Homeschool Crew Review: The 101 Series

As our Homeschool Crew Reviews were coming to an end for this year, I was super excited to see The 101 Series as our last vendor.  I had heard such wonderful things about this series and was anxious to have an opportunity to check it out.  Over the last several weeks we have had an opportunity to use and review Biology 101.  Westfield Studios was founded in 2004 when Tammy Olson was looking for a biology curriculum to help her teenage sons and could not find what she was looking for,  Her husband, Wes, with a love of science and 15 years of film experience decided to make what she was looking for, and Biology 101 was made, followed by  Chemistry 101, and Physics 101.  General Science 101 will be the next course in the series.  The goal of the 101 Series is to provide understandable, easy to use, visual, high school level curriculum.  
Biology 101 is a high school level, creation based biology course.  It was designed for ages 15 and up but is appropriate for all ages to watch.  The course  teaches biology by following the days of creation.  There are 4 discs which contain the video segments ( 4 hours and 37 minutes total)to watch and you will also find on disc four PDF's of a guidebook and accreditation booklet.   
Disc 1: Introduction: Defining Life and Life Classification               Plants
Disc 2: Aquatic Creatures              Avian Creatures
Disc 3: Land Animals Part 1              Land Animals Part 2              Mankind Part 1              Mankind Part 2
Disc 4: Genetics: A Brief History of Biology, Cells, and Genetics              Guidebook and Accreditation Booklet (PDFs)              
The Accreditation Booklet  is a 12 page PDF explaining how to turn the DVDs into a high school credit by completing a variety of activities including:  watching the DVDs, using the guidebook, making a notebook to record your work, research and lab reports, discussion questions, labs, field trips, and reading additional books of choice.  A chart is included with the suggested activities and the approximate amount of time that should be spent completing them.  The Biology 101 Course Accreditation takes around 135 hours to complete plus 20 hours of lab work.  If you complete one segment per week, it will take around 7 months to complete the course working approximately 5 hours per week.

The Guidebook is a 118 page PDF.  This book is a companion to the DVD that your student can read through.  It contains information form the film, interesting trivia, stories and commentary, footnotes, and quizzes.

I have been through one homeschool high school biology course with my oldest daughter.  It was very challenging and we did not enjoy it.  It was a struggle to get through the course.  I really wanted to find something different to use with my son who just entered 9th grade.  I was thrilled to have a chance to review Biology 101 because I thought the visual aspect (watching the DVDs) would make the study of biology more interesting.  I decided we would watch the DVDs this year and then have Nick complete the Accreditation Course for his biology credit next year. We have been watching one portion of the DVD per week. The DVDs are stunning!  The graphics are beautiful.  The information is presented in an interesting and understandable way.  I love that the study follows the days of creation.  Even though it is geared for high school ages, the DVD can be viewed by the entire family. All of my children ages 5 and up have watched and enjoyed the DVDs.  
What I didn't know until we received the product was how much I would like the course as a whole. The activities to turn this into a high school credit are fantastic!  I love the combination of watching the DVDs, hands on activities, research activities, reading, writing, and field trips.  Students are encouraged to read 3-5 juvenile books on each subject from the library.  You do not have to buy or find specific books, just anything on the subject that they find interesting that they want to read more about.  The lab work is not just dissection, instead there are a variety of activities.  I was VERY excited about that.  There is one lab assignment to catch a fish and as you prepare it identify the parts but there is also an option to buy a goldfish, observe it and identify it's outer parts.  I love the field trip suggestions.  Some of the field trips include: visiting a pond, lake, or ocean and observe and identify creatures, visit a local nursery and identify plants, go out to eat and classify items at the table, visit a park, aviary or bird sanctuary, visit a pet store, and visit a lab to look at a blood cell.  I love the inclusion of the Bible activities as well.
I am so impressed with Biology 101!  High School level science courses can be so difficult for the student and the teacher.  Biology 101 is interesting, easy to understand, and easy on the teacher. The course is also affordable.  There is no special or expensive equipment or add on items needed.  I am definitely planning on purchasing Chemistry 101 and Physics 101!
Members of The Crew reviewed all three of the DVDs in The 101 Series.  To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!    

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Homeschool Crew Review: Chara Games

Chara is the Biblical Greek word for unshakeable joy.  Chara Games was founded in 2014 to design and publish  Christian games that will create joy by building relationships with God and people.  We recently had an opportunity to use and review Commissioned from Chara Games.  Commissioned is a cooperative board game for two to six players ages 14 and older.  Younger children can play with help.  The game takes approximately one hour to play.  The game is based on the spread of the early church.  Players are the early Apostles and need to work together to grow their faith deck, grow the church, collect the books of the New Testament and overcome trials and persecution.  
The game includes:
1 Double Sided Game Board 5 Double Sided Scenario Cards 6 Player Boards 96 Faith Cards 27 Trial Cards 4 Missionary Meeples 75 Church Member Cubes 1 Elder Staff 6 Player Pawns 30 Double Sided Stop Tokens 5 Double Sided Extinguished Tokens 1 Converted City Leaders Token 1 Roman Legion Token 1 8 sided die Rule Book Theme Appendix
There are 6 apostles in the game: Andrew, Paul, Barnabas, James, John, and Peter.  Each player chooses an apostle and takes the matching player board, faith cards, and player pawn.  There are 5 different scenario cards that tell you which side of the double sided board to play on and how to set up your pieces.  Each round of play has 3 phases.  In the Arm Phases, players draw cards to add to their Faith Deck.  In the Live Phase, players face trial, pray, share, move, and grow.  In the Mature Phase, players use the cards left in their hands to purchase new Faith Cards.  The game continues until the victory conditions are met (conditions are listed on each scenario card), 5 churches are extinguished, or the last trial card is drawn.  
One of the first thing I noticed was that all of the game pieces are high quality.  Even the box is sturdier then many of your typical board game boxes.  There are a lot of pieces to the game.  Some of them came in small zipped baggies and I put all of the cards and tokens into a ziplock bag so they would not get lost.  All of these fit neatly back into the box.

When the game arrived, I read through all of the instructions and tried to set up the game.  The children were eager to go ahead and start playing.  But after reading the instructions I was very confused.  I went to the  Chara Games website and watched the video they have posted.  I set up the game board and played the game as they did it on the video and it made much more sense.  You really need to watch the video to understand how to set up and play the game.  It is around 25 minutes long. 

I like the overall theme of the game.  I think Commissioned helps people to understand early church history and the great difficulties the early church endured.  It is different then most board games, because rather then trying to compete against the other players, you are playing cooperatively towards a common goal.  I think the suggested age range on the game of 14 and up is a good one.  My 13 and 14 year year could play and understand the game quite well once we got past the initial set up.  My other younger children wanted to play and could with help but really did not completely understand and the game was a bit long and repetitive for them. 
In addition to Commissioned, Chara Games has a brand new game, 3 Seeds , that is currently in production.  It is a 2-5 player card game in which players use seed cards to complete crops, employ special event cards to gain bonuses, and uncover hidden harvest cards to gain points. 
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 11

In addition to our regular work, we spent some time this week talking about the upcoming election. We talked about the 3 branches of government, the qualifications to become president, and the jobs of the president.  We talked about the two major parties, the election process, who was running for president, and the electoral college.  The day after the election we took a look at the electoral collage again to see which states gave their votes to which candidate.  I had been up very late the night before watching the results as they came in and finally went to bed at 1:30 am.  The children offered to skip a day of school so I could take a nap (not that they had any ulterior motives!) but I told them we would still have school that day.

We also had to make a career family tree for a homeschool event to celebrate career week/Veteran's Day and worked on that two afternoons this week.

Homeschool Wrap Up Week 11

P.E.: We did two days of Family Time Fitness and one day of yoga.

Bible: We read about the Quechua Indians in Windows on the World.  We also read Matthew 7:15-8:4.

Read Aloud: We finished Nate Saint.  Books that I know have sad endings are hard for me to read aloud, but I did pretty good and only cried a little.  We also finished Paddle to the Sea and The Borrowers.

Poetry: We finished memorizing My Gift by Christina Rossetti.

E.C.C: To go along with the reading of Nate Saint, we made a paper airplane out of card stock.  We finished up the section on Brazil.  There were a few pages of reading assigned from Children's Atlas of God's World.  To that I added several notebooking pages.  We did the flag and wrote some facts on the flag underneath it.  I added another map to label and color.  We did a page on money, food, wildlife, and important landmarks in Brazil.  I found a documentary to watch but I do not know if it was my internet or the website but could not get it to play correctly,  

For the science portion we read about Colors in the Rain Forest, Water Birds, and Rain Forest Hunters.  We had a fun experiment to show how strong eggs were.  Our 4 eggs held up 24 books before they broke!

Art: I had planned an art project for this week, but ran out of time.

Science: We finished the chapter on Mars in Exploring Creation with Astronomy.  Anthony did a drawing on what his house would look like on Mars.

Language Arts: We did lesson 8 of Fix It! Grammar.  I read Christian and Anthony a short story about an acorn and they had to do an oral and written narration of it.  We have some work to do on that.  Lily's lesson was on pronouns.  Nick continues to work through his Sentence Diagramming book.

Spelling/Reading: Lily finished All About Reading Level 2 and will be moving on to Level Three.  The boys completed Step 12 in AAS 3 and lessons 30, 31, and 32 in AAR Level 4.

Math: Nick completed lesson 10 in MUS Geometry.  Alex completed 4 lessons in Teaching Textbooks.  Lily, Christian, and Anthony completed 4 lessons in Math Lessons for a Living Education.

MFW Creation from A to Z: Emmie started the unit on "o" for octopus.  She did the picture card page, handwriting page, sound identification page, and cut and paste page.  Emmie usually love school work and her worksheets, but Thursday had a massive meltdown over completing her cut and paste page.

God's Design in Nature and All American History: Nick will pick back up with Vol II of AAH in January but since he finished early he is reading a biography on George Washington and a historical fiction from that time period.  In Science he finished lessons 42-45.

Other Activities this Week

Monday we were supposed to have a game but it rained so we were able to stay home.

Tuesday the girls had gymnastics, Christian had his soccer game, and Nick had youth at church.

Wednesday was Kid's Club.

Thursday was the first game of Christian's tournament.  It was cold out there!  His team won which means our season continues. Christian was very proud that he scored one of the goals.

Friday was our career day activity and Thanksgiving Potluck.

After that we went and did our grocery shopping and bought the stuff we needed for our OCC boxes.

Saturday it was nice to stay home.  We cleaned and moved chicken pens and did some other outside chores.  The girls and I wrapped and packed the OCC boxes and I worked on a sewing project to add to the boxes.  Emmie made some popsicle stick crosses to add to the boxes because she wants the kids tht get them to know about Jesus. Anthony, Alex, and Christian started working on their bridges for the 4 H STEM meeting.  Lily decided she would make one too.

this girl did not want to get back into her pen so we had to corral her

Emmie wanted to wear her pajamas all day, so she did

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

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Review: A Royal Christmas Wedding By Rachel Hauck

Book Description "Avery Truitt aches for true love—the kind she once shared with Prince Colin. Can she dare to hope for happily ever after, or is a fairy-tale ending beyond reach?

College volleyball star Avery Truitt has not seen her former flame, Prince Colin of Brighton Kingdom, since he suddenly pushed her away five years ago. But now, the sadness of losing her father and the joy of her sister Susanna’s pregnancy have brought Avery back to Brighton just in time for Cathedral City’s enchanting Christmas season. Avery knows she can’t avoid seeing Colin—now the Kingdom’s most eligible bachelor—whether or not her heart is ready to relive the pain. But seeing him again might bring her the closure she needs after all this time.

When Colin finds himself at the center of a centuries-old Brighton tradition, he must decide whether to follow the path laid out before him or follow his heart to the only woman for whom he would ring the Pembroke Chapel Bell. Can Colin convince Avery to meet him at the chapel on Christmas morning—as tradition dictates—or will Avery run back to her St. Simons home and pursue a coaching career as planned?"

Who does not love a royal fairy tale?  A Royal Christmas Wedding is the 4th and last book in the Royal Wedding Series.  This series takes us to the imaginary (but completely real and believable) kingdoms of Brighton and Hessenburg.  Once Upon a Prince (Book 1) tells the story of Susanna Truitt and Prince Nathaniel. Princess Ever After (Book 2) is about the Grand Duchy of Hesseneburg and Regina Beeswick's struggle to go from a Tallahassee Car Queen to a Royal Princess. In How to Catch a Prince  (Book 3), Corina del Ray and Prince Stephen were torn apart by the tragedy of war but are thrown back together with a bit of divine intervention.  A Royal Wedding (Book 4) is Avery Truitt and Prince Colin's story.  You could read each of these as stand alone novels, but it is worth reading the complete series.  Each of these stories are outstanding!

We met Avery and Colin in Book One in the beginning of a sweet, young romance.  But they were too young to fall in love, or so most people would say. Five years later they both have grown up and moved on.  They both have new hopes and dreams for the future.  But when Avery goes to Brighton Kingdom for the holidays they are back in each other's lives again.  Colin and Avery both have plans for the future that do not include each other.  Will they follow the path that had been set or follow their hearts? It is a sweet story of love, and hope, and trust.  It is a story of joy even when there is sadness.  It is a story of faith.

I loved it.  It was a beautiful story and absolutely the best ending to a series that I have ever read!

I highly recommend A Royal Wedding Series and any other book by Rachel Hauck.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purpose of writing a fair and honest review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance to the FTC regulations. 

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Homeschool Crew Review: The Critical Thinking Co.™

The Critical Thinking Co.™ has a variety of products to teach children critical thinking skills for higher test scores, better grades, and improved life skills.  They do not teach through drill or memorization but instead empower the mind. We recently had an opportunity to use and review Sentence Diagramming: Beginning. Sentence Diagramming: Beginning is a 72 page paper back book for students in grades 3-12.  The book teaches students to diagram sentences to gain a better understanding of the English language and apply this knowledge to their own writing.  Sentence diagramming gives students visual and logical grammar lessons.  The book begins with simple subject-verb sentences and continues through more complex sentences.  There are 12 lessons including:
Lesson 1: Simple Subject and Main Verb Lesson 2: Direct Object Lesson 3: Adjectives Lesson 4: Adverbs Modifying Verbs Lesson 5: Predicate Adjectives Lesson 6: Predicate Nouns Lesson 7: Prepositional Phrases (Adjectival) Lesson 8: Prepositional Phrases (Adverbial) Lesson 9: Compound Subjects Lesson 10: Compound Predicates Lesson 11: Compound Direct Objects Lesson 12: Compound Predicate Adjectives and Nouns
Each lesson has a short lesson explaining the part of speech that is being focused on and and example of how to diagram it.  Section 1 shows a sentence diagrammed incorrectly and the student must diagram it correctly.  Section 2 gives the sentences ans students diagram them.  In section 3 student write their own sentences and diagram them. 
At the end of the book is a review section with 25 sentences for students to diagram.  An answer key for each lesson is located in the back of the book.
Sample Pages can be viewed here.
You can purchase Sentence Diagramming: Beginning for $12.99 here. 
I have been using Sentence Diagramming: Beginning with my 9th grade son.  This review opportunity came at just the right time for us. He was struggling with the grammar curriculum that we were using and I was looking for something else to fill in that slot.  I have been having him complete one lesson per week in the book.

The lessons are laid out very well.  They start out very simple and increase in complexity.  Each lesson follows the same pattern.  Breaking down each sentence into it's basic building blocks and diagramming them helps make sense of the parts of speech.  Students will then be able to use what they have learned to improve their own writing.  That is the goal for us.  I do not want them to learn for the sake of learning but instead be able to apply it to their own lives.  My son has a very logical, mathematical mind and Sentence Diagramming: Beginning has made a lot of sense to him. 
As I mentioned above, The Critical Thinking Co.™ . has a variety of products for ages 3 and up.  They have several products in the Reading ,Writing, and Arithmetic Before Kindergarten Bundle to help get children ready to start school.  Members of The Crew had an opportunity to review software from this bundle as well as Sentence Diagramming: Beginning and Language Smarts Level E.  To see what my Crew Mates had to say, visit the Crew Blog!

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 10

I did not get an extra hour of sleep this morning, did you?  The dog woke up at her regular time and needed to be let out and then the children started waking up at their time.  On a positive note, everyone was ready for church early.

Homeschool Wrap Up Week 10

P.E.: We did one day of yoga and 3 days of Family Time Fitness.

Bible: We read about Animism and the Yanomamo in Windows on the World.  We read Matthew 6:19-7:12.

Read Aloud: We read 5 chapters of Nate Saint for our morning read aloud.  We started Paddle to the Sea for our afternoon read aloud and continued reading The Borrowers for our evening read aloud.

Poetry: We finished memorizing Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore and started working on My Gift by Christina Rossetti.

E.C.C.C: I found 4 books at our small library on South America and Tropical Rain Forests so I added two of those to this weeks's school line up.  We read one of the books on South America over two days.  We also read 2 pages of Children's Atlas of God's World and one page showing different words in Portuguese for the geography potion.  For the science portion I found a Magic School bus episode on Tropical Rain Forests and had the children watch that.  We read a book on baby animals in the rain forest.  We also read section on The Amazon, The Rain Forest Floor, Monkeys and Apes and Climbing and Gliding in the Living World Encyclopedia and The Amazon River in Properties of Ecosystems.

I had about an hour Thursday afternoon that I used to look for and print out some pages to add to the study of Brazil.  Notebookingpages.com (aff link) had a whole set of pages on Brazil (132 pages) that I downloaded and chose some to print out and use next week.  I am hoping this will fill out our study a little more.

Art: The children used oil pastels to color in an amazon river area surrounded by a tropical rain forest.

Science: We watched the section on aquatic creatures in Biology 101.  In Exploring Creation with Astronomy we started the chapter on Mars.  One of the activities was to make a salt dough volcano and watch it erupt.

Language Arts: We did Lesson 7 of Fix It! Grammar. Nick is working through a sentence diagramming book.  Lily's lesson was on making words plural.  Christian and Anthony read through a short play with two characters and then had to write their own play using a rabbit and a squirrel as characters.

Spelling/Reading: In AAS Level 3 Christian and Anthony completed step 11.  In AAR Level 4 they completed lessons 27,28, and 29.  In AAR Level 2 Lily completed lesson  47.

Math: Nick completed lesson 9 in MUS Geometry.  Alex completed 4 lessons in Teaching Textbooks and Lily, Christian, and Anthony completed 4 lessons in Math Lessons for a Living Education.

Lily likes dot to dots so I printed her out one 

MFW Creation from A to Z: When we made the salt dough for the volcano I made some extra for Emmie to turn into a dinosaur egg.  She watched the Buddy Davis music video on dinosaurs.  She also did her math page, drawing page, and cut and paste page.  She is starting to blend letters and did her blend ladder page.

All American History and God's Design in Nature: Well I thought it would take Nick until Christmas break to finish Vol 1 of All American History.  He finished it Tuesday.  So i gave him a historical fiction I had planned on him reading anyway Duel in the Wilderness.  I also assigned him a biography of George Washington to read during the time of day he would be doing his history.  He finished lessons 38-41 in God's Design in Nature.

Other Activities this Week:

Monday I took the children to the library and then down the park Trick or Treat Trail.  They had wanted to carve pumpkins but we didn't grow any this year and I forgot to buy some.  I stopped by Walmart and they still had a few and they were marked down to $1.  By the time we got home, daddy was finally get home from work.  I quick made supper while Nick and Alex supervised the pumpkin carving.  Nick is like me and does not like to carve pumpkins.  But that sweet baby asked him for help so he helped her carve it while Alex helped Lily.  Anthony did not want to do one and Christian did his own.

Tuesday the girls had gymnastics.  Lily fell and landed on her knee.  Minor wound thankfully and just was bruised and sore.

We went and ate sandwiches and chips at the park.  When we finished Nick walked to church for youth.  Christian and Alex both had soccer games at 6.

Alex's game was the final game of the tournament.  It was one of the best games I have seen.  At the end of 4 quarters it was a 1-1 tie so they had to go to a shoot out.  Every child is supposed to kick but we only had 7 players and the other team had 11 so they chose 7 they wanted to kick.  Alex was the goalie for our team and blocked every shot.  He scored one of the two goals for our team.  His season is over.

Wednesday was Kid's Club.

Thursday Christian was supposed to have a soccer practice.  But it had been raining off and on all day and we decided to stay home.

Friday we had Book Club and a picnic at the park.  Our book was Kneeknock Rise.  Honestly I thought the book was odd but the children thought it was interesting. We answered some questions about the book and played a game that required team work. The children walked the Nature Trail several times. Afterwards we did our grocery shopping.

Saturday was the BEST Robotics competition.

I hope you had a great week!

Happy Homeschooling!

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