Review: ACTÍVA Products

Art. Wendi and art. Gosh we just don't mix. I really think I do a decent job homeschooling. But art is continually throwing me for a loop. So when an opportunity arose to do some homeschool crafts using the Rigid Wrap and CelluClay Quik-Sculpting Kit from ACTÍVA Products, I jumped at the chance. In addition to the Sculpting Kit, ACTÍVA Products also sent us their ACTÍVA Products' Favorite Sculpture KIDS CRAFTS free eBook.

Here is a picture of the box that arrived at our house:

I was a little overwhelmed with things going on around the farm and with company in town when this project came in for us to review ... so my mother-in-law, Mary, graciously volunteered to head up this project. She picked different projects to do with each of the children, and they were a huge success. I was really impressed by how simple they were and how little mess there was. They really came together very easily!

Mom specifically said that one of the best things about this product was that it was very easy to choose age-appropriate projects using the same box. She said she could easily see adults and teenagers finding fun things to do with it. And she was able to use it with my three-year-old as well.

My three-year-old (soon to be four) daughter worked on a snow man. Here is a video of her working on her project:

My eight-year-old, Sidge, made a Christmas tree. Sidge is always a great sport and excited to try new things -- but he doesn't want to devote a ton of time to anything. This was a perfect amount of attention span for him! Here is a video of him working on his project:

And here is a picture of him with his completed project. He was really proud of what he did:

Isaac, who is nine, wanted to make a bowl. Here is his almost-finished bowl. He ended up doing a lot more painting to it after I took this picture below. I love the smile on his face. He was really proud of his bowl!

Abigail, who just turned six, worked on some star ornaments. But she also wanted to do the same snowman her sister did. And she did a great job! She really has a lot of my husband's art skills in her. You can see that the hat is removable and will be a little candy dish.

Grama and the kids used the Rigid Wrap to make nearly everything seen above. There was a separate bonus product included as well called CelluClay. They used this product to make the nose on the snowman and the ornaments on the bowl. 

Creating the projects was really very simple -- in fact, I could have done it, and I'm not artsy AT ALL. Some newspaper, warm water, scissors, and detailed instructions (which came with) were all it took to get started. Some of the projects required additional materials, but you could definitely do a lot of things by just using what was in the box. 

In addition, the ACTÍVA Products' Favorite Sculpture KIDS CRAFTS free eBook is a full color document with a ton of other great ideas as well. Take some time to check out: Rigid Wrap and CelluClay Quik-Sculpting Kit today!

My kids had a blast with this product! And Grama did too. Take some time to check out this company on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

We Bought a Farm: The One Animal We Don't Have

So I took pictures of all my kids on our recent field trip to the Humane Society, but no big surprise, only Abigail's turned out. This kid never takes a bad picture. And my other kiddos, while equally cute in my eyes, don't seem to get so lucky with my photography skills:

My friend Erin actually suggested this field trip. The Humane Society is right across the street from where we take tennis so we decided to meet there right before tennis started. My kids all love animals, but Sidge, especially, is just a fanatic about animals. Abigail also loves them a lot, but she is still second to Sidge in his love for all things animal. (Currently they want to live on the farm forever and open up a veterinarian clinic on the farm.) In particular, all my kids have expressed interest in cats. We have nearly every other animal there is, and maybe that is why they are so stuck on having a cat. 

Cats are a no-go for us mostly because JB is allergic to them and also because we just don't want to deal with another animal right now and trying to get them acclimated to our dogs. We have a few stray cats who visit our farm, and we let them do their mousing thing without a bother from us. But we just don't want to have to feed and get vet care for anything else right now. Our dogs are plenty!

Man did my kiddos have a BLAST at the humane society in the "cat room." It was filled with cats and kittens, and they just loved hanging out with these cats. The people who worked there encouraged us to come back and play with the cats. My kids have only asked me about 1,000 times since we left when they can go back so I think it will be a regular occurrence for us. It's always fun to find something everyone loves that is FREE!

Thanks Erin for the great tip!!

Review: The Pencil Grip, Inc.

Folks, I have done reviews for this product before. And I wish I could say different things. But I keep saying the same thing because: Oh boy do we have fun with this product! My kids loved the Thin Stix 6pk of Classic Colors from The Pencil Grip, Inc.  They have loved them from the beginning, and they KEEP LOVING THEM!

You know how it is. You want to do crafts with your kids and get out art projects and have tons of fun doing all those Pinterest things you see all the other moms on Facebook doing. But the thought of getting all the stuff out and cleaning it all up. Man, it is just TOUGH to have a good attitude about it. I want my kids to paint and color, but the work involved. And honestly, I feel like just as I finish setting up, the first kid is done and moving on, and I am left with tons of mess to clean up.

(And then tomorrow comes and the same scene is repeated in various formats.)

As I have said on previous posts about this product: I try to be a good sport. I try to say YES many more times than I say NO, but I just can't help it sometimes. Set up and clean up ... it can break one down.

But take a look at this video of my kids painting with Thin Stix 6pk of Classic Colors  from The Pencil Grip, Inc. I open the package, they paint, it is dry in a matter of minutes and clean up requires me to put the sticks away! That's it!

Thin Stix 6pk of Classic Colors from The Pencil Grip, Inc.  are basically painting sticks! They are solid tempera paint sticks that you just uncap, twist, and paint! They dry in 90 seconds, but the painting dries looking like paint. You don't add water. You don't need paint brushes. You just uncap and color!

For a mom with four kiddos, this is nothing short of a painting miracle!

So first, I would like to show you some pictures we have done in the past with these products. (You will notice how much smaller the kiddos look in these pictures because they are almost a year old!)

Sidge with his bald eagle.

Isaac with a bird house.

Abigail painting rocks outside with her friend Jonah as we prepared to lay Scrubs to rest.

Isaac helping with the rock painting.

Look at Abigail! She just kept painting and painting. She looks so much chubbier here! Man she has grown up a lot since we initially did a review for The Pencil Grip, Inc.

Okay and now let me show you some of the painting we did this time around:

Eight-year-old Sidge who is often not a fan of art projects. I love this picture!

Three-year-old Hannah (see the big "H" for her name on the corner?) She didn't want her face shown for this review. (She was having an attitude.)

More proof of the attitude. 

Isaac and his painting project. I love this one!

By the time I took photos, Abigail (who is our biggest lover of this product) was outside helping Daddy on the farm. So I got a photo of the finished project without her in it. 

We had a blast with these sticks yet again! And you will too. Truly. This is a great product which is completely affordable. Check these out! Thin Stix 6pk of Classic Colors from The Pencil Grip, Inc. is easy and just plain fun!

Review: Focus on the Family: Captain Absolutely

To say my eight and nine-year-old boys absolutely loved Captain Absolutely from Focus on the Family honestly doesn't even seem like I am accurately sharing the truth.

They devoured it.

They argued over the book.

Each of them read it cover-to-cover one time, and since finishing it, they have both been calling "dibs" on taking it in the van whenever we have to go somewhere and continuing to read it.

It was a SMASHING success. Of course, getting two second graders to tell you what they liked about a book is as hard as taking them to the dentist. No matter how hard I tried, here is the best I could come up with.

First from my eight-year-old Elijah (aka "Sidge"):

Sidge: "I really liked that it was a superhero book."
Me: "Okay, but why do you like superhero books?"
Sidge: "Mom, you know that I think superheroes are awesome."
Me: "I know, but for my review I am trying to tell people why you think the book was awesome."
Sidge: "It was a comic book with superheroes mom."
Me: "Okay."
Sidge: "And I really liked that it was a superhero book."

You get the idea.

I tried again with nine-year-old Isaac.

Isaac: "I liked everything."
Me: "Like what kind of things?"
Isaac: "Like every thing."

(Isaac is an introvert so I couldn't even attempt to go deeper than that with him. He was already back reading or playing piano or doing one of his activities!)

I sat down and read the book too. I've never been a fan of comic books and I am not the intended audience. However, there isn't a Christian mother who doesn't appreciate what the author was trying to share with my children through his character Captain Absolutely. 

Written by Wooton Z. Bassett, the introduction to the book details the purpose behind this105-page comic book:

As Christians, our worldview is shaped by the absolute truth found in the Bible. God gave us detailed instructions: Love your neighbor. Be honest. Worship nothing but Him. And through it all, keep your eyes on Jesus. (Hebrews 12:2).

And this is why he wrote this book -- to show how bad guys try to mess with our vision and how we can fight back against those lies! It took Bassett five years to complete, and the drawings and witty humor comes flying through the pages!

The story follows Captain Absolutely as he attempts to spread truth to a crime-filled city. And I'll tell you what, while I am a non-comic-book-loving-grown-up, I was so blessed by the reminders splashed throughout this book -- that Satan, the author of lies, wants us to remember our sins and our past and all the things we have done wrong instead of remembering the absolute truth!

In another mini-story, an evil villain traps Captain Absolutely in the "Shackles of Selfishness." And while there, he can't fight evil. Every villain comes through uses words like:

"If you try to stop me, these children will hate you and everything you stand for."

"Welcome to my ultimate Lair of Distraction. You could bring 100 Bibles in here, and no one would read them."

"My Indignation Drones will poison the whole city against God -- using His words to do it."

As I have mentioned on my Blog in recent weeks, I have been battling anxiety. I truly believe that this is simply a distraction for me -- a diversion -- something to keep me from seeing God's truth. And as I read this comic book, I, a grown woman (aka "adult"), could see those truths coming through on the pages.

I actually think my two boys were the perfect age for this book, and I would say that it would work for children ages 7 and up. While it is obvious good for girls or boys, I really think boys are a huge audience for this book. It probably took them under two hours to read the book in its entirety -- and as I mentioned previously, they have gone back to browse it repeatedly.

You can check out more about this book on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, or YouTube. Seriously folks -- if you have a young boy in your life, take the opportunity to share this book with them. I love God's truth coming through in characters they want to read about.

Brilliant!

Review: Creating a Masterpiece

I may be married to a former graphic designer, but implementing art in homeschooling is still a challenge for us. That being said, I was very excited to try a product like the Monthly Plan from Creating a Masterpiece.

This program is a monthly subscription (you can also buy an annual pass) that allows anyone in your family unlimited access to over 144 videos and art projects.

We did numerous projects, but for the sake of this review, I want to focus on two of the projects we did.

The first was LESSONS IN WATERCOLOR: AFRICAN SUNSET. Here is a video I took of my three children (ages 5, 8, and 8) doing this lesson:

I took quite a few pictures during this lesson so that you can how this looked for our family. All of my children (who have VERY different likes and personalities) enjoyed every art project we did. They really got into them and had fun watching their masterpiece come alive. There is NO complaining when we did these art projects:

Isaac is my most serious artist. He always appears to not be having a good time (but really is!)

Abigail is currently our most "talented" artist. She is really showing signs that she might take after her Daddy in this area.

Sidge putting a few finishing touches on his water color project. He always does things like this with great eagerness and gusto. He is animated and shares his enjoyment.

Here's Isaac with his finished project.

Abigail putting the final touches on her watercolor picture.

You can tell from the video that Sharon Hofer is an incredibly sweet and knowledgable teacher (with over 15 years of teaching experience) She has a wonderful voice and was pleasant to listen to! She created Creating a Masterpiece because she wanted to extend the reach of her fine art school. Sharon was hoping to find a program that would teach technique but that would also equip each student to produce excellent results.

The program is designed to be done by children as young as 4 and 5, and that is definitely the case as my Abigail (who is 5.5) did very well paying attention and following along with Sharon. However, what I really loved was that each project was designed to be a masterpiece level of work. As Sharon said on her website: "I want to encourage them to take pride in their work and help them feel like a real artist, instead of doing simplistic crafts."

And she does just that. I wanted to take a moment to show another finished project that we did. This one was Lessons in Charcoal: Sailing Adventure. I have to admit that I was intimidated by this one, but I was so impressed with how well my very young children did at following the directions and completing their pictures. (Note that two of my children used brown charcoal.)

This picture really brings me joy. Sidge was SOOOOO proud of his work and truly felt like it was a masterpiece. This is SO fun to see from a child. I just loved how happy he was.

Art is always tough to put into homeschool. I do find that most of my attempts at art are more "craftsy" and don't necessarily give my children the feeling of accomplishment. But this program DOES. You can tell that they all felt PROUD of the work they did.

I have to be honest. At first glance, you might think this product is a little on the expensive side. However, I am a cheapskate, and I have to say I disagree. Especially if you have multiple children, the sky is truly the limit with how many things they can do and how much they have with these projects. Truly this is a simply wonderful product that you will find to be WELL WORTH what you might pay for it.

As always, feel free to email me directly at wkitsteiner@gmail.com if you would like to speak with me directly about this product.

You can check Creating a Masterpiece out on their website. You can also check them out on Facebook by clicking here.

Homeschooling Early Elementary: My Current Product Recommendations

Here is my truth: with four young children at home, I canNOT homeschool them one-on-one. Everyone homeschools in different ways. Our current plan is this. We attend our homeschool co-op on Mondays. The other five days of the week (we also homeschool on Saturday), we do between 2-4 hours a day of independent learning.

Don't get me wrong. I am there, and still answering a LOT of questions and guiding. But I am moving inbetween all the kiddos, and they are getting on their computer or iPad and leading the way.

We DO also do about 30-60 minutes of day of non-computer work. This usually includes reading/writing/workbooks. But the other part of our work is done with amazing online products.

This may not be for everyone, but I have had many people asking me the top products I recommend. Here they are!

Math: 

CTC Math

Okay folks. Hang on to your hats. I have found you the most INCREDIBLE math program EVER!!!!!!!!!!!! (Is that enough exclamation points?!) We have absolutely LOVED ... and I mean absolutely and whole-heartedly LOVED utilizing the Homeschool Membership from CTCMath. There is no doubt that we plan to keep this in our curriculum for the foreseeable future. And I can honestly see using this with all four of my kids throughout their entire school-aged years. This is a math program for kids starting in pre-kindergarten but you can stay with it through high school. It is completely online and requires very little parental needs. The kids watch a short lesson and then answer questions about the lesson.

Times Tales

This is an awesomely fun way to learn your multiplication facts. This product is very similar to the one below, however, this one doesn't cover the "easy" facts like zero, one, and five. it is probably a bit more refined than the product below but both are excellent.) I actually let my pre-kindergarten daughter use this, but I'd recommend it starting at about 1st or 2nd grade.

Times Tables the Fun Way

This is the same idea as the Times Tales product listed above. However, this one covers ALL facts (including the "easy" ones.) Perfect for kiddos in first or second grade.

Reflex Math

And then there is REFLEX MATH. Here is a link to this one! This has been one of the BEST thing we have done Math-wise. It says it is for grades 2-8 but I totally disagree and think you can start it with K or probably 1st grade. It basically provides games to DRILL math facts. It is set up for kids to get on and do themselves for 15 minutes each day. It gives them a green light when they are done for the day. You can do a 14 day trial. After that it is $35 for a year. This program has brought my children's math facts to a great place. (There is an add/subtraction option and then multiply/divide) option.

Spelling/Phonics: 

Talking Fingers

This is a fantastic program that combines reading, writing and typing. To understand the vision behind this program, I encourage you to read the biography of the developer of this program, Neuropsychologist Jeannine Herron. Seeing the alarming reports that reading instruction in our country was failing an alarming number of students, Dr. Herron took her belief that children needed phonics as well as whole language to master reading skills to a new level. Pre-kindergarten through early elementary can benefit from this product.

Talking Shapes

This product is by the makers of Talking Fingers above, but is designed for younger children: those just learning their letters. 

Science:

EdTechLens

I have been waiting for this company to do an additional product, but right now, they only have one on the rainforest. This is an awesome online science program. 

Magic School Bus Science Club

The main thing we are doing for science right now is this monthly delivery service from the Magic School Bus. (We also watch the DVD's.) An excellent product and totally worth the money!

Art:

ArtAchieve

This is an online art program that walks children step-by-step through art products. Really fun!

Bible: 

Veritas Press

I cannot recommend this Bible program enough. My children LOVE LOVE LOVE it, and it continues to be the least complained about thing we do every day. The only downside is that it is is pricey. But it is completely done online with very little need for parental help. This is really good beginning when your child is an independent reader, but you could do it younger if you helped and walked through it with them.

General Knowledge: 

Essential Skills Advantage

This program is FANTASTIC! It is completely online, and allows your child to answer questions on various topics like geography, science, math, etc. This is a completely independent product, and I am able to use it from pre-kindergarten on. Really great!

Reading:

Raz-Kids

This is a great online reading program that allows kids to read books and answer questions. If you are interested in trying this product, please let me know via email: flakymn@hotmail.com as I might be able to get you a free use through a friend.

Writing:

Here to Help Learning

If you are looking for an online writing program, this is a good one. This will require you to help guide your students and is not completely independent. But it offers a "classroom" setting for your child. Good from about 1st grade on.

Online Apps:

Inventioneers

Man do my kiddos LOVE this online app! You have to invent "ways" to get out of boards using products. Excellent thinking game!

Stack the States / Stack the Countries

And my last all-time favorite is Stack the States (or the follow-up Stack the Countries.) I cannot begin to say enough about this game and what it has done for my kids geography. They love it and have learned SO much. We have also used this site online with great success. This one is also very cheap -- and you can buy a lite version to try it for free. Your children do need to be able to read to do this one.

Learn with Homer

The first is LEARN WITH HOMER. It is my FAVORITE! You can try it for one month for FREE so I suggest that even if the $8 a month isn't in your budget, you try it for free! It has won all kinds of awards and is perfect for ages 4-6. You can also do this one right on the computer. This has two major "sections." The first is one for learning to read. The second is for learning great subject matters (the incas, health, different animals, etc.)

Teachme

The second is Teachme. Here is the link to the second grade one but you can start with toddler, preschool, K, 1, etc. This one is very cheap ($2 per grade) and you can have multiple kids on each grade level. We do this every day for 15 minutes to refine skills when I just need a break from direct teaching. This app does a little bit of math, reading, and writing and is definitely worth the money.

Books:

The Action Bible

My boys are obsessed with this Bible. A strong recommend from us on this one!

Read and Share: Look I'm Reading Bible

My favorite preschool Bible recommendation!

Board Games/Toys:

Sequence for Kids
I love finding games that the entire family can play together. This is one of our favorites!

Busytown

Another whole family recommendation.

Magnatiles

Best toy ever. Not cheap. But totally awesome!