Kandy is my youngest and my only girl, lately she has been begging for "shool" everyday, even on the weekends, even when the boys aren't doing school.  She loves getting to do letters, color, crafts and most of all the one-on-one time with mommy.  Growing up in a homeschool family sometimes the little ones want their own school just like their older siblings and BJU Press Homeschool makes it easy with BJU Press Focus on Fives kit.

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This curriculum is huge, I was shocked when 2 big boxes showed up on my porch.  The boxes were slam packed with content, a good mix of consumables, reproducables, reusables!

The teacher books are spiral bound, and have 25-30 lessons in each book.  With a total of 180 lessons. The lessons are easy to follow, gives you the subject you're on, the objectives, resources and materials, and any preparation work needed.  Below is a glipse of a lesson layout in the teacher workbook - Lesson 129 out of teacher book 6.

Each lesson usually consists of a review, a daily topic which alternates between a science, heritage, or reading segment, followed up by language arts. There is also extended activities which include arts and crafts, learning centers, writing, motor skills, bible connections, and more.

I definitely recommend prepping for your lessons ahead of time.  It took me a little while to figure out where each part of the lessons were, since there's 3 different workbooks, the different visual resources and there's reproducables in the back of the teacher books.  Once you get the hang of where to find everything it's not so bad to prep for but trying to find all of that with an eager child is difficult!!

The student books have a unique spine on them that allow for you to pull the pages out easily on them.  This works out well for us because I like keeping a portfolio for each kid. So with this style I can pull them out, we use them for the day, then punch holes and add them to her portofolio!  

Some big takeaways for Kandy have been working on her colors, mixing colors, shapes, identifying the letters of her name, pencil grip, writing and tracking from left to write, up and down, listening skills, and following directions!  She has picked up the routine of the program and mostly knows what to expect during our lesson.  Her favorite part is using the "Hopper" cutout on the stick.

With Kandy only being 2 years old, we haven't been using this curriculum at the pace it is laid out for, which is meant for a 5 year old kindergartener. That is the glory of homeschooling though, we don't have to work for it, we make it work for us!  This BJU Press Homeschool Curriculum has been a great first curriculum for Kandy and we look forward to slowly continuing to work our way through it.  Also looking forward it looks like BJU Press Homeschool will be launching some videos that go along with this curriculum this summer which will be a neat add on.

We have enjoyed this BJU Press Homeschool curriculum, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed it as well so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

Having three kids on three completely different levels of reading has it's challenges, so I have reluctantly been opening up to different online programs.  Most recently we've been given the opportunity to try out a  Reading Unlocked subscription from Reading Unlocked.  I can say this is by far is one of the best structured online reading subscriptions I've come across.

The interface is so simple and clean that even young hands who are still learning to use a mouse or trackpad can do this program without any problems.

Reading Unlocked uses a variation of see it, hear it, say it, find it, write it, read it, all without being to redundant. This program is absolutely worderful for visual learners, I especially love how they color code long vowels with their silent partner and the vowel blends are paired as a unit.  This all worked seemlessly for Krissy who is my 6 year old, however my older child who has auditory issues and while he is a visual learner the auditory aspect of this program would not have been clear enough for him. So if your child is deaf, hard of hearing or has problems with auditory processing I would make sure to stay near by so you can repeat the words for them.

Our favorite part of our day was reading the last passage together.  It's a neat reading drill where the student reads the red words and the parent reads the black words.  This drill is great for keep attention, practicing tracking, and helping create a rhythm for poems.  The stories were usually funny, sometimes we got mixed up and read the wrong color which just made us laugh even more.  It was always the most fun and most looked forward to!  Here's a clip of us reading together:

After our together reading passage was the "ta da" your done page, and you can see your progress, once you hit finish it logs you out.  The lessons take about 15 minutes each to complete. The student cannot skip things, it goes in a specific order and the "next" buttons do not pop up until the activity is done.  For the section of writing I had Krissy use a dry erase board, he'd write the word and then erase for the next one. 

Like I said in the beginning this program is very simple and clean, there are very little things to click on, even as a parent the photo below is the only tracking/progress you see.  For some reason it didn't track everything very well though, I think by my calculations we had finished our 20th lesson in this screen shot but it says only 15 days.  In the beginning we might have done a partial day here or there which might have thrown off the count.

We truly have enjoyed this Reading Unlocked Subscription, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed it as well so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

Everyone internalizes the messages they are told, especially the messages they are told repetitively.  Someone may hear messages like "you're fat and ugly" and over time they internalize it and start to believe it. This can have a huge negative impact on that person.  The same can happen in a postive way though, positive affirmations like "you are perfect and wonderfully made in God's image." When heard repetitively this positive affirmation will reach the very core and make a positive imact on that person!  Preborn Prodigy has created just the products for this with albums like "Prayers and Blessings for the Unborn Child," "Prayers and Blessings Newborn to 99" and "Math Prodigy."

These albums would make for great gifts for expectant parents or young children. In all honesty though even adults will find peace hearing these prayers, blessings and affirmations, especially during the current pandemic, with so much fear circulating around this type of positivity and faith is what we really need to be focued on! Faith over fear!!

We have enjoyed these Preborn Prodigy CD's, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed them as well so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

This year throughout lent we have been reading a new book published by David C Cook called The Easter Storybook by Laura Richie. This book is filled with 40 stories that tell the story of Jesus' life, reading it one small story at a time from Ash Wednesday through Easter.

The Easter Storybook is a hardback book about 8x10 in size. The cover is colorful has beautiful biblical illustrations, the pages are nice thick glossy colorful pages. The illustrations, by Ian Dale are very nicely done, specific to the stories. Each day includes a reference quote from the bible, the story translated for kids and comprehension/conversational questions to follow. All together it's about 5-7 minutes to read aloud.

The recommended age range is 4-8 with a 1st-2nd grade reading level. We use this book as a family each morning after/during breakfast time. Karter (10) enjoys leading us with it. His favorite part is the comprehension/conversational questions at the end, he likes playing teacher! Krissy (6) is capable of reading it but prefers it read aloud by someone else, he engages well with the story, questions and illustrations. I wouldn't expect most 1st-2nd graders to be able to read it.

​We have enjoyed The Easter Storybook published by David C Cook, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed it as well so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

The election process can be quite the intriquit process, many well educated adults don't even fully grasp it, myself included.  Home School In The Woods has created an all inclusive lap-pak that really puts everything together in a fun hands on visually pleasing way. With it being an election year we couldn't have asked for a better resource than the US Elections Lap-Pak.  

What's a lapbook?
Think of a project board, but made to fit in your lap.  It has one topic and each section of the lap-pak has information and details about that topic.

Benefits of lapbooks:

• Visual with pictures and pop ups
• Tactile learning
• Can be used over time gradually building on to a topic

I like this blog post from Home School In The Woods on the benifits of teaching with Lapbooks. Lapbooks can be made with any main topic, all you really need to put it together is a file folder, cardstock, tape and some writing utilsils.  Getting your creative juices flowing might take some work but Home School In The Woods has created many different lap-paks that have everything you need to make your lapbooks in easy to print PDF paks.  Topics include:

• US Elections
• Benjamin Franklin
• Knights
• Wonders of the World
• 20th Century America
• Mount St. Helens Erupts

​We have been working our way through the US Elections Lap-Pak, the boys have learned about:

• Definition of elections
• Forms of Gorvernment
• Branches of Government
• Sufferage
• Terms of Office
• Caucuses & Primaries

The pak comes with a HTML website that you follow along as you go, telling you the order for each project, has a lesson to read aloud or an audible option for the lesson, and a link to the PDF's.

This project has been fun to go through over the past few weeks, we even let the kids be apart of doing the mail-in ballots for the primaries and they got our "We Voted By Mail" stickers.  We will continue to build on to this lap-pak throughout the year as the election process unfolds.  I love that I'm learning new things right along with them!! 

We have enjoyed this Home School In The Woods Lap-pack, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed this lap-pak and others as well so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

We break up screentime in our house to 15 minutes each of "educational" and  "free time". We screen all of our apps and are very diligent about the safety of apps on our devices.  After I've screened the apps thoroughly I break them up based on if their educational or leisure on different slides on our ipads. Educational apps are usually games that include educational facts or lessons built into them.  Learning can be fun too!!  Lately during the kids educational screentime they've been brushing up on their math skills with these apps from Math Galaxy. 

• Fractions & Decimal Riddles
• Preschool Math - Math Galaxy
• Math Galaxy Word Problems Fun
• Times Tables Balloon Pop
• Zombie Numbers and Counting
• 5th Grade Math - Math Galaxy

Math Galaxy Word Problem Fun is a neat monopoly style game. Can be played single player or multi-player. you move around the board and solve a problem for a change to go cave mining where you might find treasure!  It has a calculator build in so you can use it for assistance or figure the problem out in your head and just type the answer in and hit enter. This game was Krissy's (6) favorite Math Galaxy app!

5th Grade Math Galaxy was loaded with all kinds of challenges, in each section you can work to earn robots and with the robots you can play in the labryinth.  Karter definitely was able to brush up on some skills in here, some he had forgotten because we haven't done them in a while and some were some new skills that we haven't gotten to yet. This was Karter's (10) favorite Math Galaxy app.

Please note these apps are iOs apps only available in the Apple App Store. Another little note to make is that we found with most if not all of the apps  that they worked much better on the iPads than on an iPhone.  Also they are so touch sensitive that it's important for the screen to be clean.  If the screen is not clean the apps can get glitchy.

Some of these Math Galaxy apps also have ebook that could go with them as a companion or be used individually.  The ebook is printable and has worksheets similar to the apps themselves without the actual scorekeeping.  Karter really liked that instead of the boring times table worksheets that I've been adding to his work recently he got these riddle worksheets.  It feels like it's still a little bit like his game.  The ebooks include the answer key and for the fractions also has visuals to help aid them if the answer isn't understood.

Our family has enjoyed these Math Galaxy apps and ebooks, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed many different Math Galaxy products so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

We got an awesome new childrens devotional to try out.  It's called The Action Bible Anytime Devotional by David C Cook. My boys have enjoyed the almost comic strip style illustrations that this book has.  It's geared for 8-12 year olds, I'd say the reading level is about there and some of the content but also peeks the interest of younger kids. . Karter, my 10 year old looks forward to reading us a devotional from out it each morning after breakfast.  It's about a five minute read aloud, and includes a bible verse, a story with relatable content, a scripted prayer and references to go further in the lesson straight from the bible. My 6 year old, Krissy, enjoys peeking in to see the illustrations as Karter reads it.

​This book is a 6x9" paperback book about 1/2 an inch thick with colorful illustrations on the cover that compliments what will be on each page in the book.  The illustrations do repeat themselves throughout the book about every 30 pages in order, my kids were the more observant ones who noticed that though.  The pages have a nice easy to read font with bullet points for the followup ideas and prayers. It includes 90 devotionals total.  

​I really like that this devotional can meet the needs of our day or season of life.  It doesn't have to be in order, we can pick our devotional based on our need. The theme of the devotional is at the top right corner and on the table of contents pages in parenthesis. This week, with all that going on in the world we have been reading the faith and courage ones, even momma needed to hear these messages.

​Karter says he wishes it had a comprehension question, he likes being "teacher" when he reads and wants to know if his siblings are listening.  I've been encouraging him to make sure he's interactive with them and letting them resond on the personal thought questions and prayers.

​My family enjoyed this devotional by David C Cook, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed it as well so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

I can remember as a kid running to the mailbox hoping that there was something for me, more often than not it was for my parents, they were so lucky to get mail everyday!! Or so I thought! Anyone else remember that joy as a kid? Even now when the Amazon packages arrive, our poor parents didn't have that luxery!  So I guess the joy of receiving mail never really fades but for kids it's thought of even higher because there's never bills, notices or IRS audits mixed in with those occassional letters to rain their parades!

As a military family we started pen pals at a very young age, the best part is our pen pals aren't just strangers we've never met they're friends that have moved away and letters are how kids stay in touch.  We have pen pals all over the country and even some international.  Connections Stationary Kit by Byron's Games is a great kit that puts everything together for you to make writing to pen pals that much easier.

Here's what's included in the kit:
25 Sheets of thick carstock stationary - great for markers, won't bleed
25 Envelopes- sized to only need to fold the paper once
36 Stickers
1 Stamp - says "Thank You"
2 Stamp Pads - pink and blue
1 fine tip felt pen - blue (doesn't bleed on the thick cardstock included)

Here's what I also use when we're writing letters:
Dry erase lapboard
Dry erase marker
Postage stamps

The stationary paper is made of thick cardstock which are great for markers, it comes with a fine tip felt marker and they don't bleed through.  The stationary is 6x8.5" in size and folds in half once to fit perfectly into the envelopes.  You can seal the envelopes by licking it and/or the stickers that are included.  The stamp and stamp pads are perfect for writing thank you cards with.

I like to have a the dry erase lapboards so the kids can dictate to me the letter they want to write and then they can focus on their handwriting when they copy it.  I erase it when they're done and write out the address for them to write on the envelope. As they get older we get away from the lapboard so they can focus more on grammar and spelling. 

For this Connections Stationary Kit in particular I knew handwriting was going to be a focus because of the lack of lines.  I am a line fan and so I usually always provide lined paper for my kids, however unlined paper has it's advantages.  Writing on unlined paper actually triggers different parts of your brain and creativity is effected by it. I actually heard this for the first time at Home Educators Association of Virginia Convention a few years ago, but I haven't done a great job at implementing it because I myself am hooked on lines.

Karter, my 10 year old, had no complaints at all but Krissy, my 6 year old, put up a stink about "the paper not having lines and being too small."  I told him to atleast try it and if needed he could use the back or another sheet of paper.  He was able to fit it all on one and afterwards told me it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be.  He has also used the Connections Stationary Kit numerous more times on his own, with no complaints!  I was pleased with how all of their letters came out.

​They ofcourse fold them up and add a few Pokemon cards to their letters because that's as good as cash for elementary age boys.  Karter also sealed up his letters with his personal wax seal that he's so proud of! They then picked out their stamps and were off to the mailbox to send these off.

My family thoroughly enjoyed this Byron's Games product, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed it and other Byron's Games products too so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

We have received a new missionary book called "Venturing With God in Congo" by Darrell Champlin and published by Conjurske Publications.  Darrell Champlin is a pastor and wrote this book as a recollection of memories from when he and his wife were doing missions in the Congo.  The timeline is early 2000's. 

The book is a sturdy binded hardback book with 304 pages, there's a few glossy pages that serve as a collection of photos in the center of the book. The size is roughly 9x6. The cover is beautifully designed and very intriguing with vibrant green shrubery, a snake, an elephant and mysterious eyes! I assigned the book to Karter, my 10 year old son to read.

It was a little tough for him to get interested in the beginning but around the middle of the book action picked up and sucked him right in. The climax of the story was a bit dramatic and graphic. It involved people being killed and tortured but the end result was the missionaries won and the rebels retreated.

Take aways Karter got from this book are:

• Snakes are bad
• Elephants can be deadly
• Never pick a fight you can't win
• Have faith in god and nothing shall harm you
• Sometimes sacrifices have to be made

​This was Karter’s written book review:

My family enjoyed Conjurske Publication's Venturing With God in Congo, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed this book too so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.

Dress up is a favorite for most kids, I can tell by the constant cleanup my dress up stash requires.  For the girls there are fabulous dresses, fairy wings, jewelry, and high heels while boys tend to get firefighters, policeman, chef, and superheroes. I've always encouraged my kids to dress up how they please during make-believe time and it especially makes my heart happy when I see my 2 year old daughter in a princess dress with a firefighter hat and cowboy boots.  So when I first browsed through the MANY books available by Carole P. Roman I was immediately drawn to "Can A Princess be A Firefighter?"  It is definitely our most loved book among the four books we received from Carole P. Roman's assorted series.

We have been reading "Can A Princess be A Firefighter" daily to Kandy, I love that it speaks life into her. Not only the overall concept that you can be anything you set your mind to but also the small phrases that I like to repeat (and have her repeat) like "You are smart, talented, sweet and kind.” This book is such an empowering girl power book with relatable illustrations and dress up that any girl will love and be inspired by!

"Capain No Beard: An Imaginary Tail of a Pirate's Life" was another fantastic book by Carole P. Roman. It's part one of the ten Captain No Beard series. It is about a few kids dressing up and their imagination taking control. Karter and Krissy especially loved learning “shiver me timbers” is pirate for “oh my goodness”.

"Being a Captain is Hard Work" is the last book of the Captain No Beard series by Carole P. Roman. You can see the progress of the series and the growth of the Author and Publisher from book one through book ten, which progresses well with the growth of a reader. There was a couple new character in this book that wasn't in the first, we figured them out by process of elimination. It made us all the more intrigued to read all the books between the two! I really like that it incorporates big words like “stratocumulus” and explains it as well (dark dense clouds that mean rain). This fable shares the message that we have 2 ears and 1 mouth and we should listen twice as much as we speak. It repeats the message twice which is great because we can benefit from hearing it more often.

We also received "If You Were Me and Lived In Germany" by Carole P. Roman. This book is a part of the 25 book "If you were me and lived in” series which is geared toward elementary world cultures. Each book focuses on one country. Germany was a great choice for my family because I want them to learn the culture of their ancestors. This book is about a 15 minute read aloud and was great at showing geographics, pictures, drawings and informing on things like where you’d like to visit, what to eat or do for fun. I really appreciated the pronunciations being provided. We read this as a family and Cody was great at speaking the German words, he’s got that guttural accent down! We all learned something new in this book and it has us hoping to one day actually go visit!

My family loved these Carole P. Roman books, but don't just take our word for it other families from the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed a variety of her books too so be sure to check out their reviews by clicking on the banner.