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Review: Creation Illustrated

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Three weeks ago I received the Pine Trees Unit Study ebook from Creation Illustrated. Since we have pine trees around our house I thought it would make for a nice little “time out from the normal” study with my lad. My thinking proved correct as my lad worked happily on the pine tree study rather than doing his normal course work, it’s good to have a break before Easter you know?  🙂  The Pine Trees study is part of the Creation Unit Studies that fit well with their magazine articles. 

Pine Trees by Creation Illustrated, a review

Who is Creation Illustrated?

Creation Illustrated is a company that focuses on showing God’s truth through nature.  They do this via a magazine format. They have chosen to help students expand their knowledge of a topic in their magazine using a unit study.   The unit study contains a link to the magazine.  So not only do you get to read the article that corresponds to the unit study, you also get a chance to see what a great job they do with the rest of the magazine. This magazine is for all ages. Below is the cover to the spring edition.

What do you get?

I received two unit studies, Pine Trees and Snow, though my son only worked through Pine Trees.  I thought though you would like to know if the unit studies are similar at all and they are!  They at not identical in their set up, as in subjects are in a different order, some sections are longer or shorter and such like.

Some of the units you will encounter are: 

  • List of resources
    Brief introduction to topic
    Vocabulary/Definitions/Spelling
    Bible study
    Geography/Science
    Hands on lesson
    Math
    Art Aspect
    Wordsearch

As you can see they do their best to make their unit studies well rounded.  Teacher answer key provided.

How did we use it?

Before starting the unit study the lad and I went for a walk looking for pine trees.  We found a variety in town, and a few on a favourite walk around the dam. I figured it would be a good thing to actually see the trees before we started so he’d already be able to spot differences in the trees before we started. 🙂   It was interesting to see the colour variations… some were light green, others dark, still others with a bluish tinge.  The needles didn’t all feel the same either and noting the differences in the bark texture surprised my lad. Pine Trees by Creation Illustrated

Each study encompasses several worksheets that the student fills out after reading and watching various resources provided.  My son commented that some of the line spacing is too small.  He’s still improving his cursive and struggles yet to make his writing fit narrow spacing.Pine Trees by Creation Illustrated, sample pagesOne issue we ran across in the Pine Trees study was the some of the bible verses provided didn’t seem to make any mention of Pine or fir Trees.  We didn’t find that to be a big deal as it was more fun to go out and measure a pine tree using a pencil!  🙂 But to alleviate this concern for other parents, it would be VERY easy to just include the bible verses in print form.  This unit study fit in well with the Fall 2017 Copy of the Creation Illustrated Magazine.  The unit study about snow goes along with the Winter 2018 magazine.   In that study you will, in part, learn how snowflakes are categorized and make some crystals. 

Anyways, back to our study, after we did our nature walk we worked on the worksheets of the ebook.  First I had my lad go through and see what he already knew.  Then we looked through the various resources in order to answer the questions.  My son choose to do all the easy worksheets one day and then write his essay the next. 

Pine Trees by Creation Illustrated, essayAll in all it took three days to complete the unit study.  We could have stretched it out over a week doing a little every day, or used the questions as a stepping stone to dig deeper.  Instead we enjoyed ourselves with a walk, took a partial day to learn about pine trees, and then worked on the finer details of writing an essay.  It fit into our week well and the lad found it helpful. 

Pine Trees by Creation Illustrated, cover page

Pine Trees
Creation Illustrated
Pricing: currently 30% off for the unit studies.
Series: Creation Unit Studies.
Unit studies are geared to grades 5-8.
New subscriptions to yearly membership to magazine are 25% off. 
Creation Illustrated. 
Creation, Nature, Magazine, Unit Study, all ages, faith based

60 families from the Homeschool Review Crew have reviewed The Snow and Pine Tree unit studies distributed by Creation Illustrated. Please check out their reviews here.

creation illustrated - sample pages of Pine tree unit
You can find Creation Illustrated on the following social media Platforms.

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/CreationIllustrated/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/creation_illustrated/ 
Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/creationnature/pins/ 
Twitter – https://twitter.com/CreationMag 

The other unit reviewed was the Intricacies of Snow.

Creation Illustrated unit studies snow

Review: Counting on Katherine

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Take a moment to be female and black, growing up as smart as a whip, and having no place to go to school.  Imagine that your dad finds a way, and through it a spaceship was saved.  Understand well why people would be “Counting on Katherine“.  Learn the story of how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13. 

Counting on Katherine: how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13, my review

Don’t you just loved when an illustrator of picture books captures a story really well?   When I opened the pages of Counting on Katherine and saw all the white space surrounding full colour, simply drawn pictures I was drawn into the story of Katherine Johnson, watching her through her formative years and seeing her turn into a well respected lady. Counting on Katherine: how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13, sample page

 

Katherine was a mathematically minded girl who was as smart as a whip. Her papa had a problem, how could he get her the education that she needed.   Katherine had a problem, what would she do with the education she received?

The simple drawings with plenty of white space helped bring life to the story.

Counting on Katherine: how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13, a sampling of pages

We saw how women helped to shape the space program, working in the background on the computers, formulating numbers. It was very good to see by hard work, determination and accuracy,  Katherine established a reputation as being reliable and dependable.

Counting on Katherine: how Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13

My thoughts:

Math and dreams filled with pages of this delightful book.  I so enjoy a good tale and watching good stories of real life people succeed in their ventures of life.  It’s good to be inspired by people who follow through on their dreams and to see the help they got along the way. 

Counting on Katherine book cover 
Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson saved Apollo 13 
Helaine Becker
Dow Phumiruk
Christy Ottaviano Books
40 pages, ages 5-9 
Biography, elementary
Reviewed for Raincoast Books. 
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Lessons Learned While House-Hunting

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We have a move impending in our future, to that end we’ve been searching out options for housing.   It has surprised me how involved our 12 year old wants to be in the process.   To that end we’ve been taking him with us as we look through options from renting to buying.  

Lessons learned while House Hunting

As we work through different steps we talk with him about what some obstacles are that stand in our way.

  1. Renting… throwing away money just to have a place to live.  It’s an option yes, but you are further ahead if you purchase something.
  2. Lack of an already steady position.   It’s kinda like we are stuck.  Severance didn’t allow hubby to work without losing it.  The job he has starting has a probationary period if they want keep him or not… and until that has passed we can’t be approved for a mortgage.   Banks in some ways, make it harder for people to find a place to live you know?  You can understand it as they don’t want to lose dollars, but the flipside doesn’t help US.  🙂
  3. Affordable housing is not easy to come by currently. The housing market in Ontario is more of a sellers market right now so that makes many houses out of our price range, leaving it harder to find something we’d be comfortable living in AS we fixed it up. 
  4. Landlords with high standards (which isn’t a bad thing) UNLESS  it comes with costs such as buying a metal shed, having your lawn cut weekly at a high cost, limited options for internet, along with the responsibility for keeping things tidy even if your neighbours aren’t as responsible (and being charged clean up bills if you don’t). 

He listens as dad talks with realtor agents about problems with the houses looked at.. peering in, listening, learning, absorbing, and then asking questions.  He continually affirms to his Gramma and to dad that he’s not afraid of helping and doing some hard work if it means we have a better place to live. 

In between it all the lad is seeing the value of knowing your math so you can figure out interest rates and what that comes down to in a monthly charge. He is putting into practice housing tips he’s learned from watching “Holmes on homes” with checking to see if a floor has a slant to it.  His marvellous attention to detail comes into play as he notices windows that aren’t closing right, and toilets that don’t flush.   He’s still 12 and apt to miss things, but he’s starting to use the skills he already possesses and it’s marvellous to see. 

It will be interesting to see where this journey takes us as we muddle through it one day at a time.   It’s a good thing though, to help a boy see the bigger picture, and to watch his understanding burgeon as he tries to be a help to us. 

The history and fun of wooden spoon dolls

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Last week our six-week co-op classes started for the spring session.  I have two children signed up for my class, one great helper and her wee little who joined us.  We had SUCH fun.

The history and fun of wooden spoon dolls

Our first class I wanted to assess their skills so I chose a doll that could be simple or hard depending on their abilities (6-8 year olds can be all over the map you know).   We would make wooden spoon dolls.

Part of my class is to give the children a VERY brief history into wooden spoons and the dolls that came from them.  We talked about how wooden spoons came into being, and then how wooden spoons were a symbol of marriage.  A fellow would give his gal a wooden spoon and she’d hang it on the wall.   Sometimes they would be shaped like a key, or have a wooden heart on the end or just be a good wooden spoon. Something she could take into her marriage with her a vital part of her life.  We talked about how a spoon could be passed down from mom to daughter and so forth.  The children thought that was amazing. 

Then we talked about how wooden spoons were easy to make if you had wood on hand, and how parents like to make their children happy (just like their own moms and dads do) and they would often use whatever they had on hand, and sometimes that would be an older wooden spoon they didn’t use any more.  They were very popular in colonial days, being made of scraps of material mom would have left over.

making the wooden spoon dolls

Then we set out to make wooden spoon dolls.  I was really clear with the children that they got to make all the decisions about what their dolls would look like.  I’d help them if they needed it but they needed to decide on colours and design.  We had one boy in our class who DIDN”T want a dress on his doll so we learned to make pants, and then later a cape.   We had one girl who choose to make a elegant evening gown and then a simpler evening dress.  I made a gramma doll and the children HOOTED.  🙂

Anyways, this was an amazingly simple craft to do with the children and we had so much fun.

Making Pizza at Chef School

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Last week Tuesday the lad attended Chef School and I thought I’d share a few pictures with you.  🙂  It was held at the  Stratford Chef School.

Field trip to Chef School

My son enjoyed himself.  He was disappointed we didn’t get the tour of the facilities. We were originally supposed to have a tour, then learn about making food and see the tools used, but all the students got to do was learn about the ingredients of the pizza dough, see the toppings, roll out a pizza dough and then eat it.

Now I have to say it was neat to see the big kitchens, and the pizza was great (though admittedly I only ate one piece) the lad happily picked off the mushrooms and enjoyed a piece of mine.  It was like WOOT WOOT he was really brave to try a completely different type of pizza.  🙂  He even said it was good. 

AND we thought it was quite interesting watching the pizza bake in the oven.

image of pizza cooking from field trip to chef school

 

Review: Who Says Women Can’t be Computer Programmers

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I want you to imagine… what if computers had started earlier?   What if a loom could have been the start of the computer age?   Hold that thought.  Now read this lovely picture book “Who Says Women Can’t be Computer Programmers” and learn the Story of Ana Lovelace.   She is a fascinating lady and this soft-sided picture book gives elementary children an excellent look at this historical figure. 

My review of who says women can't be computer programmers

 

One of the things I love is when illustrators can fit their drawings to the story.  The quick movement in the images brought to life the liveliness of Ana’s mind, her fascination with numbers and how everything fit together. You could almost see how she put numbers and real life together.

who says women can't be computer programmers sample pages

Such an intellectual young lady growing up within the confines of what was considered good and proper for young ladies. Her interest in numbers was fed by the number of companions she met along the way. Their encouragement helped foster her intellect and broadened her horizons greatly.

Her mother wanted so much for her daughter to grow up without these flights of fancy that her father had, so she made a point of teaching her daughter mathematics.  She wanted her daughter to learn practical things like French, mathematics, and music.   This didn’t stop Ada though… she just loved so many things.  Her mind was so agile it soaked up everything around her. 

As her life progressed she eventually she met a scientist named Charles Babbage and her life was forever changed.   Ada learned that “Math and imagination did not have to be opposites…they actually went together!”

A sample page from "who says women can't be computer programmers"

  This lovely informative book generated an interest in me of the Jacquard Loom.

The bright pictures and the interesting story make learning about this interesting young lady and her nimble mind a great story to share with the students in your life. 

who says women can't be computer programmers book cover 
Who says Women Can't be Computer Programmers?
Tanya Lee Stone
Marjorie Priceman
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
40 pages, picture book
Biography, ages 6-9
Reviewed for Raincoast books. 
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Adding Plugins to WordPress

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We’ve talked about some different blog concerns one needs to take care of when blogging. Things like writing a disclaimer and being careful about copyright. But you know what?   If you don’t have a functioning site none of that matters!  With wordpress sites I’ve learned you need to use something called “plugins”.  Plugins are what make a wordpress site safe (from spam) and functional (like being able to put youtube videos easily). 

I am SO not a technologically savvy person that I was left feeling VERY stumped by this.  I actually was causing me a lot of stress trying to sort it out.  I talked about  I thought I would share the advice that Kim Mills shared with me, along with some pictures (and if I can find some) videos on how to install them.

How to install plugins for wordpress

What advice did I receive?

Kim’s advice was three-fold

  • Get what you need. If you want something you can probably find a plug-in that will do it. 
  • Don’t get more than you need.  Too many plug-ins will slow down your site. 
  • Only get things with good reviews that are kept up-to-date.

Then she very helpfully got me on with Akismet anti-spam, Yoast, and Updraft and a few others.   I was so blessed by her help.  🙂

There are so many things to consider when you have a wordpress site that you don’t have to think about with other blog platforms.   I am POSITIVE I haven’t even scratched the surface. Which of course brings me to the question of just how does one install a plug-in?

 

How to Install a Plugin

First you need to search out what you are looking for:

When you find one that you like, check out it’s details.

Make sure you check out when it was last updated.  I know from personal experience most plugins are updated at least once a month, and also after wordpress does any update.   Check out what other people think of the plugin and dont accept any that have more negative reviews than positive. 

Be aware of any warnings that might pop up.

I had thought about downloading this one based on the recommendations from others, but the warnings and lack of updating steered me away. I still haven’t found one that I like.  Any suggestions?  

Anyways, install your plugin, don’t forget to activate it!   Kim suggested trying things out on a child site (but I have really NO CLUE what she is talking about) because apparently some plugins don’t play well with each other and if you try it out on a child site then you don’t mess up your working site.   But I have no idea how to go about setting something like that up.  Something to research eh?

 I hope you found this helpful, it was good to remind myself of what steps to take with plugins. 🙂

I found this video that you might find helpful.