Product Review - Mission Paragraph from Hands of A Child ~~~ Recycled Post

I have decided to recycle some of my reviews in order to help out those that are looking for resources and information for the upcoming "academic year".



I took Hands of a Child up on an offer that they had made a few months back to review a project pack for them. Having used their products before I was very excited to try something that would boast KM's interest in this area. Here is my review -

I was very hopeful that my reluctant writer would really be engaged by this method of presentation. However she quickly found many issues with the product including, spelling and grammar errors, poorly written examples and while some activities were extremely simplified others were far more advanced at an earlier stage than it seemed they should be. The format has you writing full paragraphs before the process has been completely explained. My daughter became very frustrated with the pack before she was even halfway through it.

I was greatly disappointed with this product. I submitted my review to Currclick as per my agreement with the Hands of A Child representative that had contacted me. I also attempted to submit the review to the Hands of A Child site, but it is not allowing me to for some reason. I have used many other project packs from this company and have liked them all, so please don't let this one review deter you from the publisher completely!

IndieFlix & Finding Kind - Official Review ~~~~GIVEAWAY Ended!~~~

I was contacted through The Living Free Project and asked to review IndieFlix and specifically a newly released film on bullying called Finding Kind. I have always LOVED independent films, so this was a great chance for me to get a free 3 month subscription to the site and since I get to use it on my roku - it was an even better deal!!! I also have been given the opportunity to giveaway some free 2 month subscriptions to my incredible vistors, so keep on reading to see how to get in on this great offer! 

About IndieFlix - 

For far too long, filmmakers have been forced to either sell out or starve. Thousands of brilliant, creative minds submit their works to festivals, hoping to find meaningful distribution yet fewer than 1% actually do.  We’re here to level the playing field. Founded by filmmakers, IndieFlix is part champion, part curator; our mission is to democratize distribution and provide significant revenue for filmmakers.

IndieFlix is a community of independent filmmakers and fans. Through its membership-based streaming service, IndieFlix helps filmmakers translate artistic vision into commercial success, and gives film lovers access to high quality independent films not otherwise available. IndieFlix’s mission is to champion filmmakers, rethink traditional approaches to distribution, and celebrate the artistry and impact of independent film. Please visit IndieFlix at http://indieflix.com

First off we are LOVING IndieFlix! Since we are big animation fans, KM and I spent some time the first afternoon watching some great shorts and our favorites had to be Frankie Rulez, Cafe Rendezvous and Firefly and The Coffee Machine. I also picked a few web-series to try out and I enjoyed Secret Millionaires, Genrefinity, Vegan 101 and found The Crew super interesting! With channels like dark comedies, music, politics, family, and food, the selection of incredible films, shorts, and documentaries has something for everyone. 

The only real issue that I have with IndieFlix is that on the Roku there is no way to know what the maturity level of the programs are before watching them. On the website itself, you can filter into 3 categories - All ages, Ages 13+ and Ages 17+. Now for our household, having just a 15 year old, these categories are fine, but if I had the Littles here I don't know how comfortable I would be showing them anything that I hadn't prescreened as there is a big difference in material I would allow a 4 year old to watch compared to a 10 year old. 

About Finding Kind -  

In February 2009, two young women, Lauren Parsekian and Molly Thompson joined forces having both been affected by female bullying throughout their youth and decided to create change by giving females a platform to speak out about this universal experience. What began as an idea for a documentary about girl-against-girl bullying, ultimately became Kind Campaign, an internationally recognized movement, documentary, and school assembly program based on the powerful belief in KINDness that brings awareness and healing to the negative and lasting effects of girl-against-girl “crime.”

In this endearing documentary, a pair of best friends (who happen to be queen-bee pretty girls, but no matter) travel the country speaking with middle and high school girls about their pain and the pain they’ve caused others. It’s a sweet, earnest addition to the current anti-bullying movement. A few confessional scenes—little girls in braces pouring their broken hearts into the camera—will stick with you. LINDY WEST (the Stranger)

This film should be mandatory for every female to watch! I don't say that lightly, but I will say it again -  This film should be MANDATORY for every female to watch! Within minutes I was on the verge of tears. This is a film that every girl, teen, woman regardless of race or economic status can relate to. It was really interesting to see the historical footage and to see that this has been going on forever. This is not a new phenomenon, but it needs to end! Girls need to realize that they are not alone. They are not the only ones being treated this way, but also that that fact does not make it okay. Mothers need to sit down and watch this with their daughters, discuss what is going on with the child, what has gone on with the mother and what you can do to change this horrific ongoing issue. We all need to realize that we are the only ones who can end this! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~GIVEAWAY Ended!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now for the giveaway --- be one of the first ten to pass this on through google+ or twitter and mention me - @fairiemom78 & @kindcampaign -  then send me an email directly at reviews@thelivingfreeproject.com I will send you directions on how to get a 2 month free indieflix subscription! 

Another Bowling Season Finished Up

This was KM's third year participating in the local juniors ten pin league and her team took 1st place for the 2nd half of the session! Not too shabby!

They had a lot of fun at the end of the year pizza party playing Funny Bones Scotch Doubles - where they had to do such crazy things as bowling between your teammates legs, skip with your teammate as they bowl and bowling with their feet!

We love this league! It has great kids and an incredible coach, but we will enjoy the 1/2 Crazy summer league as we won't have to get up early on Saturdays for the next few months!!! 

Frog Hatchery - One Year Later

So it has been just over a year since the frogs' legs sprouted out of their little tadpole bodies. We still have one left - it is often debated if it is Charlie or Bert - I think it is Charlie, but we will never know for sure. Recently we redesigned the terrarium to give him a bit more land - 

Charlie-Bert seems very happy and enjoys resting just on the edge of the bark. As I said before this is one of the most interesting projects we have ever done and it continues to be.

Design Squad Nation - New Educators Resource and Guide!

New Online Resource and Guide for Educators! Blast off into space with Mission: Solar System, the latest resources from Design Squad! Inspired by NASA's Year of the Solar System, Mission: Solar System brings kids fun, hands-on ways to think like NASA engineers. Designed for kids in school and afterschool programs, Mission: Solar System's resources bring to life NASA's Year of the Solar System. You'll find:  * 5 new hands-on engineering activities. Each challenge provides an engaging way to integrate science and engineering into your science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) program. * 5 Do-It-Yourself videos. Each activity has its own three-minute DIY video featuring kids doing the activity and talking about its science and engineering and its connection to NASA missions. * 5 video profiles of NASA engineers. These three-minute videos feature young, dynamic engineers who tackle interesting problems related to NASA's solar system missions. Each profile also comes with discussion questions and follow up ideas to help kids make connections. * Wall poster. This full-color poster gives kids a dramatic visual guide to NASA's Year of the Solar System missions with fun mission facts, solar system destinations and images of spacecraft. * The guide also contains leader notes, kids' handouts, standards alignments, assessment rubrics and more Find the Mission: Solar System resources on the Design Squad Nation website.     Click here to forward this message to a friend.

Doodle Dice - Review ~~~ Recycled Post

I have decided to recycle some of my reviews in order to help out those that are looking for resources and information for the upcoming "academic year".

KM loves any kind of game! Card games, board games, Wii Games, etc.... whatever it is wants to play! So I saw Doodle Dice when I was randomly browsing through Rainbow Resource before the Holidays and thought - "Hey that looks kinda cool!" BOY WAS I RIGHT!

SEE WHAT YOUR DICE CAN DOODLE!™

Create a ‘doodle’ with a few rolls of the DOODLE DICE™. There's a different doodle pictured on each card in the deck. When you build a doodle that matches one of the cards , you take that card. Block an opponent's turn or take one of their cards away. Collect one card of each color and you win! It's the fun challenging way for everyone in your family to a be a ‘doodle artist’!

This game is so much fun. We spent hours playing it the day we opened it and then on New Year's Eve the adults and the kids were arguing over who was going to get to play it first!

The coolest thing about this game is the different chance factors that go along with the strategy! The rules are fairly easy to remember and it is just FUN. It is fast paced, so that no one loses interest and you never know what is going to happen next.

Here are some pics -

KM liked that as a bonus she got to practice her Spanish!

Beyond Unschooling -The John Holt Legacy: Interview with Pat Farenga - Unplugged Mom 2.0

If you haven't had the chance to listen to Unplugged Mom 2.0 THIS is the episode that you CAN'T MISS -
Beyond Unschooling -The John Holt Legacy: Interview with Pat Farenga

Ken Robinson: How to escape education's death valley - TED Talk

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational "death valley" we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. Full bio »

Janice VanCleave’s Presents Science Projects that Really WORK!!! – Official UM Review -- Recycled Post

I have decided to recycle some of my reviews in order to help out those that are looking for resources and information for the upcoming "academic year".

Science was always my worry area. I didn't enjoy it in school and feared havingto take the responsibility of ensuring that my VERY science minded daughter was going to get all that she wanted out of our science education at home. I bought all sorts of kits and checked out every project book I could find at the library until I came across Janice VanCleave. If you have never heard of her, then you have never read some of the most concisely written science experiment books I have ever encountered and you and your kids are truly missing out!

Although I have enjoyed each of her books that I have read The Science For Every Kid series is a favorite in our household. In this series she covers everything fromChemistry to Food and Nutrition to Geometry, cohesively covering topics so that the kids can clearly grasp the material. This series could easily be used as a spine to jump off from, as a full science curriculum or a supplement for labs and projects. For example in Food and Nutrition for Every Kid VanCleave has each chapter set up as follows:

• What You Need to Know - here terms are explained and background information is given
  
• Exercises - the learner is presented with questions to be answered or situations that need to be resolved utilizing the information they read in the previous section.
• Activity - a project to allow the application of the skills in a real world situation.
• Solutions to Exercises - she not only gives the answers but lays out step-by-step instructions for solving each exercise.

With over 50 best-selling science experiment books that span an audience from toddler to mature adolescents, this is one author you will want to remember. Not only have I never had a single failed experiment from her books, she gives explanations that make sense. Though we have come across a few materials that we had to do a bit of digging around for the majority of materials you will need can be found in your home or in a quick trip to the local grocery or hardware store, making it convenient on a rainy day or spur of the moment. I can't say enough about these fabulous resources.

To see some more of our successful science experiments from Biology for Every Kid check out my blogposts - HERE and HERE.

You can learn more about Janice VanCleave as well as take a look through the plethora of tips, ideas and projects at her site - JVC's Science Fair Projects.

Join the Atlas Shrugged Summer Reading Program

The Ayn Rand Institute is offering a fantastic summer reading program and if you order soon, you can get a free copy of Atlas Shrugged to use during the program. There are also a number of other free resources to do in depth studies of her work.
Enjoy!!! 

Welcome to the Atlas Shrugged Summer Reading Program The Ayn Rand Institute would like to invite you and your students to participate in a new Atlas Shrugged Summer Reading campaign. While Atlas Shrugged is widely recognized as Ayn Rand's must-read masterpiece, it's often overlooked in the classroom, in part because not all teachers have the time to teach it. To help encourage its reading, we are offering a 10-week guided reading beginning on June 12. Each week, we will assign the next reading schedule, provide some study questions to focus thinking, recap the previous week's reading, and present a featured resource to highlight some relevant aspect of Atlas Shrugged. It is our hope that this reading program will help further cultivate an interest among your students in Ayn Rand's novels that you have already begun developing. With your students in mind, some featured resources will be designed to help assist them in preparation for the 2013 Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest. The reading will conclude in August, which will give students one month to write an essay by September 17, the deadline for the contest. Finally, we hope that you will consider participating in this, too! We are offering a free copy of Atlas Shrugged to all educators with an interest in participating. To participate, please sign up at aynrandeducation.org. We hope you will share this opportunity to read Atlas Shrugged with your students. Should some of them be interested, please have them sign up at aynrandnovels.org. Sincerely, Matthew Morgen Teacher Outreach

Professor Noggin's Card Games - Official Review ~~~~ Recycled Post

I have decided to recycle some of my reviews in order to help out those that are looking for resources and information for the upcoming "academic year".

Our family has been using these games for years and they are a fun, entertaining and exciting way to learn a number of subjects in numerous categories from Science to History to Art to Geography. These fun games can take your family to the far corners of Outer Space and deep into the Ocean. You can find a complete list of titles - HERE

Each game comes with 30 cards and 1 three numbered dice - meaning a six sided die that has 1, 2, & 3 on two sides each. Each card has 6 questions - 3 easy and 3 hard - which makes it fantastic to play with the whole family regardless of the amount of knowledge individuals may have in each area. Questions come in the form of true or false, multiple choice or trivia. I truly can not say enough about these fantastic product!

Here are the titles we have on our bookshelf -

  

Six Effective Video Game Tips for Mothers

Six Effective Video Game Tips for Mothers - GREAT POST I thought would be useful to many of my readers!

Where There is a Will There is a Way - Home Education is NOT Just for the Rich!

One of the most common questions that I get about home education - second only to the "S" question - is "How can you afford to home educate?" Of course people don't usually come out with it that clearly, they generally start out by asking what CJ does for a living, what kinds of curriculum we use, if I work and then finally their inquisition becomes clear. This misconception that families with minimal incomes can't home educate couldn't be farther from the truth. In this day and age with a world of knowledge LITERALLY at your fingertips, there is very little reason to think that any family on nearly any income would be unable to home educated their children.

It may take a bit of creativity, some leg work and ingenuity, but it can be done! You might have to cut some corners, make some sacrifices and really figure out what is important to your family. Connect with other home educators in your area, work together, make a community that can help each other make the most of the resources in your area. Many museums have free days throughout the year and give group discounts - sometimes for as small as groups of 10! Community centers and libraries offer free and low cost classes, lectures, reading groups, chess clubs and so much more. If you can't find something that you think your kids would like build it and they will come! You have to be willing to put yourself out there and connect! 

I have yet to google a topic with the word FREE and been let down by the number of results that appear - in fact I am often overwhelmed with the number of choices! I have compiled an incredible list of completely free resources on nearly every topic you can think of - HERE - but to get you started here are my TOP go to sites for 100% FREE resources! 

• YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!!! NEVER EVER BUY CURRICULUM without having checked to see if you can get it through your library - or interlibrary loan or national library network first! Even if you can't find it in the system's database ask your librarian to try to track it down. I have not been able to stump mine yet! 
• Khan Academy - This ever growing collection of tutorials and lectures is at the top of our list for almost all educational categories. They cover everything from computer science to math to finance and capital markets to art history and loads of things in between! 
• YouTube - here you have to be a bit careful, but with some good digging you can find out how to do just about anything and there are plenty of people who are willing to show you just how to do it! Within YouTube there are also a lot of education specific areas like - 
• Crash Course - Six awesome courses in one awesome channel: John Green teaches you US History and Hank Green teaches you Chemistry. Check out the playlists for past courses in World History, Biology, Literature, and Ecology.
• YouTube EDU - YouTube EDU brings learners and educators together in a global video classroom. On YouTube EDU, you have access to a broad set of educational videos that range from academic lectures to inspirational speeches and everything in between.
• MinutePhysics - Simply put: cool physics and other sweet science. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."~Rutherford via Einstein? (wikiquote) Created by Henry Reich 
• WatchKnowLearn - The Vision behind WatchKnowLearn is simple: To provide a world-class, online domain on which educators can store, categorize, and rate the best, K – 12 educational videos on the Internet today. And to make this service FREE so teachers, parents and students everywhere may have access to those videos.  ~~~ We love this site because you can filter for content & age groups to get the most appropriate videos!
• TED Talks - Ideas worth spreading - if you haven't heard of this one it should be your first stop
• Freely Educate - At FreelyEducate.com the blogger focuses on 100% free educational finds. She specifically focuses on removing the financial obstacle for those who think they they can't afford a good education for their families.
• Clickschooling - Get 1 FREE, Web-Based Curriculum Idea Every Day — Monday Through Saturday! ClickSchooling brings you daily recommendations by email for entertaining websites that help your kids learn. 
• National Gallery of Art - Borrow free-loan teaching packets and DVDs or access online lessons, activities, and interactives to bring art to your classroom, home, or other learning setting. All materials are free.
• OpenCourseWare Consortium - The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing OpenCourseWare and its impact on global education.  Learn more here. 
• Currclick - Although this site is not 100% free, I am adding it because they offer a lot of freebies, including weekly freebies, trial classes and a number of free online clubs. It is also the best collection of affordable curricula and classes on the web!

With these resources and the many more you can find within them, any family can get a superior education for little to NO cost! If in your heart you know that home education is the right choose for your family, there is a way! You may have to think really far outside of the box, you may have to reach out to find a community of people who are willing to help, you may have to cut back on extras, but where there is a will, there is ALWAYS a way!

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Additionally I wanted to mention two sites that have a lot of FREE information and links to help you understand the legalities of home educating in your own state. 

• HomeschoolingLegal.com Links to Homeschooling Legal Informational Sites for United States and Canada
• Homeschooling is Legal - The purpose of this website is to inform and educate homeschoolers about their legal rights and risks.

Help your students pass the 2002 Series GED Math Test

Free resources to help your students pass the 2002 Series GED® Math Test Math may be the only thing standing between your adult learner and a diploma. GED Testing Service has partnered with Pearson Learning Solutions to create a series of instructional videos that help adult learners understand key concepts on the GED® Math Test. You can use these videos during math classes, or give the link to your students so they can self-study and strengthen their knowledge of basic concepts and make them more effective in your class. More than 20 math concepts videos are available online for free. Visit GEDmathstrategies.com to begin. In addition, KET and Kentucky Adult Education have launched a free adult education resource for instructors preparing students for the GED® Math test. The collection of lessons plans are aligned to specific targets on the Math test and include video segments and practice worksheets. To access this Targeted Math Instruction resource, visit PBS Learning Media. Sincerely, GED Testing Service GED® and GED Testing Service® are registered trademarks of the American Council on Education (ACE). They may not be used or reproduced without the express written permission of ACE or GED Testing Service. The GED® and GED Testing Service® brands are administered by GED Testing Service LLC under license from the American Council on Education.

An Afternoon in the City - WE LOVE BOSTON!

We are so fortunate to be able to attend the BLO dress rehearsals, as part of their educational outreach program, and when we do we always like to head in a bit early to hang out in the city. It was such a gorgeous day, after a number of drizzly cold ones, so we decided to take a stroll through the public gardens.

The gardens were abuzz with people and animals, beautiful foliage and pleasant melodies wafting through the air. We have always loved Boston, but this visit was a bit different and we were so glad that the city seemed utterly unchanged!