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Review and Giveaway: This is Our Time

4/15/2013

This is a review of the movie T his is our time. I watched this movie tonight with my husband.

This is the story of five young people and how they strive to make a change in the world for God post graduation from College.

From the website:

Ethan, Luke, Alé, Ryder and Catherine are five friends connected by their strong faith. After graduating college, they each set out to make a difference in the world for God. Their ambitions are high, their passions are strong but will they have the courage to fulfill their calling regardless of what comes their way. The sacrifice they are asked to pay may just be too high. Through godly wisdom from an outside source, the group realizes that this is not their time after all, it’s all His!

I have to admit to having mixed feelings about this movie.   It was VERY slow to start, no real connection to the actors....it just was, well quite frankly boring, at the beginning.   Trying to figure out all the connections and why there were important was a bit of a boondoggle.   If I hadn't been watching this movie in order to do the review I probably would have stopped watching it.

BUT THEN a pivotal moment in the movie occurred and the movie changed.   It gained purpose and focus. This change made me glad that I didn't walk away from it.   All of a sudden I became interested and wanted to know how everything would work out. What would happen to Luke and Ryder and the rest of the crew?    I wanted very much to know what the solution to it all would be.

it was very cool to learn that The ministry Embrace the Village is actually a real one. :)    You can learn more about that ministry here.

My overall opinion

Despite the slow start, it turned out to be a good movie.

This movie was very focused on Christian themes. What is the call of God on our lives. Watching this, and then discussing it with a group of teens, or young adults could be a lot of fun. :) For it is good to think and ponder some of the points raised in the movie.

Overall the acting was fairly good.
Once the movie gained focus it flowed well and was interesting to watch.

Important information

Facebook page is here. The trailer can be watched here. (or just see below).

This is our Time will be released on DVD on April 16, 2013. You can pre-order it at ChristianCinema.com.

Giveaway

I have been graciously offered a copy of this DVD to offer in a giveaway.

How to enter:
1. Join my linkyfollowers located in the sidebar. Note: this takes about a minute to do and does not clutter your inbox. It's just gives you a place to go should you want to easily follow my blog. :) Leave a comment letting me know you did this. And it makes me feel good to have a few followers. :)
2. Tell me of a time when you felt God's call personally on your life.

Each submission gains you an entry.

Disclaimer

I received a copy of this DVD by FlyBy Promotions in order to review it. I was not required to give a positive review, merely to give my honest opinion of the movie. I am disclosing this as per FTC's 16 CFR, part 255.

HOPE days cancelled, revamped day plans

4/12/2013

So HOPE days were cancelled this week thereby necessitating a change in the days plans.

We did some moon phases this morning.
We started each with four cookies, plus one just for eating. :)

Then we looked at the picture in the PDF we had and worked at making our moon phases. This proved to be more difficult than the lad had anticipated. ACK!!! I broke the cookie (can i eat it?) NO...we'll figure away to use it.

But eventually the lad got his made. He didn't have to do all of them since it was a challenge for him to do and we didn't want to run out of cookies. (since we did end up eating some of the worst of them).

Here's the whole completed set. The lad didn't really think they looked like the moon as they weren't real enough, but he did understand the concept. :)

Then we went down to the basement to clean out the cold cellar. The lad needed to work hard.

We did some science....in that some of the canned goods we'd forgotten about from about...2005... well they had turned on us. So the lad got to see what happens when that occurs. The smell, the appearance, what it does to the lid of the canning jar etc. Then to see that even though the food has gone bad it can still be put to use in our compost bin. The gardens and the worms will appreciate it all.

He had the joy of chasing spiders...and the fun of seeing mom get the heegeebeegees when one landed on her and ....anyways... it was a moment of comic relief for him.

He had the physical exercise of working hard. The mathematical joy of engaging in some organization.

looks decent does it not?

we had some explorers joining us through out the cleaning time. These pigs had quite the conversation about spoiled goods and why they weren't safe to eat. it's important for explorers to know about safe foods so they don't get sick. :)

Vikings were the theme of the day today

4/10/2013

Can't really say we did much else (beyond our regular reading that is). Oh hold on... we also did some work with nouns and adjectives and watched two videos on Canada.

First thing we did was review what we learned about the Vikings. Longboats, travel to Canada, change in Britain, influence of Christianity and so forth.   The lad did a fair good job of remembering.

Then we looked at our activity pages for the "great empires" course that we are taking.   They had us doing two things today.. making Viking coins and Barley Flatbread.

We didn't have the paint so we headed off the the store to find it.   One store had some but 'it didn't look gold enough" so we went to a different store where it was gold and silver enough AND (bonus for mom) it was cheaper too. :)   Two cans of paint down we headed home where we had quite the discussion on just how we would do this. Mom, was the comment, I want to do some coins for the pigs too.   Well...that's okay.   But we have to make the Viking coins first.

We tried, oh but we tried to make them according to directions, but that just didn't work. We needed more size in order to get the glue to work well. it kept running together. We expanded from 2 inches to 4 inches and that worked much better.    And we did what we always do.. we conducted an experiment. What type of paper works best... cardboard? Construction paper?   Cardstock?    What about clear glue versus white glue?   Does it matter if we paint it or drip it out of the bottle?      Pros and cons to each method we are learning thus far.

Then we heard it... BOOM!

MOM! What's the noise?

We turned around and wow! Was it ever raining hard. The pigs started squealing... we want to get wet we want to get wet!

So the pigs hopped into their boat and out they went.

The water pouring down the road was an additional invitation for the pigs to explore the life of a Viking.

The pigs did get a little confused at one point though. We've been learning about the First Nations people as well and last night had learned how the "Caribou Hunters" would build "pounds" to catch the caribou, and how another set of First nations folk would build dams and fish traps to catch the fish. So our Vikings decided to do the same.

The lad would have happily stayed outside for another half hour but I got cold. My toes were wet so I went in and the lad accompanied me.

We got to making out Viking bread.

We made a half recipe as we weren't sure if we'd like it or how much it would make. 1.5 cups barley flour, 1/2 cup water. Mix together. Will be a stiff dough. Take a 2 inch piece, flatten as thin as you can. Cook over a greased griddle on medium-high heat for 30 seconds each side. Is best eaten while fresh. It works best greasing the griddle with butter we learned.

The lad's opinion. MOM! Can I have more Viking Bread???

Inspiration from a Homeschooling Conference

4/9/2013

This past Saturday I went to the homeschooling conference put on by KWCHEA. it's the biggest quite local homeschool conference and reasonable in price so attending is something I do once a year.

While there I attend seminars. Went to two, plus attempted a third. One of the ones I went to was called math and art. It was fascinating. I really enjoyed it came away with good ideas about how to do art with my seven year old and math at the same time.

As I was browsing the books (as that's a big part of the day) I came away with two thoughts.

1. Some companies seem determined to nickel and dime you for everything. They charge you the teachers text, the student text, the additional worksheet text, then the exams text, and then separately from that... the answer code.   Makes me NOT want to do business with those companies. I'm sure there are good reasons for it, but I find it incredibly irritating....as you need to figure out exactly what you need with the hold over your head of "just what if you need it" or ACK...what if I forget something important.

2. some books are VERY good for inspiration.

I saw a book called speed math or some such. It was for drilling math facts. The book well, cost more than what I'm willing to pay but it gave me the idea for helping the lad learn his math facts. he doesn't want to do flashcards, so I'll get him to practice his math by doing a worksheet everyday.     I went to Softschools.com for some help in printing off sheets. I was able to put an upper and lower limit on the numbers I want used and then I printed off the sheet.   Gave the lad two minutes to get the sheet done. Once he's getting a whole sheet done in two minutes then I'll give him 1 minutes 45 seconds to get it done. And eventually get it down to 1.5 minutes which would be 3 seconds per question which is what every program I've seen uses as a goal.

Other work done today

We did some reading - George Brown class clown, a bird book and our devotional time. We didn't have time to read the paper together today.

We did adventus - he continues to improve in his musical understanding, today he learned more about how notes are different lengths and they are introducing what those notes are called, target the question - today's challenge really made him have to play attention and think his way through the problems. and Tutorsoft math -. The lad was working on learning shortcuts in multiplication today. He found it a bit of a challenge but we'll continue to work on it.

Visits in Time

4/9/2013

Today the lad and I went to hear a presentation called "a visit in time". This was a talk all about the War of 1812 which was fought in our area.
It was a good presentation though a bit over the head and continued interest level of one seven year old boy. It was interesting to observe, the children 9 years old and up where quite interested, but the 8 and under crowd got quite restless after about 40 minutes. They just wanted to be able to move and explore the items that the speaker brought.

I took a bunch with evernote but somehow they aren't showing up for me to do a copy paste type of thing so that's rather vexing.

Rev. Christopher Timm told us what life was like for the common soldier who would have fought in the war. The clothing they wore, the pay they received, how most would be separated from their families, the discipline they experienced, the food they ate and so much more. It was a very informative presentation.

My notes using Evernote

War of 1812.

Seven year enlistment time introduced for a time, but generally enlistment was for a lifetime. British army began one hour before sunrise and went to sunset. Ate twice a day. They were the best army at the time.
Best because they were so disciplined.
Time after sunrise was their own.
Only six wives allowed per company unless they were garrisoned then 12 allowed.
Could be 10-14 years before see spouse if married if not allowed to come.
Children from age five were expected to work, and could draw rations until 14 years old, then had to work (usually as a soldier)
5-6 people would sleep in one tent ...this included children. They were not allotted space and just fit in where'er there was space.
Soldiers were not allowed civilian clothing. This way hey couldn't desert. It was a life time enlistment.

A soldier gear

Seventy-five caliber musket. An India musket, accurate 50-70 yards. They learned to fire as quickly as possible . 3 round/minute
100 yards was max range for accuracy
Flintlock...small piece of stone that lit the ammunition and that's what drives the musket ball forward.
They had a bayonet attached....these were rarely used. They yelled hussah!
60 rounds of ammunition

Clothing

Stove pelt shako.... not practical, didn't breathe, made only to make a person look more imposing. People would faint ROM heatstroke because the hats were so horridly hot. The feather on them denoted rank/battalion/position
Carry water in wooden canteen
Haversack carried their food.
Neck stop forced them to keep their head up and looking forward.
Music was going every thing was going well, and flags. These were often points of attack since it was demoralizing to the soldiers to lose that part of things.
Colour soldiers were the ones who carried the flags...usually young officers 14-15 years old.

Wounds were horrible. Musket balls splattered bones.
One doctor per regiment.
More men died of wounds and disease than really died in battle.
Wounds were very terrible.
Food

Two meals a day. Men full ration, women half, children 1/4 of that.
One meat net weight. 1.5 lb flour. 1 oz cheese. Quarter pint peas. 1 oz Oatmeal.
Tin plate. Mug. Soldiers knife. Horn spoon.

Carried extra flints.
Journal if literate.
Used rags to make paper,......learn how to make.
If you lost anything you would be charged for it.

People sometimes deliberately lost their neck stop because they hated to wear them.

25% of gun loads didn't work through misfires.
Sideburns were grown to cover the scald marks from getting burned by firing the gun.
Pants were drop pants (buttons to undo to drop the front of the pants to go bathroom)
Soldiers simply had shoes marched in dress shoes. Not left or right. Were required to rotate them daily so they would wear evenly.
All worldly possessions carried in pack.

Barrcack coat...called a forge coat
Always had something on their head cause it was impolite to not have head covered
Blanket to sleep under
Spare shirt, socks, underwear
Musket cleaning kit
Candle saved for special occasions
Soldiers soap (made out of lard)
Extra fork and knife. ... a gift from dead friend
And that is what they carried.

If could be punished if you broke the rules.

Punishment was being flogged (whipped)
50 lashes, 300 lashes....these were done in allotments....as 300 would kill you so did as much as you could handle and then after you healed gave you more.

Over time how personnel were treated was changing due to the affect of Christianity.....the Wesley's had a huge impact.

Facts brought out during discussion period:

The battle in Canada was mostly fought by the regular soldiers of the British.
We won all the land battles and aren't under American rule. This is the proof that we won the battle though some historians say the Americans won because they won some strategic battles.
Horseback would have sabers, short pistols or musket-tals (short muskets)
1840's switched from flint to percussion muskets. Reason was accuracy.
Most food was boiled. Roasting and frying was considered unhealthy.
Often stew was what they had for supper, oatmeal for breakfast. Each group shared a cook pot.
Often they slept under the stars. Tents were a luxury because they needed to be hauled around.
Soldiers need to be hardy, frostbite a problem in the winter,.....lost fingers and toes.
Surprise battles would happen in the winter,.... barns from farmers would be used as shelter in the winter.
Americans won the battle of New Orleans...the last battle.
But many states didn't join in the battle because they just didn't want to, ergo politically when they started losing they decided to make a treaty and call an end to it. Basically the end of the war was political expediency.
No hearing protection offered to the soldiers.
Second level battalions were sent to the Canada's to fight. The best regiments were sent to fight France.
Forging was part of the life of a soldier. Gave variety to their diet. Fences used for firewood.

SuperCharged Science - Review

4/9/2013

This is a review for SuperCharged Science that I've had the privilege of reviewing for the past month or so. I reviewed the k-8 program.

Vendor Information

Vendor: SuperCharged Science.
Program: e-science
Cost: $37.00/ month for the K-8 section and $57.00/month for the 9-12 section.
What it contains:

Access to self-guided lessons
Detailed video instruction taught by a real Rocket Scientist
Step by step videos to show how the experiment is to be done
Comprehensive parent/teacher guides
Textbook readings
Exceeds most K-8th State Standards
Exercises and Quizzes
Unlimited support for teachers and students

photo escience-full-600px_zps738b5d59.jpg

My thoughts

Supercharged Science looks confusing when you first enter the site but Aurora does a good job of helping you get your feet wet. :) She even has a "getting started" section for people who are new to the site to help get them acclimatized.

It's a unit study approach, VERY organized...I love that she has supply lists that are easily printed off so you can assemble everything you need before you start off a unit. Basically, all you need to do is pick a unit, put together a Science Journal, assemble supplies, and GO. It's as easy as that.

As you can see from the graphic below there are LOTS of units to choose from, and each unit has lots of experiments complete with explanations.

We didn't actually complete any one unit completely but we did touch on a number of them. We basically would go to the site, check out the listings and then make a choice. The beauty is that we can go back and pick up where we left off quite easily. The lessons are designed to work with how your child learns best. Sometimes we read the facts before we did an experiment and sometimes we just did the experiment and learned some facts and at other times the lad just wanted to DO stuff and figure out the whys as he went. This aspect of the program is probably what I like best. It's not a "you have to do this step in order to go to that step" you can go back and forth in whatever way suits you best.

Magnets:

Blowing up soap

Experiments in Motion and Matter

Do I recommend it?

Yes. I do. I like this program. I absolutely adore that it spurs on my son to creating his own experiments and discovering new ones. When doing the magnets my son learned he can make a snake that wags his tail. :) He had so much fun with the magnets. Even "scaring" the iron filings (you can make them be like a cat in raising their hair to make themselves look bigger).

Making a hovercraft was just a hoot and the lad learned a lot as he took the experiment further. I was unable to get a video of his "taking it further" but I did manage to capture the hovercraft working. Suffice it to say it resulted in excited yelling of MOM! Look at what I did!!! (very cool bud, can you do it again??? Great...now quick clean it up before Dad comes home). :) Then we talked about why it worked and he came up with some good thoughts. And just so you know.... a hovercraft CAN carry a homemade angry bird as long as the balloon is big enough. Though cat food and balloons combined with air pressure....you really don't want to go there. :)

Concerns

Much of the step by step guides are done using videos. Actually seeing the videos makes it easier for children to follow the instructions. I like this but here's my BUT..... when the internet is being wonky...lets you see the page but not download the videos, you can't get enough information to actually DO the experiments. Adding in written how-to's would be extremely helpful in this situation and is something I would dearly love to see added.

My second concern is this is a unit for ages k-8. Breaking down some of the language for younger students is at times a challenge. Often my lad would say MOM, what does that word mean (and sometimes I didn't know) so I'd have to look it up. Not sure how the creators can get around this aspect though. Hard to balance it out for all ages.

Try it out for yourself

Here's a link for you to go to. Mini Lessons in SuperCharged Science.

To hear what others have to say

Many people have touched on different aspect of this program, so please, go check them out by either clicking here or clicking on the image below

Disclaimer

Fun with Budgies

4/7/2013

Imagining the work it went in to train the budgies. :)
Well done.

Today was better...learning, exercise and fun

4/4/2013

we have graduated from CMJ1 and have moved onto CMJ2. (this in adventus)

Today was a MUCH easier day than yesterday.

We did our adventus, looked through an offer from Educents ....regarding Samson's Classroom (we did the demo and that worked well for our reading, phonics, and sight words). Looks like it will be a good fit for the lad and progressive so that will help I think. With my coupon turns it into a $20 purchase for the year.   So that makes it worthwhile to me.

Did a little bit of review of what we learned yesterday with Great Empires.   Did our Target the Question....good practice today for rounding up to 10 and figuring out how

I wanted to do some math with the lad but he was VERY much not interested in doing A+Tutorsoft today so I said okay... we can do math from our upstairs book.... We worked on Area and Perimeter today. That lead to fun ...oh my.. we had FUN with this.   Doing the work was boring (said the lad) but learning what it actually met... My son is into angry birds so putting into angry bird speak.....The bad piggies set up their area that they want to hide in. The birds are wanting to breach their perimeter in order to get into the area that the pigs are hiding in.

using geometric shapes to build bad piggies.

the helmeted pigs have chosen an area to defend and have marked off their perimeter...can headband pig outsmart them???

Later on we went for a walk, on our walk we looked for places that it would be easy to set up a defense area. One of our balloon pigs came along for the walk as well and she kept on pointing out....see...I could hide there and see where I could form a perimeter?? SEE??? (she was VERY talkative). :) It's just very nice to have fun and learn at the same time. Sometime I'll have to set up a capture the flag game with the lad. :) It will be just another way to help reinforce how math concepts work in real life situations. :)

Tough days

4/4/2013

Mom... I don't want to.
Mom... do I have to?
Mom.. can we play?

This today was the constant refrain.

And I have to admit....for a while I just plumb gave up. Let's play Skylander bud... it's a new game, let's give a thorough going over...but then doing our "COOPERATIVE PLAY" he started the MOM... DON"T DO THAT stuff so I kinda said enough of this. I don't need this attitude stuff even while playing a game.

SO... we picked up our Astronomy lapbook from AJTL, We looked at what they had for us to do and the lad said...but mom... didn't we have to look at the planets some more? (Ah HA!!! I said to myself...I sorta have his interest.... let's work with that). So we hunted up the small planets that we had, and the dowelling that i bought and ....we made our planetary system. Is it accurate? NO...but will it do? yes... and it did make for conversation about the planets. We used the image here to helps us figure out which planets were which.

I have to admit to being a bit amazed today. I often feel like I'm not a particularly good homeschooling parent as I'm not organized or well planned.   I'm just very relaxed (too relaxed at times I think). BUT anyways, we do lots of reading and talking about subjects.    The lad frequently mentioned "mom, do you remember we read about the earth and how many would fit inside the sun". "Mom, do you remember that...." that was a frequent sentence starter. Makes me think we are doing something right. :)

Okay what else did we do.

OH.. I started "great empires", that comes from Homeschool in the woods.   I went through the list of the histories we could look at and Vikings appealed to the lad since they came to Canada.

We read through the three pages of text and talked about it. The lad needed to focus on things with the globe and trace out patterns of how the Vikings moved around. We learned of Vikings becoming Christians and how they influenced change in the cultures surrounding them.   Quite fascinating.

And then the lad was DONE. No more, I couldn't keep him focused on anything. I want to play, I want to.... (do anything other than focus). So off we went to clean the kitchen fridge out. In the process the lad invented a milking cow. :) Made me laugh. He took a balloon, attached it to a water filled bottle. Made a small hole in the bottom and proceeded to milk it. "Mom! you have to practice this. It's good to know how to milk a cow cause what if sometime we have no more milk in the stores?"   ... So i too needed to milk a cow (even though I have milked LOTS of cows in my childhood). :)

We got the fridge clean (the lad's responsibility was to get the door clean) and then set out to make a new treat. Roasted Honey Cinnamon Chickpeas. We found the recipe here.

First came skinning the peas.

Adding cinnamon and oil to them.
Roasting then at 400 for 40 minutes.
Then putting some honey on them and roasting for another 7 minutes.

And yes....they were yummy! :)

NOTE: the lad did 90% of the work in getting these ready. I helped with skinning the peas and getting things in and out of the oven. The pretty much did the rest. The link above has a video that he watched to learn what to do.
An EXCELLENT first (or fourth) recipe for a child to learn to do on his own.

Magnets are Fun (and other things)

4/2/2013

Before I get to our magnets are fun aspect of learning today, let me talk about some of the other things we did today first.

1. read the paper. No...didn't read the whole paper with a seven year lad but I read headlines and the comics and then we talked about them.   Whatever grabbed his interest or mine.   This leads to some interesting discussions at times.

Garfield's comic this morning had Jon reading from the paper
"If space aliens were to invade earth, they could take the form of animals"
Jon stares at Garfield
"do you come in peace"
Garfield
"take me to your refrigerator".

I asked the lad....(after he finished laughing)... why was that funny?
BECAUSE mom... Garfield didn't say Take me to your leader...He likes food too much!

Then I asked....do you see what Jon did with the paper?
(that drew a blank)
...he read it!
yes, he read it...but what else did he do?
He believed it mom.

Ah...he believed it.   Do you think he should have?
No...he's being silly mom.

Exactly. :)

It's good to read the paper, but one always needs to be aware that it's not always telling the truth.

We read a bit from his current breakfast book "Ghosts don't eat potato Chips".
Then did Adventus (at lesson 12 now I think?), A-Tutorsoft Math (continuing our work on multiplication), and Target the Question.

We took a side trail to do some air pressure experiments with balloons.

The lad's been making balloon pigs and said MOM....do you think we can make a pig inside another balloon. I told him TRY. He tried, he failed and so he asked his mom to help. I blew and blew and about gave myself a heartattack (not really)....but that was tough going. BUT finally we got the balloon to expand...and it popped out of the other balloon mostly...can you see how we have a covered expansion? Fascinated the lad but we couldn't get it to duplicate with another balloon (and I ran out of breath).

Magnets

We decided to take a break from learning about motion to learn about magnets this morning. We are doing this for our review for SuperCharged Science.

To that end we made magnet dance, we made a snake that could wag it's tail, learned we have some super strong magnets that will pinch your skin if you aren't careful, had fun with iron filings - scaring them and calming them down, and just generally were well amused by how magnets work. We are hoping to see how to do electomagnets works as well...but not today. :)

Do forgive the blurriness that lad tried mightily.

magnets work even through a seven year olds hand

This was an unexpected result. The lad wanted to see if he could make the paperclips move the iron filings when the magnets literally jumped out of his hands and grabbed the iron filings through the paper.

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Review and Giveaway: This is Our Time

My overall opinion

Important information

Giveaway

Disclaimer

HOPE days cancelled, revamped day plans

Vikings were the theme of the day today

Inspiration from a Homeschooling Conference

Other work done today

Visits in Time

My notes using Evernote

SuperCharged Science - Review

Vendor Information

My thoughts

Do I recommend it?

Concerns

Try it out for yourself

To hear what others have to say

Disclaimer

Fun with Budgies

Today was better...learning, exercise and fun

Tough days

Magnets are Fun (and other things)

Magnets

Who Am I?

Archives

Categories

2013 TOS Reviews

Other Reviews

My overall opinion

Important information

Giveaway

Disclaimer

Other work done today

My notes using Evernote

Vendor Information

My thoughts

Do I recommend it?

Concerns

Try it out for yourself

To hear what others have to say

Disclaimer

Magnets

Who Am I?

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Archives

Categories

2013 TOS Reviews

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