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High School Solution – Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I have done homeschooling high school before. I was nervous, scared that I was going to screw it up. When I got the chance to review The High School Solution from The HomeScholar LLC, I jumped at this opportunity. I was ready to be prepared this time around!

What Is It

The High School Solution is an online program. There is a video training session with slides that go along with it. You could also download the audio or the slides, whatever works for you. You get lifetime access to this program so that you can use it with current and future children. Along with that, you will get four additional monthly trainings with resource packs.

With your online training program, you also get a notes page for those who love to take notes while they listen. You can listen on your computer or your smartphone. I found myself using my phone since I could move around while listening. You also get templates to help you plan out your high school years with your child.

What I Thought

I liked listening to Lee Binz talk about homeschooling high school. She gave me the confidence to know that I could do this again with the kids left in my home. The main thing I took away from the get-go was to plan for each child to go to college even if they don’t think they want to go. That wasn’t the only thing I learned, though; it was just the thing that stuck out the most. 

Lee also talked about planning and what to focus on each year. High school is not a swing by the seat of your pants education, which is the scary part for us parents. Lee talks us through the individual subjects that need to be covered and how to plan the lessons out, how to keep records for high school, and even how to grade your children.

I really appreciated the way things were broken down by year, even beginning in middle school, to help plan for a successful time homeschooling high school. All the little tidbits of information on the templates and the help with grading are very helpful. I also like that there is information on how to give high school credits. All of this information is in one place and you won’t have to spend days searching online.

If you have a middle school child and plan to homeschool all the way to graduation, I highly recommend this resource from The HomeScholar LLC.

Make sure to check out all the reviews of all the different programs and resources available on The HomeScholar right here.

Homeschool High School to College with The HomeScholar

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Help Your Kids Learn & Love the Bible – Book Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

As a Christian parent, my goal in raising my children is all about making sure they know and love God. The best way to do this is to read the bible to them daily. But sometimes, it can be challenging. Danika Cooley gives ideas in her book Help Your Kids Learn and Love the Bible, published by Bethany House.

What It Is

Help Your Kids Learn & Love the Bible is a paperback book that is just about 190 pages long. There are three parts and 11 chapters, along with an introduction and conclusion.

After the introduction, you start the first part; You’re the Leader. Here is where you will learn about making the Bible approachable for your kids of all ages. How to get a good start so that you can finish strong, and finding the actual time to put your plan of reading the Bible happen.

The second part of this book gets you into your Faithful Reading. Here the chapters are Who Wrote This Thing Anyway, Keep the Message in View, A Library of Books, and Profitable Discussion.

In the final part of the book, A Daily Walk, you will read Reading the Word Together, Hide the Word in Your Child’s Heart, Praying the Word Together, and Study the Word When You’re Not Feeling it.

How We Used It

This was a book for me to read. While I have taught my kids about God and the Bible, we haven’t had a faithful daily Bible reading time. Sure, we talked about the Bible, we prayed together, we knew and loved God, but actually sitting down and reading the Bible was not a thing we did.

I took Danika’s tips in this book and started using them to help us regularly dig into the Bible. We started with reading a chapter in Proverbs until we found a way to dig into the BIble daily together.

We also decided to focus on memorizing Bible verses. The kids would do this when they were little, using the hand motions and all of that. Only, as they got older, I wouldn’t press it much as I should. We got back into memorizing the Bible, and with an entire chapter on ideas on helping memorize, it made me happy.

Whether you are a homeschooling parent, or just a Christian parent looking to help your child learn from and love the Bible, this book is for you. I wasn’t the only one to read this book, check out the other reviews right here.

Bethany House Publishers

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Fermenting Food with Fermentools – Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I grew up with my great grandparents always having some fruit or vegetable from the garden on their table. I loved having that fresh food available all the time, especially when the garden was covered in snow. I can do the same thing for my kids now with Fermentools and the starter set.

What Is It

The starter set comes with 1 of each: a Stainless Steel lid, glass fermentation weight, airlock, rubber stopper, rubber canning gasket, Himalayan powdered salt, and instructions. You will just need to grab yourself a wide mouth jar, water, and whatever food you want to ferment. I have done asparagus, cucumbers, and cabbage. I had and still have some trial and error, but that is just learning something new.

There are some great recipes included in your starter set. You can also find many great recipes online. All you need to do is figure out which ones you want first!

How We Used It

While this isn’t a homeschool resource, we used it as a part of working in the kitchen with mom. I was always helping my great grandparents with canning and even making saurkraut before I could walk! I want my kids to know how to preserve vegetables they grew or even had to buy from the store.

I love fermented asparagus. They taste like a pickle, crisp and refreshing. I love to make a few jars of this every year. Not only that, but I need to have saur kraut in the house. However, the store-bought stuff just never tastes like what grandpa would make. I am the only one who will eat it, and I don’t have room for a big crock to ferment the cabbage in. Fermentools allows me to make my grandpa’s saur kraut in small batches just for me.

What We Thought

I love Fermentools. I got a starter kit last year and proceeded to grab an entire six-pack. When given the chance to review this product again, I was thrilled. This is one item that I never thought I needed but now can’t live without. We all know those items!

If you want to make fermented foods or drinks, but you don’t have much room in your house, Fermentools is what you need. You can make several jars of different foods all at the same time. 

While I only did a few things during this review period, you can find what others made and thought of Fermentools right here.

Fermenting Food Made Easy with Fermentools

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CTCMath – Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Math is a tricky topic in my house. I love math, and it was my favorite subject as a child. My children cry about math. Finding a math curriculum that they enjoy doing has been a hit-or-miss experience. We had the opportunity to try a 12-month subscription to CTCMath. I wasn’t going to stress if this didn’t work, but I was pleasantly surprised by what my kids had to say!

CTCMath is an online math curriculum for grades K-12. You will need a computer and internet access to use this program. Once your child is set up, they log in and complete their lessons each day.

Each lesson starts with a short video that explains the topic they are learning about. The students get to hear how to do the assignment and see visuals of what is being taught. This teaching style reminds me of sitting in the classroom and seeing what the teacher was talking about, not just reading or hearing what I am supposed to learn.

Once the video is done, the students are given some questions to answer. My kids loved doing these questions online and getting instant feedback on whether they solved it correctly or had it wrong. You also have the option of printing a worksheet and solving the problems with a pencil and paper. I may use this as they progress into more complicated problems, but right now, the kids love just doing the questions online.

Now, there are two ways for your child to know what to do each day. The first way is that you assign them weekly tasks with due dates. They would log in and see what needs to be done and complete them. The other way is to let them pick the topic they want to learn about that day and complete it.

I opted to let my kids pick the topics they wanted to learn about each day. I wanted to give them some freedom over their math lessons, which was the perfect way to do that. I keep them within their grade level at this time and just let them pick. So far, they seem delighted with this and have not argued about doing math each day.

When you are looking through the different topics within each grade level and feel that your child may know all of this already, you can have them take a diagnostic test on the material. There are three different levels to these tests. If they complete and pass the test, you can allow them to skip the topic. I used this to see what they knew within each topic and guide them to work on the lessons they struggled with. 

Within my parent dashboard, I can see when each child last logged in, what lessons they completed, and their score. I can also assign the tasks if I feel like doing that on my parent dashboard and seeing how many lessons they have completed and their overall grade.

Another benefit with CTCMath is the reports that you can print up. I can go into each student, see the detailed report of what they have been working on, and print them up as a record for their math for the year. I don’t have to worry about keeping all the details because CTCMath does it for me.

One aspect of CTCMath that we have not used yet is the games. They have Speed Skills, Times Tables, and Swap Pieces. These games allow your child to practice different math skills. Swap Pieces is the most difficult of these games, but it also looks entertaining to me. These games will be something we add to our weekly math time.

While I did not have any expectations for CTCMath with my picky kids, I am thrilled to see them enjoying doing math lessons again. Not only are they enjoying math, but I also find it easier for me to keep track of their math grades and progress each week.

We were not the only family to try CTCMath in our home; check out these other reviews.
Online Homeschool Math with CTCMath

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Time Travelers: The Civil War – Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

My kids don’t like boring history books. They want to learn history with their hands on it. Doing fun activities instead of reading a book is an excellent way for my kids to remember what we are learning. We used Time Travelers: The Civil War from Home School in the Woods with Ray Ray over the last few weeks.

Time Travelers US History Studies are theme studies based on different events that happened in the United States. I know Ray Ray loves anything with action, so we went with the Civil War study. Everything we got for the review was in digital format, but you could also order the CD version.

There are 25 lessons in this study, and you can spread them out how you would like. You can do one lesson a day for five weeks, like the suggested schedule shows, or you can do fewer lessons a week. We opted to do lessons every other day since that is how we split up our history and science courses.

Each day, we have a little bit of reading that will talk about the theme for the day. We can follow this up with different fun activities. We currently have a newspaper from the times that we add to periodically. As we do the various activities, we add them to a lapbook to store away in our portfolio. These lapbooks are also a great way to go back and review what we have learned throughout the year.

With this study, you get the PDFs of what you need, but you will have to supply the paper, file folder (for your lapbook), and other supplies. You will be in charge of printing everything for this study. That is fine for us because of our printer setup, and I like that I will be able to use this again when Little Miss is learning about American History.

These studies are geared for grades 3-8. They are adaptable to the ages by adding or taking away different activities. With Ray Ray being on the older side of the recommended age, I had him do more of the extended activities, but I know when Little Miss does this for the first time, she won’t do as much.

I enjoy that the Lesson Plan Schedule shows all the different activities that can be done with each lesson. I can have that in front of me while I go and print all the various pages. There is also a Lesson Projects page for each lesson. This page will detail the different projects and explain how to print the projects to make them turn out correctly.

The one thing about this study from Home School in the Woods is that it is not an open and go study. There is printing, cutting, assembling. This used to be an issue for me when my kids were younger, but now that they are older, I can make them help with all of this. Ray Ray enjoys being a part of completing all of these projects because they make them his.

While the cutting, coloring, and assembling is the fun part for Ray Ray, he is not my writer. I would have loved the newspaper concept when I was in school; Ray Ray does not like this. Because I need him to write more, I find the newspaper to be the perfect way to get him to investigate more about what was happening during the Civil War without writing a full report for me.

Home School in the Woods has many different options for all of your hands-on history learning needs. Check out some of the other products that were reviewed right here.

Hands On History with Homeschool in the Woods

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Clumsy Thief Junior – Review

Learning math doesn’t have to always include a math workbook. We have been using Clumsy Thief Junior from Timberdoodle’s Kindergarten Curriculum Kit to practice our math skills.

~I received this game in exchange for my honest review.~

Clumsy Thief Junior is a clever card game. Actually, it is a fun card game that is for 2-4 players ages 5 and up. This game comes with 76 cards and the rules/instructions.

Your goal to win the game, find cards that total up to 10 and get the most of these. However, the clumsy thief (your opponents) can snatch your pile at any time, with the Clumsy Thief card. You are able to protect your piles by using trap cards. Put a trap card on top of a clumsy thief and take that pile safely to your side of the table.

You play until there are no more cards in the middle pile and the person with the most food cards at the end is the winner.

Doesn’t this sound like a much more fun way to practice your addition facts? Who cares about drills and the such when you can play a card game!?

I used this with all three kids who are still doing school. In my mind, you are never too old to practice your math facts. Baby Girl was the youngest at 6, Little Miss at 10, and Ray Ray topped the age bracket at 12.

While I was worried that Little Miss and Ray Ray would have an advantage over Baby Girl, that didn’t happen. To make a sum of 10, the two cards would have matching food on them. Baby Girl picked up on this and was able to keep up just fine. She is able to know her math facts with sums of 10 easier now because of this game and seeing the numbers that match the food on the cards.

It is summer here. We don’t like to do school during the summer, but we do school year-round. Some days it is nice to just pull out a card game for math practice instead of the math workbooks. None of the kids have complained about this, and I will continue to use this game all summer and beyond.

If you are looking for a fun way to keep your kids practicing their math facts without complaining, I highly recommend Clumsy Thief Junior from Timberdoodle.

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Wise Up: Wisdom in Proverbs – Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

My goal as a Christian parent has always been to make sure my kids know God and Jesus Christ. Reading our Bibles is one of our most influential books in the house. However, I want my kids always to be learning more from the Bible. Positive Action for Christ has given me Bible Studies, like Wise Up: Wisdom in Proverbs, to help my kids dig deeper into their bibles.

What Is It

I got a copy of the Wise Up Student Manual and the Wise Up Teacher Guide for this review. As soon as I got these, I knew this company was going to give me what I wanted for my kids, so I went ahead and bought a digital copy of the Fourth Grade study for Little Miss.

The Wise Up Teacher’s Guide came with a 3-ring binder and dividers for the three sections, Teaching Material, Testing Material, and Answers. Each week is a new lesson, and the teacher’s guide gives you everything you need to teach your child the lesson and the student pages with the answers.

The Wise Up Student Manual is a paperback bible study. The lessons to be done once a week and there are 35 lessons. The beginning of the lesson has your child working through different parts of Proverbs, and the end of the study is the outline of the Teaching Lesson that you will read from the Teacher’s Guide.

How We Used It

At the beginning of the Teacher’s Guide, there are suggested weekly schedules. We opted for doing it five days a week, even through the summer. On the first day of the week, I introduce the target truths we will be learning during the week, our Scripture memory verse, and the teaching lesson. 

Over the rest of the week, we review the memory verse and work on the student exercises. On Fridays or the last day of the week, we do a quiz and see if we have memorized the memory verse.

Ray Ray has been able to do many of the student exercises independently, but it didn’t start that way. We had never found a bible study like this made for kids before, one that has the kids dig into the bible to find the answers instead of the basic stuff they already knew. Ray Ray struggled to get through some of the more challenging questions (explain in your own words what this means types of questions). But as we continued, I loved seeing that he needed my help less and less.

What We Thought of It

If I can say, this bible study and Positive Action for Christ is a prayer answered, that is the truth. The bible studies they have for kids make it so the kids are digging into their bible to find the answers. They walk away with knowledge and not just fill in answers and mark the box to say they completed the assignment.

The teacher’s guide is easy for me to use and easy for me to understand. I can understand my role in the teaching process for the week and what is expected of Ray Ray. Even Ray Ray knows what he needs to do each week. He knows that he can break the week down as he wants to, doing more one day and less the next.

Positive Action for Christ and Wise Up: Wisdom in Proverbs is just what our Bible study time needed! Check out more reviews right here.

Positive Action Bible Curriculum Reviews

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Volcanic Panic Reading Success Online – Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Reading is one of those essential skills to learn. But sometimes, learning to read can be challenging, dull, or just dreadful for the child and the parent. What if you could let your child play a game and learn to read? Volcanic Panic Reading Success Online from EdAlive enables you to do just that!

What Is It

Volcanic Panic Reading Success Online is an online game for ages 5-15. This is an Australian-based company, so there was a slight accent in the speaking. The game uses adaptive learning to allow each child to learn at their own pace.

During the game, your child can choose to play against the computer or other children. There is no communication between kids, just playing the game. Children will race around the island, trying to escape before the volcano explodes.

On the parent side of Volcanic Panic Reading Success Online, you can see how much your child uses the game, their strengths, and how they are doing within the curriculum.

How We Used It

I had Baby Girl use this as a fun way to practice her reading skills. She usually played against the computer instead of other kids as she is on the lower end of learning how to read. She enjoyed being able to take a break from our regular lessons and play a game instead.

Since we used this as a game and a break from her regular reading lessons, I didn’t pay much attention to the stuff on the parent dashboard. However, I was surprised when they said she excelled at some 2nd and 3rd-grade reading. I think she just lucked out with a good guess on those.

What We Thought Of It

I had some high hopes when Baby Girl tried this out and liked it. However, she did become bored with the game quite quickly. There were no lessons, just practice. That is why I opted to use this as practice from what we are currently using.

The accent didn’t bother Baby Girl, and she liked it. It didn’t interfere with her learning. The concept behind the game is excellent. It would be made better if there was an option to do some lessons and use the game to practice what was taught.

If your child needs a fun way to practice their reading skills, Volcanic Panic Reading Success Online is a fun way to do that. EdAlive has other programs available also; check out the reviews right here.

Online Math, Reading, and Language Arts with EdAlive

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Pursued to Eternity – A Book Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Books take you on adventures. You can travel to different worlds within the words of a book. Pursued to Eternity by John Riley is a book that takes you from the days of the dinosaurs to the eternity God has for us.

For this review, I got a paperback copy of the book. There are 17 chapters and about 150 pages. Pursued to Eternity is John Riley’s first book. He also has an Apologetics Creation vs. Evolution course available on SchoolhouseTeachers.com.

While the actual storyline of Pursued to Eternity is fictional, the challenges of evolution in our world and the survey of apologetics and bible verses are true. This book will take you on an adventure that you will not soon forget.

We first meet two brothers at the beginning of the book, 1 Christian and 1 Atheist. We see how they have some family issues when they get together, as one could imagine. But, as soon as we meet them, we are taken back into time.

We get to meet two families alive during the time of the Hebrews and Moses. We see that even during this most difficult of times, people were listening and learning and turning their hearts to the one true God.

Back to the present and the two brothers we first met. The Christian brother is a science teacher at a local high school where evolution is taught and not to be argued or discussed beyond what the lesson plans say. Some of the students were not happy about this and started discussions off of school grounds.

These discussions lead to a website built by the students without any help from the teacher. Sixty-eight questions about Creation vs. Evolution were on the website. These questions… were great! Not only do these questions question evolution, but they question why some may not ask more about evolution. How blunt can you be when you ask, “Are some scientists hesitant to criticize evolution because they may face demotion or job loss?”

As life goes on, both brothers end up working together in Egypt. During this time, we see that God is pursuing the atheist. God seeks to pursue all of us; we just need to open our hearts to see that. While in Egypt, we see the past connected with the present in an extraordinary way. I don’t want to give it away to you.

There are deaths, there is money, and there is God. And the pursuit of the atheist in this book was a victory for God.

I could tell you the whole story; it was that good. But if I did that, why would you need to grab your own copy? And I think you need your own copy. I loved that this book, while fictional, was also very real. These are topics and challenges that are faced every day all around the world. I could relate to many of these challenges, as I have encountered them as a Christian. I feel more prepared to defend the Bible and my belief in the one true God after reading this book.

I wasn’t the only one who read this book. Check out 24 other reviews right here.
Pursued to Eternity by John Riley

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One More Story – A Review

I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

 

Grab your favorite snack, a comfy blanket, and go to your reading spot. That is what I have told Baby Girl during quiet time. With One More Story on her iPad, Baby Girl can listen to stories being read to her while I get some school done with the big kids.

What Is It

For this review, we got a one-year subscription to the online One More Story. This program is for use on computers, with Chrome and Safari being the recommended platforms. You can also use it on the iOS system with the app.

One More Story currently has 80+ books on there, with more being added. All of these books are picture books, and as your child listens or reads, they can also see the pictures from the books. The books are not just any old books. They are quality books, like Crow Boy, The Snowy Day, and Stellaluna.

One More Story offers two ways for your child to read the books. They can read the book themself, or have the book read to them. If your child is reading the book themselves, they can touch the words they don’t know, and the words will be read to them. These words will also be added to the word list. 

The word list is a spot where your child can practice the words they do not know until they can read them. Your child can also go and find vocabulary words for each book. These will be the challenging words with definitions. These vocabulary words will help your child grow a more extensive vocabulary for every day.

There is also a Parent’s Place in One More Story. In this section, I can see what books Baby Girl has read during the week. I can also see if she has any words on her word list if she was reading independently.

How We Used It

I logged in on my computer and played around on the site a little before introducing it to Baby Girl. Once I knew more about the program, I downloaded the app on our iPad. I sat down with Baby Girl and showed her all about it. She was excited to get started on it.

Since Baby Girl is not reading independently yet, I would have her use this as her quiet time activity. When the big kids need my attention on their school, and I don’t want Baby Girl sitting in front of a screen mindlessly, I have her pick a book to listen to. 

One More Story was also an excellent before-bed activity. You know, when the kids want story after story read to them? After our read-aloud time, Baby Girl was allowed to listen to more stories on One More Story. Yes, it was a screen, but we have the blue light turned off after 7 pm, and she wasn’t playing games, just listening to stories. I would often find her asleep in the middle of her second or third story.

What We Thought

One More Story is an excellent way for kids to use their love of technology and still read good books. Baby Girl is still just listening to the stories, but I am looking forward to when she will be reading, and I can use the other features of this program.

One way my children have learned to read is through the captions on the TV shows they watch. With the read-along feature highlighting each word read, I see this as a great way of learning to read. As much as I always try to point out the words I read, it is not always easy. Having the words highlighted is such a great thing.

The wide selection of books available on One More Story was surprising. I saw many titles I knew and love. There were also many titles that I didn’t know about. Baby Girl fell in love with Gracie the Lighthouse Cat by Ruth Brown and The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood. She loved being able to look and pick her books, and I loved knowing that all the books were of excellent quality.

Overall, we love One More Story and would not change a thing about it!

Find out how other families have been using One More Story in their homes right here.

One More Story Online Library Reviews

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