WinterPromise Crafstmanship: Experience Adventure on the High Seas with “Adventures in the Sea & Sky.”

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Adventures in the Sea & Sky

Be prepared to traverse the high seas in this adventurous program.  Discover how history was made by explorers, commanders, traders, daredevils, astronauts, and even pirates who captained sailing ships and flying machines!   World history will unfold from the earliest traders on the Mediterranean to astronauts building the space station even now. As you travel through “Adventures in the Sea and Sky,” you’ll encounter the technologies that let sailors conquer the stormy Atlantic and Vikings raid the northern seas. You’ll find out what caused the Age of Exploration and how controlled flight became a reality — and changed the world forever.

Adventures in the Sea & Sky is a world history in a year program designed for students from 4th – 7th grade.  With the simple addition of our “Younger Learner’s Guide” you can even include your K – 2nd grade students in your adventures! To easily include your 8th – 9th graders just add our “Older Learner’s Guide” to the program.

Educationally Unique

This program contains many unique experiences, but before we dive into those, let’s look at how this program can be a great launching pad for further history study.  In Adventures in the Sea & Sky you’ll discover history from a unique perspective — looking at the development of the technology of sailing, flight, and space travel.  You’ll be amazed at how the major trends in history originate in the technologies around ships and sailing!  This program offers a bird’s eye view of history, and is a great launching pad for a four-year world history study.  Families are encouraged to experience our other history programs after seeing the big picture in Sea & Sky.

Adventurous Resources

The resources in our Sea & Sky program are now printed in stunning full color! We have uniquely selected each resource to create a world of adventure for you to enjoy every day.  See some of those resources highlighted below.

 

Sailors_Whalers_and_Astronauts_Cover

Sailors, Whalers & Astronauts

What was life like on a ship? What was it like to live aboard sailing ships, airships, and spaceships in history?  Discover life on rolling seas, in the atmosphere, and out in the vastness of space.  There’s a lot to explore!

You will learn all that a sailor would need to know and the skills they needed to survive in the open ocean. You’ll check out sailor lingo and the different watches on a ship. You will learn what sailors believed and what they wore. You will even to know what kind of knots sailors would have to tie.

Once you master the basics of being a sailor you will be promoted to a whaler. Master the basics of a whaling ship and understand how lighthouses were used to keep them safe. Want some bean soup? Cook some bean soup and really understand how good your family’s cooking is compared to what these sailors ate!  You will even get to go along on a whale chase!

Next, you will be transported to the experiences of an astronaut! Find out how to stay healthy in space and what kind of food you would eat.  You won’t want to complain about cleaning your room after hearing about how astronauts kept things clean in outer space. Get geared up as an astronaut and discover how much equipment it takes to explore — and survive in — space!

“Sailors, Whalers & Astronauts” will bring the adventure of the open ocean, the atmosphere, and outer space right into your living room.

 

MYO_Captains_Log_Cover Make-Your-Own Captain’s Log

This notebooking resource puts you right in the middle of a grand adventure. You begin by being brought onboard “The Seafarer” as a cabin boy named “Crow.” A man named Hawk will be training you in the ways of all things ship and sailing. As you work through our “Sailors, Whalers & Astronauts” resource, your Captain’s Log will bring your story to life.

With interactive notebooking pages, you will constantly be applying what you learn and engaging with the material you encounter in other resources. Learn about sailing culture with engaging questions, activities and mapping assignments. Discover how the technology aboard ships advanced and even changed sailing completely!  Read about how ships were used in war time and see us highlight important ships throughout history. After spending time on ships, you will go on to learning about flight and even space exploration!

 

Another wonderful part of this notebook and this program as a whole is that a science component is woven throughout the program. For students 6th grade and younger it is a full science credit! Each week in your Captain’s Log you will have a science section that gives another layer of education and enjoyment to this notebook.

As you learn from your mentor Hawk about the ins and outs of sailing, the advances in technology, and even the invention of flight, your students will experience an adventure that lasts the entire year and can be kept for a lifetime! To see a sample of this resource click on the title above and then select “Resource Sample” at the top of the description. You will want to see inside this amazing 300+ page resource.

 

Under_the_Sea_and_In_the_Air_CoverUnder the Sea & In the Air

To add to your science component that is included in your Make-Your-Own Captain’s Log you will receive the “Under the Sea & In the Air” resource. This will be your primary science resource.

You will study the ocean floor, learning about its features. You will get a taste of what saltwater is and learn about ice on the ocean. You will learn about different marine life such as penguins, whales, and other sea mammals.

After the ocean you will explore the atmosphere.  Your students will create a weather log and learn about the atmospheric conditions. They will get to know how the sun affects our weather as well!

Once your travels in the atmosphere are finished, you will shoot up into outer space to discover our sun, the planets and the moons that circle them.  Read about the life of a star and think about how many galaxies there are in the universe!

Every week you will get to enjoy an activity that is fun and educational.  Together with your Captain’s Log and the other science books in Sea and Sky, this resource will cover your science for the whole year!

Other exclusive resources that are included are our Bible resource, “God of All Creation”, and our spine history resource “An Unfurling Sail.”

Sea & Sky is an Adventure

In this blogging series we are going to show how we have uniquely crafted each Themed Program to provide the same wonderful educational ideals but offer very unique experiences. Each program has a unique feel and experience to it so that your family doesn’t feel as if every year is the same.

In our Adventures in the Sea & Sky program your family will go on a high-flying and exciting adventure across history on the decks of ships, the seats of airplanes, and the cockpits of space craft. This program marries a rich and wonderful education with amazing adventure and enjoyment.

We would like to invite you to go on an adventure with your family this year.  You’ll truly understand why history unfolded the way it did, live the life of sailors, crew members, and astronauts, and make memories!

“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy.  It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.” – Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

 

 

 

 

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Conquering 4 Common Questions Families Ask WinterPromise: How Does WinterPromise Help the Parent?

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How Does WinterPromise Help the Parent?

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We are continuing our series on answering some of the most common questions we hear at WinterPromise. How does WinterPromise help the parent? This question is often not said so directly, but parents ask a lot of questions that relate to this issue. How do we help our parents succeed in homeschooling? A lot of curriculums puts the responsibility completely on the parent! It is entirely up to the parent to have a rich and memorable experience homeschooling. While the parents are the primary reason homeschooling will be successful, we here at WinterPromise want to do as much as we can to make it as easy on the parent as possible.

What does that look like? Let’s take a look!

1. WinterPromise helps the parent by ensuring there is as little prep work as possible!

There is a lot in a WinterPromise program. We have a lot of pride in being able to offer huge value in our programs. We want to give you a rich, deep, and joy-filled homeschool experience. What that means though is that parents that are new to homeschooling and even more experienced homeschoolers can look at our curriculum and be overwhelmed! We want to assure you that we will help you succeed!

One of the central values our founder and author Kaeryn holds to is that parents should be doing as little “behind the scenes” work or prep work as possible. Life is busy enough let alone homeschooling, and you don’t want to be devoting more energy than is needed working to prepare lessons, organizing activities, scheduling and tracking progress etc. We want to do as much of that work as we can! We are an “open-and-go” curriculum. Which means: as long as you have your materials, you should be able to open up your guidebook and go!

What does that look like in our Teacher Guides? They are the cornerstone to each program. The never center. Our guides are PACKED with information and teacher helps. They not only schedule your weeks but they hold all your activities, extra resources and notes for teaching, all in one place!  Here are some examples:

Every Resource Scheduled Every Week – We have everything from our activities, reading, independent assignments, teacher notes, weekly goals, interactive online projects, DVD suggestions and anything else you could imagine scheduled and laid out for you. You don’t need to plan anything! We have everything planned for you. With WinterPromise you will be able to wake up, get your coffee, get breakfast going for the kids and then start your homeschooling without worrying that you have what you need to get something accomplished.

Activities Designed For Simplicity – We believe that every activity you do should be something that adds to your educational experience and to the understanding of a particular subject. Activities should not be just plain busy work. We offer great activities every week for you and your students to dive right into. To help the parent we have described each activity as Open & Go, Easy, Moderate or Difficult. Most of our activities fall under the Open & Go to Moderate range and are completely doable. You will also be given at the beginning of your guide a list containing everything you will need for the year to complete the activities and also every week you will be given what you will need for that particular week. Most often they include normal household craft materials. We do everything we can to make sure our activities are designed in such a way that you are spending more time learning and less time prepping.

Teacher Helps – Do you ever feel out of your depths when it comes to a particular issue or time in history? Do you ever feel that you are not as gifted a teacher as your children need? We have all felt those things. To address these concerns we have packed our teacher guides with so much information and help that will be invaluable to you the parent! We include in each guide several pages devoted to informing you about the different learning styles and intelligences. This is really great for you to know! You are given tips on how to use the guide even! For those that feel like they struggle knowing what the goal for a given week is, we offer weekly teacher notes so you know exactly what you should be emphasizing. We want you to succeed!

2. WinterPromise wants to help you create memories!

Homeschooling parents put so much pressure on themselves. They guilt themselves into feeling inadequate as a teacher and/or parent. The cause of this is often because the motivation or standard by which they are evaluating themselves is not helpful or accurate. Ask questions like: What is your goal? What are things that really matter to you and your family? What do you want your family to have by the end of this?

Homeschooling offers the unique opportunity to be a part of the learning process. You an be a part of the ups and downs, successes and failures. What an amazing opportunity! If you are only concerned about a test score at some state standard test, we believe you are missing the point. Knowledge is vital and we teach our kids ultimately so that they will learn. But if you are homeschooling purely for the transfer of knowledge you are missing out on so much! WinterPromise is designed to help you create a family culture that is centered around making memories and experiencing joy! Learning should be a joy and it should be shared! We want you to focus on the unique growth of each child, and to grow with them! How do we do that? Laugh together, read great books together, make a mess of a science experiment together, enjoy a nature walk, run around in the rain when you should be doing math, cook meals together, journey together into different cultures, go on adventures together! WinterPromise wants to offer that to your family!

Create memoires together; because memories flow from the wealth of love and joy in a family. This will take the pressure off of you and will enable you to succeed in a way that you never thought possible! If you are willing to not blame, guilt, or crush yourself along the way you will find that you can go on a wonderful journey with your children as you homeschool.

WinterPromise wants you to succeed. Parents are the most important relationship a child has. Parents have everything to do with their development. Therefore we at WinterPromise want to equip and help you the parent as much as possible. Let us become a part of your journey.

 

 

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Conquering 4 Common Questions Families Ask WinterPromise: What Kind of Curriculum is WinterPromise?

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As a company we are new to a lot of people. This year a lot of you have called into our office for the first time, never hearing about us before recently! We love the opportunity to be able to impact so many families and to see our WinterPromise family grow!

With so many new families contacting us we get a lot of questions, and some questions we hear more often than others. For that reason we wanted to write an article that dealt with a few of the common questions that we hear on the phones, in emails, on Facebook and beyond! Our desire is that this helps you understand us as a company better, and what you can expect when you choose us as your homeschool curriculum.

This will be split into a few posts, this week we are only answering one question!

What kind of curriculum is WinterPromise/What makes

WinterPromise unique?

This question we have heard a lot this year and have really enjoyed being able to tell people what kind of company we are, and what sets us apart. The answer to this question is not a one sentence answer, so please be patient and read along.

1. The first thing that comes out of our mouths when describing WinterPromise is that we are Charlotte Mason inspired. Everything we do starts with the foundation of the ideals and philosophies of Charlotte Mason. (If you don’t know who she is please Google her!) She was a British educator in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has had a profound impact on education in general and we endorse her ideals whole-heartedly. They are central and foundational to everything we do. What are her ideals you ask? (or maybe you weren’t asking but you may as well read!)

There are many ideals that Charlotte Mason held too, but we will highlight just a few key ones. The first is: Curiosity and Discovery. Charlotte Mason believed that curiosity and discovery should be the primary motivators and backbone of learning. Young children have a deep curiosity about the world around them. This curiosity should lead to an active discovery on the child’s part during their education. They should be on an adventure of discovery while they are at school. But it shouldn’t stop when they get older It should continue throughout their childhood and even into adulthood.

Charlotte Mason also believed that the books that children learn from should be what she called, “Living Books.” Dry textbooks that merely communicate facts do not engage children. This impacts learning. We all learn something quicker if we are having fun doing it! They also do not insight curiosity or a desire to discover in the child. We here at WinterPromise have chosen books specifically designed to be exciting, engaging, educationally rich, and feed the curiosity of those reading. DRY BOOKS ARE A NO-NO!

I am going to mention only two more ideals so that we don’t drowned in Charlotte Mason information! Another ideal that Charlotte Mason held to, was the strong exposure to nature and the direct observation of it. Nature walks and observation are a huge part of education for children! WinterPromise offers animal and nature studies, and in our nature studies (for example Animals and Their Worlds!) we encourage the active engagement of nature. We want our kids outdoors and engaged with the world around them!

Finally, Charlotte Mason also held to the ideal that learning should be as joyful as possible. Although with Algebra, I am not sure how joyful it can be! 😉 Learning should not be joyless. Learning can be challenging and full of hard work but it should never be joyless. We here at WinterPromise always strive to present the information in a way that excites, engages and puts a smile on the face of those learning. Just a few examples are: Your students can go on adventures with Quest for the Ancient World, see what life on a ship is like in our Adventures in the Sea & Sky, learn to read while meeting new friends in our Early Language Arts and much more! We want to make learning fun!

Everything we do at WinterPromise seeks to include and be underlined by these ideals! Joy, Curiosity and Discovery, Living Books, and Nature Study.

2. We are multi-faceted in our method!

There is a great graphic on our website that summarizes how we incorporate all the different homeschool methods into one curriculum. You can find that here!

When Kaeryn started on this journey of writing curriculum it was for a very personal reason. It was for one of her sons. This son is very unique in how he learns. He is really smart, logical, great at putting things together, but struggled in a lot of different homeschooling curriculums! Because of this Kaeryn tried out just about everything that was offered at the time and none of them really fit. What was the problem?

Each curriculum had a method, and it did have benefits but for every benefit there were also weaknesses. This led to frustration for Kaeryn and her son. For example: one problem was that if she went with a curriculum that was Literature Based she found that at a certain point her son’s attention span and general boy-ness distracted him from really having a rich learning experience. Besides the fact that her son did not learn nearly as easily when hearing something read to him as opposed to other more hands-on ways. It worked for a while but as we know, in a literature based curriculum you read and read and read and Kaeryn needed more.

On the other hand, she then found that if she used a curriculum that was very hands-on and activity based,  it was successful at keeping him busy and engaged but that created other problems. The problems were two-fold: 1) the activities created a lot of prep work that then led to busy work. This was exhausting considering she had 5 kids to handle! 2) The activities did not offer a truly rich educational experience, and therefore the busy work and prep work were just that. Busy and prep work.

Kaeryn found that she wanted wonderfully rich books and she wanted great educationally beneficial activities. She also wanted as much of the prep work done as was possible because she was busy enough! Kaeryn wanted these things for her son and herself but could not find them!

This inspired WinterPromise. Kaeryn designed WinterPromise to offer rich learning experiences through books, activities, multi-media, observation, notebooking, interactive content. This would create curriculum. Kaeryn was inspired to bring together the unique strengths of all the different homeschool approaches while using those approaches to offset the weaknesses! This was a lot of work. But now we have done the work so you don’t have to!

3. We offer full programs!

WinterPromise offers history, social studies, language arts, science and math. In all of our programs we underline everything with the ideals listed above. We also have designed the programs so that if you were to get one of our Themed Programs (which include history, social studies and some science!) you could include multiple students within the same program that are in different ages and grades.

WinterPromise is unique in how we create each program so that you can easily tailor is to your students needs. Whether that means you have a slightly lighter work-load for one student or you do every single project, activity, and reading assignment for the student that is older. We make it easy for you to include multiple students into one Themed Program, and this saves you money and time!

There may be lot more questions you may have and if so please visit our FAQ page or call us if you have a more specific question: 802-372-9200! We are open weekdays, 9-5, EST.

 

 

 

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9 approaches in ONE curriculum?

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Would it truly be possible to find NINE different homeschooling approaches in ONE curriculum? At Winter Promise, we believe it is possible! Let us share how…

many methods

 

Winter Promise truly takes the best of all of the homeschooling world and brings it together! Here are the different approaches you will find inside Winter Promise products:

  1. Charlotte Mason ~ joyful learning, journaling, making family memories while learning
  2. Literature Based ~ fantastic living book choices in each program
  3. Hands-On ~ lots & lots of “open and go” activities /projects
  4. Classical ~ history themes that can repeat, with new facets each time
  5. Notebooking/Lapbooking ~ exclusive timeline, note booking, and journaling pages
  6. Unit Studies ~ unified themes and cross-curricular Language Arts programs to reinforce topics
  7. Ebooks ~ digital options for guides, books, and resources allow you to use tablets and laptops for school
  8. Multimedia ~ Internet linked guides, DVD suggestions
  9. Workbooks ~ easy to use workbook options for Language Arts or Math

 

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Will Winter Promise Work For Us?

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It’s a great question! How do you know WinterPromise will work for your family? Is it the right choice? Chances are, as you look around at curriculum, you’ve got three things you’re considering — Can I effectively use it? Does the cost work for us? Will it be the right fit for us?

Here’s some help that might make you SURE that WP is just right for you!

Can I Effectively Use WinterPromise?
Yes, yes, yes! And yes, of course we’d SAY that, but is it really true? Well, here’s the skinny. WP was designed from the ground up on a foundation of practicality. Practicality to us means that (1) you CAN do it, and (2) you WILL do it. How do we know you can do it? Because every effort has been made to give you an easy-to-follow, glance-and-get-going guide. It’s not a technical manual, it’s simple to use, and the individual guide pages cover just one page, so it’s easy to see your week as a whole and make realistic plans. Resources have this same base practicality. If it isn’t clear, we really don’t want you to have to mess with it. How do we know you WILL do it? Because we’ve created a curriculum that perfectly functions together and has achievable activities for real families. Every year parents tell us that their first year with WP was their first year to EVER finish a curriculum! That says a lot!

Does the Cost Work for Us?
Every family has a real budget they have to work inside, and so this is something a lot of families might wonder. WinterPromise offers some of the best resources in homeschooling, and expects to provide everything you need for a topic you are buying. If you purchase a themed program, you are typically covering your needs for history, culture, art, humanities, social science, geography, and Bible. It can also cover some or all of your reading. With other companies, you may feel as though you need to add the “fun stuff” — a proposition which can be expensive and may not provide the experience you were really hoping for in the first place. Have you ever purchased one of those “fun” resources, only to find that it wasn’t what you expected or didn’t live up to what it promised. That won’t happen with WinterPromise. Families get all these “fun” experiences right within the curriculum, and WP delivers an enjoyable, practical, I-can-do-it experience that families love. It is worth every penny and more!

Will It Be the Right Fit for Us?
Each family has its own unique personality — and is made up of unique personalities! Think about how risky it is to purchase a curriculum like one that is solely a literature approach program that works for a few learning styles, but not for many others. The same is true for purchasing a solely hands-on curriculum. WinterPromise utilizes its own “Experience Approach,” integrating all types of experiences based upon multiple learning styles. Using solid educational advances in multiple learning styles, WP integrates an array of experiences. Some reach out to one or more learning styles, while others utilize different learning styles. This means you can tailor the curriculum to your family, rather than making the curriculum fit you! It means you can do together experiences that fit everyone, and then let some students specialize in some types of activities, and others focus on a different type that fits their own learning style. In this way, WinterPromise is everyone’s curriculum. It will work for you!

Oooh – You say — but I guess I have one more thing I’d like to ask — What if I’m not Super Mom? Will WinterPromise still work if I would rather keep things simple? Oh, of course! WinterPromise provides you with high-impact choices that let you enjoy your own trimmer version and still immerse yourself in an easy-to-complete, well-rounded study! You really can have it all! Really!

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