Gymathtics

I received the DVD Gymathtics to review for the TOS HomeschoolCrew.  Gymathtics is an exercise DVD that incorporates basic math into the exercise routine.  The exercise leader is an adult female and she leads a group of children from approximately age four or five through teen.  The exercises themselves are appropriate for children of all ages (at least in varying degrees), while the math targets 2nd through 5th grades.  The exercise program is divided into four sections:  shape stretches (warm up), counting calisthenics, pattern power, and a wind-down.  The DVD lasts approximately thirty minutes.

I really have mixed feelings about this program.  My children are too young to understand most of the math, but I was curious to see whether or not they would be interested in participating in the exercises.  They have exercised with me before when I’ve used exercise videos.  This time, Lulu was not interested in doing this in the least (although to be fair, she has had a difficult week after having dental work done on Wednesday, and this probably had something to do with it), but Louise was willing and mostly happy to participate.  Many of the moves were ones she was not coordinated enough to do, but she had fun. 

The following are what I consider the positives of this program:

• The idea of introducing mathematical concepts in such a setting is both unique and appropriate.  Many of the moves one does during exercising (i.e. geometric shapes, patterns, etc.) are related to mathematics.
• The use of children of multiple ages in the program is good.
• The leader’s voice is positive and encouraging, almost cheer-leaderish (which can quickly become a negative in my book, actually).
• Diagrams accompany the mathematical concept that is being introduced in a split-screen format so that the exercise rhythm is not lost.  (Go here to see what I mean.)  Because we have a TINY (10″ or so) television, this was somewhat of a problem in terms of viewing for us, but for most people it probably would not be problematic. 

And now, the negatives:

• In my opinion, the exercise leader does not always adequately explain or “coach” the moves.  I am rather uncoordinated, so this is important for me.  Especially on the calisthenics section, sometimes I’m not too sure I could adequately follow all the moves.
• While the idea of incorporating math into an exercise session is a good one, I’m not sure that the whole idea would be effective or useful over the long haul for how long one would expect to use an exercise video.  In other words, I think the repetitiveness of the concepts might get old.
• I would hesitate before spending $24.99 on something that I’m not sure would get a lot of air time at the House of Hope.

At the age my children are, routine, programmed exercise is just not right for us right now.  However, if your children are older, this might work for you.  Visit the Exploramania website is learn more about Gymathtics, or visit the TOS HomeschoolCrew blog to read more reviews of this program.

This product was sent to me free of charge for review purposes.

Read Aloud Thursday–More Thanksgiving Books

As a follow-up to the Read Aloud Thursday post from two weeks ago, I wanted to share a few more of the Thanksgiving books we’ve been enjoying.  We haven’t even actually gotten to the books I intended to use; these are mainly just incidental library, used bookstore, or PaperbackSwap finds. 

The first couple of books just happen to be set during Thanksgiving, but other than that, they really aren’t so much about Thanksgiving.  However, they’re both fun books, so I think they’re worth sharing. An Outlaw Thanksgiving by Emily Arnold McCully is the story of a little girl named Clara and her mother who are traveling cross country to meet up with Clara’s father to start a new life in California.  The train they’re on is snowbound somewhere in Wyoming, and Clara and her mother end up spending a memorable Thanksgiving with none other than the infamous Butch Cassidy and a host of other notorious outlaws.  As one would expect, Butch Cassidy is kind-hearted and likeable, and Clara counts it a high point in her life that she was able to meet him.  Although the story is not factual, the author’s note indicates that Butch Cassidy and some of his cohorts did indeed sponsor a Thanksgiving giving for their friends in Brown’s Hole, Utah, in 1896.  Caldecott Award-winning artist Emily Arnold McCully both wrote and illustrated this book, so the watercolor and tempera pictures are outstanding.  This book provides a safe little peek into a world of danger and excitement, and my girls thoroughly enjoyed it. A Thanksgiving Turkey by Julian Scheer is another book that is set during Thanksgiving season, but it’s not really about Thanksgiving.  Instead, it’s the story of a young boy who moves with his mother to live with his grandfather to help him on his Virginia farm as he grows older.  The boy reminsces about their work on the farm, but mainly, he remembers a time when Granddad was determined to get a gobbler for their Thanksgiving table.  He fondly remembers the hunting trips they made together, and the story culminates in Granddad being unable to allow the boy to kill a big tom when he realizes that the turkey has been around as long he has.  This story is gentle and warm and full of fond memories.  It reminds me a little of Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” although it has actually been so long since I’ve read that story that I’m not sure this is an accurate comparison.  Ronald Himmler’s illustrations are warm and gentle, perfectly befitting this story.

I intended to read An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott for this month’s Bookclub at 5 Minutes for Books, but I ran out of time.  However, after reading Carrie’s review of the book, I decided to give it a whirl with my girls.  This is a fun story to read aloud because it’s basically a “home alone” type story in which a group of children (the oldest being about sixteen) is left alone to mind the house while their parents attend an ailing grandparent.  The older girls have the bright idea that they should go ahead and cook their traditional Thanksgiving dinner in their mother’s absence, and naturally, chaos ensues. I thought my girls would be put off by the abundance of vernacular and antiquated words (some of which I edited), but they weren’t.  They enjoyed it!  Like Carrie’s, ours is a library copy that is as old as I am (half of seventy) with simple pencil sketches by Holly Johnson which I think are perfect for the story.  However, versions with updated illustrations are available, as is a movie based on the book.  Has anyone seen it? 

The only book we’ve read about Thansgiving proper this year (except for the nonfiction selection I mentioned last week)  is Thanksgiving in the White House by Gary Hines and illustrated by Alexandra Wallner. This is simply the story of how the holiday that we celebrate here in the U.S. on the last Thursday of November each year came to be.  Really, though, it’s as much about Tad Lincoln and his White House hi-jinks as anything.  It is also about the loving relationship he had with his esteemed father.  I ended up discussing the fact of assassination with my girls after reading this book; this is something I surely didn’t anticipate when planning to read this story.  However, despite my girls’ premature introduction to the dirty world of politics and war , I think this is one we’ll pull out each year.  It’s a keeper.

Lastly, I wanted to mention a few of the photojournalistic (for lack of a better word) books we’ve enjoyed about Pilgrims, too.  I picked up Samuel Eaton’s Day through PaperbackSwap and am still waiting on Sarah Morton’s Day, from the same source, to arrive in my mailbox.  My girls pored over the photographs in this story, and I consider that a “two thumbs up” from them.  You can read more about these books over at The Correspondent’s blog. 
When I saw Pilgrims of Plymouth by Susan E. Goodman listed at PaperbackSwap, I ordered it, too.  We haven’t read it yet, or even looked at it, but it looks like it will be another winner.  Sometimes a picture really is worth the proverbial 1000 words, and I think when it comes to describing seventh century life to preschoolers, this might be the case.

Whew!  I really didn’t mean to write that much, so thank you if you read all of that!    Believe it or not, that’s still not all of the Thanksgiving books I currently have in my possession.  However, the rest will have to wait for another year.  Since I this is such a lengthy post, I’m taking the week off next week from Read Aloud Thursday.    No, that’s not really the reason–I just hope everyone is busy being thankful and spending time with their families, not thinking about book blogging next Thursday.  I repeat:  there will be no Read Aloud Thursday on Thanksgiving Day.   Go, and eat lots of turkey, and take a long, long nap afterwards. 

Of course, there’s still this week, and it’s time for you to share what you’ve been reading.  Please do.  Leave a link on the MckLinky list below or simply leave a comment.

Powered by MckLinky

Click here to enter your link and view the entire list of entered links…

Happy Read Aloud Thursday!

American Heritage Education Foundation–America’s Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty

As a member of TOS HomeschoolCrew, I received a CD entitled America’s Heritage:  An Adventure in Liberty from the American Heritage Education Foundation for review.  I borrowed this summary of the American Heritage Education Foundation’s mission from the website:

AHEF is a non-profit, non-partisan educational foundation dedicated to the understanding and teaching of America’s factual and philosophical heritage to promote constructive citizenship and Freedom, Unity, Progress, and Responsibility among our students and citizens.

The lesson plans contained within the curriculum are in line with this mission.  The activities within the individual lessons are diverse–the first couple in the elementary section include writing poems and playing a simulation game.  Often, primary sources are used as a part of the lesson. 

My children are a little young for the lessons, although the curriculum supplement is advertised as being for grades K-12.  I think this might be stretching it just a little, but the lessons contained in this resource are divided into elementary, middle, and high school, which makes this a resource that could prove to be useful for quite a long time.

America’s Heritage:  An Adventure in Liberty is a resource that is most definitely written for classroom use.  The activities are geared toward being used by large groups of students.  However, some of the lessons could likely be adapted for smaller group use. 

As a home educating parent, I’m not sure that I would put forth the effort to modify the lessons for individual use or for use with a smaller group.  One possible exception might be if we were involved in some sort of co-op or group learning activity for which one of the lessons or activities would be appropriate.  However, I think this is a worthwhile resource to have on hand because it does contain a wealth of primary sources, games, puzzles, and activities, and it is FREE! 

Did you catch that? 

It’s FREE!

Check out the American Heritage Education Foundation to find out how to order your own copy, or to read more reviews, go here.

This product was sent to me free of charge for review purposes.

Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner

Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner is one of those books that I had a couple of false starts on before I actually read it through to the end.  (I find myself doing that fairly often, actually.)  I picked it up again since it is on my TBR list for the year, so it one of my Big Book Push books for the month.  I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by her so far (reviews here and here), so I was confident this book wouldn’t disappoint.  Well, it didn’t, not in the least.  However, it took me a long, long while to “get over” the fact that this book is written from the point of view of a very melancholy and negative old woman.  Although I’m not an old woman, I am rather melancholy and have to fight (really hard!) sometimes to not see the world as glass-half-empty, so it was hard for me to add insult to injury (at least in my mind) by reading her very dismal take on life. 

This book is similar to the other two of Turner’s that I have read in that it is about a marriage that has fallen apart, at least in the ways that matter most.  Unlike the others, though, this one is about a marriage that is physically dead; that is, one-half of the marriage has physically died, so there is no hope for reconciliation.  Much about this situation would not do for me to mention here, especially if the curiosity of anyone reading this is piqued enough to cause him or her to read it, so I am going to borrow the summary from the back of the book and copy it word-for-word here:

Plain and dutiful, Sophia Hess has lived most of her life without ever knowing genuine love.  Her professor husband had married her for the convenience of having a typist for his scholarly papers.  The discovery of a dark secret opens her eyes to the truth about her marriage and her husband.

Eventually nephew Patrick and his wife, Rachel, take Sophia into their home, and she observes from a careful distance their earnest faith and the simple gifts of kindness they generously bestow upon her and others–this is spite of unthinkable tragedy they’ve suffered.  Dare she unlock the door behind which she stalwartly conceals her broken heart?

Also like all of Turner’s other books that I’ve read, Winter Birds is rife with literary references and allusions.  Sophia’s husband was a Shakespearean scholar and professor, and as his typist, Sophia became quite well-versed in the works of the Bard herself.   Reading a book by Turner is very much like getting into the mind of someone who loves literature, so I would venture to guess that anyone who loves literature would also like her books.

Sophia Hess is a keen observer (and critic) of life.  Every single thing she experiences is held up and examined, almost to the point of absurdity at times.  As I mentioned before, I found this a little maddening, but familiar.   This is Sophia’s take on her current place in life:

When one is eighty years old, as I am, the handling of time is her greatest challenge.  There is no place to rest comfortably.  The present is an empty waiting room.  The past is a narrow corridor, along which doors open into examining rooms too brightly lit, full of frightening instruments to inflict pain.  The future is a black closet at the end of the corridor.  No one knows what is inside this dark cubicle.  The possibility of nothingness is a terror.  If present, past, and future seem out of order in this analogy, it is no wonder.  There is no tidy sequence of time when one is eighty and waiting to die.  (96)

Uplifting, huh?    Sophia does undergo a change by the end of the story, and although it is by no means dramatic, it is, well, hopeful.  I suppose that’s the bottom line in Turner’s books–hope.  There is always hope.

Visit the author’s website here or Semicolon’s review of Winter Birds here.

This is the first book I’ve finished for my Big Book Push, but there’s still plenty of time for you to join me!  Read all about it here.

Read Aloud Thursday–Tumtum and Nutmeg: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall by Emily Bearn

I am so excited to share with you this Read Aloud Thursday our latest completed chapter book read-aloud.  We finished  Tumtum and Nutmeg:  Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall by Emily Bearn last week, and while we’re well into our next chapter book already, we won’t forget the adventures of these proper little mice any time soon.  This book was an absolute delight to read aloud, and I can’t think of another book that has gotten quite the reception this one got from my girls.  This volume is actually a compilation of three shorter stories:  Tumtum & Nutmeg, The Great Escape, and The Pirates’ Treasure.  Each story is just as delightful as the next, and each one is chock full of adventure.  In each story, Tumtum and Nutmeg, the sweet mouse couple whose estate, Nutmouse Hall, is located inside the broom closet of the Mildew home, take it upon themselves to better the rather lowly lot in life of the Mildew children, Arthur and Lucy.  In the first story, this involves assisting them in ridding the house of their troublesome Aunt Ivy.  In the second story, the Nutmouses must leave the confines of their home in order to rescue their friend, General Marchmouse, who has been taken to school by Arthur Mildew to live with the classroom gerbils, a truly disgraceful fate for a mouse of his stature.  In the third story, the Nutmouses face off against some Rat Pirates, and once again the story involves both General Marchmouse and Arthur and Lucy.  My girls loved each one of the stories, but I think their favorite one was the second one because the Nutmouses’ rescue plan involves mouse ballerinas on pogo sticks.  Really, you have to read it to believe it.  The only story that gave me pause at all is the third one, and only because I was rather taken aback by the fact that the Mildew children intoxicate (Anne of GG, anyone?) the Rat Pirates with chocolate liqueurs in order to help free the captured mice.  It is a funny story, but I wasn’t sure exactly what to say to my girls about it, so I didn’t say much–I just read it. 

I noticed that there is also a Tumtum & Nutmeg Christmas Adventure , which we might just have to add to our Christmas book basket this year. 

I have to give a little hat-tip to Stephanie for first mentioning Tumtum and Nutmeg some time back on her blog.  I had seen it at the library, but it was Stephanie’s post about it that prompted me to pick it up.  Stephanie might just have her own Tumtum and Nutmeg post up today, too.  Check her out!

What about your family?  What have you been enjoying together?  Click on the MckLinky link below to leave your blog link, or just leave  a comment. 

Powered by MckLinky

Click here to enter your link and view the entire list of entered links…

Have a terrific Read Aloud Thursday!

Virginia Soaps and Scents

As a member of TOS Homeschool Crew, I received a nice little package of products from Virginia Soaps and Scents to try out for review.  I received several bars of soap, a shampoo bar, and a baggie of laundry soap.  By now I have used all of the products at least once, so I can truthfully offer my experience and opinions. 

The soaps are nice and have a pleasant scent.  I have used Fresh Orange and Oatmeal and Honey, and while I prefer the citrus scent over the milder and sweeter Oatmeal and Honey, both were at least tolerable.  (I have issues with scents sometimes.  I admit it.  As much as I like to bake, I do not like to smell like something that comes out of the oven.)  The soaps lather nicely and leave the skin very soft, noticeably softer than the deodorant soap I usually use.  These soaps contain olive and/or soy oil, as well as coconut oil.  These soaps provide a very soothing alternative to harsh detergent soaps if you’re in the market for such. 

The shampoo bar, however, was a different story, at least for me.  I tried the shampoo bar on two different occasions, the first time using it only one day and the second time using it two consecutive days.  I have fine hair but I have plenty of it, and it has a tendency to be unmanageable at the slightest provocation.  I also wash it daily, so it tends to be a little oily.  I use very little styling products (a little mousse and a little spray), but I do blow dry it daily, as well.  I think my hair just isn’t a good candidate, or maybe I’m not a good candidate for something so out of my routine, but two days’ use of this was all I could tolerate.  It left my hair feeling weighted down and coated, almost like I hadn’t washed it in several days.  I fully intended to use it long enough to let my hair adjust, but I just couldn’t go past two days.  Those with other hair types might find this chemical-free alternative to shampoo to their liking, but my fine and flat hair just couldn’t take it. 

A few years back, Steady Eddie and I experimented with making our own laundry detergent and actually did so for a little while.  Thus, the little laundry soap mini kit that I received was nothing new to me.  The soap does not suds like store-bought laundry detergent, but other than that, it does a fine job.  This is something that can be made at home with a little effort (and some ingredients which can be purchased through Virginia Soaps and Scents) or, you can purchase  the kit through this company and let them do the grating of the bar soap for you.  Either way, it’s a cheapter alternative to your usual boxed or bottled detergent.

I am impressed by the overall spirit of this homegrown business.  It’s interesting and inspirational to me that this whole venture started as a homeschooling lesson.  However, I am partial to my own deodorant soap (see scent issues above), so I don’t think I’ll be switching.  However, I would definitely consider some of these products as a gift for someone who enjoys pampering more than I. 

You can read more reviews of Virginia Soaps and Scents here.  

 

 

These products were sent to me free of charge for review purposes.

Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent

Same Kind of Different As Me is not the kind of book I usually pick up.  I enjoy reading books too much by people whose life’s gift is to write and my reading time is too limited for me to to spend my reading time on a recounting of someone’s life experiences to simply satisfy my curiosity.  (I hope that doesn’t sound too snobbish, but some of you know what I mean, right?)  However, this book came highly recommended to me by Steady Eddie’s aunt and uncle, two of the most dedicated and servant-hearted Christians I know.  My mother and I were at Sam’s Club several months ago, and I off-handedly suggest she buy it to read herself, since it came so highly recommended to me.    She bought it and promptly offered it to me with the remark that I’d read it before she would.  That’s my mom. Well, a couple of months went by, and I finally picked it up after finishing something (I can’t remember what now) that had required a little bit of diligence for me to finish.  I thought, this will be a quick read, and it won’t require much thought.  I was right with both of  these predictions, but what I didn’t know is that it would take me in emotionally as much as it did.  As Kathleen Kelly’s mom once told one of her customers, “Read it with a box of Kleenex!”  (Bonus points for anyone who knows to which book she was referring.  )

As the cover of this book says, it’s about “a modern-day slave, an international art dealer, and the unlikely woman who bound them together.”  That’s oversimplifying this story AND putting the emphasis in the wrong place, in my opinion.  Simply put, Denver Moore is a black man who spent his childhood and the early part of his adult life as a sharecropper in Louisiana at a time when no one would tell an illiterate black man that times had changed just about everywhere but there.  He was stuck in a system and had no idea that his life could be different, and when he finally escaped, he had no skills to make a life for himself.  He became a criminal, then an ex-convict, and finally, a homeless man. 

Enter Ron and Deborah Hall.  Actually, enter Deborah Hall.  Deborah was a woman of privilege.  Married to an incredibly wealthy art dealer, she was never fully comfortable in her role as a lady of leisure with vehicles more expensive than most people’s houses.  She also had an insatiable hunger to know God and grow closer to Him.  This desire led her to volunteer at a homeless mission in downtown San Antonio, Texas, and in order to shore up a marriage that had been on the brink of utter destruction, her husband Ron went along for the ride.  To say that when their paths crossed Denver Moore’s that it was a match made in heaven is obvious only in retrospect.  At the time, neither Ron nor Denver thought so, but Deborah always knew there was something special about Denver Moore.

Lots of things happen in this story, not the least of which is that Deborah is diagnosed with and eventually dies of colon cancer.  She is one of the heros (heroines?) in the story, but because of her legacy, Denver becomes the real hero. 

If you want to be inspired, read this story.  If you want to cry, read this story.  If you want to be encouraged to never, ever, ever give up on someone, read this story.  It’s truly beautiful.

I’m officially giving up some of my book snobbery, starting today. 

Read Aloud Thursday–Thanksgiving Books

I will be the first to admit that I usually don’t realize any given holiday is creeping up on us until it’s almost the day of.  That makes planning ahead for read-alouds pretty difficult, especially when one relies on the library (as we do) for most of one’s books.  However, this year, I’m on top of things!  Granted, Thanksgiving is my favorite of the fall/winter holidays (‘though I do LOVE Christmas), so I’m less likely to overlook this one.  Plus, I don’t get too up in the air over that holiday we just had, so I have time to snatch up the Thanksgiving books while everyone else is still looking for ghosts, pumpkins, and all manner of other scary creatures.  Here are a few of the Thanksgiving books we’ve enjoyed so far:

I picked up Thanksgiving Wish by Michael J. Rosen without so much as even a glance inside, basing my judgment of it solely on its cover (I know, I know).  Can I just say it has been a winner?  It’s a longish story, so it’s better for older kids than younger, but even Louise has sat through it multiple times.  Lulu has requested it at least three times in the week or so that we’ve had it.  Thanksgiving Wish is the story of Mandy and her extended family and their first Thanksgiving without their beloved Bubbe.  Bubbe, a traditional Jewish grandmother, worked on her Thanksgiving meal for weeks, perfecting all the dishes and cooking all of them herself.  By the time the family gathered, she had the entire meal prepared, and she had even accumulated enough wishbones from the various birds she had cooked over the past year to have a wishbone for each of the grandchildren.  This year, though, is the first Thanksgiving since Bubbe’s unexpected death, and everything is different.  Of course, they don’t know how different it will be until everyone arrives at Mandy’s new house (which is actually an old house with an equally old electrical system), and they have to scramble to modify their plans.  However, through all the changes, they also make some new friends and discover the importance of traditions.  This one is a tearjerker, but then, what book about Thanksgiving isn’t?  Highly recommended! 

I’m beginning to detect a theme among the Thanksgiving books we’ve read so far, and it has been entirely unintentional.  We read Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen today after lunch.  If you’re unfamiliar with this very popular Thanksgiving story, it’s about a little girl named Molly, an  immigrant from Russia to America who also happens to be Jewish.  Molly is picked on at school for her differences (has anyone besides me ever noticed how frequently this is presented as a theme in books about school?), and the situation only worsens when Molly brings to school a “pilgrim” doll her mother has made to fulfill Molly’s school assignment. Of course, the “pilgrim” looks like Molly’s mother–a real pilgrim from Russia who came to America in search of religious freedom.  The wise teacher, of course, turns the tables on the bullying girls and teaches them a gentle lesson.  Yet another tearjerker.

So far we’ve gotten most of our historical information about Thanksgiving from Let’s Celebrate Thanksgiving by Peter and Connie Roop.  This informational book has several pages of background information about the first Thanksgiving, the Separatists, the Mayflower, etc.  Interspersed with the historical information are jokes, riddles, facts, and even a craft.  The illustrations by Gwen Connelly are cartoonish but still respectful.  (Does that make sense?)  Although this book does NOT discuss Thanksgiving as a time of being thankful to God, over all I think it provides a fairly balanced view of Thanksgiving and leaves plenty of room for discussion.  We have read a page or two a day this week and the girls, Lulu especially, have really enjoyed it.

What are your favorite Thanksgiving books?  I’ve decided that I need to start my own collection.  I have a few (which I’ll try to highlight in a couple of weeks), but I need more!  What do you consider a can’t-be-missed Thanksgiving story?  We have these on the way (thanks to The Corresondent’s review and PaperbackSwap!) and I hope to purchase this one and this one within the next week so we can maximize our enjoyment and learning before the actual holiday!  Please share your favorite title(s) in the comments!

Oh, and don’t forget to link up your own Read Aloud Thursday post below! 

Powered by MckLinky

Click here to enter your link and view the entire list of entered links…

Big Book Push–What I’m Reading

 

I guess it’s about time I declare my intentions for the Big Book Push.  I hope someone out there in bookish blogdom is looking as forward to this as I am–knocking off a few long-ignored TBR titles.  I actually finished the first title off today–look for a review in the next week or so. 

So what do I plan to read next?  Well, I haven’t read anything at all by Wendell Berry this year, so I have that to look forward to.  I’ve read Jayber Crow (my thoughts here) and Hannah Coulter (my thoughts here).  I’m thinking about picking up Nathan Coulter next, ‘though That Distant Land is tempting because I think it might give a real “overview” of Port William.  Then again, I’m not a huge fan of short stories.  We’ll see.

I also have A Tale of Two Cities on my TBR list, and I’m determined to get to it this month.  It’s one of many titles that I’m almost embarrassed I’ve never read.  It has been a great, great while since I’ve read any Dickens, so I’m looking forward to it.

That’s it.  As busy as life is right now, I’ll be doing well to tackle these. 

Anyone else with me on the Big Book Push?

 

abcteach

As a member of TOS Homeschool Crew, I received a trial membership of abcteach in order to review it.  abcteach is a huge database that boasts over 35,000 pages of educational worksheets, activities, etc.  Both because my children are so young and because of my own educational philosophy and preferences, I do not use worksheets much at all in our homeschool.  However, two things that I did utilize from abcteach that I liked a lot are file folder games and the abctools custom worksheet generators.  Many days I look for something for Louise to do (I still haven’t perfected planning for the preschooler in our house yet!), and a simple file folder math game from abcteach is one thing I have used to give Louise something fun and educational to do during her learning time.   The abcteach feature that I was most excited about using, though, was the abctools custom worksheet generator, mainly because it includes handwriting pages.  We use the Handwriting Without Tears, so the standard handwriting pages readily available online and in stores often do not match this particular style.  abcteach includes the HWT font in abctools!  Although I found this program to be a little unwieldy to use, it is no more difficult to use than any of the worksheet generating programs I used when I was a classroom teacher.  I was pleased to be able to give Lulu her own customized handwriting practice sheets, and she was pretty excited about them, too.  (Well, as excited as she gets over handwriting!    )

Membership to abcteach is available for individuals or for groups up to nine people for $40/year or $70/two years.  The cost for larger groups goes down, of course, as the size of the group increases.  If you are a classroom teacher, I would think this would be a great resource.  If you teach by unit studies in your homeschool, or if your children thrive on worksheets/coloring sheets/etc., then this would be a great resource for your homeschool.  At this point in our home education, I’m not sure that the handwriting sheets alone are enough to warrant a subscription to this service for us, but as my children get older, I will definitely keep this site in mind.

To read more reviews of abcteach, please visit the Homeschool Crew blog.

This resource was sent to me free of charge for review purposes.