A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Reviews

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.

Review: Every Day with Jesus

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You know how it’s great to encourage children to develop the necessary habit of spending time with the Lord God?  Every Day with Jesus is a lovely devotional written by Charles F. Stanley to help us do just that.  Help our children read God’s word and then to think about it for a while.  It’s a pivotal part of Christian Parenting. 

My Review of Every Day With Jesus

Every Day with Jesus has a balloons theme, balloons on the cover and scattered on the pages throughout.  Each day starts with a one verse reading.   These verses are taken from both the Old and New Testaments. The devotions are one per page. Each devotion has a title, scripture verse, short reading, an ending prayer, and an application point. Scripture is mostly taken from the International Children’s Bible version.  Other translations used are: NKJV, NIV, NLT and NCV.

Most of the time I could easily find the connection between the scripture, but on the odd page I was stumped.  It is admittedly one of my pet peeves with devotionals, when the scripture passage used doesn’t connect with the devotion given.  May 7 was one such day.

Author Charles F Stanley is a pastor in Atlanta, Georgia.  He is a Baptist minister who has written more than 60 books. He is the founder of In Touch Ministries.  This is his first devotional meant just for children.   He wrote this children’s devotional to coordinate with the adult version “Every Day in his Presence”.  It is for the most part, a very good devotional.  He’s changed the readings to reflect the language and interests of children. 

My Thoughts:

I like this devotional.  For the most part the readings fit the text (though not always).  They are short and sweet, include a prayer and close with a main thought to talk about over the course of the day.  The short length makes it a good devotional for elementary aged children. Depending on the age of your children they could use this devotional independently, but it’s often good with younger elementary children to do devotions with them to help them understand God’s word and to answer questions they may have. 

Every Day with Jesus
Charles F. Stanley
Hardcover, devotional, 365 devotions
Elementary children.
Reviewed for: BookLookBloggers. 

Where to find: Amazon Link.

Other Devotionals:

365 Bible Answers
Beginners Bible for Little ones

Review: Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids

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Chicago Review Press puts together these wonderful books that are well done unit studies.  Today I would like to talk to you about Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids.   Imagine a book that does all the work of researching for you and then provides 21 different activities to help cement the learning in your children’s minds.  Hands-on activities to help you figure it out and see what Albert Einstein was talking about.

What do you get?

Albert Einstein and Relativity for kids is a softcover book divided into 8 chapters with different 21 activities.  Some of these activities are familiar, and other take regular household items and add a teaching element I wouldn’t have considered otherwise.  Most are hands on, but some are writing assignments.  It is written by Jerome Pohlen.

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids activity options

Chapters are:

  • A Curious and Independent child
  • The patent office and the miracle year
  • Special Relativity
  • The Professor Without Socks
  • General Relavity
  • Fame and Persecution
  • America and the Bomb
  • Standing Up for Peace and Human Rights

The tome is well designed, with text balanced well with images.  Written at a level good for upper elementary to high school students.  It is a well written book that is engaging and interesting.  I appreciated the timeline at the start of the book to give me a good overview into his life.

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids Sample pages

I love that pictures and images are strewn throughout the book, bringing into focus places and people that were part of Einstein’s life.

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids images from his life

My thoughts.

This is an excellent book to teach your children about Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity.  Engaging text that gives the facts without being boring.  Excellent graphics that break up the text with good experiments to help you to understand concepts.  This would be a great book to use within a homeschool setting and easy to adapt to using in a co-op. 

Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids book cover 
Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids
   His life and Ideas with 21 Activities and thought experiments. 
Jerome Pohlem
Chicago Review Press
Unit study, history, biography, hands-on learning
Softcover, 128 pages.
Reviewed for Chicago Review Press.
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Other Chicago Review Books in this series:

Marine Science. 
Michelangelo.
Marie Curie.

Review: Home School in the Woods

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Home School in the Woods now offers many of their hands-on history projects Á La Carte.  We received War to end all Wars file Folder Game.  The game question that runs through our house now is “Mom, you want to play the game we made?”  “Dad?   Are you busy? Want to play a game?  Do you want to be the Germans or the French?”

Home School in the woods - war to end all wars

Who is Home School in the Woods?

The Paks are a homeschooling family who saw a need and decided to fill it.  🙂   You can read more about their journey here. Starting with timelines and then broadening out to whole units of study and games as well. They are an interesting company and puts out excellent materials. 

How did we use it?

The War to End all Wars came as a PDF.  I found that printing off was easy to do.  Though admittedly… I messed up but my lad took charge and got it all sorted out easily enough.  Handy to have a smart 12 year old around (even if he does shake his head at his mother).  🙂

We liked having the option between colour and black/white, a suggestion from my son was to have some of the images with colour, or at least a variation that can still be seen in black and white.  He had a specific idea but I can’t recall exactly what that was. Our printer is black and white so it was great to have that option, and colouring in the flags was a nice time to chat with my lad. THOUGH we found out after I coloured half of them in that I had done them wrong (see the above).  The lad told me not to bother colouring them in again as he liked them in black and white. 🙂 (and didn’t want me to think I had wasted my time … he’s a kind lad)

The lad took two days to put the game together.  Cutting out the pieces, tapping them together, and gluing down the pages to the file folder.  The game was enjoyed by all members of our household, the lad likes playing.  He wins against me, but his dad is prone to win against him.  So it all evens out quite nicely. 

I printed it out on regular paper as opposed to cardstock for two reasons.  Our printer can be finicky with cardstock AND before we played the game I wasn’t sure if it would be enjoyed by my lad.  This thinking led to me going with the cheaper paper.  KNOWING full well that if we enjoyed the game a lot and wanted to play it more often, it would be easy enough to print off the parts we needed to have in cardstock. By then I would be willing to play around with our finicky printer. 🙂   

My son enjoys this game so much that he made weights to go on the bottom of the game pieces and has plans that as soon as the playing pieces look too banged up he’ll print them up on cardstock and we’ll play even more. 🙂

Our thoughts:

In case it hasn’t been readily apparent in this review, let me state it very clearly.  My son LOVES this game and is so glad we have it.  He really like strategy games and pitting his wits against another person.  He thinks through what he wants to do and this game allows him to do that. I foresee us playing this game often, particularly next year when he wants to study the world wars.  But for now.. Fridays will be a good time to keep playing eh? 

The only thing I would change if I could figure out how to do it, would be to make it a three or four player game, then all of us could play at once. But I don’t know how to make that happen, and just thinking about it makes it feel way to complicated so having it as a two-player game is probably the best option.

One of the things my lad did was to make small clay discs to weight each of the playing pieces down.   He says the game is very fun and he loves the strategy involved.  

We had a hard time choosing which of the a la carte items we wanted.  This one on the 95 theses intrigued as did the timeline of World War II.  I may end up picking that course up for my son’s studies next year on the wars.  I have also been looking at their other war related items. 

Home School in the woods - war to end all wars 
Home School in the Woods.
A la carte items.
War to End all Wars File Folder Game.
File folder game,
World war 1 game.
Digital product.

100 members of the Homeschool Review Crew were looking at the various ala carte items. Click here or below.

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Review: City Trails: Rome

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It was rather fun looking through City Trails – Rome with my lad recently.  We’ve been studying Ancient History and have been visiting the historical places in Rome.   Therefore, as we walked throughout the pages of City Trails we frequently ran into places or statutes we had seen on our journeys.   

My review of City Trails Rome

But there is more to City Trails Rome than seeing historical building.  We are taken on 19 different trails throughout the city.   We get to taste food (or at least WANT to taste some food).  Stopping by at the Mini Medicine Mound, Touring the wall of water and seeing Trajan’s Column up close.  We saw Coypus swimming by and watch people dive in the River Tiber as we headed off to visit Rome’s zoo.    

It’s always a fun day visiting Rome. 🙂  Especially while wearing the city’s colours of red and yellow.   So grab up this book and visit the City Trails of Rome.  Stop in at the markets, the toy shops and the restaurants…. feast your belly as well as your mind!  🙂   The Map provided on the opening flap of this tome leads you the various trails followed throughout the book.   Visit, have fun. 

My thoughts.

Unlike City Trails Tokyo, I found City Trails Rome to be laden with a lot of the historical monuments/buildings rather than the more modern buildings/attractions.  This isn’t bad as many people go to visit Rome for those attractions.  I just expected after the brightness  and current day buildings of Tokyo to see some of more of the modern buildings as well.   I have to admit, I would love to poke my head in at Bartolucci and Al Sogno.  Those toy shops look to be delightful to walk though, and visiting the main market!  Markets are always fun microscapes of a larger area eh?    This book would be excellent as a go along when studying Rome, or if you were planning a trip there and wanted to see what your children would be most interested in seeing. 

City Trails: Rome
     Secrets, Stories and Other Cool Stuff
Moira Butterfield
Lonely Planet Kids   104 pages, 8-12 years. 
Board cover with flap, geography 
Series: City Trails 
Reviewed for: Raincoast Books. 

Where to purchase? Amazon Link.

I recently reviewed another in this series: Tokyo.    This book would go along very well with Drive Thru History as it just gives another way to see historical places. 🙂

Review: Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein

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I read through Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein while my son was in his Karate class this morning.   When he came out he asked what I thought and I said “It was a good read, but not an easy one”.   This lead us into a discussion on what it means to have a good read not be an easy one.   It’s not easy to read about the effects of war on a child and his family.  

Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein book cover, my review

By the time we were finished our discussion (basically the car ride home) my lad asked if he could read this book when he was done his current read.  He thought it was neat that a boy could teach himself another language and have it end up being a job that he does.  I told my lad that I thought he would like it and I guessed he would agree with me that it was a good book, but not so easy to read.   I am looking forward to his report. 

My thoughts:

This book is based on a true story, told through the eyes, ears, and nose of a lad living through a war zone when Saddam Hussein was the leader of his country.   The hunger, the lessons learned during war, the tears and anger, and the help offered from one stranger to another.  All these things make this book a poignant story on war through the eyes of a child.  Seeing the war through Ali’s life made the story very relate-able, showing us glimpses of his culture and life as he dealt with some massive changes in his life.   

My Son’s Thoughts:

“It was an okay book.  Some parts were hard to read.  It was good that learning English helped him.”

Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein
Jennifer Roy & Ali Fadhil
HMH Books for Young Readers 
Softcover, 176 pages
Middle School, 
Biography, War, Middle East, True Life
Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.

Where to find: Amazon Link.

image of back cover Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein

Other based on life stories:

Betty before X.
Shark Lady.
Johnny Appleseed.
Women of Medicine.
Seized by the Sun.

Art Book: Draw Like an Artist – Pop Art

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Does PopArt interest you?  Want to learn how to do it yourself?   Draw Like an Artist PopArt will help you along your way.

My review of the art book Draw Like an Artist Pop Art by Patricia Geis

Don’t know what Pop Art is?  Me too!   I had to learn and this video helped.  Simple colourful work.

 

Draw like an Artist: pop art is a book that takes you through 18 different artists, introducing you the work they did and then gives you an opportunity to copy their style.   This book does tell you how to do it, it gives you the opportunity and the paper, and then says This is what this artist did.. now.. make their style your own. I love this style of teaching.  Being able to look at works of art until you understand the style and then being encouraged to make it your own….It’s wonderful!

Anyways, artists include people such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Peter Blake, David Hockney, Claes Oldenburg, Joe Tilson and more.  18 artists, 18 activities.   Included at the close of the book are elements you can use in your creativity.

sample pages from Pop Art

Each artist has a brief biography given plus a sample of their work.  A brief synopsis of the type of work they did, and then encouragement to make your own piece of art. 

My thoughts.

I thought this was a wonderful book. I love how each artist was introduced along with some of their art work.  Then a simple encouragement to just try your hand at it.  A page to work on with the artists work visible for inspiration makes it a useful book for students of Pop Art.   I can see this book being SO easy to use for a co-op class.  It would be a matter of finding samples of the artists work, adding a bit more to the biography, providing papers, magazines and a variety of art materials and then simply encouraging each student to make a work of art that is all their own. I think it would be fantastic to see more books like this one. 

cover of the book draw like an artist Pop Art 
Draw Like an Artist - Pop Art
Patricia Geis
Princeton Architectural Press
64 pages, softcover, age 10+
art, art book, pop art, draw like an artist
Series: Draw Like An Artist
Reviewed for Raincoast books.

Where to find: Amazon Link.

Other Art Books:

How to Draw Comics. 
How to Draw . 
Stick Stekch School.