Memoria Press: Geography I

My Middlest got a review of his own to enjoy~ Geography I by Memoria Press , a pack of 5 softcover books~ a Teacher Guide (mostly an answer key), a Student Text and a Student Workbook that cover The Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. Included as a bonus are The United States Student Text and Teacher Key (Which we did not use for this review, but based on response, are likely to use!).

Middlest enjoyed the format of the Student Text~ which is really an "Introduction to Geography" that can be used with children from 4th grade on up.

You can download the table of contents from the Geography I page along with some  samples (I'm including screenshots of a couple, to give you an idea of what it looks like inside).

Birdcage Press: Art Close Up Game (Museum Of Modern Art)

My kids love it when we get fun things for review! I love it when they have fun, and get to learn at the same time! Birdcage Press produces a wide variety of "Art" "Wildlife" and "History" games, and they sent the TOS Crew a variety of Go Fish style games as well other card games and a lotto style game. We received Art Close Up: Museum of Modern Art.

The deck of 48 cards includes works by 24 artists. Each artist has a main card that shows the entire work, with the artist name, title of the work, and the year painted.  Another card is the "match" for that card, but it is only a portion of the painting "Close Up."  This is great for training the eyes to look for detail!

There are a number of games that can be played using these cards. Of course there is the traditional "Concentration"  or in this case "Art Memory," which my children played first because it was a familiar game. They particularly enjoyed playing it the first few times as they really had to look carefully to discern whether the cards were a match or not (for the record, this was Eldest's favorite game to play with these cards).

Nuggets for the Jaunty month of June

Some more nuggets for you~ Pick and choose the ones that will suit you!

Christian Liberty Press' free ebook of the month is a historical novel~
The Brethern~ A Tale of the Crusades:

This novel by Sir H. Rider Haggard, first published in 1904, is a classic tale of love and chivalry, unfolding amidst the touching story of two English knights who are in love with the same maiden. The devotion of these men is tested as they are thrust into epic Crusader battles.
Grade: 8th - Adult
Book: 363 pages

Kids of Courage from Voice of the Martyrs is offering an amazing set of pdf's that came across my facebook feed yesterday (Thanks, Knowledgequest!). If you sign up on the site, you will have access to 30 "Bold Believers" activity books. Each pdf is filled with facts, activities, and stories that will help your children become more aware of what it means to be "Bold Believer" throughout the world.

Ring The Bell Movie Giveaway (Ends 6/22)

Life has been a little crazy around here with all the baseball and dance schedules~ so I wasn't able to properly promote my giveaway for the "Ring The Bell" DVD.

This is a most excellent family friendly film (enjoyed by everyone in my family from the youngest to the oldest), and I recommend it to all!

The "official" synopsis:

About Ring the Bell:
Ring The Bell shares the story of a slick, big city sports agent Rob Decker who seems to have it all. But on his latest mission to sign a high school baseball superstar, Rob becomes stranded in a small town where the simplicity of life—and the faith of the people—stand in stark contrast to his own fast-paced, win-at-all-costs mindset. Torn between these two worlds, will Rob have the courage to let faith transform his life? This heartwarming story of redemption is sure to entertain and inspire the whole family.
Ring The Bell features a host of well-known Christian music artists, such as Mark Hall along with his band Casting Crowns, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Matthew West, all who play a role in this inspirational drama. Several former and current Major League Baseball all-stars are also featured in the film: ESPN analysts John Kruk and Rick Sutcliffe (a former Cy Young Award winner), along with Ben Zobrist.
This family-friendly movie was produced by Mark Miller, Beach Street Records' founder and Casting Crowns’ producer. Miller, who is also the lead singer and founder of country music group Sawyer Brown, co-wrote the script with Thomas Weber and Weber directed the production. 

A trailer for you to check out~


If the Rafflecopter form hasn't finished loading, you might want to read my review here, and then come back to enter! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blessings~

Math Mammoth Light Blue Grade 1

My little math boy has gotten quite a lot of practice this year! Our latest offering was the Light Blue full year curriculum 1st Grade from Maria Miller's Math Mammoth  program. We received the downloaded pdf version of the program (it can also be purchased as printed workbook, or on CD). 
This worked out well for us as littlest enjoys doing worksheets via the pdf-notes app on my iPad. I like it because it reduces the number of papers floating around our house, AND it saves on ink and paper. If you don't have access to an iPad, you may be happy to know that the PDF's in the download version are enabled for annotation and can be filled in directly on the computer if opened in Acrobat Reader version 9 or higher. 

From the website: The four main areas of study for first grade are:

1. The concepts of addition and subtraction, and strategies for addition and subtraction facts (chapters 1-2; chapter 4);
2. Developing understanding of whole number relationships andplace value till 100 (chapter 3 and chapter 7);
3. Developing understanding of measuring lengths as iterating length units (chapter 6); and
4. Reasoning about attributes of geometric shapes, such as the number of sides and the number of corners, and composing and decomposing geometric shapes (chapter 6).

See the Light art class Pointillism (Fruit?)

We have enjoyed using See the Light in the past, and I was very pleased that we were able to review another Art Project. This time it was 4 lessons on Pointillism (Fruit) in the style of George Seurat. Each lesson runs between 20-30 minutes or so, and additional time is required in order to do the actual painting, so each lesson ideally will last about an hour.

I decided that we would ALL complete a project, and it was very interesting to see what happened.

My 5 year old decided to paint some wooden fruit.

The classes are very thorough and step-by-step, so that as you can see above, my 5 year old was able to come up with a very nice piece of art, even when following along with a class intended for 10+. He didn't get into the shading, highlighting and shadows that were in the later lessons, but I was very pleased with the outcome. 

My 12 year old started out thinking he would paint some sports balls, 

but ended up going ahead with the fruit instructions.

He began to be very impatient with his drawing ability, but as you can see, by the time he was finished, his fortitude bore fruit... (Pardon the pun...8^D ).

My 15 year old wanted to try out a floral painting, 

so she pulled together some flowers from a couple of photographs.

Not precisely following directions, 

But hey, she's 15, and she's old enough to experiment on her own...

more on that a little further on. :) 

• First lesson~ Color Theory and Initial Drawing
• Second lesson~ Lay Down Base Color with Dots
• Third lesson~ Optical Color Mixing with More Dots
• Fourth lesson~ Highlights and Shadows for Finished Still Life 

(she got the highlights, but there were no shadows in those photos~ she also used a deep purple tulip from our yard, in place of the white one in the photo)

I opted to follow suit and do a floral as well, rebel that I am... 

(and because my 12 year old didn't want me to do a fruit still life to compare with his ;)).

I didn't do the fun "play with the flowers in the app" bit that my eldest did, I was just experimenting some on my own as well. :) 

We all appreciated hearing about Georges Seraut, and the science of color and light that he studied as he played with tiny points of paint. I was less excited with the concept of using only the 6 primary and secondary colors, as I was totally unable to even slightly represent that vivid magenta color in the primroses~ I'm guessing that occasionally the Impressionists mixed a few pigments to help them approximate some of God's amazing coloring... ;)


The photo to the left is evidence that once again the 15 year old didn't strictly follow directions, and opted to use a palette, rather than waxy paper plates (that was more a function of economics~ we had the palette in house, but no paper plates...), but... isn't it pretty? And a bit of an accidental study in complimentary colors, too!


The whole art history (and science) lesson was very intriguing, and eldest and I  both learned a bit more about the color wheel than we knew before. We are both interested in experimenting and finding out more about how colors work next to one another.

Eldest decided to take on a landscape from one of our vacation photos~ 

rather fun~ still a work in progress ~ 

As a parent, I love that the class is taught *for* me~ and I enjoyed painting along with the kids. I also love that Scripture is woven throughout the lessons, because God is the ultimate artist, and His character is shown in so many ways. 

As a teacher, I appreciate that things are set up the way they are for a purpose. Because I had children who didn't want to follow the lesson to a "T" we had a little bit more frustration. In hindsight, I can clearly see that there is a reason that this lesson is painting fruit~ generally apples, oranges, pears, and bananas are fairly uniform in color, which makes for a simpler first try with pointillism, rather than attempting to figure out more complex colors and shading (even though a fruit, the mango was a bit tricky~ note that it wasn't one of those suggested!). 

As Students, my children generally enjoyed Pat Knepley's lessons, but the older ones certainly didn't always like to follow the directions, even when they were to their benefit. However, as can be clearly seen by my daughter's continuing interest, the lessons ARE engaging and instructive. 

This is also a great exercise in focus and patience ~ particularly if your child is more of a Jackson Pollock type of artist. 

Side note~ the supply list notes 50 cotton swabs~ you might require more than that if you have more than a couple of people doing the project... so plan that trip to the drugstore accordingly! 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: See the Light
• Product: Pointillism (Fruit) Art Project DVD
• Ages: 10+
• Price: $14.99 

An ideal set-up would allow for 1/week, which means that taken with the other See the Light Art Projects, you could have a year+ worth of art lessons, right from the comfort of your own home. Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew to see the experiences of the rest of the Crew as they explored this art project as well as many others!  As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Simplified Dinners/Paperless Home Organizataion

A homeschool mom's dilemma~ what to do with all the stacks of paper, notebooks, home management journals, to do lists, shopping lists, menu plans... you name it and it's in paper form, I know that *I* at least, am oftentimes SWAMPED with it. Even electronic to do's like my email inbox are out of control.

Thankfully, a kind and organized soul has created an ebook manual to help tame the paper monster (and yes... the electronic monster) by utilizing some fairly simple methods, and apps. Mystie Winckler (Author of the Simplified Pantry ebooks below) gives us Paperless Home Organization.

I have to admit that it has taken me quite awhile to get going with this system (in part because I get hung up on things like "why isn't my iCal on my computer syncing with the iCal on my iPad with the iCal on Google correctly! I have duplicates, and then I have nothing! ARGH!!! ... see.... sidetracked... whoops!), but even in spite of my sidetracks, I have been able to see some success in paring a few things down through following the tips and ideas in Mystie's book.

True Confession: I am an email hoarder~ I almost NEVER delete emails (Because I might need it some day, right??? Right! It has come in handy being able to pull up a 3 or 4 year old email upon the rare occasion). As a result, my inbox would terrify a truly type A person, while it sometimes causes me to miss an important email amidst all the "stuff." Mystie shows how to use filters and labels and tags to organize even the "junk" that I might want to read if I have a minute, as well as the essential emails. In the space of oh, 30-45 minutes I whittled my "unread inbox" from 131,170-ish emails down to 127,128 emails. (That was just creating filters from emails on my first page. Pretty nifty, right? If I can keep it up, one day I might have a sleek, slim inbox as well (While still keeping those essential archives, just in case... :) )

So~ different things will have a greater impact on different folks. For me, that was a big one. The calendar~ well.. if I could only get the technology to play nice, that would be good as well. Mystie gives more tips and instructions on using the electronic calendar to a much greater potential than I have tried so far.

Now, one thing that I am still working on wrapping my head around is the "Home Organization" part of this system. It entails the use of a couple of applications, with fairly detailed instructions, but I have bogged down in a couple of places. Evernote is the major application being used, and I have only just begun to utilize it, with help from Mystie, whose organizational skills far surpass my own.
She details how to set Evernote up to store homeschool information and even portfolios, recipes and menu organization and so much more.

For someone who has been bogged down for years I can almost promise that it's going to take *me* months to get things all in place and organized, because it DOES take some time to implement any sort of "organization" virtual or otherwise. I am hopeful that this is a system that might work for me (*if* I can get into the habit of doing certain tasks every day~ yep... that's definitely a part of my problem~ consistency). ;) Having this manual is like taking a class in electronic organization~ without having to find childcare, or leave your home!

The  Review Crew received a couple more ebooks from Mystie to review and check out~
Simplified Dinners and
Simplified Dinners Gluten Free/Dairy Free

These are  both fairly concise ebooks (30-33 pages) but they are jam-packed with some great ideas~ the basic concept is to "simplify dinner" by using a basic type of meal, and then giving variations on the dishes, so that you don't feel like you are cooking the same thing over and over.

If you want to get a feel for the way the books are set up, you can download a Simplified Dinners Sample and a Simplified Dinners Gluten Free/Dairy Free Sample. The samples include

• The introduction
• The master pantry list
• Recipe variations for one of the 16 meal types

The meal types included are:
Slow-Cooker Roasts                                 Slow-Cooker, No-Defrost Chicken Pieces
Chicken-in-a-Pot                                      Skillet Cutlets with Pan Sauces
Marinades for Grilling or Broiling           Foil-Packet Fish
Stovetop Pasta                                          Bean Pots
Lentils over Rice *GF only                      Fajitas
Quesadillas                                               Taco Bar
Burritos or Enchiladas                              Taquitos
Frittata                                                      Oven Omelette

Pizza *not in GF                                       Simple Stir-fry
Potato Hash                                              Baked Potato Bar
Bean Soups                                               Stews
Blended Vegetable Soups                         Quick Soups
Main Dish Salads                                     Vegetable Side Dishes
Side-Dish Salads                                       Starchy Side Dishes
Gluten- & Dairy-Free Desserts*GF only

Many of the ideas (For instance, the Stovetop Pasta Dishes) are ones that I already use, but I sometimes get in a rut, and this is a handy little resource to have around to make it a little easier to help the same meal not taste the same 3 weeks in a row. ;)

I also appreciate the brevity of the instructions~ for the same basic meal (Say, "Blended Soups") the basic stovetop process and the slow cooker process are written down first. They are  followed by each variation. If a certain step is skipped, it tells you, and the only the specific variations are included.  This is how it is possible to get 5 (or more) recipes on one page! Yes short, yes, concise, yes simple, but NOT skimpy! 

I will mention that many of the recipes are duplicated in both books, but if you are GF/DF, you will definitely want to check out that option. Be sure to explore the Simplified Pantry site~ there are a few more recipes included, as well as some techniques and such.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Simplified Pantry
• Product: Simplified Dinners ($12.99 PDF file)
  Simplified Dinners Gluten Free/Dairy Free ($12.99 PDF file)
  Paperless Home Organization   ($3.99) Available for Kindle or as a PDF file
• Ages: Older Teens -Adult

For those who purchase both Simplified Dinners and  Paperless Home Organization, Mystie has Simplified Dinners in an Evernote Stack that she will share upon request. If you use Evernote (or decide to after reading Paperless Home Organization), simply email her and ask for the Evernote Simplified Dinners and she will send you the invitation (she can only do it manually from Evernote, so she needs individual requests). 

Mystie is offering a TOS Review Crew discount: when readers enter TOS2013 at checkout, they can receive 30% off! That discount will work on any or all of her eBooks, through June 3rd.

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say (They may have gone more in depth on the Simplified Dinners options, I chose to focus on the HOme Organization). As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~