Bright Ideas Press-Illuminations Y2 (Crew Review)

When I was a student, History was not one of my favorite subjects. But since I began homeschooling my own children, it has quickly become one of my favorite things to learn all over again. Part of that new found love is a result from all of the awesome History programs out there, and Illuminations totally fits the bill!

Never heard of Illuminations? Well I am sure you have heard of the Mystery of History yes? Well, Illuminations is a brand new all-inclusive curriculum from Bright Ideas Press, the publishers of MOH. Illuminations is an all-inclusive, chronological study of history that is Biblically based and centered. It covers Bible, Literature, Language Arts, Geography, History, Science, Life Skills and Humanities all in one very thorough guide that will take you and your kids on an exciting trek through the history of mankind. It is available in 2 levels covering grades 3-8 and High School. There are also suggestions for gently covering the same material if you have younger kids that want to join in the study. For our review, we chose to cover Year 2, 3rd-8th grade.

For this review, we were unable to give it as thorough a tryout as I would have preferred to because we were unable to purchase any of the additional materials that are recommended throughout the program. Luckily, we do have experience with MOH and loved going through the book a few years ago. SO this review is based purely on my opinions from giving the materials a very thorough study. I hope I can do it justice. Please bear with me as there is a LOT to this program and I want to cover a little bit of all of the elements that come together to make this program so unique and fun.

History

As I mentioned before, Illuminations uses the correlating book of Mystery of History in each year plan. Bible and Geography is incorporated into the study as well. Each weekly plan grid includes everything you might want to do for a thorough and fun study of history including daily history reading, notebooking, bible reading, mapwork, timelines and more.

Literature

The way Illuminations incorporates the Literature element of the program is probably my favorite aspect of the curriculum. Literature readings are recommended (and scheduled for you) that coincide with what you are reading in MOH and Bible. But the best part is the awesome study guides that are included. There is a study guide for every book your child will read in the program, allowing you to make sure your child is getting the most rom every selection.

Language Arts

I you choose to follow the Language Arts plans, you will have to make some additional purchases. However if you decide not to, you can still make use of the copywork in the program. You do have a choice of several curriculums to use with Illuminations that are already scheduled in the plans for you. These are Grammar Punk, English From the Roots Up, The Natural Speller, Write Shop, and Foundations to Writing.

Science

Year 2 of Illuminations covers earth and space science using the popular program: Christian Kids Explore Earth & Space. Every single day of lessons and activities is scheduled for you and you will never have to wonder what to cover next. Science plans include reading, discussion, vocabulary, memory work, and hands-on projects.

There is so much more to this program than I can share with you in one blog post, but if what I have shared here with you sounds interesting, I encourage you to check the program out for yourself! It can be purchased as a digital download direct from Bright Ideas Press for only $82.50 for a semester and $165 for an entire year. There are some great sample files available for you to view also and you can find them here.

Make sure you check out the Crew blog post here where you can read reviews on different levels/years of Illuminations, and other great homeschool products by Bright Ideas Press!

DISCLAIMER: This item was provided free for review purposes through the TOS Homeschool Crew.  I received no other compensation, and this review is our honest opinion.  Click the TOS Homeschool Crew banner above to read more reviews on this and other products by other Crew members.

Weekly Wrap up – Week 5

Let me start this weekly wrap-up by saying this was a tough week. I can’t pinpoint any one reason, I think we are all just itching for our upcoming end-of-term break! It didn’t help that I got sick Friday (stomach bug) and haven’t quite gotten back to normal yet…

This week did, however, have some fun highlights that I am happy to share:

Being that both of the boys are studying plants right now, they were able to collaborate on a science lab this week.

Our lab involved germinating bean sprouts and planting them. The above photos were taken after the beans had been wrapped in wet paper towels and stored in a baggie for 24 hours. It’s hard to see, but on some of them, there was evidence of the shells breaking open in order to let the growing sprouts out.

These photos were taken yesterday before we planted our sprouts in dirt and labeled them to observe over the next week or so. You can see that each bean has a fully formed sprout growing out of it. We did a lima bean, a lentil, and a great northern so we could compare the differences. Now they are in their clear containers. We set them out in front of the patio door for a few hours each day so that they can get the sunlight they need to make food and grow!

Right now, Drew is doing Science the Well-Trained Mind way, utilizing a book called “How Nature Works” and our Usborne Internet-linked Science Encyclopedia. I will be getting a few Apologia books this coming week to try out, and one of them is the Elementary Botany book. So we are excited to try it out! Isaiah is using the “Great Science Adventures” books to do Biology this year. I had never heard of these, but they were recommended via TWTM, and once I saw that they incorporated Dinah Zike’s foldables, I was sold! This past week was his first week, and he really seems to be enjoying it so far. Next week I will show you some pictures of the minibooks he has been working on.

Jazz had a bit of a slow paced week, as I had found some things that she needed some extra help with as I was grading her work last weekend. So we took some time to do some extra practice with divisibility in Math and did some extra sentence diagramming worksheets. I tried to find some fun, different ways to review these things, but sometimes you just need to practice, practice, practice!

Joey has been really good this past week and I think he is starting to adjust better to entertaining himself while we are getting schoolwork done. Daddy was home on Wednesday and Thursday, as usual, and brought some laughter to our evenings…

Friday, we didn’t do school because I was miserably sick. I am still fighting off a mean stomach bug and I’m hoping by tomorrow I will be back to normal. Luckily, no one else has shown any signs of getting sick, so here’s hoping!

See you next week!

Weekly Wrap-up (our first 3 weeks)

It’s Thursday evening here, and man I am SO glad tomorrow is Friday! I haven’t posted any updates yet to share how the new school year is going because I have been so busy and just plain worn out!

I am amazed at the difference one more student in our homeschool makes. The fact that she is almost a high-schooler and has never been homeschooled makes things that much more interesting (and challenging). But I’ll share more about that later.

In the hustle and bustle of getting adjusted to new curriculums and new ways of doing things, we haven’t been able to enjoy a whole lot of the “fun stuff” I always try to incorporate into our days. The few projects we have attempted failed miserably. For example, our ming bowls…

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Although the kids did a very good job molding them and thoroughly enjoyed the process, the clay we used shrank up while drying. This resulted in a few cracks. Ok, I thought, no big deal. We can use fresh clay to patch them up! Then this curious little monkey came along…

Since we had our projects drying on the table, right at his eye level, he just couldn’t resist touching. Long story short, the cracks became complete breaks that were beyond repair :( We had planned on redoing them, but we just didn’t have the time. Which brought a thought to mind: We definitely need a high up, out of reach shelf hanging on the wall to keep things like this safe from exploring hands. The kids were pretty bummed we didn’t even get a chance to paint and glaze our creations.

One fun activity we did get to complete was trying to reproduce different forms of Chinese pictograms. The kids each chose 3 characters and painted both the early and modern forms on page.

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Now I think it would be nice to share a little bit about each of the kids’ studies and how they are doing so far.

Isaiah – 8

Isaiah has gotten to the point with his reading where he is hitting a wall, actually it’s more like a plateau. So we have been doing things other than our BJU Phonics and Reading 1 program. the first new thing we are trying is ETC Online. This is working out pretty well, and I am seeing improvement with his basic phonics skills. The second part of our new approach is using Rocket Phonics. At the HOTM conference last week, Dr. Guffanti (the creator of Rocket Phonics) shared a lot of great info about Kinethetic learners, and I got to ask him some questions about reading. So after listening to him talk about incorporating games and motion into your curriculum, especially when a subject is tough for the child in question, I decided to give it a try. So we started working through the lessons and games in Rocket Phonics this past Monday. So far, we are mostly reviewing the skills he has already learned. But he is really enjoying it and is able to actually sit and “do” reading for about 30-40 minute sessions daily without losing focus or getting frustrated. I think we have a winner! Isaiah is doing a lot more things on the computer now as part of my attempt to make his learning more engaging and exciting.

Drew – 10

Speaking of reading, I’m just dying to share a little Mommy brag. Drew has always been a pretty strong reader, but has never really enjoyed the process of reading. I have purchased any number of highly recommended books for boys his age, but none of them have really produced the enthusiasm I have been working for. The other day we went to the bookstore and I allowed the boys to choose a book. Drew recently read a few superman comics, graphic novels actually, and kept bringing me these $20 books. Of course, I was not planning on buying him a $20 book, so we went over to the young reader’s section. I happened to see the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, which I have heard lots of good things about. I talked him into it and we left to go get dinner.

This child read the book through dinner, on the way home, and for an hour after we got home! He kept giggling and rereading parts to me and his brother. He went to bed soon after, and I looked where he had placed his bookmark – he had read 65pp in just a few hours!! he read more today and is now over halfway through the book. It was a beautiful sight to come downstairs after waking up this morning to see both my boys, not vegging on the couch watching cartoons, but READING!! I am LOVING it!

Besides the reading progress, we have also changed latin programs for Drew. I realized, halfway through level 2 of Latin’s Not So Tough, that it was teaching him whole-to-parts latin instead of the parts-to-whole that the WTM recommends. So, we are now doing the Big Book of Lively Latin, and though it has been a bit more challenging for him, we are both learning way more from one week of this program than we did in 2 months of doing the previous program.

Drew is also really enjoying doing Logic stage Biology ala TWTM. He has not complained once about a single Science assignment, even when he is required to read and outline (he dictates, I type or write) from the Usborne IL Science Encyclopedia. I was worried about that being too challenging of a read for him, but he is grasping the material beautifully this far!

Jasmine – 13

Overall, Jasmine is doing well. We are having some issues with breaking some of her public-school, one in a classroom of 30 students mentality. She has shown at times that if something is too hard or takes too long, she won’t finish it. She has had a few days where she has had double assignments in a subject because she neglected to finish the work on the day it was originally assigned.

She does, however, take great notes for her notebooking pages in History, although I think we are going to be working on learning some outlining skills as I think she is being a bit too thorough and missing some of the key information. My goal is for her notes/outlines to be all she needs in order to study for an evaluation at the end of a week or a chapter. So far, she hasn’t done well on tests.

She has really been enjoying doing the transparencies for her TOG atlas assignments, though I am disappointed that she isn’t enjoying doing her timeline activities more. I am hoping this will change as she continues to adjust to homeschooling. Her writing thus far has been really good, and though she needs to hone her grammatical skills, her creativity is inspiring. She does a great job of getting her thoughts down onto the paper.

We also started our formal Latin and Logic studies this week, using materials from Classical Academic Press: Latin Alive level 1 and The Art of Argument. She seems to be enjoying these and while the Latin is pretty intense, between it and Lively Latin, Mom is getting a crash course! We are still wading through the introductory material from AofA, but she seems very pumped about learning how to argue logically and identify fallacies. I am really glad we are going through this program together, cause I have a feeling she is going to be pointing out the shaky arguments of everyone in the house. I will be prepared!! LOL

So I hope that gives you a decent idea of what’s been going on the past few weeks around here. As for me, this post has taken much longer to write than I had anticipated, and it’s now very much past my bedtime! I hope you had a great week and an even better weekend…

Blessings,

Study Links – Forces and Motion

We have finally wrapped up our unit on Electricity, and following our chosen route of physics for this year, our next unit is going to be Forces and Motion. Naturally, in preparing for this unit I have scoured the web for interesting resources and I can’t believe how many great things I Found! Of course the base for our study (as usual) is our lapbook project pack which you can find here on CurrClick.

Physics4kids site (lots of great basic physics info)

Great site about Newton's 3 Laws of Motion

Simple Machines Coloring Book

Color Me Physics: Activity Book (PDF)

Color Me Physics: Coloring Book (PDF)

Albert Einstein Printables

Isaac Newton Coloring Page

BBC’s Physical Processes Page (Lots of great material on this site)

EdHead.org’s Simple Machines activities

PHUN 2D Physics Sandbox (free software download)

Fantastic Contraption online game

Newton’s Apple Physics Videos

Conceptual Physics: Next Time Questions – (Printable PDF’s) Description from the Author:

Next-Time Questions are favorite insightful questions I have asked my students over my teaching career. I have embellished them with cartoons to catch interest. Their intention is to elicit student thinking.

 

Recommended Resources:

I am really excited about this study, and we are starting next week. I am so glad I am able to share these awesome resources with you! Happy studies!

Blessings,

: ) Cassie

Last Week’s Science Experiment (in video)

We just finished a chapter in our Science textbook about forces (gravity, friction, mechanical force). Last week, we did several activities related to these topics. Our favorite, by far, was the magnet activities and the friction activity, which I am sharing with you in the video below. Enjoy!

Blessings,

Cassie :)