Travel The World! The 2009 Schoolhouse Planner (June 2010 Module)
The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
www.theoldschoolhousestore.com
1-888 718-HOUSE
$7.95

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine has made world travel as easy as a click of your computer mouse! The June 2010 Module of the 2009 Old Schoolhouse Planner is a 56 page unit study for the whole family. This E-book includes everything you need to teach world geography to students from Kindergarten to 12th grade. The unit study is composed of a study guide with numerous internet links embedded into the text. This feature allows the student to quickly find the definition of vocabulary words and explore related websites.

The course begins with an exploration of globes, flat maps and the compass rose. It continues with a study of the world's oceans and the seven continents. There are internet links to quizzes and games within each section. In addition, there are numerous printable activity sheets; including word searches, word scrambles, crossword puzzles, copy work (manuscript and cursive), coloring sheets and lap book materials.

My children, ages 14, 12, and 9, each used the Travel the World study. My 14 year old enjoyed the interactive games that were linked to the study. She also liked the recipes and high school level word search. I thought the geography challenge on the high school level was a nice touch, especially since my daughter had just completed a year of high school geography. I found the word search, at this level, was a little too easy and would have preferred a challenging crossword puzzle.

My 12 year old son found the interactive links "neat" and found it fun to do geography on the computer. He also believed that the games added to the course and he continued to "play" in the unit, long past the allotted time for history. My son is not a fan of activity sheets. However, I felt that here was enough reinforcement within the unit to do a complete study without the use of the activity sheets.

The youngest of my children was very excited as she previewed the unit. She was drawn to the colorful graphics, the activity sheets and the lap book component. My 9 year old was especially fond of the interactive games. We spent quite a bit of time playing the Longitude and Latitude Matching Game. The object was to locate a little girl lost on a map using latitude and longitude coordinates. An additional favorite was the Continent Copycat Game, which is very similar to the popular game Simon. However, this one tests your memory while reinforcing the locations of the seven continents.

Overall, I really found the Travel the World Module easy to use and it required little to no prep time. A family with younger children might need to copy activity sheets ahead of time. However, my children printed out sheets as they worked. Another great feature is the internet links, which allows children to play on the internet without surfing to unfiltered websites. I found this product to work well with each of my children's learning styles. In addition, the e-book is reusable and affordable at $7.95. I would definitely recommend this program to other homeschooling families and look forward to using some of the other monthly modules that The Old Schoolhouse Magazine produces.

The Travel the World E-book was provided free of charge for my review as a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew. I received no other compensation, and this review is my honest opinion.

Reviewed by Lauren Bell

Thank God it’s the last day of school!!!! Well another great year of school has come to a close and what did I do last night? If you guessed started planning for next year, then you’re right! I think one of my favorite things about June is looking back over the school year and seeing the progress we have made during the year. This year in many ways has been one of our better homeschool years. Why? I think after sixteen years of homeschooling I am finally ok with not completing every page in every book. Although, we completed most of our curriculum, there were days when a lesson just seemed like busy work or there were pages that were repetitious-so we skipped them! (imagine that) At first my children questioned if we were allowed to skip pages and I was actually able to reply YES!! So I guess I have also made some progress this year. I hope the homeschool police will not see this, but we actually change some of our books midyear (don’t tell anyone). I finally realized that the price that I make my children pay for finishing curriculum that isn’t a good fit for them is much higher than the price it would have cost to resell and purchase new books. So this year we lap booked our way through science and did some fun unit studies instead of our text books and guess what? It turned out great. So at the end of our school year I can say I am truly thankful to God for freeing me from the textbook police and for Moore Expression’s (our local homeschool bookstore) for buying back my textbook misfits! Well, I guess I’ll go back to praying for wisdom and planning for another great school year.

Exciting News!!

I am so excited about being on the TOS Homeschool Crew this coming year! Check back frequently to see how my adventure is going. The "cruise" sets sail in July and I will be sharing reviews and news during the year. See you soon.

I can't believe I'm blogging!

I never thought I would add blogging to my very busy life. But here I am typing away on my computer as I introduce a new and exciting element to an already full plate. So where do I start, well I think it all began one summer "around my kitchen table". My oldest daughter was four years old and we were hosting the weekly playgroup at our home. While the children played, the other moms and I began to talk. Our children were rapidly approaching kindergarten age so the topic quickly turned to school. I mentioned that I had been thinking about homeschooling and the discussion began. Well, that was 15 years ago and there have been many such meetings at my home. Yes, I did decide to homeschool and it was one of the best gifts I have given to my family. Over the years, those gatherings have blessed me and I pray they were a blessing to the other moms as well. During those meetings we shared curriculum, swapped books and just encouraged each other. Somewhere along the way I became the information person in our community and those summer meetings grew to my leading a support group and today being the academic director of a large homeschool enrichment program.I can also be found at our local homeschool store giving new and veteran homeschooler curriculum advise.
Today, I am homeschooling three of our four children; our oldest daughter Kiana, is now a junior in college.(Praise God!) The second oldest, Kaela, is fourteen and she is currently in the ninth grade. Our son,Kwan is eleven and in the sixth grade. The youngest ,Karina is nine and in presently in the fourth grade.
In this blog I hope to share some of my homeschool experiences as well as review curriculum. I pray that my blog can somehow be a blessing to you…so come and join me around the kitchen table.