Zirrly Super Beads: A Low Mess, Low Stress Craft Review!

A fun craft that my ten year old can do independently and the three year old can do with a little help from the ten year old that also doesn’t leave my house full of glitter or paint? Sign me up! I recently had the opportunity to review Zirrly Super Beads and I was impressed. This was my first experience with Zirrly and I discovered that they have lots of different craft and art products. They came at a great time because we had just had our fourth child and I needed a few activities to keep the older children busy while I was focused on the baby. We have done other bead kits that required ironing but these attach with only water. We received the Super Beads Bird Set.

I had my ten year old daughter try it out first. I read over the directions with her but she was able to complete the first project without any additional assistance from me. Once she had gotten the hang of it with that first set, I had her help her three (almost four) year old brother with the second bird. He needed help getting it set up and staying on task but he was able to do most of the work himself. It was a great way for him to work on his fine motor skills and have fun with his sister. They completed the third bird in the kit together as well.

The process is very simple, you put your template under the plastic grid that is sent with the kit and then place the beads on top based on the colored template. Once the beads are in place you mist them with water, using the spray bottle included in the kit. Wait at least an hour and then you can carefully remove your object from the board and you have your finished product. The instructions said that if it broke you could fix it by placing it back and respraying it. My daughter wanted to be sure that was true, so she took the extra beads and made a random shape. She let it dry, removed it and promptly broke it apart. She then placed it back and resprayed it. Just as they had stated it went back together with no problems.

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One tip we found to keep things together and make it a little easier was to put the beads you are working with into a small bowl or muffin tin. This kept them from rolling onto the floor and made it easier for little fingers to grasp them.

The beads are small so I would not recommend trying to use it with a small child that still puts things in their mouths, but otherwise it is a great project for many ages. It is an independent project for most children that can read the instructions and a great family project for preschoolers. In addition to the Super Beads Bird Set they have several other sets including a 3D Jungle Animals set and a 3D Car and Truck Set. Don’t forget to click below to check out all of the other reviews of the various sets.

Get Your Kicks on Route 66: A Home School in the Woods Review

I had heard so many wonderful things about the Home School in the Woods products but we had not tried any of her games. When I was offered the chance to review one of her Á La Carte products, the Get Your Kicks on Route 66 file folder game, which covered the Industrial Revolution, World War I, and the Great Depression I was very excited. If you are following along on our Journey Through History you know those are the topics we covered in February and March.

The game is a printable PDF that is very easy to assemble. One of the things that impressed me as I was looking over the PDF was that she had the pages set up so that the ones that needed to be front and back could easily be printed that way in a printer that does double sided pages. This meant I only had to load my cardstock and press print, instead of making sure everything was lined up and printing one side and then putting the paper back in to print the other side. All in all, I had the game printed, colored, and set up in only about 15 minutes.

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The first time we played the game we used it during our evening family time. My children absolutely loved it and my history buff husband enjoyed it as well. It was neat to see what they remembered from what we had already covered and get a chance to talk about a few things that we had not already covered as the questions came up. Even the three year old enjoyed helping them move their markers across the board. I felt that the questions were interesting and appropriate. The children have played multiple times since that first night, including with their grandmother when she came to visit. We also used the question cards one night without the board, just as a trivia game. Our entire family really enjoyed this game and I am hoping to purchase some of her similar games for other time periods to incorporate into our history lessons.

In addition to the history board game, my daughter had the chance to try her hand at quilling. Quilling is a colonial paper craft and our family loves to help out a local colonial era historic site. She may be able to use this new skill and show others about this craft as she volunteers as a historic interpreter. It seems like a great way to engage children in history. My daughter really enjoyed this project, The Art of Quilling, and I love that using those instructions she can repeat the project using other colors to make more flowers and projects. Hers did not turn out quite as uniform as the sample but it was adorable and I thought a great job for the first try. One trick that she found very helpful was to use the paper cutter she has for scrapbooking to cut the paper strips. This helped her keep them even.

There were so many great Á La Carte options that I had a hard time narrowing it down to just the two that we reviewed. We are looking at possibly purchasing a few more to tie into our US History studies this year. The WWII: Military Weaponry Notebook Project looks like it would be a huge hit with my son. If you have a child that loves to write or you want to incorporate writing into your history program there are lots of great newspaper projects, like this American Beginnings Newspaper Collection.

I truly can not say enough good things about these projects. They were inexpensive, easy to use, educational, and lots of fun for the whole family. We enjoy making ‘school’ and learning a family experience and so these were a perfect fit for us. There are many more reviews of other Home School in the Woods Á La Carte options so make sure to click on the link below and check out all of the crew reviews!

When you sign up for our free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

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This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

Homestead Homeschool: Our 4-H Goat

It is time for our monthly Homestead Homeschool post and this time I’ve interviewed my 10 year old daughter, Elizabeth. She is sharing today about the goat that she is raising for our 4-H livestock show next month. She is learning so much about responsibility, animal care, business, and public speaking. She will show her goat in the same show that my son shows his pig which we talked about last month in, Homesteading Homeschool: Our 4H Pig. If this sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to contact your local 4-H agent. Even if you don’t have the land or space to raise an animal at your home there are often ways to keep the animal at a local farm and the child go there to care for the animal.

Tell me about your 4-H Goat Project.

“I am raising a goat to show in the 4H livestock show. I will have the goat for about two months. I am training the goat to be able to walk with me on a harness around the ring. ”

Tell me about your goat.

“My goat’s name is Cream because it looks like ice cream with a chocolate head and a vanilla body. It has floppy ears and a short tail. She is really cute and soft. I enjoy playing with her.”

What do you have to do with your goat each day?

“I have to feed it twice each day. I take it out on a harness and walk it each day to practice for the show. I provide it with clean water each day as well as hay. I spend time playing with it and rubbing it each day. ”

What does showing your goat look like?

“I will get it cleaned up and ready for the show. Then I will have it in a choker collar and it will walk with me around the show ring. I will need to keep it between me and the judge. I will do this twice. The first time is for showmanship where they judge how well I work with the goat. The second time they will look for the meat and characteristics of the goat for the market class. ”

What do you hope to learn and accomplish this year?

“I want to learn more about goats and how to show a goat. I hope to get grand champion at the show. ”

What do you think other people should know about showing goats?

“It is fun and easier than some other animals. ”

This is her first year showing an animal and I’m looking forward to watching her grow and learn through this process. She is planning to sell her goat after the show for breeding. While goats can go to to market and slaughter they are not required to and she preferred not to go that route. Goats can be shown on a circuit at several shows, but we are just participating in the one local show at this time. The show is in April and I’ll post some pictures and results afterwards. If you have any questions about 4-H you can contact your local cooperative extension office or check out our post, But I don’t do animals…or using 4-H in our homeschool.

If you participate in 4-H, tell us your favorite part in the comments. Also, please feel free to ask questions about the goat or the show in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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Deals and Freebies:

Free St. Patrick’ s Day Unit Study

Story of the World Sale at Educents! We love this history program and it is over 50% off right now at Educents!

25% of Easter Art courses at You Are An Artist ChalkPastel.com

It is the March “Building Readers & Writers from Preschoolers to Teens” Bundle! Do you have a reluctant writer? Does your child have a desire to read? Do you have a preschooler at home? If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, you need this month’s March bundle at The Old Schoolhouse® – 13 eBooks and 4 Print Magazines for only $29!

Review: Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think

Do you feel like you spend too much time lecturing your children? Is what you are doing not working? I had the chance to review Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think by Joey and Carla Link of Parenting Made Practical. This is a video of their live presentation to parents and is recommended for parents of children ages 8-college. To give you some background, Joey Link has served as a youth and families minister as well as the director of a non-profit parenting ministry. Carla has a degree in social work. They have three adult children and four grandchildren. While certainly not a Hollywood quality production, I did find that this video was well done. It was clear, easy to follow, and had excellent sound quality.

Their first major point was that disobedience is a sin and should be dealt with as such. Instead of reminding, lecturing, etc parents should handle the disobedience from a sin standpoint. They also brought up making sure that children understood the direction and had been trained to carry out the task. One of their main strategies was that instead of lecturing our children we should be asking them questions. These questions help them to think about what they have done and what they should have done instead of us just lecturing them and telling them what they did wrong. This series of questioning helps them to begin thinking for themselves.

In our family, I am working to incorporate more questions to help the children begin to think for themselves and take more responsibility for their actions. Due to my son’s ADHD, we personally don’t feel like it is prudent to take away reminders but we do want to help him to take responsibility for his actions and think about the decisions that he is making. He needs frequent reminders from us as well as things like lists and visual cues to remember tasks and rules.

While this video was not a great fit for our family due to my son’s ADHD, I can see how for children who are choosing not to do what they are asked it could be a good fit. If you have children that are not following through on instructions because they know that there will be lots of reminders or because there are no consequences, this might be a good tool for your family.

In addition to the video presentation, Taming the Lecture Bug, the Link’s have a book by the same title. They also have a DVD titled, Navigating the Rapids of Parenting. This DVD is recommended for parents of children ages 2 to college. It talks about the different phases and stages of parenting and help your child through the bumpy times. Another product which I might need in a few years is, Dating, Courting & Choosing a Mate… What Works? (Video) (for parents of kids ages 9-college). While I do have children that are older than nine, I’m not quite ready to tackle those areas. These other products were reviewed by other Crew members so click on the link below to get more information and reviews of those products as well as additional reviews from families that used Taming the Lecture Bug.

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Our Newest Addition and History Updates

If you follow Dawn Peluso, Schoolin’ Swag on Facebook then you know we have had a busy few weeks in our home. We welcomed our fourth child on February 21st. We have been blessed with a fairly smooth delivery and recovery. I’ve been spending most of my days taking care of him and finding our families new ‘normal’. Over the next few weeks, I plan to get back into the swing of things and post more resources on Facebook. I also hope to get back into our regular blog posts for history and book reviews.

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After he was born we took the rest of the week off of school to settle in and rest. However, we have done a modified school schedule since then. Prior to him being born I had modified the children’s regular weekly contract (I thought I was finished….) to give them a contract that could be done without a lot of assistance on my part during these first few weeks. This has been a real blessing in keeping them on a loose schedule and moving forward while still allowing me to focus on the needs of the baby.

My husband took over most of the history lessons for the last couple of weeks. We were working on the Industrial Revolution and the Wright Brothers. We kept things fairly simple by using dinner time conversations and several documentaries to finish up that section of history. For the Wright Brothers we used a video on demand from the NC History Museum. We used some of the episodes of the Men Who Built America to cover the Industrial Revolution. These series has excellent information but some of the episodes do show some violence or have language that you may find inappropriate for your children, so please screen them before sharing with your children to make sure they are appropriate for your family. We personally skip a couple of the episodes but find the others to be a great resource. We also had a chance to play a game from Homeschool in the Woods that covers the Industrial Revolution and World War I. I’ll be sharing a full review of that game and another fun product in an upcoming post.

I have posted several reviews over the last couple of weeks and have a giveaway going on for a free set of Pencil Grip Magic Stix Markers.

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Deals and Freebies:

Free St. Patrick’ s Day Unit Study

Free Art Lesson for the Green Ember: I’m so excited for this free art lesson from one of my favorite art programs that goes along with one of our favorite book series! https://www.facebook.com/events/212167569367588/ Anyone else love the Green Ember Series? (http://amzn.to/2FZELJe aff)

Check out some other posts over at this week’s Homeschool Highlights!

Easter Resources and Ideas

Easter is one of the more important holidays in our house. We primarily focus on the religious aspects of Easter and celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus but we also enjoy some of the other fun aspects of the holiday.

This year we will be using our Resurrection Eggs each night for the twelve days before Easter to go through together as a family devotional along with the book Benjamin’s Box.

Art and Music for Easter

My daughter has already colored some pictures to decorate for Easter using our Magic Stix Washable Markers. We are looking forward to chalk pastel Easter art. If you have not had the opportunity to try these great lessons before, check out the free palm branch lesson that is part of the Easter Art class. All you need to get started is some plain paper and an inexpensive set of chalk pastels.

We are also going to spend time doing a hymn study together during our morning time the week prior to Easter. There are several hymn study resources below. Some are very simple and available as free downloads. Not Consumed also had a great set of more detailed hymn studies for Easter. These are great if you want an open and go study.

Dying Easter Eggs

If time allows, we will make some natural dyes and dye some Easter eggs. We have chickens and so our eggs are naturally darker than store bought. Dying them with natural dyes can be a bit tricky but it is a fun process for the children. Another fun and easy way to decorate eggs without the artificial dyes is to use small stickers. This is a mess free way to get beautiful eggs without the dyes.

Cooking Activities for Easter

Finally, we will make the Easter story cookies, which is a new recipe for us, and the Resurrection Rolls. I will note that I found out the hard way that it is very important to use very fresh marshmallows for those, or they do not turn out correctly and you lose the visual effect.

We also have several family events to attend and my daughter will probably make a pineapple bunny like the one in this video (and the one shown in the picture below). It is a healthy and cute snack that we can take to events that is also fairly easy to make.

I have included a variety of resources below to incorporate Easter into your school day or family celebrations for students of all ages. I hope that you find them helpful and that you have a Blessed Easter. Please share in the comments your favorite Easter tradition or resource.

Homeschool Easter Resources:

Easter Chalk Pastel Art Course

Videos, Music, Art, and Literature Lessons (Schoolhouse Teachers)

Easter Unit Studies (some religious some nonreligious)

Easter Story Cookies

Resurrection Rolls

Easter Science Experiments

Easter Resurrection Pack

Resurrection Day Preschool Pack

Easter Family Devotional

Resurrection Lapbook

Mini-Resurrection Garden

Just Color Easter

Magic Watercolor Art

‘Stained Glass’ Cross

Easter Bible Lapbook

Christ Arose Hymn Study Copywork

Easter Notebooking Page

Easter Books and Movies:

Resurrection Eggs

Benjamin’s Box or on Kindle for only $1.99

Tale of Three Trees

Check out these great Hymn Studies by Not Consumed.

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Deals and Freebies

Schoolhouse Teachers is also offering a great sale! If you want to give it a try, your first month is only $1 or you can get an entire year for $111. My daughter is getting ready to use a photography class from our subscription to help her learn more about her new (to her) camera.

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)

CursiveLogic Review

My daughter has been interested in learning to write cursive for several years. She has worked a bit on her own in several cursive programs but nothing really stuck and it was not something that made it onto the list of things that we require and work together on during our school time. But that is a discussion for another time! I recently had the opportunity to review the CursiveLogic program. She was very excited to try out the new program. We received the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack as well as the Art of Cursive coloring book.

Part of the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack is their instructional webinar. You can purchase the book without the webinar, but I highly recommend the webinar. It really walks you through their program and how it works making it so much easier to understand and explain. I went through the instructional webinar on my own at first to get a better understanding of the program before I introduced it to my daughter. The webinar is designed to ‘train the trainer’ and teach you as the parent or teacher how to teach cursive using their program. However, I felt that my daughter was mature enough to sit with me and watch the instructional webinar and then with some guidance from me begin working on the program. This worked very well for our family as it freed up some of my time to work on other things but still gave her the support she needed to be successful.

We watched the first section of the webinar together, I talked through it with her and then she was able to complete the first week’s assignments. I also noticed her practicing those first letters in her free time during the week. She even took the photograph below to show her dad how much she had learned after the first day or two. The program uses an innovative approach of teaching letters in a chain from the very beginning instead of stand alone letters. They also use some catchy phrases to help remember the letter formation and by the end of the first week they are writing real words. They learn a new letter string each week for four weeks to complete the lower case alphabet. After that first week we would watch a bit of the video each week and then she would complete the lessons for that week. There were four days lessons for each week. She was able to learn the entire lower case alphabet in one month including putting them together to make words! She starts on capital letters next week.

CursiveLogic

Whether cursive is an important focus for your homeschool or just something one of your children wants to learn this is a great program. For younger students (they recommend the program for ages seven and above) you will need to spend more time walking them through the process and teaching them how to make the letter strings but older children can work more independently with the help of the webinar and some guidance. My daughter has enjoyed the program thus far and is looking forward to the work she is starting in capital letters. She also has the Art of Cursive coloring book sitting on her dresser just waiting until she finishes the program so that I’ll let her start the coloring book. The coloring book is not a necessary component to the program but is a great addition to reinforce the skills once they have been taught or for the parent to use to freshen up on the cursive and enjoy the stress relief of coloring.

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After

If you are looking for a thorough but easy to use cursive program that allows for an early feeling of success, I highly recommend this program. The webinar makes it very easy to teach and the workbook gives enough practice to help achieve mastery without being tedious. Check out the CursiveLogic Quick-Start Pack for your home or co-op and use code CREW2018 for a 20% discount through March 31, 2018.

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Pencil Grip Magic Stix Markers

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You may be thinking, why is she reviewing markers? I mean a marker is a marker right? Well Magic Stix Washable Markers from The Pencil Grip, Inc. are a bit different from most other markers that we have used. The first thing I noticed was the nice plastic case that they came in. The markers are all laid out in it so you can see the colors and so far the case has held up well to the wear and tear of my children using them. Next, I know I’m not the only mom that has found markers without caps all dried up and unusable. While I do work with the children to remember to put caps on them, it still happens and ruins otherwise good markers. So when I heard that these markers were guaranteed to not dry out even without their cap for at least seven days I was interested in checking this out.

My daughter picked out a color to help me test the seven day guarantee and because she knows that typically a marker would dry out she picked a color that she wasn’t as fond of (brown) so that if it did dry out she would still have her favorite colors. At the end of the test (which actually ended up being eight days because life was a little crazy on day seven) the marker was still just a dark and sharp as it had been on day one.

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One thing that stood out to me when the children were using them to make some Valentine’s Day projects is that the colors were very bright and vivid. Some markers give dull or muted colors but these were some of the brightest we have used especially considering they are washable and non-toxic. I will note that if the paper is very thin there was a little bit of ‘bleed through’ so if you have important papers underneath or ‘valuable’ surfaces you may want to be careful. However, it wiped off of the kitchen table without any problems and didn’t bleed through the thicker paper. Due to the ‘bleed through’ issue we did decide that in our family these were great markers for my 10 and 11 year olds but probably not the best choice for the three year old.

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Each year we try to send Valentines to some widows that we know to help brighten what might otherwise be a sad day. This year my daughter used the Magic Stix Washable Markers to color the Valentines and they turned out beautifully. Next, my daughter did a beautiful Easter picture that we had printed on card stock. The colors turned out wonderfully and we are using it as one of the decorations in our home.

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When we first received our set they stayed at my desk so that I could try them out, test one, and see what I thought. The children had to ask to use them (which they did and were able to quite often). They are excited that now that I have finished my review they can keep them in the art cabinet to use anytime they want. We may get an extra set so that each of the older children can have their own set at their desks.

As an added bonus, The Pencil Grip, Inc. has agreed to give away another set of these wonderful markers to one lucky reader! Enter below for your chance to win a new set mailed to you! This giveaway is for US addresses only!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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‘Winter Games’ Lego Projects

I’m so excited to be able to share with you all of these wonderful Lego projects submitted by readers. These children have done an outstanding job with their building and creativity. I believe that building and creating allows them to not only build fine motor skills but engage their minds in creative and critical thinking that is every bit as beneficial to their brains as ‘book work’.

This month’s theme was ‘Winter Games’ and you can see we had a variety of ideas related to that theme. (If you forgot to send in your pictures I will take submissions through the weekend.) The theme for March is ‘history’. So anything related to history. A person, a monument, a place, a battle, etc.

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Please feel free to share this post to show your friends and family your hard work and invite your friends to join in next month’s Lego Challenge.

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St. Patrick’s Day Fun and Resources

St. Patrick’s Day takes on many different forms in different families. For some it is a celebration of the life of Saint Patrick, for some it is about everything green, leprechauns and rainbows. With a new baby in the house we are not planning on going ‘all out’ this year with any kind of St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

Saint Patrick’s Day Homeschool Food Ideas

However, we are still going to do a few fun and simple things to remember the day. We love corn beef, so any excuse for corn beef and cabbage is welcome in our home, even if it’s nor really and “Irish’ dish. If you want to make your own from scratch, or you’re interested in some culinary history, check out the Corn the Beef Good Eats episode. It is also a simple meal to cook in my crock pot which is a big plus!

The children love fun thematic snacks, so I’ll let the older children choose a snack or two from the ideas below to fix on their own. Then I can read one of our St. Patrick’s Day books while we all enjoy the snacks.

Preschool Saint Patrick’s Day Ideas

For my three year old, we have changed out his Valentine’s Day sensory bottle for a St. Patrick’s Day themed bottle. I simply took out the pink and white beads and hearts (putting them in a bag for next year) and added in some adorable Shamrock jewels.

I found my Shamrock jewels at Hobby Lobby but you could also use something like this confetti that I found on Amazon Prime. The ones I found are different sizes so we can talk about smaller and larger. You could also use them for counting. Younger children will just enjoy seeing the colors and movement as they shake the bottle.

Shamrock Jewels

Add Water

Shake and Enjoy!

Saint Patricks Day Bible Lessons

I also want to use the St. Patrick’s Day Bible verse resource to cover the Beatitudes. We will use them for copy work with the older children. This is an easy way to incorporate it into our regular school day.

We will watch the clip about St. Patrick from Veggie Tales: Sumo of the Opera which tells the story of how he ended up ministering to the people of Ireland. I will probably also substitute the abbreviations page for their grammar work one day because I’ve noticed recently that we could use a review of some standard abbreviations.

Saint Patrick’s Day Homeschool Art Lessons

We will hopefully have time to enjoy a chalk art pastel lesson. They have one with a shamrock as well as a rainbow in their Spring Art Lessons that would be perfect to go along with this study. If you are going to do rainbows there is also a fun Magic School Bus episode about rainbows.

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What are your favorite ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? I’d love to have you share your favorite traditions or resources in the comments and check out some of the fun resources below.

Saint Patrick’s Day Homeschool Resources

Saind Patrick’s Day Foods:

Appetizers (several of these could be used to make lunch of dinner and most are naturally green)
St. Patrick’s Day Snack Ideas
Festive Treats
Traditional Irish Dinners
Shamrock Shakes (this looks yummy though I’d skip the artificial dyes and either use natural or add some green fruit to color it naturally)
Lunch Ideas