Our Review of Britfield & the Lost Crown and Study Guide

We had an opportunity to review Britfield & the Lost Crown as well as the 83 page Study Guide. I'm pretty much game for any and all things English since I'm a dual citizen and just love England. I've been there several times so providing my children an opportunity to learn more about their grandmother's home country, is something I like to encourage. I offered the adventure novel to both my children and they both wanted to read it. For this review, however, I will utilize my 12 year old's thoughts and work. Before I dive into the novel, study guide and more, here is a quick overview of Britfield & the Lost Crown:

• Available in a 394 page physical book (soft cover or hard cover) or eBook.
• Written by C.R. Stewart, a native Californian, he has 20 years of experience in writing.
• An 83 page study guide provides additional opportunities to engage students into a fun learning experience. 
• Provides the reader with an opportunity to learn more about England as they follow best friends Tom and Sarah, orphans, through a mystery that teaches about family, loyalty and friendship. 
• The entire book and study guide are intended to be utilized over eight weeks depending on each student's ability. 
• Britfield & the Lost Crown has already received numerous awards in a short time period to include Book Excellent Award, Chanticleer (5 out of 5), 2019 Purple Dragonfly 1st Place Book Awards, Kids Buzz (5 out of 5), Story Monsters and many more!

The Book

The novel begins at Weatherly Orphanage in Aysgarth, Yorkshire, England. Weatherly was an old Elizabethan castle that has all the security built-in to keep those that were suppose to stay in, in and those not wanted, out. Tom, the main character is 12 years old, is liked by the other orphans and has a best friend named Sarah. Sarah is also 12, but is from Scotland. Tom has been at Weatherly all his life and only knows the cold, cruel, poverty of life there. On the other hand is Sarah, who only arrived two years earlier after her wealthy parents died in a mysterious accident. 

Mr. and Mrs. Grievous are the mean, unscrupulous, greedy and nasty owners of Weatherly who employ Mr. Speckle as their shady caretaker. The Grievous' purchased the castle years prior and if the orphanage remains private, the British government will continue to help pay for it. It is in their best interest to keep the orphanage to appear to be running smooth since they pocket most of the money. It was obvious by the appearance of the castle and the children, there was no oversight into their well being. The orphans occasionally sneak out to the Grievous' beautiful mansion to borrow a new book while exchanging an old one and outsmarting Wind the vicious watchdog of Mr. Speckles.

One night after Sarah got in trouble and was sent to the attic, Tom broke her out and the real adventures begin with the only clue to his past, the word BRITFIELD. The journey continues with added characters such as Detective Gowerstone and Dr. Hainsworth. Students feel part of the experience as they are transported across some of the most wonderful and beautiful places in England to which the book brings alive. Who wouldn't want to fly a hot air balloon all the way to Windsor Castle for a glimpse of the Queen? I don't want to give the book away as it has an ending that will reveal itself when you read it. There is another book following their adventures titled Britfield & the Rise of the Lion, Book II due to be released in 2020.

"I really liked how the characters developed through the story. Tom's background was sad but the adventures and mystery kept me wanting to read more," Jamie. 

My daughter LOVED the utilization of Latin at various parts of the novel.

On a side note, if the student wants to learn more about the locations and facts about the novel, the website provides excellent information to supplement from history to maps to glorious photographs. 

Also, students who want to learn more, enter contests, win prizes and collect merchandise can join the Britfield Academy and the Britfield Explorer's Club.

Study Guide

The downloadable study guide provides all the instructions needed to cover 17 chapters of the book with additional resources and answer key sections. Each section of the study guide is broken down to allow for one to two chapters to be read and discussed a week. For my review, I did have my student write her answers on a separate piece of paper because although the study guide is beautifully done with an old English paper appearance, I wanted to get the most out of my ink cartridge. With the answer keys residing in the back of the guide, she was able to complete the questions by working online from the downloaded guide.

Each section provides an opportunity for the student such as:

• Vocabulary with challenges such as finding the correct synonym for the underlined word, word searches, complete the sentence and more.
• Comprehension questions that ensures the student understood what they read.
• Going Deeper requires the student to think a bit further and helps to bring out critical thinking while utilizing grammar skills.
• Learn More with Technology allows the student to utilize research skills by looking up a specified topic and recording/reporting what was requested.

There are some other fun items on the website such as printable creativity quotes, ideas to make one's classroom more creative and much more.

Overall, I like how the study guide provides an opportunity to bring a cross array of educational learning to coincide with reading the novel. The novel is adventurous, fun and full of immense excitement. It's not a Christian based novel but there is nothing that detracts from it being an overall great educational opportunity while encouraging reading. As I always tell my children, knowledge truly is power and reading provides the opportunity. The reader never knows what will happen next which is the marking of good adventurous novel to me! As fellow authors, C.R. Stewart created a thrilling novel that inspired me and my 12 year old to write more. I would recommend the Britfield & the Lost Crown and the study guide.

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Annual Membership Plan by My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping Review

Planners and schedules are a hit or miss for me. I try to use them faithfully but always fall off the bandwagon. I do tend to write things down a lot and that has been my preferred way to track what I need to do. The problem with that, for me, is organization. I have notes everywhere to include planners and am constantly reminding my two girls to complete their work or inquiring if they did complete their work. This is why I was interested in reviewing the Annual Membership Plan by My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping. It's a planner and a calendar all in one. 

First, I'll discuss these two features. The Calendar provides a resource to track and handle appointments, errands, extra curricular activities and much more. It's also versatile in that the user can change the layout as well as color code each child's schedule. Another bonus is it can be exported and printed and is mobile. The user can even sign up for daily or weekly updates that are automatically sent to either the user's e-mail or the student's or even both. Here is an example screen shot of the calendar for today:

The Planbook provides a quick resource to stay on top of current, upcoming and overdue lessons, quizzes, tests, and projects. Lessons are marked completed or can be rescheduled or changed.

The Planbook is where the classes and details are added for each student. Once classes are added, assignments are then added. The versatility is a key to the entire program in that one can choose all the specific details for each lesson allowing the very basic information to more detailed to include dates, times and more.

Below provides a look of the lessons that I entered for one of my students. From this screen, I can edit one or all, mark done and grade.

There are many features within every functionality of the lessons. Once a lesson has been entered for the student, the user can enter a preset date to be completed by and the amount of time that it took to complete are both optional. Grade options are very versatile and do not constraint the user from providing a canned approach to each lesson and/or student. For example, types include assignment to experiment to not graded and much more.

There is always a cancel feature so the user functionality is really nice if you want to spend time exploring or if a mistake was made. 

Within the Planbook, there are options to change the course, school days, class time, grading settings and more. It's easy to add new courses as update current ones assigned.

Another feature I like is what is called Create-A-Plan. This has four options:

1. Quick Split which will divide the material into evenly distributed lessons. This is good for books which is why I used it for her reading assignment.
2. Quick Split Advanced is for more complex assignments with naming patterns.
3. Rapid Repeat is for pre-selected lessons such as household chores or other repeating tasks.
4. Rapid Repeat Advanced provides more flexibility with the steps or increments.

For my example on the Quick Split, I'm going to utilize her reading assignments. I can set the start date of the term or utilize "today." What is also nice is you can share the details across students thus saving time in having to keep re-entering information.

After completing the specifics, the lessons are generated for the student.

There are many other great features with drop down menus for each student allowing quick access to topics such as Attendance, Awards, Standardized Tests and much more.

The next features include the Homeroom and Reports. Homeroom provides the user a quick look as to each student's progress. This view is only a sampling of the page that is shown but provides a great look at to the complexity of what is provided. It's sort of the one stop shop for looking at where your child is with their lessons and the term they are in. 

Reports are a really nice feature since it allows the user to create lesson plans, course descriptions, transcripts, report cards and more. Here is an example of a transcript which to me, looks really professional:

The Teacher's Aid Homework Helper provides all the assistance needed to get started and continue with the tools to aid in success.  It also provides alerts to bring items that need attention to the user as well as the ability to see when assignments are completed.

Other key features to note:

• 100% mobile friendly - also uses QR codes
• Generate lessons on iPads
• Generate and download transcripts on phones
• Creation of unlimited students

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I only covered a portion of what is offered with the Annual Membership Plan by My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping. It's really a great resource to have for the homeschool parent.

Check out what others on the Homeschool Review Crew, a division of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, thought by clicking on the (photo) link below: 

Our Review of Eighth Grade Literature Guide Set by Memoria Press

One of the reasons I chose to homeschool is I want to be able to teach from a classical Christian education standpoint. I've been homeschooling for many years and have tried a variety of different homeschool curriculum even before joining the Crew which is how I have been introduced to Memoria Press. I was delighted to participate in the review for the Eighth Grade Literature Guide Set. This was an amazing comprehensive curriculum that provided some of the classics with accompanied literature guides such as Wind in the Willows Literature Guide, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Literature Guide, Treasure Island Literature Guide, and As You Like It Literature Guide. The premise behind the literature study guides is that they train the students to become active readers. Fortunately for me, my girls already love to read.

The curriculum, four literature guides with four corresponding novels to include teachers guides, works by utilizing spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing skills. Each lesson contains a work study that helps to build the student's vocabulary. The comprehension questions helps to build a student's comfort and confidence in understanding what they read and the important part of what they read. This is vital for educational tests from my experience as they tend to always ask those type of questions. The composition gears them to write clearly and concise. The expectation is the child/student will complete each novel in approximately six or seven weeks.

For my review, I will cover Treasure Island a bit more thorough than the others with examples. Other items, such as Contents, Introductions, etc., that are the same across all Literature Guides, will be reviewed first. 

Teacher Guide

Teacher's Guide begins with a clear table of contents that helps to navigate quickly across chapters, discussion question keys, quizzes and final test with keys as well as an appendix of terms specific to the literature classic that Guide corresponds to. The Teacher's Guide provides helpful information on utilizing the Literature Guides with older or younger students. This is an active course for the teacher/parent to help the student progress through each lesson which I really enjoyed learning more along side my daughter. 

Student Study Guide

The Student Study Guide has the same table of contents and information on beginning the Literature Guide. There is an introduction of the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, that was very interesting and provided a nice beginning for answering the assignments.

The Guide contains one or more chapters per set of questions that appear across all the Literature Guides that include:

• Reading Notes includes important aspects of the novel such as Jim Hawkins, the narrator of the story or the Captain Billy Bones who was the old seaman.
• Vocabulary words are words or phrases obtained from the novel that will require the student to write out the meaning. The instructional states to encourage the student to say one synonym for each word as well.
• Comprehension Questions are either written or can be completed orally if one would be better suited for your child/student. The task of writing helps to prepare the child/student to learn and think as well as write concisely.
• Quotation and Discussion Questions can be utilized orally or written in the Student Study Guide. It provides an opportunity to encourage the child/student to think higher about the topic at hand. 
• Enrichment activities include composition, copywork, dictation, research, mapping, drawing, poetry, and more.
• Unit Review and Tests.

Treasure Island Literature Guide

The 89 page Student Guide provides lessons for the novel's 36 chapters. For Chapters 1 and 2 of Treasure Island, my daughter began working on the Student Study Guide questions after reading.

For Chapter 3, she continued working on her own which was nice she was able to complete her work with little supervision. We did discuss the answers and we worked on the Discussion questions orally.

There is an appendix to this Student Guide that provides a quick reference to the vocabulary words and other great information like parts of a ship and sails. The extra information that corresponds with the novel is a nice feature.

She tends to switch from room to room and floor to desk when completing her school work. She's gearing up to take the first quiz and did a good job.

The Wind in the Willows Literature Guide

The 53 page Student Guide covered the novel's 12 chapters. I just started this one with my other daughter as it seemed like a good place to start with her. Treasure Island seemed to be a little more difficult than The Wind in the Willows is what guided my decision. The novels chosen are lesser known to this generation and I think it's a great way to expand their breadth of literary works and writing styles. The questions and format is similar to Treasure Island's Literature Guide. Here is a sample from one of her pages and prior to sitting down and discussing her answers:

As was the Treasure Island assignments, Memoria Press does an excellent job with thought-provoking questions requiring the child/student to think and not just jot down what they remembered.

She is a budding author and tends to like literature programs where she can increase her knowledge and skill. She said she liked how the questions made her think deeper. Unfortunately, I didn't get to dive deeper into this classic as she decided late in the review cycle to want to try it out.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Literature Guide and 
As You Like It Literature Guide are set up like the other two Literature Guides with the question and other lesson activities. I plan to utilize all four with my one daughter and will also purchase extra Student Guides for each one so my other daughter can complete the course. I am a huge fan of Memoria Press and always look forward to their next course or curriculum we try.

Stay up to date with Memoria Press on the following social media platforms:  Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube. and Instagram.

Overall, I highly recommend Memoria Press and the Eighth Grade Literature Guide Set.

Check out what others on the Homeschool Review Crew, a division of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, thought by clicking on the (photo) link below:

Library and Educational Services LLC Homeschool Review

I post often about topics pertaining to history which ties into this review as we are a family of readers. My father told me often how he used to read when he was a child and continued to read as an adult. I admit that I didn't read as many books as I should but I did and continue to read. I love knowledge and have instilled that into my children. I was anxious and very eager to review Library and Educational Services LLC. If you have not heard of them, they are a family company that provide services to schools, churches, libraries, and resellers. They are perfect for the homeschooling family, church groups and teachers given the breadth of books and subjects they offer. 

For our review, we selected Who Were the Brothers Grimm?, Lifehouse Theater Pride and Prejudice CD, and the Primary Sources of Famous People in American History - Set of 11 from the Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction books.

The Details:

Who Were the Brothers Grimm?

My youngest loves the Who Was ... series to the extent that they've appeared on past Christmas wish lists. She picked Who Were the Brothers Grimm? If you aren't familiar with the book series, they aren't long in length and are filled with black and white illustrations. They provide an entertaining amount of information that covers the main facts about each person(s) they cover. Every time she reads one, I hear with such delight all the facts she learned about the person in question. She absolutely loves each one that she's read to date.

Her short review:

"I liked how it informed the reader on what it was like during their time and provided so much information on the brothers."

The words are of a good font and the books aren't too long to read. She's read many of the books in one sitting due to how captivated she becomes reading them.

Every Who Was ... Who Were .. has a timeline of the person's life compared to a world timeline of major events.

 

Lifehouse Theater Pride and Prejudice CD

This was one of my favorites mostly because I've read the book and watched many renditions of the movies. At 73 minutes in length, it's great for trips in the car or some time to sit around to listen and let the imagination conjure up images of how each character looks. Is Elizabeth the beautiful one or is it Jane? Is Mr. Darcy as dashing as you expect or just a prude? It's fun going through the audio and asking my girls what they think. The actors portraying each character is superbly done and makes me think I'm watching one of the actual movies.

There is a curriculum guide available too that includes a timeline of Jane's life, content and review questions as well as interesting facts, quotes by Jane Austen and a further discussion set of questions. I didn't have them write them out rather I utilized it as an open discussion session to make it more fun. One of the questions challenged them to provide some of their goals and accomplishments that they would like to achieve which was fun to hear their answers.

Primary Sources of Famous People in American History - Set of 11 from the Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction Books

The Primary Sources of Famous People in American History - Set of 11 from the Reinforced Hardcover Library Binding Nonfiction books included the following 11 books:

1. John Sutter California Pioneer
2. Wild Bill Hickok Legend of the Wild West
3. Wyatt Earp Lawmen of the American West
4. Cynthia Ann Parker Comanche Captive
5. Cochise Apache Chief
6. Sitting Bull Sioux War Chief
7. Francisca Alvarez The Angel of Goliad
8. John Paul Jones American Naval Hero
9. Abigail Adams Famous First Lady
10. Benjamin Franklin Early American Genius
11. George Washington Father of the Nation

Each book contained a Contents section broken into chapters for faster reference. They contained both color and black and white images as well as black and white illustrations to include maps and diagrams. Each one is very informative and written in a basic style to be read easily by children. 

Benjamin Franklin, for example, started with when and where he was born, and continued with his life and journey to make him one of America's early geniuses. It's followed by a timeline of his life, a glossary, websites to refer to, source for photos, and an index.

Another example is from John Sutter California Pioneer. Like the other books, they are 32 pages in length and full of engaging facts about the person. Each book provides just a brief but excellent overview of the highlights of their lives. It's a great series to have for any library with children. They did enjoy reading them and were able to finish a book a day when we had days designated for reading. I often would read and either before or after them and led open discussions to reinforce the important facts of each individual.

Library and Educational Services LLC also has a nice selection of DVDs, CDs, Bibles and more too. There are gifts and crafts and much much more! As former military, they ship worldwide to include military bases which is very pleasing. Every item we reviewed I loved and they did too. Although they did not find every one of the biographies from the Primary Sources of Famous People in American History as exciting as some, they still learned a lot and I definitely want to expand our library.

For a limited time, they have the Who Was? What Was? and Where is? books on sale!

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Check out what others on the Homeschool Review Crew, a division of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, thought by clicking on the (photo) link below: