Welcome to the homeschooling world through Wynfield Christian Academy

Welcome to Wynfield Christian Academy’s homeschooling world. We are not here to turn homeschooling into a private school world. We want homeschooling to flourish as it is. Homeschooling is a wonderful way to fulfill the parents’ God-given responsibilities of educating children. Wynfield just wants to provide more resources to add spice to your teaching and to make it easier to for parents to get their children into colleges without having to limit the homeschooling way. We also help families with special needs children to have more resources to homeschool their children, as well.

Here on this blog we will give you teaching ideas, discuss homeschooling issues, and even review some products for you. The next two post will actually be to review The Old SchoolHouse Magazine’s new digital magazine and their new school planner. Give us your comments or ideas for discussion. We are always listening. If you are interested in learning more about our umbrella program, visit our web site at www.wynfieldca.org. We also have a DeafBlind program to help educate, train, and equip DeafBlind children and adults that you can learn more about, and even learn how to help us on that mission at www.wynfieldca.org/deafblind.html or visit our blog at www.deafblindhope.wordpress.com.

Gymathtics: Math and Exercise? I Don’t Think So!

Two things I hate more than anything are math and exercise. No, I am not 500 lbs. I just don’t like exercise that is boring. I prefer to backpack and rock climb. Yes, I am a teacher, and I teach math and do a very good job at it. I have always struggled with math because I am dyslexic and learning disabled. I taught myself how to do math, and now God uses me to help children who need it. I don’t have to like math or exercise to know it is good for me. Being honest with my students helps them to learn that, too. I am also honest when I say that I groaned when I found out that the product I received free to review for the TOS Crew was an exercise DVD that incorporated math. And no, the vendor doesn’t control what I say about their product. However, I am fair, as well as, honest. This isn’t about me, but about helping my parents find products suitable for their students. If you read my blog regularly, you will know that once again I was pleasantly surprised at what I found.

The DVD, Gymathtics, created by Carrie Scheiner and her family through Suncheine World, LLC. Is well-produced and developed. Ms. Scheiner uses the premise that learning is enhanced by making as many connections in the brain as possible. Information from even seemingly different topics can be joined together and taught through activities to increase the connections leading to even stronger learning connections. In this case, math concepts are connected with physical exercise movements. Many students will find this odd, but this odd difference lends to its interest and fun. The program provides a warm-up section that has your body making lines, circles, and polygons that stretch your muscles preparing them for the more strenuous exercises to come. Your student will practice various ways to count as they do aerobic exercises, and then the intensity increases with pattern power as your student will do various pattern movement activities that strengthen the muscles and heart. On the screen there are diagrams with math information about polygons, circles, different kinds of visual patterns, and skip counting methods. Most are self-explanatory. During her exercise instruction, Ms. Scheiner also gives more math information verbally. The DVD finishes with the “Well-being Wind Down” section where she leads in relaxing stretches cooling down the body from the aerobic activity while explaining healthy lifestyle choices. These choices are placed on the screen as text at the end of the exercise program. The multisensory concept of math and exercise together is unique, but many students will find it delightful.

Being multisensory, many special needs students will be able to access it and benefit from its information such as those with autism, learning disabilities, dyslexia, attention deficit and attention deficit with hyperactivity, especially. Deaf students will be able to get a lot of detail from the math concepts as well as being able to follow the exercise steps pretty well visually. Ms. Scheiner often demonstrates the moves before the exercise begins. She could do this every time to be more beneficial. A Deaf student might benefit more from the math concepts if more of what Ms. Scheiner relates verbally is added to the diagrams on the screen or more diagrams were used during the exercise segments. Blind students will be able to access the music and dialogue of the DVD. Ms. Scheiner, trying not to overdo the verbal content for probably time purposes and interest of the student, may at times not give enough instruction of the movement of the exercise for a totally blind or mostly blind student to easily do the exercise. A little more specific instruction could probably be done to allow for more accessibility by a blind student. Math concepts could really use more verbal information added to allow for more benefit of the blind student, as well. Ms. Scheiner does a good job without probably even trying to provide accessibility. I am pretty certain that she could do an excellent job when aware that her DVD’s could be used by an even wider audience with just a little more thought and planning of verbal script and diagramming. You may think that there is no hope for the DeafBlind student. Well, I participated right along with my student helpers for this review. I, of course, could not get any information directly being DeafBlind. My students tactually explained to me the moves and the math concepts. I didn’t always do them perfectly, but it allowed us to giggle a lot. My readers know that I like lots of giggling during my lessons. Giggling equals fun, and fun equals better learning and longer remembering.

Gymathtics is a unique, but great way to get your students moving and possibly learning some math. They may not even realize they are” doing math”. This is their first DVD, $24.99,  but more are available and others being developed. Their website at http://www.exploramania.com has these DVD’s and other products like exercise mats and balls using math.  Check them out, and you may soon be giggling over doing polygons and parallelograms.

An Adventure in Liberty: A Good Way to teach American History and Civics

We recently talked about World History, so now let’s jump right into American History with the American Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty CD. As publishing companies and secular historians try to rewrite our country’s history to fit their own agenda, it is a breath of fresh air to see this curriculum hit the field.

The American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc. makes the social studies/civic K-12 lesson plan resource CD available to free to educators. The foundation’s mission is dedicated to the understanding and teaching of our nation’s factual and philosophical heritage to promote constructive citizenship and freedom, unity, progress, and responsibility among our students and citizens. This resource planner implements that mission in a wonderful and beneficial way. The lessons are well written and hold a child’s attention. The activities provided stimulate continued interest and encourage interesting discussions. The program has three levels on elementary, middle school, and high school level. The elementary level is also provided in Spanish. The file format is Adobe Reader .pdf, and they provide a version of Acrobat Reader for installation if you do not have it on your computer. The Acrobat Reader is free and current versions can be downloaded from the Adobe Acrobat Reader web site for future use as updates become available. The material, itself, is written clearly and simple enough that the same basic lesson information is the same across the levels with the activities being a little more involved and covering more in-depth analysis in the higher levels. This makes it ideal for a classroom setting with students having various ability levels and learning needs and for a homeschool setting where there may be several students, but in different grade levels. Instruction can be simultaneous in either setting with modifications made when necessary and activities tailored for ability and grade levels. More importantly, the information is historically accurate and places the emphasis on the key facts that this country was founded by Christian men who planned the government to allow for freedom of religion, but acknowledging that there is a sovereign God who must be our guide in government matters. All of these factors make this a great choice for your lesson plan resource.

As far as accessibility which is very important to most of my readers, the .pdf format is as discussed here before not very accessible for some of my readers who are DeafBlind as I am. Adobe has removed their features that allowed braille access and locked their program down to use only their built-in text-to-speech program which doesn’t allow for braille access. The authors do have all security measures allowed including copying for accessibility which allows you to copy the text to Word which allows for some braille text access. The majority of the document is text in this case, so that is a great help for DeafBlind users. You will be able to get use of the product with a little bit of manipulation of the text. I appreciate the authors allowing that copy ability. The lack of alternate text tags for the images will present a small problem for all blind and deafblind users. The authors didn’t set up the file for accessibility at all within the Adobe format, so this can present problems even for the built-in reader. It is a simple problem to correct by labeling alternate text tags for the images and specifying language for all the text along with a few other simple corrections. I certainly hope they will do so to make it easier for text-to-speech reading to be correct and ease the transition to Word for braille use. Overall, the authors are commended for making the effort toward some accessibility.

The American Heritage Education Foundation also provides additional resources to further enhance their An Adventure in Liberty program on their website at http://www.americanheritage.org . Check them out for information on how to order the CD resource, as well. Wynfield Christian Academy will definitely be adding it to their curriculum resources for American History and Civics instruction. I don’t think anyone can go wrong with trying this program for instilling a God-based and historically accurate foundation for our American Heritage into our children. Our next generation really needs this kind of background to help keep America on a straight path as a God-fearing nation.

Loving that Scent: Virginia Soaps and Scents

Regardless of your style of teaching, you often need just the right worksheet or activity. Often, your brain just can be taxed anymore. That is when you need a really good place to go for fresh ideas, or ready-made worksheet to save you some time. The site, http://www.abcteach.com, may be just what you need.

 

For $40.00 a year or $70.00 for two years, you can have access to over 35,000 printable worksheets on various subjects and grade levels. You have access to clip art for any type of classroom project or decoration. You also can find activities and templates for projects like book report forms, research note card forms, etc. You won’t find any annoying advertising either. There is also customer service available to answer your questions and give tips. Whether you need a learning center, or research project, or just a practice worksheet, you can find it on this site, and it is growing every day with more and more resources being added.

 

As part of the TOS Crew, I received free access to the site for about a month. For myself, I was unable to access most of the site, since I am almost totally DeafBlind. I was disappointed because I was looking forward to browsing the site. I had to get sighted help to get any help at all from the site. Accessibility is great for sighted users, but those who need screen readers will be unable to make sense of the page for the most part. I know the main page has 104 links that are recognizable to the screen reader, but I can’t seem to get to them or know what they are. It reads “Your online resource for children’s Education and thousands of free printable worksheets and activities plus over 35,000 pages of worksheets… Then it skips to a series of links in the highlighted Directories under “Sandy’s Picks.” Many of the links are icon links made of graphics, and there is a table with a graphic that contains the links. A screen reader just can’t access that at all. I hope the owners will work on the accessibility of their site. I have many parents of hearing/sighted children who are blind and deafblind themselves. They like to work with their children just like other parents do. These parents need resources, too. If you can access the resources with sighted help, you will find the .pdf format files are open to the accessibility options allowed by Adobe. Of course, that is only suitable for hearing blind because Adobe forces you to use their text to speech program. This program doesn’t allow access to a screen reader that allows braille access. Therefore, I can’t recommend this site for my blind and deafblind parents. Sighted parents will find it quite user-friendly, though.

 

If you need worksheets or activity ideas, this site will certainly give you a lot of help. Check out the ABCTeach site at http://www.abcteach.com for more information.

ABCTeach: Your Source for those Worksheets and Activities

Regardless of your style of teaching, you often need just the right worksheet or activity. Often, your brain just can be taxed anymore. That is when you need a really good place to go for fresh ideas, or ready-made worksheet to save you some time. The site, http://www.abcteach.com, may be just what you need.

 

For $40.00 a year or $70.00 for two years, you can have access to over 35,000 printable worksheets on various subjects and grade levels. You have access to clip art for any type of classroom project or decoration. You also can find activities and templates for projects like book report forms, research note card forms, etc. You won’t find any annoying advertising either. There is also customer service available to answer your questions and give tips. Whether you need a learning center, or research project, or just a practice worksheet, you can find it on this site, and it is growing every day with more and more resources being added.

 

As part of the TOS Crew, I received free access to the site for about a month. For myself, I was unable to access most of the site, since I am almost totally DeafBlind. I was disappointed because I was looking forward to browsing the site. I had to get sighted help to get any help at all from the site. Accessibility is great for sighted users, but those who need screen readers will be unable to make sense of the page for the most part. I know the main page has 104 links that are recognizable to the screen reader, but I can’t seem to get to them or know what they are. It reads “Your online resource for children’s Education and thousands of free printable worksheets and activities plus over 35,000 pages of worksheets… Then it skips to a series of links in the highlighted Directories under “Sandy’s Picks.” Many of the links are icon links made of graphics, and there is a table with a graphic that contains the links. A screen reader just can’t access that at all. I hope the owners will work on the accessibility of their site. I have many parents of hearing/sighted children who are blind and deafblind themselves. They like to work with their children just like other parents do. These parents need resources, too. If you can access the resources with sighted help, you will find the .pdf format files are open to the accessibility options allowed by Adobe. Of course, that is only suitable for hearing blind because Adobe forces you to use their text to speech program. This program doesn’t allow access to a screen reader that allows braille access. Therefore, I can’t recommend this site for my blind and deafblind parents. Sighted parents will find it quite user-friendly, though.

 

If you need worksheets or activity ideas, this site will certainly give you a lot of help. Check out the ABCTeach site at http://www.abcteach.com for more information.

Amazing Bible History Timeline

History, by the definition of http://www.dictionary.com, is the branch of knowledge dealing with past events. An old history text I had in school and can’t remember defined history as the story of man. There should only be one story, but that isn’t the way it is. As a Christian, I know that man’s story is only possible because of God, so really history should be defined as His story. Secular historians as guided by the great deceiver, Satan, have sought to remove the creator of history from the story. Church history took God’s story and corrupted it over and over again for the power derived for one group or another. There are as many church histories as there are denominations and religions.  How do we know what is truth and what is not? The answer is simple. The truth is the Bible. God has filled His word with His spirit and keeps it from corruption through His spirit stirring in Man’s heart. How can we teach our children the Truth and guard their hearts from the corruption of the world? We can try to teach them only the Word of God and keep them away from all dissenting forces while they are with us. When they leave, we can only pray that their hearts and faith are strong enough to withstand any attempt to sway. Often, we know that plan fails. To me, a better way is to teach our children the Truth, but expose them gently and carefully along the way to what the world teaches as we lay it beside the Bible for comparison. When viewed by the light and truth of the Bible, all other things will either confirm or deny God, the creator and Jesus, the son and Savior, and the Spirit who acts upon the hearts of man throughout time.

The Amazing Bible Timeline that I was given free to review here is a tool that seeks to give parents the ability to instill not only the Truth in their children, but also that strength of heart and faith to withstand the attempts to sway and corrupt. The originators of this timeline researched all the many histories of our time and past and placed all those together side by side in the chronological order of time along with the history as present by God through the Bible. They have made it as thorough and accurate as humanly possible. The company continues to update it as more is learned about history and as God and man continue to write history. The material is presented simply as an expanded time line incorporating the many time lines of the Bible and other world histories without emphasis to one religion, denomination, or secular historian. This gives the parent the full control to use the tool to teach their child how the Bible teaches and what man has sought to confirm or deny of that truth. Using the method of presentation given for the use of the chart, it is easy to see how God has influenced the world as His creation despite men and Satan’s efforts to purge the evidence of Divine influence.

The 37” X 45” chart is multicolor-coded and lay out is circular and wide to be as useful as possible despite the overwhelming amount of information provided. The print is small and difficult to read at times, but a magnifier helps. In addition, the company provides Adobe Reader .pdf format files on their web site free after purchase for download. With those files, it is easy to zoom into one particular area to study the contents more closely. Use the chart on the wall or a table along with the computer files either on the computer or printed out for particulars areas you wish to highlight at a particular time to see the specific events within the bigger picture of history as a whole. In this way, it is easy to see how the control of the Romans and culture of Roman society affected the Jews as they rejected the Messiah because they were hoping at the moment for an earthly king to rid them of their captors. Or, you can see how God influenced man as He worked to purge our country from the sin of slavery, and directed the forces that prevented Hitler from ruling the world.

As far as accessibility goes, the company providing .pdf files is a great help for the Learning Disabled and low vision students who might want to use the time line. The blind and deafblind will not get any true use of the product due to lack of braille access. The company must use graphic files, and there is no way to present graphic information in braille except as a verbal or written description which may or may not facilitate comprehension. Parents and teachers will have to find other ways to present the material to them.  One suggestion would be to take the information and provide it in small chunks of time with a tactile and braille-labeled timeline. If you provide all the material across the circular bands for a time period of a 1000 years or smaller increments, the students could gain the knowledge the same way by seeing the variations of history for just that period for comparison and study. Even though accessibility is an issue for some here, this product should not be discounted. The knowledge gained by students or parents in preparation to teach students can be invaluable.

In addition, the company, Bible Charts and Maps, LLC provides a document presenting tips for using the timeline for Bible Study and history teaching. They also have interactive maps for the Holy Land and a genealogy of Jesus Christ in various file formats to use, as well. The Amazing Bible Timeline chart is $29.97 plus shipping and handling including the digital version and the interactive Holy Land maps for free. Go to http://www.BibleTimeline.net for more information and to purchase. Use this tool wisely and as intended, and you have a resource to help build your child’s faith on the truth of Jesus Christ.

Sarah’s Wish- A Ticket to Another Time

Looking for a delightful read? How about a good series that you can trust to give to your young students? Well, I have found it in Jim Baumgardner’s Sarah books published by Tate Publishing & Enterprises. These are the most beautifully written Christian children’s books that I have seen in a long time.

The characters are so alive that you are literally transported to another time and place. History is kept genuine without blemishing the tender hearts of your students with inappropriate material. The story is adventurous and intriguing to most any child keeping them hanging on to the very end regardless of reading ability. The knowledge gained from these stories is accurate and abundant which makes them perfect for any family especially a homeschooling family. The main character, Sarah, is orphaned in the first book, Sarah’s wish, plunging her into an unknown future. Her mother’s faith was instilled in her from an early age, and Sarah finds her courage to face the unknown by relying on God. Everything about these books is what parents are looking for to encourage their children and help them grow. Don’t worry about the character being a girl. This isn’t a “girls only” type book. The adventures are bold and varied making them perfect for the boy in your family, too.

I love the way the author said on his web site and in correspondence to the TOS Crew that he struggled with the historical accuracies of cursing and the “n word” during his writing. He looked at the prospect of keeping the story historically accurate, but also, considering whether the cursing added anything to the story. He, caring for children as a kindly father or grandfather, chose not to include cursing. More importantly, he found a terrific way of teaching history in another of the series, by teaching the use of the “n word”, but not by using it in dialogue as was often done during the time, but by developing a moment when Sarah could learn from a slave what the word meant to her and how it made her feel. This allows you, the parent, to continue that very conversation with your student teaching them a very important life lesson. I applaud the author’s efforts in teaching these values.

In addition, Mr. Baumgardner’s periodic newsletters add spice to the series with interesting and educational tidbits offered through the humor of himself and Granny, an elderly caretaker of Sarah’s, who is a bit eccentric, but a strong pillar of faith. The author uses the newsletters to teach more about history as he keeps interest in the series alive with contests and trivia questions. I thoroughly enjoy reading them and look forward to each funny installment. I know my students do, too.

As far as my special needs recommendations go, the author has beautiful print editions available, which he graciously will autograph to add even more of a special touch, with a decent size font in crisp contrast to the white pages. He also has audio book versions, as well, suitable for use by the blind, print disabled, and learning disabled student. The print versions seem to also come with a code that allows you to get a free audio download of that specific book, too, making it a very useful tool for the learning disabled student to read and listen to improve comprehension. Prices for the books and/or audio books are very affordable beginning at $9.99 for one print version and $16.99 for the separate audio book only. The author’s attention to special needs is appreciated. There isn’t anything available for the deafblind student, but it could easily be done by making the book available to http://www.bookshare.org. This organization is non-profit and provides various formats of shared books to disabled persons, schools, and organizations for disabled populations including deafblind and learning disabled through a subscription program which verifies the participants as certified disabled and protects the copyrights of authors and publishing companies. I recommend that Mr. Baumgardner and owners of Tate Publishing and Enterprising contact Bookshare.org to allow the access of their books to the deafblind. I thoroughly enjoyed the book I received and look forward to reading another, but it is not nearly as enjoyable to have to have a sighted person read the book and sign it to me. I would prefer to read it in braille for myself. I am sure the author would be gracious enough to consider this based on his voluntary attention to the disabled populations of whom he is familiar.

Children will love the series and parents will love being able to trust them. In fact, as this middle- aged woman can attest, adults will love them, too.
Check out the Sarah series at http://www.sarahbooks.com.

Get Your Students Outdoors with Nature Friend Magazine

It seems today with television and video games so popular that it is almost impossible to get them outdoors for exercise, play, or learning. As parents, we are always on the lookout for ideas and resources to motivate our children to get out and enjoy the beautiful world God made for us. Nature Friend magazine is just the ticket.

These magazines just lying on the coffee table or school desk beckons you to pick it up with each gorgeous full-color cover page and back cover. My students love to grab it at break time and pour through the pages of full color pictures of animals and insects and scenery. Each basic magazine has a crossword puzzle or word search and an art activity including a drawing activity. Drawing skills are wonderful to have to allow your students to document their outdoor studies with sketches as well as journaling. There is also a wonderful nature photo with a fitting scripture for students to learn for the month. In addition, the entire issue is written from a biblical perspective and appropriate scriptures throughout reinforce the concept that God is the creator, and the whole earth is his handiwork depicting His nature to us. You also have a fun scavenger hunt to let your students improve their observational skills hunting for the drawings of a plant, or an insect, or animal track hidden in the pictures throughout that issue. Some are easy, but others really make their eyes work.

The optional, but inexpensive study guide extends these activities for fun and learning even more adding several more pages of pictures and stories, and fun. There are research activities, photography tips, word searches, crossword puzzles, etc. All of these activities help to reinforce the information found in the stories and articles on different animals and insects. Learning different ways to get good photos of nature is so informative and fun. Students will love getting outdoors to try getting the best angles. There are also writing activities for students to try. Journaling about nature observations can be fun, and is a learning tool used by naturalists.

Your students can also mail in submissions of the activities they have done to Nature Friend that just might be included in a future issue. They can send mail asking questions or telling how they love the magazine. They can also write their own articles or stories about nature and send it to them. Each issue has lots of art work, articles, photos, etc. done by the young readers of the magazine. That will certainly motivate your young naturalists.

Nature Friend will be useful for many special needs students, as well. The font is a comfortable size for learning disabled students and many low vision students. The reading level is easy to comprehend while challenging the student with its content. My students love to read the articles and sign or fingerspell their favorite things to me. Your students don’t have to sign, but let them tell you what they like, too.

Nature Friend is available by subscription for $36 for 12 issues in the U. S. while Canada and Mexico subscriptions are $49 and International is $62 for 12 issues. The study guide can be added for just $2.00 per issue for 12 issues and is highly recommended by this author. Nature Friend is well worth this price with all the fun packed into each issue. To find out how to subscribe to Nature Friend magazine, go to http://www.naturefriendmagazine.com. This just might be the magazine that gets your students off the video games and into God’s creation.

Improving Your Child’s SAT Scores with College Prep Genius

You can feel like a genius no matter how smart you are if you know the right stuff. Where can you get the right stuff? College Prep Genius: Master the SAT Success from Maven of Memory Publishing.

College Prep Genius makes bold claims for their college entrance test preparation program. “Cut your reading time in half.” “Answer math problems without ever touching your calculator.” “Write a high scoring essay in fifteen minutes.” It probably sounds impossible, but the program complete with a four DVD presentation, guide book, and workbook is right on target. The author, Jean Burke, explains that the PSAT/SAT/ACT are not knowledge checking tests. They are actually logic tests. Using logic, you can find the answer to those tough questions. This isn’t about learning little tricks to guess at the answers. It is about understanding the true nature of these tests and the purpose behind them. Once a student has a basic understanding of math and grammar, they should be learning the methods, patterns, and logic of these college entrance tests including the PSAT. The premise taught with College Prep Genius is that the tests are Standardized, and therefore, the question and answer patterns stay the same.

The program is divided into four main parts: overview of the tests, critical reading, math, and essay with additional sections on scholarship search and comparison of the SAT and ACT. The DVD’s follow the same basic organization with a DVD devoted to the four main parts above. The guide book is thorough and very clear. It provides numerous examples that walk you through each of the kinds of problem types depicting the ways to work them through correctly and how to work them through using the logic and hidden patterns and strategies of the test. These methods help you to answer the questions faster and being more accurate than falling for irrelevant information, not understanding important vocabulary, working math problems completely or using a calculator. The DVD’s highlight and further emphasize the key points of the guide book using the workbook to give sample questions to practice the guide book materials. The DVD’s go over each of the questions in the workbook detailing the method used to quickly answer the questions.

Using the methods in College Prep Genius: Master the SAT Class, your students can really improve their thinking skills as well as their achievement test scores. The cost is $79.00 for the entire package, and my readers can get free shipping and handling from now until November 15, 2009 just use the special code, HSBlog09. If you need help improving your child’s chances for college, check out http://www.collegeprepgenius.com.

Lapbooking with A Journey through Learning

Lapbooking? Doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, as they say in Britain. I am married to and have raised self-proclaiming”geeks”. Truth be known, I am probably a little on the geek side, too. I have just never cared for things that seemed like art. I was about to dismiss this review as “not very useful” if I am being honest. I wouldn’t give a bad review for that reason, of course, but I don’t know if I would have put a good effort into it, though. My conscience wouldn’t let me do that really, so I asked around and got other opinions about lapbooking in general and this particular set from A Journey through Learning. Boy, did I get a surprise!

Almost every parent in my school for homeschoolers had heard of lapbooking and loved it. The parents find it so useful for their children in learning and more importantly, retaining the information they learn. These parents felt that the process of building presentation booklets on specific topics increased their students’ interest level in the subjects, too. The ability to make lapbooks almost 3D with the use of various paper folds adds additional interest and skill to the unit studies. This method is very similar to scrapbooking and just as versatile, it seems. A Journey through Learning unit studies take a great method and make it easy to learn with the detailed instructions and tip guides. The well-designed templates and colorful photos and clip art helps make it easy to create advanced and spectacular booklets. The study guide provided with each one gives your student a great start at learning. Lapbooking and A Journey through Learning cover all the modalities needed to make learning a success with the ability to teach the skills of following instructions and working together (when a family tackles each project). You can then tie it all together with the ability to express themselves creatively.

Accessibility for these projects is there for the .pdf since Adobe has the text-to-speech ability. Of course, there is no braille output for this, but the authors do have the ability to copy text for accessibility turned on which will allow it to be pulled into other screenreading programs for large print, better voices for the blind, and braille for the deafblind. The great colors available in the templates are good for low vision, and the templates can be printed out at larger scales for those with low vision. These can definitely be modified for many special needs students.

These great lapbook units on all kinds of subjects from amphibians to reptiles, to the Civil War to the Bible can be found at the web site, http://www.ajourneythroughlearning.com. The prices are very affordable and are available in three formats: downloadable .pdf at $13.00, CD_ROM at $14.00, and print at $21.00. Created by two homeschooling moms for homeschoolers who understand what you do and what you need to teach your students, these lapbook sets are just the ticket to success.

Nutrition 101: Choose Life!

Nutrition guides and fad diet information can be found anywhere. Many are not worth the junk science they are based on. I wouldn’t want to bring that kind of program into a classroom of any type, but my fears were totally unfounded on this program. This is not just another nutrition guide, and it is not based on junk science. Nutrition 101: Choose Life! is a full nutrition and health curriculum. Its design is an excellent way to bring the study of health into the homeschool way of doing things.

 

Nutrition 101: Choose Life! written cooperatively by Debra Raybern, N. D. and Sera Johnson and Laura Hopkins and Karen Hopkins as part of Growing Healthy Homes, LLC. brings the study of the body and how it works into the homeschooling way by integrating the program into the lifestyle of the family. The resource itself is full of interesting reading about each of the body’s systems complete with colorful pictures and diagrams loaded with details. Biology study alone, it isn’t either, though. The delightful twist is nutrition and how food affects the workings of the body systems. The ultimate goal of this project is to help the family “develop lifelong habits and desires to eat wholesome foods that support great health”. The authors’ goal is definitely well-supported by the wealth of researched information, exciting family activities, and delicious healthy recipes. Scripture is referenced throughout the program modeling for your family what God has intended for our bodies, His temple. The activities are designed to get your students thinking and finding out for themselves what amazing bodies God made for us and how it is our responsibility to care for them properly. The delicious recipes are specifically chosen for each lesson to emphasize the many points taught in each area. They are designed with the family in mind including the picky eaters. The design is visually attractive to the eye as well as conducive to learning using the added visual cues of boldly colored and attractive fonts for vocabulary, pronunciation key facts, and fun fact side boxes.  The appendix is also packed with good resources for almost anything you might wish to learn more about such as selecting fresh produce, kitchen safety, calcium, asthma helps, mold, and more. This program really takes health to more than just “a check off the box” course .

 

The visual organization, though designed for the sighted, is still suitable for many low vision students. The colors and boxes help to separate the main lesson from the added information and to highlight the vocabulary and other features. The e-book version of the curriculum is in Adobe .pdf, and thankfully, the authors turned on the accessibility features that are present in Adobe. Unfortunately, this will not help braille readers at all, since Adobe has locked the .pdf to use only its speech-to-text reader which has no braille output features, and the Adobe .pdf format is not accessible to JAWS or other screenreaders for speech or braille output. I am not faulting the authors for this at all, and I hope they will educate themselves to the needs of the blind and deafblind market. There are homeschooling families who need these accessibility features including braille.

 

Nutrition 101: Choose Life! is an amazing curriculum for homeschool use. It is so versatile being in the digital e-book format and a print format. The program can be purchased on their website for $79.95 for the CD-ROM, $99.95 for the print book, or a combo pack of the CD-ROM and book for $ 129.95. This curriculum really can deliver on its promise to help “develop lifelong habits that support great health”. Find out more about this great curriculum at http://www.GrowingHealthyHomes.com.