Review: The Last Ride by Susan K. Marlow

Susan K. Marlow is the author of three different series of boks following the life of Andrea (Andi) Carter growing up on a ranch in the 1800's.  In Circle C Beginnings we meet 6-8 year old Andi, Circle C Adventures features 12 year old Andi, and the newest series Circle C Milestones is about Andi's life when she is 14-16 years old.  Susan K. Marlow is also the author of a wonderful series called Goldtown Adventures.  We have LOVED every book we have ever read by Ms. Marlow and I was excited to have an opportunity to review The Last Ride.

The Last Ride (176 page paperback) is the 3rd book in the Circle C Milestones series.  In The Last Ride, Andi is getting ready to turn sweet 16.  She loves life on her ranch, training her colt and spending time with her horse Taffy.  But when her cousin Daniel gets sent out to the ranch to try and keep him out of trouble by getting him away from the city and giving him work to do, things start to change on the ranch.  Daniel does not want to be on the ranch, ignores his duties, ruins equipment, and finds trouble even in their small town.  When Andi discovers a secret about Daniel, he forces her to stay silent and puts lives in danger.  How will Andi be able to move on with her life and learn to forgive?

I have already mentioned how much we have loved Susan K. Marlow's books, and this one was no different.  I am so glad to have the opportunity to "see" Andi grow up through this newest series of books.  I was also glad to see the return of Riley, Andi's best friend from the Circle C. Beginnings Books.  Andi faces a lot of difficult situations in the Last Ride but she learns a lot of life lessons while doing it.  There was sadness in this book (it made me cry!), but also joy, forgiveness, and new beginnings.  I can't wait for the next book in this series, Courageous Love to be released in November.

Susan K. Marlow also writes a series called Goldtown Adventures that my boys love!

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 FTC regulations.

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Review: The Goodbye Bride by Denise Hunter

The Goodbye Bride is the second book in Denise Hunter's Summer Harbor series.  The series takes place in Maine and focuses on a different Callahan Brother.  In the first book, Falling Like Snowflakes, which focuses on Beau Callahan, we know that Zac was hurt when his fiancee left him high and dry but we do not know any of the details.  The Goodbye Bride is Zac and Lucy's story.

Zac returned from a trip and found his fiancee gone.  Now 7 months later he receives a call from her to come and pick her up.  She has fallen in a diner wearing a wedding dress and believes she is late for her wedding to Zac.  She has no memory of leaving him or what she has been doing for the last several months.  Zac picks her up but is only planning on helping her until he can find out where she lives and who she was supposed to be marrying the day she fell.


I loved Falling Like Snowflakes and was very excited to have the opportunity to review The Goodbye Bride.  So many series focus on female characters as the lead characters, it is nice to be bale to read a series with brothers as the main characters.  I also really enjoy the tie ins to Colleen Coble's newest series.  The story was not what I expected.  I really enjoyed the element of suspense that Denise Hunter brought to Falling Like Snowflakes and I was looking for something similar in The Goodbye Bride, but once I let go of those expectations I could read the story for what it was. I loved the characters and the message.  Denise Hunter does an excellent job of showing that often there is more to the story then you may know and that while things may seem black and white there are two sides to everything.  She also shows the importance of trust and being able to forgive.

The story is very romancey.  I like to read Christian fiction because they contain elements of romance without going over the top.  There were a couple of intense romantic scenes in this book, not inappropriate but a little steamier then usual and something you may want to be aware of especially for younger (teen) readers.

I look forward to reading Riley's story in the next release in the Summer Harbor series later in the year!

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 FTC regulations.

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 26

Whoever came up with the idea of daylight savings, did not have children!  Every time we change the clock it upsets our routine.  All week long it has seemed like we were running behind, especially in the morning!

Week 26 in our Homeschool

P.E.: We did two days of Yoga and one day of Family Time Fitness.  One day this week we were running really behind and just skipped it.

Bible: We completed lesson 5 of our Grapevine Studies, The Resurrection.

Read Aloud: We did not have a morning read aloud this week.

History: In The Mystery of History Vol IV we completed lessons 70-72 on The United States entering the Vietnam War, The Life and Death of Martin Luther King Jr., and Man Walking on the Moon.  We watched a Youtube video of Dr. King's I Have a Dream Speech, and one of the footage of man walking on the moon.  The boys completed their worksheets, timeline figures, and memory cards.  The map assignment was on the different moon landings.

Science: We read chapters 4 and 5 of The Archaeology Book.

My Father's World Adventures: This week we learned about Samuel Morse.  I gave the children a worksheet showing Morse Code and Anthony spent that evening writing secret messages in Morse Code.  Our science activity was on air, and again it was one that we have already done, so we did not do it again.  In our state study we completed Florida and Texas.  We are still reading On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Math: We started lesson 24 in each of the different math levels.  Christian and Anthony hit some stumbling blocks, so I back tracked to lesson 23 and had them do a few worksheets for extra practice. I think they will continue to need some extra practice for awhile so they will not be moving on to a new lesson until they have complete confidence.

Art: The four younger children did lesson 19 in ARTistic Pursuits K-3 Book 3 on Van Gogh.  Their project was to do a painting adding in some ribbons of color.

Christian

Anthony

Emmie

Lily

Grammar/Writing/Literature: We completed lesson 28 of Fix It! Grammar.  Alex did 4 lessons in Writer's in Residence.  Nick has completed 10 chapters in Memoria Press's Treasure Island Literature.

Reading/Spelling: We completed lesson 5 of LOE Essentials.  Alex completed lesson 23 of The Phonetic Zoo.  Lily finished lesson 10 of AAR Level 2.  She also has been working on Talking Fingers, an online reading and typing program.

Preschool: Emmie is still working on an ABC book from Homeschool Copywork.

Other Activities This Week: We had some beautiful weather Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and we tried to take advantage of that and be outside as much as possible.

Monday: We had a 4 H meeting at the park.  It was on seeds,  We made a garden in a glove, did some seed ID, and painted flower pots.

Our seeds have started to pop out already.

The girls had gymnastics, but Christian's soccer practice was cancelled because they decided the fields were too wet from the rain the week before.

Tuesday was Lily's birthday!  It was also very nice outside!  She thought it would be fun to make sandwiches and have a birthday picnic so I loaded up her cake and presents and headed off to the park.

She wanted a ladybug cake.  I thought it tuned out cute!

Alex also had a soccer practice.

Wednesday was Kid's Club.

They sing Happy Birthday to all the children who have birthdays that week

Emmie making her fish

Thursday was supposed to be the boys' first soccer games but it was supposed to rain and they were cancelled.

Friday we went by our friends farm and got to feed a baby sheep whose mama had more babies then she could take care of.  The children petted a few of the horses and saw the other baby sheep that were out in the pasture.

After that we were hoping to go play at the park but a storm was almost right above us so we had went to our friend's house and visited until the worst of it passed by.  We had to do some grocery shopping before heading back home.

I was not sure if we were going to take a spring break or not this week.  The local public schools are off this week so we will not have gymnastics or Kid's Club.  They usually do not schedule soccer during spring break either but this year they did.  After feeling so behind this week and having a lot of household things that need to get taken care of, I decided we will be on spring break next week.

I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!

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March 4 H Nature Seekers Meeting

I had decided we would try to have as many meetings outside as possible, if the weather cooperates. After all the rain we had last week I wasn't sure what Monday would end up bringing, but the forecast looked good.  It was a beautiful day!  It ended up being in the low 80's with a slight breeze blowing. Perfect weather for our meeting!

This month I thought we would do something on seeds.  We only had an hour for the meeting because I had to have the girls to gymnastics on time, but an hour long meeting is a pretty good amount of time.  I had four activities planned because I wasn't sure how long each would take and I wanted the meeting to take the full hour, but we never got to the last activity.

First we talked about seeds, what they were, why they were important, and how they are planted besides an actual person planting them.  Then we did a seed ID activity.

I had put 10 different types of seeds in ziplock bags and numbered them 1 to 10.  I made 10 labels with the 10 different seeds on them.  We looked at each seed and tried to guess what it was and put the label beside each bag ( I had also written an answer key so I would remember!)  The children did really well.  They got 4 wrong but the ones they got wrong were easy to mistake for the other (cantaloupe and squash, carrot and basil.)

Next we did a garden in a glove activity.  I will talk more about this in detail in another post because I got the idea from my monthly homeschool science camp kit that Monsanto has been sending me each month.  The idea is to use a glove to act as a greenhouse and get your seeds to germinate.  We put a damp cotton ball in each finger of the glove, placed the seeds on top, and another damp cotton ball on top of the seeds.  The fingers were labeled with the type of seed.  Then we blew some air into the glove and used a pip cleaner to tie it closed.  The glove needs to be hung in a sunny place and is supposed to germinate in 3-5 days.  The hardest part of this was getting the seeds in the fingers of the glove.

After that I had them paint clay pots.  I found small clay pots at Dollar Tree 3 for $1.  They were really cute!  Each child painted their pot then took some dirt and a sunflower seed and planted it inside.

Emmie is now old enough to officially be a Cloverbud!

I thought it was a fun meeting and the children seemed to enjoy themselves.  I had 9 children at this meeting.  Next month we are going to do something on photography.

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Schoolhouse Crew Review: Demme Learning's Math-U-See Digital Packs

I am a big fan of Demme Learning's Math-U- See, a mastery based, hands on, student paced math curriculum.  I have used Math-U-See for years in my homeschool. It truly is my favorite math curriculum and one that we will stick with until they all graduate.  I currently have children in the Alpha, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Algebra 1 levels.  For this review we were given an opportunity to try out the new Digital Packs. My review will be focusing on the Alpha Digital Pack. The Alpha Digital Pack($38)  includes 12 month streaming access to:
Instruction Videos Instruction Manual PDFs Lesson Solutions Test Solutions Skip Count Songs (MP3) Songbook PDF Math U See Digital Manipulatives
The Alpha Digital Pack does not include the Student Workbook or Tests.  These are a necessary component to the program.
To access the Digital Pack after purchase you need to go to the Math-U-See store and log in.  From your account page you go to View Digital Packs.  From there you can select a level from your purchased digital packs.  You can then select your lesson and the correct video, lesson summary, lesson solutions, and test solutions appear for that lesson.  The instruction videos are the same ones you will find on the Math-U-See DVDs. 

You can also access the digital manipulatives in either Chrome or Safari.  On a computer it is a simple click and drag to get the blocks you want onto the screen.  A trash can at the top removes them when you are finished.  On a tablet you just pick them up with your finger and slide them where you want them to go.  You can turn them sideways or even stack blocks on top of each other.

My 6 year old daughter is using the Alpha Level of Math-U-See.  For our review I had her watch the instruction videos on the iPad.  She also used the online manipulatives instead of the physical ones we usually use.  We downloaded the Skip Count Songbook and listened to the MP3's of the Skip Count Songs.  

One of the biggest pluses to the digital pack is the portability.  You can view the instruction videos on any electronic device you own.  We chose to use an iPad, but it would also work on other tablets, computer, or even your phone.  Instead of needing to go to the family room and wait in line for the TV, Lily could watch her video right from the desk she was working at in the school room. The lesson instruction videos are short and even with out slow internet we did not have any trouble streaming the videos.  The digital manipulatives allow you to use those anywhere as well, which is especially helpful for people that need to do school on the go.  Lily enjoyed using the digital version of the manipulatives.  She called it her Math-U-See game. Having the videos, instruction manual, and solutions pages all in one place is also very handy for the teacher. 
Because the digital packs are accessed online, you do need to have internet access to use them.  Our tablets do not have built in internet so if we were trying to do school on the go, it would have to be on a phone.  The manipulatives also need to have internet access to work because they are used in a web browser not an app.  The skip count songs are an MP3, and I was able to download those to the computer but not our tablet so I needed an internet connection to stream those on the tablet. I would like to see those separated by track so you can find the ones you need to work on easily.  It is one constant file instead of smaller separated ones and if you want to skip ahead instead of listening to the whole thing you have to try and skip forward to find your place.   
For someone who is brand new to Math-U-See, the Universal Sets that include the Digital Packs are a great deal and gives you the best of both worlds.  You receive the physical products and also have access to the Digital Pack for a year.  For someone who only has one child that is using Math-U-See, purchasing the Digital Pack, along with the Student Pack may be a good option as it is a little less expensive than purchasing the physical teacher pack and it gives you the portability. The Digital Packs would also benefit families who have to do a lot of school on the go or for those who travel a lot. For families like mine though who have been using Math-U-See for many years, already own all the levels, have several children using the program, do not do a lot of school on the go, and prefers the physical manipulatives, it is not a very economical purchase.  The biggest way a digital product would benefit a family like mine would be if at some point Math-U-See offers the Student Pack as a digital download as well.  I would love to see that!
Members of The Crew reviewed all of the levels of the Math-U-See Digital Packs and some reviewed the Universal Sets as well.  To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog.

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Homeschool Wrap Up Week 25

*this post contains affiliate links

It started raining on Tuesday and rained all the way until Saturday (and actually we are under a tornado watch right now as I am typing this so we may get more rain tonight!)  Thankfully we did not get the flooding that some of the other southern states got and we had several breaks between rain showers.  The children got to be outside some and we had some activities that kept them busy this week.

Week 25 in our Homeschool

Bible: We completed lesson 4 of our GrapeVine Studies, The Resurrection, on the Civil Trials of Jesus.  For the month of March, this study is 20 % off no coupon needed.  There is also a free lesson of The Last Supper available for download.

P.E.: Two days of yoga and one day of Family Time Fitness.

Read Aloud: We finished Corrie Ten Boom Keeper of Angel's Den.

History: In The Mystery of History Vol IV, we completed lessons 67-69 on The Korean War, The Bay of Pigs Invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Assassination of JFK.  The boys completed their worksheets, timeline figures, and memory cards.  Their teacher did not give them a map assignment ;)

Science: We read Chapter 3 of The Archaeology Book from Master Books.  This book is creation based which is so nice to see!  It is hard to find creation based books on some topics!

My Father's World Adventures: Our science topic was the senses.  We did not do the activity since we have done it before recently.  In our state study we covered Maine, Missouri, and Arkansas.  We are almost halfway through On the Banks of Plum Creek.

These rocks Christian brought out because we were talking about the diamond mine and he got them there

Math: The children completed lesson 23 if each of their Math U See levels.

Art: We are still using ARTistic Pursuits K-3 Book Three.  We did lesson on 27 on Piet Mondrian and arranged blocks of color.  I think their projects turned out great!

Lily

Christian

Anthony

Grammar/Writing/Literature: No PAL writing this week.  We completed Lesson 27 of Fix It! Grammar.  Alex finished lesson 4 of LLATL and we started a new review of Apologia's Writers in Residence.  Nick is working through Memoria Press's 8th grade literature set.  We decided to start with Treasure Island.

Reading/Spelling: We completed lesson 4 of LOE Essentials.  Alex finished lesson 22 of the Phonetic Zoo.  Anthony and Christian did lesson 30 of All About Reading  Level 3.  Lily finished lessons 8 and 9 of AAR Level 2.

Preschool: Emmie is working on an ABC book from Homeschool Copywork.

I have several reviews in the upcoming weeks including:

Demme Learning

Logic of English Essentials

Memoria Press 8th Grade Literature

Apologia Writers in Residence

Times Tales

Homeschool Copywork

Stopmotion Explosion

Zeezok Publishing Music Appreciation Book One For Elementary Grades

Talking Fingers

ARTistic Pursuits

The Schoolhouse Review Crew Facebook page shares not only reviews, but also homeschool encouragement, crafts, recipes, and more.  Stop by and like our page!

Other Activities This Week:

Monday the girls had gymnastics and Christian had soccer.  Soccer was rained out the rest of the week.

Wednesday we had Kid's Club.

Thursday we had our monthly homeschool park day.  It was moved inside because of weather.  The theme was archaeology.  We had a great time!

Friday we went to a play called Apollo to the Moon.  On Thursday at our park day, one of the homeschool moms mentioned that her mother who works at a local school was attending this play with her school kids.  I asked if she knew if they would allow homeschoolers to attend as the information she had said school groups (we were looking for something to do to keep the kids busy in the rain!)  She made a phone call and they said they would love to have us attend.  We had never been to that theater before so the three families who were going met up and followed each other out.  For me it was about an hour drive.  The theater was amazing.  It had great seating and was really, really nice.  The staff was so friendly and helpful.  The cost was only $1 per student and teachers (which included us homeschool moms) were free.  The play itself was geared for 3-4th graders.  It was a one man show about a boys dream to go to space as a scientist.  It showed real footage on a TV screen from the space race: the satellites that went up, JFK talking about getting a man on the moon, news of his assassination, the reading of Genesis from the first Americans in space, footage from the first landing on the moon. We enjoyed it and it fit into what Nick and Alex had covered on JFK in history that week.  We have an opportunity to go back to the theater next month for a production for the younger children called How the Camel Got His Hump.

After the play we went to McDonalds for ice cream and then had to do our grocery shopping.

Saturday the boys worked most of the day on some Stop Motion Films.

I hope you had a great week in your homeschool!

*links to GrapeVine Studies and All About Learning Press are my affiliate links.  I only form affiliate relationships with companies whose products I actually use and can recommend!

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