TOS Crew Review: Maestro Classics Swan Lake

Last year we had the opportunity to review Maestro Classics Peter and the Wolf and enjoyed it. I have to admit, music is an area that I'm not very good at incorporating into our homeschool and it's not something the girls generally seek out so I was excited to get another chance to learn about music in a fun way.

This year we got to review Swan Lake. What better musical piece for our house full of girls than a ballet about a fairytale-esque prince?!?! 

One thing I realized as we listened to this, is that, at least for my girls (and myself, for that matter), ballet is visual. Knowing that it was a ballet didn't help when we couldn't SEE it.  We did go on You Tube and find some videos of various ballets doing parts of it, which was pretty cool, but ideally I'd love to combine the excellent narration from Maestro Classics with the visual of the actual performance. I know, I ask alot LOL.

Still, we had fun with it. The CD starts with the complete ballet, but with narration added, so that we HEAR the whole story that's built into the music, interspersed through the music itself, followed by several shorter tracks that include history and other fun things (see this page for the contents of the CD *and* previews of each track)

After we'd listened to the CD, I headed on over to the Maestro Classics site and checked out their educational resources how fun!! The homeschool section is an amazing resource! If we weren't currently rather immersed in a very different era of history (American Revolution) I would love to use this as a bouncing off point for a fun unit on medieval history! And who knows, perhaps next year we just might do that!!   We did use our math time to check out some of the castle math games linked there, and found some of them pretty addictive, hee hee. 

I also noticed that in addition to the CDs, the website now also offers instant download of mp3s! That's a great option for someone like me who is often planning things last minute . . . suddenly find out you're going to the ballet and your children (and you?) need to understand the story abit before you go, you can download it and be listening to it asap! It also means no keeping track of the CD and is, of course, less expensive as well ($16.98 for the CDs, $9.98 for the download).  That said, the CD comes with a booklet that includes information about the composer, etc, and also some fun activities (maze, crossword puzzle, etc) so that is an advantage of purchasing the physical CD as well as being able to grab it and take it along in the car. 

Maestro Classics offers 9 different CDs/downloads as well as a few different bundle options. You can see all their products listed here.  You can also "like" their facebook page.

Be sure to check out what my fellow Crewmates think of Maestro Classics here.

Book Review and GIVEAWAY!!!! Cooper & Me and the Winter Adventure

We love reading books together all year long, but somehow for me, part of Christmas is the fun of snuggling together reading stories, it helps us to slow down and reconnect in the midst of the busyness of it all.

This year Little Bit and I enjoyed reading Cooper and Me and the Winter Adventure by Monique and Alexa Peters.

This is a cute rhyming story about 2 dogs, Cooper and Bella who get lost in the snow and their friend helps them find their way home. Little Bit enjoyed the pictures and the story kept her attention as well as most stories do, she's more of a "look at pictures" kind of reader right now.

The back of the book includes some learning questions  that are abit too much like the many reading comprehension quizzes I took in school for me to be a fan, but if someone is looking for a way to open discussion about the book they might be a helpful resource. Little Bit had more fun counting the pawprints that were used instead of bullet points on that page LOL.

I also like knowing that 

$1 of every Winter Adventure book sold will go to advance research & treatment of pancreatic cancer, via the Lustgarten Foundation. It's always nice to know that we can help others while purchasing quality items for our family.

For Little Bit, this was a fun book with pictures she liked. As she gets older, we'll be able to discuss the plot abit more and then it will also be a useful, non-scary way to talk about getting lost and how to be safe if you do.

And now the fun part, I get to give away a copy of this book to one of my readers!!!

To enter (mandatory) just leave a comment here telling me if you have a dog, or want a dog, or something about a dog :)

For additional entries:

Visit the Cooper & Me website and tell me something you liked.

Like Cooper & Me on facebook

Follow Cooper & Me on Twitter

Follow my blog on Google Friend Connect or Networked Blogs (or both, for 2 entries)

Like my page on facebook

The rules:  Giveaway will end on January 10, 2012. Giveaway open to those with a US address. Please make sure you have included a way to contact you (e-mail or blog), if I can't easily contact you, I will choose a different winner. Winners have 2 days to respond to my e-mail, or a new winner will be chosen.

 “Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or

services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it 

on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally 

and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance 

with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the 

Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Book Club

A couple of months ago some members of the TOS Crew got to review the book How to Have a H.E.A.R.T. for Your Kids.  I wasn't one of the lucky ones who was chosen for the review, but when I read some of their reviews I immediately added it to my Amazon wish list.

Today I noticed on facebook that there's an online bookclub discussing this book starting this month so I used an amazon giftcard I'd gotten with my swagbucks credit to order the book. As soon as it gets here I'll be joining in and, unless I get too busy and forget, blogging about it. I'd love to have my friends and readers join me!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Happy 2012!!!!

I suppose this is the time of year when I'm supposed to write some lovely insightful, philosophical post about a fresh new start and all that, but I'm not so into New Years so . . . I'll just say "Happy New Years!!" and leave it at that LOL. When we were at Mt Vernon last month one of the "interpreters" there was talking about how New Years as a holiday didn't really exist yet in George Washington's time because America had just recently switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. On the Julian calendar the new year started in the spring, with the new growth and all that and it really hit me how much more LOGICAL that would be than to start a new year in the dead of winter, so maybe that's why I don't like New Years, but anyway . . .

We had a good week last week. Of course we began the week with Christmas. Then we had our last couple of days of Hanukkah. It was nice to be able to focus on Hanukkah those last couple of days instead of it kind of getting lost in the preparations for and then celebration of, Christmas.  Next year Hanukkah falls earlier in December and I think I'll like that better.

But anyway, Hanukkah was fun. We made latkes one night, they weren't as hard as I thought they might be, and the girls LOVED them, so I think we'll have them more often.

We've been enjoying learning about the Revolutionary War this week, I have to admit, there are SOO many great books, that we'll be spending a few weeks on it, just so we can read all the books I want us to read. Plus, some of the books the girls got for Christmas are longer chapter books from this period in history so we are taking time to let them read those too.

Little Bit started her very own Kinderbach lessons this week too. The big girls and I reviewed it last year, but this year it's Little Bit's turn, so far she is LOVING it. I have no illusions that she'll "learn piano" from it, but she's having fun.

The weather has been amazingly sporatic, in the 20's one day and near 50 the next, but thankfully the precipitation has coincided with the warmer days so we've avoided snow. Yesterday was one of the warmer days AND rain free so we grabbed the chance and went to ZooAmerica. It was soo fun! Little Bit was really into it this time, and the big girls still enjoy learning more about animals.

I have to admit I was a bad mommy and didn't even tell the girls that last night was New Years Eve, I really had no interest in staying up till midnight, much less dealing with hyper children who thought they should get to stay up but were much too tired to really stay up, and then grouchy, overtired children today. So we didn't do anything to "celebrate" new years. The girls did complain this morning when they realized they'd missed "seeing the ball drop" but they got over it pretty quickly.

And now, on to 2012 . . .

TOS Crew Review: R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish

We've been dabbling at learning Spanish for about 2 years now. This all came about at the girls' request however, they tend to get frustrated with it and not want to put effort into it. I don't feel the need to drag them kicking and screaming through an elective of their own choosing so we keep trying different things looking for a good fit. . . for the past year we've basically just added a new vocabulary word every couple of days, continuing to review the old words and that has worked relatively well for learning vocabulary, as long as we keep with it BUT they weren't at all getting the concept of putting that vocabulary to use. They could go through the vocabulary flash cards flawlessly but then if I gave them a sentence using those same words they couldn't translate it without breaking it into the individual words, sigh . . . so a couple months ago I began searching for a new option to move them into more useage . . . and as happens so often, the Crew came through with perfect timing!

R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish (R.E.A.L. stands for Relax, Enjoy, Aspire and Learn), is designed for homeschoolers to integrate Spanish into homeschooling. It is designed to be used with multiple ages of children in a homeschool or co-op setting.

We received it right before the holidays, so have gotten a slow start with it, but so far, it's working well for us. As with so many products, whether designed for classrooms or homeschools, we end up adapting it for our more relaxed type of schooling. The activity book is too workbookish for us, though we use some of the pages together orally.

Even Little Bit is loving the suggested puppet shows. By far the hit so far has been the suggestion to make their OWN board game. They had a BLAST making it and as I write they are voluntarily clearing all the other school clutter off the table so they can play their game!

The book is divided into units. With each unit divided into smaller sections. The introductory information indicated that you can either spend however many weeks on one unit, or go through each unit, learning some of the words, then go back through all. I thought that approach would work better for my girls, spending one week on each section, but found that the activities and puppet dialogues build on themselves too much for that to actually work, so we went back to the first unit and are finishing it up this week then we'll move forward again, learning all words in each unit as we go.

So, we've fallen into a pattern (that I think we'll continue), where we begin the week with a puppet show to introduce the new vocabulary. The next day the girls make their own flash cards. The rest of the week, depending on time we do suggested activities for that unit or the girls review their flash cards on their own.

This program is available as an instant download (what we received) for $49.95 or hardcopy for $89.95. The age of your children will affect how quickly you will move through this book. The book suggests that high school students might use it for a single school year, but that younger children will likely take longer. I think this will take us 2-3 years, schooling year round, so that breaks down to a very reasonable price per year.

In addition to the main teacher's book, which includes vocabulary, the dialogue/phrases that we use for our puppet shows, and tips/suggestions for each unit, we also received the Activity Book (workbook type activities) and audio files to go with each of these so we can hear how things are supposed to be pronounced. There is also a Daily Curriculum Guide available for an additional $9.95. This gives suggested daily lesson plans and teach prep work at the beginning of each week. Someone taking a more structured approach might find this very helpful.

Don't forget to check out what my fellow crewmates have to say about this product on the TOS Crew blog.

Weekly Wrap-Up - The Holiday Edition

This past week was pretty much all about cleaning and Christmas and Hanukkah (in a perfect world, our first year celebrating Hanukkah would have been a year when it falls at the BEGINNING of December instead of overlapping Christmas, but oh well . . .).

So, the cleaning's boring but the fun stuff:

Christmas:

• We definitely enjoyed using Jotham's Journey for our Advent reading this year. I think we'll use Bartholomew's Passage next year.
• Our other Advent "thing" this year was I used an advent calendar that has a little drawer for each day and put 2 slips of paper in each drawer (starting once we got back from my parents' house so it wasn't the full 25 days). One slip of paper had a family member or friend to pray for that day and the other had an activity to do that day. They included little things like "Let's have hot chocolate and marshmallows" and silly things like "Let's have an indoor snowball fight" (we used big marshmallows, they LOVED it! Little Bit especially thought it was the best thing EVER!!!), "giving" things like hiding dollar bills in the toy section at the dollar store for other children to find (they LOVED LOVED LOVED this one!) and putting money in the Salvation army bucket . . . it was a big hit! We've decided we'll make a jar (or something) of similar slips of paper and each Sunday we'll draw one slip of paper that is something we'll try to do sometime that week. We talked about the fact that sometimes we might have to "re-draw" (if we choose "let's go wade in the creek" in Feb. it's not gonna happen!) and there might be some weeks when other things are going on that I just have to say "not this week", but overall I think it will be a good way to "force" me to make time for fun stuff that I always think sounds great, but never remember to actually DO it.
• Wednesday was cookie-making day. Rodney ended up needing to work, so it was just "us girls" so we scaled back the original plans, but we did make 3 kinds of cookies and had fun doing it.
• Christmas eve continues to be a favorite tradition-filled evening at our house. We open a few, very specific, presents: Mama makes Christmas nightgowns for all 3 girls each year and sends them home with me ahead of time so we have them for Christmas eve (originally, when the big girls were little, I'd just buy them Christmas pajamas, but a few . . .3, I think?. . . years ago I asked Mom if she wanted to make them nightgowns that year (it's impossible to BUY children's nightgowns that aren't made of icky synthetic fabrics and soaked in nasty chemicals, I wanted nice, comfy, non-chemical-soaked, flannel, so that meant handmade) the girls LOVED LOVED LOVED having nightgowns, so that piece of the tradition has continued as well. I also get them some Christmas- themed DVDs, books, or games that they open on Christmas eve. So we had a nice evening watching movies, and reading books.

Hanukkah:

This is our first year celebrating Hanukkah. I was excited to find a menorah AND candles for it and also a dreidel at Goodwill, so we were all set. Hanukkah started at sundown on Tuesday, so starting Tuesday evening we lit the menorah. Biblical Holidays includes suggested readings for each night that include a few Bible verses and then commentary on those verses. In the interest of short attention spans, especially from Little Bit, and general busyness, We opted to just read the Bible verses this year. We also read the Hanukkah story (about the Macabees) a couple times during the week. We weren't able to do as much with traditional foods as the girls would have liked, when I'm madly cleaning for Christmas and making way too many cookies and such,  I don't have time to attempt latkes from scratch for the first time LOL. But we did try to have some-what traditional foods. I decided perogies were a good option since we like to make them with sauteed onions in the frying pan rather than boiling them. And we got frozen latkes and made them one night. We also had jelly donuts (store-bought, I didn't try making them) a couple times. Now that Christmas is over, I think we might try the latkes from scratch since we have tonight and tomorrow night still.

The game of Dreidel has been a big hit. Even Little Bit is enjoying it. The first night we used a small bag of chocolate coins we have, but then we decided on Hershey Kisses instead, they're more fun to eat later LOL. Especially since we got the cherry ones and dark chocolate mint ones. So we've played Dreidel for at least a  little while most evenings.

So those were some highlights from our week. I'll do a separate post about Christmas, I think dh has the pictures on his computer.

Weekly Wrap-up - December 18

Look, I'm actually writing the wrap-up on Sunday like I'm supposed to (or starting it anyway, I make no promises that I'll FINISH it tonight!).

Highlights this past week include:

Enjoying a nice lunch and celebrating Christmas with our neighbor and adopted grandma, Miss Judy. We celebrated early before she left for Hawaii for a month (yes, we're all jealous!). I have to brag on my kids for just a minute, it's my blog, I'm allowed! We got there at lunch time so ate lunch first. The older girls were chomping at the bit to get to presents (nothing unusual there) BUT they were most anxious to give Miss Judy the things they/we made for her, not to get things.  They were, however, very happy with the gifts they received. Now they keep begging me to help them put together the weather station, and are pouring over their herb book planning the herb garden they want to plant next spring :)

Little Bit spends a part of each day being a butterfly with the butterfly/fairy wings dress-up she received :) I'd take pictures, but she's generally a nakey butterfly LOL.

We also enjoyed playing with our friends E & J a couple times this week. We stopped by their house one evening to drop something else and stayed a little while so the big girls could play a game with E and Little Bit and J could chase balloons around the house. Another day, E & J came and played at our house while their mom had a doctor's appointment. It was tooo cute, Little Bit was still taking her nap when they got here, but it was time she could wake up whenever. J (just passed 2) kept asking to "me go wake [Little Bit] up" so finally I let him go upstairs, and sent MiniMe along to make sure things went ok. A few minutes later they all came back down and Little Bit was laughing and told me "J woke me up from my nap, that's SOOO SILLY!!"

We wrapped up our week by enjoying a nice evening with friends Sat. afternoon/evening. We enjoyed a yummy Indian meal picnic style and then the kids all had a blast building and decorating gingerbread houses, and eating their weight (and then some) in candy, in the process. The pictures of that are on dh's phone, I'll have to bug him to send them to me.