Enjoying the Chaos

 I was recently given the chance to review a choice of some excellent products from one of my favorite Lap book companies A Journey Through Learning . I use their products regularly for our science studies as you can see from an earlier post  here . One of the things I love about this company is that it was founded by home school Mom's for home school Mom's instead of a school program that has been 'adapted' for homeschooling. The items I could choose from were; Lapbooks Letters, Numbers, and Shapes The Earth Knights and Castles Unit Study Astronomy and Space We decided against the unit study because we had recently finished another A Journey Through Learning product that went with our Astronomy book. Little J and I decided to start with Letters, Numbers, and Shapes . A lot of the information contained in the lap book was a review for Little J. However he loved having his own lap book to do like Jam and Boo. We sailed through a lot of the li

My mother in law makes the best bread cobs. She gave me the recipe and my family LOVE them. When she visits from England she makes a batch just about every day. However due to health reasons they have not been able to visit us for a while so I have to make them now and again to keep my husband happy. I can't bake them too often as we eat ALL of them even if I double the recipe. I always double because if I am going to the effort to bake it makes sense to make more...If I am sneaky enough I put some in the freezer but they are normally all eaten before I can do that. Here is the recipe. Nana's Bread Cobs 1 1/2 lbs flour (4 1/4 cups) 1 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoon sugar 15 oz water and milk (warmed) 1 tablespoon oil 5 teaspoon dried yeast 1. Mix together - preheat oven to 450 degrees. 2. Knead well (I use my kitchen-aid it is the heavy duty one and I can just manage a double mixture) 3. Cover with cling film / bag and allow to rise till doubled in size. (Approx

Piano is quite high up in priority for us. Boo (10) and Jam (12) have been playing for nearly 5 years. In fact my husband and I agree that it is an essential part of my children's education. Little J has been asking to start piano lessons. However since he is only four we were planning on waiting a couple of years. As three children in private piano lessons is out of our budget right now. So when an opportunity came up to review Adventus I was SO excited and so was Little J. We have been using MusIQ homeschool it is a seven year curriculum designed for ages 4-18 years. The curriculum is available as a download or CD-Rom option. You need a computer, the Internet and a MIDI keyboard. Luckily we already had a full size electric piano that was MIDI compatible. We just needed an adapter to attach the piano to the computer.  I ordered a USB MIDI cable converter from Amazon and after a few issues with the settings and a couple of calls to Adventus for help and we were good t

  Jam and I have been working with an excellent product offered by Classical Academic Press . The Art of Poetry can be used as an introduction to poetry or an in-depth study it really depends how old your child is or how much time you spend in the book. The suggested age range for this text is 6th grade - 12th grade. Since Jam is 6th grade we decided that we would go pretty slowly. Our goal was to cover the first two chapters during the review period. We received the The Art of Poetry Student Edition , the The Art of Poetry Teacher's Edition , and a DVD disk 1 containing the first two lessons that are available which covered chapter one 'Images' and chapter two 'Metaphor'. When I received the books in the mail my first reaction was "Oh my goodness what have I got myself into". I was very overwhelmed. I opened the The Art of Poetry Teacher's Edition and read the 'How to use this book' section. I then paused and laughed to mysel

A is for Amblyopia Little J was diagnosed with Amblyopia when he was two. It was a fluke that we discovered it so early. I had cut his hair short for the summer and started to notice a very slight eye turn. October 2010 Summer 2011 It wasn't all the time but he also seemed a little unsteady on his feet. One day I caught it on camera and we realized it really wasn't our imagination. We decided to take him to see our local ophthalmologist who is awesome. We were shocked with what he found. My baby had VERY bad vision and even worse in his right eye. This was the problem, because his vision in that eye was so bad his eye basically had decided to stop working. First step - glasses October 2012   The eye turn fixed immediately. I thought we had cracked it. However the eye still did not want to work. We started patching 2 hours a day - in the house, and we saw improvement. However eventually my ophthalmologist said he had done all he could and referred us t

Friday was an unusually nice day. Since my nieces were having spring break we decided to take the day off and head to the zoo. This is our most common field trip and we love it. Normally we go when schools are in session because, well basically to avoid the crowds. Friday must have been the busiest day EVER at our zoo. It reminded me of Disney - I am not joking. However the good thing about going with everyone else is that there are more zoo workers and volunteers. We had a blast. The kids got to talk to a volunteer about the tigers, and stroke some 'real fur'.   Then we talked to a wonderful volunteer who taught the kids all about Kangaroos are softer that you think. So it turned into an excellent educational field trip. How do you schedule field trips? Do you prefer to go when the kids are in school? I would love to hear about your best ones.

Jam and I were given the opportunity to review the program Essentials in Writing. We have been working on  Grade 6 written for ages 11-12. Essentials in writing is a complete language arts curriculum with an emphasis on composition. It is available for grades 1-12. Each grade is $40.00 and comes with DVD with video lessons and a PDF printable workbook. There is also an optional printed workbook available for $20.00. From the website for Sixth Grade Essentials in Writing In Sixth Grade, your child will learn:  detailed sentence structure, additional grammar, additional capitalization/punctuation rules, proper use of a friendly letter, using the writing process to compose narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing (including formal paragraphs), and five paragraph essays, compare and contrast writing, effective writing skills, multi-paragraph composition, the process to complete a research project, other forms of written communication, and other topi

Tonight I was looking in the refrigerator and saw two huge punnets of blueberries. I was trying to think of what to make the first things that came to mind were pancakes and muffins. Since dinner was already in the oven I had no excuse to make pancakes. So Blueberry Muffins it was. I had never made them before, so of course I went straight to my recipe books laptop. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com. Muffin Mixture 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 3/4 cup white sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoon baking powder 1/3 cup vegetable oil 1 egg 1/3 cup milk 1 cup fresh blueberries Crumb Topping 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 1/4 cup butter, cubed 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon Directions Preheat oven to 400 degree F. Line tin with muffin liners. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt, and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup   measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muff

Boo loves poetry.  She recently found a poetry book I used to read when I was little. When she is not doing her school work she is walking around the house reading the poems to anyone who will listen. The book is called 'The Young Puffin Book of Verse' complied by Barbara Ireson My all time favorite is; By far the naughtiest children I know are Jasper Geranium James and Jo. They live in a house on the Hill of Kidd, and what in the world do you think they did? They asked their uncles and aunts to tea, and shouted in loud rude voices 'We are tired of scoldings and sendings to bed: now the grown-ups shall be punished instead.' They said 'Auntie Em, you didn't say thank you!' They said 'Uncle Robert, we're going to spank you!' They pulled the beard of Sir Henry Dorner and put him to stand in disgrace in the corner. They scolded Aunt B, they punished Aunt Jane; they slapped Aunt Louisa again and again. They said 'Naughty boy!' to

   Little J and I have been using TouchMath over the last month or so. We have been working through the Kindergarten program .   The  TouchMath program is broken down into four units. The program is also designed to meet the Common Core Standards (if that is something that is important to you). The  Kindergarten download includes an Implementation guide, 6 Module Guides with Instructional Strategies, 90 Student Activities Sheets, 6 Assessments (one per module), Real World Connections, Answer Keys, Progress Monitoring, Vocabulary. It is available in four individual downloads each one being $59.95 or $199.95 for all four. We have been working through Unit A 4 or 5 days a week. Little J really enjoyed working with this program. I feel that he has learned so much already and we have so much of the program left to work through. The topics covered in the Units are as follows; Little J has really enjoyed having his own 'math book'. I printed off the unit