Review

Review and Giveaway for Raincoast Books

February 20, 2019 By Annette1 14 Comments

Oh oh oh!!! I have a great review and giveaway for you today. Let’s welcome in spring!!!! Two lovely books and a stamp kit! Do note that this giveaway is only for my fellow Canadians 18+.

Anyways, let me tell you all about the Animals of the Savanna, In the Forest, and Stamp Bugs.

Animals of the Savanna

The first of the two nature sticker activity books, Animals of the Savannah is a romp through the Savannah of Africa. You get to meet lions, leopards, zebras, baboons, secretary birds, boa constrictors and more.

Each page has a variety of activities to go with it. Sometimes it involves attaching stickers. These stickers are found on a two-page spread in the middle of the book. Other times the reader is invited to colour, to finish an image, or change something about an animal.

Each page introduces you to small details about the animals found on the page. “Baby baboons are covered with black hair. They spend the first months of their lives clinging to their mothers. They play with each other and have fun pulling each other’s tails. The whole troop spends the night in the same tree.”.

Each of the activities has a circle in front which indicates the type of activity. A pencil crayon for colouring, and a bird for other actions.

In the Forest

Another in the My Nature Activity Book Series is In the Forest. In the Forest is laid out just the same as Animals of the Savanna. Sticker page in the middle with options to colour, draw, sticker and otherwise interact with different forest elements.

Readers are given the option to test their knowledge at the close of the book.

In the Forest doesn’t just focus on one type of forest, but features animals from forests around the world. This means you’ll find ponds with frogs, pandas in a bamboo forest, and strawberries in the undergrowth.

Stamp Bugs

The perfect compliment to this sticker activity books is stamp bugs. 25 stamps along with 2 stamp pads, allows children to create a multitude of bugs to complement their studies of forests and the Savanna.

This kit comes complete with an instructional pad to kickstart ideas about bugs to create. The cleanly cut stamps feature bodies, legs, and antenna giving the creator a good variety of bugs to imagine.

These three items are geared to ages 5-8 or so. They would make a lovely addition to any sort of nature study, or simply just to amuse children who enjoy nature, or stickers or colouring. The sticker activity books are made on a sturdy paper that will hold colour and stickers well. Once the stickers are placed on, they won’t come off again.

Stamp Bugs: 25 stamps and two ink pads
Barbara Dziadosz
Princeton Architectural Press

Animals of the Savanna – My nature sticker activity book
In the forest – my nature sticker activity book
Olivia Cosneau
Princeton Architectural Press

Reviewed for Raincoast Books

Now for the giveaway. It’s open to Canadian residents only, 18+. Thanks.

Win great product to delight and educate the young ones in your lives.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Introduction to Robotics and Automation

February 15, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

My son has an enjoyment of robotics, he’s taken a few courses over the years. Last year he was fortunate enough to be able to an engineering course at a local business and was able to build his own robot. This was almost the best thing ever. 🙂

This year I was looking at course from Innovator’s Tribe and offered to do a review in exchange for the course. Mr. K agreed! WOOT WOOT! I want to tell you how much my lad has been enjoying this course.

The course: Introduction to Robotics and Automation.

Course Description

This exciting course introduces students to the modern world of robotics. Using interactive lessons and exciting hands-on activities, students will learn how to design, build and program a virtual robot.

30 hours of learning material right at your fingertips. Easy login, Sidebar for lesson placement, units of study and encouragement to try something more.

What you Get

A self-paced, self-contained, completely on-line (except for hands-on projects) that your student can do completely on their own.

Occasionally you will be directed to a video outside of the course. Videos such as the one below. One of the things I like about these referrals is that they open the door to viewing other videos on robotics. My son would often tell me the things he was learning about.

The layout of each lesson is really obvious. This is on the things my son really liked. He knew what kind of lesson it was going to be just by checking the sidebar. Lesson variations are: Multimedia, quiz, text, and video. Activities are clearly labeled.

The page is laid out in such a way that you can see where you are in the lesson by checking the sidebar, while your lesson plays on the mainscreen.

Since this is a self-paced course, my son wanted to do all the book learning first. This isn’t unusual for him. He likes to learn the material well before trying it out in real life. At this point he has completed all the “Book-learning” that has been created (there is more to come).

Over the next three or four weeks he hopes to complete the hammer-bot and water clock. He is hoping we can find some Arduino to work with. He says it is really interesting and he wants to do it all himself. So I have a project to complete.. FIND SOME!

Our Thoughts

From my son: I found the course fun. It was enjoyable. I learned names for robotic components which I really liked. Knowing this kind of information is great. I would happily take another Mr. K class because he is good at explaining things and making them interesting. How the lessons are done with the different slides is good. And how they have videos in the slides. The web-page isn’t complicated, it’s easy to use.

From Me: When they say this is a self-directed course, it’s exactly that. My son would say “I’m doing innovators!” And off he’d go. If I asked him what he learned about (sometimes 15 minutes later, sometimes an hour later) he’d tell me, sometimes prefaced with “I’m sorry, I got interested in learning so I was watching other videos”.

Do we recommend this course? Definitely. Just like the first course we took from them called Thinking Like An Engineer. Well taught courses that engage the learner in a variety of formats to work with all learning styles. Great teacher too!

Introduction to Robotics and Automation.
Innovator's Tribe.
Mr. Kroeplin (teacher)
Grades 5-9
On-line
Self-directed, robotics, automation,

Review: For The Temple

February 13, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

For The Temple is a story I have been listening to for the past three weeks. Heirloom Audio is the producer of this captivating and dramatic tale, telling the story of the first-century Jewish revolt from the perspective of a fictional young Jewish man, John of Gamala.

The Story

G.A. Henty writes a tale with John of Gamala at the centre of it. It takes place during the years of Roman occupation. Political infighting and lawlessness ruled the day. In the end, the destruction of the Temple.

John ends up in the middle of a losing battle between Rome, greedy political groups and bands of robbers from Palestine. He makes and loses friends along the way.

John, a fictional character, maintains his honour and integrity throughout this conflict, eventually becomes procurator.

What you Get

How do I break this down for you? I could tell you that you get 27 tracks, cut into manageable sound bites running 4-8 minutes. I could say that they tell the story in a logical manner that doesn’t jump around from past to present.

But how do I tell you an Heirloom Audio story differs from, for instance, an audible story? Frankly, I LOVE listening to audio books. Listening to a good story while I fold the laundry is one of my greatest pleasure in the course of a day.

Heirloom Audio is more than one or two people reading a story. It’s a whole cast of people, retelling a story. All the voices and dramatic action make it a compelling listen, you just want to know what is going to happen next. They have a well-rounded cast that presents their parts well.

This audio comes with an excellent study guide with is formed out three basic sections: Listening well, Thinking further, and Defining words. I have to admit, I looked them over, but I didn’t really use them. As I looked through I found some questions I thought were good.

“John says that the first duty of any Jew is to protect the temple. Why should that be?” and “Some people are opposed to violence in books, particularly in books meant for young people. What do you think of this? Is it wrong to portray war as it is? Does it need to be portrayed graphically? Why can’t the author just say “Many men died that day?”

I listened to the audio as an adult, the study guide is designed for parents who want help talking their younger children through the storyline and its lessons. It can also serve as series of written assignments for older students. Each lesson is meant to go with each track.

I have to tell you, this study guide was well put together and worth going through if you have your family listening with you. It will also help you delve into the story of this battle deeper.

My Thoughts

Though I enjoyed listening to the story, I was completely lost. I listened to it twice all the way through, and then bits and pieces just to see if I could figure out the entire story. I know there was storm and boat scene, and I know there was a terrific battle. But try as I might I couldn’t connect all the pieces. I don’t know why. I have listened to Heirloom Audio tracks before and not had a problem, I own a few of them as digital recordings. But with For the Temple something just wasn’t working for me..

I’ve been thinking about who would this audio drama be good for. ANYONE, except perhaps not sensitive littles. Mind.. I’ve never had one of those in my house, so I’m not sure. I didn’t find anything objectionable.

It’s an excellent way to learn history, to see how political infighting from the Jewish leadership harmed the Jews as they fought to save the temple. How Rome got annoyed with bands of rebels making things hard for them. There is so much history in this story.

I strongly urge you to go check out other reviews. 🙂

For the Temple
Heirloom Audio
Digital Download,
audio drama, audio theatre, audio theater, radio drama, radio theatre, radio theater, audio book, G.A. Henty, heirloom audio, Christian audio drama, Christian radio theatre, focus on the family radio theatre, homeschooling, Christian homeschooling, homeschooling curriculum

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeirloomAudio
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeirloomStories
Instagram: @HeirloomAudioOfficial

Top of the Pack Crew Reviews

November 27, 2018 By Annette1 6 Comments

Over the past year I have reviewed 18 products for the Homeschool Review Crew. I don’t review a whole lot for the crew (some have reviewed some 50 products!!!) but I live in Canada and only have one child. 🙂 I’ve also learned to be a bit picky. There are the odd products that I want but don’t really need so am happy enough to let others have first dibs at them. There are usually four or so that I REALLY WANT but can’t get because I don’t live stateside. It’s part of being part of a State side crew though eh? Here are my top of the pack, our blue ribbon winners!

Anyways, I just thought I would talk a bit about my son and I’s favourite reviews and link to others that we had an appreciation for.

My son’s top reviews

Drive through history. It wasn’t stale, Dave is interesting to listen to. It was interesting that he actually travelled to places so you could see real pictures of everything.

Code for teens: they put together well, I like how they formatted it together. I’ve learned a lot and I find it interesting to learn coding.

My Favourites

Drive through History. I liked this program because Dave is funny without being an idiot. He walks you through different places and gives small ancedotes about where you are as well as giving a good history lesson. He connects scripture and art into history seamlessly. The worksheets are just an added bonus. We still watch episodes weekly.

Home School in the Woods and also the game that we received. Why do I like them? It will make our study of world war 2 much easier. Less material to look up, built in hands on projects to keep a lad intrigued. YET not so formatted we can’t expand the learning as desired.

Contenders:

Silverdale Press: this is a high school level course that teaches rhetoric and the art of persuasive speech. We really liked how it was set up but the work load was a bit beyond what my lad was up for. We are using the reading speeches and talking about them as part of our World War Studies.

Nature Glo Math-Art: The way the Glo runs her course clicked with my lad. It was so much fun watching him dig in her math/art/science/history courses. The conversations we had about the things he was learning filled me with delight. If you have an ecletic learner I urge you to check out her e-science courses.

Picta-Dicta. My son is actually annoyed with me that I keep forgetting to do this flashcard Latin learning app. He faithfullly works on it and is making great progress. I can see getting another in the series for him to follow up with.

CursiveLogic. This is a handwriting course that my son took a firm liking to. He has plans to follow up with how to do capital letters once our lives stop being quite so busy. He’s worked at them off and on but wants to gain more confidence in writing them. He very much likes how they do this course.

Books of the Bible. Laid out in a straight-forward manner, each book of the bible is presented in a clear format. Verses and stories for each book of the bible.

I urge you to check out what reviews were favourites for other members of the crew. We each have our own and for our own reasons. Who knows, you might find your next favourite resource waiting for you. 🙂 See the other top posts here.

Cooler Kitchen Soup Ladle

October 11, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

OH! It’s taken me a while to write up this review but I needed to really test this ladle before I recommended it to you. For the past two weeks this is the FIRST ladle that my lad reaches for when he scoops up soups or stews. It’s rather neat to see especially since, over the years I’ve used a lot of ladles and, when this one arrived as a review I thought…hmm.. seems like a basic spoon.

What did I get? Silicone & Stainless Steel Black 4 Ounce Soup Ladle w/CoolGrip Handle & Flexedge Silicone. It’s a lovely soup.

But oh.. the handle

It feels NICE in the hand! That smooth stainless steel, rounded smoothly to fit into my hand, ever so comfortable. LIKE REALLY! It is a step above and beyond my other ladles. AND it stays cool! How wonderful is that eh? To be able to stick in in the pot and leave it without having to use a spoon plate. Goes a long way to keeping my stove top clean (imagine what it would do for yours!)

The Scoop!

Cooler kitchen has put together a lovely spoon, the scoop portion is covered with a food-grade black silicone that is flexible. This enables you to get the last scoop of goodness out of your stew and soup pans without having to tip them out. 🙂 The silicone is good even for your hottest dishes, guaranteed to 450 degrees.

The 13 inch handle makes it nice for my large pots as well. It is able to reach well into the deepest pot I have.

Now if I were the kind of person that hung up everything, the handy hook on the end would make that incredibly easy… Hold on.. I AM that kind of person. BUT I have chosen not to hang this ladle since that would just majorly confuse my lad. Why would I put such a nice spoon in a odd ball place. Leave it with the rest of our ladles so he can grab it up easily!

See how nicely it scoops?

Silicone & Stainless Steel Black 4 Ounce Soup Ladle w/CoolGrip Handle & Flexedge Silicone

Cooler Kitchen
13 inch handle
Flexedge silicone covering over the scoop
An excellent ladle for all your cooking needsSilicone & Stainless Steel Black 4 Ounce Soup Ladle w/CoolGrip Handle & Flexedge Silicone

Review: Teach Sunday School

October 3, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

For the past few weeks my son has been testing out a new bible knowledge program. He likes it! 🙂 That’s always a win you know? When you discover a program that works for how you think. Books of the Bible At-a-Glance from Teach Sunday School gives us an overview of each book of the bible. Simply laid out, clear and crisp one page glances at each bible book. Wonderful!

Who is Teach Sunday School?

Teach Sunday School is a company who wants to help parents and teachers have the tools they need to help themselves and their charges understand God’s word better. Bible-at-a-glance is designed to help individuals better understand the theme, purpose and main verses of each bible book. Teach Sunday School has a variety of other programs to help you understand the bible better. Their purpose? To help you teach the bible with joy!

There are things like:

– Print and go lesson plans which are complete curriculums for ages 4-12,
– Bible printables (like mazes, word search, crossword puzzles, and journal prompts for ages 5-18)
– Bible Games (like Jeopardy, Tic-Tac-Toe, Bingo, and Treasure Hunts)
– Seasonal items for Back-t0-school, holidays, and even Summer
– Bible Crafts for ages 4-18
– Christian Skits and Plays for pageants, plays, and puppet shows
– Christian Parenting material for teaching kids morals, defending their faith and so much more.

What do you get with Bible-at-a-glance?

As you can see, with these bible summary sheets, you have a clear bible book name followed by information that is laid out the same for every book of the bible.

Where you can find it, who wrote it and approximately when. You will then learn the famous stories and pivotal bible verses, complete with main ideas.

How did we use it?

I have to admit, it took us a little while to decide how to use Books of the Bible at a glance. This is the schedule my son and I came up with.

After I print each page off, we place it in a binder for ease of use and reference back. Having all the information on one sheet makes it very easy to use. Coming as a PDF means I can print off as many copies as I want if I were using for a Sunday School or adult learning class. Everything is right at my finger tips!

Before starting his copywork on Monday he would take the time to learn the bible book name and where it was located.

The first day he copied out the main verses, taking the time to read them over a few times and think about what they meant so that on Tuesday he was able to work on memorization. Some weeks were easy (like Genesis took him no time at all) but Leviticus he struggled with.

Below you’ll find his copywork for Exodus. He’s been practicing his cursive using these bible lessons.

On Wednesday’s we had a deal… if there were more than four stories all he needed to do was look up half of the stories and then tell me about the stories he found. Narration is a good skill to maintain you know, and doing it from bible lessons like these, all the better eh? 🙂

Thursday was pretty straight forward, learn the major points, be able to explain them. Expand upon them if you can.

Fridays were a review day where he pulled all the information together, being able to tell me everything he had learned.

My Thoughts:

Well laid out, I like it. I like how the information is succinct, easily seen, each page has the same layout, making it easy to teach or work through. My son could do it independently with just checking in once or twice with me.

Son’s thoughts:

I like how it is set up, I know what to expect. I like that it has bible verses for me to memorize and that I can learn all the basic facts about a book of the bible and I can do them over again if I forget something.

My Pastor Hubby’s thoughts:

They didn’t do a bad job. It’s definitely not laid out from a reformed viewpoint, but overall information presented is pretty decent.

Area of struggle

I disliked this being part of the Leviticus study. Setting people up to not want to read one of books of the bible doesn’t seem right in my eyes. My son commented: “Why would learning laws make people not want to read a bible book?”

Teach Sunday School
Books of the Bible At-a-Glance
Faith based, Bible, Summary Cards, Books of the Bible, Christian, Bible Lessons
Current price $9, normally $19!

I urge you to check out this very helpful resource. It’s an excellent way to help you and your students learn God’s word better in a seamless, easy manner.

75 members of the crew had a chance to look at Bible at a Glance,

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SundaySchoolLessons/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/biblefun/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachsundayschool/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SundaySchoolSample

Review: Picta Dicta Natural World

September 11, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Roman Roads Media proudly presents, Picta Dicta Natural World! It has been our absolute pleasure to review this classical Latin program over the past few weeks. Who would have thought learning Latin could be so much fun? Come on, let me tell you all about this flash card based online program.

Who is Roman Roads Media?

Roman Roads Media are people of faith, publishing classical Christian curriculum. They produce high quality product that is accessible, affordable, and flexible for the Christian homeschool community. If Picta Dicta is any indication, their materials are top-notch!

What is Picta Dicta?

An online, mobile if you wish it to be, program that teaches you Latin words. Picta Dicta Natural World focuses on words that you would find in nature. Cats, dogs, various other animals, plants, fruit, veggies and down the road… Arachnids (my son is looking forward to that lesson). Natural world has 256 chapters.

How is a chapter set up?

I’ve only completed the first six chapters to be honest… the lad is I think on 11. I’ll admit we’ve repeated lessons a few times. Chapter one presented an animal with a description with it. Pay attention to the description you will be tested on it! (ask me how I know!) 🙂 You are given the Latin and American English spelling, what it is grammatically, and it’s importance in Roman society.

Subsequent chapters increase the difficulty. All words are introduced and then mild quizzing starts. Can you pick the right word from a list. Can you match English word to Latin? and so forth. Plenty of pictures are included to help. Correction (with correct answer) is just a thumbs up away. The repetition is the key part. The word is always pronounced, sometimes by pressing on the Latin, and sometimes it comes automatically.

Each new chapter clearly spelled out the expectations for that chapter. You will also note that the topic and lesson grouping is clearly delineated at the top of every page. The percent sign I THINK shows how far you are into each lesson. (near as I can figure anyways).

How did we use it?

Originally we started on the laptops. It didn’t take us long though, to move over to the tablets. In the heat, having a tablet in your lap is WAY cooler than having a laptop and WAY more transportable to the great outdoors too! 🙂 We both chose to just leave the tab open in our tablets, making it really easy to log-in and continue our studies. I have to admit, my son is WAY more diligent about doing it than I do. I keep forgetting! The lad though, has his mom to remind him though I never get argument from him about it. YAY!!! That’s a win, you know?

Anyways, each lesson takes no more than 15 minutes to do. I have been slowly working through chapter 1 which has six subsections. The lad is well into chapter two. There are, I believe, 256 chapters in all, so we’ll have a good time yet going through each of them. You could easily go through several chapters a week, but my requirement is three sessions per week, and he can repeat lessons if he wants to. Honestly… I find MYSELF repeating lessons since my old brain just doesn’t remember the Latin as easily. 🙂 But LOOK! I’ve managed to get three stars on two of my lessons!!!!

My son is doing better. I briefly saw his screen the other day and he has some five stars. Kinda goes to figure why he helps me so easily! 🙂

Please note: the technical difficulties I was having was due to not having the tablet on a secure surface, normally the button works really easily. But filming and doing a lesson at the same time didn’t work as well as I would have liked. But don’t you just love my son piping up in the background helping me along? I JUST LOVE IT (well as a teacher, as a student it was a touch bit annoying). 🙂

I tried quite a few times to get a video of my lad working on it, but that was simply an exercise in frustration. The camera had a hard time with not focusing properly, automatically focusing in and out at weird intervals. I am simply not that good of a photographer to problem solve the issue either.

One of the things I appreciate about this mobile Latin course is how much repetition there is and how they try to help you learn the material. For instance, the lesson I was doing tonight was having me spell the Latin. I made some errors, but they would then give me the option of choosing the right word from a list. Then it would repeat the word I missed later on in the review. Giving me three chances all told to get the right word and learn the proper spelling. I messed up asinus more than once! 🙂

Suggestion For Improvement:

My son mentioned that with some of the programs he uses that autocorrect is turned off, he has to spell it correctly without any help at all. He would like this program to do the same. Otherwise “it’s cheating”. 🙂

Small annoyance. There is no such thing as a male cow. Call it a bull or a male cattle beast…..NOT a male cow. PLEASE…for all the farmers out there…change the terminology! 🙂

My Thoughts:

It made me laugh. I was working on my picta dicta (I’m intentionally a couple days behind my son) and they’d say a word and from across the room he’d say “that’s a chicken”, or “that’s a goat”, and so on and so forth. It was a tad bit frustrating but he was having so much fun going faster than me and I let him do it. 🙂 His dad after a while though told him to quit it otherwise how is mom ever going to learn all these words. And then he (dad) stated “lupus” “cervus” GAH!!!!! These guys! 🙂

Picta Dicta Natural World
Roman Roads Media
Elementary age and up
Latin, online, Classical education, classical curriculum, Picta Dicta
Subscription: 14 months, pricing here.

75 Reviewers, click below to visit them. We reviewed

Social Media Links:

Facebook: @romanroadsmedia
Instagram: @romanroadsmedia
YouTube: @romanroadsmedia
Pinterest: @romanroadsmedia

Review

Review and Giveaway for Raincoast Books

Animals of the Savanna

In the Forest

Stamp Bugs

Review: Introduction to Robotics and Automation

Course Description

What you Get

Our Thoughts

Review: For The Temple

The Story

What you Get

My Thoughts

Top of the Pack Crew Reviews

My son’s top reviews

My Favourites

Contenders:

Cooler Kitchen Soup Ladle

But oh.. the handle

The Scoop!

Review: Teach Sunday School

Who is Teach Sunday School?

What do you get with Bible-at-a-glance?

How did we use it?

My Thoughts:

Son’s thoughts:

My Pastor Hubby’s thoughts:

Area of struggle

Review: Picta Dicta Natural World

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What is Picta Dicta?

How is a chapter set up?

How did we use it?

Suggestion For Improvement:

My Thoughts:

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Review

Animals of the Savanna

In the Forest

Stamp Bugs

Course Description

What you Get

Our Thoughts

The Story

What you Get

My Thoughts

My son’s top reviews

My Favourites

Contenders:

But oh.. the handle

The Scoop!

Who is Teach Sunday School?

What do you get with Bible-at-a-glance?

How did we use it?

My Thoughts:

Son’s thoughts:

My Pastor Hubby’s thoughts:

Area of struggle

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