TOS Blog Walk

We returned from Colorado to do some lawn mowing, laundry and then repack to head out again to a week-long Bible Conference.

During free afternoons during our conference, I'm looking forward to exploring some new blogs. Getting a glimpse of other's lives and what they are learning has been a tremendous help to me. I hope you'll find some encouragement yourself as you explore these blogs featured for the week of July 19:

1. Deanna’s Corner

2. Light, Liberty, and Learning

3. Bunny Trails

4. Flowers N Plaid Homeschool

5. Gadow Ohana

6. His Wonderful Works

7. Expand

8. Confessions of a Homeschooler

9. The Sojourner

10. A Full Heart

Be blessed~

Jill

TOS Blog Walk

Meeting new people through blogging has been a wonderful experience. I may never actually meet any of these owners in person but I have been challenged, encouraged and inspired by reading other's blogs.

As part of the TOS Homeschool Crew, ten crew member blogs are featured each week. I was out of town this past week so I'm a little behind in posting but still wanted to share the links for some great homeschool blogs. I hope you'll take the time to visit and get a view of homeschooling from someone else's perspective. Here's the blog walk for the week of July 12:

1. Buckaroo Days
2. Our Homeschool Reviews
3. Reed, Party of 6
4. Training Hearts at Home
5. Along The Way
6. I Love Science!
7. Through the Calm and Through the Storm
8. Created for Home
9. Tractors and Tire Swings
10. Guiding Light Homeschool

Be encouraged!
Jill

Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others

We've been looking forward to spending time this summer in Colorado with my husband's parents, siblings and their respective families. We know it will be an awesome time with family but we aren't so thrilled about the travelling part. We'll spend almost as much time in the car as we will at our destination, so I knew I'd have to make those days in the car as enjoyable as possible. We needed a solution for averting the obligatory "Are we there yet?" every hour upon the hour!


Providentially, as part of the new 2010-2011 The Old Schoolhouse (TOS) Homeschool Crew, I was given the opportunity to review Donna Rees's e-book, Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others. I couldn't have been given a more perfect product to review!


So what exactly is a "travel kit?" It's a collection of gifts, snacks and activities prepared in advance for a trip (whether a long vacation drive, trips to medical appointments, sporting events or anything in between). The book explains everything you need to know about how to prepare a kit.


You might be asking yourself, why do I need to read a book on buying gifts? This book is about more than just buying some gifts. If you have ever had to buy a last minute gift for a birthday party or a sick friend, you understand how easily you can get "brain-tied" (you know...when you're mind goes blank and NOTHING you see at the store seems appropriate). Or if you have ever prepared for a trip, you are frantically scurrying around packing, planning food on the road (hoping you won't forget something critical). Then the day of your trip dawns and you realize you have planned NOTHING to occupy todders, tweens, or teens on the journey.


Enter Donna Rees with her wonderfully creative book that arms you with the tools to create an unforgettable time in the car (that might even rival the time at your vacation destination!) Inside the pages of this book, the reader is given tips for:

• considering logistics such as car size, family size, trip length, and budget


• distributing kit contents on the trip as well as ways to transport them


• making free puzzles and crosswords online


• creating coupon gifts


• creating and playing a variety of car games


• where to find gifts to use for your travel kit


• preparing your car for your trip

This book gave me so many wonderful ideas for making travel time a fun and memorable journey. Most of Donna's ideas are very inexpensive, often coming from the dollar store; several suggestions are free. She suggested keeping an eye out for sales and season-end clearance items at department and office supply stores for future travel kits (in other words, ways to start planning for trips way in advance--before you are flustered with packing demands).

After my first reading of the book, I was able to hit some local garage sales. I was amazed at how many things I found that would be perfect for a travel kit. I also started digging into my "gift stash" at home and found things I'd forgotten about that will make for a fun surprise on the road.

There were so many things I liked about this e-book. There were dozens of photographs showing very specific ideas for gifts, containers, and wrapping ideas. Suggestions are arranged by gender, age and interest areas--often with links to the products mentioned. Also covered were ideas for family/group gifts as well as gifts that can be created inexpensively at home. Another thing I really liked about the book is having a resource page linked to the tourism websites for each state in the US to help in gathering resources to plan your trip.

The page of hints for preparing your car was a particular blessing--I'm usually so focused on packing that I forget the important car stuff. I printed off that page to use as a checklist before we hit the road. And yet another great aspect of this book is a list of recommended books by age. A valuable resource for any time--not just for travelling.

I have read through this book several times and each time I have found new nuggets and ideas. The author shared some really neat examples of what she called a "box of blessing"--basically the travel kit principal for something other than a trip. Readers will be inspired to apply the ideas in countless ways to minister to others. The neat thing is that you can involve the whole family in creating a travel kit or box of blessing for someone else. What a meaningful way to model love and service to your children and to the recipient of your gift!

This book can be of great help for:

• creating a college care package


• making a camp survival kit
  
• encouraging a missionary


• showing appreciation for a pastor


• making a care package for hospital stay


• blessing a new mom and baby

I can't recommend this e-book highly enough. The ideas in this book can be applied to any age and just about any gift-giving situation. I would encourage you to visit the TOS Homeschool Crew blog to read additional reviews and then hop on over to the TOS Magazine's Schoolhouse Store and purchase your copy for only $12.45.

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine publishes this book and they have a whole line of other e-books worth browsing. Remember, an e-book offers you immediate access to your book while affording you the flexibility of taking it with you on a flash drive to enjoy as you travel. Hmmm....an e-book would make a dandy gift for a travel kit!

Blessings,

Jill

Title: Travel Kits: A Simple Way to Bless Others

Publisher: The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

Price: $12.45

Purchase from: TOS Magazine's Schoolhouse Store

Age Range: All ages

I was provided a copy of Travel Kits in exchange for my fair and honest review of the product.

Travel the World!

Summer--the season of travel, exploration and adventure! The perfect time to plan a family getaway. Unfortunately, while real trips are wonderful, budgets don't always allow tripping across the globe. Thankfully, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine comes to the rescue with their June 2010 Module for The Schoolhouse Planner called Travel the World!

I have to admit that geography as a subject has been sadly neglected in our homeschool. Finding an inexpensive, easy-to-use program to tackle the world (without losing my mind) has been a challenge. With a more relaxed summer schedule for school, it was the perfect time to try our hand at Travel the World! (no passports required).

Travel the World! has 4 basic parts:

• Material covering the study of geography and specifically the seven continents
• Activity pages to reinforce learning
• Lapbooking suggestions
• Extension ideas for high school students

The first part of this e-book provides an overview of what the study of geography entails, an explanation of maps and globes, an introduction to the lines of latitude and longitude, and information on the seven continents. Geographical terms are hyperlinked to sites that define the terms (no need to run off for a dictionary). For each continent, numerous links are included that highlight rivers, mountains and other landforms for that particular area. Links to online games are also included that help students learn the location of specific countries within each continent. The online games can be done with all ages. Non-readers will need some assistance but even the youngest readers will enjoy testing their skills (and replaying the games to increase their scores) creating a very fun and painless way of learning geography.

The next portion of the e-book has a number of activity pages including: fill in the blank, word search, word scramble, crossword & rebus puzzles, as well as a poem writing activity. The beauty of the e-book format is that you can choose which pages you'd like to print off (and however many copies you might need).

The third part of the book has resources for creating a lapbook. For those who may not be familiar with lapbooking, Travel the World! includes a page of helpful links to an online demonstration video as well as sites that provide lapbook ideas and resources. Templates for mini books, copywork pages and map coloring pages are conveniently included for lapbooking purposes. Portions of the e-book itself can also be used to decorate the lapbook: scripture verses, maps of the world, pictures of the earth. Younger students can draw pictures in their mini books or dictate information to an older sibling/parent to include in their lapbook. The lapbook is a neat project to either do simultaneously with the unit study (younger students can color their maps while their teacher reads the material aloud) or to do as a culminating project to review the material. Either way, it provides a memorable scrapbook of learning.

The final portion of Travel the World! includes suggestions for extending the learning for high school students. The older student can use any of the material as a starting point for more detailed study of particular continents or landforms. Beyond that, the concepts of mathematical, physical and political geography are introduced to the older student. Suggestions for projects combining geography with writing, research, history and literature are also included. A high school student could also extend the lapbooking ideas--perhaps a computer savvy student could do a digital scrapbook of what they have learned.

Some recipes at the end, a list of website addresses (in case you prefer to print off your e-book and not read it off the computer) as well as a list of additional e-books for suggested study round out the contents of this book.

Overall we were very pleased with this e-book. It provides a very doable unit study for all ages at a very reasonable price ($7.95). A variety of links throughout the material provided a number of opportunities to learn more about each continent. My kids particularly liked the online games that quizzed on country location (we took turns doing the games). The e-book was easy to navigate with a table of contents linkable to the various topics making it easy to find or print activities of interest. I can definitely envision us using this over and over as an ongoing tool to keep reviewing geography. Our lapbooks can continue to expand as we explore different parts of the world.

If you are limited for time, then you can cover most of the the e-book in a week devoted to the topic with perhaps the weekend to complete the lapbook. We personally read through it in less than a week and will later spend more time working on the lapbooks and exploring areas of particular interest for each of my kids. This could also be used as a framework for a longer, more exhaustive study, by selecting one continent per month to focus on and incorporating some literature, cooking, and a research paper for that particular continent to stretch things out for most of the school year.

Within the book, there are maps for each continent. If you print out the e-book, you will not be able to read most of the country names and cities labelled. In this case, you will need a world map handy for reference. If you are at a computer working through the book, the nice feature about the maps is that you can enlarge those pages and get a wonderful glimpse of all the details. One thing I particularly liked about the maps was that each country was a different color so you could easily see the boundaries and which countries shared borders.

There was only only one thing I was slightly disappointed about. Some of the links direct you to a site with some member-only materials. The links always had some free things available but there were also materials that required a subscription. Not a major pitfall by any means, just something to be aware of. If a student were completing this course independently, they may get frustrated by not being able to fully access everything linked.

Whether you are looking for a quick and easy introduction to geography or need the framework for an expanded world geography course, you cannot go wrong with Travel the World! The material can easily be expanded or condensed to fill your available time and to match your student's learning level. And if you have a student driven to explore this topic on their own, you will have a course mapped out for them with links to content you can trust without having to sit right by the computer.

You can purchase your own copy of Travel the World! published by The Old Schoolhouse Magazine for only $7.95 by visiting The Schoolhouse Store. At their site, you can also view sample pages from the book to help make a decision. This product can be used for grades kindergarten through high school.

For additional reviews of this product (and others), visit the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog. You may also be interested in other TOS modules available here. According to their website, "All E-Books published by The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine come with a money-back guarantee!" So you really have nothing to lose.

Happy Travels,
Jill

This product was provided to me free of charge in exchange for my fair and honest review.