CHSH-Teach.com Subscription (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

I love using handouts for homeschooling, but I am one of those who can not make them myself.  In the past, I've used pay per handout style sheets, searching in the hopes that someone else has made a handout similar to what I am looking for and compromising when they weren't.  I also had a free membership to the website CHSH-Teach.com (Christian HomeSchool Hub) and had used some of their free resources in the past so when I was given the opportunity to review the annual subscription to the CHSH Download Club, I knew it was a subscription that I would be able to use often with my family.

CHSH-Teach.com was started by Lynda Ackert, a mother and public school teacher both in Public Schools and overseas for the Department of Defense for over 20 years.  After becoming a mother, Mrs Ackert made the choice to homeschool her children which led to her realizing that she enjoyed making printables and handouts and wanted to share this with other homeschool families.  Thus, the Christian HomeSchool Hub was created.

With well over 50,000 pages of printable educational material for grades K-12, the Christian
HomeSchool Hub offers a wide arrange of subject material, from core classes such as Math, Language Arts and Sciences on through Bible studies as well as electives such as Foreign Language and Physical Education.  Materials are arranged in such a way that makes searching by subject, grade and month easy.  There's also a search bar that allows the option to search by topic, category or key words to quickly find what you are looking for.

The Christian Homeschool Hub is more than just a download site, however.  Members have the option of contributing their own materials. From flashcards, full scans of out of print books, lapbooks, notebooking pages and planners, members are able to upload their own creations to share with other members.  There's also a forum for members to share information among each other.

How We Used CHSH-Teach.com

Daily Geography Worksheets

Navigating through the offerings at CHSH-Teach.com can be equivelent to a kid in the candy store. There is so many wonderful selections.  The first few days of access, I spent time browsing the various subjects and downloading things that I knew I could use with my 3rd graders.

The first item that really caught my eye was the Daily Geography Curriculum for 3rd-5th Grade. Consisting of 157 pages, this 36 week Geography curriculum consists of mapwork and activities that teach children valuable skills such as recognizing time zones, longitudinal and latitudinal lines, and reading various types of maps.  Each day, students review the lesson and then answer a few questions about what they are learning.  This geography curriculum was easily introduced in addition to our Charlotte Mason style geography lessons.

We also elected to begin the Character Study curriculum.  This curriculum focuses on a character trait each week, suggesting books to read that demonstrate the trait and have students explain how the characters in the book show each trait.  There are 40 lessons ranging from traits such as Greedy, Impatient, Compassionate, Tolerance and Stubborn.

Book Units were another focus that we decided to work with and we enjoyed these very much.  CHSH-Teach.com offers various Book Units for different grade levels.  So far we've done the units for Where the Wild Things Are and Jumanji.  The book units ask questions in regards to what the students have read and then ask them to interpret the story in their own words (and also with pictures).  For our grade level, the studies were only a few pages and were not overwhelming for them to complete.  The books are popular selections, which I was very grateful for since our library on base has a rather limited selection.

Since my kids are very hesitant writers, I opted for one of the handwriting options. The Read It, Write It, Draw It selections were perfect for this.  These selections include copy work about the life cycle of butterflies, ladybugs, frogs and from seed to flowers.  We were easily able to complete one of these books each week.

Many of the items we've been using these last few weeks are items that I plan to keep using throughout the school year, such as the Daily Geography, Character Studies and Book Units.  In addition to these, there are so many things that I cannot wait to incorporate into our year.  Just last week, the website added Monthly Learning Packs for K-2nd Grade, with plans to add more grades shortly.  As these types of packs are something I tend to buy from another website for about 10 bucks a month, I cannot wait to start using these with my kids next week.  Also, there's a wonderful curriculum to teach basic facts about the 50 States that I plan on starting next week as well as a full California State curriculum that I hope to incorporate later in the year.  Needless to say, I already have a file folder on my computer chocked full of things that I hope to do with the kids in the next 40 weeks.

CHSH-Teach.com is a wonderful resource and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to use it with my children. While a free membership is available that allows for limited access to the website, an annual membership that gives full access to everything the Download Club offers is reasonable priced at only $25 per year.  A lifetime membership is also available for $99.

For more information about CHSH-Teach.com and the Christian HomeSchool Hub, visit their website of visit them on any of their social media sites:

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheChristianHomeSchoolHub/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ChristianHomeSchoolHubPage/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeachWithCHSH

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/lyndaackert/chsh-teachcom-creations-by-lackert/

Google+ Group: https://plus.google.com/b/117967118184286217472/communities/108322787218266183941

Google Business Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/117967118184286217472/117967118184286217472/posts

Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lyndaackert

Tumblr: http://christianhomeschoolhub.tumblr.com/

85 Members of the Crew were offered an Annual Subscription to the Download Club at CHSH-Teach.com.  To read their reviews, please click the banner below. 

The Weekly Wrap up (7/11-7/15)

The kids are officially back in school and while we're considering the next 3 months a "Transitional" semester to finish wrapping up 2nd Grade material that we didn't complete yet (for example, our MathUSee Beta), I am going to go ahead and call them 3rd graders.  When we start full 3rd grade curriculum in October, then I guess they will officially be 3rd grade lol 

A few family members have asked why would we start back with school so early and not let the kids have a full summer vacation.  I look at it like this - it is currently in the triple digit temperatures outside every day and will be until probably the end of September. The kids can't even go outside and play comfortably until well after 7-8pm.  There's nothing fun about that for them.  It makes more sense to have them do school work rather than just allow them to play on their electronics or watch TV and instead enjoy breaks when the weather is much nicer during the daytime.  

Temps Like These Don't Make for a Fun Summer

I will be posting soon the entire curriculum that we're planning on using for the 2016-2017 school year.  We are going to be following the AmblesideOnline curriculum with a mix of Y1-Y3 curriculum.   I'm seriously wishing I had discovered AmblesideOnline two years ago but as I am late to the game, I'm trying to play a bit of "catch up", so to speak. Year 1 and 2 offer so much wonderful material that I just couldn't bring myself to allow the kids to miss out. As most of the Year 1 reading is pretty simple and quick, we will be combining it with Year 2 and 3 material in the hopes to eventually finish both and start a solid year 3. 

For the remainder of the month, the kids will be working on the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as their folk song.  The kids are having so much fun with this song and I have heard Ashleigh singing it to herself at night when she's suppose to be going to bed.  We're not working on a worship song this month because I want to devote a whole month to the songs we're learning so instead they have just been revisiting other songs we have already learned (Our God Is An Awesome God, Prayer, Drops in the Ocean). 

Garrett's Narration

Ashleigh's Narration

We have been reviewing the story of Adam and Eve by reading passages out of the book of Genesis.  The kids already know this story very well, both because of previous lessons as well as using Veritas Bible.  However, I learned something new when we did the notebooking page for the story of Adam and Eve. I do not remember the scriptures stating Adam and Eve had a two pet rats named Yuki and Nic (which just so happens to be the names of Ashleigh's pet rats).  I'll let it slide this time, as it is nice to see Ashleigh actually writing something imaginative instead of just copying what I have dictated to her.  Garrett stuck to a pretty basic Adam and Eve story for his notebooking in which he simply wrote "Adam and Eve ate the fruit that God said don't eat".  Garrett is a young man of very little words LOL

Both kids have been working on the cursive letter A this week.  Ashleigh had a bit of an advantage in this as she had previously done the New American Cursive workbook during a review last year.  However, I wanted Garrett to start learning to write in Cursive because I have read that it is easier for autistic kids over printing.  Garrett did really well with it and I hope that this is a good indicator as to how he will do with it long term. 

Garrett's Practice for Cursive Upper and Lowercase A

We distributed the various reading selections throughout the week.  For week 1 of AO Y1 we read the Aesop fables The Wolf and the Kid as well as the Tortoise and the Ducks.  We read the first chapter of An Island Story and learned about Albion and Brutus. We also read about The Sword of Damocles from the book Fifty Famous Stories Retold, How the Whale Got it's Throat from the book Just So Stories, and A Lesson of Faith from the book Parables from Nature.  Each day, we also read a poem from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

The kids also started back up with their poetry memorization from IEW.  The last poem the kids had was The Vulture by Hilaire Belloc. After a quick review to make sure that they still remembered the previous poems, the kids picked up and started memorizing After the Party by William Wise. 

For our math assignment, we are continuing to use MathUSee Beta. This week we completed unit 16 which covers Thousands and Place Value Notation.  We also used CTC Math for extra practice with our column addition.  

For Geography, we are doing three different books:  Paddle to the Sea by Holling C Holling, Elementary Geography by Charlotte Mason and Home Geography for Primary Grades by C.C. Long.   We covered simple directions such as Front, Back, Left and Right (which the kids already knew). Then we read the first two chapters of Paddle to the Sea.  In addition to the book, we are using a unit study and also the Google Lit Trip that goes along with the book.   We did a quick experiment that demonstrated how water travels from higher elevations to lower elevations (such as with the Great Lakes) using measuring cups at the kitchen sink, which the kids then also associated with waterfalls.  We also discussed how the sun melts snow and that the run off of the snow melt then runs to the river.   

Monkeys on Google Earth

As mentioned, we will be using a Google Lit Trip to map out the trip Paddle-to-the-Sea takes through the Great Lakes and to the Atlantic Ocean.  These Lit Trips use Google Earth and include route that is pre-mapped out for students that coincides with each chapter of the book.  This meant I had to install Google Earth on our computer.  Garrett has since discovered Google Earth and is absolutely addicted.  Every afternoon after school he spends hours finding things on the program.  He calls me to the computer almost constantly to show me railroad stations, Stonehenge, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids of Giza, and the Empire State Building. I had to laugh when he freaked out to find a Statue of Liberty and an Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.  Just a few minutes ago, while I was writing this, he called me to the computer as he had found a group of monkeys on a beach grooming each other. I can see many, many, many virtual field trips in our future. 

Where will he go next? Garrett's Google Earth Setup

We are currently working on a review for a foreign language program called Foreign Language for Kids by Kids and so each day, the kids have been watching a DVD that exposes them to immersion Spanish.  Currently we are watching the first video of the DVD which is called Basketballs Aren't For Breakfast.  Can I say now that we are absolutely LOVING this program??  I simply put the video on for them to watch while I made their lunch. Are they learning? Well, two days ago, Ashleigh told her dad she wanted him to go to the store and buy some pequenas manzanas (small apples) for her to have at desayuno (breakfast) because she said "Me gusta pequenas manzanas" (She likes small apples).. Yeah, I would say she's learning.  I do believe she's enjoying Spanish much more than she's liking Latin. 

Ashleigh identifies Peru on the map. 

In addition to learning Spanish, the video talks about a trip from Washington DC to Lima, Peru.  This gave us a great opportunity to find both locations on our map and discuss how the official language of most countries in South America is Spanish (with the exception of Brazil who's official language is Portuguese). We can now add Peru to counties we can identify in South America (they already knew Brazil, Chile and Argentina). 

We are still continuing with our Nature Study for 3rd Grade. In 2nd Grade, we completed the Burgess Animal book so we decided this year we would tackle the Burgess Bird book.  We worked through Chapter 1 this week which had us learning about the House Wren.  After reading the chapter, we did some research on the House Wren and the kids completed notebooking pages for the bird.  We are hoping as we start to learn and recognize each bird, we will be able to do some serious bird watching on our nature walk and identify these species in the wild. In addition to the Burgess Bird book, we are still notebooking the weather daily and we will be using the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock which we will start with next week.  We are going to Yosemite National Forest in 9 days and are hoping to do quite a bit of nature study, bird watching, nature photography and notebooking/journaling while we are there as it will be a great opportunity for the kids to see something outside of the creatures we find in a desert habitat. 

Schoolhouseteachers.com has a wonderful spelling curriculum that we have used in the past and so we started the Schoolhouse Spelling Lower Elementary Charlotte Mason LE  List 2.  This week they worked on the words Shepherd, Lord, Shall, Lie, Besides, Waters, Green, Soul and Paths.  Part of the activities they did with their spelling list this week was to being learning to proofread and find mistakes.  

Garrett is still working with his Forbrain headset and his reading. It's amazing how much his confidence in his reading has grown because of the Forbrain headset. Reading use to involve LOTS of tears and cries of "I Can't".. Now, he finishes a passage and he gets really happy and explains "Mom, I can do it. I can read".  While he's currently still reading Level 1 books, I have a feeling we will be switching to Level 2 or possibly Level 3 before October.  

Finally, the kids are starting to learn how to do more things around the house.  This includes cooking and various chores.  This week, Garrett has been learning how to load and start the dishwasher properly.  (Next week, Ashleigh will learn).  

Overall, we had a really great first week.  Mom's got her own homework to do over the weekend as we received a new review item today as well as the Answers in Genesis All-In-One curriculum for The Pilgrims Progress so I will be having to get myself familiar with both of those and see how best to incorporate both into our schedule :) 

But thankfully, I have m planners all set up, including my trusty "Ugly Schedule"..

NotebookingPages.com (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

This is a product that I had my eyes on for quite some time after seeing it over and over again on my friend Marcy's blog/facebook page.  She's talked about NotebookingPages.com  and what a great deal the Lifetime Membership is and how she has incorporated notebooking into her homeschooling with her son.  The idea of notebooking really intrigued me and a number of times I came close to buying this resource for myself but something always prevented me from doing so.

Yup, this was me!!!

You can only imagine the happy dance I was doing when I was offered the Lifetime Membership to review for my own blog.  It probably looked very similar to the Numa Numa guy mainly because my dancing greatly resembles the Numa Numa dance.. Point is, when I was asked to review NotebookingPages.com, I was absolutely ecstatic.  

What is Notebooking?

In the homeschooling community, Notebooking is the learning style of creating folders or binders filled with journaling,  drawings, lap reports, reports, scrapbooking pages,and timelines that the student works on through their study of a subject.  Notebooking allows for more flexibility to study topics more indepth then a stuctured curriculum and allows for you to cut out the "busywork" that clogs up most homeschool schedules.  Notebooking can be used in addition to oral narration and instead teaches the student to write/draw about what they are learning rather than just vocalizing it.  Then all these pages are kept neatly in the students binder/notebook.

The flexiblity that notebooking provides means that it can be used with practically any subject or course of study and for any age/grade of student.  

NotebookingPages.com

NotebookingPages.com is the brainchild of Debra Reed and was a result of years of her frustration while homeschooling her own family of 10 children.  She was frustrated, discouraged and suffering from burnout from chasing that "perfect curriculum".  We've all been there, a slave to the schedule and trying to force our kids to complete a set amount of work day after day because we feel we need to have it to prove that they are learning something. Debra got tired this neverending cycle of busywork and schedules and decided there had to be a better way to educate her children.   She discovered the Notebooking style and found it worked perfect for her family.

Her next goal was to help other homeschool families to break free from the same vicious cycle.  Designing hundreds of pages and templates to use for notebooking, she started NotebookingPages.com to provide a valuable resource for those wanting to do notebooking.   The site has grown and a subscription now gives members access to thousands of notebooking pages on a plethora of subjects such as Science/Nature, the Bible, Famous People, Geography, History, and Language Arts to just name a few.

The Member's Section is very easy to navigate. Simply select the Subject and a drop down menu of sections is displayed.  Selecting one of these sections (example: The American First Ladies Notebooking Pages section) then brings up a second menu of the topics available for that section (such as Martha Washington in the American First Ladies section).. Clicking on Martha Washington will start a download of a PDF file that contains all the Notebooking pages in that section on Martha Washington. At this screen, you are also given the options to download the printable catalog to place in the Reference Guide as well as a Zip file containing all 437 pages available in regards to American First Ladies.  Each section follows the same format regardless to subject, making it very easy to learn and navigate quickly.

User Friendly Format makes it quick and easy to locate pages to fit your topic of study

Our NotebookingPages.com Experience (So Far)

I cannot begin to even describe how amazing of a job Debra Reed has done in designing and executing this site.   The meticulous detail and explainations that she provides upon joining her site shows that she honestly does care about your success as you venture into Notebooking.  This site could easily be overwhelming to a new member, considering the thousands upon thousands of pages available and one could quickly become discouraged.  This is prevented almost immediately as Debra provides a series of Tutorials ( the "EasyStart Guide") that walk you step by step through the site along with suggestions for organizing and quickly referencing the available pages over the course of 5 daily easy to read PDF lessons.

Over the course of those first few days, with the help of Debra's EasyStart Guide, I put together my

time saving Reference Notebook.  This notebook is highly suggested as it gives you a very quick visual of all the available pages by subject.  Each pages is listed in the reference pages that lets you know what section of pages it can be found in (history, geography, language arts, ect) as well as which page number it is.  This saves HUGE amounts of time as you can find the page you want in the reference book and go straight to it in the downloaded PDF file for that section.  For example, the kids have used two very specific weather pages daily and I print out every Sunday night.  Using the Reference guide, I know that the pages I want are located in the Nature Study pages and are pages 276 and 277 out of 399 available pages in the Nature Study Section.  I HIGHLY recommend taking Debra's advice and making this reference guide as it will save loads of time in the future.  I will most likely trade my three ring binder and instead have this reference guide spiral bound with a cover in the near future.

Once I was done with the five days of Tutorials, we were ready to jump in with both feet.  I picked out a few subjects/topics I thought the kids would enjoy each week, printed them out and tested the waters with the kids.

The very first pages we started with were the weather pages located in the Nature Study section.  The kids check the weather each day as part of their daily nature study and I wanted them to start being able to read current temperatures, highs and lows for the day and wind speeds.  I was pretty happy to find not one but two pages that worked out really great for this goal.

The first page worked great for a weekly log where the kids could record a simple forecast for each day .

The second page allowed for a more in depth daily and I would print 5 of these each week - one for each school day.   These worked perfect for us because the pages didn't focus on precipitation (we live in a desert so we don't get much rain) but instead allowed us to concentrate more on wind speed - something we have lots of.  However, there are plenty of pages that also concentrate on precipitation for those who want to chart daily rain/snow fall.

I wanted to use a variety of pages from different sections, so I decided to print out one of the mapping pages - this one about North America.   The kids had fun labeling what they knew and I was pretty shocked to realize that Garrett remembered Greenland..

The kids are pretty excited about our upcoming camping trip to Yosemite.  I found a number of notebooking pages for Yosemite in the Geography section along with other National Parks and Monuments.

There's also a nice selection of Holidays pages so I printed out a few of the 4th of July pages that were available and told the kids to draw what they thought of when I said 4th of July and then write about it.  I had to laugh when Ashleigh drew fireworks and then proceeded to write about how the base fireworks always seem to set the base on fire.

In the course of the few weeks we've had access to the NotebookingPages.com website, we have done many different pages on different subjects, and we're in a slower, easier mode because of the summer. Yet we haven't even scratched the surface of the offerings available.

Just a few of our Notebooking Pages

Pages can be used over and over again in different ways - how Ashleigh and Garrett use a page right now while in 2nd (about to begin 3rd) grade will vary greatly as to how they will use the same page in 5th grade, 9th grade and 12th grade.  The lifetime membership means that we will have full access to the website for the life of the website.  It also means that we're not rushed trying to download and use as much as possible in the span of a yearly membership - when we're ready to do American History or to learn about the State of Idaho, the pages I need will be ready as well.

Currently a Lifetime Membership is available for $97 with a four month payment plan available with only $10 down.  There is a Free Membership Option also available that gives you access to hundreds of free pages which provides a wonderful introduction to Notebooking as well as to the PDF Tutorials.

In my opinion, it's well worth the cost and I can see why my friend Marcy has been talking about how wonderful this site is and I expect my friends will hear about it from me now.

For more information about NotebookingPages.com, be sure to check out their website or visit them on one of their social media sites:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debrareed.notebookingpages/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NotebookingPgs  @NotebookingPgs