Bessie's Pillow - A TOS Homeschool Crew Review

In early February I learned I would be part of the Crew doing a review for Strong Learning, Inc.


Members of the Homeschool Review Crew received copies of the book, Bessie's Pillow.
My son and I have been studying Spanish, and I was delighted to learn there is a bi-lingual version of Bessie's Pillow, and Strong Learning sent me this bilingual version! Unfortunately, for some reason the postal service delayed my book's delivery for weeks, so the English version is all that has been read so far. This was necessary in order to finish the book in time for the review!

The bilingual version is about 10" X 14" and is spiral-bound. The content is presented with one column in Spanish and one column in English on each page.

I had been informed there is a study guide to go along with Bessie's Pillow, so today I hunted around on the website to see what I could find. When you click the Bessie's Pillow link, you can see a menu bar across the top of the page. If you click on the For Teachers link, there are useful links to further your studies. You can get information about radio and movies during Bessie's era, as well as photos from Bessie's life, on the link for  “Bessie’s America.” There is also a link to the Bessie’s Pillow Teacher Guide which gives discussion questions and project and term paper ideas. In addition, Strong Learning offers a Companion Workbook available both in English and bilingual English/Spanish.

Bessie's life rings echos around many aspects of my family's immigration stories, so I have decided to give you stories of Bessie's life and parallel them with snippets from my family histories.

In 1906, when Bessie was 18 years old, she left her family in Glubokoye, Russia to escape the Russian pogroms that were being exercised against the Jews in Russia. This is around the time that my husband's Jewish ancestors fled from Odessa, Russia to escape the pogroms.

When Bessie was leaving Glubokoye, a woman named Mrs. Dreizen approached Bessie with a pillow, begging Bessie to try to get it to the woman's son, Nathan, in New Rochelle. This pillow, "Bessie's pillow", provided Bessie much comfort for many days ahead. In Yiddish the pillow's needlepoint said, "May this pillow bring you peace!" 

Bessie traveled alone, an act relatively uncommon. Young women did not travel alone. They just didn't. Bessie was a courageous woman to do such a thing. I can't tell you how eerie this was for me to read, knowing that my great grandmother, Emma Savilahti left her homeland alone in 1901 and traveled to America, celebrating her 20th birthday while she was on board the ship. Emma and Bessie both entered the United States at Ellis Island, New York. I've been there and I saw Emma's documentation of arrival.

Bessie settled in New York and built her life there.  Bessie eventually found Nathan Dreizen and delivered the pillow. In time they fell in love and married. Over the course of time they had children.

With two young children, Bessie and Nathan were devastated when their children, one by one, contracted Scarlet Fever and died. This was very sobering to me. At the age of 10 I, too, had Scarlet Fever. I was quarantined and treated with a medicine that was relatively new in 1968, penicillin. As you see, I recovered.

I already feel like I've revealed too many spoilers in my attempt to show parallels, but let me just reveal one more. Bessie and Nathan went on to have four more children. Sadly, Nathan dropped dead of a heart attack at age 44, leaving Bessie a widow needing to find a way to provide for four children. My grandmother, Esther, with four children, had to become a business woman to provide for her four children after her husband died when my mother was 9, in 1942.

Nathan's pillow again became Bessie's pillow and a source of comfort. In time of mourning, Bessie would hug the pillow tightly as she cried.

Bessie was an amazing woman. She was a successful business woman who, because of her love and compassion for others, often used her resources to provide for others. In her earlier days she visits the Hebrew Orphan Asylum with dreidels, candles and a menorah. Later it is bread or meals to the needy. As a successful older business woman she provides mortgages to people the banks refuse to lend to! She was quite a woman!

Bessie's Pillow is a compelling book. It is a fabulous launching tool for early American social studies. “Bessie’s America” provides links to radio shows and lists of movies from Bessie's time, many of which are some of my favorite all-time movies! I highly recommend this book to you for your personal enjoyment and for the benefit of your home school. I am looking forward, now to going back to the book to work my way through the content in Spanish. 

Other members of The Homeschool Review Crew have also written reviews of Bessie's Pillow. To see more reviews, please click below:

The Dragon and the Raven - A Schoolhouse Crew Review

The Schoolhouse Review Crew was recently given the opportunity to review a new audio production for Heirloom Audio Productions.

The product is their newest audio drama, The Dragon and the Raven, a dramatization of the book by G.A. Henty by the same name.

I asked begged for this review because my whole family has enjoyed every one of the audio dramas Heirloom has produced thus far. You can read my reviews: Under Drake's Flag; In Freedom's Cause; and With Lee in Virginia. My adult daughter in Virginia even waits anxiously for us to finish with these products and pass them along to her for her to enjoy on her long drives to and from work!

The package we received from Heirloom contained a 2-CD package with a beautiful activity booklet inside. There was also a letter enclosed, from The Dragon and the Raven's Associate Producer, Aaron Fullan, divulging to us our secret information to log in to get our product bonuses (to be described below).

 The Dragon and the Raven audio drama is suitable for ages 6 to adult.

The package from Heirloom arrived at a perfect time for us. For over two years, my son and I have been

The Salem Adventure - A Book Review

Our America... The Salem Adventure, by Susan Kilbride, is a historical fiction that focuses on the sad era of our history commonly known as "The Salem Witch Trials".

The Salem Adventure is the third book in the Our America... series. The first two books, with the reviews I wrote linked to each, are Our America... The Pilgrim Adventure and Our America... The King Philip's War Adventure.

Finn and Ginny are twins. They are currently living with their Aunt Martha and Uncle Peter, and they are home schooled! Uncle Peter is an inventor. One day, when Finn and Ginny's mom and dad were visiting Peter and Martha, they disappeared. They haven't been heard from since.

It turns out that Uncle Peter developed a device for time travel, and Mom and Dad apparently triggered the mechanism, thinking it was a television remote, and disappeared to another time and place in the family's history. Uncle Peter tried to find them, but failed. Finn and Ginny learned how the device works and have secretly been searching for Mom and Dad on their own, as well, whenever they can get away with it.

Whenever using the time travel device, Finn and Ginny have learned that they must hold hands during the time travel, or they get separated and land in the same time but in different locations. They always land in a time and place of someone they are related to, and by some twist of the device they arrive in proper attire, and their relatives recognize them, and they somehow suddenly fit into the timeline they are visiting. They can tell from the time travel device how long they have until they will be whisked back to their true timeline, and they must always make sure they are together with the time travel device at that time or they will get left there, like their mom and dad did. Not knowing how the device works, their mom and dad somehow got whisked to the past somewhere and do not have the time travel device with them to get them back to the present time.

In The Salem Adventure, Finn and Ginny have another opportunity to search for their parents when their aunt and uncle will both be away for the day. Ginny had heard someone gossiping about her parents at the store the day before, and was very motivated to search some more. Holding hands, they press the button on the remote, and after a quick trip through time and space they arrive in a snowy sometime and somewhere that they must figure out. They learn that they must stay with different families -- as if their parents had died and they had been taken in by different relatives. 

As it turns out, they are in Salem Massachusetts in the winter of 1691-1692. It doesn't take long for them to observe tensions in the community that lead to accusations of citizens that astonish both the twins. What is even more astonishing is that, despite the audacity of the accusations, that individuals in the community are practicing witches, the individuals in authority are taking the accusations seriously and executing individuals who are accused just on the basis of the testimony of a couple of girls.

I read this book out loud to my son, and he became engaged in the story line. He became really angry that those "stupid girls" were just acting, making false accusations, and even more that people were believing them. I explained that this actually happened at this time in our country's history, and that individuals were duped because of their superstitious. He still finds it hard to grasp.

I won't give away the story, because you want to read the book and enjoy the adventure yourself. Suffice it to say that the story ends with Finn and Ginny returning to the time they had left, but they still have not found their parents, so the Our America... series will continue as Finn and Ginny continue to search for their parents.

The Salem Adventure  is available as a paperback book from Amazon.com for $7.95, or in Kindle version for $4.95. The Salem Adventure comes with a free unit study guide that can be saved as a .pdf file onto your computer. (All of the Our America... series books come with the free unit study guide.) I did not use the guide, as my son is in 9th grade and already has a heavy school work load. We read the book for enjoyment as much as for education. Since he is getting older, I wasn't sure if we would read the next book in the series. I asked him if he wanted to read the next adventure, and his answer was an emphatic, "YES!"

We received Our America... The Revolutionary War Adventure in the mail a couple of days ago, so we will begin reading it shortly. You can watch for our review of the next adventure hopefully in about eight weeks. There is also another book already published, which is book five in the series: Our America... The Pioneer Adventure. I'm going to try to be diligent with reading and reviewing these books quickly, because their target audience is for students aged 10 to 13, so chances are my son might begin to lose interest. If I blast through them quickly enough I think he might stay interested for awhile.

Susan Kilbride, the author, home schools her children in a state that is currently buried in snow. (I'm not giving away much there -- half the country is currently buried in snow!) She writes these adventures because she knows that the best way teach history is through stories that engage the students. She has been very kind to provide me with free copies of each book in exchange for my review. I have received no other compensation.

For the Temple - A TOS Schoolhouse Crew Review

 In early September I learned that Jim Hodges Productions would be sending selected Crew members CDs from their collection of recorded books by G.A. Henty. There was a large selection to choose from, and it took me a while to decide to request For the Temple as our book of choice, because it was a good fit with the era of history we were studying.

The full title of the book and CD is For the Temple: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem. The setting for the story is Palestine and Jerusalem, and the time frame is AD 70. In addition to the physical CD, we also received a digital version of the For the Temple Study Guide.

I never cease to be amazed at the way our studies regularly intertwine, making it easier for us to grasp the material we are studying. Our church has been going through the book of Acts, and in Acts 26, Paul is being tried before King Agrippa, Herod and Bernice -- all of whom are mentioned in the story of For the Temple! So immediately this reinforces to me that someone who saw Jesus could have still been alive when the temple fell! Flavius Josephus is also mentioned -- he is not mentioned in the Bible, but he was a major player in the time and left a written record that is considered a major historical source for this time period.

I love this type of learning, where the era we are studying in history and in our Bible studies can be reinforced in our literature reading and in other ways. The study guide that was created to be used with the CD makes it possible to further intertwine the educational disciplines. The study guide's vocabulary lists can be used to:

• increase vocabulary;
• strengthen dictionary skills;
• create spelling lists.

In addition, the discussion questions can count toward "reading comprehension", and also make it easier to make sure your student is listening well and making sure they are following the story and understanding what is said. Additional language arts skills covered in the study guide are character sketches, personification, idioms, alphabetization and creative writing (newspaper article). Study Guide activities also cover Geography, Art, and discussions of climate. There are quizzes at the end of each chapter, and an answer key at the end. The Study Guide enables to reader to make a complete unit study out of the reading of For the Temple!

For the Temple contains 11 hours of listening, broken up into 19 chapters. That means each chapter takes less than an hour to listen to. My son did quite well focusing on the story while just listening. I myself found that difficult, as my mind would stray and I would stop listening. For some of us the best method would be listening with our ears and reading with our eyes, so I checked books.Google.com and found there is a FREE pdf version of For the Temple available for download. Using this I can read and listen simultaneously and stay focused.

Our schedule was carrying a very heavy workload while we were listening to For the Temple, so what was comfortable for us (to balance the listening with the Study Guide) was to listen to the story chapter and then to cover part of the study guide orally. My son is in 9th grade and already knew part of the vocabulary, and could also understand part of it through the way it was used in a sentence. I did not cover every vocabulary word, but selected ones I thought he would not know. I quickly acquired definitions through an on-line website so that I could ask him, "Do you know what 'ubiquitous' means?" And if he did not know I would provide the definition. I did run across vocabulary not in the online definition database ("sestercest"), and it wasn't in my hard copy dictionary either. The answer key does not provide definitions for the vocabulary. I'm glad I did not assign that one to my son! It always frustrates kids when you assign them something they cannot do!

I also used the reading comprehension questions to make sure my son was really getting what he was listening to. He was. (Not being such an auditory learner myself, I desperately wanted to find that he needed to read along while he listened, but he just didn't!) So at the end of a chapter, I asked him about vocabulary words and we discussed some comprehension questions. The other items in the Study Guide looked real appealing to me, but we were very busy and opted not to do more. My son has previously done some of the crafts (making model war machines) and Geography,

I was not really able to get my son very interested in the story. Now I myself am a lover of history, and I love when literature makes historical facts easier to remember, but my son not so much. History does not interest him, and historical fiction does not interest him. He also has never had any particular interest in "war" stories. So while I myself enjoyed our time learning about the fall of the temple, my son was merely obediently doing his assignment, with no particular interest, and the ever-present question in his eye ("Are we done yet?). So this historical fiction got a yawn from my son. 

I myself always appreciate recorded literature, and I consider the Henty historical fiction line to be very worthwhile. I really enjoyed listening to For the Temple with my son, and working through the study guide with him. Since I did not listen/read the entire way, there are huge chunks of content that I feel I missed, so I am planning to read/listen again to get the full understanding. It amazes me how much I miss with just listening! It amazes me how different my son and I are in that respect!

For the Temple and G.A. Henty's other works are best for ages 10 and up. The CD is an MP3, which means that it will play on your computer's CD/DVD player. It will also play on most DVD players, and it will play on any CD player that is a CD/MP3 player (not all are).

For the Temple CD sells for $25, or you can get a digital download for only $10! You can listen to a Free MP3 Download of Chapter 9 to get a taste of listening to Jim Hodges reading aloud, and you can also listen to Jim's comments on this book.  G.A. Henty historical fiction falls into the category of books that takes some patience to get yourself interested and involved in, but then builds to a fever where you don't want to put the book down (or turn the recording off, or both)! The For the Temple Study Guide sells for $12 and really expands and deepens the learning experience for both teacher and student.

If you have never "tasted" G.A. Henty, the thought of reading one of his books to your children may be overwhelming. Previously you may have dismissed Henty literature as a goal you could never accomplish. Don't miss Henty just because the the novels are daunting! Their content is amazing, and their educational value is huge! Now you can acquire most Henty books for free on line, since the originals in the public domain. Select a topic, pick a book, order the CD and enjoy a taste of living history. If you are like me, read along while you listen. Integrate the Study Guide content, and your student will have a deep learning experience that he/she will long remember.

The Schoolhouse Review Crew received a variety of G.A. Henty CD titles to review. To see other reviews of this and other G.A. Henty titles carried by Jim Hodges Productions,  click the button below.

Knowledge Quest Timemaps - A Schoolhouse Crew Review

I have known about the Knowledge Quest (and Bramley Books) company for at least a decade. I used to use Tapestry of Grace as my curriculum, and KQ worked in conjunction with the creators of TOG to create maps that corresponded with assignments. Before that it was very difficult to find the correct blank outline map for the student to use to map Europe before the Congress of Vienna, or to map Ancient China, or the Fertile Crescent.

Knowledge Quest Maps also provided the answer keys, so Mom didn't have to scurry to correct maps after the student slaved to find the items requested by the assignment.


But even with the Knowledge Quest maps available at that time, I still had difficulty understanding the way the history and geography wove together. I would read the history of the era, and my head was fuzzy about just where the Fertile Crescent was, or I would look at the map of Britain but not really understand where the Visigoths came from, or where the Celts started, and where they went when the Angles moved in. My brain couldn't mesh the maps with the history readings.

And somehow Terri Johnson at Knowledge Quest figured out that moms and kids were still having these difficulties with the maps, and she continued to brainstorm and work to come up with a solution. This year I learned that Knowledge Quest had now released TimeMaps!

She read my mind! I couldn't wait to see these! I learned that the Schoolhouse Review Crew would be reviewing KQ TimeMaps, and I was selected to do the review! Oh joy!


My TimeMaps Collection arrived as a download; it is also available as a CD set. It contains "TimeMaps" for the following important historical periods (and more TimeMaps are still in the works!):

• Ancient China;
• The Rise of the Roman Empire;
• The Fall of the Roman Empire;
• The Rise of Islam;
• The Black Death;
• European Explorers; and,
• The Slave Trade.

The complete set costs $44.95 for an electronic download, or $49.95 for the CD set. Individual titles can be acquired for $9.95 for download. Individual CDs can be purchased in "bundles" of three CDs for $24.00. (Classroom Licenses are also available.)

We immediately opened up the maps and began scrolling through them. Each map starts with a screen where you can choose "Start", "Worksheets", or "TimeMap of World History". We ended up settling in on The Black Death, so we clicked on "Start".

The TimeMaps work using Flash Player. The maps are beautifully, yet simply displayed to highlight the area of study. There is a white square in the upper right corner that tells the approximate date of the map on the screen.  There is a way to scroll through the passage of time, which we quickly did. We were stunned by how quickly the black death spread. I kept trying to get my volume to work, but finally figured out that there is no audio with the maps.  Below is a screenshot of a different TimeMap, but it shows you the features I am talking about:

After our initial perusal of the maps over the passage of time, we went back to the beginning page to dig deeper into what these maps have to offer.  Each map page has the options at the top to select more information ("i"), or to quiz the student ("Q"). (Where the above map has "i" crossed out, other maps have "Q".)


Each picture on the map, when you point and click, reveals more information about some aspect of the history. (The "Roman Galleon" information is what comes up when you click on the picture of the ship.) Each place on the map where there is a little "i", when you click on it you also receive more information about the history and geography.

After perusing my way through most of the maps, I was beginning to think surely I was missing something. What I was getting out of these maps just seemed incomplete -- I am familiar with this company's products. I thought there must be more and I was missing it. As I lay in bed one night (when my mind wouldn't go to sleep) I was pondering this all, and determined to look at it the next day with new vigor, to dissect it and figure out if there was more.


That next day was the day I realized that my downloads also came with PDF files that I had been missing. If you open files a certain way, other file types are not visible, and I had just been missing these. The PDF files are Teacher Notes for each of the study areas. Now we're talking! I knew I was missing something. 


So, yes, the Teacher Notes were a very important chunk of the big picture. They vary in length from one map to the next. They include an introduction, activity suggestions, commentaries on the maps, a fabulous blank timeline template for each map, and more maps for both the student and the teacher.


I would add here, also, that the product provides "Quizzes" and "Worksheets" that are questions available on screen. The teacher can require the student to write down the questions and answers, or the two can go over the material together orally.


WHAT I LIKED:

• These maps really fill a need for understanding geo/political changes through the history of the world. These changes and progressions can be difficult to understand when piecing together written text with historical maps. Looking at other historical maps, it can be difficult to even figure out if the map you are looking at is from the time period you are studying. These maps are clearly marked, so you can know where Gaul was in 500 BC, when they attacked and what route they took, etc., etc. Using these maps it is possible to see while you are studying, "This route was taken around these mountains;" "This attack took place over water;" "This route was taken because of this particular geographic feature of the terrain," ...that sort of thing.
• I really like all the added information using the click on the graphics and the click on the "i" for more information.
• I really like the Teacher Notes. (I can't believe how long it took me to figure out they were there!)
• I like that the Teacher Notes give links to further on-line maps for further learning and understanding. I like the exercises laid out there, and I especially like the suggest class questions to ask the students each time to get them thinking.
• I really like the topics that are available so far.

WHAT I HOPE FOR:

• I am hoping TimeMaps will be created for general European history, showing the progression of the historic battles over Great Britain, who initially lived there, who attacked whom, who moved in, who moved out, etc. as it progressed from Celts, to Romans, to Celts, to Angles, etc.
• I am hoping TimeMaps will be developed for the Expansion of the British Empire, to show their expansionism efforts during the period when "The sun never sets on the British Empire".
• I am hoping TimeMaps become available for the French Revolution, the Congress of Vienna, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the timeline of battles between the French and the British, the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Hundred Years War, The War of the Roses, etc. This has so much potential!

What I Didn't Like:

• I am still scratching my head over the fact that there is no audio. I think this would be enhanced for the audio-learner types (like me) if whatever visual window was clicked open had the option, with a little speaker button, to have the audio read for the student.
• I think this product would be better if the "Worksheets" opened up as printable PDF files. 

Here is a sample of how the TimeMaps work, from their website. The music is catchy at first, but I end up turning it down pretty quickly:

DISCLAIMER:
I received a complete digital download of TimeMaps in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation.
 

This has been a TOS Homeschool Crew Review.

To see more Crew reviews of this product, click the link below:

Heritage History: Greece - A TOS Review

Have you heard of Heritage History? I think I had heard of them, like something on the bare edge of awareness, like something off in the periphery that had buzzed at the edges of my vision, but something I had never turned my head to focus on. Well, they've got my attention now! I mean, they get a "Wow!" from me! 

You are inundated all day long with emails, blogs, websites, and reading, so let me remind you about who I am and how we homeschool so that you will understand why I am suddently so excited about this product. FlyMama Di and little JD (not so little any more) are the members of our 22-year-old homeschool. The first two attendees are now graduates.


[Oh, a little patting on the back and kudos here, my second born graduated college three days ago! WTG, B - I love you!]


So, JD and I have been homeschooling using a curriculum called Ambleside Online. The plan itself is free online, but then you have to scurry to find the books to use to follow the plan. So, I've been using Ambleside Online 7 years now. (Before that I used Tapestry of Grace, another book-intensive program -- my house is buried in books!)


So, this spring I was selected to be among the blessed TOS Crew members who were given the opportunity to review products by Heritage History.  Available for us to choose from were the following CDs: Young Readers; Ancient Greece; Ancient Rome; British Middle Ages; and British Empire.



 

 

Being unfamiliar with the company and the product, I took a quick look at their website, and asked for Ancient Greece. 

When I opened the CD and popped it into my computer, I was amazed! The Heritage History library is a collection of materials organized into collections, cross-organized by genre, reading level, author, and topic. It is amazing. (Wait.... I already said that, didn't I?) Heritage History not only has its own curriculum plan, but has crossed over any boundaries to make it easy to use their materials if you are using other curriculum plans as well.

I feel inadequate to describe to you how wonderful the selection is on the Ancient Greece  disk is, and how wonderfully the titles link up with the titles called for in the Ambleside Online curriculum. Turns out that the folks who produce the Heritage History CDs are aware of Ambleside Online. They even created a link showing what books on their CDs are books required by Ambleside here: Ambleside --  they actually even missed a few AO titles. Their disk also contains: Aesop for Children by Milo Winter and Stories from Shakespeare    by    E. Nesbit, plus many other titles able to be used as substitutions and potential supplementation, if one wants or needs to.

There is a picture above of the printed Study Guide. I did not receive a paper copy of this as a reviewer, however, Heritage History provides pre-printed Study Guides to accompany each of its Classical Curriculum CD's. Each Study Guide includes historical maps, outline maps, timelines, era summaries, character lists, battle dictionaries, recommending reading lists and other study aids. The Study Guides were designed to provide reference materials that complement the reading program and to assure instructors that their students remember the basic facts associated with each historical era. . The Curriculum User Guide gives helpful guidance and information throughout. Every document, every link, everywhere I turn on this disk is interlinked with more links, more information -- there is just so much here! The CD and the website combined are like an onion; every time I think I've gotten deeper, I find there are more layers!


Heritage History's complete book texts and illustrations of over 400 classical narrative histories are available to view online (amazing!).  Their books can also be downloaded to any e-Reader or Tablet, for one low price.



I had already known some of the titles are available in the public domain. But the format on the Heritage History CD is much nicer. Also, sometimes books from the public domain have typos and sections that are skipped. And the titles on the Heritage History CDs are in PDF format and are able to be transferred to your Kindle or other e-reader. This is so cool!

When you are a user of living books, and a user of book-intensive curricula, sometimes when it is time to use a certain book, you go get your book, and it is lost, buried among all your other books. Using the Heritage History CD, it will always be easy to locate the digital copy. And any PDF document can be downloaded to a jump drive and taken to a printing shop to get a copy printed out and bound, if that's what you prefer.

They actually have a free PDF book you can download to see what a sample book looks like. Go HERE to download a copy of Sir Francis Drake, by Mrs. O. Elton.
Here's where I try to touch on specifics. Some of it I already covered:

• Heritage History's Ancient Greece library CD is available for $24.95. It contains Includes 46 books, 50+ maps, teaching aids, and a Study Guide. 
•  Format: CD, with printed Study Guide.
• Purpose of the product: to enable students to study History and Literature; to make rich, quality material easily available to the parent and the student.
• Topics covered: History, Literature, geography.
• What do I like? Everything! I'm amazed!
• What could be improved? I haven't found anything.
• Would I recommend the product? Absolutely! To whom? Anyone studying Ancient Greece. Anyone using Ambleside Online, Tapestry of Grace, and many other living-book-based curricula.
•  Have I been surprised by anything in the material? I've been surprised since I first opened the case.

 

Disclaimer:

I received a Heritage History: Greece CD in exchange for my honest opinion in my review; I did not receive any pay.
This has been a TOS Homeschool Review. To see more reviews of this product, go to the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog Entry for Heritage History. I love comments! Tell me what you think!