Homeschool giggles

Just been listening to Lilly telling off her math lesson
"Phillip don't do it - it's a really bad deal, don't be stupid it's not worth it"
Had to take a peak - she's doing compound interest and Philip would pay an extra 2k back on a 6k car loan. Good to know she has her priorities right

Amusing math

The girls were singing 10 green bottles yesterday and to my amusement (and suffering) when they got to 'no green bottles hanging on the wall' (and I'd almost breathed a sigh of relief) they created a new set of verses 'and if one more should accidentally fall, we'd have negative one green bottl hanging on the wall' (all the way to negative ten)

Homeschool Legacy - Victoria and her World

History is one of our favourite subjects so we were pleased to be offered the chance to review Homeschool Legacy products. We chose Victoria and Her World Once-a-Week Micro-Studies because it tied in nicely with our current studies. There were a number of other choices available including Once-a-Week Unit Study: Christmas Comes to America and Once-a-Week Micro-Studies Pirates or Privateers: You Decide, Cooking up History with the Founding Presidents and Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims (so be sure to check out my crew mates reviews if those titles would be of interest)


Once-a-Week Micro-Studies are small unit studies in that provide three 30-minute lessons per week. They are designed to give you an introduction to history and are easy and simple to use (hardly any prep needed). Victoria and Her World arrived as a 18 page pdf covering Victorian England, it's full of links so we found it easier to view online but it's just as easy to use if you decide to print.

It's broken down into four weeks

Week one - gives a basic overview of literature, music, government and geography of Victoran England.

Week two - looks at the background of Victoria, fashion of the time, art, printable timeline and history.

Week three - discusses the royal family, Christmas traditions, toys and recipes 

Week four - cover challenges Victoria faced, games, toys (including making a zoetrope), industrial revolution and another recipie suggestion for afternoon tea.

The lessons are designed to be fairly quick (30 mins, three times a week) and give a great introduction to Victorian society - they are very easy to extend if you wish.

The girls favourite activites were the Christmas related ones, they especially loved making all the decorations. 

They did also enjoy the baking and toys.

I liked the level of content and the easy of using the Micro-Studies and was very impressed with how it inspired the girls to do more. A great plus for me is the adaptability of them, they be extended if you want to create additional depth, done in a different order, made easier for younger siblings and tweaked to fit your schedule. We ended up doing the whole weeks work on one afternoon which took a couple of hours (depending on the activities)

The Once-a-Week Micro-Studies are available for $12.99 and are designed for grades 1-8.

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the Homeschool review Crew

Sewing lesson results

We've had a busy week getting ready for Rose's baptism but I wanted to share how impressed I have been with her sewing skills - from the earliest lessons with their sewing teacher, to putting zips in, to sewing button holes and learning how to draw a pattern - she has loved every minute and used so many of her new skills to sew her baptism dress :)

Educeri Lesson Subscription Service - Homeschool Review Crew

I often find myself trawling the Internet for ideas and lesson plans, so when the chance came to review the Educeri Lesson Subscription Service from Educeri ....... Educeri a division of DataWORKS I was keen to give it a go. I was given a 12 month subscription to review.

Educeri is an online site full of ready to teach lesson plans. They currently have over a thousand lessons available across grades K-12 covering topics in;

• Math
• Science
• English Language Arts
• History
• Art
• P.E.
• Music
• Spanish
• English Language Development

The site is fairly easy to navigate. Once logged in you can choose to view all lessons, browse by topic, browse by grade or search for a specific lesson. You simply click 'Teach Lesson' to view.

The lesson is presented like a slide show and you have to click to move to the next slide. Each page usually has a few sentences of information, some helpful tips (in boxes) and some problems shown underneath. After you have read the information and worked out the answers, you click and the next few slides walk you step by step systematically through the problem. There are marker and eraser functions you can use through the mouse control but we found it easier to just say the answer and click to see it solved.

At the end of each lesson there is a detailed overview giving you the learning objectives, vocabulary, common core correlations and most of the lessons have printable handouts available so your students can practise what was covered in the lesson.

We used Educeri as a supplement to our existing lessons, for example Rose has been looking at quadrilaterals in geometry and I found a lesson that tied in perfectly.

The lessons aren't really interactive but I sat with her and helped her read the info and she took great pleasure in 'seeing' if her answer was correct as she clicked to the next slide.

Whereas Sunflower was quiet capable of using this on her own, she just browsed the list and picked out lessons that she wanted (I did set her a few to supplement areas we were currently studying) - she particularly loved the lesson on Australian Indigenous Rock Art.

I really liked the level of detail in the lessons and it was nice to have  prepped lessons to hand on days when I wasn't on top form. I was impressed by the breadth of topics covered in math, science and english arts, we used a number of them and I have plans to use many more : )

I would like to see some audio included in the lessons, especially for the younger ages. I am excited to see what new lessons will be added to other areas (especially Art).

You can purchase an annual subscription for $75 or opt for monthly subscriptions at $7. Educeri offer a 30 day free trial so you can see how it works for your family.

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the Homeschool Review Crew.