Homeschooling: Box day!

Someone recently mentioned that to homeschoolers "box" day should be a holiday and I have to agree!

I received my big order from Rainbow Resources yesterday and it was one of the busiest days of the week. Our box came while we were eating lunch and I stopped eating to unpack it. Yes, I did! We proceeded to take out the Prof. Noggin's History card game that I ordered as a surprise for my kids and played it while we ate! No one wanted to stop, but I had to leave to go grocery shopping.I got home with exactly 45 minutes between that and Vacation Bible school. I gathered a few things to look through on the ride to church (a 30 minute car ride) so I got to play with my school items a bit. BUT then I stayed up late when we got home to look through the rest. How come our boxes always come when we are the busiest? Anyway, here are some initial thoughts on the things I ordered.

Prof. Noggins card games: We got the History of the US and also U S Geography. These were a surprise for school for next year, because, let's face it, you have to throw a little something special in with every order eh? The kids and I played the History game while we ate lunch and I was very impressed. The cards are sturdy and the questions are interesting. Even the easy ones had a few that I could not answer, I'm sure I learned that information at some point but I could not recall the answers to some. I can see this being such a great "interest grabber" and foresee us using this card game as a game as well as just using the cards to quiz each other. I took a peek at the Geography and asked the kids one question and immediately figured out that we need more work in geography! LOL

Balancing the Sword: There are two books plus cd in this set. It has questions to ask for every chapter of the bible. I normally just read and discuss the bible with the kids during breakfast and thought this would be a good tool for when nothing jumps out at me to discuss. I tried the sample chapter questions with them a while back and when I recently asked them if they wanted to just continue reading and discussing like we have been doing or if they would like to have some questions that we could answer together as a group, they all three voted for the questions. From the first look at this book, I like what I see. The pictures and graphs are nice, detailed black and whites. Almost every question has references, so I can encourage my older two to do some independent reading to reinforce the questions that are more pertinent. I have not used the cd yet, so I will try to come back with a more thorough review when I have used this a while

Learning Language Arts through Literature RED: Since we used LLATL last year, I am already very familiar with the program and I did a review a while back, so I will just give some thoughts on the red, and not how the whole program looks. One thing I wish was that it was more geared to 4 days a week, like the older books. We tend to use Friday for life skills, extra activities like art and poetry, tea time, and such that I am wondering if it will be hard to incorporate the Friday portion of LLATL Red into our day. There is enough meat and information on Friday that I don't' think I will want to skip it. Having said that, I really like the layout of the red program. It is laid out more like it's later counterparts. Of course I did the same thing this year that I did last year with the blue... when I looked at the readers I could not imagine S. reading them, but the blue turned out to be easy for her, so I'm sure she will advance fine with the red. I also ordered the read aloud package this year and I am so glad I did. I love the book, some of my favorites are among them and I am glad to have them in our library.

Artistic Pursuits K-3 Bk 1: I was originally going to get this for my 7yo and then get the next level up for my 10 and 12 year olds. When evaluating our time, I decided that I did not have enough time to do two art books right now, and after reading a bit more on the website decided to get this and use with all three for a while. I am hoping that it will be a good introduction to art and we can advance the older two kids if they seem interested. Having flipped through the book, I am pleased with my decision. It will be a great introduction to art. The activities are not too young, though I know that my oldest will breeze through them, but I still think she will consider them fun. The book is not written in a "babyish
style so I am not concerned that the older two will feel talked down to. Since this is their first experience with art other than some observations at the museum and interest led drawing, my first impression is that this will be a nice, quick, once-a-week curriculum that we will all enjoy.

American Heritage Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus: I need a small dictionary that I could keep handy on the table or end table, as M. is starting to do more creative writing and using both the dictionary and thesaurus to aid her in that. My two dinosaur dictionaries are large and cumbersome and somewhat out of date not to mention that they are separated into two volumes so if you need to look up a work that starts with "A" and a word that starts with "T" you have to pull them both out and it gets frustrating. In addition, the only thesaurus we had was children's thesaurus and it did not provide adequately for M's needs. After much searching I found this one and ordered it. I am very please with it. It is hard back, and a good size. The font, while small is not too small and the definitions are very easily read and short enough that when we need to copy one, it will not be overwhelming. The thesaurus portion is on a split design at the bottom of the page and highlighted grey so there is a distinct difference between definitions and thesaurus. The book lays flat when opened and will be a very nice reference. I am extremely pleased with this purchase.

A reason for handwriting: I am not too fond of handwriting books and I have struggled with what to do for my two oldest who both want to write in cursive, and also my youngest who needs a good bit of practice for manuscript. In the past I have used Handwriting without tears, which I liked but never lasted very long, the kids would finish the book in record time, and I was left using quotes, which I enjoy doing but are time intensive. I decided to give these workbooks a try this year, and they seem okay. They are exactly what they say...handwriting books that give practice. I am holding off a decision until we see if we like them. I do like the quality of the books and like that there are enough volumes that I could get a different cursive book for each of my older two...

LLATL Green: Having used the Tan for M last year, the green is just what I expected. Again, I love the pace of LLATL and it is a good fit for my oldest. I also ordered the book pack for the green as well as the orange which my son will be working through and I like the book selections for all of them. I'll post a review when we are finished.

That is all for now, I will give my thought on other resources as they come in. This year it seems like we are purchasing more than in a long while, I guess it just fell that way. Plus we are investing in our home library more this year, so many of the things we are buying now will be used for years to come with subsequent kids.