Adding Fun to Your Homeschool: Contests/Competitions

Intrinsic motivation is a wonderful thing, but sometimes a little contest or competition can get students excited and motivated to do their very best. I have found that when I can tie schoolwork into a contest or competition my children will work harder and turn in work that is above what they typically do for a ‘regular’ assignment. There is also generally less grumbling and excited planning.

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While not every assignment can or should be a competition, there are lots of available options. Writing is one of the easiest subjects to incorporate this strategy. There are quite a few writing competitions available for a variety of prompts and genres, many of them are free to enter. We personally participate in writing competitions with the North Carolina Tar Heel Junior Historians and the North Carolina State Fair. The 4-H program also offers some great writing competitions. Having these prompts and directions can help students be engaged and excited about their writing. It also gives them the opportunity to get feedback from someone outside of the home about their writing. I found that this was particularly helpful to me when one of my children thought that I was too harsh of a critic. The feedback on their entries helped them realize that correct spelling really was important and noticed by other people.

Science is another great area to incorporate competitions. You could participate in a local science fair (or start one) and allow them to work through the scientific process. You could also work on things through Science Olympiad which would allow them to compete on a team in various science activities. Another option that we utilize are 4-H competitions. My children participate in Avian Bowl, Poultry Judging, and Poultry Skill-a-thon as well as other livestock and chicken activities. They also offer competitions in robotics, horticulture, and many other science areas. Students learn to be subject matter ‘experts’ in their fields and spend lots of time studying and learning together.

In addition to writing projects, my children participate in a variety of history projects through the North Carolina Tar Heel Junior Historians program. They are able to make models, film movies, create scrapbooks and more all while learning about North Carolina history. This is a great incentive for them to do their very best. I also appreciate that this particular program is really good at making them cite their sources and learn about good research. There are junior historian programs around the country and I highly recommend checking to see if you have a program local to your area.

If you have a budding artist or photographer there are lots of opportunities for competitions in these areas. My daughter has just gotten into photography after purchasing a camera at a local yard sale. She is going to be using the 4H photography curriculum and the photography courses from SchoolhouseTeachers.com to help her grow her skills and then entering her pictures into our state fair, Tar Heel Junior Historians competition, and a 4H spring competition. There are dozens of other small art and photography competitions that your student could enter to display their work and get expert feedback in order to continue to improve their work.

Last but certainly not least, I want to take a minute to talk about public speaking. I believe that public speaking is a skill that is important for students no matter what their career or life goals. As adults they need to be comfortable speaking to a variety of people in a variety of situations. We have found that 4H presentations have been a great way to improve my children’s comfort levels when speaking in front of a group of people. My oldest son has been participating in presentations for about seven years and I have watched him not only get more comfortable during presentations but also flourish in a variety of speaking situations. He can interact with people in a confident and clear manner. This was a major benefit last year when he was running a supply trailer after Hurricane Florence. He interacted with volunteers, disaster victims, and the people and companies bringing in supplies. More than once people sought me out to tell me how impressed they were with his communication skills. I truly believe that 4H presentations are a big part of that success.

Contests and competitions are one way to add a little fun into your homeschool. Make sure to check back each day this week for a new way to add fun. Also, do not forget to check out some of the other great posts in this five-day blog hop. There is sure to be some help and encouragement for you.

CREW @ Homeschool Review Crew – 2019 Annual Not Back to School Homeschool Blog Hop

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses – ABC of Homeschooling

Dawn @ Schoolin’ Swag – Adding Fun to Your Homeschool Day

Erin @ For Him and My Family – Large Family Homeschooling

Lori @ At Home Where Life Happens – Learning Life Skills

Monique @ Mountain of Grace Homeschooling – Homeschooling the High School Years

Monique D. @ Early Learning Mom – Homeschooling With Autism

Yvie @ Homeschool On the Range – 5 Days of Upper Grades Homeschooling

Abby @ Making Room 4 One More – Time Management for Homeschool Moms

Amanda @ Hopkins Homeschool – 5 Days of Homeschool Questions

Amy @ the WRITE Balance – Year-Round Schooling

Annette @ A Net in Time – Homeschooling.

Betty @ Lets Get Real – Homeschooling High School

Cassandra @ My Blessed Mess – Eclectic Homeschooling
Kimberley @ Vintage Blue Suitcase – Roadschooling with a Teenager

Yvonne @ The Life We Build – 5 Days of Relaxed Homeschooling

Destiny @ Some Call It Destiny – Encouragement for the Homeschooling Mom

Karen @ Tots and Me…Growing Up Together – A Peek into Our Homeschool

Cassie D @ Deputie Tribe – Homeschooling 6 Taking Care of YOU

Kristen Heider @ A Mom’s Quest to Teach –Theme: A Quest for a Great Homeschool Year

Patti Pierce – Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy – My Favorite Homeschooling Things

Wendy @ Life on Chickadee Lane – 5 Days of Nature Study

Jacquelin @ A Stable Beginning – Homeschooling my final 4

Christine @ Life’s Special Necessities – Yes! You Can Homeschool Your Special Needs Child

Sally M – Tell the Next Generation – Tips for Homeschooling Struggling Learners

Kim @ Good Sweet Love – Last Year of Elementary

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Deals and Freebies

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is doing an amazing sale this month! Buy One year get One Year FREE! We use this for several of our courses and one price covers all the students in your home for as many of their over 400 courses and you would like to use.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Enrichment Studies has a great free fine arts memory match game this month!

Free Help Your Child’s Memory Book from All About Learning Press!

Mid-Year Goals, Book, and Art Updates

How can 2019 already be half over? The year is passing quickly, but I’m pleased with the progress I’m making on several of my goals. First, we recently completed our goal of decluttering 1,000 things from our home. It was a family effort and it feels so good to have sold, donated, and trashed things that were no longer needed in our home to make space and reduce visual clutter. The children are also pleased that it makes cleaning up so much easier when there is less stuff. We had promised them the chance to go out to eat at a restaurant of their choice when we finished our goal. They debated on several fancier restaurants in town but ended up deciding on sushi and pizza. We even decided to give it a go again and work towards another 1,000 things but this time including items from our storage room.

I have been keeping up with my reading goals this summer and I am looking forward to reading even more as we have a little vacation coming up later this month. Since my last goals update, I have finished five more books and I am currently reading three others. I have shared a list of those books below but want to take a minute to highly encourage you to check out A Homeschool Experiment if you are looking for a fun but encouraging summer read. This is a novel about a mom’s experiment in homeschooling that will have you laughing, crying, and nodding your head and she goes through the process of figuring out what works best for her kids while showing the real-life side of things.

Books Read

Currently Reading:

Upcoming:

We have not done as much hiking in other places as I would have liked but I have been enjoying walking and biking with my youngest two children several times a week right in our own neighborhood. This has been a great way to get some miles in towards my 100-mile goal and we have plans for more hikes when the weather cools off a bit in the fall.

I have been a little slack over the summer at getting our foot print art posted so I wanted to take a minute and catch that up as well. In June we did a family hand print art project for my husband for Father’s Day. I convinced him to let me get his hand print four times on the canvas and then I put the hand print of each child into one of his hand prints. I thought it turned out well and he has it hanging up in his home office. I even managed to get the baby’s hand print.

For July we wanted to celebrate summer a bit and so we have feet in the sand foot print art! I first brushed the baby’s foot with paint and then placed it into the sand before making the prints on the paper. We used sand from our sand box because I forgot to do it when we were at the beach a couple weeks ago. You could use any kind of sand that was available. I do recommend dry sand so it doesn’t clump as badly.

We are making progress on our goals, enjoying a little down time this month as our summer winds down, and getting ready to jump back into our ‘school’ schedule in September. I would love to hear more from you about your goals and the progress you are making. Also, don’t forget to check back every day this week for our blog hop!

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Deals and Freebies

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is doing an amazing sale this month! Buy One year get One Year FREE! We use this for several of our courses and one price covers all the students in your home for as many of their over 400 courses and you would like to use.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Enrichment Studies has a great free fine arts memory match game this month!

Free Help Your Child’s Memory Book from All About Learning Press!

Y is for YWAM

You may have noticed that I skipped last week. I just could not think of a great ‘X’ book to share. However, ‘Y’ was an easy choice. We absolutely love the books from Youth With a Mission or YWAM. They have two wonderful book series that we love to read: Christian Heroes Then and Now and Heroes of History. Both of these biography series are wonderful additions to your home library. They can be used as family read alouds, independent reading, audio books, or they even offer study guides to make them full unit studies.

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“Since it is likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” C.S. Lewis

Christian Heroes Then and Now is a biography series that features missionaries and other heroes of the faith. These books provide a great insight into the lives of these men and women who sacrificed so much to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are exciting and engaging narratives that give children positive role models and heroes to follow. These books feature great heroes of the faith such as George Mueller, Nate Saint, Corrie Ten Boom and C.S. Lewis.

Similarly, Heroes of History is a biography series but the people featured there are more historical figures who were Christians. Orville Wright, Daniel Boone, Alan Shepherd and Clara Barton are a few of the people featured in this series. They help students see how their contributions shaped history.

When I contemplate the C.S. Lewis quote above, I know that I want to have exposed my children to many good heroes. Some we see in our everyday lives but many of them they ‘meet’ though the pages of a good book. I think that these YWAM series are great ways for them to ‘meet’ a variety of heroes and help prepare them to face the battles they will surely face in this world. I highly encourage you to check out these series if you are not familiar with them.

Have you read any of these ‘Y’ books? Tell me what books come to mind when you think of the letter ‘Y’.

abcblogging

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Deals and Freebies

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is doing an amazing sale this month! Buy One year get One Year FREE! We use this for several of our courses and one price covers all the students in your home for as many of their over 400 courses and you would like to use.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Enrichment Studies has a great free fine arts memory match game this month!

Free Help Your Child’s Memory Book from All About Learning Press!

Back to School Blog Hop 2019!

I am so excited to share with you that the Review Crew is doing another amazing Back to School Blog Hop! I always enjoy reading all of these wonderful posts just in time to get me excited for another new year of homeschooling! The Blog Hop will run from August 12th through the 16th and I will be sharing a new post here each day as well as linking to the posts from the other Crew Members that will be participating. This year we are each sharing on our own home school related themes.

I will be sharing each day about a different way to add a bit of fun into your home school day without changing curriculum! We will talk about things you can add or tweak to bring a little more excitement into your homeschooling experience. Make sure to check back here on Monday August 12th for the first installment in this series! There will be a variety of topics covered in the hop, including peace in your home school, upper grades homeschooling, favorite home school things and so much more.

Day 1: Adding Fun to Your Homeschool: Contests/Competitions

Day 2: Adding Fun Into Your Homeschool: Games

Day 3: Adding Fun Into Your Homeschool: Cooking

Day 4: Adding Fun to Your Homeschool: Incorporating Hobbies

Day 5: Adding Fun Into Your Homeschool: Field Trips

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Deals and Freebies

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is doing an amazing sale this month! Buy One year get One Year FREE! We use this for several of our courses and one price covers all the students in your home for as many of their over 400 courses and you would like to use.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Enrichment Studies has a great free fine arts memory match game this month!

Free Help Your Child’s Memory Book from All About Learning Press!

Our 8th Grade Curriculum Choices

Some days I find it hard to believe that I already have an eighth grader! I started homeschooling him in first grade and it seems like it cannot have possibly been that long ago. We started with a class schedule that was slightly shorter, but much like the one I had as a classroom teacher. It didn’t take more than a few weeks for me to realize that I didn’t want to create school at home but I wanted to create a learning environment where we could thrive. We have had our ups and downs, good days and bad days but I think we have learned a lot and each year gets better.

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He will be taking Algebra 1 as an eighth grader which means I have to start his transcript this year. We looked at several programs but settled on No-nonsense Algebra. It came highly recommended by some fellow homeschool moms and we gave it a trial run this summer. The simple and straightforward approach seemed to work well with my son, especially after we worked through a couple of lessons together and I ensured he was working out the problems as required. This program combines short online video lessons with well written and worked out example problems, followed by a short practice session (usually about 15-20 problems). Each lesson also includes about four review questions at the end to help with retention.

For language arts he will be using several programs. First, we are continuing to use All About Spelling. It is one of my favorite programs ever because it was such a game changer for our family. This program helped both of my older children to finally understand spelling and translate what they were learning in spelling to their everyday writing. My son could read years above grade level and make hundreds on traditional spelling tests but could not translate those words into his every day writing. We had tried multiple other spelling programs before we finally purchased All About Spelling. With-in just a few weeks I was able to begin to see improvement. Last spring, my daughter had the opportunity to try out Fix It! Grammar from IEW and we felt like it was a really good fit. The short lessons were effective without being overwhelming. I thought this would also work well for my son so I purchased another copy of the student book for my son to begin this fall.

check list

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to review Lightning Lit & Comp: Hewitt Homeschooling Resources with my son. We did the first two chapters and I felt like it was a good match for his personality. We are planning to finish that program for his eighth-grade literature, although I will be mostly using the literature components and not the composition because we will be using a different composition program. He started working his way through Sharon Watson’s writing program Jump In and we plan to finish that program this year to give him the skills he needs for high school level composition next year.

We will be studying North Carolina History as a family. We love history and have spent a good deal of time volunteering at our local historic site. My son turned 13 in May and was very excited to be able to join his father in volunteering with their NC Continental Line group. History is the subject he is most excited about and I look forward to helping him learn and grow in this area. I will be using a variety of books, our North Carolina Junior Historians program, the North Carolina Historic Sites, and a variety of other resources to take them through North Carolina’s history. We will also use State History from a Christian Perspective to get us started and get a good overview of North Carolina.

For science he will be using Apologia General Science . This was another product that I had the privilege of reviewing this summer. I had been looking for a science that would help him become more independent and give him a good review of a variety of concepts in preparation for high school next year. This program did an excellent job of that and is very well laid out. I loved how easy it was for him to know exactly what he needed to accomplish because of the checklists and reminders that are included in the student journal.

Cutting Grass

To further his goals of running and growing his own business we started working through The Kingdom Code . He is loving the program, enjoying having his own grass cutting business, and looking forward to continuing in that program. It is a great program that teaches entrepreneurship and economics from a Biblical perspective. I will be sharing a weekly journal on the blog about his progress through this program, so make sure to follow along.

In addition to these programs, he will be doing Bible study each day and our morning time which will include read alouds, music appreciation, missionary studies, and more. Of course, there will also be lots of free play, field trips, and hands on adventures to keep the real-life learning going. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing more about what we are using for our morning time. If you have younger children you may want to check out Our Kindergarten Curriculum.

What are your favorite middle grades resources?

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Deals and Freebies

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is doing an amazing sale this month! Buy One year get One Year FREE! We use this for several of our courses and one price covers all the students in your home for as many of their over 400 courses and you would like to use.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Enrichment Studies has a great free fine arts memory match game this month!

Free Help Your Child’s Memory Book from All About Learning Press!

The Kingdom Code Journal #2

Welcome to installment two of our Journey Through the Code with the The Kingdom Code . This is the week my son had been waiting for, he could pick his business and get started. I loved that it was only lesson two and he was already getting started. Some programs want to teach them everything before they get started but they can easily get bored or frustrated. By only waiting until lesson 2, he was excited and motivated.

Lego Businesses

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Key to the Lesson: “In a free enterprise system, I can build a better business if I seek wisdom.”

In this lesson he learned about capitalism and free enterprise. We discussed various ways that businesses can be competitive and what freedoms are enjoyed by the owners of private businesses. We discussed various business opportunities and what each one of them would involve, the difficulties that would need to be overcome, and which one would work best for our family. He created a city featuring various service businesses out of Legos and then he chose his own business. Once he had chosen, he filled out the Treasure Builder Permit which was an agreement between the child and parents about the business that would be started. I loved how formal and official this made the business feel for my son.

He was learning to seek wisdom from the Bible and from trusted mentors, the value and benefit of entrepreneurship and free enterprise, and how to analyze the potential benefits and challenges of various opportunities. My son choose to open his own grass cutting and lawn care business as a way to best utilize his time and talents.

Stay tuned next week for lesson two of The Kingdom Code and don’t forget that you can get 10% of this program using Coupon Code: 10TKC08! If you have any questions about our journey let me know in the comments and I will be sure to try and address them in our next installment.

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Library and Educational Services LLC (Review)

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Most of the reviews you will find on this blog are for specific products, but this review is a bit different. I had the opportunity to review a selection from the online bookstore, Library and Educational Services LLC. They were very generous in allowing me to pick out on book from the “Who Was…” series, an audiobook on CD from Lifehouse Theater, and $60 worth of books from their Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction books. You can imagine the excitement at my house as we browsed, discussed, and made our final selections. There were so many to choose from but I tried to get something each of my children would enjoy.

We were already big fans of the “Who Was…” series and excited to be able to pick out a new one for our collection. When I realized how great their prices were, I went ahead and picked up an extra one at my expense. The children were thrilled to receive Who Was Beatrix Potter? and Who Was J.R.R. Tolkien?. These are two of the authors that we were already planning to study this year so the books work nicely with our curriculum. IF you are not familiar with this series, they are short easy to read biographies that include lots of great information for young readers. I would recommend them for the 7-12 year old range, although my thirteen-year-old still enjoys reading them as a quick read.

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Lifehouse Theater Audio books were new to me but we love audio books and I was excited to give it a try. We had a family trip to our state capital and used the time coming home to listen to their version of Pride and Prejudice. This was an abridged version of the story, much to the relief of my husband, but really well done. The voices were engaging and story was well represented. I thought it was a great introduction to the story and look forward to reading the full text with them in a few years.

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As I sat down to browse through the Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction books, I could have easily spent hundreds of dollars on books. There were so many amazing titles to choose from but I tried to stick closely to my $60 budget. In the end, I chose three sets that I thought would be beneficial to our family. First, a set of two animal detectives books. These books are for early readers and were great for me to read aloud to my five-year-old son. They featured military dolphins and police dogs and he has loved hearing me read them and going through on his own and viewing the pictures. Then for my oldest two children, I picked up a set of Stories in American History. These four hardback chapter books each teach about a different part of American History. They are colorful and engaging but not ‘babyish’. Finally, I picked up a set of books for us to use together for nature study. The title, A Kid’s Guide to Animal Poop, made the children laugh and the boys were immediately drawn to them. However, while the title is a bit silly, the books are full of great information about each of the four animals that were represented in the series. They will be a great addition to our science and nature study this year.

Overall, I was very pleased with the prompt service and reasonable prices offered by Library and Educational Services LLC. They had a great selection of books and they were very high-quality books which I expect to last for many years. They also have a great selection of books on CD that I am looking forward to utilizing for some Christmas shopping this year. I was also impressed by the speed of service. The books were shipped out the very next day and arrived in about 3-4 days. As you prepare for the upcoming school year, you should take a look at the selection offered by Library and Educational Services LLC and see what they have that might work well with your curriculum choices.

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Our Sixth Grade Curriculum Choices

I am excited to share with you today the very best and only correct sixth grade curriculum! Just kidding! I firmly believe that there are many great programs. There are many factors that go into choosing the best curriculum for your child. However, I always like to share what we are using in case it helps someone find a program that works well for their family.

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My daughter is eleven and getting ready to start her sixth-grade year. When we sat down and discussed her goals for the year, she wanted to work on improving her running, her music skills, start her own weaving business, and read through the entire Old Testament. As I sat down to plan her curriculum, I wanted to find ways to incorporate both the academic goals that I had for her as well as her own goals and interests.

Glossary Sample

For language arts, we are using a combination of four programs. This might sound a bit overwhelming but they each cover a different area and generally only require a few minutes each day per program. First, we are continuing to use All About Spelling. It is one of my favorite programs ever because it was such a game changer for our family. This program helped both of my older children to finally understand spelling and translate what they were learning in spelling to their everyday writing. Last spring, my daughter had the opportunity to try out Fix It! Grammar from IEW and we felt like it was a really good fit. The short lessons were effective without being overwhelming and so we are going to continue to use that program for Grammar. For literature we are going to use Analyzing, Understanding, and Exploring Literature from SchoolhouseTeachers.com. Finally, we are going to start working our way through Sharon Watson’s writing program Jump In. My son started this program last spring and we really liked it. She has various plans to cover this material in anywhere from one to three years. I plan on using the two-year track with my daughter.

For the last two years my daughter has used Math For A Living Education. She has really enjoyed the program and it worked well for her. I thought about switching her to something that she could use all through middle school (level six is the highest in this program), but since she liked it and wanted to continue, we decided to go ahead and finish out the program before switching to something new next year. I love that it is a very open and go program that includes lots of real-life application to help them understand why they need the math and when they will use it in real life.

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For science, we are finishing up a science program that we started but did not finish last year: Apologia Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics. We love the Apologia series but got behind due to the hurricane and switched our science focus to match what was happening in our lives. We are excited to dive back into this program and finish it out. We enjoy all of the hands-on projects and the creation-based approach to science.

We will be studying North Carolina History as a family. We love history and have spent a good deal of time volunteering at our local historic site, so the children are very excited about this year’s history line-up. I will be using a variety of books, our North Carolina Junior Historians program, the North Carolina Historic Sites, and a variety of other resources to take them through North Carolina’s history. We will also use State History from a Christian Perspective to get us started and get a good overview of North Carolina.

For art, she will work on lessons from You Are An Artist Chalk Pastels. She does not see herself as much of an artist, but has found that she can follow along with Nana’s simple and clear instructions to create adorable pictures. I think that the program helps her gain confidence in her art abilities and takes her outside of her ‘box’ and lets her try new things. For music, she takes violin lessons from Practice Monkeys. We love this gentle and convenient approach to music lessons. She is progressing through the levels of the program quickly and enjoys practicing each day. She is also hoping to add piano lessons through the same program in January. I love that she can manage this new passion and is being responsible in practicing and ‘going to’ her online lessons without a lot of reminding. We are also going to incorporate some music appreciation materials during our morning time and evening education.

In addition to these programs, she will be doing Bible study each day and our morning time which will include read alouds, music appreciation, missionary studies, and more. Of course, there will also be lots of free play, field trips, and hands on adventures to keep the real-life learning going. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing more about what we are using for our morning time as well as the programs I am using for my eighth grader. If you have younger children you may want to check out Our Kindergarten Curriculum.

What are your favorite middle grades resources?

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Deals and Freebies

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is doing an amazing sale this month! Buy One year get One Year FREE! We use this for several of our courses and one price covers all the students in your home for as many of their over 400 courses and you would like to use.

Not Consumed is having a great FREE Homeschool Curriculum week this week including live chats, free printables and daily giveaways! make sure to check it out.

Free ABC Mouse Trial: Looking for a little summer education for your children when it is too hot to play outside? ABC Mouse is offering a FREE 30 day trial. This is a great way to give it a try and see if it works for your child.

Free Makeover Your Morning 5 Day Challenge! This is a great way to help re-focus and get your day off on the right foot.

Harry The Happy Mouse (Free on Kindle)

Illustrated Would You Rather Book (Free on Kindle)

Enrichment Studies has a great free fine arts memory match game this month!

Free Help Your Child’s Memory Book from All About Learning Press!

Home School in the Woods Time Travelers (Review)

After an unusually crazy year (thanks to Hurricane Florence) we were finally finishing up our school year at the end of June. About that same time, I was given the opportunity to review one of the Time Travelers U.S. History Studies by Home School in the Woods. I was tired, the children were tired, and we all needed a break. I almost turned down the review without even discussing it with them. However, I casually mentioned it to them because I knew they had really enjoyed it when we used the Project Passport World History Studies last year to study Ancient Egypt. To my surprise they both enthusiastically told me they wanted to review the product, even though it meant working through it on their summer break.

Since the children were excited about it, I agreed to the review and we turned it into a summer family learning project. We would gather as a family in the evenings a few nights a week and work through a lesson or two. We chose to review Time Travelers: The Early 19th Century because that was a time period my children were interested in learning more about. This program includes 25 days of lessons (five of which are project days to complete projects associated with the other lessons). The lessons include a text (generally 2-3 pages) which I read aloud to the family at the beginning of each lesson. This was the new information that we were learning for the lessons.

Then for each lesson there was a variety of activities. You could have each student complete all of the activities, especially if you were using this as a primary history curriculum or unit study. However, since we were enjoying this as a summer family project, I chose to just have each of my older children do one or two activities per lesson. This was enough to reinforce what was being taught but still kept it light and fun.

Time Travelers 2

The activities that were offered included a timeline, lap book components, copywork, maps, a song book, hands-on projects, and recipes. Students could also create a newspaper and write articles related to the lessons. We chose to primarily focus on the song book, maps, and timeline. In addition, we are collecting the recipes and looking forward to having a celebratory dinner when we finish this program in a few weeks. She even has a post on her blog with ideas on incorporating recipes.

I think that the timeline is so helpful, especially for old students, in helping to understand what things were happening concurrently and how different events impacted other events. My son enjoyed cutting out the timeline figures that went with each lesson and adding them to our timeline pages.

The map component for this program was really well thought out and added a lot to our discussions. It started with a base map in the first lesson and then added maps on clear overlays to help students understand how the country was changing during this time period. We printed off the maps, cut out the parts that had changed and glued them onto the clear sheets. Then the clear sheets were placed on top of the other maps making it very easy to conceptualize the changes.

My daughter has recently taken a strong interest in music and enjoyed creating the song book. For the lessons that had songs, we would print out the words that were included with the lesson, read over them, and then find the song performed and listen to the song. They really enjoyed this component of the study.

While we did not have time to do all of the hands-on projects there were some really neat ideas included and we plan to go back and complete more of them. My five year old who was listening along with us, would really like to make the coon skin cap project once I get the needed materials. There were other projects like making corn husk dolls and making jumping jack toys (that one is coming up in our lessons this week and I know my son will enjoy it).

Overall, we found this to be a really fun summer learning project for our family. I think it offers a lot of flexibility to be used as a family or to be used as a more formal curriculum. If you were using it as a curriculum, I would recommend it for upper elementary school and possibly middle grades students. For our history loving family, I would probably have my middle school student take some of the lessons a bit deeper with further research but it would be a good base of study. If you were using this program for the year you would probably want to go through at least three or four of the various time periods over the course of a school year. You could also use these programs to supplement and add a more creative component to your other history studies. If you were using a program that briefly covered the time period, this could be a great way to go deeper into an area of interest.

I encourage you to check out all of the Time Travelers U.S. History Studies and to click on the graphic below to check out the other Crew Reviews which cover a variety of time periods as well as some of the other Home School in the Woods products. You can also see our review of Project Passport: Ancient Egypt from last year. Have you tried any of these products? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.