Tuesday, December 31, 2013

A Match Made in Texas review



This is a review for A Match Made in Texas, four novellas in one by authors Karen Witemeyer, Mary Connealy, Regina Jennings and Carol Cox.

I don’t normally read novellas because they are too short.  I like to get involved in my books and not have them end right when I’m getting comfortable.  And that’s the way I felt with this book.  I struggled to want to finish it because I didn’t get invested in the characters.  There were also some typos that made it difficult to read at times.  I felt like there wasn’t much development with plots and characters.

If you like novellas you might like this book.

I received a complimentary copy from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Time4learning Review

On November 7, I wrote that I was reviewing a homeschool program by Time4learning.  Well, our free month has ended and I wanted to tell you how it went.

The site was easy to register with and log in to.  Our daughter is 5 so I started her at the Kindergarten level.  The site was easily navigated by her on our laptop.  She loved "doing school."  In one month's time she actually progressed to first grade level in all three areas:  math, language arts and science.  She would remember the characters as she saw them in different lessons.  A few lessons didn't seem to load completely and so we had to skip them.  Later on I figured out that I hadn't given it enough time to load.

One negative:  one of the science lessons was about the life cycle and how living creatures begin.  The question was asked which came first, the chicken or the egg.  As a Christian I know the answer is the chicken because God made all the animals but this program took the view that we don't know which came first.  I realize it's not intended to be a Christian based program but to even tackle that question seemed inappropriate.

All in all, I liked the program for my daughter at the Kindergarten level.  I have already registered her with an online school which will start towards the end of January.  Time4learning has offered us another free month with a month paid.  I am considering that option as we need something to fill in until the online school starts.  Since this is familiar to her, it would probably be easiest to do.  If it were completely free I would continue to use it.

Even though Time4learning.com has compensated us with a free month of lessons, they did not require a positive review, only our honest opinions.