Lobster Network is a social networking site, on which you can share, sell, buy, or keep track of certain items.  The items can include anything, from books to movies to household items.  The best part is, it’s free to sign up and use.

For me personally, Lobster Network is a great tool to help me keep track of items that we own.  For insurance purposes especially, this could be quite useful.  If you just want to keep a private inventory of your items (for example, the homeschooling items/books that you have acquired), you can, and noone else can see your inventory.  However, if you’d like to sell your stuff or share your stuff, you can do that too.  Lobster Network has its own messaging system for this purpose.  With the click of a button, you can borrow a movie from a friend.  If you’re simply looking for something that you’ve been wanting, you can list that desire on your board.  You can include picures, as well, on any listing.  This is a great homeschooling tool, especially if you’re like me and homeschooling on a budget, trying to find the best deals on the things you need for next year.With this network you can invite friends onboard with you.  You and your friends can have your own “community” within Lobster Network.  All you have to do to try it is to sign up for a free account; it’s that easy.

To read more reviews, visit the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

For those of us who homeschool, finding things to keep our toddlers busy while we do so, is quite the challenge on a daily basis. With our situation right now, if I don’t keep my toddler, Jaden, busy, then he’s going to keep me extra busy by doing things he shouldn’t do….for example, he decided to take a red stamper to my living room the other day….oh yeah, that was fun! I believe he stamped the fireplace and pictures on it, the tv, etc. I’ve found that when I keep him busy with small learning activities, we both have a much more peaceful day.

Ideal Curriculum is a company that is geared towards younger children. They aim to help preschoolers learn oral language, math concepts, and even reading. Their products are made for the purpose of helping individual students have better opportunities for learning, meaning that you, as the parent, can slow things down if need be….or if your child is learning and a little bored, you can speed things up or jump ahead.

We received Month 1 of the Transportation Theme, which is a month-long packet of curriculum for preschoolers. With this packet, there are activities with math concepts, reading concepts, art projects, and even science and history topics.  Your child will listen to music, as well as do plenty of hands-on projects.  The following are the skills taught with this packet:

• Letters and Sounds -Letter Names
• Phonological Awareness -Listening Skills
• Concepts About Print -Print is all Around
• Sight Words -Name Recognition
• Math -Rote Counting

I’ll be honest here and say that I wasn’t able to download this packet and actually use it, so I’m by no means an expert on Ideal Curriculum.  However, you can purchase this downloadable packet for $30 or the already printed packet for $55.  From May  1st – May 31st, you can use this 10% discount code: welovekids on your first order of any of their products.  To me, the price seems a little steep, as you are supposed to keep purchasing the packets, in order, up through 9 months…..so this would add up quickly.  For my preschooler, I tend to lean towards finding free, printable, educational activities online, plus finding bargains at yard sales, such as manipulatives, wooden puzzles, etc.  If you want an easier path, though, with everything laid out for you already, this might be the way to go.  It would definitely jumpstart your preschooler’s education, in my opinion. You can sign up for the Ideal Curriculum Newsletter to stay aware of all they are doing.

To read more reviews, check out the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

(Disclosure: I received a downloadable version of this packet, free of charge, from Ideal Curriculum….but wasn’t able to download it.  It was for the purposes of this review.)

Lesson Planet is truly an awesome resource, in my opinion.  They are an online database of approximately 150,000 lesson plans for teachers to use for any subject, at any time.  For me it was way easier to use Lesson Planet’s searchable database than to sift through hundreds of results on a regular search engine….mainly because everything is categorized and simplified within Lesson Planet.  They offer a Homeschooling Web Guide for Teachers, as well as a Lesson Plan Curriculum Calendar, in which you can find ideas by the date.  In fact, there are several different ways that you can search, to help you cut down on the number of results that you have to sift through.  Here’s a short video to show you what I mean:

Lesson Planet doesn’t just have lesson plans, though; they also have printable worksheets.  I actually sifted through multiplication worksheets, since that’s something we’re really working on right now.  They have a variety of different types, including Problem Solving, Word Problem, Coloring, Drawing, Word Scramble, Printing Practice, Word Puzzle, Graphic Organizer, Essay, etc.  If your child needs specific help with a certain subject, it’s easy to find something to fit his needs.  Not only that, but you can look up the standards for each state on Lesson Planet.  These standards tell you what your child should be able to do within each age group.

Since I sometimes have a hard time finding art projects for us to do, I decided to look up lesson plans for arts and crafts.  I was able to narrow it down to Preschool arts and crafts.  I came up with 796 results, which I could further break down by rating or topic (main type of craft).  There were some very cool crafts within the database.

As a member of Lesson Planet, you can also share/create your own lesson plans.  You can actually try Lesson Planet free for 10 days.  After that it is $39.95 per year.  You can become a fan of Lesson Planet on Facebook.

For more reviews, you can check out the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

(Disclosure: I received a free trial from Lesson Planet, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)

Time 4 Learning is an online educational program for ages from preschool up through 8th grade.  Their programs can be used as core curriculum, or they can be used as supplements.  They cover all of the major subjects, including math, language arts (which includes phonics and reading comprehension), science, and social studies. They include not only online programs but lesson plans to go along with the activities, so that it’s planned out for the parent, helping the parent to save time and energy for other activities.

I actually signed Jaden up for the program, as they have a Pre-K program.  We honestly did not use the program very much, as he is only 2 1/2, and it was just a little beyond his skills.  We could do some parts of the program together, as long as I was right there with him.  If he was just a little older, though, this would have made an excellent supplement to his TotSchool activities that we are doing.  There are 2 levels in the preschool program.  Here are some of the things that a child can learn in the Pre-K program with Time 4 Learning:

1. Shapes
2. Colors
3. Alphabet
4. Rhyme Time
5. Numbers
6. Weather
7. On the Farm
8. Food
9. At the Zoo
10. Feelings
11. Tools
12. The Human Body
13. Sports
14. In the Garden
15. At the Library
16. Seasons
17. Out to Sea
18. Staying Fit
19. Time
20. Making Music

….and so much more.  The activities include matching games, pattern recognition and ordering of things, puzzles, stories, vocabulary exercises, etc.  There is also a playground section with games for your child to play; this could be used as an award center.  All of this is just the child’s side of the site, though.

There is also a parent’s side for admin and keeping track of what your child needs to do and looking through the lesson plans.  You can update your child’s educational level, if you feel your child needs to advance or even back up a little.  You can also download worksheets.  There is also a parent’s forum, in which you can talk with other parents and support each other.

You can purchase Time 4 Learning for $19.95/month for the first child and $14.95/month for each additional child.  Personally, unless you were using this as a core curriculum and only had 1-2 children, this would be a bit steep for me.  I also feel that children need more hands-on activities, especially at preschool age, so I probably would not buy this program for my preschooler.  I can find plenty of free, online activities for him to do, just to help supplement our hands-on activities that we do every day….especially seeing as we’d only spend 10-20 minutes on the computer at a time.  He is not one to sit and look at a computer screen for too long, as he is usually ready to move on to the next thing.  For some, though, this program might be just the answer to giving your children a bit more freedom and independence in their studies.  The activities are very colorful, and instructions are given to where most children could work independently after their first time using the program.  You can try lesson demos here.  You can read more reviews over on the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided a free trial of this program by Time 4 Learning, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)