Homeschool Review: Crypto Mind Benders!

Hi Everyone!

Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing the book "Crypto Mind Benders" by The Critical Thinking Company.  As I had never seen even their "Mind Benders" series, I really had no idea what to expect before I received the book.

In the "Crypto Mind Benders" books, the students are asked to break a secret code to identify either a hidden joke or a famous quote.  To break the code, logic and mathematical reasoning must be used in solving three sets of clues.  Then these clues will be used to solve the secret code.

I received the classic jokes version--and was very pleasantly surprised.  I personally do not enjoy a lot of jokes, and did not want my daughter exposed to jokes that might be not in good taste.  But I should not have worried!  The jokes in "Crypto Mind Benders" are written by children ages 9-15, and are just clean, funny jokes.  One of the jokes in the book asks:  Why did the cat go to the computer lab every day?  To play with the mouse!

The book is marked as appropriate for grades 3-12, a broad range indeed!  But after looking through the book, I have to say that I agree 100%!  It definitely is challenging enough for the upper grade students, yet by carefully reading the sample instructions given in the beginning of the book my daughter and I were able to figure out how to use the clues and figure out the problems.  My daughter is 8 years old, so I wondered if it would be too difficult for her.  At first glance through the book I thought it would be for sure, but now that she has some understanding of how you use the clues to rule out or in possibilities, she is doing quite well.  It IS challenging, and I don't think she will be outgrowing this book for a long time, but I love how it is really making her think--and all in a very fun way!

The original purchaser of this book has permission to make copies for personal use within one home, or even within one classroom up to 35 students.   I made a copy for her to first try it, as I wasn't sure if it would be too difficult for her and we might be putting it back on the shelf for a while.  But since I am only home schooling one child at this point, it is easier just to let her do her work right in the book.  A detailed answer key can be found in the back of the book--perfect for those days that I look at the page and get this big question mark in my mind!  Let's just say that while "Mind Benders" is a great name for this product, my daughter and I think "Mind Stretchers" would also be a good name--and some days my mind definitely has growing pains!

So if you are looking for something to REALLY REALLY REALLY make your students think, I highly recommend this book!  And for us, personally, this may be our first "Mind Benders" book, but there is no way it will be our last!

This product can be found at www.CriticalThinking.com, Phone 1-800-458-4849.

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Disclaimer:  I was provided a copy of this book free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion and review.  All thoughts expressed are my own, and I truly am impressed with this product! :)

It's "Elephant Appreciation Day!"

Hi Everyone!

Did you know that today is "Elephant Appreciation Day?" That's right. I'm really not making this up. Really.

I have no idea how today received such a distinction, but it was written on the same kids calendar that I learned about "International Chocolate Day" awhile back. ;) Did any of you end up doing the Homeschool Bits "All Chocolate" study that day? We did, and had so much fun doing it. And wouldn't you know it--a week later my 18 year old was being given a vocabulary test orally and my daughter and I were waiting for him in the same room. The test giver was reading off descriptions of things, and my son was supposed to come up with the vocabulary word that would best fit the description. One of the descriptions being given was describing something that came from beans and was used in many desserts. My son did not think of the answer "Chocolate" at that time, but my daughter looked at me with wide eyes and was SO excited that SHE knew the answer to a test question of big brothers! And she had learned it from her "All Chocolate" unit study we had done the week before. So you see--you never know when the information you learn may come in handy--even from fun little studies like these!

Today, being "Elephant Appreciation Day" and all, my daughter and I are going to be doing the "Elephants--A Fun Study" from Homeschool Bits company, sold as a download over at Curriclick. It is SO affordable, and a real deal for what you get! It is sold for only $1.00, and since it is a download you can get it immediately. If you are interested, you can find it here: http://www.currclick.com/product_info.php?cPath=1166_1274&products_id=36474&it=1

It has great pictures, coloring pictures, lots of information about elephants--where they live and what the differences are between African and Asian elephants, booklets and cards and pockets that can be assembled into a lap book, an elephant crossword (in two levels of difficulty), copywork--in different levels including print and cursive, and even a link to a video of a baby elephant as well as links to other web sites where you can learn more about elephants and find elephant crafts. Not bad for $1.00!

Anyway, just wanted to share about this fun product with the rest of you. I do love the Homeschool Bits items! Check out Curriclick.com, and you will find MANY more! So many fun things to study, so little time in each day. . .

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This product review is entirely my own opinion. I did not receive this product free--I purchased it and just wanted to share my appreciation of all it contains for so little price with others. I have in the past occasionally received a Homeschool Bits study for free.

Homeschool Review: All Chocolate!

Hi Everyone!

Just thought I would let you all know about a fun little something we are going to be doing for Home school this coming week. Are you all familiar with www.currclick.com? If you aren't, and you are a homeschooler, then you need to be! Currclick is a GREAT place to get some nice curriculum to use in your home school. It is all downloads--which means you can get it much cheaper and also instant--compared to ordering a physical book from a publisher. The materials are usually things that home school families developed for use in their own homeschool, so they know it came in handy with their own children. ANYWAY, did you all know that this coming Tuesday, September 13, is "International Chocolate Day?" So what is a homeschooling mother to do? Study CHOCOLATE, of course!

Over at Currclick there is a wonderful home school publisher by the name of "Homeschool Bits." This mom has developed the neatest most fun little studies. Nothing that would replace your regular curriculum--just fun little add-on sorts of things. And one of the materials she has developed is called "All Chocolate!" It is a pdf file that consists of 27 pages. You and your child will learn about how chocolate is developed, see pictures of the beans growing, practice handwriting using copywork about the chocolate process, etc. There are word searches, a puzzle you can make, and ideas for creating a lap book about what you learned. The target audience is grades K-5, and the best part is the price--it is only $1.00! I think this is a GREAT price! (By the way, there are also quite often sales on things at Currclick, and I actually purchased this study when it was only .25 cents!)

Anyway--just wanted to share one of my sources for fun things to add to our home school. If you are interested in the "All Chocolate" study, you can find it here: http://www.currclick.com/product_info.php?products_id=32954&it=1

And in case you are wondering--this review is completely unsolicited. I did not even receive a free product in exchange for my mentioning it here on my blog. I just REALLY like the "Homeschool Bits" materials I have seen, and wanted to share my great findings with all of you. And yes, I did purchase some chocolate for us to eat after our study Tuesday. Dark chocolate--that's a health food, right?

Homeschool Review: Scripture Adventures--Update!

Hi Everyone!

I thought it was time to give you an update on the Scripture Adventures curriculum that we are testing this summer. Back in mid May, I posted about how we were able to chose an item from their selection to play around with over the summer. We have played around for a couple weeks with the Old Testament book, and are really enjoying ourselves.

I am finding the materials to be thoughtful and well written. I love how the actual Bible text is right in the actual page you are working on, therefore making it easy for your child to read the Bible passages right then and answer the questions. There is a variety of activities, ranging from reading the Bible passages and underlining a certain part they are looking for, to more creative things such as coming up with your own names for the animals like Adam did.

The pictures here in this post show my daughter doing one of the other suggested activities--when reading about God forming man out of the dust of the earth, the materials suggest that the children make their own "people" and while doing them, think about how unique we each are. There is even a cookie recipe included in the book pages, though due to special dietary needs I had to choose a different recipe for us to use as I needed something vegan.

Don't you think this cookie-person looks JUST like my daughter? As you can see, she had a grand time with this activity, and this is the kind of school she would like to do every single day. I love that this curriculum is giving us a chance to read the Bible together, and really think about the passages and apply them to our lives. I want her to be excited about the Bible--and this book is really helping her to be just that.

Disclaimer: Though I did receive a free copy of the Scripture Adventures book we are using, my only obligation was to post one post about it on my blog. All opinions are 100% my own, and I was not even obligated to post a second time. It is only because I am enjoying this curriculum so much that I decided to post about it again.

Homeschool Review: Scripture Adventures!

Hi Everyone!

Recently I have run across a new-to-me curriculum for homeschooling that I am SUPER excited about! You know how it is--sometimes you are visiting a blog, and they have linked to another blog, which is linked to another blog, etc. You can go down those bunny trails for quite some time and end up somewhere you have never been before!

This is what happened to me around a month ago. I finally stumbled across a blog that had a link for a company called "Scripture Adventures." (www.scriptureadventures.com) This caught my attention, so I checked out the web site and was quite simply amazed at what I found. It is filled with the most interesting, creative curriculum for helping you teach your child scripture memory or Bible stories--I couldn't help but ask myself "WHY HAVEN'T I KNOWN ABOUT THIS BEFORE NOW????" I don't mean to sound conceited when I say that, but I have been a professional teacher in a classroom as well as a home school Educational Consultant (where I ordered curriculum for many different home school families) and that is not even counting the fact that I have home schooled our first born for twelve years now--all this to say that I have seen a LOT of different curriculum in my day, and I have never seen nor heard of Scripture Adventures until I stumbled across it in my blog hopping that day.

I immediately made a note on my "shopping list" for next school year to look into using one of the Scripture Adventure products with our youngest. I spent time on the Scripture Adventure web site (www.scriptureadventures.com) . I read the descriptions of EVERY product they had and looked at ALL the sample pages that were posted--by the way, there are some nice freebies so go to their web site and take a look around! Let's just say that there is a reason my husband's nickname for me is "The Curriculum Queen." I LOVE curriculum--or at least, I should say I love a GOOD curriculum.

So, when I had an opportunity to try out one of the Scripture Adventure products in exchange for blogging about it, I jumped at the chance. And I do mean JUMPED. The company has produced a wide variety of products to suit different needs--from large complete curriculums that would take you a full school year to complete, to shorter items that you may spend just a few weeks around Easter or Christmas doing. They ALL look absolutely excellent not only in topic, but in ease of use by the parent, but what I was constantly drawn to is their full Bible curriculums. These include one on the Old Testament, one on the Life of Christ, one on the Acts of the Apostles, and one on Bible Notebooking.

Since I was given my choice of which one I wanted to sample, I chose the full curriculum "Scripture Adventures in the Old Testament." They really ALL looked great, but I think what really drew me to this one to start with was one of the project activities that I saw was included in this study--a salt dough map of Canaan! Doesn't that sound fun? This volume is filled with fun projects for your kids to do that will really make the Bible stories come alive. What about making ginger bread cookies and talking about how God made all people similar, yet different as well? Having only received my curriculum last night, I have only scratched the surface but there is a nice variety of projects such as creating your own creation poster, doing some creation research, memory verse copywork, and pretending Noah is your grandfather and writing a letter to your children describing what you learned from him. I love the variety of projects, but at the same time I feel that the projects are not overwhelming for the parent. They are simple and do-able.

The Scripture Adventure web site (www.scriptureadventures.com) lists the table of contents for this volume, so you can see more details there but in short there are 12 Units which start with creation and go through divided Israel. These are all sold as downloads, which makes them VERY inexpensive and you can buy it once and use it for all your family. You can keep them on your computer and simply print off the sheets that your child will write on such as a Bible crossword, but in my opinion once you see the beauty of these books I bet you will want to print them out for your children to have a paper copy. The "Scripture Adventures in the Old Testament" is HUGE--287 pages to be exact--but WELL worth printing out. I printed our copy out on fast draft, and will either put it into a binder or am considering taking it to a office store and having it comb bound. There is a nice mix of beautiful color pictures, some of them famous paintings which is nice for children to be exposed to.

O.K., before this post turns into a book I will draw it to a close. We will be starting this curriculum on Monday and will have fun with it through the summer. I am quite certain we will not finish it before summer's end, but will simply continue it into the school year. When exactly we will finish I am not sure, but I AM certain of one thing--as soon as we finish this volume we will move onto the one on the "Life of Christ." And after that the "Acts of the Apostles." And the "Bible Notebooking." And then we may look into some of the other smaller ones. Because, after all, helping our children read and memorize God's Word ranks right up there as one of the most important things we can spend our home school time on.

I'll keep you posted on how it's going--feel free to ask me any questions you may have. This is something I am TRUELY thrilled to use with my child.

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Disclaimer: Though I received a free download of "Scripture Adventures in the Old Testament" in exchange for posting a review of it on my blog, all thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are 100% mine.

Record Keeping--Easy and Flexible!

Record keeping is one of those things that homeschoolers either tend to go over board on--recording every single workbook page or educational activity their child does, or the opposite--keeping no records whatsoever. To add to the complication of it all is the fact that state laws of what you are required to keep for records varies greatly. Some states have no requirements of records being kept at all. Other states tell you what subjects you must teach and how much time you must spend daily. So what is a homeschooler to do?

As a classroom teacher in my "former life" before I turned into a homeschooler, I have been trained to make those wonderful things called LESSON PLANS. In fact, not only was I required to write them up, but I was required to write them up a full week ahead of time and submit them to my principal. There is good reason, of course, for this this type of record keeping. When a classroom teacher is sick, it means that any substitute teacher may walk into that classroom and know exactly where in each subject the class is. But this type of record keeping does not always work so well in a homeschool setting--trust me, I know!

There are too many days where "something" happens, and it eats up your school time. Perhaps your husband forgot some papers at home, and calls asking you to bring them to his office. A pet gets sick, and you need to take them to the vet that day. The car needs repairs. Or medical appointments for family members have to be made and the only time the doctor has available is during your homeschool teaching time. I discovered early in my homeschool life that teaching at home was NOT the same as teaching at school. There is a reason why I could make up lesson plans weeks ahead for my classroom, and after the time passed, there we were--right on schedule. It's because I had no outside interruptions to my teaching day. I walked into my classroom, closed the door, and--taught! Can you imagine that? No cooking lunch, running laundry through, and answering the phone at the same time you are teaching math class!

So--I quickly learned, I think around the first week of homeschool with our oldest, that making lesson plans ahead of time was not going to work out the same way it did in the classroom. Over the last 13 years of homeschooling I have tried various methods of record keeping, including computer programs that were supposed to make my life easier all the way to a plain notebook and simply recording what we DID, not what we were going to DO. I have pretty much settled into the plain old notebook method, and just recording what we did--but I think that is about to change!

Today I was introduced to a record keeping product called Homeschool Daybook. I first looked at it quite skeptical, due to other experiences with complicated computer record keeping programs that only added more work to my already full day. Not so with the Homeschool Daybook! It is a very simple program to use, but it has everything you need and not a bunch of stuff that you don't. If you follow the link above, you will be able to see samples of the pages available and the company is even providing a free limited-use program, so you can sample using it and see if it really works for you.

In a nutshell, you enter the different students in your homeschool along with the subject areas you are teaching. That's all there is to the set up--takes all of three minutes. After that, you can pick a date on the calendar, and click the boxes next to each student name to show that they did school that day--that's your attendance record. Then, for each student, you quickly and easily enter what subjects they did that day, and--this is my favorite part--there is a box where you can enter your own description of what your lesson was. For instance--if you are doing a hands-on type of project that does not have a book name and page number for you to record, it is NOT a problem with this program. You simply give your entry a name--"Cooking" for instance, and I would click on the box next to "Math" since that is the subject I am counting this activity under. Then in the box I would write up however much or little I wanted to--maybe "Today we baked cookies and divided them into groups to practice fractions."

The advantage of this computer program over my simple paper and pencil record keeping is that I can quickly find and print out reports for whatever I need to. If I need to see what a child did for math for the past month, I can print out a report that will show all math entries. Or I can print out a report showing all subjects, reports showing just the subject names or the subject names along with the detailed description of the activities. A report showing attendence can be printed, if you live in a state where you are required to keep track of attendence. One HUGE advantage of using this program would be to those who live in states where they are required to keep track of the TIME they spend homeschooling--this program will take all those hands-on activities you entered, and collect for you all of your entries that you marked as "Math", showing a total number of hours and minutes spent on that subject area. On the other hand, if your state does not require a record of time to be kept, you can simply leave that spot blank.

I hope this review has helped give some ideas to those of you out there struggling with record keeping. With a free trial version available, I think this is a great program to try!

Disclaimer: This review was written in response to the offer by Homeschool Day Books to provide a permanent license, free of charge, to any bloggers willing to write a review of the trial version. No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.