Week #7

This week we continued in the book of Daniel for our Bible.  Each morning we start out our day in prayer.  My kids are blowing me away by their prayers lately.  I can hardly pray at all when they are done because I am in tears.  God is doing a mighty work in their lives at such a young age and it is an awesome sight to witness!
The bible curriculum is from Positive Action For Christ and the company is located right here in NC.  We are still working on last year's book which is labeled for 3rd grade but I use it with all my children and it works out great.

Remember my organization post last week.  Well, let me tell you just how organized I am!  I showed up a whole week early for a hair appointment on Monday!!  Lol, so this Monday will be a replica of last Monday except for I actually do have an appointment this week.  =)

This marked our 5th week of Classical Conversations.  We have next week and then we will be off for a week with lots of time to review.  This week I'd like to look up some games to play for our 6 weeks of review.  So far the kids are doing an awesome job and loving it.  Both boys wrote papers on Charlemagne this week. 

One of our favorite events for the week was a field trip to see our local Act! 4 Youth give a performance of "Annie".  They did such an amazing job as always!  Next up is "Tom Sawyer".

For more weekly wrap-ups visit Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Review of Digital Frog Field Trip Series

I received The Digital Field Trip DVD series from Digital Frog International as a member of TOS Homeschool Crew to review.  I had never heard of the company before at all.  They are located in Ontario, Canada and offer lots of different products and services.  I was impressed with the company right away even before receiving anything from them.  The vendor actually drove the copies of the DVDs coming to the US across the border so that my fellow US crewmates would not have any problems receiving our product.  I thought that was awesome!

The DVD I reviewed offers three virtual field trips for you to explore.  The three field trips included are The Wetlands, The Rainforest, and The Desert.  We were discussing the 7 types of biomes in our classical conversations group so this came at a wonderful time! 

This DVD is loaded with information and scientific facts about these areas.  We are still going through the DVD and haven't completely finished one field trip yet!  Honestly, if you went through all the information and did all the workbook pages it would take you years to finish this!  We decided to browse each field trip and then went back to our favorite for a more in depth study.  The picture quality is amazing!  It really did look like you were right there in the desert, wetlands, and rainforest!

Also included with each digital field trip are workbook pages that can be printed from the DVD, interactive maps, definitions and pronunciations of scientific vocabulary words, ability to bookmark your favorite parts, online updates, games, and so much more.

Since there is so much information on the DVD, I'm going to give an overview of each one separately. 

The Desert

You will be transported to five of North America's deserts while never even leaving your chair!  The deserts you will visit are the Sonoran Desert, the Painted Desert, Cattail Falls Oasis in Big Bend National Park, Black Rock Desert, and Death Valley. You will explore many aspects of desert life including desert types, desert mechanisms, and the impacts of deserts.
You can view a sample of the Desert workbook here.

The Rainforest

With this field trip you will explore the Blue Creek Rainforest Reserve in Belize, Central America.  You will surround yourself with the sounds of a tropical rainforest as you learn more about it, the plants and animals found there and the mechanisms and processes that keep them alive and vital.
You can view a sample of the Rainforest workbook here.

The Wetlands

The wetlands include five modules for you to explore.  The five modules are the Field Trip, Study of a Bog, Wetlands Types, Mechanisms of a Wetland, and Endangered Wetlands.

You can view a sample of the Wetlands workbook here.


The following system requirements are required for each DVD:

Windows: Pentium II with Windows 2000, XP or Vista (Pentium III recommended) with a DVD drive, 32 MB of RAM (64 or more recommended) and 75 MB of hard drive space for QuickTime.


Macintosh: G3 300 with CD drive, Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later, 30 MB of available RAM


You can purchase a home license in DVD format for each field trip separately for $60 or you can save 20% when you purchase a home license in DVD format that includes all three field trips for $125 here.

Our family's opinion of this DVD is mixed.  We really enjoyed the wonderful pictures that were included and the ability to scroll around within them.  Our favorite out of the three was the Rainforest.  The information and scientific facts presented were awesome!  For my children, they found reading all of the information became boring quickly.  So, I stepped in to help out sometimes and we also skipped around some.  Our favorite features were the videos included and the games available to play.  This DVD has valuable use for all grade levels.  So, would our family purchase this to add to our curriculum?  Yes, even though the cost gives me a little sigh at first.  The information and ability to use this year after year would convince me to purchase this for our homeschool.

You can find out what my fellow crewmates thought about The Digital Field Trip Series here.

**Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of this DVD for review purposes.  The opinions expressed here are my honest opinions.  I received no other compensation for this review.
 

Week #6

I'm actually on the current week and looking back!  I've caught up and my hope is to review our week each Saturday!

Six weeks have passed and I have come to the realization that I cannot do everything that I planned to do at the beginning of the year.  I knew I over planned from the beginning but my stubbornness led me to keep on keeping on even when it wasn't the best thing to do!

So, I've tweaked our homeschool schedule to now hopefully fit more appropriately with our on-the-go lifestyle that we've suddenly embarked upon!

Step 1 - very important for me!

Step 2 - My handy dandy planner from Home Educating Family!  I use it for everything!

Step 3 - I made an on the go notebook for us to have in hand to review our Classical Conversations memory work.  Because, sometimes I'd say, "Tell me the 7 types of biomes" and the kids would rattle them off but one and none of us could think of that one!  So, this comes in very handy.  We also have a 99 van that does not have a CD player so I uploaded all the songs to my blackberry!

I divided our notebook by weeks and printed out some very valuable resources from the CC Connected.  You must have a membership to get to the files and I highly recommend joining!  Each week has the memory work laid out.  It's like a mini version of our weekly board.

I also printed out the weekly map for geography and added that in.

Next I added in the weekly History and Science snippets.  They give a little more detail about the history sentence and science facts we are learning for the week.  For now, we have put aside Mystery of History and Apologia Astronomy and are just doing these.  We will use MOH and AA during the off weeks we have at classical.  I love both so much that I can't give them up but we just do not have the time to fit them in right now.  We have a break coming up in October and we will pull them pack out then.  We also have all of December off.

Next up are the memory cards for testing yourself at glance.  On the front is the question and on the back is the answer.

I added our timeline cards into their own notebook.

I carry the notebooks in my free w/purchase  ESTÉE LAUDER bag for easy transportation. =)

Step 3 - I've learned versatility!  School doesn't have to be done at a desk!!  Here, we are waiting for Sarah to finish up with her dance class.

And that leads back to the beauty of homeschooling!!

Here is a sample of Sarah's artwork for the week.  The boys were writing about Justinian the Great from their IEW Medieval History books (more history there too!) and Sarah drew a picture him.  I thought she did a great job!

Week 4 of Classical Conversations!  We are still enjoying it!  Sarah is giving her presentation.  She is sharing some photos of her family =)



That's a wrap!  You can join in the weekly wrap-up fun too!

Week #5

It is unbelievable to me how fast time is flying by!!  I can't believe October is right around the corner! 

On our agenda this week includes attending our local See You At The Pole event.  Ours was held at the local Chic-fil-A.  We had about 40 attend.  It was an awesome experience to stand with fellow believers and pray for our schools, community, and country!

We also went on our first field trip to The Wilson Times (our local newspaper).  And our tour guide was none other than the owner!!  We enjoyed it so much.  Notice my three right next to the owner.  They do not have a shy bone!  I am not sure where they get that from!

And on the way home, they were preoccupied. =)

The kids also had their very first dance performance with the ministry team they have joined at Heaven's Footprints.  I must tell about our dance journey.  It all started with Sarah.  She wanted to take dance so we stopped by a new studio that had opened up that our homeschool group had recommended.  Immediately, Sarah fell in love with Mrs. Angela.  The boys and I watched as Sarah tried out EVERY dance to decide what she wanted to do and in a total of a week, our whole family fell in love with Mrs. Angela!!  She is such an awesome dancer and instructor.  But most of all, she has a passion for the Lord and wants to pass that along through teaching children how to dance with a purpose!!  And that purpose is all for the glory of God!  God works in amazing ways and we are truly blessed that He directed our path to Heaven's Footprints!

I did make a notebook for our new on the go lifestyle but did not get to take any pictures of it.  So, coming up next week, how we keep it all together.  (lol, or try!)

Week #4

This week we are fully into our crazy schedule!  We have dance, soccer, homeschool activities, church activities, and Classical Conversations.  We are BUSY!!  But we are enjoying every minute of it!  However, I do realize I must stay super organized or school work seems to fall by the wayside. 

So, coming up next week a plan of action!

Week #3

Week 3 included our first week of Classical Conversations!  We had a blast!  It's a lot of work but the kids do it so willingly!  I'm amazed!

Sarah and her All About Me poster that she made.

Here's the board I fixed to review our memory work.  Each week, I'll add the new material.

The bottom right is now attached with the science facts but wasn't when I took the photo :)

We ended the week with a small vacation to the beach!  It was so nice to get away!  

New Monic Vocabulary Cartoon Review

Today's review is from New Monic Books, Inc.  I was given the opportunity to review the Vocabulary Cartoon book.  The book is the elementary edition and is geared towards 3rd-6th graders.

I used this book with all of my children (ages 7, 9, and 12) and they absolutely LOVED it!  It is an excellent book for teaching vocabulary words.  There are over 210 vocabulary words in the book and review quizzes after each 10.  For a complete word list, you can visit here.  The approach they use is combining rhyming mnemonics and visual mnemonics to guide your student into learning new vocabulary words all while having a blast!  The cartoons are quite hilarious and each one is actually a learning tool to boot!  That is my all time favorite way of learning anything!

What is a mnemonic?  It is just a fancy word which simply means "assisting the memory."  Here is a sample so you can see the concept in action. 

To view other sample pages from the book you can visit here.  The price of this book is a very affordable $12.95.  They also offer other books for older children as well.

You may purchase Vocabulary Cartoons online at New Monic Books, Inc, by phone at 1-800-741-1295, or by fax at 1-941-575-6436. 

Our family would highly recommend this book to you.  We are having a jocular time with Vocabulary Cartoons!  Hee hee...had to use that one!

To find out what my crewmates had to say go here. 

**Disclaimer:  I was given a free copy of this book to review.  The views expressed here are my true and honest opinions.  I received no other compensation for this review.