Creation Illustrated

Creation Illustrated magazine is a magazine with a fantastic purpose that has breathtaking illustrations.  It has left our jaws dropped open in wonder and our minds looking in unexpected directions. 

 For close to 20 years they've had recipes, photo contests, puzzles and wonderful views of God's creation.  Each magazine has been divided into three distinct parts: Living, Nature and Scripture.  All three sections are beautifully photographed, I loved going through each magazine and watching my children's eyes fill with amazement and wonder.  A lot of questions came up and we googled everything we could find, that wasn't covered in the magazine.

Our Purpose…is to share the wonders of God’s creation. By revealing fresh insights of His infinite wisdom, gentle touch, undeniable justice, redeeming love, and flawless design, pure truth shall bring renewed peace. Each part of this publication is offered as a reprieve from the daily rigor’s of life so that all can look to the future with unbridled gratitude and hope.

Creation Illustrated is published every quarter in the USA and the cover price is $4.99.  You can subscribe online for the following::

• 1 year    $ 19.95
• 2 Years  $ 37.95
• 3 Years  $ 53.95

Those who pay now with a credit card will save another $5.00 per year per subscription.  Canadian Residents  add $5.00 for 
postage, those living in other foreign countries add $10.

You can also request your own sample issue of Creation Illustrated before purchasing a subscription. 

Thanks for reading,

 

IXL

IXL is a computer based website that helps your students practice their current math skills and learn new skills in a fun, exciting and sometimes challenging environment online.  Both of my kids love to play video games, computer games, handheld games, board games so I guess you could say they just love to play games. Well, what kid doesn't?  I've noticed that the more games we play the easier it is for them to remember things so we try to make a game out of almost everything but sometimes they get bored with the games that I make up and sometimes I'm in a hurry and can't think up a new game.  That's where IXL came in really handy for our family!  I didn't actually have to come up with any new math games, I'd just let them play for 20 minutes or so a day and I saw dramatic improvement in their math skills plus they were also learning some new skills along the way! I've actually had some problems getting them to stop playing because they are having so much fun.

IXL starts in Pre-K and works all the way up to Algebra.  Geometry, Trigonometry, and other advanced topics are on their way!  IXL is currently being used in more than 150 countries around the world and in the USA the state standards are listed for each state.

IXL would be a great addition to any math curriculum that you are currently using because students practice their skills in many different ways and then are rewarded with virtual awards as they complete each challenge that arises. The virtual awards can also be printed if you would like to.

One of the things that I (the parent/teacher) liked was the Improvement Reports.  These reports track your child's progress and you can also set goals to help keep your student on track.

Membership benefits include:

• Complete coverage of math curriculum from Pre-K to algebra.
  Your kids won’t miss a thing!
• Unlimited questions in over 2,000 skills.
• Fun and colorful practice formats.
• Questions that adapt to your child’s ability, increasing in difficulty as they improve.
• Immediate feedback and question-specific explanations to solidify understanding of each concept.
• Audio for all Pre-K through first-grade skills.
• Weekly e-mail updates on your child’s progress.
• Informative, detailed reports pointing out successes and trouble spots.
• Awards and certificates for you and your children to print out as they
  reach important milestones.

A family plan includes up to 3 children and you can choose from a $9.95 monthly or $79.00 yearly plan. Additional children can be added to the account for an additional $2.00 per month or $20.00 per year. Special pricing is also available for schools.

Thanks for reading,

 

Christian Kids Explore Science-chemistry

Bright Ideas Press is a company that publishes curriculum that moms love.  They have promised to publish Christian oriented curriculum that fits into a busy life.  They also say their curriculum is easy to use with children of all ages and is affordable.  So far everything sounds great to me!  Raise your hand if you if you like affordable and easy to use with children of all ages, I'll raise both hands for that one.  As I was looking through the Bright Ideas Press website I found history, literature, geography, science and a couple of things that I'm not familiar with like wonder maps and illuminations. So I dug a little deeper and found out that illuminations is an all inclusive curriculum and wonder maps is a customizable collection of over 350 maps.  Both of these sound wonderful!

I was getting really excited about the Christian Kids Explore Chemistry now that I'd had time to explore different parts of the Bright Ideas Press website and I found this description of Christian Kids Explore Science:

“This user-friendly, unabashedly Christian science curriculum includes teaching lessons, gorgeous coloring pages, hands-on time, review sheets, and an awesome supplemental book list! ”

and specifically for chemistry they said the following:

Christian Kids Explore Chemistry, Grade Levels 4-8 contains units on the basics of chemistry, atoms and molecules, the nature of chemistry, states of matter,and organic chemistry.

Chemistry is $39.95 for the book and the resources CD is $9.95 

My Opinion

My kids love science and are always asking for more and more science.  We flew through Chemistry with ease and my kids really enjoyed it.  It did seem to be very simple and almost too easy for both of my kids, they are 4th and 6th graders.  They did learn some things they didn't know though and enjoyed the curriculum but were longing for more experiments.  We easily completed this curriculum in about a month and worked on it about 2-3 times per week, we did NOT follow the recommended time frame of 1 lesson per week because it was just too simple for my children.  We did enjoy that it was centered around God creating the universe and all the compounds and matter around us.  I also love that the lesson plans were well organized, this makes for one happy mommy in this home school!

I would recommend this curriculum for younger children or families that haven't completed a lot of science.

If you would like to see what other members of the TOS Crew have to say about Christian Kids Explore Science please click here.

Thanks for reading,

 

Math Rider

Math Rider is a math facts game that teaches your children to master addition, subtraction, multiplication and division for numbers 1-12 while they are having fun!  This game is for ages 6-12 and was designed by a software architect for his own children.

To play the game you start a "quest" and the story line is given so the children know what's going on.  You then ride your horse on your quest and along the way jump over obstacles which are math problems.  If you happen to miss one the horse stops and the correct answer is given.  Your horse starts back up and you continue with your "quest".  You can adjust the speed and problems according to your child's ability.

What My Kids Think

Makenzie my 11 year old is in 6th grade and she really likes the program and flew through it with ease but she already knows her facts and so this was a simple review for her.

Kylan my 10 year old is in 4th grade and he liked it too but thought it was challenging and is still working on completing his first quest.  *He has special needs and likes to take new things slowly and he still has problems with his multiplication facts but I'm seeing improvement since using Math Rider*

Math Rider is normally $49.95 but is on sale for $37 and you can even have a free 7 day trial to see if this is the right program for you and your child.

If you would like to see what other TOS crew mates have to say about Math Rider click here.

Thanks for reading, 

We Choose Virtues-TOS reivew

Attentive

Content

Diligent

Forgiving

Gentle

Helpful

Honest

Kind

Obedient

Patient

Perseverant

Self-Controlled

If I've just described your children then you probably won't need to use this product BUT for the rest of us We Choose Virtues can be a life saver or at least a sanity saver.  Here's a synopsis of

How it Works

We Choose Virtues is not unit study that you use once and then move on from. It is actually a character development tool that you use  every day, every year. You introduce the Virtues, then demonstrate them, memorize the catchphrases, then learn the antonyms, then capture teachable moments when they are being used…or aren’t. You will be amazed how fast you will all learn to obey (not just learn what obedience is, but actually learn to obey!)…and 11 other Virtues too! There are 13 Parenting Cards, one card is the Butterfly and Caterpillar Card. It teaches that everyone was born able to change.

• PARENTS and GRANDPARENTS, we encourage you to introduce one Virtue every day, preferably at the very beginning of each day. Next, assign a Virtue in Focus to each member of the family and start choosing and using Virtue! You will be amazed at the changes you will see as you encourage the right attitudes and actions and correct the wrong ones! You will want to reinforce the Virtues over and over every day no matter where you are. Eventually they will be a part of your family’s life style as you thoroughly demonstrate, memorize and apply each one.

• TEACHERS, you are free to start with any Virtue you choose. Your school might have a character education system in place and one of these Virtues will most likely reinforce what ever character quality you are already working on. We encourage you to introduce one Virtue every week, preferably at the very beginning of each day for the first twelve weeks of school. This does not need to take a long time. 10 minutes is enough. You will be reinforcing the same Virtues over and over the entire year, so you will have plenty of time to thoroughly demonstrate, memorize and apply each one.

We received a packet of the virtue clues and they have helped my son's attitude so much.  They have actually helped him to change his life, he remembers all the little quotes and the people that go with those quotes (just a fun part of the whole program).   We would study a virtue each week and make sure we knew all about that virtue for the week, it even helped me remember to talk in a soft voice and not yell!  Even though my kids are 10 and 11 the program is for younger children but I think they enjoyed using We Choose Virtues, we will continue with the weekly virtue, it was good for the whole family.  I hung the Virtues poster in our kitchen so we can all remember to follow each and every virtue.  Makenzie and Kylan have also made it into a game by trying to outdo each other and outdo mom and dad by remembering their virtues, they even help each other out by saying, "I don't think you are using your Attentive virtue, go read it quickly"

The virtue clues are $5.99 right now.

They also offer many other products like

 The Kids Book of Virtues coloring book

and a family character assessment to help you figure out which character qualities you might need to work on.

 Overall, I give this program 2 thumbs up because it really did seem to help my kids remember the character quality we were working and they thought it was fun, I loved the fact that it was color co-ordinated and easy to use.

Thanks for reading,

 

The World's Greatest Stories-TOS review

As a child my parents would play a KJV of the Bible on cassette every night and it would play throughout the night while we slept, it was a very nice set of cassette tapes but it was a little dry and boring.  Not to long ago I was wishing for something similar to this for my family but of course on CD and maybe not so monotone and boring.

Bye, bye boring I've found the answer!!!  It's called The World's Greatest Stories and it's not boring at all. The actor George W. Sarris  brings the stories to life, they leap off the pages of the Bible and you can vividly imagine what he is saying because he's such a dynamic, dramatic storyteller!  There is music and sound effects but all words are taken directly, word for word, from the Bible.  You can get either the King James Version or the New International Version.

 There are 18 individual stories on CD or cassette for a total of 6 CD's and each is about 1 hour long and costs $7.95 per volume.

~Volume 1: The Prophets

~Volume 2: The Life of Christ

~Volume 3: Beginnings

~Volume 4: Joshua & Esther

~Volume 5: Joseph & His Brothers

~Volume 6: Defeating Giants

~Plus, The Real Story of Easter, from the Gospel of John (NIV only, $9.95)

  If you want your children to beg you to listen to the Bible as you are driving around doing errands then you've found the right set of CD's (mine ask all the time).  This makes me happy and proud!  I think I've found a great gift for birthday parties, baby showers, Christmas gifts, etc.  We received The Prophets CD which just happens to be Volume 1 and I think my children are going to wear it out before the end of the year and yes I do know that's only a couple of weeks away!

The only negative thing I have to say about this series is that I really wish they would offer an MP3 version so we could download them on iPods, wouldn't that be amazing!

If you would like to see what my fellow crew mates are saying about The World's Greatest Stories click here.

Thanks for reading,

Fractazmic is Fantastic!

We received a deck of the Fractazmic Cards from I See Cards to review and at first Makenzie wasn't that excited to play with them until she realized that she could help teach Kylan his fractions.  Now, the tables were turned she was the teacher and she LOVED it.  Kylan was excited to play the game and learn his fractions so he could be like his older sister and I heard a lot of laughing and, "Let's play again" over and over.  They have also been taking it in the car while we travel to and from Tulsa, they can get several games in during the 30 minute drive.  The brightly colored cards are fun to use while your child is learning fractions, numbers and measurement and as a parent you love hearing your children laughing and enjoying playing a game while learning at the same time!  Fractazmic is recommended for ages all ages, I even enjoy a game every now and then!  We have found that it's more fun with at least 3 people playing and even more fun when we can get dad or a 4th person to join in on the game.  We say Fractazmic is FANTASTIC!

(the following info is taken from their website)

Fractazmic is  a 2-4 player game that uses math and language skills. The object of Fractazmic trap is to gather as many hands as possible before the first player runs out of cards. Hands are captured by either (1) playing a card that brings the sum of all cards thrown to 1 or (2) forcing the next player to throw a card that brings the sum to greater than 1. If any of these events occur – the player captures the round and is the first to start the next round.

• Each card clearly numbered
• Each card clearly labeled with the fraction and reinforcing graphic.

Fractazmic Decks Include:

• 60 Math Learning Cards
• Each card clearly numbered
• Each card clearly labeled with the fraction and reinforcing graphic.

What makes Fractazmic Decks Special:

• Quickly learn to convert and add fractions.
• Reinforces relationship between fractions and measurements.
• Shows real world use of fractions.

Fractazmic can be purchased at this link for only $6.95

I See Cards also offers other fun, educational games like 

PyraMath-

Prime Bomb

I See Cards

If you would like to see what my fellow TOS crew mates have to say about Fractazmic please click here.

Thanks for reading,

 

Siege Machines

We were very excited to review the items that we received from Pitsco.  They sent us a Trebuchet and a Catapult and we've been having some "floor wars" and having fun learning about force and motion while we are at it.  So much fun, we love hands on projects and this is one of my kids favorites of the year, so far.  The machines come in a balsa wood pop out kit with great instructions.  We easily put it together with only 1 slight mishap.

In case you don't know here's the definition of a trebuchet according to Wikipedia.

A trebuchet^{[nb 1]} (French trébuchet) is a siege engine that was employed in the Middle Ages. It is sometimes called a "counterweight trebuchet" or "counterpoise trebuchet" in order to distinguish it from an earlier weapon that has come to be called the "traction trebuchet", the original version with pulling men instead of a counterweight. The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century. It could fling projectiles of up to three hundred and fifty pounds (140 kg) at high speeds into enemy fortifications.

I'm sure almost everyone is familiar with a catapult but here's the definition just in case.

A catapult is a device used to throw or hurl a projectile a great distance without the aid of explosive devices—particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines.^[1] Although the catapult has been used since ancient times, it has proven to be one of the most effective mechanisms during warfare. The word 'catapult' comes from the Latin 'catapulta', which in turn comes from the Greek καταπέλτης (katapeltēs), itself from (kata), "downwards"^[2]+ πάλλω (pallō), "to toss, to hurl".^[3][4] Catapults were invented by the ancient Greeks.

We are learning about Rome and Greece this year so both of these worked well with our curriculum and I've actually seen a couple of Roman soldiers sailing through the air.

You can purchase the Siege Machines kit, which includes a Trebuchet Kit, Catapult Kit, Mass Plates, and the Siege Machines book.  The price is $21.95 and to purchase it click here.

This is recommended for intermediate to middle school aged children.  All we used were some needle nosed pliers, glue, and scissors everything else came in the kit.  We have been launching clay(which is the only thing Pitsco recommends), lego figures, Roman soldier figures and anything else my kids can find that is light enough.  I'm sure this will be used for years and years in the future.  Pitsco offers a bunch of fun educational tools and has been around for 40 years!  I forwarded the website to family members that were asking what my kids want for Christmas and told them anything from this site would be an AWESOME gift!

If you would like to see what my fellow TOS crew mates are saying about Pitsco please click here.

Thanks for reading,