My experience with the Crew this year has led to a wonderful variety of products and books and curriculum that we’ve been able to try for ourselves and review.  Cookbooks are always something I love to look through and even use, if given the chance.  Sue Gregg’s cookbook, More than…Breakfasts…with Blender Batter Baking & Allergy Alternatives, is a cookbook that carries within, healthier alternatives than your average breakfast.

This cookbook is really not your average cookbook either.  Not only does it contain recipes, but it contains pages of education on how to properly plan your breakfasts, including a Quality Guide to Ingredients.  I found this guide to be one of the most helpful things about the cookbook because it explains why certain dairy products, fats & oils, fruits, grains & flour, nuts & seeds, etc., are good for you and what kinds to buy or not buy.  A lot of the recipes within are aimed at helping those with food allergies still be able to find healthier alternatives, so they can enjoy some of the same types of foods. Here’s a peek at the contents of this book:

• Preface
• Cook’s Prayer
• Planning for Breakfasts- includes education about whole grains, menu planning, recipe nutrient information basics, allergies info, equipment check list, etc.
• Milk Alternatives- including education on saturated fats, dairy choices, pasteurization, goat’s milk, yogurt, soy milk, rice milk, nut milk, etc.
• Cereals- including info on sprouting, recipes for direct heat, creamed cereals, crock-pot cereals, thermos cereals, etc.
• Eggs & Accompaniments- including education on buying eggs, storing eggs, toast, omelets, and all different kinds of egg recipes, etc.
• Fruits
• On-the-Go Shakes & Muffins
• Waffles, Pancakes, French Toast & Toppings
• Special Occasions
• Potpourri
• Menus
• Index
• Cut-Out Tabs

This cookbook is more like an encyclopedia of healthy breakfast choices and alternatives.  Sue uses a lot of Scripture to back up her nutritional info and the points that she tries to get through to the reader.  For a Scripturally-based cookbook, this is a great choice.

We actually tried the Maple Butter French Toast, which you use no eggs in; you dip the bread in maple syrup.  We honestly did not care for the recipe at all.  Dipping in the maple syrup just made a sugary mess of the bread, and it was too sweet and not very good.  The regular French Toast recipe that’s included in the cookbook would have been much better, as it uses eggs, and we prefer to use eggs.

My only qualm with this cookbook is that it uses a lot of ingredients that we normally can’t afford to buy.  I couldn’t try a lot of the recipes, because my grocery budget just wouldn’t allow for it, with everything else that we have to buy.  Some of the ingredients I had never even heard of, so I was really happy to have Sue’s education on ingredients at the front of the cookbook.  It is a wonderful resource, though, and one which I will keep and occasionally use, as there are some recipes which we can make.

You can purchase this cookbook for $23.00 from Sue Gregg Cookbooks.  You can even try out a recipe that she has up on the Breakfasts portion of her site: Almond Crunch Coffee Cake.  Try it out for yourself, and see how it works with your family.  To read more reviews, visit the TOS Crew Homeschool blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided a copy of this cookbook, free of charge, by Sue Gregg Cookbooks, for the purposes of this TOS Crew review.)

When Jacob was about 2-3 years old, he suffered from constant ear infections.  We always knew that if he had a fever, it was coming.  As a consequence, he ended up having a slight hearing loss due to the infections and having to have tubes put in, as well as speech therapy for a while.  Now with Jaden, we’ve dealt with the same issue, only he is borderline on his hearing, and his ear infections seem to be slowly growing less and less.  I still am concerned about his speech, though, and I’m really grateful to have a resource that I can use with him, as he gets a little older.  It’s called Super Star Speech and is written by Deborah Lott, a speech-language-pathologist.

Super Star Speech was developed to help parents provide their children with forms of simple speech therapy at home….they have one focus. The focus of these books is the correction of articulation (speech sound) errors.  I’m going to be honest and state that I haven’t used this with Jaden yet, but I plan to start using it with him this fall.  Although the books are designed for ages 3 and up, he is only 2….I feel, as his mama, that he just needs a bit more time to learn certain words.  He’s really starting to grasp how to say certain things, and I want to give him time to develop his speech a bit more; that way, I can hone in on the areas where he might need a little bit of help.

Let me tell you a little bit about the book, though.  I received the Super Star Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple book.  Consisting of 74 pages, it starts with an articulation test for you to do with your child in the very beginning.  This is an assessment tool for you, as the parent, to see where your child is at.  There are charts for you to mark down certain errors/responses you get from your child.  From there, you can formulate a plan of action with your child’s speech therapy.  You can even create lesson plans, although lesson plans aren’t written in stone in the book because of the different starting points for each child.  The book contains clear-cut directions, simple activities, and things you can do with your child to help him learn to articulate his sounds more clearly.  Here are the specific sounds it focuses on:

• P and B
• T and D
• N
• K and G
• NG
• F and V
• L
• SH
• CH and J
• TH
• S and Z
• R

There are wordlists and activities for each new sound.  With most of the sounds, you are showing your child how to articulate that particular sound with the use of a mirror.  There are extra games and activities included towards the back of the ebook, as well as worksheets and picture word cards.  The picture word cards are black and white, but a fun activity could be to have your children help you color the pictures and cut them out….I will probably laminate them, as well, to keep them in good condition for multiple uses.  You can purchase this book, already printed and spiral bound for $18.95 or ring bound for $22.95.  If you’d rather just download as an ebook and print out what you need, saving both resources and money, you can purchase it from CurrClick for $12.95.  It’s a wonderful resource for any homeschooling family.  It would also make an excellent supplement to any Pre-K, kindergarten phonics curriculum, in my opinion.

We also had the opportunity to review 3 of the Super Star Games: Silly Snail Parts of Speech Game, Planets, Moon and Stars! Quiz Game, and Covering the Continents.

Jacob and I actually play the Silly Snail Parts of Speech Game as a supplement to his language book now.  It is a lot of fun for both of us and gives us a welcome break.  He’s been gradually learning the different parts of speech this year, and this game just reinforces what he’s learning.  We cut out the different sentence cards, and placed them upside down by the game board.  The game board is just a big snail with a start to finish with the names of different parts of speech in the boxes.  The player picks up the card and has to guess which part of speech the bolded word in that sentence is.  If he gets it right, he gets to move his token (we use one of our flat colored counters for math) along the game path, stopping at the correct part of speech.  Whoever gets to the Finish first, wins.  It covers common nouns, proper nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  If we ever make it all the way through the game cards, it’d even be easy to make up our own as extras.  This game can easily be stored in a folder for everyday use.  You can purchase this game for an awesome price of $3.50 from CurrClick.

The Planets, Moon, and Stars! Quiz Game is meant for 3rd grade and up; at first, I thought this would be great for Jacob, as we’re studying astronomy right now, but we need to cover a bit more material, and we’ll be able to play it for sure.  A lot of the questions are basic questions, though, so give or take a couple more weeks, and we’ll be supplementing this with our science curriculum.  With colorful game cards and multiple choice type questions, it’s an excellent learning activity that gets away from the textbook/workbook for a while.  He will love this game, as he has to answer as many questions as he can correctly, thereby collecting all of the planets that he can to add to his stash.  The player who eventually collects all of the planets wins the game.  You can also purchase this game for $3.50 from CurrClick.

The last game we reviewed was Covering the Continents.  This is a great geography supplement that will add a lot of fun to our homeschooling day.  Players have to try to answer as many questions correctly as they can; if they answer 3 questions correctly about a certain continent before the other players, they have “settled” that continent.  By the end of the game, the player who has “settled” the most continents wins the game.  The great thing about these games (all 3 of them), is that you don’t need anything else to play the games; everything is included, minus game tokens in the first game.  You just print, cut, and play.  Covering the Continents can also be purchased for $3.50 from CurrClick.

I would definitely recommend these resources, not only because they are affordable, but because they are wonderful resources to have on your shelf for your children to use and learn from over and over again; they are great for reinforcement.  Learning can be fun!  To read more reviews, you can check out the TOS Crew Homeschool blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided these products, free of charge, by Super Star Speech and Super Star Games, 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.)

We’ve been using the All About Spelling program for Jacob’s spelling and some of his phonics work.  We now have their second reader, What Am I?, to go along with our spelling program.  This reader follows along after the first reader and is filled with short stories that go along with Level 2, Steps 1-14 of the spelling program, to help reinforce what the child is learning.

Each story is printed in large print and is a little longer than the stories in the first reader.  The words are bigger and a bit longer, as well.  The child gets to practice the different phonograms and words he’s learning in his spelling steps for the first half of Level 2, Steps 1-14.  There are no review questions, just stories for the child to enjoy.  Here are the stories included in this reader:

1. The Bench
2. An Elf in the Alps
3. Broken Robot
4. The Bake Sale
5. Matt the Musk Ox
6. Skunk Hotel
7. Champ
8. Pine Tree Pet Shop
9. Just for You: Poems for Fun
10. What Am I?

My favorite part of the reader is the illustrations it contains.  Although they are black and white, the illustrations are beautifully drawn and have great detail to them.  They make the stories even more interesting for an imaginative mind.

You can purchase this reader, starting April 1, today, for $19.95 from All About Spelling.  You can read more reviews on the TOS Crew Homeschool Blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided this reader, free of charge, by All About Spelling, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)