This curriculum I received on a disk free from American Heritage Education to review for the Old Schoolhouse Crew.  It comes in three levels; elementary, middle school and high school and is subtitled , “An Adventure in Liberty”, which it truly is.  Each level is about 160-180 pages in length.

The content is organized both by theme and date.  Some of theme’s are things like freedom, unity, progress and responsibility.  The dates range from 1776 to 2000.  Topics include many of the things you think of when you study liberty and American; things like the Bill of rights, the flag, the star spangled banner, declaration of independence and more.

Each unit contains a variety of items.  First it contains text teaching the subject matter then it contains discussion questions, activity and game suggestions, definitions and more.  It varies depending on the lesson.  For instance one of the activities is to learn the preamble in sign language!

As a homeschoolers we are used to adapting things made for the classroom for home use, this one will be no exception.  Some of the activities would be difficult to adapt but most could be modified with a little creativity.  This would also be a great resource for anyone who does history co-ops as well. 

Looking through the guide I had planned on trying out a game called Monarchy at our last co-op meeting but we ended up rescheduling due to illness so we’ll have to try it out next week.  In the game each student gets assigned a role like King, Queen, Noblemen, Merchant, Peasant etc…  They get pretend cash based on who they are.  As the simulation progresses things like taxes, colonization and war take place.  Money changes hands based on the event and at the end there is a suggestion of discussion and a worksheet to fill out about the role you played and how it felt.  This is in the middle school set but I think it could easily be used in a multi-age setting.

When we were in the medieval period I found something similar on-line and the kids loved it so I’m pretty sure this one will go over well too!

In our history co-op we are “almost” to 1776 so I plan on using a lot of this as supplemental material as we get into that era.  I do think most will find this a welcome addition to whatever they are already using though it could be used alone.

I was so excited to get All American History II in the mail to review as part of the Old Schoolhouse Crew.   It’s a complete American history program that covers the Civil War through the 1990’s.  The curriculum contains 32 lessons that are easily adapted to a multi-age environment; I’d say K-12.  I probably would do something like this when your oldest is 5th or 6^th and adapt it for younger children.  The publisher states that it’s written at a Jr. High level but adaptable lower and higher.

One of the features that make this curriculum stand out in my opinion is the worksheets that go with each lesson.  They are really more like notebooking then workbooking.  By that I mean it’s not so much a fill in the blank guided answer as spaces to put down the important events, timelines, key figures etc… in your own words.  What I also like about these is that many have maps included right on them!  I get so tired of searching for maps or honestly we often leave them out and not so with this curriculum.  All American makes maps easy!

The sheets also tend to keep my kids busy as I read.  There are often photos of key figures and flags of countries to cut out and paste in.  Now I do have to say my daughters age 9 and 11 like this feature more than my boys ages 14 and 16.  The 16 year old tolerates it but I pretty much have to make the 14 year old do it.  I’m not sure if it’s an age or gender issue but I think its great reinforcement so we did/do it.

I’m not sure that a short review can really do this curriculum justice as it’s quite comprehensive!  You really do want to get the student activity book, reader and teachers guide.  The teachers guide has all your answer keys as well as suggested additional reading by age level and other recommend added activities by ages.  The student activity book has all the notepages, maps, key figure pictures and reproducibles.

There are special pages and suggestions if you want to do a Native American notebook, war battle pages (civil, WWI etc...), and president pages.

Please ask questions if there is anything I haven’t answered about this curriculum.  You may want to bookmark the blog as well as we’ll be using All American for much of our history after the 1^st of the year and I’ m sure I’ll have blogs to write as we go along!

Can I think of any negatives?  This is tough!  I really have a hard time coming up with any.  For some it may seem costly and though it is from a Christian perspective it’s not quite as apparent as for instance Mystery of History curriculum.  That’s not necessarily a negative but something some might want to know.

I highly encourage you to check this one out!  It’ available from Bright Ideas Press.   All three are $68 and they are also available priced individually.  On the website they also have sample pages so you can see for yourself.

Did you ever go Letter boxing or heard of Geocaching?  Well this Educaching is using your GPS for educational purposes.  I'd never heard of this product that was up for review by the Old Schoolhouse Crew. 

We were sent free materials from Educaching in exchange for our reviews.   It’s a 128 pages guide which gives you lessons and instructions to use your GPS for education.

There are five sections to this manual; teacher education, lesson plans, field sheets, acquiring GPS and beyond the basics.  I spent quite a bit of time on the teacher education as this was a pretty new concept for me!

This section defines a lot of the lingo like geocaching, waypoints, educache and more.  “Basically” it boils down to using Longitude and Latitute coordinates to have students find hidden things and plot certain points. 

Once you figure out how that’s done which requires a little knowledge of your GPS (more on that farther down) you’re on your way to the lessons.

The lessons range from math, science, thought process and more.  Ideas are also given for modifying to fit your own needs.

Honestly we don’t have time for a lot of extra things beyond what we are already studying and some of lessons the kids would all need to have studied the same things so if I were to use this I’d be modifying and making my own lessons a lot.  We did find one on chemical and physical changes which we studied together last year so we decided to test that one.

You could take many of the ideas but exchange your science or history concepts but it would take more teacher preparation.  Some of activities like types of triangle, finding perimeter etc… would obviously be more suited to a group of same age rather then multi-age kids.  It would work very well in a class or co-op setting, even a co-op class specifically on Educaching would be a neat idea.

We did use the field sheet section to print the worksheet that went with the Chemical/Physical change lesson we chose.  It basically was a fill in the blank sheet to write in the coordinates and locations as you found them along with whether they where chemical or physical changes.

For the activity you place things (or I used slips of paper naming the item) that demonstrate a chemical or physical change in container (or I used zip locks.)  The book gives you the suggestions.  Things like a burnt match (chemical), rusty nail (chemical) or popped balloon (physical).  Then you go out with your GPS and find your place and write down the coordinates. 

Though this could be a very fun activity it obviously takes a lot of teacher prep time (without kids in tow) to complete. 

Well on to our experience…

My 9 year old daughter tried it out with me.  I first got all the coordinates and then I gave them to her to find.  This is where we started having a lot of problems.

Our GPS did not handle this very well.  Apparently our GPS only does street directions and won’t go “through the woods” so to speak.  By coaching her (since I knew where they were) we were able to do the exercise but it obviously wasn’t ideal and not nearly as fun as it could have been.

My recommendation is to definitely check out your GPS and know how it works.  In the manual they go over what to look for in a GPS but having ours already we obviously didn’t follow these guidelines.  We had problems with charging our GPS and keeping it off the charger for very long.  Prior to this we only used it in the car constantly (pretty much) plugged in, so battery life is an issue. 

I truly don’t know much about GPS systems but my husband though more expensive models would do the off road that ours wouldn’t.

With the frustration of our GPS aside I think this could be very useful for a homeschool family especially if you take part in co-op’s or classroom situations that could make use of it.  You would also need to consider if you have the teacher prep time.  One option could be to have one of your older children “plan” the event and do all the prep.

The price is very reasonable at $32 so if you've been wanting to check out this technology with your kids this might be your ticket!

For Old Schoolhouse Crew we received both printed material and access to online functions of the the Discover program from ACT Advantage.  Their site describes it as, “.... (a)career planning process (that) begins with a research-based assessment system that allows students to assess their interests, abilities and values—a critical step to building a career plan based on personal strengths.  Students can then explore multiple career paths using DISCOVER's up-to-date databases of occupations (including military), majors and colleges.”

 My daughter who is middle school helped me take a look at these materials though we plugged in some information for our high school boys too. 

We first received a lot of printed pdf material which actually looks like it’s free for download from their site here.  This appears to be how to use this in a classroom setting.  As typical for us at home it seems to me anyway that things for the “classroom” take much less time at home so we condensed and did some of the information from these pages orally.  We did some T/F type sheets about preconceived ideas about particular careers and used questions on worksheets to talk about ideas you’ve heard from your family and society about working.  These are obviously geared toward the typical classroom, secular environment but I just adapted as I went.

As we worked through the information (typically condensing and doing 5 or so of the “prepared”  lesson in one setting) we’d come to a point where there would be a worksheet I would print like a sheet to write out what job/chores she liked best least and why or thoughts about 1^st job she ever wanted to do and what she wants to do now.  Then it directs you to go online and check out a particular section related to what you just looked at.

Honestly, it was a bit confusing but I think we did get some good discussion and information from it.  We spent a lot of time on the paper information and I’d probably in hind site skip sooner to the information online.  Once she went online it was again a bit confusing at first but the career information was very good.  The paper parts would be a good place to spend some time if your child still needs some thinking about work, careers, values etc…  If they have some solid ideas you might benefit more from exploring specific careers online.

They use a “World-of-Work” map which confuses me a little.  It’s supposed to be a pie wedge graph that breaks up careers into segments and places the results of your interest inventory within the proper “pie”.  Maybe I’m not visual enough to appreciate this but we did better just using the selections in wording that they tell you were the highest areas.

The biggest plus to this program in my opinion is the career information.  When a particular field is recommended you then explore many choices within that area.  What I really liked is they give you extensive information about that particular career.  Often we’ve done career things that give you a list but then if you don’t know or just have vague ideas of what particular careers are you have to do further investigations.  With Discover all your choices and lengthy definitions of what those choices entail and require are just clicks away.

There was only one inventory to complete but the focus here I would say is more on investigating choices.  Once you chose a field/career it gives you majors, classes and even lengthy lists of schools that have what you want.  As you start investigating you can save your favorites to come back to later.

My boys have better ideas of what they want so we played a bit with this feature.  While they do have extensive information on Computer programming (one of my oldest son’s interests) we could not locate specifically computer “game” programming which is what he wants to specialize in.  So if you have a “specialty” it may not give everything you need but it does give a lot on the general major of computer programming.  It lists high school classes recommended for that particular field which pretty much correspond to other lists we have found. 

There are also a lot of screens and help on resume building, interviewing and job seeking as well. 

Would I go ahead and do it if I wasn’t reviewing?  Yes, I think I would if we needed some direction in that area.  Right now we seem to have been checking into a lot of career’s/majors and the kids are pretty confident of what their doing and the plan they have so at this time I wouldn’t but if you’ve got a Jr. High or High Schooler who needs some direction this may be worth checking out.   The cost is $19.95 for a three month access.  They also have a demo to view on their site.

*Free materials and trial of the site were provided me in exchange for my opinions.

WHAT: Piedmont Science Fair for Non-Public Schools

WHO: Students in grades 3 to 12 that reside in the 11 county area comprising Region 5
(Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Davidson, Forsyth, Guilford, Orange, Person, Randolph,
Rockingham, and Stokes counties)

WHEN: Saturday, January 30, 8:30-5:00pm

WHERE: High Point University, Congdon Hall

DETAILS: There will be a science demonstration and hands-on science activities.

There will also be campus tours available for high school students and their families.
Lunch is on your own. There are restaurants in the area (none available on campus) or bring your own bag lunch.
Interviews will begin after lunch.

Award Ceremony will be held at approximately 4 p.m. after the score tabulation.

Winners of this fair can advance to the Region 5 Science Fair at SciWorks on Feb. 19, 2010.

IMPORTANT: All participants must fill out the required forms as stated on the NC Science & Engineering Fair website:

http://www.ncsta. org/

These forms should be completed before starting the experiment.
The forms do NOT need to be displayed with the project board, but should be available if asked for by the judges.

HOW: To register, please email the following information.
(Due to space limitations, there is a maximum of 12 students per school.)
============ ========= ========= ========= =
Name of School or Homeschool Group:
Contact Person:
Contact Person Address:
Contact Person Email:
Contact Person Cell Phone:
(This is in case I need to get a hold of you during the science fair.)
============ ========= ========= =========
For each student, include the following...
Student's Name:
Student's Grade:
Title of Project:
Category of Project (select one of the following):
Biological Science
Physical Science
Earth/Environmental Science
Technology
(For a description of the categories, see 

http://www.ncsta.org/sciencefair/students/categories.html

DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION is Saturday, January 23.

Registration fee is $10 per student, payable at check-in on the day of the science fair.
Please make checks payable to Jeanne Reppert.
Team projects are allowed.

Please feel free to email with any questions at:
thepineweaver@ gmail.com

Sincerely,
Jeanne Reppert and Heather Blonsky
Co-coordinators of the Piedmont Science Fair for Non-Public Schools

Greensboro Black Belt Academy is offering to co-ordinate a  Homeschool TaekwonDo class!

This looks like a terrific deal and a great opportunity!

Please respond back directly to them with any questions @

Greensboro Black Belt Academy
109-B Pisgah Church Road,  

Greensboro, NC 27455
(336) 218-5056


MeritK

Now Enrolling

* Class length: 45 minutes

* Belt ranks will be earned. Testing normally occurs approximately
every 2 months and is by instructor invitation only.

* Fees: Monthly Tuition: $30.00 per month for 1st family member, $15.00 per month for 2nd family member $10.00 per month for each additional family member

* Uniform costs: $40.00 for 1st uniform, $20.00 for each additional uniform purchased at the same time per family!

*Testing Fees: $25.00 per test (includes belt and certificate)

If more than 12 participants are interested, we can arrange multiple classes.

It’s November already and before you know it Christmas will be here!  I’m big on not rushing over Thanksgiving because I believe it’s important to focus on family and Thankfulness but I am also a big believer in preparing for Christmas.

If we don’t prepare for Christmas often we get sucked up in the busyness and lose the focus of Christ that we intend to have.  Because this is important to me I’d like to devote a blog entry each week from now until Christmas on preparing.  Some of the entries will include;

Gifts to make

Traditions to turn our focus to Christ

Foods

Planning

Decorations

Books

Thoughts

Stories

Simplifying

And more!

To get an idea of some of the past things I’ve covered at Christmas click on the Christmas category at the right.

A couple of my favorite from past years are listed below.

Jesus Stocking (not much to the entry but it’s been such a profound thing for our family)

Advent (two entries, love the picture on the older one, it remains one of my favorite Christmas pictures) 1st one, 2nd one

Funny Christmas Eve story (this really happened and though not so funny at the time it is now!)

Holiday Candies (my favorite quick thing to do with younger kids!)

So enjoy and hope you can stop back for more!  Be sure to leave your comments with your thoughts or to share your ideas as we go along!

Virginia Soaps and Scents site is like a feast for your eyes.  The soaps look so good you can almost smell them through the screen!  They truly are pretty to look at as well as fun to use!

As part of the Old Schoolhouse Crew we were sent samples of Virginia Soaps and Scents laundry detergent to make, shampoo bar and regular soap bars to try. 

Let’s start with the soap.

First of all I had to fight my daughter to use them!  She was especially attracted to the oatmeal one.  They have a good lather and are rather creamy.  The scents are pleasant and not too strong and they are very “pretty” to look at!  I do have trouble with scented soaps sometimes as they make me sneeze.  These did not leave me sneezing.  Our only problem is we are fairly accustomed to the pump type soaps and no longer own any soap dishes.  I’m not sure that we’re ready to switch back to a bar soap but if we did these would be fabulous.

We had never tried a shampoo bar so I was the first to try it.  I would love to say I had fabulous results but I did not.  My hair was very hard to brush through (I have fairly long hair) and it felt almost gummy or sticky.  The best way I can describe it is when you get too much chlorine build up.  Anyway, I had heard that a vinegar rinse can get rid of build up so I tried that then shampooed again and had very similar results.  The third time I shampooed with the bar I used my regular cream rinse after and it was tolerable but still not as silky feeling as I was used to.  After my experience I chose not to try it on my daughters hair that I already have a difficult time brushing.

Our water here is slightly hard so I don’t know if that is part of it or what.  I know many of the crew members had great results so I encourage you to read their experiences as well if you’ve been thinking of a shampoo bar.

The third product we were sent to review was a laundry soap kit.  It comes with complete instructions for “making” the laundry soap (basically add water, heat and thicken.)  I have made my own before so I was familiar with the process.  The picture shows what it looks like after thickening.  We “funneled” it into a rinsed out old detergent container.  It is sort of globular so you “pour” or glob out ½ cup per load.

Our first few loads went fine and we were happy with the results however it didn’t get the smells out of the workout clothes.  Again, don’t know if it’s an issue with our water or what?  I tried adding more soap to the next load but still the odor remained.  We love homemade laundry soap but for us this one isn’t quite strong enough for all the odors.  Again you may want to check out other crew member review as many had great results.

To check out the other crew member reviews click here.

The soaps are $4.50 per bar or 3/$12, the shampoo bar $5.50 each or 2/$10 and a laundry “kit” to try is $4.95.  I encourage you to check their site out, it’s really fun to look through. 

ABC Teach is a membership site that has a plethora of worksheets, tools, clip arts, forms and much more to use in your homeschool.  When my kids were younger I had found this site and a few other similar sites online I used once in awhile but as our ages increased and we became more eclectic and needed less busywork I found we used these type of things less.  If you find yourself wanting/needing extra worksheets/colorsheets etc… this might be a great tool for you.  One of the things we still used (today in fact) are the book report forms . 

One of the best things about ABC teach is that you can check out a lot of it for free!  Just go to abcteach.com and start searching, much of it is available without membership.

It is obviously geared toward regular school students/teachers.  For instance there are lots of bulletin board and desk card tools. If you look around however you can find many things that would lend themselves more toward the typical homeschool family.

They have many “generators” where you can create your own worksheets or puzzles.  This could be very helpful for families who are creating their own curriculum.  Since my daughter has been asking for more handwriting sheets, and I didn’t get her a workbook this year, we checked out that feature of the site. 

There is a tutorial which tells you how to use the generator that I bypassed and just went right ahead in creating.  The generator has many types of font to chose from.  You can create the cursive (or print) to copy or select “dotted lines” for your child to trace.  If you want to reinforce learning in a particular subject you can create copywork to go along with curriculum you already have.  We chose to type in some of the definitions we’re learning in Economics to help her improve on her cursive.  It does take time however for you to put in all the information rather than have a prepared copywork.  They do have a few prepared click and prints but very limited.

We don’t follow typical school scope and sequence so when I typed in some of the content of our history to see what was available I didn’t find a lot.  If you use curriculum that corresponds more with regular school curriculum you might find more already prepared options.  I did find some on Plymouth and Thanksgiving that could be extra options for us as we study that era.  One of the things I downloaded was a 7 page guide on the mayflower and pilgrims.  It had timeline, who/what/where/when sheets, etc…

Another area I check out was the literature section.  There are a lot of question and answer type worksheets for various novels.  I did save a couple that I thought we might be reading soon and though I wouldn’t give them out as worksheets as they were intended I would use the questions for discussion.

I would recommend this if you need some “extras” and especially if you have time to create using their generators to fit your existing curriculum.  I encourage you to check out their freebie’s first to get a feel for the site. 

It’s $40 for a one year membership.  Be sure to visit ABC Teach for more information and to check out their freebies!

*ABC teach provided a free one month membership to me in exchange for my review.

My Access  is a web based writing program like I had never come across before.  Have you ever wanted a program that could actually show your child where to improve in the areas of focus, organization, content & development, language use and mechanics?  This program actually does that! 

Have you ever struggled with knowing what to suggest to help your child’s writing become better?  This program helps you know where they need help the most.

Most other writing programs I’ve looked at focus mostly (or even exclusively) on mechanics; things like punctuation and grammar.  This is the first I’ve looked at that is able to use a computer to measure some of those other area’s like language, focus, content etc…

Now let me just say that it obviously isn’t perfect but I’d say it’s pretty good.  Any computer is going to sometimes give you suggestions that are not correct.  Think of this like your spell check.  It usually helps you out but sometimes it gives you a word suggestion that isn’t even the word you wanted.  Just like you have to train you children to think when using spell check they do need to think when using this program. 

But with that being said, I think this could truly take loads of time and instruction off of a busy mom and put some accountability to the computer instead of the teacher.  I’m not saying it can replace the teacher but it covers a lot of ground and reiterates a lot so you don’t have to.  At our house I know sometimes it’s hard for mom to always be the one saying rework that or fix this.  When my children were working for a goal on this program they wanted to do the work without me telling them!

Each child has their own account they log into at myaccess.com.  Once in they chose from a list of prompts to get them started. They start earning point by writing, revising and completing tutorials.  You can set rewards (that you chose) for certain point levels which was hugely motivational for my girls (ages 9 and 11.)  I will say somewhere in the site I read to set your first goal low as points take awhile get and I disagree.  The lowest you can set is 250 which is what I chose since they wanted to watch the kick-off of a favorite TV show that was only a week away, they blew it away in one afternoon!

I do have to mention that my girls were thrilled with this but my boys (ages 14 and 16) were not quite as enthralled.  My 14 year old prefers to write what he wants to write and not follow any prompts (this was a hurdle for him) and honestly my 16 year old was too busy with all of his other subjects to give it much time.  I did have them each do 250 points worth and they did but not without prodding.

You can add your own writing prompts if you want to.  I did put one in on Ben & Me that we were doing with our Total Language Plus curriculum but I found the more new ones I put in the kids would rather do first before they’d revise what they’ve already got there.  If you were going to use this as a years curriculum I’m sure you’d get through their premade prompts and need some more (I would say there’s about 30-40 per level premade.)  If you use Total Language Plus many of your personal thinking questions could easily be modified into these prompts.

There is not an assignment set up, like they log in and it says do this or that today, but you could easily set that up on paper.  In fact they do have a sample calendar as a suggestion to follow or modify.  You could also only assign them one prompt instead of letting them chose from the list and set up the expectation that they complete or do a certain amount of revising on that one before you assign the next one of your choosing for the next week.

The parent or teacher can go in and see the progress and view assignments as well as set new rewards (something I need to do!)  We had not been doing it as curriculum but just for fun and when they hit their reward point level they tend to stop using the program.  This is the area where I think parents could be tempted to just let the computer take over and never give feedback themselves.  I really do think parents/teacher would still need to make a point of reading through assignments, seeing the progress themselves and make any corrections or comments.  Like I said it’s a computer program so there will be things a live teacher may need to correct or notice that a computer won’t.

They do have video demo’s on their site so I encourage you to check them out if you're considering purchasing.  This gives you some idea of the content and what the screens look like.

The program is available for 1 year for three students for $99.95 or 6 students for $129.95.  This is a substantial cost but in my opinion it could be used for a good part of your writing curriculum so it’s worth considering especially if you’re a parent who struggles in how to coach your child in their writing.

 *This program was provided to me free of charge for the purpose of my review as part of the Old Schoolhouse Crew.