Happy Halloween from our family to yours

Wordless Wednsday

Educeri Lesson Subscription Service Review

We were blessed to receive Educeri Lesson Subscription Service from Educeri .......  Educeri a division of DataWORKS .  This is another wonderful subscription service that has tones of downloadable lessons that cover all grade levels. There are 1,000 lessons in Math alone 413 lessons for all math grade levels. 525 lessons for all Language Arts grades, 22 lessons for science though they are mostly for middle through high school. History has 26 lessons for 5th grade and up.  There are even a few Music, Art and PE lessons.


We tried a lesson called Identify Regular and Irregular Verbs. When you go to the page there is a Description about the lesson on the main page. Then off to the side is the good stuff. There is a Teach Lesson button and an additional resources button. Additional Resources will take you to the downloadable student handout. The Teach Button is just that the part you take your child to. There they will actually learn the lesson being taught. The lesson opens in your web browser and is fairly simple to navigate. It has forward and backwards buttons at the bottom. It gives your child an objective and a reminder about prior knowledge, There is also a make a connection and a vocabulary section and a marker for highlighting things as you go. There are some questions along the side of each page to work through as you go along in the lesson. When you have completed the lesson they will do the student handout. Parents answer key is included and they are working on a quiz for your child to do after each lesson.

My 4th grader liked it she said the lessons were fairly easy to understand. I had to explain to her how it worked the first time and after that she was able to navigate the lesson on her own, stopping to ask me questions as she needed. She noted that as she clicked the forward button in the lesson that it would select the answer to the questions on the page. So I had to have her write her answer down on a piece of paper then click to check and see if she was right.

The next one we tried out was Produce Simple Sentences. This one is a 2nd grade lesson like the others it has some printable student handouts. The navigation of the lesson is similar to the others we tried. My second grader need more guidance on it but I expected that. As you read through the lesson it will ask you to do some things like circle the subject. No matter what you click in the lesson it will select the correct answer for you. It will also show the answer when you hit the forward arrow.  So like for my oldest daughter we started having her write down her answer to the question before clicking to check and see if she was correct. Then I remembered the Highlighter feature. So now I have them highlight the answer before clicking to see if they are right. This worked much better than the write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. She also enjoyed the lessons and did well with the student hand outs.

The only down fall we found with the program is that the lessons are not read out loud to the child. This would be such a handy addition for an auditory learner. My daughter likes to both hear and read the lessons. So she was a bit bummed when it did not read the lesson to her. I would also like to see more science and history lessons for the elementary and middle school grades.

Everyone click the link below to see to check out what the other Homeschool Review Crew members tried out at Educeri.

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Road Trip

We took a little trip in our favorite rocket ship!

These pictures will give you a hint.

 We are going to get a little wet on our trip.

And its going to be a little hot

The girls loved seeing all the wind mills making electricity. 

Can anyone guess where we traveled to? 

MyFreezEasy at MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership Review

Good morning my mommy friends. Today I want to introduce you to MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership by MyFreezEasy. I received this membership and its amazing. MyFreezEasy is basically a meal planning service to help you make meals that you prep all in one day and freeze so when you are in a rush you can just pull it out of the freezer toss it in say a crock pot and continue on with your day. Not all recipes are crock pot recipes but whether it's tossing it in a pan or the oven they are all super easy to cook. I chose mostly crock pot recipes because well you just toss it in and go.

The service is easy to you it gives you a great selection of menus for everything form chicken to beef, pork, gluten free etc. The options are really endless and they seem to always be adding new recipe's. The site advertised that you can prep 10 meals for the freezer in 1 hour. It has some great how to videos and directions. Now while I watched all of these videos and read the directions it took me longer than an hour. Imagine that the longer you do this the faster you get at the prep process.

After I watched the how to videos I started flipping through all the recipes and different meal plans that the site has available. I chose to use a mix and match method of different recipe's since I have some picky eaters in my home and I wanted to give this a try with out having to go grocery shopping. So I picked out my recipes and printed them off along with the handy dandy labels and shopping list. I love the shopping list by the way. I never forget anything if I use it and since its already made for me why not. The next morning I got set up to make my freezer meals. You will first label all your freezer bags. Then you should pull out ingredients and get everything chopped and cut up for each recipe. Next you will want to pre-cook anything that your directions tell you to pre-cook. Once all of that is done you will begin to put everything for each meal into the pre-labeled bags smash out all the air or as much as you can and pop them in the freezer. I like to lay mine flat tell they freeze then I found that I can stand them upright in baskets in the freezer to save on room. You can fit a lot of these baby's in the freezer if you wanted to.  Forgive me I forgot to take a picture of them all stacked up in my freezer but it looks just like the picture above only its all sitting in my freezer.

When it came time to uses them I basically dumped it in the crock pot and continued on with my day. I did have a couple of meals that needed to be cooked in the oven or on the stove and those were almost as easy to cook as the crock pot meals are. The only difference is I needed to keep a better watch on it as it was finishing up in the oven or stove top. A lot of the things that go into the bags are pre cooked so when it comes down to putting the actual meal together it flies by. So far every freezer meal we have tried has been amazingly good. Octobers recipes just came out a few days a go and my girls are dying to try Cheeseburger Nachos.

I want everyone to click the link below and read what the other Crew Mom's thought about about MyFreezEasy.com.

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Everyday Education, LLC Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting Review

For the last couple of months we have had the pleasure of using Perfect Reading, Beautiful Handwriting by Everyday Education, LLC. This is a very simple step by step program that you can use to teach your child to read as well as how to write beautifully. You can use this program as your primary reading and handwriting program or as a supplement. We chose to use it as a handwriting supplement. The program consist of 60 lessons and is phonics based. It starts with Italic handwriting that progresses from straight to a slant and joined writing. It comes in both a downloadable version or a printed/bound physical book that has 218 pages.

We received the downloadable version of Perfect reading, Beautiful Handwriting. Currently the price for the downloadable version is $27.00. We chose to use this mainly as a handwriting supplement since both of the girls are already reading. The program is easy to download and navigate. It comes with some easy to follow basic instructions on how to use it. The writing pages start out with straight letters and progress on to slanted and then joined lettering. Chapters 1-5 are phonics based lessons and start out with straight writing. Chapter 6 is the handwriting chapter. In this area is where all the handwriting magic happens. Chapter 6 covers all of these handwriting areas.

• Different Ways Italic Can Look 170
• Using This Chapter 172
• “The Night Before Christmas” Copywork 174
• Slanted Letters 180
• Trace, Copy, and Finish 186
• Reproducible Guide Sheet: Slanted 187
• Writing in a Smaller Size 188
• Reproducible Guide Sheet – Smaller Size 189
• Joining Letters Together 190
• Joining Practice 192
• Using the Edged Pen 196
• Adding Serifs 200
• Reproducible Guide Sheet for Edged Pen 203
• Variations 204
• Joined Writing with an Edged Pen 208

We skipped ahead a little to the slanted lettering because the girls were already writing straight lettering fairly well. We did lessons about three days a week. I found this one chapter to be enough to improve the girls letter formation and they are beginning to understand how to connect the letters. Some pages we have printed more than once for additional practice. I still have to watch my lefty because she tends to start letters from right to left for some reason but over all we are seeing some slow improvements with her writing.

The first 5 chapters are the phonics chapters while we did not use these specifically I did look through them. I liked the way it was laid out the simplicity was nice and the instructions for teaching it were easy to understand. The phonics are very basic and great for a beginner just learning how to read. It makes it nice that they are learning how to write at the same time they are learning phonics. Buy combining both it is a great time saver and its nice to combine things when ever possible. 

If you click the banner below you can read how some of the other Homeschool Review Crew members used the phonics portion of the program.

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Just a picture

We did a little traveling last week and I decided this month I would share some pictures from our travels. I liked the lighting and clouds in this picture. The sun was just coming up over the mountains behind us and made this great shadow across the desert and mountains. 

Spencer Learning Ultimate Phonics Reading Program Review

Are you ready for another review? I hope so because we were give the chance to try Ultimate Phonics Reading Program by Spencer Learning. As you can tell from the name this is a phonics reading program. Ultimate Phonics Reading is a downloadable software program. This means that you can download it to your computer and use it off line. Right now the program is on sale for 49.95. 

This program is designed to help beginning and struggling readers of all ages. It helps improve reading grade level, comprehension, and spelling. So that your children are not simply memorizing words or guessing and skipping over the ones they don't know. This program can be used in one of two ways. First you can use it as a stand alone reading program. The second way is to use it as a supplement to help your existing reading program work better. We used it as a supplement since both my girls are already decent readers. 

Downloading and installing is just like any other program its easy. I created a little icon on my desk top so it's easy to find when its time to practice. You can start out with the free 30 day trial to test drive the program then you simply enter your license once you have purchased the program. 

Since both the girls are fairly good readers it took a little adjusting to decide where to start them. The girls are using it to pick up on some of the more difficult phonics patterns that our other program seemed to have skipped over. A few days a week they sit down with one of the upper lessons and just run through it. Its fairly simple to use, there are arrows at the top to go forward to the next part of the lesson or double arrows to skip to the next lesson. Below the arrows is where you will see the lesson. There is a little speaker that you can click to have it read to you. You will also see a bigger version of the phonics pattern or letter you can simply hover your mouse over it and it will play the sound for you.  An older child could probably navigate it on there own but I think a younger one would need a little help.

There are six types of lesson pages in the program.

• Idea- pages tell you about important phonics ideas and concepts.
• Pattern- pages tell about letter patterns that represent sounds
• Word list- pages will show you the list of words that are used for a lesson
• Word- pages will break down the words from the list and sound them out for you
• Sight Word- pages display words like the, and, is was etc. These are commonly used words.
• Sentence- pages will provide important reading practice and review of the lesson.

There are 262 phonics lessons, 4,400 words and 2,100 sentences in the program. You can download a scope and sequence for the program if you should happen to need it, and there is a free tracking sheet that you can also download.  I don't see this as a program that a child could use on there own. I feel like a child that is having difficulty reading will need an adult to lead the lessons. How ever a child that is already fairly fluent in reading may be able to navigate the lessons with out too much direction from an adult. Since it had the read it button (aka the little clickable speaker I mentioned above) to help them through the things they are having trouble reading.

The girls felt OK about the program, a little board at times since some of it is review for them but over all it was a well rounded program and covered an amazing amount of phonics lessons. The voice that the program uses is easy to understand and was more human sounding than some of the other programs than I have heard. I liked that there were no dancing characters or games to distract them from the task at hand. It is just straight forward phonics program. I like that it works independent from the internet. More than one child can use the program at a time so its nice for a family that has a couple of kids close together. 

  

Don't forget to click the banner to read how the other Homeschool Review Crew families used Ultimate Phonics Reading Program.

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The simple things

  Just a girl and her dog taking a nap on a rainy  afternoon 

She is toothless look at that smile. Who is the tooth fairy in your house?

Guinea Eggs

One of our Guinea started laying eggs a few weeks a go. The yolk is about the size of a nickel may be a little bigger it can be eaten in one bite. Looks bigger in the pan than what it t is guess I should have put something In the pan for size reference 

CHSH Download Club at CHSH-Teach.com review

We had the opportunity to review the CHSH Download Club  at CHSH-Teach.com. We were given an annual subscription to the site. Currently and annual subscription to the site is $25 so that's not a bad price considering you can find things for pre k -12th grade.  This site is basically a big stash of homeschooling resources that you can download and print. The site says there are over 50,000 downloadable educational fun. At first I really was not sure what I was going to try out on this site. So I did a little surfing around and played with it for a few days just getting the feel of what was on it and how it worked. Then on the third trip to the site I stumbled on to the dinosaurs. Yup, I knew right away this just what I had been looking for. We are going to be visiting a dinosaur museum in a few weeks and I had been looking for something that would fit the field trip but wouldn't be too hard for a 7 and 9 year old to do on there own. I wanted to start learning how to research. So I printed off the dinosaur pages that I found there were a bunch enough to fill a nice notebook. Downloading was easy and I had no trouble getting it to open on my computer. The pages were great, it had a picture of what the dinosaur looked like. Then is had areas for the girls to fill out. It ask for things like scientific name, where they lived at, what they ate, how big they were, how much they weight. It basically ask everything that a kid would want to know about a dinosaur.  This gave the girls a jumping off point to start there research and a great way to record the information that they could review any time they liked.

CHSH has a wide variety of subjects available on the download club. Bible Studies, Social Studies, Math, Languages, Science, Language Arts and more. We have downloaded a lot of the math sheets to uses as our daily work sheets for the last couple of weeks. We found pages for things like fractions and multiplication tables. I felt the variety was really good and gave us lots of things to choose from. I also printed off a set about volcano's. We have not hit the Volcano unit in our science curriculum yet but I know that these will be a great addition to our unit study and I am excited to see the girls start using them.

CHSH Download Club continues to add new content all the time. So you keep getting new content as you go through the year. As a subscriber you can even share your own units, or work sheets with other Download Club subscribers.


Click the Banner below to see more about the CHSH Download Club. Other Crew Reviewers may have tried out something different on the site that you might want to hear about.

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Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation with Astronomy Review

We were blessed with the opportunity to review Exploring Creation with Astronomy, 2nd Edition for Apologia Educational Ministries  ~  http://www.apologia.com/

This was our first experience using an Apologia science curriculum. Our kit came with a number of items. There was a student text, a notebooking journal for grades 3+, a junior notebooking journal for grades k-2/3, we also received a Audio CD.

There are 14 lessons in the Astronomy set. It has 63 total activities  42 of them are activities found in the textbook and 21 of them are bonus activities that are noted in the textbook but only found in the Apologia Astronomy Science Kit.

It is a full color curriculum this means the hardback text book is colored and the student notebooking journals are colored. We used both the junior notebook and the standard notebook. I felt both notebooks worked well for multiple grade levels. This is something that is often a little hard to do when a curriculum can be used for more than one grade level. They are spiral bound which makes using them great and the pages don't start falling out half way though the year. The beginning on the notebooking journals have a suggested daily schedule that has check off boxes. My girls like this feature I hand wrote the date in next to each daily assignment so that they could keep track of what day they were on. Now these notebooking journals are a bit heavy in the writing department. But that was to be expected with a notebooking journal. The colored pictures made each writing lesson fun and the cut out projects were a hit with the girls. I did appropriate the fact that they were careful to ensure there was nothing printed on the back of a page they needed to cut out.

We received a Exploring Creation With Astronomy CD. This is an MP3 Audio Book so you do need an MP3 compatible cd player. Basically its the text book read to you. This is a super handy item if you have an auditory learner or a slow reader. We used this off an on depending on the lesson. The girls like to play the audio and follow along in the text book. We also use it as a way to review the lessons at the end of the month. We have even listened to it in the car when we were learning on the go.

Exploring Creation with Astronomy text book is very well done. It comes as a hardback full color book. It's loaded with pictures and graphics. The girls liked how each lesson is explained but the activities were by far the favorite part. We found an activity on how to make a compass in lesson 5. The girls plan on taking a copy of this activity with them on the next camping trip to see if they can navigate on a hike with it. At the end of a lesson there is a what do you remember section. This generally ask a few questions to help your child recall what was taught through the lesson. There is an answer key in the back of the text book in case you need it. At the back of the text book you will also find a supply list broken down by lesson. I loved this I could quickly and easily find what I was going to need to complete the next lesson. This helped me to get ready before hand and I always had the items on hand by the time we actually needed them. I did notice on the website that they have a Exploring Creation Astronomy Kit which has the text book notebook etc but it also has some of the non perishable items that you will need to complete the activities. http://www.apologia.com/astrono/489-astronomy-2nd-edition-lab-kit.html.   If I was buying this same curriculum again I would definitely go with the kit. It would save a lot of time and prep work.

We really enjoyed Exploring Creation with Astronomy and I cant wait to get my hands on Exploring Creation with  Human Anatomy and Physiology next year. If you want to read more about Exploring Creation with Astronomy Click the banner below. If you want to read more great reviews from me and the girls don't forget to follow my blog there are several option on the right.



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Puffy Clouds

Drove by the lake today I snapped these beautiful puffy cloud pictures and I wanted to share. I hope you enjoy !

HomeSchool Scholastics, WAY Comes Home Kit Review

Health class is in session. We are doing a health class from HomeSchool Scholastics, an i4 Learning company We are using the WAY Comes Home Kit and it's loaded with activities and lessons your kids are sure to love. Take a look at the picture and see all the great things that come in the kit. There are three levels of work books covering grades K-1, 2-3, and grades 4-5, Posters, activity pages, a DVD, Stethoscope, Scale, Finger print ink. teachers book etc.

There are 5 modules in this program. Each Module has three sections a Health Safari, Me Mysteries, and Innerspace Adventure. Module 1 is called getting started. Module 2 is called Where do you begin? Module 2 is Let's Get Active, Module 4 is The Nutrition WAY, and Module 5 is Health-It's Personal. We used the grade 2-3 workbook and the grade 4-5 workbook. The WAY me mysteries workbook is for grades 2-3 and the WAY Innerspace Adventure workbook is for grades 4-5. The workbooks are nice, they are colored and include some instruction and activities for you child to do. I found the workbooks to be easy to use. The teachers manual is a great help. It explains what you are teaching and just gives some really easy to follow directions for teaching this program to you kids. Each Module or activity has a Parent Prep section to help you make sure you as the teacher are ready to teach the class. There is a lesson at a glance section which gets you going on teaching the lesson. It tell you things like additional library books that you can get. What you need for the lesson. and a What to Do section which tells you the steps for teaching the lesson. This part is broke down by number so its easy to follow it even tells you what video segment to use with your child.

We used the video like instructed in the teachers manual. It ask us to start with the introduction and use each video before each of the lessons. My 2nd grader liked it but my 4th grader felt it was a baby video and got board with it a little easy I had to keep reminding her to pay attention. Over all it was decent video and helped them to get started with the days lesson. The video also has a physical activity section that has some fun easy exercises to get your kids up and moving. Both girls liked this section as they had one for each of grade level groups. The spent a lot of time giggling and having fun with it. This was our go to exercise video on rainy days.

I found the content of the program to be well rounded but a tad to simple for my 4th grader. Many of the things we had already covered in a lower grade. So if this is the first health class your 4th grader has ever done than it will most likely be a great program for them. If they have done a health class before than it will be more of a review. For my 2nd grader the content was just right. It covered the important things she needed to know in a fun way. She enjoyed the included stethoscope as well as the cool scales.  The activity pages and other items helped to bring a hand on aspect to the class. Making it easier to remember the lessons. Both of the girls learned some great things with this program and they had some fun doing it. Don't forget to click the link below and see what all the other Crew members are saying about HomeSchool Scholastics. Everyone tried out a different level !

Happy Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !

Enlivenze LLC Tyrannosaurus Rex Review

We are testing out something new and completely different than we have ever tried before. This product comes from Enlivenze LLC and it is a self-contained Tyrannosaurus Rex puzzle called FlipStir. This is a self-contained, 10 piece 3D puzzle. Using this is so simple yet changeling. This puzzle comes sealed in a container that is shaped like a tube or bottle. It has a special wand with a hook on the end that you use to move the pieces around and get them in order. Instructions are simple Shake up the tube, Stir it around then solve the puzzle. The Tyrannosaurus Rex puzzle is a level 1 puzzle and it is designed for ages 7+.  The FlipStir is MADE IN THE USA which is a big bonus in my book. I love made in the USA products.

FlipStir has won a bunch of awards

• 2015 Dr. Toy Top Ten Best Active Toys
• 2015 Creative Child Magazine "Puzzle of the Year"
• 2015 Seal of Approval from The National Parenting Center
• 2015 Family Choice Awards Winner
• 2014 Tillywig "Brain Child" award
• 2014 Creative Child Magazine "Game of the Year - Puzzle Games Category"
• Toy Man News & Reviews - The Toy Man "Seal of Approval," The Toy Man "Award of Excellence," The Toy Man "Editor's Choice," The Toy Man "Award of Recognition," The Toy Man "S.T.E.M. Award," The Toy Man "Mom Approved" Award

My favorite part of this hole puzzle is that you cant loose the pieces. This is a perfect on the go puzzle. We love to use it in the car when we are on the road. One person gets to stir it up then they have to pass it on to someone else. We time each other to see how fast we can complete it. Then that person stirs it up and passes it on. There are no real rules for using the FlipStir puzzle. You can use the wand, gravity, you can shake it jiggle it what ever you need to do, to wiggle those pieces back in order. It is great for hand eye coordination and takes a little work to get all those pieces moved around and put together. We keep this one stashed under the seat in the truck and pop it when ever we start getting a little car board-um. We would like to get couple more so we can change up our puzzles every now and then. 

This puzzle has gotten a little addictive, if its sitting around some where and its not solved someone is going to pick it up and solve it, you just cant help your self. My oldest has gotten where she can complete it fairly fast but my little one still spends quite a bit of time working on it. It's one of those games that you just have to finish. I really hope you give a FlipStir a try. These would make great stocking suffers and birthday gifts.  I would love for everyone to click the banner below and see the other Enlivenze LLC products.