Mom of Many

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Artists that Shaped the Italian Renaissance, K-3 Vol. 4 from ARTistic Pursuits Inc.: A TOS Crew Review

Artists that Shaped the Italian Renaissance, K-3 Vol. 4 from ARTistic Pursuits Inc.

We love getting to create! And, when we can combine it with another favorite subject...history, we get double the fun! Artists that Shaped the Italian Renaissance, K-3 Vol. 4 from ARTistic Pursuits Inc. has been our latest adventure. You can check out what we did last year with Art of the Middle Ages: Volume 3 here.

These hardcover books are designed for grades K-3. They are filled with full-color photos, easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions, historical background information for 18 projects AND a DVD and Blu-Ray disc. It's like getting the art teacher to come to your house!

We have been long time fans of Artistic Pursuits! This new series is definitely at the top of our "favorites list". K-3rd Grade Level, Volumes 1-8 will take you on a journey through history, and teach you a variety of art skills along the way. The series includes:

Art of the Ancients, K-3 Vol. 2 (strong use of chalk pastels and clay)
Art of the Middle Ages, K-3 Vol. 3 (a variety of paper construction methods, textiles, and collage)
Artists that Shaped the Italian Renaissance, K-3 Vol. 4 (strong emphasis on a variety of watercolor painting methods including resist and fresco, scratch art)
Art of the Northern Countries, Renaissance to Realism, K-3 Vol. 5 (monoprint and relief printmaking methods, plus watercolor and charcoal)
Art of the Impressionists, K-3 Vol. 6 (gouache painting, plus carving, modeling, and constructing methods of sculpting)
Art of the Modern Age, K-3 Vol. 7 (acrylic paint methods, foil and plaster sculpting)
Art in America, K-3 Vol. 8 (pencil drawing instruction using graphite and colored pencils)

I love that this series helps you teach your children - both how to use the art materials, and the history behind the artist and their creations. In Artists that Shaped the Italian Renaissance, K-3 Vol. 4, we learned from greats like Cimabue, Van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sofonisba… just to name a few.

My testers love getting to create! This program is a favorite, because they don't have to wait for mom to be ready. They can put in the DVD and get started! Each lesson has step-by-step instructions.

Let me show you an example -

First - watch a short lesson on the DVD (most are under 10 minutes) on what to do and how to use your art materials.

Then, gather your supplies. Most are easily located. We did need a few "specialty" papers that we didn't already own (scratch paper and gold leaf)

Follow the basic instructions, add your own artistic creativity

And, we have big smiles and great creations to show off! Not to mention, we learned all about watercolors and line resist paintings.

Here's a few more examples:

Some basic instructions from our video + lots of textures

Equals=Success They loved this lesson on texture and oil pastels so much, they wanted to do more. In fact, we may have created texture pictures using almost every surface within reach.

Here's a few more of our favorites.

For this one, we just needed the book. The book features short lessons about a particular artist and their style, then it's back to creating your own.

I may have to frame this creation, in the style of Sofonisba… oil pastel on colored construction paper. I love it!

We also enjoyed trying out new supplies, like scratch paper. We loved how these turned out!

And, even the gold leaf,which comes with a warning that it "can" be difficult to work with. This lesson turned into a real test of using our creativity to SEE something new and different from what we intended. My tester wanted to make a castle, like the example in the book. But, this is what happened with our tricky gold leaf when it didn't stay where she wanted it.

Thanks to the encouragement to use our OWN creativity, she turned it into her castle.

The finished creations turned out beautifully! But, we may never try gold leaf again... I love how much they learned along the way.

We HIGHLY recommend ARTistic Pursuits Inc. !

Kindergarten to Third Grade Art following History in Chronological Order {ARTistic Pursuits Inc. Reviews}

Find ARTistic Pursuits Inc. on Social Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtisticPursuitsInc/
Twitter: @ARTisticPursui1
Instagram: @artisticpursuitsinc

Hashtags: #hsreviews #myartisticpursuits #homeschoolart #artinstruction #hsreview #homeschool #blueribbonaward #finearts #art

See what other members of the Crew thought here

Ballet Love...

I'm thinking she is happy to be back to ballet...I "found" these on my phone!

I like the artistic flare!

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Homeschool Complete: A TOS Crew Review

Ho meschool Complete

Everything you need to teach your K-4th grade student in one place! We have been exploring Fourth Grade Comple t e, the first semester of a year long program that includes Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Science, Fine Arts, Physical Development, Fitness, Character Development, and Bible, all centered around thematic units.

Homeschool Complete is an easy-to-use curriculum, it arrives as a 2 part downloadable PDF. It comes with a comprehensive , 690 page PDF Teacher Edition that contains detailed, step-by-step instructions and lesson plans for a full year of teaching. The Student Workbook, 270 pages contains all the printable workbook pages in one place.

Subject areas and detailed content lists let you see exactly what you will be covering. The year is broken down into thematic units. Here is a peek at the Table of Contents:

As you can see, level 4 will cover Back to school, Southeast States, Baseball, Penguins, Tall Tales, World War I, Behavior and Economics in this edition. We truly love unit study learning, where every subject ties to a central theme. The author, Debra Arbuthnot, has chosen interesting topics for the grade level. My tester was constantly discovering new things!

The lesson plan format helps you create an effective learning routine by incorporating a daily opening, language arts, math, Bible and special subjects. The Teacher Guide offers practical tips for planning, organization/scheduling and even setting up your school area.

Each lesson is clearly outlined, step-by-step with many student workbook pages included My tester is the type of kid who would sit down to do worksheets...for FUN. So, this format would work well. However, I do have several kids that would rather eat spinach than complete a workbook page. You need to know your student's style to know if this approach would work for them. Samples are available here.

The Teacher Guide is scripted to walk you step-by-step through each lesson. I found printing all the worksheets for the lesson first from the Student Workbook, worked well for us. If you are nervous about homeschooling, or trying it for the first time, this program will make it easy for you to cover all the subjects! I wish I had started with a program like this. It's all straightforward and organized in a logical way.

One downside, for us, was that the math level was quite a bit below my tester's. She's more advanced, but the math workbook pages in this curriculum provided great review and practice for speeding up on her math facts.

The Appendix offers an extensive collection of extra printables, games, rubrics and more. These were some of our favorites! Not only for school, but also for just having fun. Laminate them, and you can use them over and over.

This program incorporates quality children's literature and books to help instill a love of learning in your child. A quick trip to the library will get you what you need. I did have a challenge finding some of the listed books, but the author offers additional titles. The literature portions were my favorite. Even though it appeared simple, the depth of information for my tester was impressive.

By using a variety of low-cost supplies, all listed on handy supply lists, you can have everything you need readily available for your day.

Homeschool Complete seeks to appeal to all your learners with a full variety of activities for each learning style - seeing, hearing, and doing. The program incorporates art and music activities as well.

If you are looking for a solid program, without a lot of extras, this one is for you. You will need access to a library, and a good printer. The topics are varied and interesting. We were impressed.

In addition to the Complete programs, they offer a variety of Unit Studies. These Unit Studies follow the same structure as the Complete programs by integrating all subjects around a interesting theme, but they only take 1-3 weeks to complete. Be sure to check out the Crew Reviews!

Homeschool Complete K - 4th Grade & Unit Studies {Homeschool Complete Reviews}

Find Ho meschool Complete on Social Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolcomplete/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HomeschoolCmplt Tag: @homeschoolcmplt
Instagram: https://instagram.com/homeschoolcomplete
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kcomplete/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5aqEg8dpPHxHSr_p-x5u7w

Hashtags: #hsreviews #homeschoolcomplete #unitstudies #unitstudy

See what other members of the Crew thought here

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Pippi Longstocking

We loved reading Pippi Longstocking with our literature class!

Since my girls love to make something... what else could we do, but make our own colorful longstockings?!

So simple,

First we took sharpies and colored our designs onto simple cotton socks. Using an aluminum tray helped contain the "mess".

Then, we sprayed them with rubbing alcohol to make the colors run and set. (Warning - make sure you have ventilation, the smell can get quite powerful!)

We loved the result!! Every sock a unique creation...

Victus Study Skills System: A TOS Crew Review

Victus Study Skills System

Effective study skills are a must! Victus Study Skills System, gives you a way to teach study skills with their K-College set of products.

We have been using Victus Study Skills System for the past several years, you can check out our previous review. I was excited to see how they have expanded! We have students in almost every level, so we were able to use most. Our main focus was with Level 2 (3-5th grade), Level 3 (6-11th) and Level 4 (College).

The full program includes:

Level 1: Primary (K-2/3)

Teacher Supplement
Student Workbook

Level 2: Elementary (2/3-4/5)
Teacher Supplement
Student Workbook

Level 3 (5/6-10/11)
Teacher Edition
Student Workbook

Level 4 (10/11-College)
College Student Workbook

Other Products
Student Planner

This effective program is made up of 10 lessons, or approximately 5 hours of instruction. The lessons are the same across all the levels, but geared to the correct age/grade. I LOVE this feature, it means I can teach all of my kids at the same time!

The basic idea is that we need to teach our students HOW to study, not just WHAT to study. Victus is a latin word that means "way of life". These important skills can simply become their "way of life". I know that my two college age students, who learned this system several years ago, are STILL using their study skills daily (shameless bragging... they are both 4.0 GPA college Junior and Freshman!)

The program focuses on 3 cornerstone questions:

Where am I now?
Where do I want to be?
How do I get there?

We sat down together to begin with simple steps to asses how our study habits are right now, and what our learning strengths are. My testers were fascinated to learn if they were visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners. I was fascinated to learn that I had all of them to teach to! The differences in the levels are in age appropriateness. For example, in Level 2 - they checked off statements they thought applied to them, in Level 3 & 4 they completed a questionnaire by using numbers to rate statements.

I love that this program works so well with all ages! After they all discovered this first cornerstone, the discussions kept on going. Suddenly, they understood more about their study skills and study needs. This alone would have been worth the investment.

But, the program does go on, the second cornerstone - Where do I want to be? This proved to be the ah-ha moment for my middle schooler using Level 3. The section starts with a page of successful people, and gives us a glimpse at their story. They all had experienced failure, and kept on going to success! In this section, they are encouraged to create a mission statement and SMART goals.

The "How do I get there?" section focuses on the skills they need to study. Topics include time management and organization. The program teaches them a handy PQRST acronym to learn to read effectively. Even my youngest tester can easily remember it! Other important strategies are taught - like how to take notes, prepare and take tests, and many other solidly helpful study tips.

The Teacher Edition is a must have component, it contains everything you need to teach the study skills system. It gives a through overview, effective techniques and copies of the Student view pages. The Purpose - Preparation - Procedure method is used to teach the lessons. I found it to be so useful, not only for teaching the lessons, but for teaching myself! Take a peek at this video:

I think the College level should be a mandatory course for all of your high school students. My older sons actually took their copies with them. Do them a favor, get them started now.

My testers all enjoyed this program. The books are not flashy, one of my testers thought they looked a bit "old fashioned". But, their hesitation disappeared as we started with the lessons. The information is truly useful and really sticks!