Maestro Classics offered us the opportunity to review their cd and activity book, The Nutcracker.  They sent us the cd in a nice case and an activity book.  This would make a great Christmas gift for a family! Have you ever heard Jim Weiss tell a story?  If not, stop reading this, grab your kiddos, and listen to this story! We are huge fans of his, and own several of his recordings.  He makes the stories come alive!   I was excited to see that he was the narrator for The Nutcracker.  He also wrote the script himself. I loved the idea of having a script to go along with…

Apologia Educational Ministries has another winner!  I reviewed their Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal earlier this year, so I had high expectations for this homeschool planner.   Apologia sent me not just a homeschool planner, but The Ultimate Homeschool Planner.  And, yes, it has lived up to its name. I’m a rather techy girl, so a lot of my life revolves around being online.  I’ve tried a variety of online resources for planners, and I’ve recently found myself coming back to pen and paper.  I would miss an appointment, or finding an appointment in my digital planner on the wrong date, minor things like that.  #hideseyes   I picked up…

I’ll admit, I’m a bit of an Institute for Excellence in Writing groupie.   I heard the founder, Andrew Pudewa, teach at a homeschool convention I attended last spring, and I went to every lecture he gave.   When we were offered the opportunity to review the Phonetic Zoo, I jumped at it.  Actually, I begged.  Pretty please, with sugar on top, let me review this product!   The kind folks over at The Old Schoolhouse agreed, and pretty soon this fabulous product arrived at my mailbox.  We’ve spent the last couple of months using this program: Institute For Excellence in Writing’s The Phonetic Zoo A Self-Teaching Spelling Program Level…

Reading skills, or the lack thereof, are reaching crisis levels in our nation.   The Dept of Education has found that 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. That’s 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.   Interestingly enough, 70 percent of the prison population can’t read.    Reading Kingdom would like to see a drastic change in those statistics!   They recently offered us a fabulous opportunity to review their program, Reading Kingdom Online.   We were given a year’s subscription. Reading Kingdom is designed to teach kiddos between…

  Foreign Language has been one of those subjects that’s on my “list” of things I want to add but either haven’t found a good way to do it or made it a priority to research.  I was excited when I was offered the opportunity to review one semester of Middlebury Interactive Languages’ programs.   After a bit of agonizing over which language to choose, we settled on their Elementary Spanish 1, Grades 3-5. Middlebury Interactive Languages offers a variety of digital language courses including Spanish, French, German, Chinese.  For my 3rd grader, Super D, they currently offer 2 semesters of Spanish, French, and German and 1 semester of Chinese. All the…