Picaboo Yearbooks- Schoolhouse Review

As homeschoolers, we don't always have formal markings of each year. Having a yearbook of activities and extra classes and field trips helps with this. I am so thrilled with a product I just got to review- Picaboo Yearbooks!  Picaboo Yearbooks is a company which enables schools, co-ops, clubs, and other organizations to create yearbooks. They sell both hardcover and softcover yearbooks. I was able to review a custom 20 Page Softcover Yearbook for my family.

Creating a yearbook is really easy. Once I created a new account and new yearbook, I was ready to start my yearbook. (This can be done by anyone before committing to buy). I knew I had 20 pages so I chose to divide up my book by month and gave a couple pages to each month from September to June. I could have just as easily divided my book up into other categories like Tiger, Butterfly, Pumpkin Pie… or by subjects or classes.  These divisions are called sections by the software. Each section gets a name that makes for easy navigation and compilation. Each section is worked on individually rather than working on the whole book at once. Pictures are uploaded into each section. There is a way to use pictures uploaded into other sections, but primarily you work with the pictures uploaded in that section. Uploading is easy with the multi-picture uploading tool. After the pictures are uploaded into the sections, it is time to go to work laying them out.

Picaboo Yearbooks has so many options and tools available, more than I have found elsewhere, to help you lay out your yearbook in a pleasing manner. For example, there are pre-set pages with locations for pictures and text or you can create free-form pages. Even if you select a page layout with a certain number of pictures, you can customize the layout with more or less pictures, new sizes, and changes to the text boxes.There are also many tools available to work with pictures like borders, zoom, crop, shape, rotate, etc. Each one of the features allows for further customization beyond the default settings. For example, borders can vary in color, thickness, and which pictures have borders. Zooming in and cropping are really easy so just the part of the picture you want is visible or highlighted. Picaboo also includes in their compilation software a myriad backgrounds, graphics, and fonts. Colors for borders, text, and text boxes can be matched to colors within the photos (using an eyedropper tool) and the color palette for your book is stored so you can reuse a certain exact shade again later.  In addition, any user uploaded picture or graphic can be used in creative ways. For example, in my book I used a photo I took as the background on a few pages including my cover.

Picaboo offers many "stickers" or small graphics to use in the photo layouts. Stickers can also be user-created. I uploaded graphic as a sticker for my son’s Arrow of Light.

One feature I absolutely loved was the lines that would pop up when I was lining up photos. When I placed a picture of Tiger on the cover and then when I placed the picture of Butterfly, I was able to line it up with the guide lines. It was great that they didn’t stay on the page and clutter my screen but appeared when I was moving things and the images lined up.

At times the interface was frustrating and I wished there was a help screen within the edit interface. Once I got the hang of it, it got really easy though. I did find a user’s manual after digging around the site a lot right before submitting my book to order. The manual can be found here. Really, the most difficult part about compiling my yearbook was deciding what pictures to include! One thing that I thought could be improved is the inability to upload .gif image files. I wanted to upload some clipart but couldn’t unless it was in .jpg format.

Because the yearbook in process is stored on the Picaboo server, Picaboo Yearbooks allows for multiple people to work on the yearbook anywhere they have access to the computer and internet. This is especially helpful for a co-op or club. Since my yearbook was just for my family, I didn’t use this feature, but I could have invited others to add to my yearbook. After writing my review and receiving my book, the yearbook editor at our co-op decided to use Picaboo for our yearbook. She went through all the steps of setting up the yearbook and then invited me and a few other parents to work on the yearbook. As the administrator, she can authorize or deauthorize access to whichever pages she wants to have someone work on. Working in a group on our co-op yearbook is every bit as easy as working on my own yearbook.

For the most part customer service was excellent. I did have one minor snag when I had a technical glitch just before finalizing my book. The agent I spoke with did as much as she could before upgrading my problem to a technical specialist. She had told me she would call me back with an update but didn’t. When I called back to follow up, the next agent was extremely helpful and the technical glitch got fixed quickly. This time I did receive a call back when it was fixed.  I also took advantage of the online chat feature a few times when I could not figure out how to do something on a page within the book. Both times the agents were extremely helpful.

After ordering my book, I waited impatiently for its arrival. The yearbook is gorgeous! The pictures were vibrant, true to color, and crisp. The pages were heavy-weight and had a nice hand to them. I was also pleasantly surprised with the quality of the cover. The paper felt almost like a leathery plastic paper and was nice and thick for durability. It has been looked at many times and everyone who sees it comments on the quality.

Picaboo Yearbooks are for everyone. I think that for the most part, middle school and up will be able to handle the layout portion, but everyone can enjoy the finished product. For 20 pages, a softcover book is $8.49. Additional pages are $0.22 each. Hardcover prices are about $10 more. Shipping is $8.99 for 1 book and $.99 for each additional copy. Additionally, ebooks are available free with the purchase of a yearbook. The ebooks can be viewed on a tablet or computer that uses an ePub reader. Picaboo Yearbooks are great for both families and groups.

 I am going to start working on my yearbook for next year right away!

Birthday Fun

Pumpkin Pie wanted to take her cousins and do something fun. They had been to a local family fun center as a family reward and couldn’t wait to go back so they began informing her of all the benefits of going. LOL Pumpkin Pie wanted to go. Since it was really hot outside and we would have 2 three year olds in tow, we decided that mini golf wasn’t going to be too fun. The bigger kids decided on bumper boats.

The littler kids were too short for bumper boats, so they opted for mini bumper cars.

  Both Strawberry and my nephew were too little to push a button and steer at the same time… so the attendant had to keep running out and getting them unstuck and going again.

On the bumper boats, the kids were allowed about five minutes to play. For $5.50 a piece, that was ridiculous and they were disappointed that they had to get out. My sister and I decided that we would spring for $10 in tokens (about 8 tokens per person) so they could play a couple games in the arcade. That was a better value for our money for sure. The kids had a ton of fun.

Butterfly figured out that if she competed against her brother she could get more tickets… so she offered him a token to play on the other side of the board with the caveat that she got all the tickets that were produced!

I loved that Butterfly helped Strawberry with the ducks.

For dinner we went to Pumpkin Pie’s choice- Cafe Rio. I think that even though Daddy was back at home and not with us, Pumpkin Pie had a great birthday.

Happy Birthday Pumpkin Pie!

I can’t believe that Pumpkin Pie is now 7.

Then…

And Now…

    

For some funny reason, Pumpkin Pie likes to frown when I try to take her picture… I told her I was trying to take a birthday picture and she immediately frowned for it! After I took it she laughed.

At 7, she loves karate, playing dolls and dress-up with her sisters, and learning time. She loves her class in Primary and looks forward to co-op each week. She doesn’t want to be left behind and is constantly striving to learn and do more. She knows what she wants and isn’t easily deterred. She will not allow anyone to push her around. She also loves to laugh and be a bit silly. She adores her baby brother and likes to wrap her arms around her little sister and chant, “Always a team,” as they walk around the room. She is fiercely competitive and age means nothing to her. She has no fear of older kids or new situations and is always thrilled to compete with the big kids in karate, especially if she wins! She doesn’t want to play games labeled for her age, she wants to play her brother and dad in Dominion.

On Making a Roadtrip with Little Ones

I drove 2200 miles with 5 kids and survived… barely.

Ok really it wasn’t that bad. The drive out there was as I expected it to go. The drive home- not so much.

So, how do I drive with 5 little ones 11-3.5 months? I prepare. That was the problem coming home. I had all my stuff in the car but not organized and ready for the 3 year old. I had packed the car in the dark and was tired and in a hurry. I also just wanted to get home. If I had taken a few more minutes preparing to make things go right, I might have saved myself a few hours of going wrong.

What works:

Exercise! At potty stops, have the children run to trees and back several times.

Snacks! Have healthy snacks available and present them in no-mess containers like the little Gladware containers that fit in cup holders. I had some dried fruit, trail mix, and arari crackers from Trader Joe’s. These little cups are great because they fit in the cup holder and don’t spill.

Toy Bags! I pack a toy bag for each child. It contains coloring or activity books and a couple of car appropriate toys. I also have a toy bag with a few new toys by me which I parcel out during the trip. Having the bags packed and ready to use helps the little ones find things. Unfortunately on our trip home, my daughter Strawberry had her stuff scattered all over the car and her sisters weren’t very good about giving it to her. Having it in the bag helps her to see what she wants to play with.  

Audio books! I don’t do movies in the car. But we do audio books. Either on CD or downloaded from the library’s collection. A good story can make the driving more interesting. I also have several Sansa Clip mp3 players for the kids and kid headphones so they could listen to their own stories too. Each mp3 player I loaded with stories that child would like.

 

Water! Have a water bottle for each person to drink during the trip. 

Interim Milestones and good food! On a very long trip, there have to be interim milestones and celebrations to keep everyone motivated to get along. Meal times make great milestones. Parks and restaurants you know the location of are great places to stop and eat. Over the years, we have discovered a few restaurants that are about at proper meal time spacing on our trip. They have food that my family eats (vegetarian, whole food) and my kids look forward to going to those places. I look forward to eating something that will keep me fueled to keep driving. The break from the car also helps with enthusiasm. Yes, it takes more time to stop and sit down, but it also helps the drive go faster. Food doesn’t have to be expensive, just quality.

Here we stopped at a restaurant for dinner, but before that we stopped on the side of the road with a picnic lunch. I find it is good to mix sit down with picnics on the drive and try to have one of each during each long leg of the journey.

Dig-It Games- Schoolhouse Review

As a kid I remember playing various educational history based computer games with fondness. I don’t know how much I actually learned from them, but I had fun playing them. As summer approached, I was excited for the opportunity to review a Dig-It Games game about the Mayan civilization. June was so crazy with end of the year things that I thought Mayan Mysteries Online Game would be a fun change to our learning time. Mayan Mysteries is designed for children in grades 5-9. It is available either as an iPad game or online. The online version can be played both on a computer and a tablet. We used my Kindle Fire to play a few times.

Mayan Mysteries is an adventure game where students travel to different geographical regions, interview people, read information regarding the Mayan civilization and archeology, take short quizzes in the form of a game, excavate artifacts and discover who the thief is. Games include working with Mayan numbers and learning the calendar, decoding glyphs, and exploring and identifying artifacts.

Tiger really enjoyed playing Mayan Mysteries. In the past he had studied the Mayan civilization so not everything was brand new, but this was a good review and opportunity to learn a lot more about the Mayan civilization. It also provided him with an educational opportunity while we were visiting family. Tiger needs to do some learning every day or he tends to get unhappy. He didn’t want to go and sit and study while we were visiting cousins, but he didn’t mind playing a game while the cousins were napping.

This game is definitely easier to play on a computer, but it worked to play on the Kindle Fire. On the tablet, the entire screen was not always visible. As a result, a couple of games were very difficult to scroll around the screen to play. Also, some parts had complex details and the pictures were a little small. On the computer this would be no problem. A couple of times Tiger had to repeat a game because he clicked back instead of continue (he didn’t see the continue button) and this frustrated him, but overall he loved the game. I really liked the variety of games and topics covered. Everything from daily life to calendar and math to religion. He also learned a little about the geography and trade routes of Central America.

Mayan Mysteries is available for $21.99 for a 1 year license. The game has approximately 12 hours of playing time. I thought this game was well put together and played well. Unlike the educational games of my day, I think Tiger actually learned something from playing the game. I can’t wait to check out Dig-It Games other games too!

Reading Merit Badge

I am a Boy Scout mom. I love scouts of the opportunities scouts provides Tiger to try new things.

  

Tiger is working on his reading merit badge for Boy Scouts. Reading isn’t a new thing per se, but the Reading Merit Badge requires he expand his literary repertoire and try new genres. One book he checked out was a sandwich cookbook since he enjoys cooking and needed a non-fiction book. We got to reap the benefits for lunch last week- Navajo Tacos from Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day!  

It was tasty!

Teaching the Classics- IEW Schoolhouse Review

Institute for Excellence in Writing has long been known for its seminars for parents and teachers to learn to teach writing. Recently I was presented with the opportunity to review Teaching the Classics. Would it stand up to the quality that I have come to know and love with products from IEW?

Teaching the Classics consists of a seminar on 4 DVDs and a 97 page workbook. The workbook consists of notes from the lecture, story analysis charts and questions for each work covered, and several appendices. The appendices include an extensive list of Socratic questions which could be asked to facilitate a discussion on a literary work, a classics book list broken down into age ranges, and a glossary of terms. The Teaching the Classics seminar is intended to teach parents and teachers how to teach basic literary analysis to children of all ages. The complete package retails for $89.

For me, literary analysis has been a bit of a stumbling block. I value quality literature for reading purposes, and as I have matured, I have noticed how great works can change a person. Due to my experiences with literature in high school and college, I have not wanted to spend much time doing literary analysis though. Recently, I have begun to ponder on the necessity of analysis and came to the conclusion that it really is necessary if one is to learn from a piece of writing. Since I want my children to think about the works they read and understand how to analyze them, I need to know how to teach it to my children. I don’t want to be like the teachers I had in high school and college so I was really excited to get to review this seminar.

Throughout the seminar, Adam Andrews was engaging and animated. He had me laughing within the first minute. While he is excited to teach about literary analysis, he is a historian by training. As a result, he brought many fascinating historical details into his discussions of some of the works covered. I am happy to say there was no stuffiness or self-importance in this seminar. Andrews teaches the basics of literary analysis and how to teach it through familiar short stories, most which are often read to children because he contends that the skill of analysis is best learned through children’s stories before moving on to the more meaty classics.

I really identified with what was being taught, perhaps because of the educational models which were mentioned in the lectures. He primarily pulled from classical education and leadership education philosophies. I found that he had a good grasp on developmental stages of children and made special notes on ways to teach even the smallest students. Because he believes in inspiring children to love literature, he was very clear that the Socratic list was not a worksheet, nor was the story chart. It was a tool for discussion. I loved this!

After watching this seminar and going through the syllabus, I feel like I have a better grasp on how to approach analysis with my children- one step at a time. I love the list of Socratic questions. They ranged in difficulty from questions to ask my youngest children like, “Who is this story about?” to much more complex questions which require deeper thinking.  The only thing I would change is that occasionally I couldn’t hear the students’ answers in the seminar. I really don’t like listening to a lecture where I can’t hear the questions being asked! The only other thing is I wished I had read To Kill a Mockingbird more recently than 7th grade. Several times To Kill a Mockingbird was referenced in the lectures. Time to re-read it and re-watch the seminar!

I would say that Teaching the Classics lived up to the IEW reputation. Like a good class at a homeschool convention, Teaching the Classics has inspired me and given me a few tools to go to work with.

The crew also recently reviewed IEW’s writing programs. Be sure to check out the reviews.