I choose to give this product 4 ½ out of 5 Gold Teachers Stars!

I am an avid collector of Nativities. I add at least one or two to my collection every year. Imagine my delighted surprise when I received a Nativity to review from One 2 Believe. I was ecstatic! This particular set contains a storybook and 17 pvc figurines.  It’s everything you need to share the Nativity story with your children.

What I love most about this adorable nativity is that it is meant to be played with. Most of my nativities are fragile and I hold my breath every year as my son plays with them regardless of how I caution him not to. He just can’t help himself. Now we have one that he can play with all season and I don’t have to worry.

He has put this Nativity through the paces and he adores it. He loves that the characters are cartoonish. He says it makes it fun and kid friendly. He now refers to it as his nativity. I borrowed it this past Sunday for our music time at church. I teach the music in our children’s program at church and we are beginning to learn Christmas songs for our Christmas program. The children loved it!

If you are looking for a great Nativity for the kids, then you will want to be sure to check out the one from One 2 Believe. It is sure to bring years of enjoyment to your family.

You may have noticed that I am doing a lot of reviews lately.  I just wanted to let you know that this week will not be any different!  I have a couple more reviews that I will be posting that concern products from the TOS Homechool Crew focus group.  We are feeling very blessed in our home to get to try out so many great products and then tell you about them.

I hope that you are enjoying the reviews thus far.  There will be several more over the next few weeks and then it should slow down just a bit and things will be back to normal here.  Then the reviews will be scattered here and there.  We are excited that we have been chosen to review Auralog’s Tell Me More Language system that should be arriving in our home around Chrismas. We were also chosen to review The Latin Road to English Grammar.  We are definitely excited to review this and try it out.  We received the products in the mail yesterday.

The upcoming product reviews over the next few weeks are some great products.  Watch for my reviews on:

One 2 Believe

Time 4 Learning (3 more reviews!)

Salem Ridge Press

Rime to Read

Spears Art Studio

Schoolside Press

Trigger Memory Systems

Aleks

Motherboard Books

All About Spelling

Kinderbach

As you can see, we have been extremely busy around here trying out all of these great products!  We are having fun and learning the tricks to using all of these different products.  We orignally tried to just add them into our regular curriculum, but we have decided to set it aside for the moment and just focus on these.  It is a little less maddening this way.

I have learned that I really enjoy doing these reviews.  I imagine that I will continue to do reviews on homeschool products long after my time with the TOS Homeschool Crew is completed.  I hope that you are finding value here and that what I have to say about these products help you to decipher what will work in your own homeschool.  Let me know!

Photo provided by xandert, morguefile.com

I choose to give this product 4 out of 5 Gold Teacher’s Stars!

Now I realize that many homeschool parents only like their kids to read books that they consider to contain sustanence and not “fluff”.  However, I am of the opinion that a little “fluff” can go a long way in encouraging your child to read.  I encourage my son to read good wholesome books, but I don’t worry too much if he chooses to read “fluff” books.  He loves to read mysteries and he can often be found with a Hardy Boys novel in his hands. That is why I was pleased to be chosen to review the first book in The Truth Seekers Mysteries from Media Angels.

When we received the first book in the series, I immediately gave it to my 12 year old son to read.  I told him to give me his honest opinion about the book and tell me why he did or did not like the book.  He quickly read the entire book and raved over it.  He said he loved that The Missing Link: Found was a mystery and that the characters in the book remembered to pray for help.  He really liked the Christian emphasis and that the main characters talked about Creationism in contrast to evolution.

I then took the book and gave it a whirl.  I also liked the story.  There was a section that went into detail about why scientists believed in evolution that I thought was a little dry, just because there were so many facts stated.  But the main characters emphasized that they believed in creation rather than evolution.

There are several twists and turns in the book and the last two chapters sum up everything nicely with plenty of turns that change the outcome and make it surprising.  I thought it was well done.

Now, you need to understand that this book was begun by a 12 year old homeschool girl.  I found that to be quite outstanding.  It is written for a teenage audience.  I found it quite inspiring that such a young girl would take on a project such as this and do it well.  It was also inspiring for my son, who is currently working on his own novel for NanoWriMo.  It showed him that it was definitely possible to complete a novel at his age.

There are study guides available for each of the books in the series.  I think it would be very easy to make each of the books into a fun study unit.  There are lots of things to be learned in these novels besides literature.

I hope that if you decide to try this book, that you will enjoy it as much as we did.  In fact, we just may find the next two books in the series beneath the Christmas tree this year.  My son has requested them and I think it is a great idea!