ABC Teach

As a member of the homeschool CREW I received a one month, free trail membership to ABC Teach.
ABC Teach is an online resource for tons of printable worksheets, activities and tools for the homeschool Mom! They have ABC Tools that will help you generate custom worksheets like:
Handwriting
Word Search
Crossword Puzzles
Spelling
Sudoku
and may more!
Some of the things you can search under are:
Subjects
Themes
Flashcards
Clip art
Learning Centers
and that's just a few!
There was so much to offer at this site I spent hours browsing and printing! I found fun worksheets that my 3 little guys did for learning the alphabet and counting, cut and paste, and learning their colors. I found Ancient Egypt in the themes section and a mummy crossword to go along with The Magic Tree house book one of the kids had gotten from the library, and a pyramid math game that they enjoyed. There is just so much this site has to over!!

A one year membership runs $40 and you can print out as much as you want. The materials run from Preschool to 8th grade level. This is well worth the $40 for a year and they are always adding new material. Some of the material are free for you to try.

If you would like to see what other CREW members have to say about ABC Teach please click HERE.





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My Access Online Writing Program

I received as a gift a one year subscription for 6 students from Vantage Learning to their MY Access!^® Home Edition to review.

MY Access!® Home Edition, by Vantage Learning, is an online writing program designed to guide students through the writing process with engaging and interactive writing activities, self-guided instruction and motivating feedback.

Each 12-month subscription to MY Access!^® Home Edition includes one parent account and your choice of three or six student accounts.

• MY Access!^® is completely Web-based, so there's no software to load and it's accessible anywhere you have a computer and Internet connection—at home, at school, or at the library.

• 90 pre-loaded writing topics for three different distinct age groups (8-10, 11-14, and 15-18) encourage students to begin writing immediately.

• Parents can easily enter their own writing topics to make writing across the curriculum a reality.

• Self-paced and interactive lessons guide students through the writing process: planning, organizing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.

• Graphic organizers and other printable resources help students plan successful essays.

• Essay scoring and individualized feedback is available immediately through a powerful, award-winning artificial intelligence scoring engine

• Detailed, prescriptive revision plans focus students' revision activities on the key traits of writing: focus, content development, organization, language use, and grammar.

• Individual progress reports are easy to access and share with others.

• A writing portfolio enables students to monitor their own progress and easily share their writing with family, friends, or teachers.

• Dozens of annotated samples of actual student writing help students see the potential in their own writing.

• A word processor with editing and writing tools including a thesaurus, grammar-checker, spell-checker, and word bank lists help students vary and develop their vocabulary.

I used this with my kids 8-17 , it was very easy to set up our account and get each one of the kids started. They really enjoyed earning the points by doing lessons and aiming for their personal goal. I knew this would be a challenge for my youngest ones as our focus is on reading still so writing is still a beginning endeavor for them, but they did enjoy trying and watching the improvements they made. The older kids could move through this much easier and with less of a struggle. I like that its self paced and that each child could move at their own pace.

That being said we did have some difficulty with the point system as the kids figured out that they could get points for doing work without very much effort. Also my 16 year old worked very hard on one of her first essays for well over 45 minutes and had to leave before she was finished and we could find no way to save her work except to submit it before she was finished. The corrections the children received were too vague for them to be helpful, with comments like "write your sentences correctly" or "run on sentences" leaving them frustrated.

With that being said, I still believe that this is an excellent program, and that it's best use would be as a tool for intermediate writers.

Each 12 month subscription to My Access! Home Edition includes one parent account and your choice of: 3 students at: $99.95
6 students at: $129.95

If you would like to see what other CREW members have to say on their review of this product and others please click here.

Amazing Bible History Timeline

When history and Bible are taught as separate subjects we may not see the interconnectedness of them. After all History is God's story so the two really are inseparable... We study the two subjects together to see God's hand at work in all of history, so when I received the Amazing Bible Timeline to review I was really excited.

"The Amazing Bible Timeline pinpoints the relationships between seemingly unrelated events. Which prophets, kings and wars were linked and how. The ability to view it all at the same time clarifies connections. If you want an in depth knowledge of religion and history you will benefit from having The Amazing Bible Time-line to view and study.

See the Whole Bible At Once!

Using the Amazing Bible Timeline you will easily grasp the timing of the major Bible stories, peoples and events. You can readily see the flow of major events, the timing of the stories in the Bible in relationship to each other as well as other nations.

Jam packed with information!

You have over a thousand references at your fingertips. All the important historical events of the main religions and world cultures are indexed and outlined in one simple to understand format. It's color coded so you can track families, nations and related events easily."

We are studying Ancient history right now and we are loving this timeline, The kids have made some great connections by going and looking at the timeline and being able to see not just what is going on in ancient Egypt, but in other parts of the world at the same time has really enhanced there understanding and enjoyment of history.


The timeline comes with two free downloads, one is a PDF version of the timeline, and the other a neat interactive layered map of the holy land from 1850 BC to 4 BC. This timeline can be found here for $29.97.


If you would like to see what other CREW members have to say please click here

Sue Patrick's Workboxes

Specialized and Structured Teaching^sm

Sue Patrick's Workbox System^SM

An effective teaching system to reduce your organizational time and increase your child's self-control, independence and learning.





Iam so excited to have been chosen to receive this book from Sue Patrick!
I have been browsing through many blogs about this system and thought" that is exactly what I need" This book Workbox System Users Guide explains in detail all about this phenomena that has been on so many homeschooling blogs. Sue explains what exactly the workbox system is, who this system is for and how it works.
The workbox system is actually a physical structure of 12 boxes that you divide your child's work into along with some of those projects, or work we never seem to organize into our daily schedule. This is actually a "physical" schedule your child fallows that has order and allows the child to see his/her progress towards finishing his work goal for the day.

There is a great video at Sue's web page that explains the workbox system... please click here

The author, Sue Patrick is pretty adamant in her book to do things exactly the way she explains it, well with 6 kids in school and 3 kindergartners and 1 preschooler.....12 boxes each mmmm that's 120 boxes AND a place to put them, now our house, nor I could handle that many boxes! BUT I saw the potential and I knew that this system could revolutionize our school day so, I did what homeschoolers are so very good at... I tweaked it to work for us!

The 4 crates on the top shelve are the big kids' workboxes (aka: files)
The plastic shoe boxes will be what the 4 youngest ones will work from.

So far I have the 6 oldest kids using the "workboxes" and I am setting this up for the youngest this week. So how did I get this to work for us? We used a crate for each child then instead of boxes they have 12 hanging files. These files are set up the same way as the boxes and this is working for us. This workbox system has made such a positive difference in our school day, the kids feel like they are accomplishing so much more and they KNOW what it is they have to do. No more "forgetting" some of the assignments, or misplacing what they were supposed to do its all in their crates and files! We are getting so much more work done and that's encouraging to the kids and ME! I have also been able to schedule into their days those things we had just not been able to...games, Lego Technic, art, oh I have so much that I am excited to be able to finally find the "time" to do!!!! Yup to say that this has really helped us is an understatement.
The kids love it,
I love it.

I Do really recommend getting the book to get the best picture of the way this system can work, plus Sue has some wonderful ideas for centers!

Sue Patrick's Workbox System: Users Guide $19


If you would like to see what other CREW members have tosay about Sue Patrick's Workbox System please click HERE

Virginia Soap and Sents

I received a wonderfully exotic smelling package in the mail from Virginia Soaps & Scents. We eagerly opened the package which contained soaps, shampoo bar and a laundry soap kit to review. Quickly these soaps found homes other than my bathroom:)!!! I had to go search them out in the kids' bathroom.

Virgina Soap & Scents is a homeschooling family owned company located in southeastern Virginia. Their venture began as a homeschool project that turned into a business. Their soaps are all handcrafted olive oil soap, this is REAL soap not detergent. All natural ingredients, no added chemicals. They also use a " generous amount of coconut oil".

I was so excited about the laundry soap kit, I have so wanted to try to make our own laundry soap, but have just never got around to doing that. We were due to get a new bottle of laundry soap so instead I made up this kit, which contained a pre-measured amount of everything needed to make the laundry soap I just added water! The process is easy: melt the pre-measured and grated soap in heated water add the next ingredients add more warm water and stir every so often till cool. I ended up with a pretty pink (yes I do love pink!) gel that I put into a left over ice cream bucket and placed in our laundry room with and old measuring scoop to measure out the gel into the loads. I loved the fresh smell and it cleaned really well! We are sold and we will be transferring to homemade laundry soap!!!

Those soaps I had to try out, were the bed and breakfast sizes of soap bars of: Coconut Lemongrass, Oatmeal, Milk & Honey, and Fresh Orange. Now I would be hard pressed to choose my favorite as they all smell DIVINE, and I loved how my skin felt clean but not dried. After all we do live in a dry climate and if I am honest, age has made my skin dryer! The boys; 12 and 14 loved the Oatmeal, Milk and Honey as it cleared up their faces, and as long as they kept using it their faces stayed clear! This is a wonderful plus for us as I really do not like them using the chemical laden "Nationally advertised and more expensive products."

The other product I received was a Ginger lime Shampoo bar. The shampoo bars are also olive oil based but contain Castor oil which acts as an extra humectant (holds moisture). You just wet your hair and rub this all over and it lathers up. My 17 year old daughter is using this one as she is always looking for something that will make her hair clean and not greasy looking, and this soap does the trick and she loves it!

Viginia Soap & scents has a wonderful line of poducts: Gourmet Soaps, Shaving Soaps for both men and women and Bath and Body stuff that includes lotions, scrubs and powders. They have many scents to choose from including Lavender and Country Clothesline.
They have a Christmas collection out for the Holidays that sounds like it would smell wonderful in my bathroom!

Check out their website HERE to see all they have.

REMEMBER CHRISTMAS......these soaps would make great gifts!!!!!

If you would like to see what other CREW members have to say please click here

CHOOSE TODAY.....

CHOOSE TO MAKE TODAY A MASTERPIECE...TO HIS GLORY!!

Live out His calling in your life today with persistence, determination,and perseverance.


You can do all things in Christ who gives you strength. Philippians 4:13