Greek Myths are a popular area of interest so when I saw that there was a Greek Myths book in the Factology series I was interested to see what it was like. And I LOVED it. Even though I have read a few other Greek Mythology books before I found this one set out and explained the stories and how everyone was linked in a very easy to digest manner. While I was reading it I had quite a few “light bulb” moments.
Okay so what does this book cover?
It really is all the important facts in one easy to read book, perfect for primary aged kiddos (and of course their moms).
To start with I was really impressed with how they explained the whole origin story, and yes I know there are a few different versions but they went with one of the more better-know versions and they really did an excellent job setting it all out (because honestly I have read some other versions where I was just totally confused).
I really thought this was well explained.
I also thought they did an incredible job of explaining the key features of the main characters (the Gods and Goddess). It was one of the best summaries that I have read.
One of my “light bulb” moments was their simple yet spot on description of the underworld and how the three regions worked. So simple yet I have never really understood it until now.
And then my other “favourite” section was how they retold the famous “tales”, which can be quite confusing. The Trojan War, The Odyssey, Jason and the golden fleece, the 12 labours, all famous tales but all can be a bit confusing and hard to remember yet they managed to simplify them and make then logical and easy to remember.
To say I was really impressed with this book and that I found it easy to read is such an understatement. I really enjoyed reading this and I think I would have loved using it with my kids if I had had it a few years ago.
I really do highly recommend this one!
For those of you interested here is an Amazon link – Greek Myths
Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.
I am slowly starting to get myself geared up for September, yes yes I know it is early but from September I will have one kiddo doing 7 IGCSE subjects (all of which we are doing at home without external tutors) and my daughter will be starting her A levels with me potentially “teaching” her one subject. So I know it is going to be even busier and crazier than it has been the last 2 years (how is that even possible) which means I am trying to make sure I am better prepared.
For the most part I am sticking to what we used with my daughter but because I know I am going to be pressured I am making sure I have some extra practice questions already set up. And for the extra Physics questions I am going to be using the Collins IGCSE Physics Workbook (which comes with answers which you can download from their site – you need to scroll down on the page but I promise the answers are there I have already downloaded and printed them out so I am all set).
So what exactly doe this workbook cover?
And yes it covers everything that you need. They have linked all the pages back to their student book, which would be very useful if you are using their student book. And they even state which Syllabus learning objectives each page is covering – I will admit that if this was the first time that I was guiding one of my kids through Physics I would have found this incredibly helpful.
My plan is to use this as an extra set of practice questions as we cover the topics. So I will only really get a proper feel for this as we use it (I will write an update once we have had time to use it). But I have already paged through it quite carefully and I looked to make sure it included the “popular” questions that I already know we need to work on (based on helping my oldest prepare for her exams) and I looked to make sure that they have included both questions that test understanding and questions that are more calculation based. All of which I was satisfied with.
I am feeling quite happy that I have another set of questions ready and waiting for us to use. In fact I think I might have a look at their Biology and Chemistry workbooks as well because for just £10.99 I think it is good value for money and it will be one less thing that I need to worry about.
I honestly have not had a chance to look at any book stores to see if they stock this (I will get around to that soon) but you can order directly from the Collins site or from Amazon – IGCSE Physics Workbook
Admin – I did email Collins and ask if I could review some of their IGCSE books. This is one of the books that they sent me and one that I am looking forward to using which I why I chose to write about it.
I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.
My oldest has recently finished her last set of IGCSE exams (International GCSE). As home educator you can do things differently to schools and one of the things that we did differently was to stagger her exams. And I know some people find this strange and wonder why we did that so here is a quick explanation of why we chose to stagger her exams.
Firstly cost. If you kid is in school you do not need to pay for there exams. However if your kid is home educated you have to pay for every exam that they write and you have to pay for every mock exam that they write. This gets very expensive, I am talking thousands of pounds. So staggering the cost does help.
Our second reason was me. We did not use tutors for her subjects it was me, my daughter, her student books and some online videos. I was the one guiding her and answering her questions for every subject that she was doing and I was doing that while still home educating our other kiddo. Honestly there is NO way I would have managed if she did all her subjects together at one go.
Do I think I did I good job preparing her for her exams? Yes. I am not going to sugar coat it, it was challenging, I worked as hard as she did, because there was quite a bit of content that I had to teach myself and understand so I could explain to her. I also had to understand what was needed for every exam and how the exam board wanted her to answer the questions.
It was time consuming. Really time consuming. If you are planning on home educating your kid through GCSE exams please understand you are going to be diving in with them and it is going to suck up a lot of your time.
But it is totally doable as long as you have the right attitude and are prepared to jump in with your kiddo you can do it.
I am glad we chose to stagger her exams. YES.
In fact we are already planning on staggering my youngest exams. We have already started him on two of his IGCSE subjects which means we will probably write these two subjects early. Bearing in mind he wants to do two more subjects than his sister did and his sister is potentially wanting me to teach her one of her A level subjects. So again there is no way that I would be able to commit to doing all of that, doing it well and doing it without killing myself unless we chose to stagger his exams.
Home education means you do have choice and one of those is around when your kid writes their exams. I am glad we chose to stagger her exams. If I did it all over again I would still stagger them.
Finally, my oldest has written her last IGCSE exam, which was Physics and we are all starting to relax a bit. I am not going to lie but the last 2 subjects (Maths and Physics) have been our most stressful. But it got me thinking that there must be other home educating parents out there who are feeling a bit stressed about Physics so I thought I would put together a quick summary of the Physics resources that worked for us. All of these are the resources that my oldest used for her preparations for her exams and all of these are the exact same resources that my youngest is current also using (he was already started with his IGCSE Physics and Biology).
To start with we did Physics a bit differently to our other subjects and that is because we discovered the lovely Lara from Theatre of Science. We did every one of her IGCSE lessons and we also did the homework activities that she set us. Honestly she is brilliant and I must be completely honest and say discovering her lessons took a huge weight off my shoulders. Both my kids love her lessons. And I will mention she does live lessons and she also has recorded lessons so you can pick which one works for your kiddo (I have 1 kid you LOVES the lives lesson and 1 kid who would rather watch her recorded lessons).
All three books were well used but if I had to only pick 2 I would stick with the Revision Guide and the Workbook (One of the things that I really liked about these 2 books is the fact that they are very clear about what content is only included in Paper 2 – I found this invaluable).
While we were working through the Theatre of Science lessons we did also use Cognito. Now I chose to stick with the free version of Cognito and we did not do every single lesson on Cognito, I would say we did about 70% of the lessons. I did find it was useful and my daughter enjoyed working through the videos and answering the questions (My daughter likes the Cognito format of quick explanation videos followed by a few questions to test that she has understood – she used Cognito for Biology, Physics and Maths).
Okay so those were the resources that we used while we were covering the content.
When it came time to revise we did include a few other sources. For revision we did sometimes go back and rewatch some of the Theatre of Science content but we also did watch content from Science with Hazel. I feel like Theatre of Science is more detailed explanation and Science with Hazel is more summarized, so the one if good for when you are covering the content for the first time and the other is more suitable for revision.
I liked having both resources but I know sometimes you have to choose and if I had to choose one I would choose the Question and Answer cards. These cards together with our CGP Edexcel IGCSE Revision Guide were the main source of revision notes/ questions that my daughter used over and over. I honestly would not want to revise without these two resources.
And finally when it came to practice questions I did two things. I went onto the Edexecl site and downloading lots of their past papers and marks schemes (which is a must). You want to make sure your kiddo works through quite a few past papers (full papers and timed).
But I also found the Physics and Maths Tutor site was brilliant. What I liked about the Physics and Maths Tutor site is they group the questions into topics. So as you kiddo revises Forces you can print out a pack of forces question for them to work through, and yes the questions are exam style questions and yes all answers are included.
That is everything that we used and how we used it. I hope this gives someone else some ideas about potential resources. But honestly it is not as scary as you may imagine at first, just dive in and go for it.
For those of you who want them here are Amazon links for all the books I mentioned
Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.
My son has always been fascinated with Sharks so when I saw they had released a new Factology book on Sharks I asked if I could get a review copy to see if it was something that my son would have enjoyed.
Although the Factology books are a bit young for my son (recommended ages 8-11), the fact that I spent many hours searching for good non-fiction books for my son (he went through a stage where all he would read was very specific non-fiction books on things like sharks or snakes) means I am now always keen to write reviews on the books that I searched for when he was younger (I really did spend hours searching for these types of books).
Okay so what can you expect to find in this Shark book?
It covers quite a lot. And it is quite wide in what it covers – even things like cage diving and being an Aquarist. (I do not like the idea of cage diving but I am glad that books like this are including it as I think it encourages the kids to think about whether they consider cage diving good or bad.)
I have to admit that we found the entire book interesting but the pages which really got our attention where the ones that covered the sharks body. We found these pages particularly informative and something that I think other shark books for this age don’t always cover in such good detail.
I really thought they did a good job with the illustrations on these pages and they way they explained how things like the breathing and sight works. I was really impressed with this side of the book.
The younger version of my son would have spent hours with this book. In fact the page that they compare the sizes of the sharks reminded me of a 8-year old who unrolled a massive sheet of paper in the passage and spent ages marked out the different lengths of ocean creatures on it. I could imagine him taking that page and making his own version.
I also know the pages on the Meg, The Great White, Hammerheads and Rays would have been read and re-read countless times.
I enjoyed reading this book, I think they covered a wide range of shark related items, it was informative and they included some brilliant illustrations. I am in no doubt that if my son was a few years younger this would have been a firm favourite, in fact it would have been one of those books which he would have read countless times and he would have used it in his many animal projects that he was always working on.
So if you do have a kiddo you enjoys reading non-fiction and who is fascinated with creatures like sharks then I would say this is one for you.
I was given a free copy of this book but you can find it on Amazon here
Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we recommend.
ofamily learning together 