Redhanded Homeschool High Fives ~ Our 2017 Crew Favorites

It's time once again, as the Homeschool Review Crew year comes to a close, to choose our Redhanded Homeschool's High Fives for 2017.  I can't believe another year is behind us.  There were about 75 vendor "runs" this year.  My family reviewed 47 products to share with you.  Plus two single reviews for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.

For the 2017 Homeschool Review Crew Blue Ribbon Awards, voting is very difficult in some categories.  We must choose *just one* vendor or product in each of the Crew's categories.  I've relaxed that rule for my blog.  'Cuz it's my blog, natch!  So where the punks or I loved more than one thing, I'm giving them all High Fives.

As usual, there are old favorites, new treasures, and things I've "had my eye on" for someday.  These favorites are all products that I would, actually have, or might again really pay money for it.  I think it's important that you can trust that when I tell you we absolutely loved something, I really mean it was *that good*.

Malachi's High Five
Carole P. Roman.  We really like her If You Were Me and Lived In... series, but Mal especially enjoyed our first fiction book from Carole, Oh, Susannah: It's in the Bag.  Actually, they all did and we have since read the second book and they're hoping for more.  The reading level is a bit below the older punks, but they love the stories, just for fun.

Xavier's High Five
First, Xav tried to choose Stopmotion Explosion again.  I told him he had to stick to products we reviewed in 2017, so he voted for The Brinkman Adventures - season 4 (see Merrick's High Five below).

Merrick's High Five
The Brinkman Adventures - season 4.  The Crew reviewed season 2 in 2014.  Since then, I've purchased seasons 1 and 3.  These fictionalized versions of real life missionary stories are always a hit.  They have a curriculum out for season 1 that I want to check out at some point, too.

My High Five for Moms
Homeschool Rescue from Only Passionate Curiosity.  I only managed to get through part of the program during the review period.  Now, I'll have a bit more time and I intend to finish it through once.  Then I want to work through it once each year to update our homeschool plan.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com is way more than just classes for the kids, though it certainly is that.  We've used this off and on since, I think 2011, when it started.  Back in those "olden days" if you had a subscription to the print Old Schoolhouse Magazine, you were given SchoolhouseTeachers.com access until your subscription ran out.  I had over a year of it.  About a year after it expired, I won another year in 2013.  In 2014, 2016, and 2017 I received access as a reviewer for the Homeschool Review Crew.  Hey, we're all family.  :)  I have decided to not return to the Crew in 2018 for various reasons, so I purchased two years during the BOGO sale last week.

These curriculum favorites are products we are still using, have completed this year, or will continue to use in 2018 and beyond.

Language Arts High Fives
Crafty Classroom's Learn to R.E.A.D. program - Merrick loves having his own school stuff that no one else does and the notebooking pages are so much fun for a Kinder.
Channie's Handwriting and Math Workbooks - I only reviewed the one handwriting workbook for littles, but I liked it so much, I ordered handwriting journals for the bigger littles and several math workbooks.
Reading Eggs - We've had Reading Eggs before.  I liked it so much, I was willing to pay for it when the bigger punks were littler.  Now Mal and Merrick are happily using it.  Merrick also likes to dabble in MathSeeds, though it placed him lower than I thought he should be.  I consider MathSeeds "just for fun" school.

Math High Fives
CTCMath.  Always.  And it's now a complete math curriculum for grades K-12. Another curriculum I have happily paid for and will again.

Science High Fives
Think Like an Engineer from Innovators Tribe is so much fun with all the hands on challenges.  I love that we are encouraged to include the whole family in this subscription.

Social Studies High Fives
Drive Thru History - The Gospels.  The Drive Thru History series is fantastic.  We're also using the American History videos for part of Xav and Mal's history this year.
Heirloom Audio ~ In the Reign of Terror and Captain Bayley's Heir.  While I have reviewed other Heirloom Audio titles for the Crew, I have also purchased copies of other titles in the series.  These audio dramas are crazy good.

Extra-Curricular High Fives
Creating a Masterpiece.  I wish we had been able to fit more of Sharon's lessons in before our subscription expired, but we really enjoyed learning how to make real art while we had it.
Doctor Aviation with Daryl Smith.  This one expires pretty soon and we enjoyed it a lot, though we didn't get through as much as we would have liked.

My Bonus High Fives
Lamplighter's The Secret Bridge.  While this wasn't the best book I ever read, I enjoyed it and it opened up a whole new world of literature for us.  Since this review, we toured the Lamplighter Ministries Book Bindery and purchased five or six more books and three audio dramas.  I especially recommend Sir Malcom and the Missing Prince and Teddy's Button.
Northern Speech Services' Color My Conversation was one of those "didn't know I needed" kind of curriculum.  We did set this aside, but will be picking it back up and starting over after the holidays.


Check out the *Official* Homeschool Review Crew Blue Ribbon Award winners and look in the Linky to read about my Crew Mates' family favorites.

Best of the Best ~ 2016 Crew Awards

After taking 2015 off from The Crew, we happily rejoined this year.  It has been a whirlwind of amazing homeschool products.  Many were return vendors we know and love and there were lots of fresh, new companies joining us, too.  Some curricula were on my "short list" for "some day" and some were wonderful surprises.  We used and reviewed just over forty products for The Homeschool Review Crew, plus some single reviews for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, which you'll also, eventually, get to read about here.

Last week, The Crew reviewers and their kiddos were all invited to vote for our favorite reviews of the 2016 run.  I have to say, this is probably one of the absolute hardest parts of being on The Crew.  You get to vote for *just one* thing in each category. It's incredibly difficult, sometimes, to narrow it down.


My personal *blog* requirements are a bit more lenient in that I allow us to choose several items in categories I want to use.  To simplify, I used subjects for the categories or I could go on and list nearly every review we did here. So, here goes.  Here are Redhanded Homeschool's High Fives for the 2016 Homeschool Review Crew.  All links will take you to my original reviews.

Malachi's High Five
Familyman Ministries' The Familyman's Christmas Treasury
We all like these stories so much.  Almost every time we get in the car, they ask me to play Cootie McKay, Captain Chaos, or The Stranger.

Xavier's High Five ("Obviously.")
Stopmotion Explosion's Stopmotion Animation Kit
We've all liked this and have made it a bit of a hobby.  I'm even teaching the kids at co-op a class based on the information I learned from SME and other kits, and videos we've been using.

Merrick's High Five
Talking Fingers, Inc.'s Read, Write, & Type
Who doesn't like teaching pesky Vexor a lesson for bad behavior?  And there's the bonus of learning to read, write, and type as you go.

My High Fives for Moms
MyFreezEasy
Love, love, love this one!  I've tried freezer cooking before, but it was always overwhelming to me.  Not anymore!

SchoolhouseTeachers.com
While on the surface, SchoolhouseTeachers.com is for classes, there are also tons of resources for moms and the whole family.

Most of the following products are favorites that we have finished, kept using through the year, or will be using in the future.

Language Arts
LOE Foundations A 
Merrick used several reading and writing programs this year and he (and BooBear, his teddy) really enjoyed this one.

IEW's Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization
"Ooey gooey was a worm..."  We all had a blast studying and memorizing poetry this year.  This program will be with us for years to come.

Progeny Press' The Sword in the Tree e-guide
This was a really good study based on a book that really held their attention.

Can Do Cubes from jollyliteracy.com
While Merrick liked using these with Jolly Phonics, the beauty of these cubes is that they can be used with any program.  All of my kids like manipulatives.  Why not have them in LA also?

Language Arts ~ Honorable Mention 
I have one honorable mention again this year.  This is a *great* writing program, but we just weren't able to finish it for various reasons.  I almost held a co-op class in my home using Here to Help Learning, but we had a bunch of balls in the air at that time and I couldn't figure out a good time to do it.  I'd be so happy to use it again sometime, though. 

Math
CTCMath
I love this math times 1000!  Malachi especially does well with it.  He worked tirelessly this summer to get his scores up in multiplication, working the section over and over.  I was so proud of him, but more importantly, he was proud of his own achievements.  We use CTCMath almost every day.

Math ~ Honorable Mention
It's a game.  It's math.  It's Sunya the Magic and Wonder of Math and Science Adding & Subtracting.  This is a fun card game (with a really long name) for memorizing math facts and comes in multiplication and division as well.  We should use it more often.  And get Merrick playing it with us.

Science
Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy 2nd edition
We had a great time using this edition with Merrick (and Xav who can't get enough science).  I'd used the first edition with Mal and Xav years ago.  We have loved each Apologia science we've used.

Social Studies 
Heirloom Audio 
We love every. single. one. of Heirloom Audio's Henty titles we've heard.  Most we received through The Crew, but we've also listened to a few I purchased.  I love the downloads that come with the CDs including the study guide which turns the stories into a nice historical unit.

Extra-Curricular  
Zeezok Publishing's Music Appreciation 
Not only is this an AMAZING music appreciation curriculum, it also has a lot of historical information in it as well as a focus on positive character traits.

Memoria Press' Traditional Logic hurt my brain.  I obviously don't have a high schooler, so I worked on this course my own self.  It's a great program.

Foreign Languages for Kids by Kids Spanish Starter Set
This was such a fun video Spanish class.  The boys love that it takes place on a day in the life of three brothers.

Middlebury Interactive Languages Elementary Chinese 1
This is the third course we've used from Middlebury and our first foray into Chinese.  It's a great program and I liked that it also taught some characters and had special paper to download for writing practice. 

Just For Fun  
The Pencil Grip's Kwik Stix 
We bigfatpuffyheart Kwik Stix tempera paint.  They were easy to use and worked great on paper, cardboard, wood, and canvas.

Enlivenze FlipStir
Enclosed puzzles with no loose pieces.  What's not to love?  They're fun and challenging.

Special Category - Best Gift
CrossTimber Name Meaning Gifts
I had to include CrossTimber, but it isn't curriculum or a puzzle, so...  New category invented.  Check.  Hey, it's my blog and these are my favorites.  I'm not sure if the best part about CrossTimber is that they can make something meaningful for *any* name, or seeing how happy you can make someone with one of their Name Meaning Gifts.

You can see how the official voting of The Homeschool Review Crew went on the blog.

The Best of the Best ~ 2014 Crew Awards

This year was such an incredibly blessed one.  As part of the 2014 Schoolhouse Review Crew, our family was able to use and review nearly forty home and homeschooling products.  Some of these, I had never heard of.  A few I had checked into previously and thought about "for another time."  And there were several I was convinced we could never afford and I could not justify the money on an unknown product.

A week or two ago, as the Crew year was winding down, reviewers and our children were invited to vote on our favorite products for 2014.  I was a rube!  I didn't keep track of each category nor how I voted.  Let me say, some of the choices were clear cut, but many I struggled with just choosing *one* product.  I also didn't vote in each category.  We never used any college prep products, for instance.

In no particular order, here are Redhanded Homeschool's top Crew picks for 2014.  Click the name to read our reviews.

Malachi's pick for 2014
Go Science! DVDs

Xavier's 2014 favorite
Brinkman Adventures Season Two
These audio dramas based on real life missionary stories are well loved and often repeated on long car trips.

Merrick's choice
Egglo Eggs (Remember his fun glow bath?)

My favorite Mom Resources
Preschoolers and Peace
I enjoyed this ebook resource for homeschooling biggers with littles nearby.
A Life in Balance
A great resource for special needs educators and the fascinating story of Frank Belgau's life.


These curriculum favorites are products we are still using, have completed this year, or will use in 2015.

Some of our Language Arts favorites.
The Logic of English - I'm using this with Malachi and will use it with Xavier eventually.
Lightning Literature - We reviewed and are using Lightning Lit 1 with Xavier.  I liked it so much that I signed up to be a guinea pig for LL3 with Malachi.
Spelling You See - Xavier is using Jack and Jill.  We kind of slacked off on this one, but need to pick it back up.  It uses an excellent handwriting "font" that I want the boys to keep practicing.
IEW's The Nose Tree - This is Malachi's grammar program.  It's ONE. Sentence. Each. Day.  Very do-able and we get to read and rewrite an entire story we probably would never have heard of.

Math favorites
CTC Math - We used several math programs throughout the year and this one is my favorite.  The boys are not fans of math. at. all. so they had no favorite here. 

Science favorites
Science4Us was a HUGE hit with Malachi and Xavier.  I may resubscribe and use this one with Merrick in a few years.
Go Science DVDs - We loved the short presentations, so we could discuss a demonstration with more depth, or I could throw in a disk and let it go for 20 minutes or so and just watch the DVD.  Even if we weren't discussing what they saw as an official part of school, they were certainly chatting about it all day long!

Social Studies favorites
Under Drake's Flag audio drama - Just incredible to listen to, amazingly talented actors.

Extra-curricular favorites
Middlebury Interactive Languages, K-2 Spanish - Xav loves this course and finished it quickly.  Next, we will be getting him Grade 3-5 Spanish 1.  There is some overlap and I regret not starting with that in the first place.
Maestro Classics - These classical music CDs are so much more than music.  We learned about instruments and the history of each piece as well.
     

Just For Fun
Snake Oil Party Potion - There are very few games that make us laugh *this* hard!   
Clued In Kids Treasure Hunts - We found our boys worked best independently, but they loved every one that we did.  We'll definitely have more of these and share the love with friends and family.

Honorable Mention
Apologia's What on Earth Can I Do? - The only reason this is an honorable mention is that we didn't complete it.  I'd really like to start the series at the beginning with Who is God?.

There have been other products that we liked, but not necessarily *loved*.  Some will serve as supplements whenever it applies. 

I am so grateful to the Schoolhouse Review Crew for allowing me the opportunity to be a part of such an incredible group of mom bloggers.  I really enjoyed working with Marcy again, from my Download N Go days, and meeting Debra and Kate this year and getting to know them.  They are truly first-class individuals and make up a great leadership team.  I didn't apply for the 2015 Crew for various reasons, but "my plan" (Oh, how God laughs!) is to join up again for 2016.

Go see who won the 2014 Blue Ribbon Awards from the Crew.

Versatile Blogger Award

Cuh-razy! I was honored with the Versatile Blogger Award last week. How cool is that? Renita over at Krazy Kuehner Days likes my blog. Thanks Renita and all of those krazy Kuehners!



Here are the "rules" of the award.

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award

2. Answer 10 questions

3. Pass it along to 7 blogs you've recently discovered and enjoy

4. Leave your recipients a note, telling them about the award

The 10 Questions...
1. Why did you create this blog?
Our families don't live close by, so this is a nice way for them to see what we're up to and watch the littles learn and grow.

2. What kinds of blogs do you follow?
Homeschooling, Christian, Food, and my friends.

3. Favorite make-up brand?
Easy question. I rarely wear makeup.

4. Favorite clothing brand?
Whatever I like that's on sale.

5. Indispensable makeup product?
None.

6. Favorite color?
Purple and autumnal shades

7. Favorite perfume?
I like Coty Wild Musk, but rarely wear it.

8. Favorite film?
The Princess Bride is all time number 1! I think a close second is Avatar. Just stunning.

9. What country would you like to visit and why?
Israel, just because.

10. Would you rather forget to put mascara on one eye or forget blush on one side of your face?
I generally "forget" to put mascara and blush on both eyes and cheeks.

As for new blogs I've discovered and enjoy, I've selected a few to receive the Versatile Blogger Award from recent additions to my RSS feed. Something drew me to each one; whether homeschooling, Christian encouragement, FOOD! :) I enjoyed a post(s) enough to add them to Google Reader. I'm passing the award on to:

Good Morning Girls

The Cheapskate Cook

A Holy Experience

T. Suzanne Eller

To Be Busy at Home

Becoming Minimalist

Education Cubes

Sunshine Award

I received the Sunshine Award from Patriots of the Republic Academy. It's my first blogging award! Thanks so much PRA (or would that be PotRA?)!

As recipient of this award, I am to post seven tidbits about myself and pass on the Sunshine Award to seven blogs. I don't know why, but thinking of interesting things about myself is always difficult.

Let's see...
1) There are nearly 20 years between the bigger (#1 son) and the bigger little (#2 son).

2) I am nine, yes NINE, years older than my husband.

3) I met Micah in an 11 car pileup. He rear-ended me twice! He was the immediate answer to a prayer. :)

4) I left Christianity for a while, but I was re-baptized in 2002. Now I don't know what I would do without the knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus Christ and the love of my Heavenly Father.

5) I'm going to become an aunt for the seventh time around the same time the bigger becomes an uncle for the first time.

Hmmm.... those all involve numbers. What can I tell you that doesn't involve numbers? *thinking thinking* I know!

6) I may have an addiction to chocolate. Especially to dark chocolate.

7) I used to love wind chimes, as long as they weren't too tinkly. Now I can't help but think of the movie Signs every time I hear them. It's a creepy alien movie. Curse you, M. Night Shyamalan, for ruining wind chimes!

Now to pass on the Sunshine Award...

1) My sweet friend Sara's papercrafting blog, Sara Stamps.

2) Kirsten's beautiful family blog, Lucky Seven or maybe that should be "blog of her beautiful family.

3) "Somewhat crunchy" Becca's Living with a Handful.

4) Heather T's incredible photography at Memoirs & Offerings.

5) For a cute baby fix, visit my girl NoJo's Stinkyface Portraits.

And to two women I am inspired by...

6) Jennifer at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam.

and finally, 7) Courtney at Women Living Well.