Review

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/
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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
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Pinterest: @romanroadsmedia

Review: Branch Out World

August 13, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Paddington Bear…. doesn’t that bear just make you smile? Today, for my review, I have a unit study, from Branch Out World, that will help you dig deeper into the world of Paddington Bear and the places he has been. Fly with me from the deep, dark forests of Peru to the city lights of London. Along the way we’ll discover art, architecture, story-telling, language arts and more.

Who is Branch Out World?

Branch Out World is brain child of a homeschooling family located in the United Kingdom. Having a deep love of books, they wanted to share that love with others and to that end have created literature-based unit studies as well as lapbooks. They are geared to be used by the whole family. Their unit studies have a UK link, the lapbooks are more globally oriented.

What do you Get?

I received a 69 page PDF of Paddington Bear, a literature based unit study. It’s connected to the picture book of Paddington Bear.

You could, if you wanted get through all five days, it’s quite doable, or you could spread it over a longer period. 🙂 A weekly schedule is included, explaining the how and what of each day’s planned activities.

In this literature study you will find lapbook elements such as the one below, along with lists showing what supplies you’ll need every day.

A sample day (I’m choosing day three) has the following options to do with your students.

Learn about the artist
Picture study based on page 31 in the picture book
Learn about architectural features. We went to youtube and looked up specific examples online. Later we went for a walk and talked about the different features we learned about in the houses we saw. This was fun to do!
Principles of Design – overlapping… my son declined to do this project, but we did talk about how shadows would be different depending on where the fruit was placed and that helps show depth and placement.
Principles of Design – Emphasis. My son did this project using a huge spider in the foreground. I’ve a picture of it below.

As you can see, lots to do on any given day. Depending on your student this could take 1/2 an hour or a couple of hours. You could easily expand the projects or shorten them down to just the basics.

All the information and lapbook elements are found at the end of the study.

How We Used Paddington Bear:

I offered to get the book for my 13 year old to read and he turned me down flat. We had the option of watching the book being read, but mostly we just sat down and looked through the options for extended learning. He dove right into learning about the Spectacled bear… telling me all about what he learned about them, showing me one of the videos he watched, and showing me on our globe where they live.

He also grabbed onto the idea of learning some architectural terms, and even drew a picture showing emphasis. It was so interesting watching what elements he gravitated toward and knowing that this study would please so many students. You certainly don’t have to do everything in the lesson plan, you can pick what your students are most interested in (or what you deem most important) and learn about the world at large through a great picture book about Paddington. I have to admit to being a bit annoyed with myself, I had a couple of different elements put together and I can’t find them AND I failed to get a picture of them. I only have the picture of this one element….the drawing for emphasis.

My Thoughts:

I have to admit, my son is a bit beyond the Paddington years, so we picked up this review so that I could look at it for those that DO like Paddington. I was impressed. A good variety of activities and interesting topics to look at. Even my non-Paddington son found things of interest. If you are a lover of all things Paddington OR doing a larger unit study on bears and want to have a literary tie in, this book will provide a good way to do that. 🙂

I was browsing through the Picture Book Explorers series and saw the Mousehole Cat. That sounds like a fun book to read and then explore. What one would intrigue you?

Paddington Bear
Branch Out World
Picture Book Explorers series
69 pages, PDF, 5-10 years old.
lit-based unit studies, topic pack, home education resources, homeschool resources

65 members of the Homeschool Review Crew had a chance to utilize this study. Please read our reviews.

Social Media Links:

Facebook: @BranchOutWorld
Pinterest: @belzibow
Instagram: @belzibow
Twitter: @belzibow

Home School in the Woods – WW2

July 31, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My son wants to learn about the great wars in the coming year, therefore we were very excited to get a chance to review World War II from the selection of Time Travelers in U.S. History series offered by Home School in the Woods. For the past bit, between bouts of readying our guest room and learning other important keeping up a house skills, my son has been watching copious Youtube videos and diving deep into World War II. Come join us in our studies won’t you?

Who is Home School in the Woods?

The Pak family in essence. Taking a dislike of history and finding a way to teach it in a meaningful, delight-filled way. Their goal is to make history fun and interactive. I urge you to check out the entirety of their Time Travelers series, as well as newest release Ancient Rome which completes their Project Passport series.

What do you get?

A WHOLE lot of PDF’s! OH MY! I actually just ordered them printed off for me at my local Staples. For $35 printed, and delivered, I couldn’t beat the time saver, and personal printing costs to me in the middle of a busy season. Just look at the binder full of paper!

I found the materials come in two formats. If you unzip the folder you can open the entire file in HTML format which walks you through all the information start to finish. Or you can follow the same format I did and simply open all the files. Print off exactly what you need, put it all in a binder so it’s all set up and ready to go and then just work your way through it. You do not have to print off everything, some of the files are simply how to use, how to print off etc. I should mention that different colours of paper were called for in the printing instructions. I chose to ignore those colour changes as I didn’t need “Why this colour mom? Can’t we print it in this colour instead?” All white is simply easier in my household. 🙂

It is SO worth looking through the intro files, teacher keys etc. You’ll find a treasure trove of information. In fact one of the pages I really appreciated having was the additional resources page listed in the intro file. Books, movies, audios, music, and websites. Just a phenomenal well done list which will save me OODLES of time (as long as I can find the materials!) 🙂

When I put things in the binder I put the Lesson reading, followed by the project list, then the copy work (for most weeks), and the weekly project. I really appreciated that they build time into the unit study for catch up weeks. Some of the weekly projects are fairly large, so instead of putting them in a page protector I gave them their own files… like the timelime and a later couple of lessons.

This study follows the events from the Close of WW1 and beginnings of the Nazi party through to the end of the war and what happened afterwards. There are almost 100 figures to add to the ten-page timeline.

A Brief Look:

My son and I put together this brief overview for you.

How we used it:

We didn’t work through our WW2 study at a fast pace. Interspersed into our summer are several birthdays, I’ve had a few “under the weather days”, caring for a house that is our own now, and a major heat wave.. speed wasn’t in our purview. Taking our time working through lessons allowed us to more fully discuss ideas and watch videos that went along with the lessons. We’ve been inspired to take a few rabbit trails as well. I love rabbit trails don’t you? They are so much fun!

Taking time to set it all up properly in the beginning was the best thing I could have done. Having the binder ready to go actually made my boy grin. “Look Mom! Look how much I can learn about the war!” My son could work through it independently beyond checking in with me to see what his work load should be.

There are 25 lessons in all. We are looking forward to these upcoming lessons: Pearl Harbour, Hitler’s Fortress, VE day and Iwo Jima and the Atomic bomb. It is SO interesting listening to my boy. “I didn’t know that!” “Mom, did you know ________________”. The questions of “I don’t understand this part, can you help me?” “Can we look this up on youtube? I want to know more.” Those questions a homeschooling parent lives for eh?

I now know FAR MORE about Hitler, his youth, and how he rose to power from a variety of viewpoints then I ever thought I would. 🙂 And think…. come January I’ll get to learn it all over again. This Time Traveler unit study will become the spine of our World War II studies. We’ll diverge now again to pick up speeches and study them, to focus on Canadian men and women of the war, and to throw in a bit more geography, art projects and to follow rabbit trails.

My son’s opinion:

I like it. I am learning so much and I want to know even more. It makes me think of different things I can watch on youtube, and how everything connects. It’s good and I can do most of it on my own, sometimes mom helps though.

My thoughts:

My lad likes it, it’s well laid out. It provides ample opportunity for rabbit trails and discussion. It’s written at a language easily accessed by middle school and above students. It provides an easy spine for when we start our official studies of World War II in January. It will be very easy to adapt it, or perhaps adapt is not the right word, the way it is laid out it will be very easy to add additional materials or extend a lesson further. Together with The War to End all Wars Game, this history study will suit our needs nicely.

World War II
Time Travelers U.S. History Series
Home School in the Woods
PDF and HTML files received.

Also has a CD option. Pricing options here.
History, interactive, hands on
Hands-on history, history studies, best history studies, world history studies, american history studies, history timelines, history curriculum, notebooking pages

Some 90 of us on the crew took a look at a variety of products from Home School in the Woods. I invite you to go read the reviews. Perhaps the next one you come across will be just what you are looking for! I know this review is what we needed in our household.

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolinthewoods
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Review: Silverdale Press

June 19, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Rhetoric anyone? Do you know how to write a skillful, artistic and persuasive speech? Introducing Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers by Silverdale Press LLC. Learning to think persuasively with great speeches from the past. Come read our review.

You see that boy in my opening image? That would be my son. He’s just about to explain to me what he thinks of John F. Kennedy’s speech about the space program. This time of discussion has been a blessing in our household over the past few weeks. Silverdale Press’s, Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric program has been a boon to our household.

Who is Silverdale Press?

Silverdale Press was founded by Joshua and Jill Hummer. Their aim is to help middle and high school students cultivate knowledge and improve their skill sets. In that quest they aim to teach the ways of great leaders, writers, thinkers, and citizens.

How is the course set up?

I received four PDF’s from Silverdale Press

Rhetoric Answer Book
Rhetoric Lesson Book
Rhetoric Reader
Rhetoric Workbook

The Lesson Book sets out a schedule to follow weekly. There are 36 lessons divided into five sections. Each lesson is designed to be completed in one week. The five sections are introduction, invention, arrangement, style, and conclusion.

Each lesson in the workbook spelled out each of these steps specifically. The lessons include topics such as Stasis theory, emotional appeals, taking notes and developing a reading list. People studied vary from John Locke to John F. Kennedy to E.B. White.

Setting reading goals had my son doing something he normally doesn’t do (though I’ve been trying to encourage for the past two years) but having it as part of a lesson seems to have spurred him on. “Mom, I have a list of books that I want to read though they aren’t the type that Kennedy would read. I want to read “The Hobbit” “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings”. ” Did you catch that? NOT ones that Kennedy would read (see… he remembers!!!!!) AND he came up with a list of books that he wants to read for himself. I totally call that a win!

What books would you put on this list?

There are massive amounts of pages in these ebooks, The lesson book 235, workbook 202, answer book 65, and reader 111. You can choose to print it all off or print off only what you need to. At this point, I’ve been printing the speeches and the review questions only.

Each week finishes off with an essay challenge based on a major point of the speech reviewed. “Give me ______ or give me death”. “We Choose to ________” By the end of the 36 week study you’ll have received lessons in what real writers do, how to pitch your work and handling rejection. The aim is to produce better writers, and writers want to be published. 🙂

How did we use it?

This is a high-school level course and my son is a rising eight grade student. This meant I adapted the program to suit our needs.

The first lesson we broke over two weeks. Taking time to thoroughly discuss the speech we were given. We learned new words, figured out what rhetoric was, and just talked. We talked while feeding our rabbits, and going for a walk, this wasn’t a sit down and think about it lesson…this was an on-going discussion for us. Part of the requirements was to write an 500 word essay. I simply told my lad, write an essay based on the prompt. I’ll write one too and then we’ll talk about each others essays. Admittedly this was HARD for my lad. Coming up with something to write about (even with a prompt) and then figuring out how to write the essay… tough job. I walked him through how I was writing my essay and from that he was able to put something together but wasn’t happy with it and actually wanted to totally rewrite it.

Surgery happened. The essay got put to the wayside. I started to work my way through lesson two, discovering something wonderful. My lad didn’t want me to work through it on my own. He wanted to continue to chat with me. Since he wasn’t allowed (Doctor’s orders) to do school for two weeks I put it on hold. For the past two weeks we’ve been talking about Kennedy’s space speech. All this discussion and coming up with ideas. It’s been a hoot. Could you imagine a world with all self-driven cars?

I’m not requiring an essay from him at this point. We’ve decided that for now, we will just discuss the speeches, we’ll learn new terminology and do the lessons, but mom will write an essay, and the lad will critique and together we’ll make it the best we can. The lad will talk about an idea he has, and the arguments he would use to persuade his audience of its merits. For instance the lesson on Patrick Henry had him discussing with parents the merits of a good video game and how it doesn’t rot your brain.

Our plans are to work our way through each lesson (taking a couple of weeks to do so) over the next year or so.. and then when the lad is in grade 10 we’ll do the course again, this time with an essay requirement being part of it. When we do so, I will make full use of the answer key which provides correct answers and a rubric for the essays.

Our Recommendation:

This highschool level class has been a lot of fun to work through with my seventh grade student. We are far from done, but we are looking forward to our next lessons. My son wanted me to assure parents with grade seven and eight students to not be afraid to get this course. It’s alot of fun to talk about ideas, and to try to figure out ways to make an essay or speech more persuasive. Silverdale Press has produced a stellar program with their Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric class. It’s been very good to be about practicing the habits of great writers. As a parent I liked how they organized all their workbooks and setting out a good way to approach it. It helped me to break down a bit more for my lad. The side benefit is that I am learning as well. This is an excellent course for parents wanting to increase their skills as well.

Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers
Silverdale Press LLC

Ages 14-18
Homeschool High school, homeschool writing curriculum,
Digital, Ebook, PDF
Rhetoric, Persuasive writing, Speech

Homeschool Review Crew Reviews:

The crew reviewed two products from Silverdale Press

Persuasive Writing & Classical Rhetoric: Practicing the Habits of Great Writers – ages 14-18
White House Holidays Unit Studies – ages 5-18

Social Media Links:
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