Journey to Excellence

Susan Kilbride has some of my favorite science unit studies! The kids and I have done her plants study , her atoms and molecules study , and reviewed her book Science Unit Studies for Homeschoolers and Teachers . She recently gave me the opportunity to review How to Teach About Electricity for Ages 8-13 . Susan's unit studies are very well-organized and planned out. This electricity unit study is set up like all of her others. The beginning of the study has a "Materials Needed" page that lists each and every thing you will need to complete the unit study. Some of the materials are those you have on hand, and some are those that will need to be purchased. I appreciated that Susan had a chapter on Safety. As the experiments involved electricity, she had specific dos and don'ts for how to perform the experiments. Two of the chapters and experiments we covered were on Static Electricity and Electrical Currents. The Static Electricity chapter contained three ...

Are you looking for a delightful and simple way to celebrate Christmas in your homeschool? If so, then Christmas Comes to America would be a good choice. For the past month the kids and I have had the pleasure of reviewing this product from Homeschool Legacy . Homeschool Legacy's unit studies are based on a Once-a-Week schedule. They recommend doing all of your other studies four days a week and then devoting your unit study to one day. We typically do this on Fridays. So, each Friday we took a week of the four-week study and devoted it to learning about Christmas in Denmark, England, Germany and America. Although you can go to the Homeschool Legacy website for their  Scheduling Tips , the unit study is easily adaptable to  any  schedule. We typically do our unit studies  each  afternoon of the week. But, in using this one as an additional seasonal study, I was able to dedicate it to Fridays. What I liked: Each week's lessons start with the Lib...

P.E. Class. I tend to have good intentions (we'll go for a walk tonight, we'll go play at the park after we're done with school work, we'll ride our bikes to grandma and papa's). But, then the day gets away from us and, before I know it, two weeks have gone by without one moment of intentional physical activity. I am a routine girl. It has to be scheduled for me to do it. I ride my bike to the park and back and walk three miles every morning with my mom and a couple of other ladies. They keep me on schedule. If they didn't, I would miss many days of exercise for a miriad of reasons. So this year I added P.E. to our daily planner page. And each day I include a lesson of some kind. Sometimes our P.E. lesson really is going for a walk or playing at the park or riding our bikes. But many days we have no physical activity planned and those are the days I schedule in a lesson from Family Time Fitness . The Crew had the opportunity to review the Fitness 4 Ho...

PENGUINS! When I saw that we could have the opportunity to review Lots and Lots of Playful Penguins by Marshall Publishing, I leaped at the chance!! When Eli and Brynne were little, they loved Lots and Lots of Jets and Planes , and we checked them out from the library more than once. I was pretty sure the Penguin videos would be a huge hit, because my kids are obssessed with penguins. In fact, just the week before, Eli chose to write a story pretending that he was a penguin. Marshall Publishing and Promotions, Inc. , not only produces the Lots and Lots of ... series of dvds, but history dvds and many other products, including As Seen on TV products. We were given the opportunity to choose between four dvds: I had a hard time choosing which video we should choose, because every single one of them excited me! But, ultimately, because of the kids' interest level and their ages, we chose to review the Lots and Lots of Penguins and their Happy Feet dvd set that i...

You remember doing it, right? ... writing endless vocabulary words on one side of your notebook paper that was folded in half lengthwise with the definition on the other half. Then the night before the test you would write the vocab words on one side of an index card and the definition on the other side so that you could drill yourself. You'd have a pile of words you knew and words you didn't. And, if you are a parent, you have held those index cards up for your kids so that they could regurgitate the answers back onto a test. BORING! And how many of those words did you really remember to be used in real life? Enter Vocab Videos , an entertaining way to learn the possible 500 vocabulary words that will be on the SAT. Vocab Videos was developed by experienced educators looking for a better way to teach vocabulary. The system combines memorable videos — featuring 500 key SAT vocabulary words—and cutting edge learning tools to offer an engaging and highly effective vocab...

Talk about a GOLD MINE! A Thomas Jefferson Education's This Week in History by Rachel DeMille is her "labor of love" ... and I absolutely LOVE it! " This Week in History is a daily resource that brings your home school or classroom to life." For just $9.99 per month, you can log onto TJEd.com and click the "This Week in History" link to obtain many, many, many resources tied to specific events that occurred in the upcoming week in history. Or even better, you can receive the summaries and links to ALL resources right in your email Inbox each week! It doesn't get any easier than that! What does this really look like in real life? Each week, I receive an email from Rachel DeMille that sets out each date of the coming week. Under the date, there are listed anywhere from one to several events that occurred in history on that date. THEN there are ALL kinds of things to do related to that event, such as books to read, websites to visit, ac...

We've used the same highly-acclaimed writing program for the past two years. And I wasn't interested in a change. So, when I was chosen to do a review for Create Better Writers , when I requested that I be passed over for this one, I was a little annoyed. I didn't want to try something different! And, it's summer break for my high school student. Getting him to do the lessons in the middle of summer was going to be impossible. So, when I received the e-book materials How to Write a Paragraph , How to Write a Five Paragraph Essay , and The Homeschool Writing Action Plan , I was pleased to quickly realize that I would be able to use the program with my 8 and 7 year olds. The thought had honestly not occurred to me that they would be read to write a cohesive paragraph. They are both entering the 3rd grade this year. Why not joyfully try out a new program with them? And ultimately I was glad I was chosen. I decided to just stick to the How to Write a Paragraph ...

Back when I was offered to review Science Unit Studies for Homeschoolers and Teachers by Susan Kilbride, she also asked me if I would be interested in reviewing her newest historical fiction book for children called The Pilgrim Adventure . This is Ms. Kilbride's first book in her Our America series. It is a story about Finn and Ginny, two children whose parents disappeared when they accidentally mistook a time machine for a television remote control. Once the childrens' uncle reveals to them what really happened, they decide to try to go back in time to locate their parents. They find themselves on the Mayflower coming to America. And then the adventures begin. This book is an easy, informative, and fun read with fairly short chapters (I find that important when reading to younger children.) The story is told from the perspective of two children who are traveling to America on the Mayflower and then settling there. There are hardships, most definitely, and many obsta...

A couple of months ago I was contacted by Susan Kilbride, the author of Science Unit Studies for Homeschoolers and Teachers about writing a review for the book. She had read my blog post on our The Secret Garden unit where I used her free Plant unit study downloaded from Funtastic Unit Studies . I told her that I would be thrilled to review the entire book that the plants unit came from, because we enjoyed it so much! Although we have not done any other full unit studies from the book yet, I have reviewed it extensively. I have even pulled out some relevant activities to do regarding delight-directed learning opportunities on which we had embarked. (Like our spontaneous Water Cycle unit . I just grabbed the book to see if there might be some activities on the Water Cycle, and voila! I found some great things in a snap!) I do, however, plan to use this book for many years to come. That's what's great about the book! It has designated activities for Ages 4-7, and ...

Dawson has been studying DNA for the past couple of weeks. I had read many recommendations to purchase a particular DNA building kit, but at $50 I was reluctant to do so for such a limited purpose. While perusing the aisles at Hobby Lobby, I came across the ScienceWiz DNA kit by Penny Norman, Ph.D. Wielded with my 40% off coupon, I picked up this little gem for about $12.00. It is regularly priced at $19.99 (still a bargain). It included all of the pieces necessary to build the DNA ladder and Double Helix (that I was going to be purchasing the other kit for), and included all the materials necessary to do some DNA extractions (both vegetable/fruit and HUMAN), a chromosome puzzle and karyotyping. It was a bargain for all we could do with it! Constructed Double Helix Chromosome puzzle The 40-page booklet that came with the kit not only included the instructions for all of the projects, but also acted as a mini-textbook with introductory material about cells, nuclei, DNA, c...

Several months ago I received an offer from CSN to review the products of my choice. I couldn't resist getting some free homeschooling resources. I have already reviewed some of the things I purchased, and you can read those reviews by going here (the Your Backyard review was for a different company). This time my review is for the Time and Money Tabletop Pocket Chart by Patch Products . Brynne has loved this! After she used it the first time she said, "That was a fun math program about time. It was so fun!" We have only used the Time components of the pocket chart. We will start using the Money components next week. Here are some of the ways we used it ... I inserted picture cards into the pockets representing her typical school day schedule. She chose digital times for when she does those activities and then the analog time that was the closest. I put analog times in the pockets and she had to choose the digital times to match. I mixed up the digital and...

You can read about the other products I recently reviewed for CSN Stores here , here and here . I chose to review all products from toysandgamesonline.com to take advantage of some free homeschooling resources. Last week Brynne had the opportunity to try out the Place Value and Counting Pocket Chart from Learning Resources . We had just started learning place values of tens and ones and she was having a little bit of trouble grasping the concept. So, we used Legos to make groups of ten and as individual ones, as the workbook she was using demonstrated with like blocks. She started to understand it a little better. But then I got out the Place Value and Counting Pocket Chart. I didn't hang it up, but just put it on the coffee table where she was working. Within minutes she had completely grasped the concept and was happily solving the problems. She said, "This is fun!" We used the pocket chart all week, and I have plans to use it again this week to expand on what...