the go. Then you have the Homeschool Features: Lesson plans, attendance tracking, a planner, a calendar, separate logins for each child to log in view and check off their assignments, a daily digest, email and text message reminders. There is also tracking for attendance, grades, and time spent, and transcripts. You can even print off reports for just about anything you would need a report for while home schooling.

 

Since Homeschool Planet offers so many great features I decided I would talk most about the features that have been most useful for me and the girls.

 

We just started our new school year. I was a little worried about setting up a new school year and learning a new program. It took a month to get the hang of my old program. Turns out I was worried about nothing. Getting started was easy peasy. I signed up for the Homeschool buyers co-op. The Co-op is free to sign up for. Once I had a log in, I then signed up for my copy of Homeschool Planet. I think it took me all of 15min to do. From there I logged into my Homeschool Planet account. You will find some simple to follow tutorial videos under the help button located at the top right of the screen. You click the help button then select online help. It opens a page where you can access how to articles and tutorial videos. I do recommend that you watch the videos. They give you a quick easy to understand way to get set up and going with the program. How ever Homeschool Planet is easy enough to operate that you can figure most of the program out on your own. I had my school year set up in about 20 minutes. You find the school year & vacation set up under the settings button on the top right. It allows you to put in your start and finish dates, vacation days/holidays. From that same screen you can select different tabs. You can set subjects, grading, if you want the program to track time on classes or assignments. You can set if you want Homeschool Planet to share your calendar with google calendar and vice versa. You can input the information about your school like name, location, phone number etc. You can even change the back ground theme of Homeschool Planet. The girls chose a horse them.

Once I had all the general stuff set up subjects vacation days, start and end dates I moved on to adding students. You do this on the left side of the page. There is an add a person button. You can actually add in other people beside students if you plan on them needing the schedule or if you want to have Homeschool Planet email them reports etc. Since its just me and the girls, my page shows Mom, HotRod girl, and Snoopy. You can customize each profile with a cute little picture of the person or what ever you want. You can put in email address and phone number so that they can be sent the digest and reminders by email or text. Neither of my girls have email or cell phones yet so this is a feature we don't use but I like that it is an option for when they get older. You can also select if you wish for attendance to be tracked for each person. We don't use this feature yet, but you can provide each person with an individual login password. The program also allows you to restrict what they have access to and what they are allowed to make changes to.

Under each person you can input the classes and assignments they need to do. It only takes a couple clicks to get it done. You can even list birthdays holidays and appointments, chores etc. for each individual person. We only use the class and assignment features at the moments. I like to pre schedule classes. I click on a time on my calendar select class. From there I can add what class I want them to do. I can set the dates for how long I want the class to run. I can set the grading scale, time spend on the class, I can give it assignments and add resources to those assignments. Once an assignment is entered you can then check off when it has been completed straight from your main calendar. If you have set up grading for each subject you can also give a grade to the assignment from the main calendar or use the grading helper. I have been setting up a weeks worth of assignments on Saturday so that I don't have to enter assignments during the week. All I have to do during the week is open the calendar and mark off if an assignment has been completed. I can also award a grade if necessary. If you set up access for your child they can check off completed assignments them selves. This is something the girls will be doing in the future.

You can find a grading helper and a rescheduling helper at the top under a tab called helpers. The grading helper is self explanatory it gives you the assignments for the day and allows you to give a grade for each assignment all in one place. I don't use the rescheduling helper much but its fairly simple. When you open it you are given a few choices. You select which one fits best what you need to do. Reschedule an over due assignment, reschedule over due assignment and todays assignments or reschedule assignments by making it a day off. Once you have selected an option it then gives you a quick choice on where you want the assignment to go. From the main calendar you can drag a class to another day if you need to move one class quickly. 

Resources are also a an important part of home schooling. Homeschool Planet offers a resource section. This is where you can input all the resources that you plan to use for the year. You can put them in by workbook, book, website, DVD, Cd, article, file from computer etc. You can also select which subject you would like the resource to be under. The best part is the ISBN lookup feature. You simply select book, workbook, or textbook enter the ISBN number and hit look up. It will then search for the book and enter the known information for you. It saves some time and keeps me from having to enter it all manually.


So far Homeschool Planet is running smoothly. I had one small glitch with internet explorer but technical support was wonderful and got the issue fixed right away. The only thing I feel the program is missing is a reading log. My girls read a lot of library books for free reading. I need to keep track of these books. How ever I do not want to have to enter them each as an assignment and resource. I prefer my resources to just list the curriculum books and websites that we are using for our core classes. It would be great to have a designated reading list where the girls could enter the book ( ISBN lookup would be great) and then list how much time they spent on the book.

I am very happy with Homeschool Planet and its ease of use. I hope you will click the link below and see what other Crew members are saying about Homeschool Planet. I also wanted to mention that Homeschool Planet offers a free 30 day trial and no credit card is required so give it a try. http://www.homeschoolbuyersco-op.org/ 


Social Media:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolbuyers
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hsbuyerscoop
Google+: https://plus.google.com/112069021534542740249/about

Happy Independance Day

Image from: http://www.eahelp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/happy-4th-of-july-2012-fireworks-flag-usa.jpg

Throw Back Thursday

 THROW BACK THURSDAY

 

Anyone remember these ?

 

 

Moisturizing anti-aging facial mist

I have never shared one of my beauty product recipes before and today seemed like a good day to share this one. With summer here I have transitioned from my winter moisturizer to something much lighter. This is a toning blend that contains a few essential oils that I choose for there anti-aging properties.

I use a 2oz glass cobalt bottle with a spray top to blend everything in.

You need
4 drops Frankincence essential oil
4 drops Calendula essential oil
2 drops Roesmary essential oil
4 drops Rose hip oil essential oil
Witch Hazel
Distilled water

I like to put my oils in the bottle first then I fill the bottle 3/4 full with witch hazel and then add distilled water to fill it the rest of the way to the neck. Shake the bottle well before spritzing your face. I apply in the evening and morning after washing my face. One or two sprays does my hole face. Allow to dry before applying your makeup. It adds plenty of moisture to my skin with out having a heavy feeling. I hope everyone enjoys the blend.