Grapevine Studies - The Resurrection review

Have you thought about doing a special Bible study with your kids for Easter?  If so, may I suggest Grapevine Studies' lessons on The Resurrection?


We received Resurrection: Multi-level student pages and teacher guide for review purposes.  You may remember when we got the opportunity to review Creation to Jacob, also by Grapevine Studies.

This time around, since Jack has been excited about his new Bible, I had Jack and Hannah learn how to look up the verses, and they took turns reading them aloud as we went through the materials.

This kid friendly study takes you from The Evil Plan (where Judas agrees to betray Jesus), through the trials, the crucifixion, resurrection, details about what happened after Jesus rose from the dead, and the ascension, to what the disciples did after Jesus left the Earth.

We've had some really great discussions during our lessons.  Unfortunately, I've come to realize that while our older children were in Sunday school every weekend, and AWANA every Wednesday night, and had a Baptist homeschool curriculum that was very big on Bible stories and Scripture memorization...  the last few years have brought a lot of changes to our family.  We don't get out to AWANA any more.  We're using a different curriculum.  And Sunday school has been hit or miss at best the last 2.5 years.  The result of all this is that my younger kids don't know the Bible like my older kids did.  It saddens me.

But Grapevine Studies has been instrumental in helping to change that.

One of the neat things that happened during our review period is that one of the teens mentioned something about somebody lopping off an ear.  Jack piped up with, "Just like Peter cut off the slave's ear when Jesus was arrested!"  I was so blessed to hear him recall that from our Grapevine lesson a few days earlier.

The kids like this study because they get to draw pictures of all the key events.  I think that drawing helps them remember the stories better.

My drawing skills leave something to be desired, but the stick figures in the Teacher's Edition are simple enough to copy easily.  The Teacher's Edition lists the scripture readings, discussion points, and the drawing.  It also has things to look up in a Bible dictionary, review questions, spaces to make notes, and teaching tips.

Grapevine's products come in hole punched physical copies, or as digital downloads.  They have studies for preschool through junior high, on a wide variety of Bible topics.

Seeing the kids looking things up in the Bible has probably been my favorite part of teaching this study.  Followed closely, of course, by watching them learn new things about the life of Christ and the Word of God.  I am grateful to the good folks at Grapevine Studies for this opportunity to review another of their great products.  I feel like we have really tucked away some foundational Christian knowledge in Jack and Hannah's minds.

You can connect with Grapevine Studies on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.  To read what other Crew families have to say about Resurrection or other Grapevine Studies, please click the box below:

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Laser Maze, Jr.

Our friends at Timberdoodle sent us Laser Maze, Jr. recently.  I pulled it out during our last hour of school one day, and Jack and Hannah were super excited!

We took out the pieces and started familiarizing ourselves with the mirrors, rocks, rockets, and splitter.

This game requires 2 AAA batteries, which are not included.

The challenge cards, which start out easy and get progressively more difficult, slide into the base of the game.  Each card tells you where to place the rocket (and other pieces) and which pieces you can add in order to get the beam to light up the rocket.

You turn the laser on and then redirect the beam in order to light up the rocket or rockets.

Jack is 11, and he "got it" right away.  After doing a few of the easy cards, we gave Hannah, who is 8, a turn.  You can tell by Jack's face, he really wants to help her.  Sometimes it's hard to watch and let her figure it out on her own, but I can see how this game would be very good for her.  Logic, as the professor in the Chronicles of Narnia laments, is no longer taught in schools.  But it's something we need in order to make good choices.

Kids from less than optimal beginnings need help in learning logic, and what better way to do it than through a fun game like Laser Maze, Jr?

Laser Maze Jr. is designed for kids ages 6 and up.  Some more of our "and up" contingent came home from school and had a blast playing with it.  Eli is 14, and Jack took great delight in showing his big brother the ropes.  The boys like to challenge themselves by working on the hard cards.  Eli also bounced the light around the school room floor, trying to get the cat to chase it, but Wheelie is no spring chicken, and pretty much ignored the laser beam.

I like to leave interesting things out in the school room and allow whoever wanders by to stop and mess with them.  Such was the case with our new game.  Josiah was focused enough on what he was doing that I was able to snap several pictures of the normally camera shy teen.

Sam also gave it a whirl.  He enjoyed doing his own thing more than trying to master the challenge cards, and told me I should be proud of his "outside the box thinking."

Jack Jack got through almost every single card in just a couple of days.  One of the cards was particularly frustrating to him, but he persevered until he had mastered them ALL.  I'm very proud of him.  He then discovered that the instruction booklet has the solutions to the cards in the back.  I'm glad we didn't realize that until he had conquered the one that was troubling him.  I'm sure he has more pride in successfully figuring it out than if I'd said, "Let's look it up and see how it's done."

Laser Maze, Jr. is currently selling for $27.99 at Timberdoodle.  It is also included in the second grade curriculum kit that Timberdoodle puts together for families who like one-stop homeschool shopping.  In looking at the curriculum kits, I saw some of our favorite products included, such as Spelling You See and Reason For Handwriting.

If your kids are all older than 8, you may wish to go with the regular version of Laser Maze (without the Jr.), which is also available at Timberdoodle.  Same idea, but a little more challenging.  Personally, we found Laser Maze, Jr. to be challenging enough for our whole household!

You can connect with Timberdoodle on Facebook and Twitter.

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Our Week - With Another Birthday

I'm really anxious to share our field trip pictures with you from last week, but like a doofus, I left my camera behind at one of our stops.  Fortunately, my mom was able to pick it up for me, but since we live 2 hours away from each other, it may be a while before I get it back.

We have several interesting homeschool products that we're reviewing right now.  I'm excited to tell you about them soon!

I tend to print things and then not actually use them.  I'm working on only printing things I know we'll use, and using up the things we've already printed.  So Katie and the dot markers have been getting quite the workout, as we use up the many cool dot marker pages I've printed in the past.  You can find dot marker pages on Pinterest to go with pretty much any theme imaginable.

The kids worked on a coloring page while I read aloud a couple days this week.

I was really impressed with Katie's coloring on this one.  She's come a long way since school started.

Hannah and Jack continue to work on XtraMath, and Jack and Katie continue to work on Reading Kingdom.  We're going to be adding another computer based program soon.

Once I saw how well Katie did on the picture above, I switched her from the big, chunky, triangle crayons to colored pencils for her coloring.

We made another trip to the library.  I'm getting better about remembering books for myself.  In the past, I have browsed and gathered up interesting books for the kids and then gotten home and realized I had nothing to read!  I introduced Jack to the Hank the Cowdog books, and he's been telling me all about them, so they seem to be a thumbs up.

We hung out at the park with friends one afternoon.

It was good to get out of the house!  Now the weather has gone back to cool and rainy, so I'm glad we got out when we did!

Jack is somewhat camera shy these days, so I had to sneak evidence that he was there having fun, too.

Well that happened.  Little Bubba, as we've called Eli for many years, has passed up his big sister!

We had another birthday in the house this week.  When I asked why 4 candles, Paul said that putting the correct number of candles on the cake would have left no room for the words.

Not sure if she was having an off day, or if she "lost" skills, but it seems we need to go back to more frequent scissor practice for Katie.  This was very choppy work.

So, the next holiday is St. Patrick's Day.

We made leprechauns from Super Teacher Worksheets.

Friday, we opened up a new logic game.  I'll be sharing more about it next week, but it's been a hit with everybody that's walked past the school room.

The magnatiles were originally Brianna's, but when Katie got the light table at Christmas, we brought them out to play on it.  Well, having them visible and accessible has meant more spontaneous building with them.

This coming week should be interesting as Paul will be taking another class, and a couple of the big kids have after school dental appointments.


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The Dragon and the Raven

Do you know about the amazing audio drama productions from Heirloom Audio Productions?  We have reviewed others in the past, and were pleased to be able to review their newest offering, The Dragon and the Raven.

The Dragon and the Raven is 2 audio CDs that come in a tri-fold case, as well as additional online resources.  Online, there's a documentary video, which the kids and I found really interesting.  It was neat to put faces to the voices.  Furthermore, there are MP3 versions of the discs online, if you prefer to download and listen on the go.  There are printable posters, an ebook version of the story, and the soundtrack.  There is also a study guide.

The 49 page study guide is a great resource for homeschoolers.  It contains vocabulary and two types of questions for each "chapter" and at the end of the study guide there is additional history and Bible study sections.  All this for only $29.97.

Since it's very very hard to show pictures of listening, I'll show you pictures of the things that listening inspired us to do.

Since the story was about King Alfred, I found a King Alfred coloring page for the kids to work on while we were listening.  We also watched a short video about King Alfred, which helped the kids visualize the story a little better.

I mentioned that we've reviewed other Heirloom Audio Productions stories.  Here are links to Under Drake's Flag, In Freedom's Cause, and With Lee In Virginia.  If you've listened to the others, you'll recognize the familiar voices of Ned and Gerald, and the narrator, of course.  These are really high quality, nicely done, radio-style dramatizations, complete with musical score and sound effects.  This is not a monotonous audio book.

For another one of our listening sessions, I found a viking ship craft online and printed it on card stock so the kids could paint their ships instead of coloring them.

Painting and listening go well together, especially, when you're only working with one color and you don't have to worry too much about detail.

Another day, we listened and cut our ships out.  We were actually on our second time through listening to the CDs at this point.  My kids wanted to hear them again, and since the vocabulary is a bit rich for them, I thought they'd benefit from another hearing.

The sails were my own addition to the project, and I think I should have broken the bamboo skewers down a bit further so that the sails were closer to the ships.

This audio drama would make a fabulous addition to a study of England, of early European history, or of Scandinavia.  For those using My Father's World, this would fit best into the Rome to the Reformation year.  Or you could create your own King Alfred the Great unit study around the CDs and the Study Guide.  These family friendly, radio drama style stories are also great for listening to on long car trips.

We enjoyed this production every bit as much as the first three, and I cannot wait to see what comes out next!  There was a little hint at the end of this story, and I'm pretty excited to see if that's really the one they're working on now.

You can connect with Heirloom Audio Productions on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and G+.  There's also a Facebook page specifically for The Dragon and the Raven.  Please click the box below to read what other Crew families have to say about The Dragon and the Raven.

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