Andrea Chen
God's Little Angels
This lovely story is reprint of the 1905 book The Transplanting of Tessie. Little Tessie spent six years at a convent boarding school before becoming ill. She finds herself at her uncle's country estate where she recovers and, through many adventures, brings her relatives to the Catholic faith. All of our children enjoyed this touching story. The author writes vividly and with just enough suspense to keep the reader wanting more.
Catholic Math Activities
If you're looking for a way to liven up your math program or to bring in some painless math review you have to pick up this book. Catholic Math Activities provides dozens of math games that children actually enjoy playing and almost all of them only require dice and simple home-made material. The author makes use of children's interests by revolving the games around things such as baseball cards and animals. What really pleased me about this program is the clever way our Catholic faith was brought into these games.
Reading Comprehension: Stories of the Saints, Volume 3
The ad for this book does not do it justice. It is far more than just a reading comprehension workbook and although the ad does list the activities involved, it doesn't express their depth or breadth. This book could be used as a unit study! I plan to have my 12 year old select a saint each quarter to prayerfully study and to immerse himself in the saints life and spirituality. Although Isaiah enjoys reading the lives of the saints, when he's done with a book (usually in a few days) his devotion to the saint usually doesn't last long.
Home Educator's Lesson Planner
Designed to keep track of one child's lesson plans for a year, this organizer has several features that would please both the structured homeschooler or those who prefer unit studies. This comb bound planner includes an attendance record as well as pages for expenses, projects and field trips, book lists, progress reports, grading, monthly overview and 70 lesson plan pages with two pages covering each of 35 weeks.
Writing Strands
The Writing Strands program focuses on the structure of writing by teaching the student to organize his thoughts before writing. Many of the ideas the author uses are found in other English programs, such as Voyages in English, but in WS they are presented in a more systematic fashion with each lesson building on preceding lessons. The lessons are written for the child to read and do independently, with the parent checking work occasionally. WS is very straightforward and directs the child to write about specific topics.
The Institute for Excellence in Writing
The Institute for Excellence in Writing, owned by a Catholic convert and home school father, teaches the "structure and style of writing" through live and video workshops. This program is used throughout Canada. As do other programs IEW teaches structure (organizing material for writing) so that the final written piece will be logical, but unlike most programs children are trained to do this by using the writings of good authors. The structure of writing is taught by having children read literature, outline the literature, narrate from their outline, then write their own piece.
Singapore Math
Singapore students are scoring the highest in the world in math and science. The web page for these texts in the US is http://www.singaporemath.com
Singapore Math seems to solve the "conceptual/drill...Saxon jumping around problem". Here's an example from a problem in the first half of fifth grade book
<< Mr Li paid $36 for 3 singlets and 2 T-shirts. A T-shirt cost 3 times as much as a singlet. How much did Mr Li pay for the 2 T-shirts?>>
Singapore Math seems to solve the "conceptual/drill...Saxon jumping around problem". Here's an example from a problem in the first half of fifth grade book
<< Mr Li paid $36 for 3 singlets and 2 T-shirts. A T-shirt cost 3 times as much as a singlet. How much did Mr Li pay for the 2 T-shirts?>>