Daily GRAMS (Guided Review Aiding Mastery Skills) This is one of those simple ideas that I love as a review in our weekly schedule. We thoroughly covered grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence writing in our grammar and logic stage years (grades 4-8). As high school students, they no longer needed a full-blown language arts program, but I also didn’t want…
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Winter Promise American Story 1 Curriculum Review
Winter Promise (WP) is a provider of complete curriculum packages (excepting math and often science, depending on the program). Their philosophy is primarily Charlotte Mason with an emphasis on living books, narration, timelines, and historical fiction read alouds. One main difference from other similar curriculum providers is the addition of hands-on projects, paper crafts and notebooking pages. American Story 1…
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Geopuzzles
Geography a bore? Not anymore! As the name implies, Geopuzzles are geography-based puzzles manufactured by GeoToys. There are five continent puzzles, each focusing on a specific area of the globe. The world according to Geopuzzles has the following divisions: ●Africa and the Middle East ●Asia ●Europe ●Latin America ●U.S. and Canada It may be important to know that the Middle…
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Jonathan Park CD’s
I think my older children were 8 and 5 when we bought the first volume of the Jonathan Park audio series. We’ve been hooked ever since, buying a new volume each year for Christmas. What an exciting, educational joy these CD sets are for our entire family (not just the children!) The action-packed story lines follow the Park and Brennan…
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Book of Saints
Amy Welborn’s Book of Saints is a good choice for a living book about the lives of saints. My twelve year old son reads the four page stories independently at a rate of two per week. He then narrates in writing, often draws a picture or sometimes journals after each reading. When asked what he likes best about the stories…
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Vocabulary Cartoons, SAT Word Power
I have to admit, when I find a book or resource that works wonderfully for my family, I love to tell everyone about it. That’s exactly how I felt when I found this book. I was so excited by the results I saw right away that I literally carried this around in my purse so I wouldn’t forget to show…
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The Well Planned Day – Homeschool Planner
The Well Planned Day is this homeschooling mother’s dream! I have searched high and low for a complete, comprehensive planner that offered both homeschooling and household planning in once space, without a zillion separate forms. I was thrilled when I stumbled upon the Well Planned Day. The planner is created by “Home Educating Family” which offers three different planners, depending…
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Scribblenauts Game for the Nintendo DS
We are a household of gamers. While the games we like to play are different from one another, right or wrong, we all seem to answer the call of that gentle glow of an electronic game. In particular, I am a fan of the Nintendo DS. Although I have never personally played it for more than a few minutes, I…
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Our Mother Tongue
I really love the Rod & Staff English curriculum. It is wonderfully thorough, sequential, and it just makes sense to me. (I even reviewed it on The Curriculum Choice. ) I thought I would continue using it through the 8th grade. But last year my son (currently 11 years old) asked me why he had to keep doing the same…
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Reading Detective Review
Some children are natural readers. They analyze, synthesize, understanding inferences, cause and affect and other advanced reading comprehension issues in a natural manner. However, other children will struggle with one or more of these issues for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they simply need more experience with reading, or maybe, as with my own high school student, they are in the…
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