It has been a long time since I taught myself how to type. I waited until I was in middle or high school to learn. Nowadays, my three-year old pecks at a typewriter. Learning how to type (at an earlier age) is more valuable than ever.

This is where Keyboarding for the Christian School comes in. I was recently sent a copy to review. Because my daughter is in the second grade, we took a look at the elementary school version, but there is a version for middle and high school students.

There are a lot of things that I like about this book. It goes through the keyboard systematically, just like I learned to type when I was in school. There are periodic reviews. Once you start learning how to type sentences, your child gets to type Bible verses. This book also teaches the number pad and gets into some basic word processing. The book has some time tests towards the end, but it’s mostly focused on learning the positions of the keys and actually learning to type. This is a good thing for my daughter, who is a perfectionist and doesn’t like the pressure of a timer.

There are a few things that I don’t care about in this book, and it’s fairly minor. They use Times New Roman font, which is great for word processing, but scrunches up some of the letters together so it’s harder to differentiate each word when you’re trying to learn to type. I personally think that a fixed-width font would have been preferable for most of the book; the one exception being the word processing section at the end. They also use the New International Version for the verses; this might be preferable to many people, but my church likes to use the King James Version, so there might be some confusion there.

Overall, this is a pretty good book. While it’s likely that a secular book would work just as well (or a program like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing), this book is a good choice if you want to use a book, and you want to incorporate Christian beliefs into your typing program.

Earlier, I reviewed the Beehive Reader and All About Spelling. I really loved All About Spelling, but the Beehive Reader was a little youngish for my daughter, who is now working on 150+ page chapter books like Ramona Quimby, Age 8. I was recently given the opportunity to review What Am I, which is the first volume of Level 1 from All About Reading.

This book is a lot like the Beehive Reader, but it doesn’t directly correspond with All About Spelling like the Beehive Reader does. Because it is Level 2, it is a little bit more advanced. Like you would expect out of a reading text, the stories get more difficult as it progresses. In the beginning, the sentences are primarily one-syllable words, and the sentences are fairly simple. The final story, “What Am I?”, is considerably longer, has more difficult words, and is more complex.

Like the Beehive Reader, the book is beautifully illustrated, and is hardbound, so it will last through several children, if you need it to. It is 160 pages.

My daughter thought that this book was more interesting than The Beehive Reader, which was much too simple for her. This book was closer to her level, but over the year, she has exploded in her reading ability, and this book was still a little simple for her. I do recommend this book for early readers who have progressed past the Beehive Reader though. It’s a little too early for my little boy to start working on this set… he’s still working on his letters… but this will probably do nicely as a supplement for his reading (I’m partial to BJU reading). I’m a firm believer in having something available for kids to read.

I have taken this book to church as well. The sermons sometimes go over my daughter’s head, so she sometimes reads this book, along with Seasons of Faith. Even though it’s a little simple, it’s something that we can take along.

I was watching America: The Story of Us on the History Channel (it’s a great series, I highly recommend it for both you and your kids), and I noticed that they were giving away a copy of the video to every classroom in America (or that was their goal). I figured that I’d take a look to see if that included homeschool families, although I doubted it.

To my surprise, I discovered that to be eligible for the free DVD, the “School must be an accredited public, private or home school, grades K-12 and college.” Now, I’m not sure what an accredited homeschool is, but I signed up for the DVD. They said that it would be on its way this summer in time for the fall semester.

I have the first episode on Tivo; I’ll try to get my daughter to watch the video tomorrow. We have already been over American History from Columbus through the Civil War, so this will be review; however, I started teaching her about Columbus when she was 5, so she really doesn’t remember much from back then.

So far, they showed Episodes 1 and 2 on Sunday. There are things in there that I didn’t know, and I have been through AP American History, have read extensively on History, and am currently reading A Patriot’s History of the United States. I’ve also read a great deal of The Real George Washington. I haven’t seen too much bias… yet… although I do expect to see some bias when they start talking about the Great Depression.

I was recently sent a copy of the Seasons of Faith book series, available from CBH ministries. If you’re a Christian and you have kids, you might be familiar with the company. They’re the people that do Down Gilead Lane and Keys for Kids.

The Seasons of Faith book series consists of four books, each representing a different season of our Christian life. There is a lesson in each book that kids can appreciate.

In the spring of our Christian life, we’re just learning about being a Christian, and life is exciting. In Racing Midnight, Becky is visiting her friend’s farm, and would like her friend to know Jesus too.

In the summer, we grow in God’s love. In You Can’t Come In, Zack learns that God won’t let sin into heaven, just like Mom won’t let a dirty, mud-covered boy into her clean kitchen.

In the fall, we make mistakes, but we learn of God’s forgiveness. In Seventy Times Seven, Brad learns that he needs to be forgiving… just like the unforgiving servant.

In the winter, the storms of life come. Thomás is upset because he’s been going through a difficult period of life… but then he realizes that to make it through, he needs to be rooted in God.

There are a lot of good reasons to like these books. For one, they present God’s lessons in ways that kids can understand. The illustrations are excellent. The characters are ethnically diverse, so they appeal to everyone.

Each of these books comes with a CD, where Uncle Charlie reads the book, and chimes tell the kids when to turn the page. I’ve read the book to my kids, and we’ve also used the CD. My kids are familiar with Uncle Charlie from listening to Keys for Kids in our car when he’s on. He’s a great reader, which is probably why his Keys for Kids series is so great. He also does a great job with these books.

These books are great for independent readers, kids who want to listen along with the CDs, and for parents to read to their kids. These would be great for families, Sunday Schools, and Christian day cares. I highly recommend them.

I was recently sent a copy of Language Smarts C for my daughter to look at and for me to review. It is sold by the Critical Thinking Company.

My daughter finds this book challenging, and in a way, I think that’s a good thing. For example, in one of the excercises, my daughter has to write directions. Most language arts curriculums don’t make kids figure out how to do things like this. In a section on a certain kind of vowels, like vowel digraphs, kids find the word that has the digraph, then they have to think of one that has their own.

There are a lot of pages in this book… 314. It is a workbook, so it can’t be reused. It sells for $39.99. This book practices a lot of different concepts, from spelling, to writing, to capitalization and categorizing. I’m not sure if I would use it as a complete curriculum, but it might be a fun way to practice concepts that you are learning. This might work for some children as a complete curriculum, but I’m not sure that it’s enough for my child.

We currently use this book a couple of times a week, in place of Switched On Schoolhouse Language Arts, which I don’t plan on using another year. It gives her a little variety, and I like how she has to think “outside the box” when she is doing this. It can be a little frustrating for her, but I think that it’s good for her to stretch her brain every now and then, and it’s not so frustrating that she gives up.

History has real life applications. It has been said that those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. I believe that we are reliving history today. We seem to be living through the 1930s, and I fear that with the way America is printing money today, we may go through a situation like the Weimar Republic.

We can also learn other lessons from history, which I wrote about in my article about the abolitionists Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown. Stowe acted by writing, Brown acted through murder. Through history, we were able to learn the lesson that it’s wrong to do the wrong thing in order to achieve the right ends.

If only congress could also learn this lesson.

Tektoma uses a program called GameMaker to make it easier to create video games. Younger children, like my daughter, may need help downloading and installing the program, and adding the resource files to the desktop.

My daughter was very excited to give Tektoma a try. She likes to play video games (what seven-year-old doesn’t) and had grand ideas of creating the next Super Mario Brothers. For us, reality was a little different.

The program is good, and as an adult, it is easy to follow along. Tektoma has videos that you follow along on your computer. You open the same files, see (almost) the same things on your screen, and create the same video game features. In the process your child is learning how to create video games. There are basic videos, like learning how to make a race car game or an arcade game, as well as more advanced games.

My daughter had a little trouble with these tutorials. She’s on the younger range of the kids these videos are made for, and that might be why she was having some difficulty. The video tutor used the Pro version of GameMaker, while we had the free version. There were slight variations between what was on the video, and what was on our screen, and I think that it threw her off. I tried to help her, but she was already frustrated.

I think that in a year or two, my daughter would be able to follow along a little bit better, and she would enjoy these tutorials a little bit more. If she expresses an interest in computer programming when she gets older (particularly game making), we will probably take another look at it.

You can try them out for 14 days for free. This would give you enough time to see if these tutorials are at the right level for your child.

I was recently sent a copy of two books by Zeezok publishing: Handel at the Court of Kings and Robert Schumann and Mascot Ziff. This is sold as a pack of two as part of their Great Musician’s Series.

There are many ways that a homeschool family can go about using this book. We have decided to read the book together. I have my daughter read some of the shorter paragraphs, while I read the longer paragraphs. We’ll read the story together, and then we’ll listen to the musical passages in the story.

There are several things that my daughter learns while reading this story with me. For one, she learns how to read longer words. Many of the words are fairly difficult for seven-year-olds, or at least for mine. Some of these words include orchestra, clavichord, conductor, and Medici. She is also able to learn a little bit about the lives of these musicians, and about the times they lived in. It’s done in a way that is not intimidating or difficult. When I asked my daughter what she thought about these books, she said that they were “cool.”

Each book has a study guide that goes along with the books. Each of the four chapters has a timeline in the study guide that lists what was going on in the world at the time, reading comprehension questions, notes of interest, and character qualities that the musician displayed. We haven’t really used these much, mostly because reading the book seems to be just about the right amount of work for my daughter. They would probably come in handy for older kids though.

We are able to do about a half chapter a day. We tried a whole chapter the first day, and it was a bit much for my daughter. Each book is four chapters long.

There are music notes in the book that young piano players, with a little bit of experience, can play. It uses two hands, but no chords. It’s a little advanced for my little girl to play, but would be useful for musicians with a little more experience.

We use these books in music class, but you could also use them in reading class, unit studies, or perhaps history.

I was recently sent a copy of Marie Rippel’s Beehive Reader in exchange for writing a review. The Beehive Reader is meant to be a companion to All About Spelling, which I previously reviewed. All About Spelling really works for my daughter, and I have already decided to buy level 3 for next year (she just completed level 1 yesterday, and we will be starting level 2 right away).

The Beehive Reader is a high-quality book. I like to buy high-quality hardback books for my school, even if I have to pay a little more. We have been using Story of the World for part of our history curriculum, and I always choose to buy the hardback, even though a paperback is available. I don’t want my kids to have to worry about bending the covers or anything. It would be nice if more textbook producers would create student editions in hardback.

The stories in the Beehive Reader correlate with the spelling ideas that are learned in All About Spelling. After the student learns short vowels, they read a story that contains a lot of short vowels. When they cover blends, or double letters, there is a corresponding story to read. Each page is beautifully illustrated with a pencil illustration. The stories in Beehive Reader 1 should interest younger readers. They are simple, yet interesting.

That being said, I’m not sure if the Beehive Reader/All About Spelling combination will work well for all students. When my daughter learned how to read, she went from a stage where she could barely sound out words one day, and the next day, it was like a light went on in her head, and she could read nearly everything. The trouble was, she had difficulty with spelling. In her case, the Beehive Reader would have been quite easy for her, while the spelling would be difficult. My daughter just finished All About Spelling level 1, and the Beehive Reader was much too easy for her. She may be the exception, as we found All About Spelling after she was a proficient reader. She read her first chapter book two days ago.

The Beehive Reader is likely to work best with students that are learning how to read. I plan on using All About Spelling with my little boy from the start, and as long as he is not an advanced reader or a poor speller, the program is likely to work well. With my daughter, I used the Beehive Reader as a source of additional phrases to spell if we need to spend a little more time on an All About Spelling lesson. I would recommend this book to younger students as they learn to read (whether or not they use the spelling program at the same time).

The Beehive Reader 1 is available for $19.95 from All About Spelling.com.

The Old Schoolhouse is looking for homeschoolers to review products for their 2010-2011 school year. Click on the link if you’d like to apply for the position.

Being on The Old Schoolhouse Crew has been a great opportunity for me. I’ve been able to try out a variety of products that I otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to try out. I’ve found some things that worked really well, some things that didn’t fit our lifestyle, and other things that I could use, but probably won’t continue to use in the upcoming year. It can be challenging at time to review all the products, but it’s worth it.