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Big Book of Earth & Sky review

By Joy on May 24, 2013 in 2013, homeschooling, review

The Big Book of Earth and Sky is a 15ft chart book that is written by Bodie Hodge and Dr. Carolyn Reeves and published by New Leaf Publishing. This book shows and explains about the Earth and the Sky from the Outer Atmosphere all the way to the Inner Core of the Earth, from a creation point of view. The book is specified for ages 7-12. However, I think a younger child would enjoy it, if a parent was reading the information to the child. The illustrations are very colorful and draws you in to the book.

There are several ways you can use the Big Book of Earth and Sky. You can read it as a chart as you fold it out, panel by panel. You can use it is a resource tool. You can use it as a spring board (along with the Teacher’s Guide), to learn about different topics from the Earth’s Atmosphere to the layers of the Earth. This book would be a great start to use for a unit study, using the Teacher’s Guide.

The Big Book of Earth and Sky has detailed charts and graphs about the earth’s crust, caves and clouds. You can read all sorts of facts about the mountains and the weather. You can explore the oceans and read about deep-sea diving records. You can read about the water cycle, mountain zones and volcanoes. The amount of information packed into this book is amazing.

Our family is a science loving family. We love learning all about God’s creation, how things are made and how they work. This book does not let us down in any way. It talkes about many things of the Earth and Sky. It gives a lot of pictures showing different parts of the earth, explaining how things work and how things are formed. We have looked at this book almost daily since we have received it and have learned something new every time we have looked at it. We highly recommend this book! We think that Mr. Bodie Hodge and Dr. Carolyn Reeves did an amazing job putting together this book.

If you purchase the book online from New Leaf Publishing, you can also purchase the Teacher Resource Guide for $6.99 or you can download it for free! The teacher Resource Guide has questions, activities and discussions that you can do with your children.

Be sure to join Master Books on their Facebook Page for the Book and a Bite Party. It will be May 28th, 2013, beginning at 8pm CDT. The Big Book of Earth and Sky will be featured along with our Bite Sponsor Devo Olive Oil (http://devooliveoil.com/). They will even be giving away a prize! There will be other prizes at the party, including gift certificates. I hope to see you there!

disclaimer: I was given this book by New Leaf Publishing Group/Master Books in exchange for a review. All opinions stated are my own. No other compensation was given.

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Wednesday’s Around the World ~ Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego

By Joy on May 22, 2013 in 2013, homeschooling, Wednesdays Around The World

Our next lesson for Wednesday’s Around the World is about Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego was taken captive, along with Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar II was king. Nebuchadnezzar wanted to train these young men to serve in his palace. The king tried to change these young men in several different ways. He first changed their names. They all had Hebrew names and the king changed them. Then, he invited them to live in the palace, eat his food and learn the language of the king. The king wanted to reshape their minds and way of thinking so they would become loyal followers of him.

While their names did change, they refused to eat the king’s food. They didn’t want to defile themselves of all the food that the king was served. While they didn’t change the way they believed, they did grow strong and were placed in service under Nebuchadnezzar. While serving under the king, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, the king told them they had to bow down to a huge gold image that he had built. But by being faithful servants of God, they refused. This upset the king so much that he had Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego thrown in a furnace and heated up so hot that it killed anyone who went near it. However, despite it being so hot that not one hair was singed on any of their bodies! Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace and couldn’t believe what he saw! The guys were not burned or harmed in any way! He also noticed that there was another person in the furnace with them! It was God! God protected his faithful followers! Nebuchadnezzar couldn’t believe it and said this:

Daniel 3:28

²⁸Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.

After seeing this amazing miracle, Nebuchadnezzar declared that anyone who spoke against God, would die.

The activity for this lesson is a really neat one. You are to attempt to burn different types of material. This is definitely an activity that needs adult supervision. My kids were really excited that they were going to get to burn things!

Items we used to burn.

The material you need for this activity is a candle, metal tongs and several small items to burn. We used a piece of chalk, polyester, plastic, strawberry top, piece of cloth, a paper clip, pine needles, plastic clip and a little of Samuel’s hair. We also had a bowl of water to put out the items that caught fire.

Claire burning a strawberry top.

We lit the candle and each child took turns choosing an item to see what would burn and what didn’t catch fire.

Samuel burning his hair.

Once the kids saw how easy it was for the cloth and hair to burn, we talked about the miracle that happened with Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego. How not even one hair on their body or even their clothes did not have any burn marks on them at all. God had saved them from the fiery furnace! It was a great lesson to show that if you are faithful to God, He will take care of you during those trying times.

What have you been studying in history and geography? Have you done any fun activities or projects? I would love for you to share with us any history or geography lesson, project or activity that you have done in the last couple of weeks. Just link up below!

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Chronicles of Dinosauria review

By Joy on May 22, 2013 in 2013, homeschooling, review

The Chronicles of Dinosauria is written by Dave Woetzel, illustrated by Richard Dobbs and published by New Leaf Publishing.

Chronicles of Dinosauria is this amazing book by Dave Woetzel that talks about the history of Dinosaurs and Man. In this beautifully illustrated book, Dave Woetzel covers the Creation and the Dinosaurs, the Flood and the Dinosaurs, Fossil Evidence , the Historical Evidence, Artistic Evidence, Cryptozoology Evidence and Biblical Evidence of Dinosaurs and Man.

In this book, the author addresses one of the big questions that a lot of people have. Did man and Dinosaur live at the same time? Mr. Woetzel does a wonderful job of explaining and giving scientific evidence how man and dinosaur lived together. (Yes, I believe that man and dinosaur lived together.)

How did Dave Woetzel come to this conclusion? He traveled around the world finding artifacts and talking to people. In this books, he shares his own personal pictures and other papers, drawings and information that he came across during the search.

Between all of the information that Mr. Woetzel used to write this book and the amazing drawings that Mr. Richard Dobbs created to go along with the work, this book is put together wonderfully and answers many questions that one might have regarding how man and dinosaur lived together and what happened to the dinosaurs.

My kids and I have really enjoyed reading this book. We definitely recommend it to others who want to learn more about man and dinosaurs living together.

Kids reading Chronicles of Dinosaura.

**Disclaimer: I was given this book by Master Books, a division of New Leaf publishing, in exchange for a review. All opinions in the review are my own. No other compensation was given.

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Wednesday’s Around the World~ Ezekiel and the edible scroll

By Joy on May 8, 2013 in 2013, homeschooling, Wednesdays Around The World

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted a Wednesday’s Around the World in a couple of weeks. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to post, I just couldn’t seem to get the post written. The last couple of weeks, I have been struggling with migraines, allergy/sinus headaches and even a Fibromyalgia flare-up that lasted longer than what I liked. When I have a Fibromyalgia flare-up, I basically hurt from head to toe and have no energy whatsoever, which makes it very hard to think and concentrate. I am praying that I don’t have one of those for a while. It is now finally feeling like spring and the kids and I want to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather we have been having. Now on to Wednesday’s Around the World where we are talking about Ezekiel, the prophet and the edible scroll.

We studied about Ezekiel a couple of weeks ago. He was taken as a young man to Babylonia, just like Daniel. It wasn’t until after he had been held captive of about 5 years before he became a prophet. Ezekiel was a preist and a prophet to the Judeans that lived along the River Chebar. This group was able to worship and live somewhat of a normal life.

The way Ezekiel prophesied was a little unusual compared to other prophets. God gave Ezekiel visions that are hard for us to understand. For example, Ezekiel wrote that he had seen creatures with 4 faces and 4 wings in a fiery cloud. One of the strangest though was God gave Ezekiel a scroll to eat. The scripture says,

Ezekiel 3:3-4

³And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.”Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

⁴And he said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them.

After everything that Ezekiel had seen in his life as a prophet, Ezekiel has no problem following God’s instructions. He ate the scroll and then went to the house of Israel and told them about God. Ezekiel was an amazing man and lived his life out as a prophet. A lot of the Hebrews that Ezekiel lived with turned away from their idolatry and started serving God. He died, obeying God while still living in captivity.

The activity for the lesson on Ezekiel, we were to make an edible scroll. The kids liked this idea! All you need for this activity is one slice of bread per kid, a knife and honey to drizzle.

The first thing the kids did was cut the crust off the bread and then made the bread as square as they could.

cutting the crust off and squaring the bread up.

Once they finished squaring off their bread, they were to write “Oh Israel” on their “scroll”. This proved challenging to them, because it was hard to write with the honey. I didn’t have a small bottle with a nozzle, so I improvised and used ziploc bags and cut off a very tiny part of the corner.

Writing on their “scroll” with honey.

The last things the kids had to do was then roll the bread up just like a scroll and eat! I think this was their favorite part!

eating their “scroll”.

So what all have you been learning in the last couple of weeks? Did you do any neat projects or activities? I would love if you would link up and share it with us!

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Saving Memories Forever ~ review

By Joy on May 7, 2013 in 2013, review

(Disclaimer: I received this product free to review. While I got it for free, all thoughts and opinions are my own. No other compensation was received.)

Do you love learning about your family’s history or love hearing stories from days gone by? What about when your baby starts talking and wishing you had a way to capture the moment? With Saving Memories Forever App, you can preserve and save all of those special memories!

How does Saving Memories Forever work? The first thing you need is a smart phone. You will then need to download the Saving Memories Forever App. Once you have downloaded the app on your phone, you will need to register on their system. You also need to decide if you want to use the free version, or if you want to upgrade to the monthly paid version. While the process is the same for both versions, you will be able to do more with the paid version, which is only $3.99 a month.

Now that you have registered with Saving Memories Forever, you are now ready to begin saving those precious memories of your family. The first thing you will need to do is make a profile for the individuals you want to record. Once that profile has been made, Saving Memories Forever gives questions you can ask to the person, or you can ask your own questions. There are different categories for different age groups. The creators of Saving Memories Forever suggests that you keep the conversation recordings to 5 minutes or less. Once you finish the recording of your profiler, you are then ready to upload and save the story, so that others can listen and enjoy the stories, as well.

Overall, I think this is a very good idea. I know there have been times when I wished I had written or recorded stories of my parents and grandparents, that they told when they were growing up.

However, I had some issues with the Saving Memories Forevers App when I downloaded it. First off, make sure you have room on your phone to download the app. I had to delete a few other apps to make room for it. Secondly, once I was finally able to download the app, it took several tries for me to get the app to work properly on my phone. The app never did fit my phone screen. It was just too large for my screen. (I have an HTC). While, I have had just a few issues, a lot of others have had a lot of success using the Saving Memories Forever app. The creators are also very friendly and helpful for when you are having issues. I can see this app being a success for a lot of history buffs!

**Disclaimer: I received this product free to review. While I got it for free, all thoughts and opinions are my own. No other compensation was received.