4H For Us!

We have really been enjoying 4H this year! This is our first year doing anything with 4H. Nathan is doing shooting sports with rifles and archery as well as some groups. Nathan is the one way in the back, in the white shirt, shooting with his arm behind is back. Hard to see, but he is having fun! 

There are usually a lot more kids, but this was a special out of the way practice that not many could attend. 

He is now back, doing school at home, so this is one of the things we have taken up so that he can get out of the house and do things he likes and make friends. 

If you will, please pray with me that he finds at least one or two really good friends this year. He needs ones that are good influences and ones that he can see fairly often. My hope is that he doesn't want to go back to brick and mortar school next year, and I know if he makes a good homeschool friend, he won't want to. he only likes school for the social aspect of it. I am trying to get him involved in things where he may make new, better friends. 

So, ya, this is a new journey for us all, but we are enjoying it so far!!!  

Britfield & The Lost Crown / TOS Review

My son and I were given the opportunity to review a brand new book called Britfield & The Lost Crown. It is the first in what will be a five book series.

In this book a young man named Tom has spent most of his life locked up in an orphanage, but one day he learns that his parents may actually be alive, and sets out on a mission to escape from the orphanage to find them.

He takes his best friend Sarah with him and they set out on a journey full of suspense. Will they make it very far, or will they be found and sent back to the orphanage??

You can find Britfield & The Lost Crown in all of it's formats at https://www.britfield.com/

Please visit https://schoolhousereviewcrew.com/bri... to read more Crew reviews!



Disclaimer
I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

CTCMath/ TOS Review

We were given a 12-month Family Membership to CTCMath. 

CTCMath is for children in all grade levels, K-12.  It is a full math curriculum, but can also be used as an online private math tutor type of program. It is made to help your child get caught up or get ahead. Your child can choose from many different topics, making personalized education possible. They do not have to go through a bunch of other lessons that they already know.  

 The teacher, Pat Murray, shows and explains every step of a problem so that your child will completely understand what they are doing. Your child is hearing and seeing the problem being done at the same time. This is super helpful. You can pause, fast forward and rewind the lessons so that you can go back and hear something again if you need to. 

I know when I was in school I would ask the teacher a questiona and still not understand, sometimes I would ask again, but then I still wouldn't understand. I would stop going back and asking because it was embarrassing, and that is one of the things that this program eliminates. 

Another thing I hated in school was how the teacher would give us examples on the board but then the rest of the questions were nothing like the ones the teacher showed us. This won't happen with CTCMath because the child can get help every step of the way for every problem, if needed. 

Once the child has watched their lesson they can practice what they just learned. The practice is tailored to the child. If the child shows that he is understanding the problem by getting the answer correct, it will continue to get harder so that the child isn't just practicing the same simple problems over and over. 

Once you are done with your practice you can print it out and keep a portfolio of your work. There are also extra worksheets that you can print out to get offline work and extra practice. The worksheets are connected to the online portion and after your child completes a worksheet, they will enter their answers in the program. If they get one wrong they can still correct it and they can also get help where the teacher shows them how to do the problem correctly, but this can only happen after the student has done the worksheet and entered an answer so that they can't just watch the video and get the answers. 

Another good thing about this program is that you get access to ALL grade levels. So if your child is ahead in certain topics and needs more help in others, it is not a problem They can work from any and all grade levels at once. There are more than 950 lessons to choose from. 

As the parent you can choose to receive weekly updates emailed to you so that you can see your child's progress or you can check the parent area at any time.

We only worked in the Kindergarten grade level. You can see from the below screenshots how it is set up. You can choose from the different grade levels and then from the different topics and categories. 

When you have completed a section it will show you on the right what your grade percent for that lesson is. 

You can see here that they even have lessons from Algebra all the way up to Calculus. 

Here are just a couple of examples of what the kindergarten grade lessons look like. 

This is my only complaint about this program. While it does have a speaker button that will read your child most thing,s there are plenty of times that if your child cant read, you will need to be right there with them to help or they won't know how to do it.

Brently likes this program OK, but he can't do it very well on his own like he wants to. I have to be able to help him, so if we can't do this together, he gets frustrated. If your child is old enough to read though, this isn't an issue. I think that this is a good program for helping students to understand concepts that they are not fully understanding or to get ahead in math as well.

If your child needs extra help in a particular area, this is a great alternative to private tutoring for sure!!!

Here is a short video of my son doing a lesson.

The Family Membership is the best value, but they do offer a single membership as well.

There are many other members of the Review Crew that used CTCMath and we all used different grade levels, so be sure to check those out to find out more information about your child's specific grade, or to get a different prospective of the program.

Attempting to Make Slime

So we attempted to make slime today. We saw a Nickelodeon slime kit at Walmart today and Brently really wanted it. We came home and followed the directions. It seemed good for a minute but every time I gave it to Brently it seemed like it was melting. I kept adding stuff and kneading and kept thinking it was good, but after a minute of playing with it, it just kept getting sticky and melty... 

I think we need a new kit or recipe. What is your favorite recipe for homemade slime?

The balls in the bluw slime just fall out everywhere every time you touch it! I do not recommend using them, at least from this kit. 

Do you have any tried and true slime or playdoh recipes to share?

My Handsome Boys

My handsome boys. They having matching hats! They are both growing up so darn fast. Nathan is starting high school this year and getting into 4H and shooting sports and archery. Brently is learning to read trying to be just like his big brother. 

We are about to start school in few weeks and it's all going to be so different for us all. It has been a few years since Nathan has been home for school and Brently is officially starting Pre-K/Kindergarten. 

It is definitely going to be a busier season for us all, but I think we are all going to enjoy it. 

Library and Educational Services LLC/ TOS Review

 Library and Educational Services LLC  is a family company, wholesale distributor. They sell to schools, churches and libraries, but they are such an awesome company that they allow homeschoolers to purchase from them as well!

Why is this such a big deal? Because their products, and more importantly their prices, are amazing! They seriously have such good deals.

Library and Educational Services LLC extended us a very gracious offer. We were allowed to choose one of the books from the Who Was...Series, one CD from the Lifehouse Theater CDs series and $60-$63 worth of the Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction books. We were also given free shipping on any other books/products that we wanted to order on our own. The picture below shows everything that we got, including the extra books we purchased out of pocket.

The Who Was...series is a New York Times Best-Selling series. This series is intended for grades 3-7. I think younger kids can enjoy these being read to them though, as well as older children could learn quite a bit from these books. There are over 100 titles to choose from. There is also a smaller subset of these books called Where Is and What Was.

We chose Who Was George Washington. It is a nice quality, 101 page paperback. It has cute illustrations and a nice size print. Children can learn all about George Washington, including his childhood. The list price for the books in this series is $5.99. Our price through Library and Educational Services LLC is $3.89. They are currently having a sale on these books making the price only $2.89! I would love to have them all.

For the CD we chose Job - A Modern Man. 

I picked this one because I thought it would shed a new light on the Job story, that it may make the story current. It really did, more than I thought it would. The CD started out with Job and his family celebrating Job's 56th birthday. They are out at a fancy place, having a good time. You get a sense of Job and what his life was like. He had it pretty good and was well thought of. 

One day things started to change for Job. Bad thing kept happening to him. His children died in a plane crash on their way home, the hospital he was part of was involved in a shooting and many people were killed, he was accused of doing illegal business, rumors were started that he was having an affair with his secretary, he was asked to step down from the church board because of the rumors, and lastly, found out that he had a cancerous brain tumor. 

His wife was furious with him that he wasn't angry with God, his friends thought he must be sinning for all of this to happen to him. He was told that God doesn't punish his children like this. This really hit home for me. This is what it seems like sometimes, or at least what it seems like it should be. We think that God shouldn't punish or allow these things to happen to us if we are serving him. 

Job, of course, questioned God as to why he would allow all of this to happen when he was blameless. I know a lot of us feel this way, even if we haven't had this many bad things happen to us. But it can seem like one thing after another happens and it is hard to understand why we have to suffer. In the audio, God asked Job who he was to question Him, why he had so much pride that he felt he could accuse God or ask Him to justify Himself to Job! Wow, that is right. We are not anyone to question God! Job let his pride get in the way and led him to feel as if he could condemn God to justify himself. This was really eye opening to me. 

The audio ended 10 years later with Job having gone into remission from his cancer and reevaluating his life based on the things that had happened. He realized how prideful he had been and how he wanted to change. He and his wife moved to Uganda to serve in and run an orphanage. 

God had taken their children, but he also provided many more children for them to take care of. 

When asked how he could still serve God after everything that happened he replied "Yet he slay me, I will serve Him."

This is a very good CD. I am happy that I chose this one. I think everyone needs to listen to this. I would love to get one for my church. I really think this can help to put the story of Job into perspective and into our day and time. 

The list price for this is $19.99. The Library and Educational Services LLC price is $9,99. Of all the things that I received, and I love them all, I suggest your family purchase this CD. It really moved me and helped me to see my life in a different light. 

I listened to this with my 14 year old son and asked him what he got out of the audio and he said "To trust in God always, no matter the circumstances." 

"What if the biblical Job lived today? What if he lived in our modern world as a successful executive with a loving family, loyal friends and the best life has to offer? And, as in the scriptural story, what if he lost it all in a flash? This gripping parallel story of Job is set in contemporary times and explores the age old question: "Where is God in the midst of trouble and tragedy?"

Now, for the part I was most looking forward to: The Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction books. These are the books we picked with our $60 allowance.

As you can see they all have very nice, hard covers. They are very sturdy and nicely bound books. These are library quality books. They are definitely made to last.

The Baby animals set is our favorite of the sets we received. They are so cute. They are geared towards grades K-2. They have a large font, making it easier for little ones to read. The pictures are very nice, and adorable, I must say. :) Each of the books has a Words to Know page at the back of the book with words your younger children may not yet be familiar with. The list price for this set is $172.20. The publishers school and library price is $129.15. Our price with Library and Educational Services LLC is only $38.74. That averages out to $5.50 per book. Even a paperback book of this nature would be at least this much or probably even more. And these are the super durable, hardback library quality books! I think $5.50 a book is a great price! These are ones you can definitely pass on to younger siblings, or even grandchildren, as they will hold up that long!

"Curious young readers will be fascinated as they learn all about these baby animal's lives. This irresistible and informative series introduces young readers to adorable baby animals through simple language, full-color photos, and picture glossaries."

The next set of books we received was the Ask A... set. There are three books in this set. Each book is 32 pages long and geared towards children in the K-5 grade range. These books are awesome for learning about these animals. They are written in a unique way. These books respond to the asked questions from the animals point of view, so it seems as if the animal is answering the questions! It's pretty cool. The list price for this set is $79.50. The publisher's school and library price is $59.85. Guess how much I got this set of three books for? And these are large books too. Technically I didn't pay for these though, but if I had of, I would have only paid $11.98. FOR ALL THREE BOOKS!! Crazy! 

"This wonderfully-illustrated set puts the animals at the center of focus, and offers a new take on the Question and Answer format. Readers get the tantalizing story straight from each book's subject, such as the elephant who tells readers about her daily challenges, and surrounding world. Other points of view are gained from the life tale of bugs and sea creatures. Readers will enjoy pondering the questions that are posed and seeking answers through the beguiling narratives. Fact boxes and smaller illustrations share supplemental details that are memorable and entertaining."

We also received the Crafts for Kids Who Are Learning About...series. This comes with two books in the set. One for Weather and one for Insects. These are a great idea. You can incorporate crafts into what you are already learning. If you are doing unit studies, you will really love these. We invited his two neighbor friends over to make one of the crafts. We decided to make the rain in a bag craft. They had a lot of fun making it. Well, the two girls did. Brently literally just drew red scribbles all over his bag. It definitely did not look like an outdoor scene. lol The girl's were really cute though. The list price is $53.20. The publishers school and library price is $39.90. The price with Library and Educational Services LLC is only $9.98! $5 a book! That is a great price for these. 

Now remember, we were also allowed to purchase anything else out of pocket if we wanted to and they would be shipped for free with our other items. These are the items I purchased. It is a mix of chapter books, coloring books, comic books and other random books. I literally bought most of these for $0.22 -$2.00. Yes, 22 cents! They were having an awesome sale going on at the time. I am not sure how often they do sales like this, but I am definitely keeping a look out for them. 

My total for all of these books was $19.44! I also had 6 pocket planners, but gave them away. :)

Most of these are too old for Brently and too young for Nathan but I bought them anyway because I have 4 step children that I am happy to be able to send these to! I really like the comic books and coloring books. I bought the Total Health Turnaround because it was only $0.22, but I may learn some really helpful tips from this book. 

I can't remember the exact shipping time, but it seemed pretty fast. I know it was less than two weeks for sure. 

Library and Educational Services LLC carries more than just books. They have CD's and DVD's. They have homeschool resources and curriculum. They have Bibles, crafts, hobbies, games, gifts and more. 

Most of their products are sold at really great prices. Some of them I really can't believe how cheap they are. I think this is a very valuable resource for homeschoolers. I have never heard of them before now. I am very grateful to the family that owns this business for allowing us homeschoolers to benefit from these savings like the schools and libraries do. For most homeschoolers we pay for all of our children's educational products ourselves, so being able to save is very helpful and very appreciated. 

I will be sure to spread the word about this company to all of my homeschool friends. You can too after you have read this review. 

If you would like to read more reviews on this company and see what other families chose for their free books, check out my fellow Crew Mates reviews below.