Tuesday, May 14, 2013

First homeschooling convention experience!

I am so ready for summer. And not just because that means school will be officially over for us. I am excited about this summer because we will finally have time to spend together again. We won't have to wake up at 6:30 am to start our battle of getting up. Monster used to be a bright and early type of kid. Now I have to fight him to get up. Most of the time he whines about how he doesn't want to go to school. As of right now, we have 17 days left of public schooling! I did however sign us both up to do VBS this year at church. So really our first week of summer vacation we will still be getting up way early!
 
This past weekend my husband and I went to our very first homeschooling convention in Arlington, Texas. Everyone warned me that for our first one we would be overwhelmed. I really was not expecting it. I had done my research and knew what curriculum I would be using. Then I walked through those convention doors and everything changed. There is so much out there!
 
 I know for the basic subjects we will be using Horizon. I found that my local Mardels sells the Horizon sets and I can just go and get them from there and not have to worry about ordering them online and waiting for them. However, the rest of the extras we will need I wanted to look at the convention.
 
 I think for Social Studies we are going to do Cantering the Country. We were deciding between Cantering the Country or Little Passports. They both seem great, but I think we are going with Cantering the Country after being able to look at both at the convention.
 
As for Art, I found a set at the convention I really liked. It is called Atelier. It is hands on, has DVDs to follow and is reinforced with lesson plans. They had some original samples at the convention that some other kids have done and I was quite impressed. There are 8 levels. They start at age 4 and go to age 18.
 
I also found a great company that does Lapbooks. These are something I strongly am for. When I was going through my teaching internship we used these in the classroom. The kids loved them. This company is called A Journey Through Lapbooks. They have so many lapbooks to chose from too. You can have them downloaded to your computer and print it off or you can have them mail you pre-printed lapbooks (they are a little more).
 
We also found Friends and Heroes. They have a homeschooling curriculum. It teaches:
History/Geography
Science
Creative Writing
Bible Study
Crafts
Discipleship
We got the first unit to start with and if we decide to use this then we will order the full unit set. 
 
For my first convention I was very excited that I went. Next year we will take Monster with us. This year we decided not to since we wanted to go to some of the seminars. We did buy a few items at the convention but not too much since we really wanted to make sure we know what we want to order and use first. But it was great getting to see everything in person and explore it all!! Besides we also skipped out early the last day and went to Six Flags! Last time we went (two years ago) we stood in one line for 2 hours, rode that one ride and left. It was crazy. This year is wasn't so bad. I can't wait to take Monster though and see what I can get him on (we got season passes since you can pay monthly for them now!).

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Zoomtool (REVIEW!)

Awhile back I won an awesome giveaway. I just haven't been able to do much with it because our weather has been so random. We finally got a pretty weekend so I got the very neat item out and let Monster play!
 
The Product is called Zoomtool. I really didn't get it at first but now that I won these I love them! The set that we got is called Crazy Bubbles. It came with a bucket of different size sticks and balls. You put them together to make your own shapes or the booklet it comes with has tons of ideas in it to make shapes. We made the 3-D Triangle to play with. Monster loved it! This is a really neat product!
 
 
Monster was having a blast. He played with this for more then an hour and then came back to it the next day as well to play some more!
 
 
I love this shot! You can see the bubble solution just hanging out on the shape!
 
We actually had a windy kind of day so the wind kept making the bubbles blow!
 
His face is so funny in this one to me!
 
Watching the bubbles blow with the wind!
 
 
 
I love this! I will keep this out now that we have played with it and figured it out! I want to order some more too! Now that we are going to homeschool, I also want to get their other neat sets.
 
These are on my to get list next:
Creator 1 $59.00 - great starter kit!
 
I wish these guys were going to be at our homeschooling convention this weekend! I would be all over these!!
* I was not given any compensation for this review! I won the product awhile back in a review and wanted to share it with my readers! Please check out their awesome products!