TOS Crew: Easy Classical

We were given a copy of  Easy Classical's Early Modern History Schedule for review for the TOS Crew.  This history schedule is available either in notebook form or for download.  We viewed the downloaded version for the review.

We did not actually use this history schedule but I have reviewed everything well enough to explain to you what I like and don't as well as how I would use it.  The Early Modern History Schedule uses a classical approach to learning.


The Early Modern History Schedule covers from Explorers to 1815 and can be taught to students in grades K -6th.   This is a very much like a teachers manual, it guides you through the school year using several other books.  This schedule is by no means a complete history curriculum.

After downloading the curriculum and reading the included instruction sheet I saw that the author, Sandra Williams, recommends reading the Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer.  The sections that she specifically mentions are those on the Grammar Stage and the How to Do It, as these will help you to set up notebooks for your children for the school year. 

I appreciate that Sandra seems to be very realistic and tells you up front that you will NOT be able to complete every thing on the schedule and that it is OK.  I don't know about you but that really puts me at ease and helps me to not beat myself up when I have not checked off every little thing.  Thanks Sandra!

She goes further to explain that this year is "jammed packed with a variety of projects, and lessons" and to feel free to pick and choose what works best for your family. Another sigh of relief!  Hands on projects are wonderful, kids usually LOVE them and they seem to seal the deal as far as helping children remember what they have just learned.  I always thinks hands on projects are a great compliment to any study. This is schedule incorporates several of the History Pockets into the lessons.  You can view a sample lesson HERE.

There are 36 weeks of lessons included in this schedule along with 45 pages of charts, sheets, and helps.  Weekly lessons also include review questions, quizzes, a shopping list for the following week and detailed instructions on how to use the schedules and the books that accompany it.

This schedule is right up my alley and very similar to what we are already doing.  I really love to have a guide and then several books to pull information from.  I love to use a mix of reference type books, historical fictions and reference books that have a story like tone to them.

Just to give you a better idea, here are the books that would be used with this schedule (purchased separately):


Veritas Press Explorers
Story of the World Vol. 2
Story of the World Vol. 3
Story of the 13 Colonies
Story of the Great Republic
History of US: First Americans
History of US: 13 Colonies
History of US: From Colonies to County
History of US: New Nations


You can purchase your own copy of Easy Classical's Early Modern History Schedule, either for download for $29.95 or in notebook form for $35.95.

Easy Classical also offers full curriculum's for grades K-6th, science schedule as well as other history schedules, which can be viewed on the Easy Classical website.

To see what other TOS Crew members are saying about Easy Classical please click HERE.

Please note that we received Easy Classical's Early Modern History Schedule free of charge for review purposes, but this did not influence my opinions of this product.

Holy, Holy, Holy

Words by Reginald Heber

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!
 
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.
 
Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!


This is one of the songs that I imagine the saints will be singing at the throne of God.

Saturday Solutions - Salad Fixin's Bar

Back in December we had some friends over for dinner after church.  I had made Baked Cavatini, one friend brought salad and another bread.

My friend Robin arrived with her salad green washed and ready to go in a salad spinner and THEN she pulled out a veggie tray.  This veggies tray was FULL of salad fixin's!!  I am sure that she probably thought I was a real dork, LOL, because I keep going on and on about how great of an item it was (because it really was a great idea).

She had this the fixin's bar filled with shredded carrots, green olives, raisins, and lots of other goodies.  Oh, and in the center, FETA CHEESE!

Let me tell you why I love this idea and how I am incorporating it into my world.  First of all I really NEED to be eating more salads again and I by nature can be a little lazy and don't like to have to chop up all these veggies each time I want a salad.  AND mixing your greens along with everything else only seems to last a day, maybe two before slime starts setting in.

 

If this doesn't make you want to run off and eat a salad I don't know what will!

When you chop up your goodies and place them into the divided veggie tray, you have killed two birds with one stone so to speak (FYI no birds were harmed during the making of this salad).  Your veggies are ready to go and the best part is they stay not slimy longer.  See, it's the two bird thing!

  For those of you wondering what's in my fixin's bar, I have green olives, broccoli slaw, green onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, shredded carrots and of course FETA.  If I had more slots I would had added sunflower seeds and raisins.

What kind of goodies do you put in your salads??

Weekly Wrap Up

This was our first week back after our winter break.  Things went pretty well, considering. 

I started a new routine with the kids (and self) this week and I am thinking that is going to take some getting used to, for all of us.  Things really do run much smoother and I am much happier if we have a plan and focus on completing it each day.  Our routine includes chores, reading time, school times, quiet/nap times, computer times and the like.   We had a few snags since I am doing physical therapy (for my neck) 3 mornings a week, but we accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish. 

I haven't talked much about our curriculum for a while but we are still using MFW, along with a few supplements, and loving it.  We are doing Creation to Greeks this year and I am really diggin' all of the old testament studies.  This week we studied the plagues that the Lord sent upon Egypt when the Pharaoh would not let God's people go.  As I was read scripture in Exodus the children and I would talk about what we were reading, well, everyone except Little Bits, he would usually just pelt Joe O's at us.  The kids keep a Bible/History notebook so they would draw a picture of each plague to go into their notebook. 

We have been using some of Diana Waring's Ancient Civilization curriculum, mostly the workbook and the audio cd's, and this week we sung her song about the plagues to the tunes of Camptown Races.  That was AWESOME!  I gave the girls 2 challenges, one to do this week and one for next.  I told them that I wanted them to write their own song about the Egyptian plagues, this should be no problem and lots of fun for them because they are ALWAYS writing songs about something.  They also need to put on a news broadcast about the plagues for their daddy and I.  The only requirements that I gave them were to do one this week and one next and I also told them they had to include their brothers.  The boys could be frogs or locust or something : )

I have been wanting to start incorporating character traits into our studies and this week I FINALLY did!!  Yay!  This week we talked about loyalty.  We talked about what it means to be loyal and ways that we can show loyalty to others.

We studied comparative and superlative words, worked on fractions, and had spelling words with a french origin.  We have been enjoying some really cool online games that we are reviewing for the TOS Crew, which I will be telling you all about real soon. 

For Health and Science we studied blood and the immune system.  We are working on a book about blood and we learned alot about the different types of blood cells and what they do.  We learned some pretty amazing facts about the body which the Lord has so miraculously created!  Then we followed that us with a Moody Science video that taught us about the immune system, this was by far the coolest science video I have seen so far (more about this later).  After watching the video and reading from our book, the girls draw pictures of blood cells and viruses for their health notebook. 

Friday is our day off so we are going to be doing a little house cleaning and we will probably make gingerbread houses because we just never got to them.  At least we are doing better them last year when we didn't get to them until MARCH.  Yes, MARCH! 

I also believe we might get a little snow tomorrow and if we do we will be making these really neat 3D snowflakes. 

TOS Crew: Math Facts Now

 

As a member of the TOS Crew we were given Math Facts Now! for review.  This is an educational math facts program that drills children in the basic math facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

 

Math Facts Now, as their website says..."is simple yet effective." 

Here is what I liked about it:

• This program picks up on the facts that your children are struggling with. 
• I think it is wonderful that if a problem is missed they have to type it over, not just the answer but the whole problem.  AND the program allows you to select how many times the student has to type the problem correct before moving on, up to ten times.  I love this, my kids. not so much. 
• Math Facts Now also allows you to design your own lessons.  You can choose addition, subtraction, multiplication or division and then you can even choose which numbers to work with.  I really like that I can really customize different lessons for each child. 
• I like that once I enter a child's name, the program will keep track on their progress.  The progress report shows the date, lesson they worked on, time spent with the lesson, and how many problems they got right and wrong.  AWESOME!!  This is great for multiply reasons, one it shows me what they are learning and what they are not getting PLUS it is wonderful to print out for the end of the year portfolio.  
• The program has the option to offer a reward when the child has completed the lesson.  I did not do this but I thought it was a cool feature.
• I was very happy that I could add multiple children to program.  

I really do like this program, it is affordable, simple and it gets the job done.  They only thing I could think of in the "something I didn't like" department was I wish they had some games with in the program.  The Math Facts Now website says that they didn't want to rely on cartoon characters to entertain children rather than educate then and I do get that, BUT my kids learn alot from "games" too.  I think even a little game at the end of each lesson completed, like a reward of sorts would be a wonderful addition to this already great product.  Like I said, I really do like this product and would recommend it. 

In my opinion, this product is not really grade specific.  The program covers addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, so as your child works on those areas in their core math program they would use Math Facts Now to reinforce the facts they are already learning.

You can purchase your own Math Facts Now either on CD ROM or on Download both cost $15.95, but the CD has an additional $3.95 added for shipping and handling.

We received this product free of charge for review purposes only.  We were not paid in any way and the opinions expressed here are my own.