Monday, May 21, 2012

April~MFW weeks 24-28 (with Easter, sledding, and friends)

On Rose's actual birthday we went to the Discovery Museum and then Olive Garden....or as she calls it "Oliver" Garden.

Grandpa and Grandma Anderson were able to stuff all these gifts into a USPS box.  Now I see were Chad gets his space defying packing skills from :0)

Legos and Anatomy gifts from mommy and daddy...

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Resurrection celebrations...
Here is Rose next to the Easter shelf.

...a (rare) family photo.

We went to an egg hunt hosted by a local church.  Candy, eggs, lunch, and puppets on a sunny day was fun.

After 8 years, Rose's hair is finally long enough to put in a single french braid.  She was so pleased.  Plus, Grandma and Grandpa Anderson sent these cute Easter hair pins and bow.

Coloring Easter Eggs...



Every year at Easter, Rose enjoys her Resurrection Eggs.  She memorized the story of Jesus' death and Resurrection with the eggs when she was a preschooler and still loves to use the eggs to go through the timeline of events.

Her Easter basket this year was filled with Audio books from Jim Hodges.  It is fun to give great Biblical worldview resources as gifts.  Last year her basket was filled with books and dvds from Answers in Genesis.

At church assembly....

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Rose spent part of her birthday money to put toward buying the computer game Timez Attack.  She is memorizing her times facts and this is a fun game to help her along.  (As a side note, even though they have addition and subtraction as well....I do not recommend this game to children younger than 8 years old... unless they are already desensitized to video games.)  
This game has really helped improved her skills and is better than using boring flashcards :0)  I do have some tips for those of you who may have a more tender child, like Rose.  You can adjust the brightness of screen.  We brightened it as high as it would go to make it a little more cheerful appearing.  I also sat with her the first several times she played it... as there are some cartoon ogre creatures that a 'rainbows and flowers' type of girl is not accustomed too.

 In our States studies we learned about FL, TX, IA, WI, CA, MN, and OR.


Rose was so cute.  After studying solids, liquids, and gases in science she spent the rest of the day making up songs and singing about these three forms of materials.  This girl sure does enjoy science.

Her favorite books this month are the Amelia Bedelia books.

We had a great Music Field Trip to the Reno Chamber Orchestra.  We all loved it.  Rose especially enjoyed the cello solo.

Our homeschool group took a Field trip to Rocksport which is were she takes her rockclimbing lessons, so it was fun for her to show the 'big kids' around the place.
She continues rockclimbing classes and ballet lessons.  In co-op she continues her Etiquette class and Fencing class.  She also is taking swim lessons this month to brush up on her strokes before summer gets here.

History is another beloved subject...."Can we please read more?" ... is often heard during the day referring to history.
Her notebook page about Samuel Morse...

Draw Write Now page about the trails heading west...
John Sutter notebook page...

Draw Write Now about the Gold Rush...

Notebook page about Abraham Lincoln...

Draw Write Now about Abraham Lincoln...

Just for fun, I am including a picture Rose drew of me and her sitting outside.  

After ballet class, her friend Carissa often gets to come over and play.  

It is nice having sweet friends.  Here is a photo of our friends, the Becks, playing the board game 'Carcasonne' with us.

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Keepers At Home Club this month was fun as always.  At one meeting the girls learned to make ice cream.


At another meeting the girls learned about Hospitality.


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There is still snow on the mountain so we went sledding one afternoon.


 Then Rose and daddy dug a cave in this wall of snow...


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 This photo is our church meeting at the park for assembly one Sunday.
The girls had fun exploring the woods.
I will end the post with another family photo.  Two family photos in one post!  

Time4Learning Review

We were given a free trial membership of  Time4Learning.com  to review.

Time4Learning is an online, subscription based curriculum for preK to grade 8.

We used it for Language Arts.  Rose didn't love it, but she thought it was alright.  It was bright and colorful.  It had some fun characters.
We thought about continuing with it.  That is until we looked at the price.  It is $19.95 a month!  That is $239.40 a year for some language arts games.  So I thought, well, I know Time 4 Learning also has science and math, so let's look at those to see if maybe if we used all the subjects it would be worth it.

Since I have a daughter that loves science, I thought maybe this could be a fun way for her to get some more science.  We went to the science section and ugh...  It had a strong evolutionary slant.  I was not happy with that at all.  They did a whole thing on which came first, the chicken or the egg.
So we just did that one science lesson.  I was not happy that it makes you question the Biblical truth of God's creation.

Okay so science is a no-go.  I contacted the company and asked if they had a lower pricing if we just wanted to access the language arts portions.  Their answer, "NO".

So we didn't continue our enrollment after the free trial.

Final thoughts:
I did think the Language Arts had useful games.
I did not like their science due to evolutionary views.
I did not try the math.

I think it is way over priced!

I can not recommend Time4Learning.com as a good homeschool resource.

Side-note:
If you are looking for a good online resource for language arts I recommend ReadingEggs.com