Mommy Octopus

With 5 kids in the house, homeschooling,  gymnastics, scouts, co-ops, and more, dinner can be quite hectic around here at times!  I have been checking out the MyFreezEasy.com Freezer Meal Plan Membership from MyFreezEasy as part of the Homeschool Review Crew.

About MyFreezEasy:

 

With a MyFreezEasy.com membership, you have access to 8 different meal plans every month filled with NEW recipes!

• Traditional Plan – 10 meals: mix of different types of meals
• Gluten-Free Plan – 10 meals: completely gluten-free including sides
• Slow Cooker Plan – 10 meals: all freezer to slow cooker style
• Clean Eats Plan – 10 meals: all “clean ingredients”
• 20 Meals Plan – 20 meals: mix of different types of meals
• All Chicken Plan – 10 meals: all recipes using chicken breasts/chicken thighs, so you can get the chicken on sale and stock your freezer
• All Ground Beef Plan – 10 meals: all recipes using ground beef so you can get the ground beef on sale and stock your freezer
• All Pork Chops Plan – 10 meals: all recipes using pork chops or pork tenderloin so you can get the pork on sale and stock your freezer

In addition to the meal plans, members also receive complete shopping lists, assembly details, printable labels, highlight videos, instructional assembly videos, and even adaptations for dairy and gluten free diets.

Our Experience:

MyFreezEasy.com has been my first experience with a freezer cooking meal plan.  I often make our meals doubled so I can freeze and extra pan of something, but hadn’t considered taking the time to make a big batch of meals to keep in the freezer.

Right off the bat, I was thrilled with the way you can choose recipes on the website.  With the membership we were given, I was able to select and remove meals that didn’t sound appealing to our family.  For September, I chose from the All Chicken Plan since we mostly eat chicken and chicken has been on sale here lately.  For the October plan, I chose the Slow Cooker Meal Plan.

We went with the following meals from September:

• Bacon & Ranch Chicken
• Basil Balsamic Chicken
• Chicken Fajita Bake
• Chicken Pineapple Curry
• Slow Cooker Butter Chicken

October’s Slow Cooker Meal Plan featured these meals:

• Slow Cooker Italian Chicken & Vegetables
• Slow Cooker Red Pepper Chicken
• Slow Cooker Island Chicken
• Slow Cooker Simple Baby Beef Stew
• Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches.

I really like that the shopping list is included and that with the premium membership, I can select to feed more than 4 people and receive the conversions for a larger group.  That comes in handy when you’re a family of 7 plus Grandma most nights.

We enjoyed the meals that we tried, however I would have appreciated a little more flavor.  Since we have been mostly cooking from scratch over the past 6 years after finding out about my son’s allergy, I have learned how wonderful it is to pull from the spice cabinet instead of store-bought packets and mixes.

I agree with the concept and that the recipes are pretty simple.  Perfect for a busy family.  Having frozen meals ready to heat and serve comes in handy when you’re looking to minister to friends going through hard times as well.  You could simply pull out a meal to cook for them, or you could simply provide the frozen meal and instructions for them to cook when needed.  Definitely a wonderful service!

 

For More Information:

For more information, you can visit the MyFreezEasy website.  You can also find out more on their Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

You can also read other’s reviews of MyFreezeEasy.com by clicking the banner below.

I absolutely love writing reviews with the Homeschool Review Crew!  I especially love getting new and educational books for the kids to read.  I am so excited to share with you about four new books I received, brought to you by Carole P. Roman and Awaywegomedia.com.

The books are:

• If You Were Me and Lived in… Elizabethan England (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 3)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…the American West (Volume 7)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…the Middle Ages (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 6)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…Ancient Greece (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 1)

About the Books:

Carole P. Roman actually has eight books out in the “If You Were Me and Lived in…” series!  We were just given 4 of these to check out.  The 8 titles in the series are

• If You Were Me and Lived in…Ancient Greece (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 1)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…Renaissance Italy (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 2)
• If You Were Me and Lived in… Elizabethan England (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 3)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…Colonial America (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 4) 
• If You Were Me and Lived in…Ancient China: The Han Dynasty
• If You Were Me and Lived in…the Middle Ages (An Introduction to Civilizations Throughout Time) (Volume 6)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…the American West (Volume 7)
• If You Were Me and Lived in…Viking Europe

Each of the books discusses about life in the time and place of the title.

My Thoughts:

In If You Were Me and Lived in… Elizabethan England, you can journey back to the year 1578.  The book describes in vivid detail about what life was like back then and in that time.  I found many of the facts interesting like meat wasn’t allowed to be eaten on Friday or Saturday in order to support the fishing industry.  I’m not a fan of fish at all, so I suppose I would have just filled up on the veggies!  I also found it interesting that tomatoes were considered poisonous!  How different that is from current day!If You Were Me and Lived in…the American West our favorite of the 4 books we were provided.  The illustrations were beautiful and really helped to create imagery of what it would have been like during that time.  My kids were fascinated at all the chores that children were required to do each day!  Milk the cow, gather wood and buffalo chips, wash dishes, bring water from the river, skin animals, etc.  If You Were Me and Lived in…Ancient Greece takes place around 2,300 years ago in around 350 BC during the Classical Period.  This book talks about the different Greek gods and the beliefs during this time frame.  We found it interesting that most days, people would eat just bread, cheese, olives, figs, and grapes.  It was really fascinating to learn about what they drank.  They didn’t drink plain water like we do.  They would mix it with wine to kill off germs!  So watered down wine with each meal!

If You Were Me and Lived in…the Middle Ages circles around the year 1072, during the Medieval or Middle Ages, which lasted until the Renaissance period.  This book gives background on the Roman Empire and Europe.  I really appreciate that this and other books in the series have pronunciations listed to help in learning new vocabulary relative to the times.  My kids found it intriguing that children in this time just dreamed of going to visit a town in order to shop and that at just 7 years old, children could start learning a trade.

These books turned out to be really educational for our family and now my kids are wanting to learn more about these times.  I think that these books would be the perfect addition to any history curriculum.  We will be checking out the other books as we continue our studies through history.

For More Information:

For more information, you can check out Awaywegomedia.com.  You can also find more on Facebook, Pinterest, Good Reads, and Twitter.

 

As part of the Homeschool Review Crew, we had the opportunity to check out the Ultimate Phonics Reading Program from Spencer Learning with our children.

About the Product:

Ultimate Phonics Reading Program is a downloadable software program that helps people of all ages become better readers.  It’s not just for kids!

You can watch the Ultimate Phonics Quick Demo video below to see firsthand what Spencer Learning offers.

The program has over 7,000 pages divided into 262 lessons!  That’s a lot of information!

There are six types of pages:

1) Pattern pages
2) Idea pages
3) Word List pages
4) Word pages
5) Sight Word pages
6) Sentence pages

The pages in a lesson are organized into four parts:

1) A Pattern or Idea page
2) A set of Word List pages
3) A set of Word pages
4) A set of Sentence pages

You can try out a week of Ultimate Phonics Reading Program for free and can find that information on their website.  Once you decide on buying the full version, you will be able to install the program on every computer in your home.  It also can be used with every person in the house!  Just a one time cost.

To find out if your child would benefit from this program, you can check out their Ultimate Phonics Reading Test.

To download the program, you must be running Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, XP; or for Macs, OSX 10.5.8 or higher.

Our Thoughts:

We have been using the Ultimate Phonics Reading Program with my 7 year old over the last few weeks.  She is my most struggling reader right now.  In hind sight, I think I should have went ahead and started it with my 9 year old as well, just to get better at phonics decoding skills.  I plan to start that today.

Honestly, my 7 year old wasn’t a fan of the program at first.  She found it slow and boring, however after some encouragement, she doesn’t mind as much.  I’m seeing that her reading IS improving just after these few weeks of working on the program.  If you are looking for something cartoonish and exciting, this is not that program.  However, if you want something that is more serious and will actually help your child with phonics, this is what you want.

I am super thrilled that the purchase is a one time purchase.  This is fantastic news for large(r) families that would like several students to use the program.  The only improvement that I would like to see them make is an app for iPad or Android so that we could take the lessons with us.  We can take our laptop with us to do lessons on the go, and since it’s a downloaded program, we do not have to have the internet in order to use it.  That’s definitely a plus.

I will be continuing this program with my children and I’m thankful that I was able to learn more about such a wonderful phonics program.

For More Information:

For more information on Ultimate Phonics Reading Program, you can visit Spencer Learning’s website or check them out on Facebook or Twitter.

You can also check out reviews by other members of the Homeschool Review Crew on this product and others by clicking the banner below.