CHSH-Teach.com TOS Review

Over the summer we have had the privilege to review CHSH-Teach.com otherwise known as the 

Christian HomeSchool Hub Download Club. I was given a years subscription to the CHSH Download Club

CHSH-Teach.com is the creation of  homeschooler, Lynda Ackert. She decided to put her love of creating to good use and designed a website that acts as a hub for all her educational resources - it has over 50,000 down loadable pages including; worksheets, lapbooks, flashcards, notebook pages, reading comprehension, languages, writing prompts, workbooks, posters and many more. It even remembers us and has pages of organisational materials including; planning forms, graphic organisers, awards and calendars as well as daily devotionals and discussion forums. Lynda is continuously adding new contents to the site as she creates them so the list is ever evolving.

CHSH-Teach.com is incredibly easy to use. Once you have registered online created your account you can browse the resource bank and search by subject, search by topic or keyword, search by grade level or search by monthly events. The subjects are broken down into the main topics areas of Bible Related Resources, Languages, Arts Music and Crafts, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Electives, Health.

You can opt to search by grade level - Kindergarden, 1st-3rd grades, 4th-8th grades, 9th-12th grades.

There are two ways to search by month as well.

 

I selected a summer math activity for the girls (fractions) and then gave them free reign to select their own 'lessons' for the summer. 

Rose being the wannabe inventor decided she wanted to know more about inventors and how they did it so we opted for a pack on Thomas Edison. Sunflower and Tulip wanted to look at the industrial revolution (more as an excuse to visit the local museums again) so I downloaded their pack. Basically this had something for every child (even Lilly downloaded some English Lit activities to go alongside her coursework), I downloaded some nice grammar rules and math posters to use as prompts for the new school year.

If you are after simple worksheets for practise or for a more complete lesson plan - its all here. For example the Industrial Revolution pack we used is a 24 page pack including reading, questions, vocab, timelines, discussions, reading comprehension and more. There are a number of additional worksheets and activities to go alongside the main pack.

I've got to be honest and say I'm very impressed with CHSH-Teach.com - whatever we are studying there seems to be something here for every age group. I love that its all in one place and saves me hours of trawling the Internet for suitable materials and I love how versatile it is, whether we want to do lapbooking, notebooking, worksheets, discuss, fill in the blanks, narrate etc. there is something in the hub to use. It makes it so much simpler to homeschool and teach your children.

CHSH-Teach.com offers an annual subscription fee of  $25 or for lifetime only for $99.99. They have freebies so you can trial the site and they have options to buy individual worksheets or workbooks.

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the TOS Blog.

ArtAchieve - TOS Review

Art is not my strength but the girls love it. I've always struggled to come up with any lesson plans so I was very happy (and so were the girls) when the chance came up to review Entire Level ll  from ArtAchieve.

ArtAchieve is a complete homeschool art curriculum providing drawing lessons for kids (and adults), it was created by John Hofland (a veteran homeschooler) who firmly believes that anyone can learn to draw, that drawing is essential skill and that like math, that skill can be taught. Puling on his combined experiences of teaching in school, homeschooling and studying with the masters he has created a hassle free on line curriculum that does the teaching for you.

We received a years access to the Entire Level ll for review. Its so simple to use - you literally create an account and the lessons are all on line and available once you have logged in.

There are 14 lessons in level 2. You can opt to print a pdf of the lesson or watch a video (approx 25 mins) outlining it step by step. Each lesson starts with some tips on how to relax and prepare yourself mentally and physically for art - my favourite tip was when he said to paint/draw without talking to improve concentration and to see the girls take this on board while I sat enjoying the silence while they worked (Sunflower even told her sisters "please be quiet, I need to concentrate"). Next comes a  'warm up' which is a grid with some of the squares containing elements from the picture for you to copy, then it moves on to discussing different aspects of art like types of lines, motifs etc before showing you how to draw. Lessons also include elements of geography, history or literature which are a great addition (I love sneaking in extra lessons) and he even has a play list of inspirational music to help you.

The lessons are professional, engaging and memorable (I've spotted Rose using one of his relaxation techniques when her sisters were annoying her) - they are so easy to use and I was really impressed with how someone with no historical art skills (me) could even produce an amazing piece of art and enjoy doing it.

This really has been so simple to incorporate into our schedule, the girls have loved this and it has fast become a firm favourite in our house. Lilly has spent hours working on minute detail within her pictures and has adopted a couple of his techniques in her various doodles. Sunflower said that this was the best lesson of the week while Rose has requested to do more. Tulip summed it all up nicely when she said 'I never knew that art was so much fun - can you get me some more paints'

I loved the confidence it gave me to include art in our weekly schedule and I loved the impact it had on the girls. I was also impressed by how varied their work was even though they were working from the same instructions.

ArtAchieve Entire Level ll is available for $53 and there are various different options to buy (including single lessons).

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the TOS Blog

 

Spray can art

We went to a fab workshop where the girls learnt to use aerosol's to make pictures.

They started by lightly spaying black over their paper, then white over the black and used crumpled paper to texture it, next they masked off a circle (lid/plate etc) and sprayed over in black paint.

To finish they sprayed their fingers and splattered white paint to make the stars.

A few kids took it a step further and created backdrops and landscapes to go with their moon.

Art with flowers

Rose made an exciting discovery last week. She noticed that when she picked up the fallen petals from my purple tulips they left a stain on her fingers - this prompted her to develop a way to colour and draw with them.

First she would screw one up,

then wrap the next petal round it in a tube and colour away.

Her final tip it to remember that the colour fades after an hour or so.

School again

Our school year started again this week (we should have started last week but postponed so we could spend some time on the beach - the joy of flexibility), we took it fairly slowly just to get them back into the habit.

We explored shells (from our beach trip), picked and studied wheat and harvested our fruit trees for our nature studies.

The older girls were reintroduced to their math programs while Rose did some work on geometry. I also sneaked in an extra hundred square for her as she wanted to do a countdown chart to her birthday and knowing it was a hundred days or so until Christmas (thanks people for giving me nightmares-you know who I'm talking too) convinced her to do a countdown to Christmas instead.

For science we just watched some Mystery Science videos and because Sunflower wanted to know why clouds don't float into space we did some reading and investigating. We also managed a quick snail study.

Art was mud pie sculptures - my favourites were the snail with its stone trail and the pig.

Clay Fruit

A big hole we were digging for foundations revealed clay in our garden.

clay = happy kids

needless to say they got very muddy digging up loads of clay, then spent a few hours washing it and making clay fruit and bowls.

Summer Education

I don't know about you but we try to keep some form of education going over the summer - not as formal or structured as normal but we do look for opportunities to learn. 

Art and drawing skills seem to be worked on more.

It's always the perfect time for history projects that we always meant to do but never got around to,

or just to do an unusual geometry lesson

while maths becomes a group effort.

How do you keep the learning spirit alive over summer?

Abstract Sculpture day

We went to a great activity this week, making abstract sculptures from old tights and gardening wire.

After making the sculptures they got to paint them 

 And then enjoy a great afternoon out in the sun while they dried.