Homeschool Crew Review Thin Stix Creativity Pack

The Pencil Grip, Inc. carries a variety of products including pencil grips, Kwik Stix and Thin Stix paint sticks, fidgets, plus a variety of school and office supplies.  Ever since the first time The Pencil Grip, Inc. contacted me to review their Kwik Stix, we have been hooked on their products.  We were very excited to have an opportunity to review their Thin Stix Creativity Pack .
   

Thin Stix are solid tempera paint sticks that dry in 90 seconds.  They can be used on a wide variety of materials including paper, canvas, cardboard, wood, poster board and more.  We even painted rocks with them and then hid them for others to find. They are non toxic and washable.  They wash off of surfaces, skin, and clothing. No water is needed to use these paints, which means no water to spill and clean up!  All you have to do to use them is uncap, twist, and paint.  It is true paint and will not crack and peel, and you can use two colors to blend and make new colors or make your colors lighter or darker.

We loved the Kwik Stix when we first tried them out.  Kwik Stix are smaller and fatter then Thin Stix, similar to a glue stick.  After those were so popular the company released the Thin Stix which are thinner and able to get in hard to reach places and longer.  We loved the Thin Stix 6 pack of classic colors that we reviewed earlier in the year.  The girls made some amazing pictures, we painted rocks with them, and even made cards to send to kids in the hospital.  We wished we had a few more color options though and were excited to see this Creativity Pack.  The Thin Stix Creativity Pack has 24 different Thin Stix including 12 classic colors, 6 neon colors, and 6 metalix.  

Emmie was practicing writing some of the words she was learning using the Neon Thin Stix.  This was a great fun way to reinforce what she had been learning.  My photos do not do the brightness of the colors justice.

Lily did some fun pictures.

The colors are bold and bright.  We love the shimmer of the metalix and the brightness of the neon colors.  All of the other reasons we love Thin Stix still hold true.  They are easy to use.  You can use them on the go, and if they accidentally paint on the table or another surface it cleans right up with a wet rag.  I love how quick they dry.  They are great for Sunday School, co-op. or 4 H projects.  

We will be using these to paint some Christmas ornaments and decorations very soon!

The Thin Stix Creativity pack has a great combination of colors that children will love.  This would make a great gift for the children in your life (and for their parents too!) 

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

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 11

I am a few days late posting this because we were out of town this week-end.

After our Bible lesson on Mondays (still working on our Weave Your Word in Me Bible study) we do geography.  Well actually we usually work on poetry first but we didn't this week.  Our geography lesson was a review of the countries we have learned so far in North and South America. They all completed a math lesson, Christian and Anthony started step 20 in AAS Level 4, and did their handwriting and reading of Johnny Tremain.  Emmie did lesson 21 in AAR Level 1 and Lily read one of her magic stories.

That afternoon we had our 4 H meeting packing OCC Boxes.

After that I met Art and gave him the children and my van and I took his truck to my required 4 H leader training (I have to have 4 hours of training per year.)


Tuesday after our Bible lesson I had planned on watching a Torchlighter's video on Martin Luther but was unable to stream it.  So instead I read a short biography on him.  Then we worked on a lesson in Thinking Like an Engineer and downloaded software to start learning CAD.  In the afternoon we did our math, spelling, reading, and handwriting.

Then we had gymnastics.

After gymnastics we went to church to change into costumes and left Nick there for senior high youth. 

Alex went ahead to the park to hand out candy with the 4 H Teen Leaders and then the rest of us followed to go through the Trick or Treat Trail.  It was cold and started to rain while we were in the park so we didn't stay long.  We stopped by two houses and headed back home.

Wednesday after Bible we worked on Lesson 11 in America's Story.  We could not do the next lesson in Thinking Like an Engineer because I couldn't load the video (already slow internet is being much slower lately!) After lunch they did their math, reading, spelling, and handwriting and then we headed off to Kid's Club.

Thursday morning after our Bible lesson, I started reading aloud George Washington True Patriot from YWAM Publishing.  We did a science lesson on Stephen Hales and water transport in plants.  We did an experiment with celery to show how this works.  Our afternoon was spent on math, reading, handwriting, and spelling.  The boys finished Johnny Tremain and we will be moving on to the next unit in Readers in Residence on Charlotte's Web.

Lily and Alex had music lessons.

Friday after I picked up Nick from school we loaded the camper to head to Little Rock for the week-end.  We went to Maumelle Park which is on the Arkansas River.  You are in the city, but actually not.  It was very pretty. 

Friday night we dropped off Christian and Alex at Forestry and Wildlife Camp at the 4 H center.  It was Christian's first overnight camp and I was nervous but he was fine.  While they were there they had workshops and activities on archeology, food plots,  built a bat house, ATV safety, rode 4 wheelers, Gun Safety, shot BB guns, population/trapping analysis, scavenger hunt, and rock climbing.  I hope they post pictures on the FB page so I can see some!

Saturday morning we headed to the BEST Robotics competition and were there all day watching Nick compete with his team.  He drove two rounds.  It was a fire rescue theme this year.  The team did really well and won 5 different awards.  They are moving on to compete in Regionals at Fort Smith in December.

After the competition we went back to the campsite, fished a little, and cooked over the campfire.

Sunday we didn't have to pick the boys up until 1, so we went to the zoo.

baby penguins

I hope you had a great week!  Happy Homeschooling!

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October Nature Seekers 4 H Meeting

Last year in October we went to a local church and did a Operation Christmas Child packing day.  This church has a huge Operation Christmas Child ministry and has work days to pack OCC boxes.  The children really enjoyed it and asked to go back again this year so I scheduled us another day to go pack boxes.

I had a really small group of children.  We had one out sick and one family that couldn't make it at the last minute so we only had 7 children and one adult.  We worked in assembly line style packing boxes for 5-7 year old boys.  Each box got a notebook, coloring book, crayons, pencils and pencil sharpener, comb, washcloth and soap, toothbrush, t-shirt, bouncy ball, car, stuffed animal, and Christmas card.  They worked really hard and fast and in one hour had packed 230 boxes!

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Homeschool Crew Review: The Magic Stories

Allsaid & Dunn, LLC, publishers of The Reading Game and authors of the Wordly Wise series, has released a brand new product for children with a 2nd-3rd grade reading level called The Magic Stories.  I have had an opportunity to review The Magic Stories over the last few weeks with my 3rd grade daughter.

The Magic Stories is a set of 6 stories.  It was designed to be a follow up to The Reading Game, but you do not have to use The Reading Game before going through The Magic Stories.  It is available for purchase as a download.  With your purchase you receive all 6 stories at around 20 pages each,  a set of Naughty 40 flashcards for each story, and 4 worksheets for each story.  There is also a running record page and pre/post flashcards sight word assessment. The stories can be read on a tablet or computer or printed out.  The flashcards can be printed out on cardstock.  The words on the flashcards are the most difficult words your child will encounter in the story.  They can practice with the flashcards before reading the story to help with word recognition and build confidence while reading.  After finishing reading the story, the student can work on the worksheets which include a story maze, finish the sentence page, Imagine, and Finish the Story.  The Magic Stories includes:

The Magic Hole

The Magic Axe

The Magic Joke

The Magic Hotdog

The Magic Boots

The Magic Box

In The Magic Hole, Ping Ho finds a bag with a magic hole.  When all of her rice comes up missing, her family doesn't believe her that there was a hole in the bag. But the hole starts appearing in different places and changes her family's life.  In The Magic Axe, Tom does not like to have to do any work.  When his father is injured he has to be the man in the family.  Trying to avoid work, he is thrilled when he comes upon a magic axe.  The Magic Joke is about a joke that is so funny anyone who hears or reads it is overcome with fits of laughter.  The king decides to use the joke against a kingdom he is at war against to win the war.  The Magic Hotdog is about a boy named Alfred who loves hotdogs and comes across a magic hotdog that doesn't disappear no matter how many bites you take.  In The Magic Boots, Patty is a six year old girls who really wants a pair of pixie boots.  The Magic Box is about Rum-pel-stilt-skin and how he used a magic box to turn gold to straw.

You can purchase The Magic Stories for $16.95 or you can buy individual titles for $3.95.

I used The Magic Stories with my daughter Lily who is 8 years old and a very strong reader.  The first story I printed out but the others we just read on my iPad and found that much easier.  I did not use the Naughty 40 flashcards with her, because I wanted to see if any of the words would give her trouble, they did not. If I had been using this with a child that was not such a strong reader I would have gone over the words several times before attempting to read the stories.  The stories are quite lengthy at around 20 pages each.  That is more then Lily is used to reading aloud, so we took turns reading them together.  She read a paragraph and then I read a paragraph.

I really liked the worksheets that came with The Magic Stories.  They are more then just your simple read the story and answer the questions.  We especially liked the Maze and the Write the Story.  I wish there was more teacher direction with The Magic Stories and an answer key for parents who may not be reading the stories with their children.

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

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