Beloved Books offers many, many audio versions of books many families already know and love. Some in mp3 format, others on CD, and some on cassettes, also. There are Bible Memory audios, missionary stories, and G.A. Henty audio stories. Also included are The Sugar Creek Gang audios that i’m reviewing today.

My 12 year old son loves The Sugar Creek Gang and I can not keep enough of these books in stock for him. Some of my other kids loved them, too. We’ve also enjoyed watching The Sugar Creek Gang on tv. Zach was so excited to see these cd’s. I didn’t tell him they were coming, I just let him open the package when it came in the mail.

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The Sugar Creek Gang Volume One CD set contains the following stories:

The Swamp Robber The Killer Bear The Winter Rescue The Lost Campers Chicago Adventure The Secret Hideout

Each story is on 2 cds, so there are 12 cds included in this set. The packaging is a very nice hard case with vinyl pockets for the cds. This audio version of The Sugar Creek Gang stories is very well done. They are true to the books, with no added background music or other noises.

Listening to these cd’s was one thing I did not have to remind my son to do. He would put them in on his one and listen to them himself.  Some days, Zach would listen to two cds. He really loved them.

I just love this picture of the kids gathered in front of the radio listening. My son did not look like this at all. He played them in the living room in our dvd player. So he listened while laying sideways in a chair, or hanging upside down on the couch. I’m sure you other mom’s to boys can relate to that. lol

I asked him for a quote about the cds, and here is what he said: “They saved me the reading.They are the same as the book only they are reading it for you.” The Sugar Creek Gang audio cds are also perfect for car trips. No loud music or jarring noises so the parents can have a nice ride, too. lol The Sugar Creek Gang Audio Volume One sells for $54.95. There are also 5 other volumes available, as well as a bundle of all 6 for a reduced price. Definitely a good deal if your family loves The Sugar Creek Gang. My son has asked if I’m going to buy anymore volumes. Maybe for Christmas.  🙂 Beloved Books is offering Linda’s Lunacy readers a 20% discount off their entire purchase! Just use the code: LUNACY-20 *Disclosure of Material Connection: I received these audio cds to review  in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. My opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

As part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received WealthQuest for Teens to review. WealthQuest for Teens was designed by a teacher after talking to her students about money management. She realized the students wanted financial education, so she developed this program from what she had learned in her own life. This program is intended for teens, ages 14-19, but can also be used by an older student. If you have a mature 13-year-old who is interested or earns their own money, the program would also be helpful to them. I used WealthQuest with my 16 and 17 year olds. I am assigning it to my 14 year old next.  

WealthQuest for Teens consists of three parts. First, is a video and interactive workbook seminar, which is split into seven modules. These videos are watched on the computer. Both my students finished these during one school week. The videos are short, informative, and hold the students attention. The interactive workbook is filled out after watching the video. The questions are answered by the student typing in the answers. These questions are to get the student thinking. Their answers are not saved in the program.   The second part is a workbook for the teens, which includes 30 daily assignments. These assignments are pretty short, and only take about 5-15 minutes a day. This is intended to be done after working through all the modules. This workbook can either be read on the computer with the answers written in a notebook, or printed out so the student can write it it. This is not ink-intensive, (yeah!) so I printed out a workbook for both of my students. Since many assignments have the students make lists, having the workbook printed out makes a nice notebook that the student can refer back to. My students usually did more than one assignment a day since they were short. The third part is for the parents, and is a 60-page pdf book talking about the importance of teaching money skills to our teens even though (or especially when) we don’t feel like we offer a good example.

The Parent Guide is not a teachers manual for the program. It’s purpose is to inform the parent of the hows and whys to be a good financial example for teens. For parents who have never taken any kind of financial class, this guide is a big help.  It’s a fairly quick read, it only took me a couple of day to read, and I found it very helpful. I learned a few things, too. I know there wasn’t any financial management class in either of the two high schools I attended. We had to learn everything on our own, the hard way. The Parent Guide is a great addition to this program to equip parents to help their teens. Here are a couple of screen shots from the modules.   The video is played in the little tv screen, while the student can read through the interactive workbook. Some of the topics included in the modules are Money Habits, 3 Kinds of Incomes, Knowledge about Money, and a Great Money Management System. The Money Management System consists of setting up categories with “silos”or envelopes. My kids used envelopes. My daughter decided to turn it into a craft project, too, and made her own origami envelopes. An envelope system is highly recommended to adults by a lot of different financial advisers. I use an envelope with dividers in it myself. It’s great to start teens out with the right equipment so they can be successful. WealthQuest for Teens can easily be completed in 6 weeks. By doing more than one assignment a day, my students completed the course in about four weeks. The length of the course can easily be adjusted to your own schedule. http://youtu.be/ajI_Acyp528   WealthQuest for Teens sells on the website for $39.95. WealthQuest is definitely a worthwhile investment for our teens.     *Disclosure of Material Connection: I received online access to this curriculum in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. My opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

As part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received online access to The Pilgrim Story from Dayspring Christian Academy. Dayspring Christian Academy is a physical school in Pennsylvania that uses the Principle Approach.  They have expanded to included online courses available to homeschoolers. These include live classes and self paced courses such as The Pilgrim Story.

The Pilgrim Story is an interactive, self paced course for grades 3-6. This history course teaches students the true history of the Pilgrims using original sources. I used this curriculum with my 6th grade son and my 8th grade daughter. Even though she is beyond the recommended grade level, I had her do it. There are extra activities in the curriculum, including essay suggestions, that are suited to older students. Even though she had studied the Pilgrims before, she still learned from the curriculum due to it being an in depth study. They started out doing the lessons at the same time. I thought it worked out well with both of them working at the same time. As long as your computer monitor is large enough for two students to both see it, this course is well suited to using with more than one student at a time. Due to my daughter writing faster than my son, and getting tired of waiting, they have split up and now do the lessons on their own.

The Pilgrim Story is divided into 5 units, and ends with a virtual field trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts. Each unit has 3-4 lessons and a unit test. Also included are crafts, map making, and more. The lessons take from 30-45 minutes to complete.

Unit One covers King Henry, the Geneva Bible, Life in Scrooby and the Liberty of Conscience.

Unit Two covers Leaving England, the Second Escape Attempt, Leiden, and Preparing to Go. Preparing to Go includes an activity where the student has to plan what they would bring with them on the ship.

Unit Three covers Leaving Leiden, conditions on the Mayflower and building Christian character.

Unit Four covers the Mayflower Compact, exploration of Plymouth and the first winter.

Unit Five covers the spring of 1621, the Wampanoag people and the rest of the story. The rest of the story is about the next three years of colony life, the first Thanksgiving, and the institution of a free enterprise system of economics.

The tests are all taken online and automatically graded. You do have the option of printing out the test. When you print out the test, it lists the grade at the top, the question asked, the student answer, and the correct answer. In the last column, in bold, capital red or green letters is CORRECT or INCORRECT. It is easy for the student to see which question they got wrong, and why they got it wrong. The students can take the tests more than once, if need be. My son raced through the first test so fast, I’m not even sure he read the questions. lol Needless to say, his grade was not up to par, so I had him take the test again. He did much better, and learned to go slower. I did print all the tests to put in their notebooks. The curriculum does not store the test scores.

The notebook is intended to be a very nice book for the student to refer back to, not just a place to keep finished papers until you throw them away. With the student note sheets, the vocabulary word sheets, all the quotes and other documents, the notebook is quite lovely. We even used the design from the pages to decorate the binder of their notebooks. Yes, my son loves paperclips. lol

For each lesson, the student watches the slide show presentation. The teacher (the narrator, as you don’t see a person) tells them when to fill out the student sheet, when to read over the vocabulary sheet, or other informational sheets included in the lesson and to complete any extra activities. Here are a few sample pages from my daughters notebook.

They are currently on Unit Four, Lesson One. They are at the point of doing the project in the picture above. They are looking forward to making their own Mayflower.

I wish they had a printer friendly option for printing all the pages. There are a lot of pages to print, and they all take a lot of ink. Especially the ones that are made to look like parchment paper. I would like to have the option to print out the words on my own colored paper. They would have taken a lot of black ink, too, if I had printed them out as black and white. And the parchment pages would have looked bad. We could still have made a very nice notebook for them to refer back to for years to come with a printer friendly option to print the pages on our own colored paper.

The pages are printed during each lesson as the student moves through the course. The student has to click on the “resources” tab to print the pages. The narrator does remind them to print the pages if they haven’t yet.  Having all the printable pages in one place for the parent to access and print would be a nice option to have.

My kids and I loved The Pilgrim Story, even considering printing the pages took all my ink.  🙂  One of the things that really stood out for me was that the teacher is constantly pointing the students to God. For example, when talking about property, the teacher said, “You are ultimately the property of God because He created you.” There are numerous other instances, also.

We have always paid special attention to our study of the Pilgrims, as my husbands family had ancestors come over on the Mayflower. The family tree has been traced back that far. The kids really liked seeing their ancestors name on the ships roster included in the curriculum. Ok, I did, too!

I found The Pilgrim Story to be an excellent curriculum. Even though the price is high for a course for this age group, it is worth it. Especially if you use it with more than one student.

Here’s a preview:

The Pilgrim Story course is available for $99. You will receive 6 months access to the course. You just have to make sure to complete the 17 lessons and the tests before the 6 months is up.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I received online access to this curriculum in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. My opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

As part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received a PDF version of Big Box of Ideas WWII Pearl Harbor Box. Every Big Box of Ideas is full of great learning to supplement your curriculum, or use as a special project. These boxes are great for families or homeschool groups as they are geared for multi-level learning with ages 9-16. Each box is portable, and contains 10 or more modules about the box topic, and provides 10 portfolio pieces to record the student’s journey. There is also a timed SAT style summary test in each box.

The WWII Pearl Harbor Box contains 10 modules:

Before Becoming a Naval Base
Beginning of a Naval Presence
Weeks before the Attack
Day of Infamy
Day After the Attack
Weeks after the Attack
Six Months after the Attack
A Year after the Attack
Four Years after the Attack
Decades after the Attack

When you purchase the Big Box of Ideas, each module comes wrapped separately, as you can see from the picture below. Very convenient to grab and go, whether your going to homeschool group or just to the dining room table. There is very minimal prep required. With the PDF version that I received, the instructions for each module told me exactly what pages to print out for that module. It even told me which pages to print on regular paper and which to print on cardstock. If you chose to print everything at once, you could sort them out into bags or folders. Or if your like me, you can print the pages out as you go along.

I really loved that I could use Big Box of Ideas with all my children, ages 12, 14, 16 and 17. I have always loved doing school together as a family, instead of separately. Once you get to the middle school and high school years, it’s hard to find curriculum that works for all the grades together.

It’s easy to the started with Big Box of Ideas, the directions are easy to follow. The modules are full of information and activities. The activities are fun, whether there are 2 or 5 of you participating.

The only thing I didn’t like about Big Box of Ideas WWII Pearl Harbor was that the activities that I had to print from the PDF version are in full, photographic color. To print out all the activities from all the modules takes a LOT of ink. It would be nice to have a printer friendly option in the PDF version. You can see an example of this in the picture below.

The Big Box of Ideas WWII Pearl Harbor sells for $79 for the box version and $49 for the PDF version like I received. There are also numerous other great boxes to choose from.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a download PDF version of this book in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. My opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

As part of The Schoolhouse Review Crew, I received a download version of Homeschool Legacy’s  Birds of a Feather Once a Week Unit Study. Homeschool Legacy and Once a Week Unit Studies were started by a homeschooling mom of 16 years. She designed the unit studies for students to have more fun learning and for moms to have more fun teaching.

These once a week unit studies are for students of all ages. Your whole family can have fun learning together. Once a week unit studies are just that. You set aside one day a week to work on the study. The rest of the week, you do your regular books and read the individual and family read alouds from the study. On unit study day, you set aside your regular books and have fun doing all the activities and projects in the unit. The units vary in length, some are 4 weeks, some are up to 8 weeks long.

An added feature of the once a week unit studies is the students can earn Boy Scout and American Heritage Girls badges by completing the studies. The book tells you exactly what the student needs to accomplish to earn the badge. If you have any scouts in your family, this is a great way for the family to help them work towards their badges.

The Birds of A Feather Once a Week Unit Study I received gets kids excited about science while studying some of God’s most beautiful creations. This unit study is 4 weeks long, so we were able to complete it during the time I had to work on this review.

I did this study with my 12 year old, 6th grade son. We had a lot of fun together doing this study. I am very impressed with the amount of information, book & movie lists, activities in this unit study. There are suggestions for individual and family reading. Movie suggestions for family movie night and great field trip ideas. Even themed based devotions are included. You start each week by reading the lesson from the book, then branch out into the other activities.

We read about birds and John James Audobon. We looked at numerous drawings and paintings by him. We watched Fly Away Home together. (A very good movie, by the way) We did lots of activities and projects together. Here are a few of the things we did. (The memory card with the rest of the pictures has disappeared. so annoying!)

One of the projects he did was this milk carton bird feeder. He did this all by himself. I showed him the picture in the book and read him the instructions. He did all the rest. It’s still hanging on our porch.

We also dissected owl pellets. Two of the other kids joined us for this activity. Here’s one of the sheets they sorted the bones onto. All these bones came from one owl pellet. Very interesting.

He did an owl coloring sheet. He was clearly in a hurry when he did this. He also did one of a cardinal, our state bird.

There are no required books or activities. There are plenty of suggestions, though. For example, can’t find the books on the suggested list? That’s ok, find another one from the same category to read. If we had read all the books suggested, watched all the movies, did all the activities and went on all the field trips, it would have taken much longer than four weeks to complete. There is so much to choose from that you can choose what works best for your family. There are scheduling tips on the website to help you fit in your regular studies and the once a week unit study.

I highly recommend the once a week unit studies as a fun, and educational, addition to your regular studies. We really liked Birds of a Feather.

While I received a download PDF ebook, this product is only available as physical book. The Birds of a Feather Once a Week Unit Study sells for $15.95 on the website.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a download PDF version of this book in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. My opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”