The Curriculum Choice

Kendra

Kendra lives in Tasmania Australia with her husband, the Man From Down Under, her two curious boys, a dog, & a bird that constantly talks back. She's a second generation homeschooler using a mostly eclectic, with a Charlotte Mason flair, home educator. She loves using methods from Unit Studies to Nature Studies and everything in between to help feed the curious minds of her two ever growing boys. Creator, and avid user, of the Homeschooling Book of Days & The Nature Game. She can be found retelling tales from The Land Down Under over at the Aussie Pumpkin Patch.

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Ka-Ching!

Mathematics 1 Response »

May 042012

One of the things I love to use for our living math lessons is games. I don’t know about your children, but mine can pick up skills they never knew they had simply by playing a game. When I taught my eldest how to multiply one of the things I started with was this very simple game called Ka-Ching! Instead of using the word “multiply” though I used the words “groups of”. My son had so much fun playing this game he had absolutely no idea he was learning a valuable math skill!

How We Use It:

When we’re having a living math day, I pull this game out and challenge my son to a round or two. It’s a very fast paced game all about buying and selling stocks. It’s really addictive to play as well!

Basically you set a game board up with the cards by laying them out in a 7×5 grid. Each person is given a certain amount of money {provided in the game} to buy stocks with. I give out money a little differently than the game indicates. I hand out one $10, one $5, one $2, & three $1’s to get the game rolling. Each player also gets one bonus card which can be paired, at any time, with any stock card from the grid. {We generally save it until the end!}

From there, on each turn a person can collect a card from the grid or they can sell stocks, the choice is theirs. The idea is to buy low and sell high. For instance, if you purchase a $3 card and a $6 card you’ve spent a mere $9, but when you sell them you get $3 x $6 for a grand total of $18!

You can see where this is going right? I didn’t explain this strategy to my child when we started playing the game. We simply played. I prefer to let them find their own strategies as they go along, it’s more likely to stick with them. That’s exactly what happened with this game! It took a few rounds of plays but he very quickly realized he needed the higher value cards in order to beat Mom at the end.

What I love:

I love the simplicity of this game. It didn’t take us an hour or a week to figure out the instructions. It was pretty open and go!
I love that this is made by Gamewright. Seriously! They sell some amazing, but quick, fun games!
I love that the cards are reasonably durable considering I play this with my kids.
I love the color! For anyone who’s visual it’s really eye popping to play, not to mention the pictures of the presidents on the money crack us all up.
The price. If purchased in the US, this game is fairly reasonably priced at a meager $9.89 + shipping from Amazon.

What I don’t like:

When sold overseas I find the price of this game a bit much. I bought it at a local shop in Tasmania for $20. At the same time, the game is fun, educational, and thus makes it worth what I paid.

Other than that I really can’t complain about this game!

Bottom Line:

We love this highly fun, extremely addictive, amazingly educational game. You really have got to try it for yourself!

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Homeschool In The Woods Time Traveler Packs

Hands On, History & Geography, Lapbooks, Unit study resources 2 Responses »

Apr 182012

I’ve been a huge fan of Homeschool In The Woods for a long time! Their products are just funtastic. Thus far we’ve used three different time traveler packs and are gearing up to use another two next year!

Each Time Traveler pack is loaded with crafts, recipes, copywork, notebooking pages and lapbooking pages. It’s six weeks of school pre-planned for you, but many of them can easily be extended well beyond six weeks!

How I use it:

I have now used four of these wonderful Time Traveler packs with another two lined up for next year. Each one has been used pretty much the same way. We print out the pieces that we’ll need to make our notebook and lapbook. Then we follow the schedule provided in with each Time Traveler CD.

The exception was with the Early 19th Century CD. Wow, is this CD loaded! Because we used this alongside the Winter Promise Curriculum we chose to make our way through this particular CD at a slower pace and I’m really glad we did! It’s just loaded with so much information I really believe you could spend an entire week on each and every one of the twenty-two lessons!

We work for four consecutive days on the lessons provided and use our fifth day as “project day”, as suggested in the CD. Project day is where things really get fun. You can work on any of the craft projects you might not have attempted yet {if desired}. There’s usually a recipe or two and often vocabulary words to use.

Really, the CDs couldn’t be simpler to use. There are pictures of each project so you can visually see the step-by-step instructions. But panic not if you would prefer to read the instructions because they are written out as well!

What I love:

I love that there’s a simple schedule, premade, that I can follow if I so wish. I usually do!

Everything is on a CD-disc so I can print it out if I want, or not. I prefer to print out the notebooking and lapbooking pieces and put the lessons and instructions onto my iPad for ease. But, I’ve also printed it all out in the past and that works just as well too!

I love the homemade games in each unit, they are such a fun way for children to remember what they’ve learned!

I love that each time we use one of these kits my kids feel like they are a part of history. They walk away knowing so much and feeling as though they’ve made fast friends.

I love that each unit comes with a list of additional books and videos you can use to enhance your learning experience, if you want. You won’t miss out if you choose not to use them!

I love that there are recipes included. There’s nothing quite like food to help my boys understand a certain time in history. The recipes are usually fairly simple and don’t require any special ingredients. Despite a few food allergies in our home I find that I can adapt all the recipes with ease.

I love that I can purchase just one of these CDs and legally make copies for all my children! No need to buy more then one copy – just print off as much as you need.

I love that these are written from a Christian perspective and that perspective is woven throughout the entire six weeks worth of lessons.

What I don’t like:

There’s precious little to not like about this particular curriculum, however to be honest with my review the one thing I wish was possible with this was to purchase them as downloads!

International shipping can be pricey, and even when it’s not it can take an excruciatingly long time to get stuff from other places. {Two weeks in general for us in Tasmania, but there are times when it can take 6-8 weeks!!} If these items were available as downloads it would reduce the need for international shipping.

However, I must also note that I once emailed Amy Pak about these not being downloadable and she was very honest and stated that the sheer size of them was part of the problem. The other problem was that there are huge images {remember you get timeline pieces, notebook pieces and lapbooking pieces – not to mention all the other goodies I’ve named} that would be distorted when they bring the size down to make download faster. She’s also very willing to put several CDs in a priority mail envelope for you {or was last time I emailed her} so if you stock up and purchase a few at a time then you’re good to go!

Bottom Line:

Thanks to the Pak family’s love for history and sharing it with the rest of the world. Because of this nifty series, my children have fallen in love with history. What more can I ask for?

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Winter Promise All American 1

Art, Bible, Elementary, Hands On, High School, History & Geography, Living books, Middle School, Unit study resources 2 Responses »

Mar 122012

A Bit of Background: For the 2011 school year my family decided to make a change in our curriculum. If you’ve read my blog before you’ll know we’re Five In A Row fans, and after 4 years of their curriculum with my eldest it was time to move forward to give him something a bit meatier for his grade level.

After some prayerful research and web surfing I discovered there’s a lot of curriculum out there that a homeschooling mama can choose from. In fact there’s so much that at times I felt truly overloaded with choices. In the end I wrote down my needs on one side of a sheet of paper and my wants on the other side. From there I was able to quickly weed out curriculum that would be of no use to me and finally settle on ones that would work. From that very short list I settled on Winter Promise All American 1.

I chose to use All American 1 because it covers your needs from grades 1-7. This does not mean that you can use this particular core for seven years, rather it means that if you have students ranging from first through seventh grades it’s a good fit for you. If you have students older than that and wish to keep them all together, you can also purchase a high school add on pack.

How We Use It:

This was our very first year using an “out of the box” curriculum. {Out of the box simply means everything you need to use is included and you’re off and running.} We basically used it exactly as it’s laid out. I ordered the core {All American 1; AA-1}, as well as the accompanying Character Supplement, Art Study, and I even picked out a science pack to round everything out.

All but the science is scheduled right in your main core. All I have to do is open to the week and day I’m on and we’re off and running. I will confess, that at times we didn’t use it exactly as it was laid out. Some weeks were incredibly light and we wanted more so we did two weeks in one. This isn’t too hard if you have a couple of back to back light weeks. Winter Promise cores are only mapped out for a four day school week.

Our core also came with Student Planning Pages that I chose not to use. I had high hopes of using them for my 4/5 grader to learn to be a more independent learner. However because his younger brother was also doing the core, it limited how much I could permit him to do on his own.

This core also came with plenty of web links to enhance the study. We did not check most of these out. We did visit a few and they were so-so. Eventually we found we were fully satisfied with the vast amount of crafts and notebooking that we were doing.

I also chose to use some of the read-alouds as audio books because our family adores having a book playing in the car. During one of our long journeys this year I purchased Fever {our current read aloud} as an audio and plugged it in the car and were able to enjoy the story while we traveled.

What I Loved:

I loved, loved, loved, the fact that this particular core decided to use Homeschool In The Woods Time (HSITW ) Traveler Packs {worthy of a review all their own!}. My family happens to be HUGE HSITW fans and these packs are nothing short of fantastic. The fact that Winter Promise chose to use them in this particular core was one of the deciding factors in our purchase!

I loved the fast array of historical fiction we read this year. Many of the books I was none the wise for and wouldn’t have chosen had I not used this curriculum. We learned so much from the good quality literature that we read and my children still refer to these characters {some fictional some real} as life-long friends.

I can not stress how amazing it was to have our school year laid out for us, all 36 weeks, 180 days worth. I suffer from chronic migraines and there are times in my life where planning out our school is nothing short of a miracle. We also had to abruptly move in September and helped a family member move.. twice! It was such a relief to know that despite all of that we were not going to be held up because I hadn’t had time to finish planning the final bits of our school week. Instead, we grabbed some of our books and hit the road!

Customer Service! Living overseas I have an overseas mailing address and a US address. When the company accidentally mailed something to the wrong address, they quickly refunded my shipping so that I could then pay to have it forwarded to the right place. Anytime I contacted them they were quick to answer my questions in full. I was grateful for that.

The Timeline. Oh. My. I’ve never met a timeline I’m so in love with, and we’ve tried a lot! Over the years I’m pretty sure we’ve used no less than four timelines, but this one is the best! It’s a notebook timeline separated by years. You then glue timeline figures to the separating pages and place all notebooking, lapbooking, maps, etc. behind these pages. My children equally love these huge notebooks. They are a beautiful portfolio of the work they’ve done all year! Even if you use nothing else from this company, I assure you their timeline is worth purchasing all on it’s own!

What I Don’t Love:

I didn’t love the price of shipping for overseas users. Check out my tips at the end of this post for help in reducing the cost of shipping!

I was disappointed to see a few typos in the Core. Only a couple, but they did throw me for a loop for a minute.

I found the Character study to be a bit weak for my family. The prints of the artwork were small and dark compared to the large copies we found online.

To be totally honest and fair with my review I must admit my children loved the art portion and requested it frequently! I would also like to have seen the prints turned into coloring sheets for the children. I never asked my children to try their hands at drawing the pictures we studied. I knew my eight-year-old would have been quickly overwhelmed and frustrated with his attempts. Had the art prints been coloring pictures it would have allowed him to try it and critique his art in a positive way.

Their resale policy. I was unaware when I purchased from them that they had a strict request that you don’t resell their exclusive material.

I was also disappointed to see that if I had not included the Bible Character Supplement there would have been no “Christian” reference to their curriculum. I admit to being disappointed because it’s considered a Christian curriculum and I would have loved to see that better integrated.

Geography. In the AA-1 core there was geography worked into it. We ended up only doing a few weeks before leaving it alone and only doing the geography that applied to our stories {mapping the Lewis & Clark trail, Mapping the Erie canal, finding the places specific battles took place, etc.}

Tips I’d Like To Share:

I want to offer up a few tips for anyone trying to decide about Winter Promise.

Try ringing them directly to place your order. While I ordered online, I did ring them later that week to confirm that my order had taken place and to find out exactly when it would be shipped out. If you have your order shipped to an overseas address you must ring them anyway.

Only order Winter Promise Exclusives from them. That means the Core Manual, Bible, Art, Timeline, etc. Order all the books you’ll need from other sources. This is exactly what I did. I chose to order all my books {read alouds, readers, and go alongs} from Book Depository. They offer free shipping to most of the world and I knew exactly when they’d show up at my front door! No waiting on a middle man to get them to me. This is huge for overseas purchasers! The biggest complaint for people who purchased an entire core from this company that lived overseas was that books trickled in over months.

Use the samples on their websites, & really investigate their website! All American 1 is not listed as a core on their Themed Humanities page, but it is available if you look at the American Story {1 or 2} as a better option if you are working with a wider range of children.

If you don’t want to do all the crafts included, don’t! There were many I skipped mainly because we all ready had done lots and I knew my involvement would be heavily needed. For crafts that my children could do on their own I supplied them with what they needed and let them lose. For crafts that needed my involvement we only picked a few to do each week.

Purchase your Time Traveler Packs from The Old Schoohouse Magazine.* This will greatly reduce your costs because you won’t pay shipping for them! They are shipped directly from the Pak family and arrive in amazingly quick time. You can’t go wrong there! We also purchased the Homeschool In The Woods Mapping CD to use with the geography written in the core {the same geography we chose to drop because it seemed very watery instead of rich and purposeful.} *If you live overseas you will not be able to get the free shipping mentioned above. Instead email HSITW! When I did that they offered to put them in a priority mail envelope and post them to me, up to six, for the current price of that envelope {at the time of this review I believe the envelopes cost $14 USD}

Bottom Line:

We absolutely loved our year with Winter Promise’s All-American 1! My children learned and created so much this year. They have a timeline notebook bursting with the proof of their labors and will continue to fill that over the rest of their homeschooling “careers”. I am grateful for the freedom it gave me as I dealt with life this year. Despite my initial concerns when making the switch I’m incredibly glad that I did!

Notes: The cores do not come bound as you see in the above pictures. I chose to bind my own copy! Each core comes pre-hole punched and ready to slip into a three ring binder.

*You might also be interested in Jimmie’s review of Winter Promise American Story 1 here.

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Home Learning Year By Year

Encouragement, Mom Helps, New to Homeschooling, Organization No Responses »

Feb 032012

What’s one of the biggest homeschooling questions you are asked or find yourself asking? I’m not talking about the, “Is this enough?” question, rather the, “What should my child know?” It’s so easy to wonder if you’re teaching your children the right information at the right time, especially if you’re not using standard textbooks.

There are solutions to this problem but my favorite comes in one small book. Home Learning Year By Year by Rebecca Rupp. This book has saved my sanity many times. Really, it has. Home Learning Year By Year breaks down exactly what children will be tested for or are learning in most US based public institutions for kindergarten through 12th Grade. One book. So much information!

How I use it:

I’m sure there are many ways you could use this. The book has an overwhelming amount of information. About once a year, during summer break or before the start of our new school term, I make a list of items I want my child to learn for his grade.

I also go back over the information my child should have learned from the previous grade , just to be sure I covered everything I wanted. You’ll find that much of the standards carry over. For instance, in Grade 2 a child is meant to learn how to use a comma when writing a date, address, or when making a list within in a sentence. By Grade 3 your child will expand their knowledge of commas, so don’t panic if you didn’t teach it in Grade 2. Just teach commas in Grade 3 and expand on it more.

The list making process isn’t complex. I read through the chapter for each of my children’s grade levels. I jot down, in a notebook, the things I know they don’t know or that I’m not sure if they’ll be covered formally in any of our curriculum. From there I type that list out and group things together. All math information, for instance, is tucked under a Math heading. I make sure to make a little check mark box next to each item I put on my list. It’s very simple. I also make sure to put the school year, grade level and child’s name on the top of each paper. I also leave some space for putting notes on my pages. I then print the pages out, and tuck the note into my Teacher/Mom notebook for school. As we go along I can tick off boxes when things are taught or learned.

Not everything has to be taught in a formal way. For instance, I’m really great for making the lists and leaving it laying around so I can bring certain topics up, “Do you guys know what an animal home is called?” If they get the right answer, I tick it off my list. Wrong answer? I plug in a Magic School Bus video and pull out a matching book, then I tick it off my list. Explaining terms like biography and autobiography can happen right at the dinner table. Where as teaching children how to alphabetize is better suited on the living room floor with an alphabet puzzle spread before you.

What I love:

I love that this one small book can guide me through my children’s entire school careers. There’s no need to purchase a new book all the time.

I love the price! Seriously, one book that will last me all 13 years of my children’s schooling and it only costs between $10 – $16 depending on where you purchase it. {Amazon.com has it for $10 + shipping & Book Depository has it for $15.97 with free shipping}

I love that Rebecca Rupp has taken the time to type out resources you can use to teach a variety of the things on her list. From main stream math programmes to lesser known picture books. It’s all right there at your finger tips!

I love that the book is small. I know that sounds silly, but really that’s big! I can toss this in my bag and take it with me nearly anywhere during the summer when I’m making my lists. It’s not much bigger than a typical paperback book!

What I don’t like:

I honestly can’t think of much about this book I don’t like. I think, if you live outside of America, you may not find the book as helpful because it is made to pass the US tests at the end of each grade. I can’t consider this a dislike because I knew that going in. I also don’t teach my kids to pass tests, so that’s not a problem for me.

There’s also the factor that while this explains what US children will be learning for history at different years, there’s going to be huge amounts of US history. Again, not something I dislike about this book for a couple of reasons. First off, I knew that going in. Secondly, my children are both American & Australian so it’s important that they know US history. For those of you not interested in learning US history you could simply substitute your country’s history in it’s place.

Bottom Line:

I love Home Learning Year by Year. I love the treasures inside of it. I love the peace of mind it helps me achieve! When asked what book to recommend to new homeschoolers this is one that’s on the top of my list!

Extra:

Rebecca Rupp has also written a book entitled The Homelearning Source Book. This book is a coffee table type book that is just bursting full of resources for teaching your children anything and everything. It’s very simple to use. And on top of the awesome resources, there’s also notes about which resources The Rupp Family used and how they enjoyed them. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if it’s still in print as neither Amazon or Book Depository seem to be selling copies of it, all though CBD seems to have copies {they do ship overseas as well.} If you can get your hands on a copy it’s well worth it!

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Times Alive!

Elementary, Mathematics 3 Responses »

Jan 202012

Until the 2011 school year started both of my boys had been doing five days worth of living math lessons. I loved our time with it. This year, however, I decided to put them into Teaching Textbooks.

One of the things I used during our lovely Living Math Lessons was a programme called Times Alive! I found it rather by mistake while doing my daily blog hopping. Before I knew it I’d stumbled upon the City Creek Press website and was in total awe of their multiplication programme.

I confess, that despite my child being officially in third grade at the time and having an amazing grasp on a variety of math subjects from simple to complex I hadn’t branched out with multiplication yet. No, rather I’d been teaching him “groups of” with a fun game we’d been playing. After a quick chat with my husband about what funds were left in our homeschool budget I purchased Times Alive! and never looked back.

Times Alive! is not entirely unique as I know there’s another song and story programme out there for children to learn their multiplication facts.

How I use it:

We chose the download instead of the cd version of this progamme {remember we live overseas so downloads often win out for us!}. Each day I’d load up the programme. My son would happily listen to the story and song and then do a quick and simple application test proving he understood and fully grasped what he’d learned.

The programme starts with 2’s and skips 1’s and 0’s. Not a huge deal for us because I’d all ready taught him his 0’s, 1’s, 2’s, 10’s, 11’s, and we were working on our 5’s.
There aren’t stories for the 2 family. Rather there’s a teddy bear who comes on and shows that by counting by 2’s you can easily find the answer to any problem you need. Simple.
There are stories for all your 3 facts, 4 facts, 6 facts, and 8 facts. For the 9 facts there are clues on how to get the answer quickly. These clues are as great as the stories. I can always hear my kids working out 9 facts if they’d forgotten the answer! Again, none for the 5’s, 10’s, or 11’s. Wasn’t an issue for us, and I really believe that it shouldn’t be an issue for anyone.
We loved some of the stories and were constantly amazed at the ability of the author to come up with some great little rhymes that permitted the children to remember exactly what the stories were. If my son now says, “Mom, I forgot what 8×8 is..” I’ll shout out, “STICKS are FOR the fire!”

The story for this particular math problem is that two snowman {shaped like 8’s} go walking on a cold winter night. They get really cold when they stumble upon a sign that tells them they can have the sticks for the fire. Super simple.

After my son learned all the fact families I discovered City Creek Press also sells a learning pack to compliment Times Alive! Included are flash cards with picture clues, posters to color in and a few other simple goodies. It was offered inexpensively as a download. We all worked together coloring in the posters for my son’s math notebook. I laminated all the flash cards and we go through them {little brother too} each morning before we get going with any of our other school stuff.

What I love:

My son asked to do this programme! If a day passed and he didn’t get a turn with it he’d complain! Yep, and if his little brother was set up with another task at the time and missed out on the video or song there were tears and I’d have to replay it!
The stories were, for the most part, catchy.
For my visual learner, the color programme and the add-ons {mentioned below} allowed him to add more color and hands on learning.
I could play it on my Mac!

There are posters and flashcards with the picture clues on them that can be downloaded from the website! This allows us to practice what we learned in an easy to remember way! Not only that, there were some heated discussions over who was going to color which posters. I’m only slightly ashamed to admit I was part of those chats with my boys.

What I don’t like:

I confess there were a couple of stories that left me scratching my head. My son disagrees with me on this and since the programme was for him that’s what matters most, right?

Bottom Line:

My kids love this programme and have learned their multiplication facts with ease. I feel eternally grateful to the people over at City Creek Press for that! I wish their addition programme was also in video/song format.

Extra:

You can check out more of the songs, picture to color in, and test over at City Creek Press if you’re interested in knowing/seeing a little more.

Save $24.48 off the regular price on Times Alive

You can use the coupon code SOTxhalf to take $24.48 off the regular price of $48.95. Just add Times Alive to your cart and enter the coupon code and press apply. Bingo-you save $24.48. Be sure to enter the code, it doesn’t happen automatically. Order your product today because this offer expires on January 31, 2012. You can order from 1-100 for half price! To order now: CLICK HERE

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Interactive 3D Maps

Hands On, Uncategorized 1 Response »

Dec 282011

One of our investments for the 2011 school year was Scholastic’s Interactive 3D Maps: American History. It was actually recommended by the core programme we are using, but the book itself was bound to be a hit with two map loving young boys. Not to mention they really enjoy doing hands-on projects, so mixing the two together sounded like it would be right up their alley!

We were not in the slightest bit disappointed with this book! We are just under halfway through the book and have mapped the adventures of Various Explorers, The Mayflower, Paul Revere, The Slave Trade, Lewis & Clark and a few more. Which is nothing compared to what’s left waiting for us in the book!

The Breakdown:

Each map has a total of four pages. Two pages are written more to the teacher and provide information about the map, time period, and/or event that took place. It also provides instructions of how to put the maps together and a few ideas to use the maps as well.

The next two pages are the actual map and pieces that go with it. So for instance, with Lewis & Clark you’ll have two pieces of map, various forts, Indian villages and boats. The children colour the maps and pieces and then assemble everything together.

How We Use It:
I find that my children love to color when I’m reading aloud to them. So these maps are often colored while I’m reading about the people or times involved in these maps! Once colored we cut the maps out.

The instructions state you are to glue the maps on construction paper, but we like to do things just a wee bit different. Instead, we tape both pieces of the map together, then we take two pieces of colored card stock and glue the map to both pieces leaving about an eighth of an inch gap between the two pieces. Why?

This allows us to fold the map neatly, paperclip all the accessories to the map & tuck it into a nifty page protector {I love those things!} before we put the whole thing right into the kids timeline notebook. Easy Peasy!

What I Love:

This book is fantastic and my kids love the maps! I love that they love the maps and can visualize all the things we’re reading about. I love that the little pieces can be moved around the map and places on specific locations like the starting and stopping point of journeys.

The price: This book is extremely inexpensive when you consider that it is reproducible. The book ranges in price from $10.99 {amazon.com} $11.99 {Book Depository with free shipping}, or $15.99 {directly from Scholastic as an ebook}. Either way you go, it’s a great deal.

What I don’t Love:
There is one thing I don’t love about this book, and really only one thing. The pages aren’t perforated and the book isn’t spiral bound. It makes copying the pages a bit more difficult, but not impossible! However, the lack of either of these does not stop me from loving this book! It really isn’t that big of a deal to copy it like it is. Of course if you purchase this book directly from Scholastic as an ebook that’s not an issue you’d have to worry about!

Bottom Line:
We love the book and I’m extremely happy with the purchase! My kids are very hands-on and love being involved in their projects. These maps are simple enough that even my eight-year-old can do most of it without assistance.

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Teaching Textbooks

Mathematics 7 Responses »

Nov 212011

For the past few years we haven’t used a math curriculum of any sort. Yes, you read that right. For several years we’d been “free flying” as I call it, learning math through games, hands on applications, & stories.

We had a grand time of it, and both of my children had a firm foundation in basic mathematics. However, we made a few changes to our little homeschool & one of the changes I decided to make was to use a math curriculum again.

It wasn’t that what we were doing wasn’t working, but rather that I wanted to be sure all the gaps I might have were filled. I opted to go with Teaching Textbooks after trying out the free samples online & administering their placement tests.

My 2nd grader easily fit into the Third Grade math with Teaching Textbooks & my Fourth Grader knew too much to use the Grade Four cds thus bumping him up to the Fifth Grade choice.

How We Use it:

This is an extremely easy programme to use, and after chatting with fellow TT users I decided not to purchase the books that came with it, but rather just the cds.

On any given Teaching Textbook day my child will load his cd into the computer and work studiously. If they need help and Mum is busy they merely skip the problem until I can come to their aid.

Because I chose to only purchase the cds I also went online to the Teaching Textbooks website and printed out the Table Of Contents for each grade level we’re working on. I file that in my teacher notebook and highlight bonus rounds with what facts the children will cover; see below for more information on Bonus Rounds. I also highlight lessons I don’t want a child to miss, but might mark lessons we won’t need because we all ready know the information.

The Break Down:

Each of the various grades that we own comes with four cds, and there are roughly 30 lessons on each disc. Every 7th lesson or so is something dubbed as a Bonus Round.

My kids live for Bonus Rounds! Okay, so a Bonus Round is just a three minute chance to show how many math facts you know by heart. It’s set up similar to a game show complete with a robot host & robot crowd.

In each Bonus Round you have the opportunity to gain up to 4 additional points towards your grade for the day. If you can answer a quarter of the problems correctly you get 1 point, half the questions you get 2 points, three quarters earns you 3 points, & obviously answering them all correctly gets you 4.

This can be a challenging time for children who don’t work well under pressure. In our home, the kids don’t mind the ticking time and the encouraging little robots, but they do get flustered making sure they are hitting the right keys on the number pad in a quick fashion. So, in our house when we hit a Bonus Round I go ahead and type for them while they spout off answers.

Note that each bonus round concentrates on a specific operation each time. These are noted in the table of contents so you can remind your student to brush up on their addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division facts.

Each lesson starts with a lecture that the child listens to. In it a male voice explains how to do the days lessons or new topic. This is generally well done, all though I wasn’t as impressed with the way they taught facts. By this, I mean when it came to multiplication facts the fellow would tell them the answer to each of their 12 times table facts, then he’d tell them they needed to memorize them. The flashed on the screen for a mere matter of seconds disappeared and the child was to set about the lesson for the day. We chose to supplement for learning our times tables due to this.

After your lecture for the day you are given 5 practice problems, not alway based on your lecture. Then you have an additional 23 problems to answer for the day. Sometimes we chose to do them all, sometimes I permit the kids to skip problems.

For instance, if my child knows how to do the problem, I see no point in having him do 6 of the same problems so long as he got the answer correct the first two or three times. There are some downsides to this, but we’ll discuss those later.

Every 13 lessons or so there is also a quiz. There is no lecture for Quiz days, you merely load up your lesson and answer 23 different math problems.

The programme automatically keeps track of the grades & scores for quizzes, bonuses, & lessons. As my children finish with a cd I print out the final scores for each of those lessons and I file it so I have proof of the math they’ve done for the year and the scores they achieved.

What I don’t like:

As mentioned before I’m not keen on the way some lectures are given. I respect that teaching a student math facts can be a challenging process & I know that by adding in the Bonus Rounds they are encouraging memorization, however I was still unimpressed with the way some facts were taught.

I don’t like trick problems. My student was dutifully working away one day when I heard a problem come up that I felt was a bit too tricky and sneaky and would merely frustrate my student. The problem was down the lines of, “If it’s 2:00 and it’s dark outside is that am or pm.” For an 8 year old I’m pretty sure he’d associate dark with pm, thus I felt the problem was a tad too sneaky/tricky.

I dislike the fact that there are 23 problems for each lesson & if I have my student skip those problems it’s reflected in his grade. For instance if my child only does 19 our of 23 problems his grade will be an 85% or there abouts.

I don’t love what they wanted to charge me for international shipping when I know it can be done for half the price. I really struggle with this, but also understand that people who don’t ship internationally regularly might not know that.

What I love:

I love that this little programme can do the grades for me. Until this programme my children have never really had a grade before and they actually enjoy seeing what their score is.

I love that if my children make a typo and get a problem wrong I can log in to their grade book and reflect the change OR I can even delete answers and have them rework problems. This is a huge deal if your child has the habit of being a tad heavy on the keyboard.

I love that I can also delete out a Bonus Round and have my child redo that too. This is funtastic if you want your child to have a creative way to practice their math facts. Or, if your keyboard gets unplugged during the middle of a round and your Mum doesn’t know it until there’s 10 seconds left.

I love that these cds are both Windows & Mac compatible! This excites me in ways I just can’t explain. As a Mac family it was a huge deal for us to be able to use these on our Macs!

I love that if you have a US or Canadian postal address you can get free shipping from this company!

I’m also really impressed with the resale value that this programme has. The programme is $110 brand new from the published/creator, but it has an average resale value of $70.

I love that there are not 180 days worth of lessons! This means my children can use this programme only 2-3x a week and we use those extra days for our Living Math lessons. They can still accomplish more then enough, if not all of, the programme.

Bottom Line:

We really enjoy using this programme. It’s a really fun way for kids to get both computer skills and math skills in. Not to mention, if you’re not a math fan and feel you lack the skills to teach your children this programme would be a wonderful fit for you!

Kendra lives in Tasmania Australia with her husband, the Man From Down Under, two curious boys, a dog, & a bird that constantly talks back. Creator, and avid user, of the Homeschool Book Of Days & The Nature Game she can be found retelling tales from The Land Down Under over at the Aussie Pumpkin Patch.

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Spellwell

Charlotte Mason, Spelling No Responses »

Oct 192011

I’ve always been avidly against spelling as a subject all on it’s own, and this worked well for one of my children. Unfortunately the other suffers from poor spelling. It’s been a struggle for him, and thus for me.

I decided this was the year that we’d add spelling, officially, to our daily routine. The problem was, that I didn’t want to have random lists of words that confused the poor child even more.

You see, he can spell phonetically, but outside of that realm he’s lost. Thus he spells: frum, wut, luv, sav. Oh, to be able to read his sweet little notes without the need for a red pen to scribble all over it.

I wanted something that stuck with the basic rule of: keeping phonetically spelled words together. This is down the Charlotte Mason line of thinking, and it made perfect sense, especially for a child who is struggling so much.

After searching through many spelling programs I stumbled upon one called Spellwell. I was intrigued because I’d never heard of it before. The lists of words were not huge, and they happened to have a pattern about them!

I decided to give it a try, and ordered the second book in the series called Aa. That’s right, the series doesn’t have grades on them but alphabetical numbers. This works wonderfully well when you have a student in one grade for most subjects but feel the need to back them up significantly for others.

Each week a child starts with a pretest. Now, that goes against the Charlotte Mason idea of spelling, but I actually like this. It gives us a baseline, a jumping point. It allows me to know if it’s worth doing the lesson or not.

When we pulled the book out the first day, I was convinced my child would ace that test. He didn’t. I nearly cried. In the weeks since then, however, he’s gotten progressively better with each pretest, and was so excited to find himself using bonus words one week!

The spelling lists are roughly 7-10 words long in the Aa book that we are using. If a child can master all of those words you give them the Bonus Words. Each list has words that follow the same phonetical spellling rule. Er, ea, silent e, ice, etc.

This works really well and builds confidence quickly for my poor speller. If he remembers his phonics rules he can quickly master his lists because he remembers they all have something in common! This is just so perfect for his confidence!

There is one page of work to be done Monday – Thursday in Spellwell. Each page is very simplistic. It might be a fill in the blank story, rhyming fun, compound word practice, games or any one of a few things.

The books are in black and white, but there are sketches through out on most pages that the children are encouraged to color in if they want. My student skips this particular activity.

There is no work on Friday as this is saved for Post Test Day. There is no place within the small workbook for a child to take the test, so we generally do so on the whiteboard, or if the weather is really nice out on the driveway with sidewalk chalk.

What I love:

My top notch answer is going to be simple. I love that my child has gained confidence and power with his spelling. He’s gone from worrying that everything he spells will be wrong to asking occasionally. His spelling is not perfect, but it’s vastly better!

I love that the spelling words are applied each day in fun and engaging ways! So much so that my student who doesn’t truly need spelling help {yet} has asked if he could also do these books!

I love that the lists are short, simple, and the words on them all have something in common with each other! This was really important to me.

I especially love that this programme is extremely inexpensive. It’s presumed that in a typical school year {180 days} a child would go through two workbooks {Normally A & Aa or B & Bb, etc.} Workbooks & answer keys can be purchased through CBD or Book Depository.

I do not own a Teacher’s Manual for these workbooks. I didn’t feel a need for one, but if you wanted to purchase one they are a few dollars less then the Student books. You’ll also find that both letters {A & Aa or B & Bb, etc.} are all in one Teacher’s Manual!

Oh, and for those of you, like us, who did not use Explore the Code, the author of SpellWell happens to be one in the same! I found that information neat for some odd reason!

What I don’t Like:

Honestly, so far I’ve only had one qualm with this book. In one lesson there was a fill in the blank story about a Teddy Bear. In an effort to fit in a spelling word of “wear” the author used the sentence: “He is truly wash-and-________. Despite the answer being a rhyme with the previous sentence my son was baffled.

I thought they could have used a better sentence, but I have to admit I’ve tried to write fill in the blank sentences with rhyming words before and it can be tricky!!

Bottom Line:

We love this simple, inexpensive program.

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Grapevine Bible Studies

Bible, Hands On 1 Response »

Sep 082011

We’ve been using the Grapevine Bible Curriculum, New Testament, & loving it! The idea is that your children draws the stories & lessons from the Bible as they learn the lessons. The drawings are simple little stick figures, but if your children are like mine they’ll enjoy embellishing them with a few extra details!

They will also write and memorize verses & have weekly reviews. All of which combines together to help your child remember the lessons. In fact, my children’s retention using this curriculum is huge!

This curriculum is made so you can get as much or as little out of it as you want. The Teacher’s Manual comes with information about each lesson so you can pre-study it if you so desire. It’s also suggested you keep a dictionary and concordance at hand incase you need it, but with websites like Dictionary.com & Biblos.com you wouldn’t need to pay for either of those items if you didn’t want to.

You’ll also want to provide your child with a wide range of coloured pencils. The manual also calls for a white board so you can draw the stick figure pictures first, then the students copy them down. They are all very simple to draw and the TM actually shows them so you don’t have to think up what/how to draw on your own. Can I confess that I don’t always draw the pictures thought?

How we use it:

I read the story to them, both from the Bible and telling parts in my own words. I point to the picture in the TM and have them draw each one as I come to that part of the story. Doing it this way means we can take this Bible curriculum anywhere and not have to worry about hauling a whiteboard with us.

Each lesson is very simple, and it’s up to you how much of it you do in a day. The reason this curriculum has lasted us so long is because we started out doing one lesson a week. In the TM it explains that you can do one lesson per week or one per day depending on your needs and desires.

To do one lesson each week we broke it down like this: Monday: Review of previous lesson. Tuesday: Timeline Review. Wednesday: Read new lesson & do page one. Thursday: Do page two of new lesson. Friday: None, OR start the rotation again.

However, we decided to pick up the pace and start doing more lessons in a week so we could move on to the Old Testament. Now we do one lesson per day, but we still save the review of that lesson for the next day to help reinforce what we previously did. This means our schedule now looks like this: M-F: Review previous lesson, timeline review, new lessons.

The Break Down:

Let’s take a look at the Student Workbook and how it all breaks down! The book begins with a New Testament blank Timeline. This is basically an overview lesson. They discuss each “story” or event in only a few basic sentences while your child sketches everything on the timeline. The idea being that the children get an idea of what they’ll be learning.

Next you have lessons. Each lesson has a Biblical reference, you can choose to read the summarized version from the Teacher’s Manual or you can grab your Bible and read it from there. I’ve been known to do both if I feel like a specific part of the story I want my children to know was missing from the summarized version. I even summarize it in my own words at times.

Each lesson is a two page spread, with generally about 8 pictures to draw. The pictures are always based on the lesson, and, as previously mentioned, are always pre-drawn in the TM. At the end of each lesson comes the Lesson Review.

Lesson Reviews have a few questions {4-8 generally} about the lesson you just learned. I like saving these for the next day to make sure the kids still remember the previous lesson. After the Lesson Review is a Memory Verse to go with each lesson.

We add all memory verses to our Memory Box to work on memorizing them through that simple method. We also say them at lesson times to help enforce why we chose to memorize this verse.

Next up you’ll find a page with Character/Event Cards & a space to write out your memory verse. I will confess that we haven’t filled out the cards. The idea is that you write down the key factors from the person or event so that you can use them as quick reference points. My children retain the events and stories well enough that we’ve chosen to skip this part of each lesson. I’ll also confess we don’t always write our our memory verse as we might be working on something else for copywork.

Then you come to the Timeline Review. This is where you’re meant to remember the three previous lessons you learned before jumping into the next one. You simply draw your stick figures on the timeline and jot under it what they are. There’s also a space for writing out the two previous memory verses. We always do the timeline reviews, but sometimes I’ll just have the children tell me the verse rather then write it.

Last, but not least, every 6 lessons is a Big Review. When we come to a Big Review it’s the only thing we do that day for Bible. My kids love Big Review Days. We turn them into trivia style games.

What We Love:

My kids love everything about this curriculum. Anytime I move away from using this as our main Bible there are cries of, “When do we get to do drawing Bible again?”

I love that it’s simple to teach! It did take a little bit of time to “figure it out”, but once I found my groove we were set!

It’s non denominational. It was not written from the view point of any one religion. You can read any story/event from your own personal Bible getting that view point.

I also really love that my kids adore this Bible Programme. Let’s be honest, anything that gets my kids excited about the Bible is usually top notch in my book!

I was also really excited that I could buy this programme as a download from either Grapevine directly or from Currclick.com. This is a big factor for international homeschoolers. It completely eliminated the need to pay for shipping! It’s also nice if you have more then one student using the student book.

If you just want to “try” this programme you can even get one of their smaller studies like The Birth Of Christ, The Life of Ruth, or The Resurrection of Jesus.

What we don’t love:

While I love that I can buy this product as a download it’s big. I’m talking 200+ pages for students & the same for the Teacher’s Manual. Now, the downside there is the amount of paper and ink you’re going to use when you print it out. For US based homeschoolers, I suspect buying the hardcopy would be a wiser and more economical choice. This is not the fault of the programme, as they do offer hard copies of their books.

I’m also going to give a few thoughts that might be factors for some people.

It did take a little bit to find my feet with this curriculum. I don’t fault the programme, you are encouraged to contact them if you need any help. I don’t think it’s a difficult programme to use, but, like most curriculums, it took me a bit to find my feet.

If your children do not like to draw they probably won’t enjoy this programme.

If you’re nervous about drawing for your kids you might feel turned off by Grapevine Bible, but may I just say that you do not have to draw! Stick figures are really simple, and if you don’t have the confidence to draw them, just show your children the pictures directly located in the Teacher’s Manual. We do this like when we school outside, at the library, or in the park.

Bottom Line:

We love this programme. My kids retain so much information that I know we’ll be sticking with this programme for quite a while!

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Life Of Fred Books

Mathematics 4 Responses »

Aug 242011

This year my fourth grader and I are having some fun living math lessons a few days a week using the Life Of Fred Fractions book. The Life Of Fred books are quite catchy and well written for children, and they cover so much more then math!

Fred happens to be a 5.5 year old little boy who’s all ready in university. Throughout the books you learn various math concepts by reading Fred’s stories.

In the fraction book it starts out slow and simple and you cover greater then and less then, most likely a familiar topic to someone in fourth grade. You quickly move on to billion, diameter & radius, and so on until you reach fractions.

Once you reach the information about fractions you learn how to do all sorts of fun things with them. Write checks, reducing fractions, adding fractions, subtracting fractions and more.

The fun thing about Fred is you aren’t given a dry boring lesson and then asked to complete countless worksheets. No, you’re given a humors story often full of other useful information. At the end of each short chapter there are 6-10 questions to answer to show if you remember what you learned.

The book even works in review or quizzes, but they call them bridges. I mean, who doesn’t love to cross a bridge? It sounds far less intimidating then “Quiz” doesn’t it?

What we like about the Fred Books:

We love the short simple chapters & fun engaging story.

We like that there are only a few questions at the end of each chapter, but those questions can cover a mixed bag of topics.

I love that my son loves the book and is learning at the very same time.

I also love that these are non-consumable hardback books. That means I can reuse them with both of my children without having to repurchase them.

What we didn’t like about the Fred Books:

Honestly, so far we’ve yet to meet any part we didn’t like, but I do think that there will be some drawbacks for some people.

The questions happen to be on the same page the answers at the end of each chapter. Bridge answers are on the back of the book. This isn’t a problem for us as I often read out the problems to my son and he copies them onto notebooking paper. You could easily cover up the answers with a sheet of paper or a large post-it note if you were unhappy with this.

Because the author is American and American’s use the imperial system you’ll find that most of the terms will swing in that direction. {ie pound not kilo, inches not centimeters, etc.} I never hold that against a book, but I always feel it’s fair to let people know.

Common Questions About Fred:

Can I use this on it’s own or is it just an extra?

Honestly, I’ve seen families use it both ways. For us we’re using it as an extra. I like to teach my kids a lot of math topics in a year, but I like to really focus in on one topic to give them a great foundation and build their confidence. I think the Fred books really help in that area.

I want to use this on it’s own but there’s only about 36 – 40 days worth of lessons, what should I do?

You could expand on the lessons by incorporating other fun living math things into the lessons. For instance in lesson two you learn about a billion. You see what it looks like in both numbers and words. You also learn the importance of writing numbers with letters and not just numbers. You could focus in on number words throughout the week and also offer your child worksheets on skills they all ready have in math in order to drag it out. Another option would be to use several Fred books in one year.

The Fred stories seem a little bit cheesy, are you sure we’ll learn from it?

Absolutely! If you have a sense of humor you’re going to love these books. If you enjoy something, chances are you’re going to learn from it. My 4th grader has been the intended student for these books, but I’ve caught my 2nd grader listening in several times and then attempting to quiz both of us later on in the day. So needless to say, I believe no matter how cheesy you find the stories you’ll learn from them. It doesn’t have to be hard to be educational.

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