CrossTimber Review

We received a Personalized Framed Plaque with Name Meaning and Bible Verse from CrossTimber to review. CrossTimber is a family-run business with affordable products. Their best selling product is their custom name meaning and bible verse plaques.

CrossTimber has so many different designs to choose through and group their designs into four main categories: faith and inspiration, animals and creatures, people and relationships, and the great outdoors. So there is a design for everyone and you can truly customize the name plaque to the person you are gifting it to. You can also add on bookmarks, pocket cards, greeting cards, or a personalized message on the back of the frame, for a small additional charge.  We chose the Fishing in the Stream design paired with the 5x7 Artist's Choice Frame. We decided to make this a gift for my grandfather Kevin and we spent several days researching Bible verses before we made a final decision. We went with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV:

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

The image for the Fishing in the Stream design said: "This pro fisherman baits his hook in the beautiful mists on this country stream. Encourage a fisherman with the meaning of his name on this relaxing getaway to get close to God. The matching bookmark has the same red-shirted fisherman, while the Pocket Card has the profile of an older fisherman in the same peaceful creek."

I chose the fisherman design because my grandfather has two favorite hobbies: fishing and hunting. I've gone hunting with him once, and while I enjoyed spending time with him, I dreaded him actually shooting anything that day. Thankfully there were no deer in the woods that day. However, my favorite memories of my grandfather usually take place at my grandparents cottage on an island with no electricity. I spent many summers there growing up and now I love bringing my children there. I always loved going fishing with him and it was so relaxing being on the water and quietly talking with him or just sitting there waiting for the fish to bite. My kids can't wait to learn to fish next summer and go out on the boat with him. I hope they cherish the same memories I do when they are older.

I spoke with John at CrossTimber who was very patient and helpful in selecting a Bible verse. They did have some suggestions of their own, which they would normally have used with the name Kevin, but I was glad they allowed me to choose a verse that fit my grandfather.

Along with the Name Meaning Plaque, they also sent a newsletter about CrossTimber's history, two business cards, a Bible verse card, and a small name meaning card, which also features the name Kevin. 

I'll be giving both the small card and the Name Meaning Plaque to my grandfather for Christmas, along with other gifts we plan to give him. (I usually cross stitch him something special.)

The frame can be hung on a wall or placed on a table. 

The frame stands almost straight up.


I chose my grandfather because he's a very special member of our family and he was recently ill. We wanted to give him a gift that showed how much he means to our family. Kevin means comely, noble, kind: one who is beloved. And he certainly is!

One of the things I like about CrossTimber is that they research hundreds, or more likely thousands, of names to make sure they have the correct meaning. Sometimes names are used in different regions of the world and have different meanings. For example, I gave my daughter a name used mostly in Ireland, Russia, and Japan (besides America). Each country has a different meaning, although the meaning is similar in Russia and Japan, but almost the opposite in Ireland. And although we have Irish roots, we actually named her after a Japanese character that we loved. My oldest son is also named after a literary character, but his name is also a common Irish name, but with the English spelling. My second son, however, has a name with Greek roots, but French spelling, because we also share some French heritage. We tried to name our children names that reflect our heritage.

CrossTimber offers more than just name plaques, although that is their focus. They also have mugs, bookmarks, and music boxes. When you buy multiple items they offer discounted prices.


This holiday season CrossTimber is having a giveaway. Enter the giveaway below!

Grand Prize: The winner may choose between a: Personalized Mug OR a Name Plaque or 8x10 Plaque! --> Plus 9 more prizes: $10 Gift Certificates  Ends December 4th.
 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Middlebury Interactive Languages Review

We received access to a semester of Spanish Courses offered by Middlebury Interactive Languages. We chose Elementary Spanish 1: Grades K-2. Last year we used Middlebury Interactive Languages to introduce my daughter to Spanish (you can read our review here), and this year we used it as a refresher for her, but also to introduce Spanish to my son, who mainly just watched his sister use the program last year. This year she is in 1st grade and he is in Kindergarten. We chose Spanish because it's a very common language spoken in our area, and we also have family members who speak Spanish.

We use Middlebury Interactive Languages on our laptop. The kids are older now, so they can use it independently. They use the laptop one at a time, my son going first, since using the activities is a first for him, so he took more time completing the lessons. My daughter worked on the lesson after him. Each unit has about 6 lessons each. We aimed to complete one unit each week, although we usually finishing one or two lessons per day. We would go back at the end of the week and complete them again to make sure they remembered the lessons and were ready to move on to the next unit. Some units we went over for two weeks. We make flash cards for each vocabulary word so they can read and review them and at the end of the week they practice writing them.
There are 12 units in the K-2 Spanish study. They each focus on one subject. There are Greetings, Numbers, Family, Colors, School, Body, Animals, Calendar, Food, Descriptions, and two review units (6 and 12). When we begin a new unit, I start by printing out the story pages and vocabulary list. You'll find the story video and recap in the first lesson. We complete lesson one usually the same day, but we use the printables throughout the week to review the story, which has additional words to learn, and to use the vocabulary words as our spelling words. At the end of the week, when we go over lesson six with the test, we also read the story one last time and I'll ask them comprehension questions and review the words. Then I let them know what the theme will be next week and ask them if there are any other words in that theme they would like to learn. For example, in the family section, it only has the words for mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, and grandfather. But they wanted to know what the words for aunt and uncle were, so we learned those too. 
There are some printables available that you can find in lesson 6 of each unit. The printables cover the overview of the story on the first page, then it goes through the story line-by-line translating it, with English on the left and Spanish on the right. When we first began using Middlebury Interactive Languages (last year), I didn't know about the story pages until we got to them, so to watch the story completely in Spanish was confusing. It's much easier to watch them now that we have the translation ready to go over each part of the story. The only thing that I'd change about the printables is that they highlight the vocabulary words in light orange. We don't have a color printer, so those words just look really light. It would be much easier to read if they were black and in bold letters. 
(Apologies for the poor lighting. We had a massive rain storm that caused the power to go out during the time I took these pictures.)

We put our printables in folders, one for each unit. The printables go on the left side, while our flash cards and writing pages are put in the right side. We plan to also make picture collages for the animals and food units. 

Close up of how the words look pale using a black and white printer.

I would love more printables to be available, especially for young children who are using the K-2 version. There are lots of activities that involve matching a phrase to a picture. That could be turned into a printable cut and paste version for offline revision. There could also be printables where the student writes in their answer to a question. Currently I have a writing book that they use to copy Spanish phrases in for each unit. Each phrase uses one page, so they have to copy the phrase multiple times and also draw a picture depicting the phrase, such as "Hola" and the person is waving. That being said, Middlebury Interactive Languages is primarily an online foreign language study program and does a great job introducing the Spanish language to young children.

My children and I love using Middlebury Interactive Languages to learn Spanish. We would love to use the next level, which is for grades 3-5, but will probably wait until the kids are in 2nd and 3rd grade to use it. In the meantime, they do have French and Chinese (Mandarin) for grades K-2 available. So we may look into learning a new language next year! 
I would recommend using Middlebury Interactive Languages to other homeschoolers or public school students who may not have a foreign language class available to them (in our area some schools don't offer foreign language studies until middle or high school). This program can also be used by children who move to a new country that speaks Spanish, French, German, or Chinese. They have different levels for learning each language K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, and 11-12, so if your child already knows the basics, they can move to the next level or match their grade level. 

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Educeri Review

We received Educeri Lesson Subscription Service from Educeri ....... Educeri a division of DataWORKS to review. The subscription gave us 12 months of access to Educeri's online and printable educational materials. Educeri covers Kindergarten to Grade 12. Educeri's subjects include: math, science, English language arts, history, art, PE, music, Spanish, English language development, and other resources. Some of these subjects do not currently have learning materials for every grade.


We used the Kindergarten and 1st grade materials for Munchkin and Bean. There are 60 worksheets available for Kindergarten students and 78 worksheets available for 1st grade students. They are mostly language arts and math worksheets, but there is one science and one history worksheet available. Hopefully there will be more beginner science worksheets available in the future!

Each lesson has an online portion, called "Teach Lesson." These are all ready to teach lessons, so this area goes over the teacher portion of the lesson and highlights the key parts to focus on. Then you can print out the materials and lead the lessons. I typically taught the lesson by having the materials printed out and the kids sat across from me while I read from the laptop. Occasionally I sit in the middle, but I usually try to sit across from them so they can see my face when we are talking. This helps with language arts lessons when they watch me enunciate words or sound out letters.

Most of the language arts materials only require a couple pages printed out, while some of the math materials require up to 32, that we've found so far, but you don't have to print and use them all at once. We aimed to do at least one lesson from each subject 3 times a week, in addition to the materials we already use.

We don't have a color printer, so unfortunately all the pictures are in black and white. My kids don't seem to mind, though. This week I printed out ten lessons, five for each child. They were a mixture of Kindergarten and 1st grade math and language arts worksheets.

For math we focused on addition, and measuring length and height. The worksheets we didn't get to were for skip counting, counting to 100, and adding three numbers.

Adding two single digit numbers.

Measuring shorter and longer. My daughter will use this same worksheet later to measure with a ruler. 

Shorter and taller. She'll also use this worksheet later to measure with a ruler. 

For language arts we focused on storytelling, and recognizing parts of the story, characters, and location.

We also printed out worksheets for writing sight words and recognizing beginning and ending sounds. 

The lessons are easy to find. They are categorized by grade and subject and you can decide how many lessons you want to see on each page (20/40/60). I had no issues loading the teaching materials or downloading the student worksheets.


Educeri will soon have quizzes available for some of the lessons. I hope they will also expand their art, PE, music, and Spanish sections, as there are only a handful of lessons in each of these subjects. However, there are over 1,000 K-12 lessons available: 413 in math, 525 for English language arts, 22 lessons for science, and 26 lessons for history.

I really liked using Educeri. It had plenty of worksheets to choose from. So far we have been able to find one for every lesson we plan. I do hope they expand their other subject areas, but for math and language arts, they have a ton of materials. Most educational sites that offer worksheets don't have a teaching guide with it, so that was very helpful! We plan to continue using Educeri's educational materials for our homeschooling needs.

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MyFreezEasy Review

We received the MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership from MyFreezEasy to review. Specifically the Premium Annual Membership, which allows you to customize your own plan or create your own. The Premium Annual Membership also gives you access to all eight meal plans each month.

MyFreezEasy offers you an easier way to freeze meals in advance by providing you with meal plans, recipes, and shopping lists. We used our laptop and tablet to view the recipe plans, but you can also download and print them. Another nice option is that MyFreezEasy offers labels which have the name of the recipe, cooking instructions, and a space to write in the date.

There are eight meal plans available: Traditional Meal Plan, The 20 Meals Plan, Gluten Free Meal Plan, All Pork Chops Meal Plan, All Ground Beef Meals Plan, All Chicken Meal Plan, Slow Cooker Meal Plan, and Clean Eats Meal Plan. The Clean Eats Meal Plan contains some Paleo recipes. The printable meal plans are very organized and lists the ingredients, prep time and instructions, and how long you can store your meals in the freezer. The main feature I love is that you make two meals at once, one for now and the second for a later date. It really does save time and makes it so much easier. In the future we will try to prep multiple recipes at once. 

The meal plans we used the most were the Traditional, 20 Meals, and All Chicken. Now that it's October and the temperature is starting to drop, we are getting into slow cooker season and will be using those recipes too. The 20 Meals plan has 10 recipes and plans to make one now and freeze the second batch. The other recipe plans typically had 5 recipes. I loved that the recipe plans came with a shopping list, separated by recipe, and there is also a second shopping list so you can shop by store section.

For the most part, we created the recipes as directed. I did substitute some ingredients though. For example, I don't like chicken thighs, so we used chicken breast instead. And if a recipe called for onions, I just omitted them, since I'm allergic to them. One thing I loved is that some of the recipes use ingredients I would not usually consider using, like lime juice in the Paleo Chicken Taco Salad. I also liked that many of these recipes are new to us. I tend to stick to my go-to favorite recipes, but my children love trying new recipes.

My daughter loves cooking and enjoyed prepping with me for our freezer meals. We were also able to use the meal plans to work on reading and math (cooking is our favorite math lesson). She was able to read the ingredient list (with help) and measure out the ingredients (the math part).



There were only two things I did not like about MyFreezEasy. The first is that they don't provide nutritional information, since some people might be on strict diets or count calories. This doesn't apply to us, but it's something to consider. The other is that I feel you should have access to the meal plans for past months in your subscription, not just the current month. This is mainly because I only had a chance to make a handful of the recipes from September and was using my laptop to read the recipes, but I did not download and save the recipes. So when I went back at the start of October, the old recipes were gone and only October's recipes were available.

Overall, I liked MyFreezEasy because it allowed me to prepare full meals in advance. Now on busy days I can just pull out a meal from the freezer and cook it, without having to spend time preparing the meal.

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If You Were Me and Lived in... Book Review

We received four books from the If You Were Me and Lived In... book series to review, brought to you by Carole P. Roman and Awaywegomedia.com. I chose If You Were Me and Lived in...Ancient China: The Han Dynasty and If You Were Me and Lived in...the Middle Ages (Volume 6), and they also generously sent us If You Were Me and Lived in...Renaissance Italy (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 2) and If You Were Me and Lived in...Viking Europe. These are all exciting periods of time in World History and I knew my kids would find them fascinating!

What can you do with your If You Were Me and Lived in... books? You can use them for cultural or history studies and unit studies, which is what we did. Each book can be used for various activities, such as creating a timeline, using the glossary for vocabulary and spelling words, pretend play (playing roles depicted in the books, such as a Lord, peasant, or doctor from the Middle Ages book). You'll also learn about various occupations, food (which you can learn about further by cooking recipes in the kitchen), clothing, and recreation.

If You Were Me and Lived in...the Middle Ages follows the life of Aalis, the daughter of a standard bearer in William the Conqueror's army. Her family lives in a large, fortified stone house with a motte. She spends her days embroidering and sewing with her sisters. My grandfather hunts, so we had a venison dinner, and we baked homemade bread. We collected herbs from the garden. They did not want to test out the Middle Ages eating schedule, which was two meals a day, or pottage if you were a peasant. We used a Middle Ages sticker book to further explore the clothing of the time. The Middle Ages book addresses what life was like for peasants as well. They lived hard lives as farmers. The Church was also a major influence in the life of those living in the Middle Ages.

The book introduces historical figures, such as William the Conqueror, Clovis, and Charlemagne. We each chose a person from history who lived in the time period we were reading about and researched them further. I am teaching my children how to research and this was a perfect opportunity. They were able to look online and find books at the library with help. We chose the Middle Ages for our first unit study. We chose William the Conqueror (Munchkin), Joan of Arc (Bean), and Christine de Pizan (me - mom). After a week we each reported what we had learned about that person. We focused on key facts, such as their date of birth and death, what their name was and other names they were called, what they looked like (we each drew a portrait), where they lived, and what they were best known for. We tagged each one on our timeline for the year they "made history." When they are a little older, we will probably use activities like this to create lapbooks. 

If You Were Me and Lived in...Viking Europe introduces you to Viking life in Northern Europe around the year 870 AD. You're given name ideas from that time period and what your family life would look like. In this book, you follow young Knut Ericson, son of a Jarl. Vikings were famous for their long voyages to foreign lands and raids. The Viking era depicted what life was like before the Middle Ages. Many things were similar. Medicine, for example, pretty much didn't change for a thousand years and they had limited options for those who were sick or injured. Food was plentiful for those who were part of the Jarl's family. They also drank a lot, with the adults drinking from horns so they had to drink it quickly or pass it around but never put it down, and children drank from cups. The Vikings written language was runic, which we learned.

The second book we focused on was Viking Europe. We use the first week of the study period to read the book, which usually takes 3-5 days, with 30-45 minute reading periods each day. After reading each page I stop and we discuss what was talked about, such as who a Jarl is or what mutton was. Sometimes this meant turning to the internet to look at more pictures. The second week we visit the library and find more reading materials, typically story books and at least one non-fiction book. Their favorite was the one on Norse myths. The third week, which we will start this week, will focus on what they want to research more about. Bean wants to learn to weave. Munchkin wanted to forage for food, but we're going into the wrong season for that, at least in our area, so instead he is going to learn to dye cloth using berries and plants. For the last week, we will focus on more hands-on lessons, cooking viking recipes, and our final project. 

We used a laminated map to draw lines to the countries the Vikings visited and measured how long they would have traveled to get there. We added math into the lesson by estimating how long the journey would take and how much food and water they would have had to bring. We created a Viking ship using a large cardboard box and practiced rowing. It was a lot of fun!

If You Were Me and Lived in...Renaissance Italy The Renaissance took place over 500 hundred years ago, which really wasn't that long ago, although much has changed since then. It began in the Tuscany region of Italy and is most famous for the artists and inventors it produced. The Renaissance took place after the Middle Ages ended, and was a well-spring of creativity. Architecture, science and astronomy were making new changes. Life was making major changes, such as it becoming more common for children to be taught by tutors. Even girls were taught about art, music, and dancing, although they still focused on needlework. Children wore clothing like their parents and were expected to act appropriately. Clothing was important and represented your status in society. Forks were finally being used and important family members ate on porcelain dishes. Artists were in demand and are still remembered today as some of the best artists in the world.

If You Were Me and Lived in...Ancient China: The Han Dynasty is one of the most important periods of time in Ancient China. The Han Dynasty took place between 206 BC until 220 AD. During this period of time civil service and organized government was established. Paper and porcelain was also invented. The Silk Road was the most important trade route to the East. Merchants were created to transport Chinese silk and became very wealthy. Most houses were designed the same and men were the head of the family. All families set aside a special part of their house as an alter to their ancestors. Silk was very important to the Chinese and was used to make clothes. There were four major professions: doctors, warriors, scholars, and advisers. Below that were farmers, artisans, and merchants. School was free, but only available to boys. Girls were taught how to be wives and mothers. There were three major religions: Taoism, Buddhiam, and the teachings of Confucius. Boys studied poetry and practiced calligraphy.  

These books are easy to read and the art is interesting. My kids thought they looked like watercolor pictures. Three of the books are illustrated by Mateya Arkova from Bulgaria. The Renaissance Italy book is illustrated by Silvia Brunetti from Rome. We really enjoyed reading these books and look forward to collecting the rest of the books in this series!

Carole P. Roman is a children's author who began writing on a dare. Since then, and many awards later, she has written over 30 books. You may be more familiar with her Captain No Beard series or her If You Were Me and Lived In... Country series. Her picture books, and cultural and historical books are perfect for children in elementary grades.

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