Mood:  cool

Good morning from the president’s desk.

As you know by now, Haiti is in the aftermath of one of the worst earthquakes recorded in the Western hemisphere in recent history. Reports of as many as 100,000 dead, many more hurt,  and countless homeless continue demonstrating the great need there.

BCM missionary Tommy Gambrill , whose ministry is BCM Disaster relief, traveled to the Dominican Republic where he met with our missionary Bolivar Cuevas. Together they developed the trip into neighboring Haiti, and Thursday afternoon Tommy and a team of four left Santo Domingo and entered Haiti. The latest report is that things are going well in the relief efforts in Port au Prince where they have been working together with our Haitian contacts, doctors, and pastors. Tommy and the team will return to the DR after 10 days, and then Tommy will return to the States. Upon his return, we will have up to date information and be able to decide how BCM can best partner with the local church in this disaster recovery.

Many of you have been praying for Haiti. Others have been participating in giving toward this need. BCM has already sent in some relief, and will be coordinating further actions together with sister organizations, our DR brethren, and Haitian local churches. For those of you that have been asking, we are receiving donations through the BCM website and local BCM offices, and coordinating these funds from the offices here.

Blessings,

Marty

I would encourage you to donate through BCM or through Compassion International if you haven't already. Both of them are reputable organizations that you can be assured will use all of the money donated for Haite relief. Just click on the names links above to go to there donation pages. If you wish to donate through BCM International, click on the large Haiti banner at the top of the page and it will take you to the Haiti donation page. On the Compassion page, click on the Haiti Relief Effort Donate Now button half way down the page.

Subscribe to Families Again

Mood:  blue

Notice the words shaped as frowns! This is for all of you who have Internet Explorer or another browser. I use Firefox. Everything on my blog looked fine with Firefox. I didn't realize that my blog looked terrible on IE and on some other browsers. I have made some changes and I hope that it is easier for you to read now.

Subscribe to Families Again

Mood:  cheeky

All right, so it's not a real disclaimer. Unless, of course, your're referring to the disclaimer that I have on all of my reviews about getting a product for free to try out. This disclaimer is a statement that I made when I began reviewing homeschool products on the TOS Homeschool Crew. I said back then that I would always be honest in my reviews, and not try to make a product look good just because I got it for free. I do, however, try to find something positive to say about every product I review. If it didn't fit well with my family, then I always try to find a situation that it would fit in with. Today's product, though, is not a product that I have to search for positives. It is, in fact, two products that I recieved and reviewed from Math Tutor that are totally different but equally impressive. I'll review them one at a time.

Young Minds - Numbers and Counting

Jacob was thrilled when he heard about this because htis is the first product this year that has been just for him. This product is all about intoducing children from toddler age through preschool to numbers and counting. Here is what the Math Tutor website has to say about this product -

In addition to introductin Math in an engaging manner for little ones, these DVD's strive to immerse the child in learning about things that naturally interest young children such as colors, animal names and sounds, machines, and more!

I am here to tell you that  they do just that. It is a total learning experience. The pictures are fantastic, the music is from classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart, and the graphics are great. Everything about this video is well done, entertaining and educational. I was even fascinated! Math Tutor uses classical music in the background while a child's voice introduces thenumbers on through ten. They show and talk about each number in a variety of ways. This reinforces the nuber being taught in various learning styles to help eachchild grasp the concept. The child might say "Here we have four zebras. One zebra, two zebras, three zebraz, four zebras. Here we have four zebras drinking. These zebras are black and white." This reinforces the number being taught and the concept of what the number represents. While the child narrator is saying this, your child is seeing four zebras on the screen. As the child counts the zebras, a graphic of that number is shown close by each zebra. So the pictures and the graphics are visual reminders of what each number means. Along with the animal names, names of fruits and vegetables, and lots more. Jacob loved it, but let me quit talking about it and show you a short YouTube clip of this great product.

The DVD also has bonus features such as Repeat Play, Picture Puzzles,  Connect the Dots and Name the Animal. The retail price for this DVD is $29.99,  but if you purchase it direct from Math Tutor online, you can get it for $19.99. Now for the next product.

The Basic Math Word Problem Tutor

Let me tell you up front, that anything truly educational that my children ask to watch is a winner with me. And, John Allen actually loves to watch this. I fancy myself as being a fairly good math teacher. I loved math in high school. It was one of my best subjects. I have even tutored college students in math. For some reason, however, John Allen and I don't click when it comes to math. I don't think I'm a bad teacher, and I don't think that he is a bad student, but my way of teaching just doesn't work with him. This Math Tutor DVD has been the trick.

When I first got the video, I was a little disappointed. I thought that the DVD was going to be on Basic Math, not Basic Math Word Problems. I soon realized, however, the benefit of having the Basic Math Word Problem 2 DVD set. Of course, as you are teaching the kids how to take apart and understand a word problem, you are going to have to eventually work the word problem out.  The well qualified instructor (he just left his job as a Space Shuttle Flight Controller with NASA), Jason Gibson, doesn't leave anything for chance. Although he is very intelligent, he clearly explains each problem step by step in very understandable ways. This DVD covers everything from basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers, decimals and fractions to percents, ratios and proportions. John Allen has had no difficulty understanding anything. The amazing thing is, that Mr. Gibson doesn't use any bells and whistles. He teaches the old fashion way in front of a wipe erase board. YouTube didn't have a sample for this particular DVD, but I found a sample of the Algebra Word Problem DVD. It's not quite the same, but I think you'll get the picture.

As I said before, John Allen loves it, and it has actually improved his math abilities. This DVD sells regularly for 434.99, but you can buy it for $26.99 if you purchase it from Math Tutor online.

Math Tutor has many more turorial DVD's that you can pruchas and since Jason Gibson has left his job, he is focusing on producing more. At the time of this writing they had everything from the 1st - 7th Math Tutor DVD to Physics, Calculus and Probability.

One small caveat. Although they are little by little preparing worksheet CD's to be sold separately from the tutorial DVD's, they are done for only a few of the DVD's that they offer. So, you cannot use it as a full curriculum for most subjects at least at this time. We have been using Math Tutor to supplement the curriculum that John Allen is presently using. As you can see, however, it has workd out fantastically. I would certainly recommend these DVD's for any one whether you homeschool or not and whether you're having difficulty with math or not. To find out more about what Math Tutor has to offer, just click here or on any one of the hi-lighted links above. As usual, many more of the TOS Crew Members reviewed this product as well. To find out what they had to say, you can click here. Happy Home Educating!

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew I was sent a free copy of Young Minds - Numbers and Counting and The Basic Math Word Problem Tutor in order to try out and review on my blog. 

Subscribe to Families Again

Mood:  a-ok

Families Again

Since I'm still having problems with my sidebar and haven't been able to post the above badge for my Facebook Fan Page on it, I'm bumping it back to the top with this post. I would love to have you follow my Facebook Fan page. All of my posts from both of my blogs show up here, so if you are having a problem finding notices of my posts on the new Facebook, this is the place to go.

Subscribe to Families Again

Mood:  a-ok

The TOS Homeschool Crew has embarked on a new endeavor. We have begun something called "The Blog Cruise". It actually began a few weeks ago but this is the first time I've posted about it. The Blog Cruise focuses on a homeschool question of the week. These questions are typical questions that new or even experienced homeschoolers often ask. TOS decided to tap in to the expertise of the members of the TOS Homeschool Crew for answers to these questions. That's very humbling to me, as I don't think I'm very experienced. Thankfully, answering the questions is voluntary. We don't have to submit an answer ~ in the form of a post ~ unless we would like to. So far the questions have been:

What about socialization?

How do I know what to teach?

AND

How do you know if your children are keeping up with their peers? 

If you want to know what the Crew Members said about each, just click on the individual question above to go to the Blog Cruise page for the answers.

This weeks question is:

How do you handle multiple ages?/How do you homeschool with a baby or toddler? 

Now that's one that I can answer. We certainly do have a wide range of ages in our family, and I have homeschooled for the past few years with Jacob crawling under our feet. Be looking for a post in the next couple of days answering that question. I'll put the link up to the other crew members answers as soon as I get it. In the meantime, why don't you click on one of the questions above and check out the great answers that have been given so far. Happy Homeschooling!

Subscribe to Families Again