A Net in Time

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Games

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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Canada: Discover Canada

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Today I have something a wee bit different for learning about Canada.   It’s a game!  A brain game none-the-less!  I picked this game up a while ago to use with my lad, just a fun grab a card, look at it and see what you remember and can learn about Canada.  

Let me introduce you to Discover Canada by Brainbox.   You can learn more about Brainbox and even play some games while visiting them right HERE.

You might be wondering, what is this game?  What makes it interesting?   It’s a game meant for one or two people (making it great for mom and son).   Take a timer that runs for 10 seconds and a card.  Try to memorize as many details as you can in that 10 seconds and then answer the questions on the reverse side of the card.   The most answers right wins!  In the meantime you are learning facts about Canada.

They have a variety of categories from animals, sports, provinces, fur trade, inventors, first nations and more. Pictures, maps, questions.. fun with learning, can’t really beat that can you know?

If ten seconds is too short for you or your family, extend it!  It’s a game, have fun with it.  

Discover Canada
Brainbox
Game, brain game

Where can you find it?

Amazon.ca: Discover Canada
Amazon.com: Discover Canada by Brainbox

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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

Review: Planet 316

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 Love the Lord?   Like to do puzzles?   Planet 316 has a Daily Bible Jigsaw puzzle that will challenge you and remind you of the truths of the Lord.   

I admittedly have tried out a few different puzzle apps on my tablet, and this one… what can I say, it’s quick and fun.  There are many aspects to daily bible jigsaw that I like.

What do you get?
A free app for making jigsaw puzzles that when completed have a bible verse show up with an option to share it with your facebook feed.  11 bonus puzzles which are harder than most puzzles, all but one of these bonus puzzles is free. Each puzzle comes with options to make it easier to complete like rotate, edges, sweep, magnet and guide.  

You get one free jigsaw puzzle daily with options, if you have the puzzle coins, to do more.

There are a number of achievement levels which enable you to win more puzzle coins. Some of these achievements are: playing five Monday games, completing puzzles by a certain time, playing 100 games and so on. 

I played the game on my android tablet.

The helps
Rotate -turns all the pieces into the correct orientation.
Guide: for two coins it will give you a peek at the completed puzzle
Sweep – puts all the pieces in the margins leaving the playing field open
Magnet: automatically joins two pieces together.
Edges – removes all piece from the playing field until you put all the edge pieces together.

What I liked:

  • Having a daily puzzle to do.   Every day a new puzzle and a small YAY when you finish it.   It’s enough to keep me coming back for more.
  • Scriptural encouragement.   Each picture, upon completion pops up with a bible verse to inspire for the day.
  • Options to share favourite puzzles easily to facebook.   I’ve had comments of “nice picture” given to me, sparking additional conversation.  Good that eh?
  • Challenges against friends.  Seriously… its fun to know that you can beat people that you know and shocking when occasionally they beat you!  🙂
  • Options to make the puzzle making easier: rotate, sweep, edges etc.
  • Puzzles can be completed usually in less than five minutes making them ideal to hand to a boy child and say “think you can make the ______”?  He loves the “make it easier” options AND if he can beat my time all the better!  🙂
  • The pictures are pretty, with excellent colour. Some I could guess what the image was almost right away and others I wasn’t sure what they were until half way completed.    
  • Excellent customer service.  If you have any questions or issues, they answer immediately and work with you to resolve the problem. 

What I would love to see:

  • More of the harder puzzles. They do have 11 bonus puzzles which I think are awesome!   Trying to do the one that was mostly white was a joy to work on!  And the one with many colours…ah.. I LOVE IT!  It’s good to have a challenge. Whilst the daily puzzles have a challenge of can you make a mystery puzzle and do it more quickly than friends.. I KNOW I can complete them generally under 2 1/2 minutes.  It’s nice to have a puzzle that makes you think a bit harder, I want more of them. 🙂  
  • As fun as the challenges against friends are… it’s hard to know if you are beating them OR if you are beating them using the helps.  I like beating the puzzle on my own, not using helps, and sometimes the allure of competition has me using the helps and… I rather not do that, I want to win on my own merits.  I wish the competition had some way to differentiate between those using helps and those not using helps.  … increase the challenge level a bit eh?  🙂

End result of my review:

I LIKE IT.  Seriously.  It’s a fun free app that inspires me to think beyond the YAY I finished a puzzle, and turns my heart toward God.  A good thing that. So go on, get it.  Be inspired, be challenged and HAVE FUN!

Vendor: Planet 316
Product: Daily Bible Jigsaw
Received: Game plus 500 Puzzle Coins bundle so I could try out all the features. A $39.99 value.
Price: Free, with a price for additional puzzle coins.

Here are the current options for playing Daily Jigsaw:

  To see what all 90 reviewers thought, click here or on the image below.

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Hashtags: #hsreviews #dailybiblejigsaw

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/

Today’s Homeschooling

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 The lad and I have been working through various safety issues.

We’ve done fire safety, chemical safety, kitchen safety, and something else.  Today we’re doing animal safety.  We talked about safety around dogs, cats, wild animals.   The lad asked about “poisonous spiders and Poisonous snakes”.   So we talked about the rattlesnake which is the only poisonous snake in Ontario and how to be safe around them.  We did a variety of puzzles, learned the words yes/no, and counted.

I’m also starting to go through our bible materials box and today we have “the golden rule”.
I printed out this copywork sheet.    And went through a variety of pictures and we talked about what you should do in a given situation.  Sharing, caring, helping, and such like.   We’ll pick a package at least once a week and work on it.  🙂

We did a language lesson from First language lessons.   We learned about fables, and took the opportunity to do some art at the same time. 🙂   Drawing pictures of lions and mice and answering questions about how the story went.   It was interesting how this story tied in with learning about the golden rule.

we took the time to look up in 123 Draw how to draw a lion.  It was decided that mommy would learn to draw a lion and the lad would draw out the story (see above) complete with a few embellishments. 🙂  The hunters of course had to figure out HOW to net the lion and it was fairly complicated but they managed it.

 

Time for fun with smarties. 🙂  these are a favourite chocolate confection.

 

This was followed by playing chess with smarties.

 

We did a number of things with smarties first though.  We learned about consumer packaging.  How they can’t put less in the box than they say.. we learned that our smartie box calls for 50 g but we had 55 g.  So we practiced doing less than and greater than signs, we counted out how many of each colour there was and did less than/greater than signs.  Then played checkers.  it was a good thing that we have enough of two colours to play it well.  The lad beat me.

count by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. that was the theme of the day in our numbers and counting book.


I did something different for our animal of the day.  I pulled out my temperate zone books and gave the lad a choice.  He chose deserts.  And of the animal pages in the book he was intrigued by the fringe-toed sand lizard.  We looked it up and found them to be quite an interesting little animal.  They can swim in sand like a fish does in water!  Complete with nostrils that seal and jaws that can clamp shut to keep the sand out.   Quite fascinating the creatures that God creates.

Well.. I was going to show you a foot, but apparently it’s a copyright violation to show it to you.  So I’d suggest you go check out this site and check it out for yourself.  🙂  They have these are special scales that help the lizard move in the sand.

We had a hoot playing checkers using goldfish crackers.
We play modified checkers in that we have no forced jump and we only jump once, even if we can jump two or three times.  This makes it easier for the lad to grasp for some reason.  Over time we’ll start playing by the rules, but for now this is easier, and yet harder.  🙂  I was the smiling goldfish, he was the no smile ones.

When we finished with our bookwork the lad asked if I could hook him up with some thinking computer games, and I said most certainly. Not sure yet where I’ll put him but I’ll find something for him to play online. Cheers! 🙂

We had fun getting trounced at Playing History.   We played  a battle in England between the Vikings and the English and well.. as is true to life, we got trounced. 🙂   and then he did some logic games over at CoolMath4Kids.

Today a good day

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Today was a good day.

Didn’t exactly go homeschooling wise as I thought it might.

On Wednesday mornings I have bible study so hubby dear usually gets the lad busy with book work. but this morning hubby’s brain was fried so that didn’t go over.

Over lunch therefore, we did our normal reading.

10 minute stories

He liked today’s story. I shortened it here and there as it was quite wordy and that NEVER goes over well with the lad. But it was a good story about a firebird, a grey wolf and a boy who had to learn how to listen well.

World History

We are into Roman history now. We are learning about gladiators.

I had gotten the lad onto reflexmath before I headed out to bible study. The lad enjoys this program.

So after I got back from my stuff I got the lad busy with Studyladder. We did math, music, and something else that right now I can’t remember.

This afternoon we played a game with dad. Catopoly
We had a lot of fun playing it. So much nicer playing games with a lad who is willing to follow the rules of the game.

oh..I’m trying to work home-making skills into our week… today it was cleaning the upstairs bathroom. I set the boy at the task of cleaning the bathtub. He did a decent job for a six year old doing a job for the first time. he did an EXCELLENT job of having a bath so he could clean his toys up really really well. 🙂

Then peter rabbit videos were the thing to watch, followed by supper and children’s club at the baptist church. They are learning the fruits of the spirit there. What I know most is how much the lad enjoys attending. 🙂

that worked well

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went to the Stratford library to do our schooling before heading off to swimming.

I think I shall do that more often. Getting out work done at the library means less distractions.

means I have to be better organized, but better organized, and having better schooling done over a shorter period of time sounds like an excellent idea to me. 🙂

We did art and science today at the library. A good thing that! We first did some book work though, then played art and language skills on a computer, and some science as well on the computer. Then we started doing our Christmas cards… excellent way to practice our spelling!

He has watched the rescuers a fair bit lately so the golden eagle and the boy riding the figure prominently. 🙂
building Christmas cards… stickers, drawing and writing. It’s all good.

Then off to lunch at boston pizza, and then over to the YMCA for swimming lessons.

the lad in the blue head band. 🙂

Then home again.

Played a game before bed (connect four) and played a construction game as well.

Tangents and more

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One of the things I enjoy about homeschooling is some of the interesting tangents one can take.

For instance this morning we added studying at least one or two animals every week. We don’t go indepth, we just read a bit, find a location of where the animal lives, it’s animal track if we can get and draw a picture of it and one fact that is interesting.

today we did caribou. We read about them in this book.

Then I searched for a nature study page we could use a base, and found this one I got as part of the teacher’s toolbox from the old schoolhouse.

I asked the lad to draw a picture of a caribou while I found a picture of where the caribou lives (up north) and caribou tracks.

He did that. and then it evolved as pictures in this house are apt to do. To “J is capturing the caribou” (he was tranquilizing them which he’s learned about from watching nature shows on TV.


From that evolved this story.
“The caribou are escaping from the zoo and a tree root grew really fast and there were eagles who escaped from the zoo. The angry birds came to help the bunny town Justin recapture all the animals that got out of the zoo. They are tranquilizing the eagle and the caribou.” I read what I recalled to the lad and he added the following “The zoo man ran after the guinea pigs and ben said don’t attack them, they are trying to help”.

This was a just a fun way to learn and think and talk out what is happening.

We also did some work out of this book.

Listening Skills for grades 2-3. This book was interesting because it had a dot-to-dot with all mixed up numbers and letters and I told the lad where to draw and what type of line to draw. At the end of it we were surprised to find a bunny on a swing. The book below is similar to the one we have but ours is an older version of it. 🙂


A fellow homeschooler over at Learning To Homeschool gave me this idea. To have a daily word to learn. I asked her how she came up with them and she said just words they come across as they read or talk. Since that’s too “iffy” for me I decided to use this

Children’s Illustrated Dictionary.

Today’s word was Aardvark.

I read another chapter out of First Language Lessons, Levels 1&2

We did our normal daily readings out of

10 minute stories

some of the stories in this book are quite good, others leave something to be desired. Today’s story left the lad confused.

World History

We are into Roman history now. It’s just fascinating reading tidbits about ancient history. Gives us a good framework for study in the future. 🙂

We repotted a couple of plants, the lad learned what it means that a plant is rootbound and that we have to help the plant by loosening up the roots.

We played a couple of games “pirates” – this is a board game we got at the local dollar store, it is a HUGE favourite of the lad and 9 times out of 10 he beats me handily. And bingo link which is a fun game that we win 50% of the time.

And then he worked on building a spider web on our stair way and helped dad play a computer game. Problem solving skills at work!