Join your Encouraging Hearts & Home Co-Hosts each week for encouragement and support for your heart & your home. We hope to provide a space that builds each other up and lends a helping hand along the way. With all the negativity in the world, let’s shine a positive light!
Use the form below to share your posts this week, and maybe you’ll discover some new ideas from all the fabulous links!
Please share only your family friendly posts with us!
Please only link up images that you have the rights to use.
By linking up, you agree that if your blog post is selected to be featured on any of our hosts’ blogs, we can use an image from your post with a link back to your post.
Other nice things you can do
Follow and/or subscribe to your host’s blog.
Visit a few other bloggers and show them your support. We all love getting comments, and who knows what inspiration you may find? Be sure to share the love–that’s what a blog hop is all about!
If you are interested in co-hosting, contact anne@mylearningtable.com
It’s no secret that a good book can take you to a different place and/or time, we’ve been reviewing such a book as we’ve read Britfield & the Lost Crown. We received the softcover edition of this book for this review.Britfield & the Lost Crown,written by C.R. Stewart, is actually the first in a series of books, following the travels and adventures of orphans, Tom and Sarah
Britfield and the Lost Crown Storyline
Life for Tom, Sarah and the other orphans was hard and unforgiving at Weatherly. Weatherly was located in Aysgarth, Yorkshire, in Northern England. Despite being the 21st century, the orphange looked like something out of the medeival time period. The orphanage was run by the greedy Grievouses who received government money to help care for the orphans. However, they kept all the money for themselves and treated the orphans harshly even forcing them to work long hours.
The orphans would occassionally sneak to the roof top at night as a way to experience a little bit of the beauty of the outside world and to be able to talk quiet. One night when friends, Tom and Sarah snuck to the roof to talk, the awful man, Speckle, discovered they were there and captured Sarah. Her punishment was 30 days of solitary confinement in one of the attics above Weatherly.
Tom and some of the other orphans decided that they must get Sarah out of solitary. 30 days was too long for her to be able to stand. With the help of his friend, Patrick, and other orphans a plan was devised that Tom could rescue Sarah and the two of them could escape Weatherly.
They had no idea that escaping the walls of Weatherly would be the easiest part of the journey. The Grievouses couldn’t risk those two orphans escaping and telling about the horrors at Weatherly. So they hired the famous Detective Gowerstone to hunt down the two orphans and return them to the orphanage.
As Tom and Sarah fled, their paths crossed that of Professor Hainsworth. The professor chose to help Tom and Sarah once they told of their story. The three decided that their best course of action was to try to get to London. It would be much easier to hide in London.
Together with their unlikely partner, Professor Hainsworth, Tom and Sarah make their way across the British countryside in the stolen hot air balloon. As the go, they realize that they are not just being chased by Detective Gowerstone and his men. They learned the hardway that even though Professor Hainsworth had considered the head butler at Windsor Castle to be a friend, he was an adversary to the trio. In fact, his man, Coldwell, was the most dangerous of all as he was trying to kill Tom.
We have thoroughly enjoyed reading Britfield & the Lost Crown! Our only complaint is that we have to wait for the next book in this adventure series!
Connect with Britfield on these Social Media Links:
Recently, I have had the opportunity to review the Annual Membership Plan from My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping.This is actually the second time I have reviewed My School Year. Three years ago, I had the opportunity to do my first review of My School Year.There were several components to the program that I really liked, but there were other parts of the program that felt burdensome and not as easy to navigate as I and other members of the Homeschool Review Crew would have liked. My School Year took those suggestions and worked very hard to make their online record keeping easier to use.
Upon registration, I noticed some of these upgrades right away. I felt like setting up my students this time was much easier than it had been before. I simply clicked on My Homeschool then Setup and then on Students.
It then opens a new window where +New Student is an option. I then just put their name in, select a favorite color for them and then click on the drop down for show more options. It is under this option that I added birthdates, selected whether or not they would receive notifications from My School Year and if those notifications would be in the form of emails or texts.
The next step I took after setting up my students was to start entering the classes that they are taking this year. Previously, there were two options for setting up the classes in the lesson plan; Quick Split and Rapid Repeat. Quick Split works great when using living books or other books that need to be read or for other material that has a defined time period to be completed. It splits the material up into same size chunks. Rapid Repeat works well for those classes in which they go in numerical lesson order (i.e. Lesson 1, Lesson 2…). Now in addition to the Quick Split and Rapid Repeat there are Advanced Options for both.
I found the Advanced options of both the Quick Split and the Rapid Repeat to be helpful upgrades.
I had to set up a school term for each child. There can be one term if everyone will be attending school on the same days. This was always the case when the kids were smaller. Now that Brock and Adisyn both have part-time jobs, their school days are not the same on the younger kids who are home much more throughout the week. So I decided to set up two school terms. This more accurately represents our family.
Other Components of My School Year
Other useful aspects include the transcripts, report cards, awards etc. that can also be created/recorded through My School Year. It’s hard to believe I will soon be completing Brock’s transcript since this is his senior year. My goodness, time flies!!!
What Do I Think of My School Year?
I certainly feel like they’ve improved their product immensely! There is a learning curve now but not nearly like it was before. I feel like they’ve done a nice job upgrading their product so that it is even more useful than it was previously.
I like that My School Year can be accessed from any internet connected device, including my phone. Often I have just a few minutes while waiting to pick up a child from work, or the dentist or…that I can now use to help get and keep our homeschool and family life organized.
We are just getting started into our “real school year,” while we do review items throughout the summer we don’t do full blown school until fall. My School Year has been a helpful tool as we’ve started back into those full blown school days schedule.
We’ve had the opportunity to review CTCMath with their 12-month Family Membership over the past few weeks. However, since my first review of CTCMath in 2015 , we’ve used CTCMath on several different occassions. It has worked so well in our home, that I’ve paid for a membership in-between the reviews.
The following are the courses available through CTCMath:
Kindergarten
1st grade
2nd grade
3rd grade
4th grade
5th grade
6th grade
Basic Math and Pre-Algebra
Elementary Measurement
Elementary Geometry
Algebra I
Geometry
Algebra II
Triginometry
Pre-Calculus
Calculus
The courses in CTCMath are complete; however, in addition to using it as a core class, CTC can be used as a supplement to help a struggling student who is using a different math curriculum. The Diagnositc Tests would be exceptionally helpful for someone looking for a supplemental course.
How Does CTCMath Work?
For each grade level or course in CTCMath the lessons are divided into “Streams” (I.e. Number, Patterns and Algebra, Measurement, Space and Geometry, Statistics and Probability are some of the Streams for the different courses)
The streams are then divided into individual lessons. These lessons feature a teaching lesson which is 4-9 minutes in length. Following the lesson, students will complete questions that pertain to the lesson. The preprogrammed passing rate for the questions is 80%, however this is customizable. The student can redo the lesson if he/she isn’t satisfied with the initial grade. The goal is mastery, so if it takes a little bit to accomplish that then so be it. This helps build a strong foundation for the student since math concepts continue to build upon themselves.
When getting started with CTC there are some very helpful tools that should be utilized to make using CTC a better experience: such as the How to Videos, the FAQ page, and the diagnostic tests.
I found the how-to videos provided by CTC very helpful! They show step by step how to add students, generate question banks and so much more. The FAQ are even sorted by questions from students, parents or teachers.
Changes and Updates to CTCMath
We have reviewed CTCMath in the past and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, since the last review there have been some updates.
Rebekah has enjoying one of those updates! She has been using CTCMath on her Kindle and has found that it is so much easier to work with than the larger chromebooks. She’s found that the best way for her to remember math lessons is to take notes with pencil and paper. She finds the Kindle very convenient for that as it takes up less room on the table or her lap. Previously, CTCMath was only set up to use on a computer.
Other updates include the new Question Bank. I LOVE this feature! The question bank allows the parent to generate a worksheet for the student but it’s much more than that. The parent first picks the stream and lesson they want to generate a worksheet for. Then the parent can choose whether it will be based on a specific number of questions (which the parent easily customizes) or if the student will be required to work for a certain number of minutes (also customizable.) Then the parent gets to choose if there are easy questions, hard questions or an evenly divided mix. The quiz bank is then set as a task for the student so when they log in they can see what they need to complete. This is a great upgrade in my opinion.
We have found CTCMath to be very helpful in our line-up of homeschool curriculum!
Join your Encouraging Hearts & Home Co-Hosts each week for encouragement and support for your heart & your home. We hope to provide a space that builds each other up and lends a helping hand along the way. With all the negativity in the world, let’s shine a positive light!
Use the form below to share your posts this week, and maybe you’ll discover some new ideas from all the fabulous links!
Please share only your family friendly posts with us!
Please only link up images that you have the rights to use.
By linking up, you agree that if your blog post is selected to be featured on any of our hosts’ blogs, we can use an image from your post with a link back to your post.
Other nice things you can do
Follow and/or subscribe to your host’s blog.
Visit a few other bloggers and show them your support. We all love getting comments, and who knows what inspiration you may find? Be sure to share the love–that’s what a blog hop is all about!
If you are interested in co-hosting, contact anne@mylearningtable.com
