A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Books for Upper Elementary

Review: Following the Great Wall

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Guess what I have for you today?   Another Unfolding Journeys book, this one on the Great Wall!  You may remember me talking about Rocky Mountains Explorer in the past.  This book does not disappoint as it dips us into the Following the Great Wall in China.

Following the Great Wall is an unfolding book, where the one side of the fold out is illustrated images about the great wall, with the opposite side giving factual details. 

This is one of the facts that I particularly find helpful when talking about a subject with a group of students.  Being able to easily show them an image while I read the information from the backside of the image.

But the information is so readily linked that even if you are sitting just looking at the book you can easily flip from one side to the other to learn more.  The numbering system is just so helpful. With the illustration providing just enough information to peak one’s interest.

My Thoughts:
I thoroughly enjoy the unfolding journey books and this one is no exception.   To be able to see the whole picture and take in all the details, and then to gain more information in whatever images hits my fancy.. it’s great!

Following the Great Wall
Steward Ross
Victo Ngai
Lonely Planet Kids
Series: Unfolding Journeys
Pages: 16
Age Range: 8-12 years
Type: heavy cardstock, foldout book

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

Others in the series:

Where can you find it?
Amazon.ca: Lonely Planet Unfolding Journeys – Following the Great Wall 1st Ed.

Amazon.com: Unfolding Journeys – Following the Great Wall (Lonely Planet Kids)

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Review: Grand Canyon

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Ever wondered about the Grand Canyon, thinking about the animals that lived there or even how it came into being?   Jason Chin takes us on a picturesque journey through the many layers of the Grand Canyon, introducing us to the plants, animals and rocks that we’ll find along the way.

Jason Chin has put together a beautifully illustrated book that speaks to us of the history of The Grand Canyon.   He carefully takes us through the different layers, showing us the rocks, animals and plants that live along the way.

 This meaty picture book exceeded my expectations as it talked about the rock formation, and why it happened.   He dwelt heavily upon evolutionary principles but as he did so he showed the beauty of the Grand Canyon, and the huge variety of habitats and animals found throughout.  From the heat of the inner beauty to the hidden oasis found within.   I wanted to go see the Grand Canyon for myself by the time I was done, while realizing I could never see all that he showed me without hiking it myself.

He took the time to teach about concepts such as weathering, rock layers, ripple marks from mud flats, and much more.  Making this a highly useful book for anyone wanting to learn about the Grand Canyon.

He talks to us about fossils and takes imaginary trips back in time to show us what life might have been like back then in the Grand Canyon.

There is also a huge fold out that shows the beauty of the Grand Canyon.  I could not get the whole thing in my camera frame.  🙂

The last section of the book is devoted to facts to help you understand the geology of the Grand Canyon all the more.  By looking at the rocks found in the present, we can imagine what might have been in the past.   Layer by layer learning to appreciate the Grand Canyon.

 Mr. Chin explains some of this thinking as he created this book:

My Thoughts:
I never expected that a picture book, with illustrations as opposed to images, could convey to me the depth and breadth of the Grand Canyon.   This book helped me to see the immensity of it as well as the beauty of wonder.  Jason Chin did an excellent job.   A well crafted book that will benefit the classroom as well as individual enjoyment.

 Grand Canyon
By: Jason Chin
Roaring Brook Press
Pages: 56
Ages: 7 – 12 years
Type: Hardcover with fly
Approximately 10 x 12 inches

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

Where can you find it?
Amazon.ca: Grand Canyon

Amazon.com: Grand Canyon

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©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time . We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites

Art Book: My Name is Georgia

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YAY!!!   One of my favourite people is doing a guest post for me today.   Lori is going to tell you about a neat book and interesting person.
One of my favorite artists is Georgia O’Keefe. Partly because she
is New Mexican, partly because her artwork is just stunning, partly
because she is just an interesting person. Whatever way you look at it,
Georgia O’Keefe is worth learning a bit about. That is why, when I was
able to visit the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, I picked up a
children’s biography about her to share with the girls.

My Name Is Georgia a portrait by Jeanette Winter
This
is a lovely children’s book that takes us from Georgia’s childhood
through to her old age. She moved from her Wisconsin childhood home to
Chicago, New York, Texas, and New Mexico. She was always searching for
inspiration and she found it in nature.

This
is not a difficult book to read but it is an inspiring one. Reach for
your desires – this is the inspiration from Georgia O’Keefe. And if it
encourages you to read more about her and all that she did for the art
movement and community, well, that’s all the better.
This book is published by Voyager Books and was purchased at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, NM.

If you were inspired to learn more about Georgia O’Keefe perhaps this video might help.

You can find Lori blogging at At Home where life happens.  You need to visit her seriously, she writes well and has a good heart. 🙂

Where can you find this delightful book?

Amazon.ca – My Name Is Georgia: A Portrait by Jeanette Winter

Amazon.com – My Name Is Georgia: A Portrait by Jeanette Winter

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Review: Beekeeper’s Lab

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Do you know what we discovered the other day?   A BEE’s Nest!!!!   In our own backyard!   It wasn’t a honeybee, just a normal bumblebee… doesn’t matter though, the lad and I were so excited, and we carefully covered up the nest again (and reinforced it with other wood). When Gramma stopped in the afternoon, she was delighted as well and had the lad show her where the bee lived.   We like having easy going bees flitting about the house, so imagine our delight when the “Beekeeper’s Lab” showed up in the mail!  🙂

Kim Lehman is an author who knows bees well, having been a hobby beekeeper for 20 years and a contributing author to various bee publications and coordinating the Kids and Bees program.  She writes with a desire not only to teach, but help people really learn and see the beauty that can be found in all aspects of care-taking bees.

Her book has 8 chapters, covering everything you can think of in the world of keeping bees.  Each section is called a lab and can be everything from information to an experiment or art project that you can do. From providing the bees a safe home to working with beeswax and honey. It closes with a whole section on how to be helpful to bees.  This is a very informative and fun book about beekeeping.

Each page is filled with tons of images to delight and inform.  The images further explain the well written text enabling you to complete each project well.

Help bees find a home
How to make fire starters

On almost every page you will find a supply list, bee buzz (Tidbits of information about bees), Fun with Kids, how to take it further, and a safety note (only if required). 

All these helpful features make the Beekeeper’s Lab a very helpful and informative book.  I am actually looking at sourcing out some of these materials to do a co-op class since alas.. I have no bees from which to take honey or wax.  🙂  I think it would be fun to make honey sticks and beeswax art.  To help youth make smoker bundles and bee bread.  Learning about bees, their importance, their usefulness to mankind and how to protect them is vitally important to our food chain.  Keep the bees, keep the food, sustain life.   A good thing that!

I wonder if anyone will join me in making a wax candle holder?

 
Or perhaps make a whole host of the other crafts and projects found within the pages of this marvellous book all about bees?   52 different ideas.  Pick and choose or do one activity a week for a whole year!  🙂  You will find activities that will challenge your teens or delight the littles and everyone in between.  Science, art, bee care, 52 different labs to entertain, delight, educate and inspire everyone in your family.
The Beekeeper’s Lab: 52 Family Friendly Activities and Experiments Exploring the Life of the Hive.
Author: Kim Lehman.
Publisher: Quarry
144 pages
250 photos
8.5 x 8.5 inches
Reviewed for: The Quarto Group

Where can you find this treasure trove?
 Amazon.ca – Beekeeper’s Lab: 52 Family-Friendly Activities and Experiments Exploring the Life of the Hive
 Amazon.com – Beekeeper’s Lab: 52 Family-Friendly Activities and Experiments Exploring the Life of the Hive

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Review: Voyage to Magical North

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I have to admit to eagerness with Voyage to Magical North.  I thoroughly enjoyed the sequelin  Journey to Dragon Island and now I had a chance to find out how the whole thing began.   AND the book did not disappoint.  

What can I say… if you have youth who like fantasy… these books will not disappoint.  🙂   Cleverly written with humour… it works!

Enter a girl (Brine), add a boy (Peter), an evil magician, a bunch of pirates (with their own set of rules) and a girl who isn’t plus..throw in an unusual quest.. perhaps an impossible one.  Can they do it?  Will they survive?  Is it a hoax?   Will evil triumph?  NOW THAT is the question.

I absolutely refuse to tell you too much about the story.  I want you to dive right in and enjoy it from start to finish.  Use your brain, try to see where the story is going, quotes at the beginning of the chapter lend a clue.  BUT Brine is trying to find her place in the world, Peter is trying to be a decent magician, Pirates well.. they want to be the best pirates they can be, and well .. evil will be what evil is right… even clothed in an odd ball figure!

Know this.. the characters are real, their struggles seeming insurmountable.. but through it all they build their friendships, their loyalties are tested, their characters developed and life is lived.  This is not a humdrum book, but one full of life and wit. 

Watch out for the penguins… seriously….

Book Synopsis:
A swashbuckling story of a girl and a boy, an evil magician, a merry band of pirates, and an unthinkable quest.

Twelve-year-old
Brine Seaborne is a girl with a past – if only she could remember what
it is. Found alone in a rowboat as a child, clutching a shard of the
rare starshell needed for spell-casting, she’s spent the past years
keeping house for an irritable magician and his obnoxious apprentice,
Peter.
……

Title: Voyage to Magical North
Author: Claire Fayers
Publisher: Square Face
 336 pages
Ages 8-12 years
Series: Accidental Pirates

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

What are you waiting for?  Get this book!   Not just for your middle schooler…but for yourself!
  Amazon.ca – The Voyage to Magical North

Amazon.com – The Voyage to Magical North (The Accidental Pirates)

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Books read in the Month of May

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 May…the time for spring flowers and rolling back on the schooling expectations, business in the outdoors planting gardens, going to for walks, and cleaning out rabbitries.   Not a time for a whole lot of reading, but still.. I DID!  YES!  I read some books!!!

Wow. Guilty Wives by James Patterson…
Wow… I have to admit, that the beginning of the book had me NOT wanting to read the book, so I read part of the ending which… was just enough to intrigue me to want to know how the bad guy did it.

Wow.. this was good read.  I was so glad I stuck it out.  The horror of French prisons though… NASTY.  Are they like that in real-life?   I don’t know, but I do know I don’t want to go to France and break the law and get stuck in jail there. 

The determination of Abbie, the main character, was impressive.  Her ability to focus and work on proving her innocence amazes me despite all the hardship she was put through.   Perseverance and commitment, being the type of person she needed to be for her children’s long term care.   It was such an interesting read…definitely a book for ADULTS!

Urban Wildlife Habitats was a neat read about how different animals have adapted to living with people in urban areas.

Everything from storks to monkeys, to sheep and lizards, to snails and kangeroos.   So many animals have learned to co-exist with people.  Throughout the book are a copious amount of pictures, and tons of information to help us co-exist with them and even help them.  

So tell me….would you want to see a moose in your take-out window?

We’ve learned about muskoxen and ostriches recently.

Fascinating critters.
Did you know that male ostrich lay on the eggs at night because their black feathers are the perfect camoflage. 

 Rip and Red and the Tournament of Champions.

Two boys learning and growing together… finding it’s hard … Red with his autism (high-functioning) and Rip with his Dad returning… hard things for boys to deal with.  But they manage to pull it together around the world of a basketball championship.

 Secrets and Sequences of the Secret Coders series.

You’ll find my review here.   

Using a graphic novel to teach some of the basics of coding. 

 Mission to Pluto is a book my son thoroughly enjoyed.  He used it to further his learning with his apologia studies.  

It’s part of the scientist series. And it is a really well done series.  if you have a chance to read some with your children (or even just for yourself do so.)  Elephants and Dolphins are the next on my hit list!

Books I am working through.

My mom-in-law asked me what I thought of this book and I said “this man writes my hubby preaches!”

I am so far loving this book and looking forward to digging into it all the more.  It’s not a quick fiction read, but a let’s grow a discipling people read.

Good book … My review is coming!

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©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/

Canada Book: Irish Chain

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 I almost didn’t do this book in my books on Canada series… but then thought I HAVE TO.  SERIOUSLY have to.

A book that the lad excitedly tells gramma about so that she has to read it and then stays up all night so that she can finish it… that’s a good book.  🙂

But seriously… if you don’t know about the explosion in the Halifax harbour you are missing a big part of Canadian history.   This story is about a family and how they lived before the explosion, and how they lived after the explosion.  It is fiction.

Tied throughout is the heartbreak of a girl dealing with dsylexia and being bullied.  That same girl who is loved fiercely by her large extended family.   

Woven throughout the story, is the Irish Chain,,, the stories woven in the pieces of a quilt made by their gramma who brought the family out of Ireland during the potato famine.

Their history is woven throughout the history of Halifax.

This is a poignant story, heart breaking in the truths it speaks.   The horror of the explosion and the confusion that followed.   The struggle of being thought of as stupid and having one’s self-esteem totally eroded.   The joy of a strong memory, of conviction of spirit, the determination to hold to a truth you know to be real despite the discouragement of others, and finally the coming to terms of who God is and how he acts.    Ms. Haworth-Attard has carefully wrought a story of life in early 1900’s in Canada.

The war in the background, hard working immigrants, prosperous landowners, women working, there is so much of Canada in this book that it is SO worth reading.

Mind though….you might find yourself staying up all night.  🙂

Where can you find it?   Now that’s a great question, cause seriously…you need to read this book, it was, at least in three members of the families opinion, a seriously good read.  🙂
Amazon.ca – Irish Chain

Amazon.com – Irish Chain

This post may contain affiliate links – using affiliate links from A Net in Time helps fuel this blog and our homeschool – thank you!

©2006-2017 A Net In Time. All rights reserved. All text, photographs, artwork, and other content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written consent of the author. A Net In Time/