Homeschool Crew Review: Britfield & the Lost Crown

We are always looking for good books for the children to read or for me to read aloud to them.  We were happy to receive the first book, Britfield & the Lost Crown , a new adventure series for middle grade children.

Britfield & the Lost Crown is written by C.R. Stewart who has over 20 years experience in writing fiction, non-fiction, and movie screen plays. The book is a 394 page paperback that was written with ages 10-18 in mind.  It is the first in a series of 5 books.  Britfield & the Lost Crown takes place in England.  The second book Britfield & the Rise of the Lion takes place in France.  Book III will take place in Italy and books IV and V are still being planned.

Britfield & the Lost Crown starts off at Weatherly,  an orphanage in England.  The children there are treated horribly and are used to work and make money for the Grievouses, the people that run the orphanage.  The children try to find some ways to enjoy life, such as "borrowing" books from the mansion to read.  After such an escapade, Tom is summoned to the office where he is told his parents may be alive and he will get more information about them by giving information about what is going on in the orphanage. When Tom's friend Sarah receives an especially harsh punishment, Tom decides it is time to break her out and attempt an escape.  With the help of the other orphans at Weatherly they are successful.  Tom has one clue to his family, the word Britfield.

Sarah and Tom's escape is not easy and they are being followed by the famous Detective Gowerstone.  Their adventure takes them throughout England in a hot air balloon, to Oxford, Windsor Castle, London, St. Paul's Cathedral, Canterbury and more.  Many people help them throughout their journey but at times they are unsure who they can really trust.  As they travel Tom is trying to find out more information about his clue to his family but that clue leads him and Sarah into even more danger.

To go along with the book there is a free 8 week study guide available on the Britfield Institute Website.  The study guide has four main parts for each section: vocabulary, comprehension, going deeper, and learn more with technology.  The vocabulary section has different vocabulary exercises such as filling in the blanks, writing definitions, matching, even a crossword puzzle and a word search.  The comprehension questions are questions that students can answer straight from the reading.  The Going Deeper section has deeper questions for students to answer and sometimes other activities such as drawings for them to do.  The Learn More with Technology has students looking up facts online such as Who is Winston Churchill? or When did Queen Victoria rule? and writing down their answers.

I like to pre-read newer books by authors I am not familiar with before handing them off to my children so I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing this book myself.  I have to say that the this adventure story drew me in and kept me turning the pages to see how it would turn out.  I finished the book in a week-end.  The story is compelling and full of adventure.  Children will want to keep reading to see what will happen next.  There are a ton of fun realistic details about life in England and famous places and people.  I love that children will be challenged with the vocabulary that is used in the book and I found nothing objectionable in the book.  The character and setting descriptions are wonderful.  Several elements of the story are resolved by the end but there are some things that we do not know that will carry on into the next book.  I can't wait to find out what happens next.

My 14 year old is having foot surgery next week and will be down for a couple of weeks recovering so I am saving Britfield & the Lost Crown to give him something to do during this time.  He will love it!

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 2

We are still only working on a few subjects each day and will not have a full schedule until after the first week of September.


The week did not start out great.  We ended last week with a sick baby goat that we were taking to the vet on Monday morning and hoping they could do something for her.  We got her there and as I had suspected she had pneumonia.  She had not acted right for more then a week but we were not sure at first what was going on. She went off of her feed, was more lethargic then usual (she never was super energetic) and had some diarrhea.  She wasnt drinking like she should.  We gave a Nutra Drench to her that has lots of vitamins and things for goats that are a little off and was giving extra water squirting a syringe in her mouth.  It was so horribly hot and humid but there is a fan out there and they have a lot of shade.  I noticed on Saturday that she was standing a lot I didn't see her lay down at all and she started breathing very fast.  That is a sign of pneumonia in goats.  We gave her three shots of penicillin Saturday and Sunday and a fever/pain reducer but she didn't get any better.  Watching her breathe was awful.  When we got to the vet on Monday they gave her a shot of a stronger antibiotic and a fever/pain reducer and started IV fluid on her under the skin.  They wanted to keep her for a few hours to run some more fluids in so we headed home to do some school work.

Later that afternoon we went back to town to run some errands and then the girls had a cake decorating workshop.  During the workshop Alex called to check on Betsy and she had passed.  We get very attached to our animals and she was our own baby that we had to help the mom deliver so it was very hard.  It was even worse when the mama kept crying for her baby.  I hate this part of raising animals......


The cake decorating workshop was good though.  They got to decorate two cakes: one to eat and one to enter in the fair.  I didn't get photos of the finished products because I had to leave and take care of some things at the vet office but they all did a great job!

Wednesday Chelsea came over with Liam and Willow.  Liam absolutely made my week when I got to the house to pick them up and he started jumping up and down and saying Yay!! It's Mimi!!    Of course he was so excited to see me so he could go to my house and play with the children but still....

Thursday our music lessons were cancelled because our sweet and wonderful teacher is very sick and in the hospital.  She had to have a major surgery on Friday and will take some time to recover. 

Lily had a sewing workshop in the afternoon.  They are making a skirt.  It did not get finished so we have to go back Monday.

Friday Anthony had a check up at his foot doctor just to make sure that there is no change in his condition or that he has not started having any pain.  I thought it was just going to be quick in and out but we ended up being there almost two hours. The thing that used to be a small thing on the end of his toe that last time we thought was just a callous from the way he toe moves up and down when he walks was much larger.  After x rays they discovered it is an extra bone that has started growing and will need to be surgically removed.  The surgery is scheduled in two weeks. 

Week 2 in our Homeschool

Bible: We are reading one chapter per day in the book of Luke.

History: We read 3 stops in Passport Ancient Rome.  If you ask my children about Roman history they will tell you its simple everyone gets assassinated.

Music Appreciation: We started reading about Frederick Chopin's later years and listening to some of his works using Zeezok's Music Appreciation 2.

Art History: We watched the second video in HIGASFY on the Impressionists.

Math: 4 days of CTC Math for the 4 youngest.

Language Arts: Lily is working on a workbook from Reading Eggs that she completes daily.  I have not started the others on anything yet.

We are reading aloud River of Peril from Susan K Marlow and Dragonlight by Donita K Paul.

We are busily finishing up fair entries and working on one of our booths.  The fair starts a week from today.

I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!

Happy Homeschooling!

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Homeschool Crew Review: CTCMath Family Membership

My most difficult subject to teach is math.  I loved math when I was in school and it came very easy to me, but for several of my children it is not at all easy.  Curriculum that worked with my two oldest did not work well with the others and I have been struggling to find the perfect fit.  When we were offered a 12 month Family Membership for up to 5 students from CTCMath to use and review we decided to give it a shot to see if it might work for our math curriculum this year.

CTCMath is a complete curriculum for grades K-8.  Starting at grade 9 it is recommended to be used as a supplement.  A subscription to CTCMath gives you access to all of the grades and you can move between grades as you need to. You also have the ability to move through the program in the recommended order or pick and choose which topics to study.  You can use this program on a computer but it works on tablets as well.  CTCMath has over 1400 different math lessons and over 57000 interactive questions. 

When your student is logged in they have access to all of the grades.  They choose the level to work in and then can see all of the main topics.  Each main topics have several sub topics.  It is very easy to work through the topics in order or pick and choose which area your child needs to work in.

Anthony is working in Pre-Algebra which has 4 parts.  Under Part 1 their are 4 main topics: Basic and Whole numbers (this topics has 12 sub topics), Fractions (17 subtopics), Decimals (10 subtopics) and Percentages (11 subtopics.) 

The program shows you which subtopics you have completed and how you did in each area.  So the next time you log in you just click on the next subtopic.  

Each lesson starts with a video lesson taught by Australian teacher Pat Murray.  The length of the video varies but all of the lessons we have viewed have been under 5 minutes long.  The video gives a couple of problems and shows them being worked out. At the end of the video students are wished good luck with their questions.

After viewing the video students click on questions where they are given 10 questions to answer.  They know right away if the answer is correct or not.  A green check mark shows it is correct, a red x shows it is incorrect.  If they get the answer incorrect the correct answer is shown.

When they finish their questions a report is generated that shows all of the questions with the correct answers and their percentage.

 CTCMath has a new Question Bank Wizard which allows you to create worksheets for each lesson if you wish.  You can control the number of questions and the level of difficulty and assign the worksheets to your child.  This is a great option for extra practice off of the screen.


Weekly reports are emailed to the parents.  Parents have a separate log in so they can see at a glance when each student last logged in, what they worked on, and how they did.  You can also assign tasks and create worksheets using the Question Bank Wizard.

When I first was assigned this review, I though I would use it with three of my students.  But since I have reviewed CTCMath in the past, they renewed my Family Membership for up to 5 students so I decided to go ahead and have the younger 4 children all use CTCMath.  Emmie has been working in 3rd grade, Lily in 5th, Christian in 6th, and Anthony in Pre-Algebra.  We only have one laptop so they have to take turns (we go youngest to oldest) and wait patiently but so far it has worked out great. Each child is only spending around 15 minutes per day on their lessons 4 days a week.

I started out having them do a diagnostic test but changed my mind about that and instead have just had each of the children complete the lessons in order in the grade level they are in.  I do sit with Emmie to make sure that she understands what she is supposed to do , but the others have completed their lessons completely independently.  Although I did watch Anthony do his lesson yesterday and hopefully convinced him that just because the lesson is on the computer does not mean he doesn't need to use a pencil and paper to work the problems out first!  I love that I don't have to teach or grade the lessons.  It is all done for me and that is an amazing time saver!

The lessons are short and to the point.  The voice on the lessons is easy to listen to and understand.  I love the visual aspect of the lessons.  In the multiplication lessons I thought it was a great idea that they covered up the number not being used and wondered why I  had never thought of that before. They do a great job explaining the concepts and helping children to understand.   The immediate feedback is great for children so they know right away if they have the answer correct or not. I also like how easy it is for them to see their progress and also for parents to see exactly how the child is doing.

If a child struggles with a concept you can have them rewatch the video, but there is only one video for each lesson.  They can do additional questions though and it is very helpful to see each problem worked out so they can see where they went wrong. That is one of the reasons I decided to switch the boys to CTCMath because their last curriculum only gave the answers not the solutions.  I have had one of my children spend several days on one lesson rewatching the video and doing additional questions to make sure he truly understood.



 Another benefit of using  CTCMath is that you are given access to all grades rather then being locked into a specific grade level.  So if you start your child in a particular grade level and they start off doing well but find it becomes too difficult you can switch them to a lower grade, or if it becomes too easy you can move to a higher grade.  For my child that struggles the most in math, I moved him down a grade and he is doing great.

I thought that since they were getting done so quickly with their lessons that maybe it wasn't enough.  But then I realized that you don't need to spend more time for it to be enough.  All that matters is that they understand the concept and are able to build on it to move to the next lesson.  I am planning on using CTCMath this year for our math curriculum for my four youngest children.

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 1

It was so hot this week!  August in SW Arkansas can be brutal.  I am very thankful for air conditioning.  We started our new school this week with a few of our subjects.  I haven't even ordered all of our books yet and we wont be up to a full schedule until after the county fair.  For the next few weeks we will do half days in the afternoon when it is blazing hot!  And I hope to put together some posts talking about curriculum choices for this year for each grade later in the week.

The biggest change for our homeschool this year is that we have one less student.  Nick has gone into public school full time for his senior year.  There were a few computer classes offered at the school that he wanted to take and he is also taking two classes for concurrent college credits that by taking through the high school he could take for free.  So he is gone the entire day which is very strange for me.  It's hard wrapping my mind around the fact that he is a senior and will be going to college next year.

The local public schools started back on Tuesday but we did not because Miss Willow had a check up in Hot Springs and Chelsea is not able to drive yet so we took them.  She got an A Plus from the doctor and doesn't have to go back for a month.

Homeschool Wrap Up Week 1 

Bible: Last year we finished up reading through the book of Mark so this year we started the book of Luke.  We are reading one chapter per day.

History: We will be finishing reading Passport Ancient Rome from Home School in the Woods before jumping back into The Mystery of History.  We are not doing any of the activities just reading through the lessons.  We completed 3 stops this week.

Music Appreciations: We are working on a review of Music Appreciation Level 2 from Zeezok.  The composer we are studying is Chopin.  It includes a biography of each composer, music to listen to, and extra information and activities.  We are in the process of reading Chopin the Early years and will be finishing that book up next week.

Art: We are reviewing an Art History video series called HIGASFY for grades 1-8.  We watched the first video (30 minutes) on the Introduction to the Impressionist Period.

Math: I have Emmie, Lily, Christian, and Anthony working on CTC Math.  Alex picked up MUS Pre-Algebra where he left off last spring.

Language Arts: Lily is reviewing a LA workbook from Reading Eggs and finished the first two lessons.  We are supposed to have access to Reading Eggspress online for 4 weeks to go with it but I haven't received that yet.  She also worked on Typing Tournament.  I have not started the other on their language arts yet.


Other Activities this Week:

Tuesday we took the baby to the doctor.

Wednesday Samantha came over to help us with the pig. 

Thursday The girls had music lessons, we ran errands and went grocery shopping, ran home to unload groceries and then had to leave again.  There was a mandatory meeting for students taking concurrent classes and their parents.  After the meeting Nick, Christian, and Alex went to the Cattlemans dinner to help set up and auction off desserts to raise money for 4 H and FFA.

Friday I think we stayed home.

Saturday we had clean up at the Howard County Fair grounds.

I have spent every evening working with Nick and his pig.  Actually we all have it has turned into a family project.  And I have a sick goat.  She is not at all well.  Taking her to the vet this morning and hoping they can do something for her :(

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

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Our Week in Review (August 5th-11th)

It was a very busy week!  And a huge blessing arrived this week!


My mom and dad flew in on Sunday.  Monday Chelsea had some pre-op stuff she needed to do at the hospital in Hot Springs and wanted all of us to come along so we could go to the museum first before my passes expired.  They had some new exhibits in there including a room decorated to look like 1969 with a recording of the speech JFK gave about the US getting to the moon and a video of the launch of Apollo 11 and a whole section of stuff on the human body that was really cool.  The children though that it was really neat that Liam did an ultrasound just two days before his sister arrived.

Tuesday Lily and Emmie had a 4 H Healthy Snacks workshops.  Alex and Nick both helped with it.

Liam arrived that afternoon to stay with us for a few days while his mama and daddy were in Hot Springs to have his little sister.

Wednesday morning Art and I went to the hospital early to wait on the arrival of Willow.  The c-section was scheduled for 10 am.  It was a very strange set up at the hospital this time.  They no longer have a nursery for babies.  They are 100 percent roomed in with the mother unless there is a problem.  Then there will be a NICU but it was under construction.  They had Chelsea in a triage room waiting for her C-section to start with a neighbor on the other side of the curtain that had just had a baby.  She had received special permission from the doctor for me to be in the recovery room with the baby as soon as she was born but the nurses wouldn't let me go in.  We had to wait in the triage room.  Her doctor is very sweet and came in to do the C-section on her vacation and did come back to talk to me after she had finished.  The baby swallowed amniotic fluid on the way out and had to be suctioned. but in oxygen, and have an IV started.  Chelsea only got to see her for a minute.  Since there was no nursery we couldn't even look in a window at her, she stayed in the recovery room.  They moved Chelsea back to the triage room until her spinal wore off and then they moved her to her regular room.  They brought the baby to her for about 5 minutes so she could hold her before they moved her then they took her back.  Thankfully she did better then Liam and didn't run fever or have other problems and they were able to wean her off the oxygen and remove the IV.  She got to move into her mamas room around 3:30 that afternoon and was able to stay!

She was 7 lbs 10 oz and 19.5 inches long.

Big Brother , Nana and Papa and all of the aunts and uncles were able to meet her that evening.

The next day Chelsea was missing Liam and wanted us to bring him up there so we loaded up and went back to Hot Springs.

After a short visit Nana and Papa treated us to a movie.  We went to see Aladdin.  The children were very impressed with the theater's reclining chairs!

That night was open house for Nick at his school.


Friday morning Willow and Chelsea got the OK to be discharged by the doctors.  It took more then 4 hours for their paperwork to be processed and they were actually released.  While we waited I threw together a couple of meals to send home with them.  She was in a lot of pain from the car ride so they only stayed long enough to grab Liam and head home.

Some Liam cuteness 

We had to run to town to run some errands and sign Emmie up for a new year of dance.  Have I mentioned lately that I can't believe how fast this summer has gone?

Before we new about Willow's arrival date, we committed to participating in a pig/goat show on the 10th of August in Hot Springs.  Art, Nick, Alex, Christian, and I got up really early Saturday morning to load animals and head for Hot Springs (again.)  There were two pig shows one at 10 and another at 8 pm and a goat show after the conclusion of the morning pig show.  The evening pig show was our county 4 H fundraiser.  It was the pig's first show and it didn't go at all well.  Like I can't imagine it being able to be any worse unless she would've died or we lost her completely.  He came in last for both shows and then took another person's pig in for showmanship because we didn't want to attempt to get her out of the pen again.  He came in 11th.  Getting her back on the trailer was a nightmare.  He has three weeks to work with her before the County Fair.  Oh yeah and it was miserably hot. 

Christian and Alex placed 5th and 6th in their show and were disappointed but they know what they need to do to work with them and get them better before the fair. 

The boys and I helped with the second show since it was our fundraiser.  They ran the gates and the hog panels in the ring and I handed out prizes.  After the show they took down the pens and cleaned up all the trash.  We didn't get home til 12:30 am.

Mom and dad brought the other three children up for the first pig show and then went to visit Chelsea.  That night mom and Lily with Emmie's help worked on a table runner.  Lily did a great job!

Mom and dad left Sunday morning and the rest of us didn't do much but take care of what had to be done and rest.

School starts this week.  I am not ready.

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

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