Back to blogging

Hello dear blog, long time no see! Instead of trying to capture the last year that's flown by "unblogged," I'm going to pick up right here with the present. Tuesday, September 12th finds us living happily in Apex, NC, loving our church family at Sovereign Grace, homeschooling a second grader and kindergartener with a very active toddler underfoot and looking forward to the arrival of our sweet surprise baby #4-a girl!

Look at these handsome young gentlemen on their first day of school! This year we are excited to travel down a new road in our homeschooling journey and have joined a local chapter of "Classical Conversations." If you're not familiar with the methodology behind Classical, Christian education, I encourage you to click here to learn more. I mention this because it will no doubt color a big part of our at home studies and I hope to blog lots of fun CC resources in the future. Every Monday we attend our CC co-op and the boys have loved it so far! 

 

 

 First day in "Foundations."

Asher is quickly approaching the trying/terrible/tenacious/terrific twos(you pick) and is too stinking cute for his big boy pants. Just this weekend he transitioned out of our 8yr old beloved crib and into his own toddler bed. I'm happy to report that despite a few nap time gliches, so far so good. He adores his brothers, his special fox blanket, and all things musical. Interestingly, while he continues to grow into Evan's twin by appearance(the side by side pictures could be featured in "The Twilight Zone"), his personality is very much like Bennett's. For one thing, he was made for the shade and loves to be outside. While he goes by many nicknames(a record number really) his current is "cookie" because he a little cookie monster and has quite the sweet tooth-I must admit he comes by it honestly! Otherwise his favorite foods include strawberries, Chic-Fil-A, and playdough. :-)

As I mentioned earlier, we moved! And hit the jackpot of family friendly neighborhoods. There are so many kiddos on our cul-de-sac that my big boys spend most of their time outside riding bikes, scooting scooters, jumping on our trampolines and having all sorts of wild adventures with friends. All I need now is an upright dinner bell or megaphone to call them in every afternoon(and a blindfold for when I see them swinging on trees by sheets and bungee cords). You really can't put a high enough value on that!

In other current news, we are almost 30 weeks along with baby girl!!! I've had a great pregnancy so far and though those annoying pregnancy aches and pains have certainly kicked in, I can't complain! After three boys we were over the moon excited to welcome a dash(or more like tsunami sized splash) of pink into our home. No doubt she will be a treasure to her adoring brothers. I'm so thankful for this gift of new life and very much looking to forward to not being the only girl in the house anymore!

Godwilling I will not completely fall off the blogging wagon again and will be back soon with a quick look back on our whirlwind summer. Like when we took this trip to the beach...

and this one...till next time! :-)

The Caterpillar Chronicles

It all started with a cup of caterpillars. 

They arrived as tiny eggs, and over the course of about two weeks transformed before our eyes-at our table side even- into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies.

The process is really amazing to see up close and personal. Four out of the five eggs we received turned into butterflies. What happened to "Tiny," we will never know(of course, many a story has been told). On that note, we affectionately named them all. "Ronald" was by far the most popular in the group, and by the end of it all we were calling every caterpillar in that cup Ronald.

Day by day we observed mother nature in action, with little to no help from us. It's a small sort of miracle to see one thing completely change and become a whole new creation. 

These guys grew FAST! Basically, the cup comes with all the food they need to grow. And grow they do. It was so interesting to see these guys move and roll around up close!

Once they're ready, the wiggle on up to the top of the cup and hang in an "J" shape. I'm sure Bennett will always picture his "j's" like this. It's there that they form their chrysalides, and begin the metamorphosis into butterflies.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17

After the outer shell of each chrysalis had hardened, we(Chris) carefully transported the cocoons to the butterfly house. We furnished their new home with flowers and apple slices, and then waited. The kit we bought from Insect Lore also comes with a pipette to feed your butterflies. You can make homemade nectar easily enough with sugar and water, but we mostly let the butterflies dip their long proboscis' in left over banana slices.

It was very exciting to come downstairs every morning to see the progress with each passing day. Try as we might, we missed the magical moment they emerged from their chrysalides-I think they were waiting till our backs were turned! One by one the came out of their chrysalides as new butterflies. Their wings were paper thin, beautiful and full of wrinkles to start. We watched them grow in strength, size and even color over the next few days before we released them into the wild world outside. It was pretty amazing.

To watch them grow in each stage, both as butterflies and caterpillars, was so interesting to the littles AND the bigs in this house. I am not a buggy person by any bend or stretch of the word, and will admit I was full of the heebie jeebies when these crawly critters arrived on our doorstep. But when it was time to let this new creatures fly, even I was a little sad to see them go. I took a few videos below, it was a fun and special moment!
Butterfly release! from Rebecca Scott on Vimeo.
Letting the butterflies fly #2 from Rebecca Scott on Vimeo.

I remember reading somewhere that experiencing things hands on, outside of a textbook, moves information from  the left brain to the right. Or rather, from short term to long term memory. I'm so thankful for the flexibility that homeschooling offers us and the many opportunities we have to take learning outside of our textbooks or four walls. While you can't always make that happen, this one is a winner and an A+ learning experience. Alongside our fun family project, we also visited the butterfly observatory at the Durham Museum of Life and Science. Interestingly, Evan is still skittish in the big butterfly house(he comes by it honestly) but was very hands on and comfortable with our own butterflies. He took many pictures of them on top of our yellow cabinet, read to them, drew them, fed them, and was all around a very brave friend and protector while they underwent their transformation. As for Bennett, we are thankful the butterflies survived him hehe.

Every now and then we catch sight of a new "Ronald" around the neighborhood, and always wave a friendly hello to our fluttering friends.

Foreign Languages for Kids by Kids-a Review

Hola amigos! Over the past month we have had the opportunity to explore Spanish with Foreign Languages for Kids by Kids. This immersive and multi-sensory program was developed by homeschooling mom and lawyer Kit Strauss. Part of our homeschooling goals include raising global citizens with a wide awareness of the world we live in. Naturally, we were excited to take our first dive into the Spanish language with this award winning program. We received the Starter Set 1 to review, which includes:

• DVD with videos for levels 1-3
• Three parent-teacher guides 
• Flashcards and card games for levels 1-3
• Workbooks for levels 1-3
• Stickers for all 3 levels

The three levels mentioned above are Basketballs aren't for Breakfast, and The Little Magic House(parts 1 & 2). Each DVD is creatively presented as an in flight video to watch as you "travel" to a Spanish speaking country. What I really like about this curriculum is that the DVDs are actually entertaining and fun to watch. Both of my boys laughed several times throughout the videos-it's always nice to hear laughter and learning go hand in hand!
Something that I think that sets FLKBK apart from other foreign language curriculums is that it teaches by method of immersion. There is no "repeat after me" type of instruction, and you will not find translators or many subtitles in the videos. Instead, students naturally pick up the language as they see it spoken by other kids in a real life setting. This is much like the way they have learned their first language-simply by listening and watching. For example, there is a short "hide and seek" skit where the girl counts "Uno, dos, tres..." behind a tree. While this may present a bit of a learning curve up front, the video introduces it like riding a bike-it gets easier to understand over time. As an English speaking parent teacher, I would also note that it's incredible helpful to have that DVD component to hear how the words are correctly pronounced. 

My boys also really enjoyed the stickers and workbooks. The workbooks are engaging, colorful and sturdy. Also, the flash cards are a great addition but I will admit the "Go Squish" card game was difficult for my littles to understand. While I would'nt neccesarily recommend that game for younger kids, you can still have plenty of learning fun with the flash cards and even adapt the game as you like. 

The parent teacher guides included in this starter set are extremely helpful. Not only do they lay out detailed lesson plans, but also suggest supplemental hands on activities to reinforce the material taught, leaving plenty of room for flexibility. 
For more information, you can connect with Foreign Languages for Kids by Kids on Facebook:

And, click on the link below for more reviews from the Schoolhouse Crew.

CTCMath Homeschool Membership, a Review

Since Math is one of Evan's favorite subjects, we were both excited for the opportunity to review the Homeschool Membership from CTCMath. CTCMath is an online math curriculum offering over 1400 tutorials to learn from. This program provides a full math curriculum for grades k-8 and is designed to be an additional supplement for high school. The material, created by seasoned math teacher Patrick Murray, is solid and very clearly communicated; this is the type of math I wish I had learned from myself!  Based on the assessments offered, we primarily worked in first grade math with the exception of a few topics I wanted to explore further. 

The short 4-9 minute video tutorials have been an especially helpful teaching tool for us. Because Evan really benefits from that type of multi-sensory learning, CTCMath is right up our ally. The neat thing about video tutorials is that you can pause, rewind, or watch them as many times as you need to fully understand the topic. If only all of our math teachers could be so patient! 


Here is a screenshot of a first grade level lesson on place value. In the picture below you see the video is selected to play first. 

After watching the video, you click over to the interactive "Questions" tab to gauge your understanding of the topic. You can also print worksheets there for further practice. I think it's important to have that pen to paper relationship with math so being able to print out worksheets to go along with the lessons is a great feature.

As you can see below there is quite a comprehensive scope of lessons covered. Pictured below is an outline of the first grade curriculum. 

As the parent teacher, regular reports are provided for you as your student progresses through the material. You can also set up their individual tasks so that when your student logs in, he/she can go to their assigned tasks for the day.  For the combination of its video tutorials, interactive questions and printable worksheets, I believe CTCMath to be a superior program and would readily recommend it to friends looking for an online math curriculum. You can purchase as subscription to CTCMath online for either 1 or 2 or more students with payment plans monthly, every six months or for one year. The one year access plan offers the best value. Also, membership allows access to all grades and levels so your student can have the freedom to explore topics either above or below their specific grade level.  For more reviews on this product, be sure to check out the Schoolhouse Review Crew post below... And, check out CTCMath on social media at the following links...
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ctcmath?ref=hl Twitter: https://twitter.com/ctcmathofficial Periscope: https://www.periscope.tv/ctcmathofficial Pinterest: https://au.pinterest.com/ctcmath/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWn5e6974bpIEAe46VnovZw
Maths Online (Australia Only) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mathsonline.com.au Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MathsOnlineAU

First day reflections

July 11th marked the first day of our second year homeschooling. Our feet are wet and we're excited dive into a new year together. In addition to our new first grader, we added pre-K with Bennett bear and a class pet-baby Asher! Haha, just kidding! Though, spoiler alert, I do see a live animal or two in our classroom this year. ;-)

With one year under my belt, I'm learning to embrace the sometimes messy reality that is staying at home and homeschooling with three little boys. This year July finds us in a new city, with a new school room set up and a newly mobile baby to boot. If I was to choose a theme for the year ahead, the word "flexibility" wins the golden ticket. With that in mind, our first day was a great one!

For starters, I cut myself some slack in the breakfast department. You see, expectations are a killer and the first day of school is heavy with them. I myself have spent an embarrassing amount of time pinteresting the perfect "first day of school" printables for those all important first day photos. Back to bacon, I knew the morning would be jam packed and I was in no hurry to add dirty dishes to it. Instead, I served myself a spoonful of grace and set us up for success with breakfast bars and bananas. No smiling pancakes on good plates till Saturday haha! No worries, we are making new traditions here-like ice cream for dinner! How's that for a sweet incentive?!

Here's Bennett learning about the happy letter "C." C is happy because he's a cookie and someone took a-CRUNCH- bite out of him!

As I said earlier, the morning was a great one. Asher took a rare but true long nap and the excitement over new books made for a very productive school time. After our work was finished and cleared from the table, we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon at the gym and pool before heading to Coldstone for our cotton candy cones. When you school year round during the southern summertime, the pool makes for the best recess!

Fast forward...

It's been two weeks since our first day, but we've really only logged a week in the books since we spent the greater part of last week at the beach with family. Almost everyday I find myself ironing out small wrinkles here and there as we find a new groove together, but I'm pretty sure that's par for the course. We are loving this new place of ours and have found an abundant amount of amazing educational resources in our area. Moreover I am so excited to dive into our local church and community homeschool groups. As we are settling into a new church home I have already been so encouraged by new friends and homeschool mamas, and am looking forward to the year ahead. Cheers to a new school year, to getting it done and having fun!

It's the first day of school!

 Sweet Lord Jesus, bless this mess!!!

MaxScholar-A Review

MaxScholar is an excellent online resource that offers a variety of activities for students to improve reading skills with their MaxScholar Reading Intervention Program. For this review we were generously given a one year license to the MaxGuru suite, which includes MaxPhonics, MaxReading, MaxWords, MaxMusic, MaxBios and MaxPlaces.

The MaxScholar Reading Intervention Program is based on the Orton-Gillingham method and geared toward children who struggle with learning disabilities like dyslexia, ADHD, and processing problems OR who are more simply struggling to read. Its engaging, multi sensory approach aims to access all pathways of the brain to establish permanent knowledge. MaxScholar has a TON to offer for students in kindergarten all the way thru high school; for my younger crowd MaxPhonics was the perfect place to start!   How we used it: Evan is six years old and ripe for reading! I am so proud of the hard earned progress he has made over this last year, and was excited to bring MaxScholar into the mix. We spent the most time with MaxPhonics, MaxReading and MaxWords to iron out and reinforce those foundational phonics, reading comprehension and early spelling concepts.  MaxPhonics was our favorite! Evan made great use of the blends and digraph activities while Bennett, my preschooler, was wholly engaged with the beginning letter sounds.  Here are some screenshots of the letter "f" activities. 

Each letter has a visual, tactile, and an auditory component. In the tactile activity students can practice their handwriting by either drawing the letter with their finger on a touchscreen or using a mouse to trace it out.

Associating letter sounds with a picture-as in using the image of a fox for the letter f- is a great left brain/right brain exercise for the struggling reader who may have a real learning disability like dyslexia.

Matching games are always a hit in this house and this one is no different. Here you match the letter sound to the picture that begins with that letter. As an aside, MaxScholar is touchscreen friendly and in fact, I found it easier for my littles to navigate on their tablets.

I introduced a more formal spelling curriculum earlier this year with Evan and MaxWords has become my go to reference for spelling rules! As you can see below, students can review spelling rules and are given a handy list of examples with an auditory component as well. In MaxWords you will also learn about prefixes, suffixes, and Latin root words.

Though we mostly stuck to the early learning activities, I noticed a great deal of reading comprehension exercises across almost every component we explored. MaxBios for example offers great little(yet comprehensive) biographical sketches on a vast variety of people from famous musicians and inventors to influential women. Though Evan is not at the point where he could fluently read and highlight these pages on his own, I can easily read them aloud to him and then test his understanding with the corresponding comprehension questions. 

My only small dislike of the program overall would be it's music and games selection. I wasn't a fan of many of the artists chosen and didn't think their lyrics offered any real depth of learning-however, it's certainly no deal breaker when considering the overall worth of this program. The phonics program is tried and true and that's just the beginning. You can purchase a 12 month digital license to MaxGuru for $279, or buy the K-2 pack including phonics levels 1-4 and reading levels k-2 for $99.

Click on the banner below to see what the fellow crew thought of learning with MaxScholar.

And, be sure to check out MaxScholar on social media at the following links:

    Facebook: MaxScholar, https://www.facebook.com/MaxScholarLLC/?fref=nf

    Twitter: @MaxScholarLLC, https://twitter.com/MaxScholarLLC

    Pintrest: MaxScholar LLC, https://www.pinterest.com/MaxScholarLLC/

    Google+: MaxScholar, https://plus.google.com/+Maxscholar/posts

    LinkedIn: MaxScholar, https://www.linkedin.com/company/2884620

    YouTube: MaxScholar LLC, https://www.youtube.com/user/MaxScholarLLC

Complete Home Learning Suite with Essential Skills Advantage-A Review

Over the past month Evan and I have been enjoying the Complete Home Learning Suite by Essential Skills Advantage. We received a one year, online subscription to ESA for up to two students.This online resource has been an excellent supplement to our regular curriculum and given us a fun outlet for both practicing what we've learned already and introducing new concepts. The Complete Home Learning Suite offers access to various subjects including reading, spelling, math, geography and science for children in kindergarten thru sixth grade.

Lessons(there are over 14,000 of them!) are self paced, colorful and engaging. For younger children, parents will appreciate that they are shorter and many are dictated or have an audio feature if your student isn't yet reading on his own. Overall the program is very user friendly and easy to navigate.  How we used it: I found the program to be most useful as a tool to practice those early math and reading skills. The interactive online platform makes refreshing those addition and subtraction facts fun, almost like a new and improved flash card. Tried and true, it's six year old approved! ESA is easily accessed on mobile devices, and has been a nice addition to our library of educational activities on the boys' kindle fires. Since everything is online it's completely portable and a great way to do school on the road or in the waiting room. I have really enjoyed incorporating online educational resources into our homeschool because they are easy to access from just about anywhere, and save space on the bookshelf and weight in the backpack.  Another nice feature of The Complete Learning Suite is the  "marks manager" tool. It allows teachers and parents to be able to check detailed progress in each subject area and print out reports for record keeping or certificates just for fun. My only complaint about the product would be that the scores given at the end of each lesson were inconsistent and did not always accurately reflect the students work. For example, Evan could miss 7 out of 10 questions in a math lesson and still receive 100%. Again, this did not happen every time but was noticeable on more than one occasion.  Product Details: This is a digital product that you can purchase as low as $7.99 per month, or buy as a package deal for 6 or 12 months with the option of adding more students. Here's a more detailed snapshot of the variety of subjects covered in The Complete Learning Suite.

Click on the banner below to see what the fellow crew thought of learning with ESA!

And, be sure to check out ESA on social media at the following links: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skillsadvantage/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SkillsAdvantage @SkillsAdvantage
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SkillsAdvantage
Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/skillsadvantage
Blog: http://buyesa.com/blog/

Science Shepherd-A Review

I could not have asked for a better springboard to teaching science than the Introductory Science curriculum from Science Shepherd. This is the first formal science curriculum that we've incoportated into our Kindergarten/1st grade classroom outside of unit studies and dare I say, we found a winner! Truly truly, I am so excited to share this review with you!!!

The Introductory Science program, for kids ages 6-11, covers a wide breadth of topics including meteorology, astronomy, oceanography and more over 35 weeks of lessons. Each video lesson is up to 5 minutes long, and all are accessible online for 12 months with this selection. The program is self paced but nicely lends itself to daily lessons.

Alongside the video course, you can purchase corresponding workbooks to reinforce the lessons taught. We received a copy of Workbook A(with an answer guide), which is intended for ages 6-8. The Level B workbook contains the same material but with some added content and is geared towards ages 9-11. Evan loves his workbook! On average there are usually two workbook pages per lesson, one page with questions about the material and the other with a fun activity like a word search or puzzle. The questions are given as short answer, multiple choice or "circle the answer" and are great for practicing simple comprehension with your early elementary student. There are samples of each workbook pages available online.

What I love about this product: The format!!! Each video lesson is less that five minutes long, and the corresponding workbook pages are equally as non-intimidating-with no compromise to the content! This is so age appropriate for my 6 year old-it's an all around win! The material itself is thorough and engaging and it's format makes it so approachable for little ones. 

Here is a screenshot of one of the online video lessons

I was worried this program would be above Evan's level since he is at the very beginning of the age range, but I have been so pleasantly surprised! He loves doing his science work! The video interface is a win win and with the occasional dictation from mom, he has become almost independent over his workbook pages. This is not to say that the program itself is super simple since it has worked so well for my 6 year old, because as a 30 year old myself I've learned alongside him! I am so so glad we discovered Science Shepherd early on and will definitely consider their other products as we grow. 
It's no surprise that Evan especially loves the additional experiments included in the workbook. I love that they are equally addressed in the video tutorials. In the past I admit I've second guessed myself while conducting even very elementary level science experiments, often having to refer to google for extra help and pictures where I may have gone wrong or missed a step. Seeing the experiment firsthand, and demonstrated by these smart young ladies below, is so helpful. So far we have done every optional activity and have enjoyed them all! As a plus, most materials needed for the science experiments throughout the book can easily be found around your house. You can find a list of the video activities and supplies needed here. 

Product Details:

• The Introductory Science video course is $35.
• The Workbook Level A is $12.
• The Workbook Level B is $15.
• Answer keys are $3. 

I highly recommend Introductory Science as an early elementary science course as it is just that-an excellent and solid first foundation to the world of science. Click on the banner below to see what the fellow crew thought!

And, be sure to check out Science Shepherd on social media at the following links:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ScienceShepherd/
Twitter -  https://twitter.com/scienceshepherd
Pinterest - ​ https://www.pinterest.com/scienceshepherd