I have been a huge fan of Robert Liparulo’s Dreamhouse Kings series for young adults (yep, I’m one of THOSE adults – who voraciously devour YA fiction).  When I saw that he had released the first in a new series of supernatural suspense titles – for adults this time – I was all for it.

The 13^th Tribe is the first in a new series – revealingly titled the Immortal Files that can perhaps be described best as biblically-inspired, speculative, suspense.  To summarize the basic premise – a group of Israelites who sinned against God in the desert (remember that golden calf?) were cursed with immortality. 3,500 years later we find them in the current age, bedecked with cutting-edge technology, equipped with deep financial resources acquired over the years – they have set themselves the task of punishing sinners – killing them in fact.  And they’ve been doing it since almost the beginning of their term.  Yes, this is where the speculation comes in.

The suspense comes into the picture when other individuals try to stop their plans once they reach epic proportions of death and destruction and begin to more directly involve innocents. Jagger – a depressed family man and security specialist recovering from the loss of his arm and best friend, taken from him by a drunk driver – finds himself unexpectedly drawn into the fray as the paths of this group – The Tribe.  There is violence (this is adult Liparulo after all), blood, and darkness – these immortals are somewhat obsessed with the deaths that they themselves cannot obtain.

The writing is awesome – much better than any of Liparulo’s other adult titles, the theme is actually quite a bit more up my alley than his other suspense novels to boot.  Even though the pacing can be a bit slow at times (flashbacks, back story and all), the novel itself still manages to achieve a certain kind of beauty with its embedded message of grace.

If I have to be honest, I cried, and I don’t often do that with action-driven novels.  The themes of redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, are all apparent while being blended deftly into the storyline itself without huge chunks of preaching.  As a bonus, although the is a first title it doesn’t end with a cliffhanger, it can be satisfyingly read as a single novel.  This is just a very well done offering from Liparulo, and I’ll be looking forward to future installments in the series.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS BOOK NOW AT AMAZON.COM OR FOR KINDLE!

CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS BOOK NOW AT CHRISTIANBOOK.COM!

Matt Mikalatos is a hilarious author.  I fell in love with his work when I read Imaginary Jesus (which has just been re-issued as My Imaginary Jesus with a new cover to match his latest – don’t miss it, I was laughing hard before the first chapter ended.)

His latest, Night of the Living Dead Christian has a horror-type theme, treating flawed humans with issues of sin as typical horror-movie monsters as they struggle with their ‘baser’ desires (re: the flesh).  The question Matt and his motley crew set out to explore is how does a life spent following Jesus lead to transformation and freedom?  Can He change a monster?

Here’s the official blurb!

What does a transformed life actually look like?
In his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Imaginary Jesus, Matt Mikalatos tackles this question in an entertaining and thought-provoking way—with MONSTERS!!! While Christians claim to experience Christ’s resurrection power, we sometimes act like werewolves who can’t control our base desires. Or zombies, experiencing a resurrection that is 90 percent shambling death and 10 percent life. Or vampires, satiating ourselves at the expense of others. But through it all we long to stop being monsters and become truly human—the way Christ intended. We just can’t seem to figure out how.

Night of the Living Dead Christian is the story of Luther, a werewolf on the run, whose inner beast has driven him dangerously close to losing everything that matters. Desperate to conquer his dark side, Luther joins forces with Matt to find someone who can help. Yet their time is running out. A powerful and mysterious man is on their trail, determined to kill the wolf at all costs . . .

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Night of the Living Dead Christian is a spiritual allegory that boldly explores the monstrous underpinnings of our nature and tackles head-on the question of how we can ever hope to become truly transformed.

I have to say, I’m only half-way through the book right now, so I can’t treat it to my normal full review, but so far, I’m finding it to be a bit more serious than his first novel, and not quite as laugh-out-loud funny.  I’m still finding it an interesting read however, and plan to share my thoughts once I’m finished.

You can find Night of the Living Dead Christian at Amazon.com in print, for the Kindle (I’m a big fan of using the app on my phone), or at Christianbook.com!

Would you like to find out what other bloggers on the CSFF tour have to say?  Visit the following links for more, and don’t forget that the author himself is blogging along with the tour here!:

Gillian Adams
Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Theresa Dunlap
Amber French
Tori Greene
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Janeen Ippolito
Becky Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Leighton
Shannon McDermott
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Joan Nienhuis
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Shane Werlinger
Nicole White
Dave Wilson

My oldest daughter is eight (third grade) and has been BEGGING me for independent research options.  When the opportunity came up to review Creek Edge Press’ task card sets I was excited to give them a try.  We chose the American History Task Card Set ($20.00) because of her ongoing fascinating with First Nations (Native American) life.  This American history course covers much more than that though – it spans American history from Native Americans right into the 21^st century over a set of task cards along with a teacher’s manual.

Designed with a blend of Montessori, Charlotte Mason, and Classical educational principles in mind, the course is somewhat flexible in that you get to choose the resources you use to complete the suggested tasks.  The cards themselves make a framework through time that you and your child work through to cover the content.  You can see images of a variety of different cards here.  It’s a bit tricky to explain, but once you get your hands on the oh, so helpful teacher’s manual and pull your resources together (a blend of reference materials – encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and living books etc.) it starts to all make sense.   You can also check out the FAQ at Creek Edge Press to help you out with some of the nitty gritties.

While suggested as a course of study for K-8, younger children will need direct one on one help every step of the way to make this course work for them.  I think where it truly shines the most is for older children from grades 3-8.  As their parent you can help them to acquire valuable research skills while using the task cards and rich research topics to drive the acquisition of the research and writing skills they need to complete their projects.

If you are a new homeschooling parent, you should know upfront that this course isn’t open and go.  It requires you to use the extensive resource list to decide which source material and resources you’ll work with and you’ll also need to help your child pick a project to work on each week.   There is some prep and planning time and a learning curve as well as you and your child work together to learn the needed skills.

I absolutely love the teacher’s guide, it tells you how to set up the area, gives you lots of mom-to-mom helpful advice on how to actually dig into the course, get it going, and thoughts on how to ease in and adapt that I’ve found SO helpful.  The booklists are absolutely amazing, giving you a lot of choices to pull from (you might even have quite a few titles on your shelves already – if not they are all sound investments).  You can find the booklists here to give you an idea of their richness.

This is really a flexible course where you can go deep or shallow depending on the interest levels of you and your child.  I have to say that the approach itself is quite unique, but flexible, practical, and very valuable for homeschooling families.  It just makes great sense to help your child develop research skills while exploring history at the same time – it works great with notebooking too!

Many other card sets are available across the subjects of Science, History, Geography & Culture, Art, Music, and Grammar Reinforcement.  You can find them all here.

Disclosure: We received a copy of the American History Task Card Set in order to write this review – all opinions are genuine and my own.

Over the past month our life has been pretty wild, and we’ve been without internet for several weeks during that period.  Unfortnately we didn’t have the chance to explore K-5 Learning as deeply as I would have liked to with my children.  However, I still wanted to share with you some information regarding this supplementary program that offers both reading and math enrichment.

Designed for children from kindergarten to grade 5, there are 4 programs included on the website – Reading, Spelling, Math, and Math Facts.  K5 is a web-based program, so you need to be connected with the internet in order to use it.  Your children start with an online assessment that covers eight key reading and math skills (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, site words, comprehension, numbers/operations, geometry and measurement) and places your child to work independently through 3,000 interactive, self-paced lessons.  The program automatically chooses the appropriate lessons for your child based on the assessment and their results in previous lessons.  Your child’s progress is also tracked and you can view the statistics online.

The program is very skill-focused without a lot of frills and covers the core basic skills required in elementary school.  Even though the lessons are designed to be seriously educational, the highly visual format of the lessons combined with the computer-based delivery will still be very appealing to many children – you can check out the sample lessons here - my children actually really enjoy these sorts of educational activities.

If you’d like to try this program yourself, you can sign up for a 14 day free trial here.

After the trial, the monthly subscription is available for $25/month for the first child and $15/month for additional children.

An annual subscription is available for $199/year for the first child and $129/year for any additional children.  You can find the pricing details here under the Pricing and Free Trial tab.

Disclosure: I was provided with a six week trial of this program in order to write this review for the TOS Crew.

If you’d like to read more reviews from those who were able to test the program more extensively with your children – please visit the TOS Crew blog and find all of the reviews here!

Christian Kids Explore Biology by Stephanie Redmond is designed to provide a year of science teaching in the life sciences from a creation-based perspective for grades 3-6. Though it is written with families in mind and can be geared up or down, I found that it is a bit much for younger students, and you should definitely wait until your oldest is in 3rd and up to dive in as a family.

 
The 35 lessons are designed to be completed at a rate of around 1/week and the book includes coloring pages, printables, hands-on activity ideas, memory verses, supplemental reading lists, recipes, and a lot more. Each unit includes a test as well and the coloring pages for each unit are really spectacular. The main topics covered include: Biology Basics, Plants in God’s World, Birds of the Earth, Mammals in the Wild, The Human Factor, Reptiles All Around, Insects High and Low, and Water Creatures.

 
Bright Ideas Press has also put together a downloadable bundle  of all the printable sheets (a separate purchase) which is awesome! That is such a boon to me – much simpler than scanning each page I need in order to get a copy out of the book.

Like other titles published by Bright Ideas Press, Christian Kids Explore Biology is written by a real homeschooling mom, and as a result – it’s realistic! I hope I don’t come across as slacker-mom here, but this curriculum is pretty balanced – it has straight forward teaching sessions twice a week leaving room for additional readings, delight-driven studies, and hands-on activities. It doesn’t micro-manage your entire science schedule for you (though it is slightly scripted and you can just open it and read the main content to your children.

If you want everything and the kitchen sink in a science program, this one isn’t for you – it covers the basics succinctly, in a timely fashion without bogging down or drowning you in detail – that leaves room for flexibility and your own expansions if you want to add them. Otherwise, it’s a good core program that gets the job done from a creation-based perspective.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW AT CHRISTIANBOOK.COM OR AMAZON.COM!

I was super-duper excited to have a chance to review The Story of Swan Lake from Maestro Classics with my oldest daughter (8).  Like many homeschooling moms I struggle to get music appreciation done, and since Swan Lake is pretty cannonical fare – particularly when it comes to ballets (and how many little girls can resist a ballerina?) I was excited to get started!

The Story of Swan Lake includes the main themes from the ballet along with narration that simply retells the story by Stephen Simon, conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (all the music is performed by them as well – really top notch stuff!)  There are also bonus tracks including a shred guitar rendition of the main Swan Lake song, a sing-along song that serves as a mnemonic to help children remember the main plot of the ballet set to the main theme, and an ‘empty’ sing-along song so your child can do their own performance (and oh boy, did mine ever!)

The CD also comes with a very well-designed booklet filled with a pictogram type overview of the plot of Swan Lake, a connect the dots, word puzzles, lyrics to the sing-along, biographies of the contributors and a lot more.  I’m not sure where ours is – my daughter made off with it and enthusiastically filled in every spot she could find to do an activity (it is consumable by the way).

The whole experience was incredible…except for one thing.  This CD uses the revised ending of Swan Lake..you know…the one where the prince and the swan maiden both die in the end?  Umm..recommended for ages 6-12, but if you have a sensitive little girl you MIGHT want to save this one for LATER.  Interestingly, Tchaikovsky’s original ending was a happy one where the lovers survived and conquered the evil magician.  Just saying.

With that being said, I am DEFINITELY interested in buying some of their downloads with less traumatic endings because they make music appreciation so easy.  Despite being disturbed by the ballet’s end she still had to memorize the sing-along to perform for her grandparents when they came to visit – so cute .

All of Maestro Classic’s music appreciation titles are available on CD for $16.98 or as MP3 downloads for $9.98 – you can find them all here and listen to free samples online too!  They even have free cross-curricular lesson plans you can use to take the earning even further!

If you’d like to read more reviews of The Story of Swan Lake from real homeschooling moms, visit the TOS Crew post here and dig in!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this CD for the purposes of this review.  All thoughts are genuine, and my own.

I recently had the opportunity to review the digital version of REAL Homeschool Spanish as part of my TOS Crew review duties.

First, I just want to give you an overview of what is included in the program.  It contains the main REAL Homeschool Spanish book which is full of the vocabulary and teaching suggestions you need to share the program with your children.  The Activity Book contains fun reinforcement activities like crosswords and more traditional written practice.  The Answer Book includes the answers for the Activity Book, and the optional Daily Curriculum Guide holds your hand while you’re getting started with the program by giving you a suggested teaching schedule that you can run with while you’re finding your own particular family’s rhythm with the program.  The Audio Files include a native Spanish (Mexico) speaker saying the vocabulary words and phrases, and the website includes free culture links that you can use to spice-up your study of Spanish.

Dr. Karyn Williamson-Coria – an accomplished linguist, mom, and homeschooler designed REAL Homeschool Spanish!  She designed this program for REAL homeschoolers, which is part of the program name, but the other part is an acronym refering to her educational philosophy.

R – Relax

E – Enjoy

A – Aspire

L – Learn

Those tenets really shine through in her program as well.  This isn’t a strict, open the book, check of the boxes sort of a program (though there is scheduling assistance provided), rather it is a conversational Spanish program that is structured in a logical way that encourages moms to find their own groove with their children.  Because of this, the program can be used with a WIDE range of ages (you get to pick how much you do, at what pace, and what written and cultural activities you’d like to incorporate if any).

So, if you have K-2 you might want to do the program together using the audio, the free cultural links from the website and the playful activity suggestions in the main curriculum book.  You can stretch the program out over three years to keep the pace relaxed.

If you have motivated high school students they can tackle all of the written work in the activity book, and all of the content in the main book at a faster pace and finish this Spanish course in a single year.  Then there are all of the possibilities in between.

This might sound a bit daunting if you are a new homeschooler, but Dr. Williamson-Coria is very personable and responds quickly to email support requests (I know – I’ve tried!)  The Daily Curriculum Guide also gives you a sample schedule you can use when you are just getting started.

I was very excited that the program is available in an all-digital format so I could read the books on my iPad and listen to the audio there too.  (It is also available with a hard copy book, audio cds, and cds with the printable activity and answer book on them.)

Unfortunately, my daughter couldn’t use her pdf writing programs to fill out the activity sheets on the iPad with a stylus because they were scrambled.  She has some sensory issues and really prefers to do her work without paper so we like writing directly on the iPad.  We had to print the pages from Adobe PDF on our laptop instead.  They are looking into a way around this though and responded promptly to my concerns.

The Tips to the Home Educator sections are awesome – these are really engaging ways to present the vocabulary and phrases in the program to children that use many different styles of learning.  I’m not so great at thinking of these sorts of things on my own, so I really appreciated this.  This is the sort of program you really need to learn along WITH your children, it isn’t an independent learning kind of approach.  REAL Homeschool Spanish tackles education as a family and encourages families to learn and practice together in their daily lives.

The program starts with traditional lessons on names, greetings, colors, family vocabulary etc. and builds following a pretty traditional conversational language course scope and sequence.  The main teaching book is broken into 10 units, 55 vocab clusters and 15 idea sections of ways to further your learning.  The activity book includes 179 pages of fun written reinforcements (that’s a lot!)

The emphasis is on verbal communication and sharing the vocabulary together as a family – there is some grammar included, but this isn’t a grammar driven course of study.  The whole feel of the program is so nice and relaxed; you don’t have to stress out with this one!

REAL Homeschool Spanish is available digitally for $49.95 and as a hard copy for $89.95 (US only, free shipping). If you’d like the optional Daily Curriculum Guide it is an additional charge, or can be included in a slightly higher cost bundle – you can find all of the buying details here.  If you’d like to check this program out you can find some free samples online here.

Don’t forget to visit the TOS Crew blog to read more reviews of REAL Homeschool Spanish.

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this program for review purposes.

As part of my duties as a TOS Crew member this year I was given the oppotunity to review a volume of The World’s Greatest Stories.  Our family was sent a copy of Volume 1: The Prophets, a CD featuring dramatic Bible readings directly from the biblical text by George Sarris.

The readings included on this CD are:

• The Blazing Furnace – Daniel 3
• The Handwriting on the Wall – Daniel 5
• Daniel in the Lion’s Den – Daniel 6
• Elijah and the Prophets of Baal – 1 Kings 17-18
• The Prophecy of Jonah – Jonah

This is such a unique way to expose and familiarize children with God’s word!  Word for word readings (you can get the CDs in KJV or NIV, we chose KJV) full of drama and excitement.  George Sarris reads very dramatically with different voices, lisps, breathing, and much more.  Sometimes Sarris reading was a bit overenthusiastic and we had some giggles, but it certainly did enliven the readings!  There is also a dramatic sound track with music and sound effects that really captivate listeners.

My daughters asked me to, “Play another story Mommy!” when we would come to the end of one of the tracks on the CD.  This CD is 55 minutes in length with each of the stories around 8-15 minutes in length.  We like listening to them when the girls are coloring or playing quietly, but they’d also make great CDs for car trips – even quick errands because no individual story is too long.  They’d also make great, engaging listening for family devotions, particularly if you have audio learners in your home!

At only $7.95/CD I think these recordings straight from God’s word are an excellent value!  I hope that they will be available as MP3 downloads in the future!  There are currently six volumes, and if you buy any combination of six CDs you receive free shipping!

You can find a list of all the available recordings here, and also listen to some audio clips online to see if this series would be a good fit for your family.  I plan to buy Volume 2: The Life of Christ to enjoy with our girls because it has one of my daughter’s FAVORITE stories from John 9 on it!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this CD in order to review it, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

You can read reviews of the other CDs in the series here at the TOS Crew blog!

Many of our blog readers know that we live in Canada (yay!) where French is an official second language.  I’ve always considered teaching some French to my children for this reason, French is everywhere in Canada – on packaging, ingredient lists, and those fluent in French have more job opportunities as well.

When I heard of Le Francaise Facile (The Easy French) from Great Commission Languages I was intrigued.  Not only does the
program include a variety of French accents as it progresses through the years and levels to help develop an international ear for French, but it also teaches French PHONETICALLY and from a Christian point of view.

Obviously, if there were ONE French program I was going to teach with my children, this would be my top pick!  I love phonics, and I love Jesus even more .  It is also designed by a native French speaker who is a homeschooler – I love programs made by REAL homeschooling moms!

There are a few different ways this program is presented; the Junior Level for K-3 is the one we will be trying because it is best for families with younger children.  Our oldest is 8, and I have a 5 and 3 year-old as well so I thought this would be best for us with so many littles tagging along!

There are 34 lessons in the text, with lots of stories and songs being included on the two audio CDs (they also have printables on them).  You can find the table of contents on the sample page here.

The classic-style The Easy French (Level I and Level II) is recommended for families with children of all ages.  Both the Junior and classic style levels are non-consumable (requiring printing from a CD).  There is a new format available that is consumable and designed for older students as well – IA, IB, IIA, and IIB.  If you’d like to read more about the different French programs they have for homeschoolers, you can see them all listed here.

I’m so excited that the Junior Level of Le Francaise Facile is waiting for me in the city to pick up on my next trip in!  I will update you when I’ve had a chance to try it for ourselves!

Until then – check out these samples of the program – they are what really convinced me of the value of the program – it is incredibly cute and smoothly integrates both French and English within the audio to ease children naturally into understanding French vocabulary and grammar without explicit drill-type instruction.  Very fun!  There are audio samples and pdf samples to learn more about the program.

The Easy French Junior Level or Le Francais Facile! Junior is available for $69.95 from Great Commission Languages.  It has

Christine Lindsay writes historical Christian inspirational novels with strong love stories. She doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects such as the themes in her debut novel SHADOWED IN SILK which is set in India during a turbulent era. Christine’s long-time fascination with the British Raj was seeded from stories of her ancestors who served in the British Cavalry in India. SHADOWED IN SILK was the Gold winner of the 2009 ACFW Genesis for Historical.

The Pacific coast of Canada, about 200 miles north of Seattle, is Christine’s home. It’s a special time in her life as she and her husband enjoy the empty nest, but also the noise and fun when the kids and grandkids come home. Like a lot of writers, her cat is her chief editor.
ABOUT THE BOOK

She was invisible to those who should have loved her.

After the Great War, Abby Fraser returns to India with her small son, where her husband is stationed with the British army. She has longed to go home to the land of glittering palaces and veiled women…but Nick has become a cruel stranger. It will take more than her American pluck to survive.

Major Geoff Richards, broken over the loss of so many of his men in the trenches of France, returns to his cavalry post in Amritsar. But his faith does little to help him understand the ruthlessness of his British peers toward the Indian people he loves. Nor does it explain how he is to protect Abby Fraser and her child from the husband who mistreats them.

Amid political unrest, inhospitable deserts, and Russian spies, tensions rise in India as the people cry for the freedom espoused by Gandhi. Caught between their own ideals and duty, Geoff and Abby stumble into sinister secrets . . . secrets that will thrust them out of the shadows and straight into the fire of revolution.

If you’d like to read the first chapter of Shadowed In Silk, go HERE.

Watch the book video trailer: