Learn Our History produced a series of cartoons called the Time Cycle Academy, each dealing with a different episode in American history.  The premise of the series involves a group of kids who made a time machine out of bikes, a laptop, and a trumpet and use it to travel back in time to help them do their history class assignments.  Learn Our History sells the episodes in a one-per-month subscription.

The series is not specifically for homeschoolers, and in fact it seems more geared to kids in traditional schools whose parents are concerned about the type or extent of history being covered.  I reviewed the Columbus, American Revolution, and September 11th DVDs for this post, but the company eventually plans to release around 70 different episodes.

Good things about the series:

• The history is fairly accurate.  We do a lot of history around here, and while I would say that the cartoons are not as detailed as some other references, I didn’t find anything blatantly wrong or mischaracterized in the stories.
• Given Huckabee’s involvement I was expecting a lot more right-wingery, but I didn’t find much of that, which was a relief.  There is quite a lot of patriotism, but not in a crazy or inaccurate way, and the series is pretty up front about being intended to promote patriotism (which I think is a good thing).  Some critics seem to have an issue with that, but as a person who is neither left-wing nor right-wing, I thought the series struck a comfortable balance.
• The cartoons were really easy to follow.  Although the website states that “children age six and below may not be able to follow much of the historical content” I have a hard time believing that the average preschooler couldn’t follow this.  That said, I’m not going to have my kids watch the 9/11 DVD, because I don’t think they are old enough to handle it visually, and when they are I will prefer for them to see the actual footage.  Other families may not have the same reservations about a cartoon version.  Again, it’s not a content issue, just a personal preference.
• Although it didn’t seem to be on the main website, with a subscription you have access to supplemental materials like games, quizzes, maps, and timelines to build on the history covered in each episode.

Questionable things about the series:

• The biggest issue I have with the cartoons is the quality of the animation.  It’s very rough.  I am really careful about aesthetics for the kids; I think it’s important for them to be exposed to the best of all art forms.  Even in cartoon as a medium, there are variations in quality, and this series is not the highest.  If I didn’t know one of the owners of the company, I might not have tried the DVDs because of the quality of the pictures.  That said, given that the content is educational, you might be willing to overlook the artistic deficiencies.
• Some critics online thought the cartoons were racist since the Native American characters all look the same – but having viewed three episodes I can say that ALL of the people in crowd scenes look the same – there just isn’t a lot of detail to the cartoons.  Again, it’s just a point of aesthetics, but since you’d probably google the series before buying, I thought I would mention my response to that common criticism.
• The story lines involving the kids with the time machine are a little weak.  Sometimes the whole this-is-REAL-history-not-like-what-you-read-in-books thing seems overplayed and some of the dialog is clumsy, especially when it’s used to define vocabulary (ideally, that would be worked in more smoothly so the kids would understand it in context, but that’s probably asking a lot for a short cartoon).  Still, as Hannah pointed out, “the cartoon kids are just make-believe and the real story part is all right.”

Recommendations:

The Learn Our History episodes cost around $10 each.  If you would otherwise spend $10 a month buying random videos or renting video games from Redbox, I think you would get more out of the Learn Our History subscription.

If your kids watch TV or other DVDs pretty frequently and you’d rather them watch something educational that still seems sort of like a show or movie rather than a documentary, these cartoons would be a reasonable option.

If you have extra room in your educational materials budget and have visual learners or take a lot of car trips or just want to supplement what you’re already doing with educational cartoons, the Learn Our History set is worth your consideration.

If you don’t have wiggle room to buy supplemental movies and are interested in teaching your kids more history, or if you like the idea of DVDs but are also looking for comprehensive, detailed, literature-based history, here is what I would suggest:

• Story of the World: This comprehensive history is geared toward elementary (ish) age kids, and ties in what was going on around the world at given times, so kids learn a lot and develop a more nuanced and globally integrated view of history.  We have the whole set in audiobook format and love it but it’s also available in book form.  Check your library for the book or audio versions.
• D’Aulaire history books: The Learn Our History Columbus DVD covers the Vikings a little bit, but the D’Aulaire Leif the Lucky book does so with a lot more detail.  D’Aulaire’s Columbus is also good.  For the Revolutionary War era, we read the D’Aulaire George Washington and Benjamin Franklin books and got a lot out of them.  The D’Aulaire books have colorful and detailed illustrations but plenty of detail, which makes them great if you have preschoolers and elementary-age kids.
• Read-aloud chapter books about American history abound, and are another great way to help kids really think about history and understand it better.  Check out books like Almost Home, Carry On Mr. Bowditch, Calico Captive, etc.  Reading classic, award-winning children’s literature is an excellent way to expose your kids to history.
• Talking to your kids about history you witnessed:  Because of the work I was doing at the time, I pretty much lived, breathed, and dreamed 9/11 and related events for a couple of years and so I have strong opinions about terrorism and America’s response to it.  Unfortunately I have to be careful about how much detail I go into when I talk about the subject or I will have to go to prison for a very long time, but I still think it will be valuable to share some of my experiences and perspective with my kids.  So far we have talked about 9/11 in a limited way, because it’s covered in our Classical Conversations material.  As I mentioned, ultimately I will prefer for my kids to see the actual footage rather than cartoons about what happened.  However, if you were not closely involved with 9/11 and have more of a concerned citizen view, you might really like the way the cartoon handles the subject, and how it shows Americans otherwise unconnected to the event responding.

Overall, the Learn Our History DVDs may be a resource worth checking out.  If you’re local and want to borrow one to see if you like it first, let me know.

Disclosure: Learn Our History sent me review copies of three of their DVDs but I was not otherwise compensated for this review.  The links to other history resources in the post are Amazon affiliate links.

Related posts:

1. The Week In Books, No. 49A – Counterfactual History Overload
2. Semester in Review
3. Celebrating with Catechism

The workout is really hard, which is great if you’ve been using other Jillian workouts like The 30 Day Shred, Banish Fat Boost Metabolism, Ripped in 30, or 6 Week 6 Pack.  It’s good to have something new to challenge yourself.  If I’m going to spend time working out, I want to feel like I’m getting something out of it.

You can do level one of the workout, or level two, OR, and this is really fantastic, you can choose to do both workouts back to back.  I love that since what I often do with the other workouts is lump them together – so for example, I will do all three levels of the 30 Day Shred, but skip past the warm-ups and cool-downs of the ones in the middles.  With Extreme Shed & Shred, you don’t have to do all of that skipping around and going back and forth in the menu.  Doing both workouts together gives you a really awesome workout that lasts about an hour and 20 minutes.  Yes, that’s a lot of time, but it’s really, really good.  The individual workouts stand up well on their own too.

If you exercise and want some really good muscle/cardio/ab workouts to add to your mix, I heartily recommend Extreme Shed & Shred.  It might be too late to order it for Christmas unless you live near an Amazon distribution center or have Prime, but you really should try it.  If nothing else, it will be a good jump start to your New Year’s Resolutions.  Assuming that your New Year’s Resolutions include some sort of health/exercise component.  Which they might not.  In any case, this is a stellar workout!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

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So it has that in common with the stories in Wells Tower’s book Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.

I really wanted to like this book, because a friend of mine liked the writing and because Michael Chabon wrote a blurb for it and Chabon is one of my favorite authors.  I tried to like it as I slogged through the stories, but I didn’t.  Josh tried to read it with me, like our own personal book club (how sweet is it that he offered to do that?) but about halfway through he quit, wisely deciding not to throw good money after bad.

It bothers me intensely that this book is seen as good by the literary establishment.  First, because the writing is strained and forced, and second because the stories are not great stories, they are condescending and trite attempts to “document” life as it is these days.  They miss the mark, they have nothing to add to our understanding, they do nothing to illuminate an issue or make the world better.

Moreover, to my first point, the writing is not even that great.  People are excited about Tower’s use of imagery, but honestly, I thought his attempts were overdone and often played to tired sterotypes rather than being fresh and insightful.  A good writer sees the world in a different way, and makes the reader see something he had never considered before.

Worst of all, the book communicates such a bleak and meager view of life.  Writers always put their philosophy in their work, and you can tell that Tower sees others as ignorant beasts, and doesn’t really have any particular hope or sense of redemption.

Although I rarely write completely negative reviews, I absolutely cannot find anything at all to recommend this book.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.  Although, for pity’s sake, if you click through to Amazon from this post please buy ANY book other than the one I reviewed.

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2. The Week in Books 2008, No. 39
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Ripped in 30 is a lot like the 30 Day Shred:

• There are several workouts on each DVD, with the idea that you do one for a week or so before moving on to the next level.
• Each workout is made up of three circuits of three minutes strength, two minutes cardio, one minute abs.

Unlike the 30 Day Shred, Ripped in 30 also includes:

• Four levels of workouts instead of three.

• No exercises are repeated. I have nearly all of Jillian’s workouts (the post-Shred ones anyway) and a lot of these moves were new to me.  I appreciate that because different exercises challenge you in new ways.

• The girl who does the hard version in Ripped in 30 is a lot more likeable than the girl who did the hard version in the Shred.  That is probably just a personal preference issue, but the girl from the Shred was totally phoning it in whenever Jillian’s back was turned, whereas Bashira from Ripped in 30 is legit. 

If you’re used to doing the Shred you might find levels 1 and 2 to be too easy.  I only did those once each before moving on.  But then I alternated between level 3 and level 4 and felt like they were great workouts.

If you want to get REALLY bananas and have some extra time one day, you can get an exceptionally killer workout by doing level 3 or 4 of Ripped in 30 and then immediately moving into one of the Six Week Six Pack workouts.  Your endorphins will be flying after that, I guarantee.

You may want to check your library for Jillian workouts to try them out.  Our library usually has a ridiculously long hold list for them, so I generally check them out once and then buy them because they are cheap on Amazon and I know I’ll use them.  In any case, I’d recommend Ripped in 30 as a great workout to try if you’re looking for a fitness routine that gets results and doesn’t take a ton of time.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Related posts:

1. Shred Update
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3. Get in Shape, Girl (or guy)

You should also know that after having three babies in less than three years, my stomach is not the miracle of tautness it once was.  I have a little bit of a diastasis, which is what happens when your stomach muscles separate during pregnancy.  It’s common and it’s hard to get rid of.  This makes doing ab work tricky because the wrong sort of ab training can make a diastasis worse.

Here’s where the surprising news comes in: Jillian’s new workout 6 Week Six-Pack has shrunk my diastasis. It’s not completely gone, but it’s at least a centimeter thinner than it was before (which may not sound like much, but I’ve tried everything to shrink it and this is the only progress I’ve ever made).  I also have the beginnings of a LEGIT six pack going, which is all kinds of awesome.

How is this possible? I thought through the exercises in the workout and realized that 6 Week Six-Pack:

• Is unusually core-focused, versus an emphasis on crunches and leg dips.
• Focuses on diagonal training, which helps the muscles pull together in the middle.
• Includes a lot of the work done in a standing ab position or in a plank pose, with very few direct straight on crunch moves.
• Uses pilates-style lever movements for crunches, which helps keep you from accidentally poking your stomach out during the crunch.

Combined, these techniques had a very positive impact on my diastasis issue.

The DVD includes two workouts: level one and level two.  Each is a great cardio workout as well as targeting abs and hitting arms and legs (combining strength and cardio moves is one of the characteristics that I love about Jillian’s workouts).  You use a hand weight for resistance – I started with an 8 pound weight and worked up to a 10 pound weight.  These workouts are NO JOKE.  At the end of the 35 or so minutes you will have no doubt that you exercised.

I think 6 Week Six-Pack is a fantastic workout and I’d highly recommend it, even (or maybe especially) if you have a post-baby stomach issue. That said, if you do think you might have a diastasis, I’d recommend you check out a book like Lose Your Mummy Tummy, because unless you figure out how to avoid making your diastasis worse in everyday life, the ab work in the DVD may not be as effective.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

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1. Bind Your Baby Belly?
2. Review: Ripped in 30
3. Seven Minute Abs

The reviews for Rework are utterly hyperbolic. “Ignore at your own peril!” says one. “I’d rather hire someone who has read Rework than someone who went to Harvard Business School!” says another. One guy said it moved him to tears. Um, OK. Apparently some people love this book to bits and pieces so it might prove very helpful to some. I wouldn’t put it in the top 10 business books I’ve ever read, but I did make note of six things, which I will share with you here.

• “Whenever you can, swap ‘Let’s think about it’ for ‘Let’s decide on it.’ Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.”
• “When you don’t have to mind-shift between various tasks, you get a boatload done.”
• “To keep your momentum and motivation up, get in the habit of accomplishing small victories along the way.”
• “Some people still develop a masochistic sense of honor about sleep deprivation. They even brag about how tired they are. Don’t be impressed. It will come back to bite them.”
• “Instead of trying to outspend, outsell, or outsponsor competitors, try to out-teach them.”
• “Don’t make up problems you don’t have yet. It’s not a problem until it’s a real problem. Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.”

While I don’t think Rework is a must read, and given the chance I’d recommend Harvard Business School over reading this book, I did find some good and helpful thoughts in it, and if you’re interested in business or entrepreneurship you might find it interesting.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

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Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is a book of stories about a lady who loves children and knows all sorts of interesting ways to break them of their bad habits.  Distraught mothers from all over town call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle for advice about their child who is an answer-backer, or a slow-eater-tiny-bite-taker, or a fighter-quarreler or whatnot, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle dispenses a cure.  The cures are mostly inventive ways of showing the child what he or she is doing, and then helping him or her make a different, positive habit to replace the bad habit.

As we read the stories, we found a lot of applications for our own little bad habits.  One day when I was really at the end of my rope over some recurring bad behavior I said, “I just don’t know what to do with you guys!” and Jack said, “I think you should call Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.”

Although some of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s cures are unlikely, I like the idea of the kids hearing about a behavior that isn’t right, seeing the parent’s perspective, then understanding how the kids overcame the problem.  I don’t think you can read TOO much into this book – it’s very lighthearted and funny – but it did give us some good conversation topics along the way and I’d recommend it as a good read aloud for little ones.

I’m linking up this post at Read Aloud Thursday on Hope is the Word.  Be sure to check over there for more great ideas!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

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This e-book is a great reference about platypuses and includes helpful suggestions for activities to reinforce what your child learns about the animal.  If your kids are younger like mine, they will probably really enjoy the coloring activities and making the platypus burrow with dried beans for the platypus babies, and older kids might be interested to find out how scientists figured out the taxonomy of the platypus and how the platypus finds food via electroreception in its bill.

Other sections in the e-book include a set of studies about how to care for the earth God created and how the platypus reminds us of God’s creativity in creation, ideas for how to use the platypus theme to practice math and science concepts like classification, counting by tens, percentages, and the like, suggestions for writing activities, spelling and vocabulary, geography study of Australia, and a list of books about platypi.

Since my kids are 5, 3, and 2, we didn’t cover a lot of these topics in great depth, but they did enjoy doing some of the crafts and learning about classification and taxonomy.  We looked up Australia in our atlas and tried to decide how we would get there from Indiana.  I checked out most of the books on the reading list since we usually like to learn through literature, and we especially liked the illustrations in A Platypus, Probably.  Hannah read Platypus! out loud to us.

If you have an interest in particular animals or topics, an e-book unit study guide like this one might be really helpful to you, whether you homeschool or are just looking for something interesting to do with your kids after school.  In the past when we’ve done unit studies (like the unit study we did on The Netherlands) I’ve just done my own research, but if you’re pressed for time I can see how it would be nice to have everything outlined for you.  The $6.95 you pay for the e-book might be worth the couple of hours you save scouring the library and Amazon and looking up ideas online, unless you just enjoy doing that sort of thing, which sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.

In addition to Platypus, the Curiosity Files series also includes unit studies on other animals, insects, and natural phenomena.  Some of them are only $1 right now!

If you’ve tried unit studies, how do you use them?  What are some of the best ones you’ve tried?

Disclosure: Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, Old Schoolhouse links are not.  The Old Schoolhouse magazine sent me a complimentary review copy of the Platypus unit study, but I was not compensated for the review nor required to post a positive response.  Opinions contained in this review are my honest reaction to the book.  Whew!  That was a lot of disclosure.

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Life

• Are you a moderator or an abstainer when you try to give something up? Being moderate stresses me out like you wouldn’t believe.  It’s much easier for me to just give something up entirely than have to think about it all the time.  Whereas I know moderators who flip out at the mere suggestion of ever giving something up entirely.  Knowing yourself helps you get results.Gretchen Rubin’s quiz might help.
• If you want to sell your house, the WSJ says, basically you want to get it looking as much like the Pottery Barn catalog as possible.
• “Stop worrying 18% of your life. Stop overthinking everything.  Stop remaining seated comfortably.  Stop accepting things as they are, even if they suck.  Stop taking the path of least resistance.  Stop living the life other people planned for you.”  Penelope Trunk has an insightful way of getting at the root of things.
• “It’s scary to tell people I’m not working full time because all the good jobs will dry up. And it’s scary to tell people when I’m not home with my kids because I only get one chance in my life to do that. The labels are most scary because they tell you what you gave up. And the scariest thing about adult life is what we give up. What women try to do today is give up nothing. Which is impossible.”  I’m trying to find the balance between being home and homeschooling and working part time with a writing company, and it really is a philosophical balance as much as a scheduling issue.  Again, a thoughtful article from Penelope Trunk.

Parenting

• “Sometimes things just happen. Situations escalate. Children get overly rowdy while you are nursing, or changing a diaper, or elbow deep in raw chicken. You are making dinner, but they want snacks. The phone is ringing, there has been a potty incident, and the Jehovah Witnesses are at your doorbell. Someone breaks their necklace of beads, and the crawling baby has never been more thrilled to try to choke.”  Wise words from Femina about how to handle parenting situations you can’t walk away from.
• This is a great idea for a memory work system. Right now we’re using a file box separated into days of the week for review, but it’s getting unwieldy and we’re about to move to the monthly model like the one described in this link from Simply Charlotte Mason.
• Unbelievably adorable bubblegum birthday party idea from A Little Loveliness – this might be a theme for one of the girls next year!
• Right.  I’ve gone over the Tiger Mom thing enough.  But here is the part I really really agree with from Chua’s original WSJ article: “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.”
• Books about Ancient Greece for kids. Hope is the Word has an excellent books for kids roundup every week.

Writing

• Ideas for using the Myers-Briggs personality types to flesh out your characters
• Five things you can do this week to become a better writer
• “If the main character’s not in jeopardy—physical, psychological, emotional, whatever—then you don’t have any tension, and you don’t have a story.”  Excellent point from an author interview.
• “But my protagonist and antagonist are the same. He is his own worst enemy…Yeah…um, no.” Kristin Lamb has some great guidance for authors on her site.
• Four Ways to Make Yourself Complete a Book – advice I need to take to heart as my 90K draft sits and sits and sits, pitifully waiting to be transformed into its next iteration…all writers should be reading Jody Hedlund, she writes a fantastic blog.

Cooking

• I have been making this chana masala recipe weekly ever since I found it.  Except I make it with lentils so it’s not really chana masala.  But it’s so delicious I would eat it three meals a day for the rest of my life.  It’s that good.

If you come across any interesting articles or links you’d like to share, feel free to post in the comments or on the Facebook page!

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I tend to think that health related resolutions work better when they are tied to concrete lifestyle changes.  When you make “I will lose 20 pounds” your goal, you don’t have a lot of specific day by day decision points to keep you on track, you just have a big nebulous goal that you might or might not achieve, and you know what they say: if you aim at nothing you will always hit it.

One thing I really like about Jillian Michaels’ book Master Your Metabolism is the focus on making concrete changes in your diet and nutrition that will cumulatively make you healthier and leaner.  Instead of calorie counting and cutting fat or carbs, Jillian’s book goes into great depth about different health problems, imbalances, and diseases common in Western culture and how nutrition can support or even cure those issues.  I learned a great deal while reading this book, and came away with a lot of ideas for how to further amend our family’s diet to be healthier without breaking the budget.  My one complaint with the book is that the section on polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) was not as exhaustive as I was hoping it would be since I read somewhere that Jillian has PCOS too so I thought perhaps she had researched dietary changes helpful for the condition.  That said, I also know that the main thing with PCOS is eliminating refined sugars and flours and balancing insulin, and the book does go into detail on those topics.

I also checked out The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook and was pleased to find a condensed version of the research and condition descriptions from Master Your Metabolism, along with specific recommendation of healthy and often inexpensive foods to boost nutritional deficiencies and really tasty recipes.  So far I have tried Blueberry Banana Muffins and Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins (made with maple syrup instead of sugar and whole grain flours), and Lentil Sweet Potato Coriander Stew and they were all delicious.  I marked lots of other recipes to try out, because I am still learning how to substitute healthier whole foods for common ingredients.

In addition to nutrition, I am setting specific exercise goals.  Surprise, surprise, my favorite workouts are from Jillian’s collection.  I’ve tried a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of workout DVDs, and these are the ones I’ve found are most challenging and that give the most return for my time.  I used to spend a lot of time doing purely cardio workouts, but I’ve found that since I started doing more strength based workouts I’m in better shape and I can work out in less time.  That’s always a bonus.  All of these workouts are available for pretty cheap on Amazon and have good resale value on Amazon if you wind up not liking them for some inexplicable reason. 

30 Day Shred – If you’re just starting up a workout routine, the 30 Day Shred will feel like murder, but it’s a great and fast way to get in shape

No More Trouble Zones – Once you’ve gone through the Shred, No More Trouble Zones is a more intense, slightly longer workout incorporating lots of weights and still staying aerobic.  It’s hard, but you will feel awesome when you’re finished!

Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism – I like to alternate Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism with No More Trouble Zones.  Banish is more cardio and doesn’t use hand weights, but it contains a lot of plank work and body weight strength moves that will still shape you up.

Shred-It With Weights – This workout is short but good for your core and toning different parts of your muscles than regular strength workouts do, because it uses a kettlebell.  I don’t have a kettlebell, but I use a heavy dumbell and it works great.

Yoga Meltdown – The latest Jillian workout I tried, Yoga Meltdown, surprised me with its intensity.  I thought it would be a relaxing stretching sort of thing, but I should have known better since that is not how Jillian rolls.  This yoga workout is super intense, and my arms hurt like crazy the next day even though I do a lot of arm work in the other workouts.  I got this workout from the library but there is always a ridiculously long hold line for Jillian DVDs at my library, so this DVD is only Christmas list.  Hint, hint, ahem.

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2. Review: Ripped in 30
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