CHSH-Teach.com (Christian HomeSchool Hub) CHSH Download Club Annual Subscription (Review)

As a homeschool parent, Support Group Leader, Awana Leader, Church Musician, and general chauffeur to dance, baseball, youth-group, and any other activity, I don't have the time OR the energy to reinvent the wheel. I'm sure that many of you feel the same, and that's why sites like CHSH-Teach.com are such a boon to the busy homeschooling family. With over 50,000 pages of educational material, many homeschoolers are sure to find useful a number of ready-made worksheets, as well as forms and other pages to use for notebooking, lapbooks, journaling, and general portfolio-building.

While there are quite a few free resources available, in order to access the entire site, members of the TOS Review Crew were given an annual subscription the CHSH Download Club. In order to get a feel for the quantity of downloads available you may wish to peruse their catalog. You'll find the downloads organized in a few different ways:

By Subject:

• Arts, Music and Crafts
• Bible Related Resources
• Electives
• Health
• Language Arts
• Languages
• Math
• Science
• Social Studies

By Grade Level
Pre-K/Kindergarten
1st-3rd Grade
4th-8th Grade
9th-12th Grade (High School)

By Month (2 months at a time, with seasonal highlights)
General Organization and Classroom Helps
Miscellaneous including Curriculum Treasures from the Past, Fun Pages, and Lapbooking and Notebooking Units.

Sampling of some of the variety of pages/units available to download.

Because it was summertime during our review period, we weren't doing a lot of work that was required "extras," plus we spent two weeks on a cross-country road trip, so I actually mostly checked out some of the e-books available, rather than using worksheets.

I was intrigued by the "HomeEc" section of of the "Curriculum Treasures From the Past" and downloaded A Little Cookbook for a Little Girl. As many books printed around that time, the instruction comes in the form of a story about a young girl who wanted to learn to cook *now* not when she was older. Her mother, grandmother and aunts all work together to create a cookbook for her birthday with some of the "simple" recipes from their cookbooks.

How interesting (And what a history lesson) to read through this cookbook! While some recipes could be attempted today, some of them might be harder to alter, as the instructions are based on cooking over a fire, or possibly on a wood stove. I was also amazed at the recipes that were considered "simple" as some of them are nothing my graduate would like to attempt.

At any rate, it was a learning experience that gave a little glimpse into the practicalities of one of the basics of life (cooking) a little over a hundred years ago.
An excerpt discussing how to cook bacon. I especially love the way it ends... ;)
This is much nicer than bacon cooked in the fryingpan or over coals, for it is neither greasy nor smoky, but pink and light brown, and crisp and delicious, and good for sick people and little children and everybody.

I did take a peek at some of the other areas, and am sure that as we get our fall school schedule up and running there will be a number of useful items. These really only touch the very tiny tip of the iceberg as far as the pages available...

The Graphic Organizers file includes 80 different organizers as well as a number of examples, which is very helpful. There are generic organizers as well as author study sheets, graph paper, storyboards, language/grammar/writing organizers, science, reporting, and more. Pretty useful bunch of printables!

I was pleased to find a unit on Johnny Appleseed geared for upper elementary ages rather
than the usual first and second grade offerings. Johnny is a favorite of ours, as he shares a birthday with one of my sons, and got his start in Massachusetts. The unit found at CHSH-Teach.com has some information included that I had never read before, so will be new and interesting to my Youngest.


I am also looking over the High School World History course (Student textbook and Teacher manuals all available for download). School starts for us on Monday coming, so I haven't gotten that far with him just yet, but it looks very thorough. Part 1 covers 3100BC-1800's with 21 units and over 600 pages in the student text. The 242 page teacher manual includes Unit Focus, Suggestions for Enrichment, Unit Assessment, and Answer Keys for each unit.

I am very impressed with the quantity of resources presented on CHSH-Teach.com, and expect that I may find myself checking here first if looking for a resource for a specific topic.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: CHSH-Teach.com
• Product: CHSH Download Club  
• Ages: Resources to use for K-12
• Price: $25 Annually OR $99.99 Lifetime

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Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Notebooking Pages ~ Notebooking Pages Lifetime Membership (Informational Review)

Members of the TOS Review Crew received a Lifetime Membership from NotebookingPages.com for review. You may have run across the over 600 pages that they offer for free on their website. This is just a small (if 600 can be considered small?) sampling of the thousands of pages included in the Lifetime Membership.

What exactly is included in this Membership? 

• A huge variety of pages for a multiplicity of ages, covering a wide span of topics. 
• And this isn't just for what is available currently. As pages are added to the site, they are included in the Lifetime Membership 
• A Search Bar and Table of Contents to help you rapidly find the appropriate pages for your current studies. 
• Tutorials, Tips and Videos that will help you as you begin or continue your homeschool notebooking journey. 
• If you are somewhat eclectic in your homeschooling, and would like something concrete to add to your portfolio, this might be a resource to consider. 
• If your student likes to be creative and draw as part of their daily education, again~ check these page out! 
• If you want to see thoughtful "This is what I learned" paperwork, vs the "This is what I remember, This is what I don't know" method of popular testing assessments, this NotebookingPages.com might be something you would like to check out and possibly add to your arsenal of teaching tools. :) 

The Bible Notebooking Pages and the North American Birds Pages are two of my favorites (But really, there are SOOOO many topics to check out, this is just a smattering). The Bible Pages are handy for last minute Sunday School preparation (We don't use a set curriculum, so this is helpful if one doesn't wish to reinvent the wheel constantly).

The Bird Pages are gorgeous, and are a great addition to a Thornton Burgess read-through, or any basic bird Nature Program. They also make simply lovely pages to color! :) This screenshot I took gives you a bit of an idea of the quality of these pages.

If you like what you see, go give them a bit of a closer look, and sign up to download some pages from the free section. You can also access visual samples (non-printable) of most sets straight from website, to see if there are pages that will be useful to you in your homeschooling. Because of the breadth and width of topics covered, I suspect that just about anyone would be able to make great use of these pages.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: NotebookingPages.com
• Product: Notebooking Pages Lifetime Membership
• Ages: K-12
• Price: $97 or 4 month payment plan of $10, $29, $29, $29 

You can follow Notebooking Pages on their Social Media Accounts:
Facebook, Twitter

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Practice Makes Perfect! Homeschool Copywork Lifetime Membership Review

It's not often that I am given the opportunity to review something produced by one of my friends, but today I get to talk about the Lifetime Membership from my friend Amy Blevins' company, Homeschool Copywork. She has produced a large number of quality copywork ebooks with themes to suit all ages, and many interests.

Amy has created copywork ebooks which feature themes from Scripture, History, Poetry, Art, Science, Music (Composers and Hymns), Nature, and Seasonal Themes. These ebooks are put together with care. They include multiple styles of print and manuscript for handwriting practice and are beautifully illustrated. Some of the pages have great line drawing illustrations which can be colored in when the copywork is finished, and others are accompanied by full color illustrations.

Some of the books are pretty much strictly copywork, others include extra information and/or activities or suggestions that can become a little unit study. Here is a screen shot from one of the Van Gogh books. You can see that the page has a beautiful Van Gogh picture to go along with the quote~ lovely! The beginning of the book includes a biographical snippet and some activity suggestions.

I really appreciate the variety of styles of print/manuscript that she has included, as all of my children are at different places in their handwriting. My Eldest has developed her own style:

My Middlest is still figuring out his style...

And my Youngest is working on letter size and spacing... writing neatly is something that he needs to work on, and these sheets are great, because they give a clear example for him to follow, using sentences that are interesting and/or beneficial.

Because it's a Presidential Election year we chose to use some pages from the Presidential Quotes book. There are quotes from each one of the Presidents, in a variety of styles.

My eldest was delighted to discover verses that included two of her favorite things, Dragons AND Owls in the Dragons of the Bible book (Among other Dragon references...)

My youngest was also interested in The Armor of God book... Anything having to do with "army" or "armor" makes him happy, even if it isn't Military Police or some other modern force. For my part, I think this is a good way to help to learn the verses from Ephesians 6!

Some of the benefits of using copywork, even into high school include:

• Reinforcing proper  Spelling, Punctuation, Vocabulary, Sentence Structure, and Grammar ~ as they copy what is correctly modeled they *will* learn.
• Memorization aid~ when the eyes see the words, the brain thinks the words, and the hands write the words they are more likely to be retained. This is where quality copywork comes into play. We want our children to be putting meaningful words to paper, into their brains, and hearts. Amy's books definitely set a standard here. 
• Of course, there is also the benefit of "hopefully" improving penmanship. This is a big thing with my youngest, as his letters are of all shapes, sizes, and smooshed together, so seeing properly spaced and written words directly above his workspace is extremely helpful! 

While Amy often shares some samples of her copywork ebooks for free, a membership allows you to pick and choose content from *everything* that she has produced (I believe I counted 47 copywork ebooks), as well as access to Member only Bonus materials, including notebooking and coloring pages.

This is a great resource for all ages.
Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Homeschool Copywork
• Product: Lifetime Membership
• Ages: Pre-K to High School
• Price: Lifetime Membership $45, Full Membership $29.95 for one year

You can visit Homeschool Copywork on their social media channels:
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~