We have really struggled with math in our homeschool. I think that it is partly because math just isn’t our strongest subject. For a few of my children it is also from not learning certain concepts thoroughly in public school.
Because of these things we have also struggled to find the right math curriculum.
We have recently gone back to the math we started with – Horizons Math. I think leaving it the first time was because of the number of children needing one-on-one help. I wish we had stuck with it!
We have been using Horizons for a few months now and the children are doing really well with the spiral approach in math.
Sam’s Noggin
Horizons Math covers much in each level. It also covers some concepts like beginning algebra sooner than in other programs we have tried. The good news is that these concepts won’t be scary later on, as they are introduced very gently.
Horizons is a bit advanced, so we are not using per the grade level our students are in necessarily. They would have been further if we hadn’t tried other curricula but we live and learn I suppose.
Sam's Noggin
I rarely have to use the teacher’s manual because Horizons does a great job at self-teaching with examples and brief explanations. The lessons themselves are in-depth and cover new concepts as well as reviewing things previously learned. I know my children forget concepts without the spiral approach, so this is a great fit for us.
Sam's Noggin
Pros:
Spiral approach works for our family.
The workbooks aren’t overly busy, with enough color to make them friendly.
Teacher involvement is low – I have only needed to reinforce a few concepts on the board.
Thorough – you won’t wonder if your child is getting enough.
Covers time and measurement.
Cons:
I would love to see the price drop a little. {I feel the full kit with teacher manual is needed for most levels but can run up to $80 without a sale.}
Some lessons are a little long, I mark out sections my children can skip.
When my daughter was a second grader, she loved to write and create her own sentences and little stories. I was so pleased that she liked to write but not pleased with the number of misspelled words! I didn’t want to correct each word, as that would affect her free thinking writing attempts. So I consulted with the staff at our local teaching supplies store and the homeschoolers in my group. They all agreed that correcting each mistake was unnecessary and that the spelling skills would come over time with practice. When I found Evan Moor’s Building Spelling Skills – Grade 2, I knew I had found what we needed! Easy to use and fun spelling practice for my daughter.
Features of BUILDING SPELLING SKILLS – Grade 2:
A well set out program, which meets state standards. Each lesson includes 10 spelling words and room to add two more.
Spelling words are based on the 200 most commonly used words in the English language and the words frequently misspelled by second graders.
They are printed in large font with black and white illustrations.
Lessons are centered around common phonetic elements – easier to learn!
Each lesson in BUILDING SPELLING SKILLS includes the following activities:
Visual Memory Shape Activity, using the shapes of the letters to make a puzzle.
Spell Vowel Sounds - Practice with the sounds/vowels.
Word Study – Cut and glue activities.
The activities in this book are repeated in a predictable sequence. This helped my daughter to feel mastery and to work independently. All I needed to do was to remind her when it was spelling time, give spelling tests and to reinforce her work! We used stickers and a chart for rewards. My daughter would chose her own stickers at the local store. Friday was sticker day – after the spelling test! She loved Fridays. With time, my daughter became a good speller. She began to integrate her knowledge of English (from her reading), with the spelling skills (from SPELLING SKILLS – grade 2). Gradually there were more correctly spelled words in her writing! And this learning happened naturally. There are many good spelling programs out there but for my family, we liked BUILDING SPELLING SKILLS.
Building Spelling Skills curriculum is available for grades 1 to 6.
Here’s to equipping the next generation with the skills to become excellent writers!
~Betsy lives near Puget Sound with her husband of 29 years, and her teen daughter. As a waldorf-inspired homeschooler, she loves using art with academics. In her free time, she enjoys gardening, writing, and being out in nature. She also offers consulting to families who would like some support for their homeschool journey. To reach Betsy just send a message to Jane Sproger on Facebook.
Big Brainz is giving away a deluxe version of Timez Attack multiplication and division, valued at $59.99, to one Curriculum Choice reader – don’t miss it at the end!
We’ve enjoyed Timez Attack by the Big Brainz company in our homeschool for several years now. These fun, multiplication games were recommended to us by my friends and fellow homeschool moms. It’s one of those resources we turn to when we know we need a little boost in multiplication practice. And, wow, how Timez Attack has improved since we first learned about it. See, we’d tucked it away because there was some space there between our older children and our middle girl. But now, she’s the one that needs that encouragement in times table memorization and division practice.
Enjoy this video for a quick start overview in a minute and a half:
“The most powerful multiplication games ever created.”
Three of my children practice with the Big Brainz game – three different ages/grades. And what better way to practice than with a fun computer game?
But guess what else? Timez Attack now offers addition and subtraction practice, so rising 1st grader got in on the mix as well. At the start, your child practices finding the numbers on the keyboard, chooses a boy or girl player and takes a pre-test to determine skill level. What impressed me most about this offering is that the game slows down when a child misses a certain problems. I watched as Timez Addition drilled my daughter in 2 + 1 = 3 then 3 – 2 = 1.
Plus, Big Brainz just recently added division! Hmm. I sure can appreciate a program that my age range of children can use! Here’s what my rising 8th grader had to say about the newly improved version, “They made it harder to play (you have to give your answer in less time) but easier to remember the multiplication facts.”
Some things I bet you didn’t know:
available for both Windows and Mac platforms
built in pre-test and post-test
a retention component to regularly review the facts
There is a free version! You and your child can try it out and use the free version which is what we did to start with
The paid version gives your child access to more ‘worlds’ and entertainment.
Standard version: $39.99
Deluxe version: $59.99
100% money back guarantee
Comparison of the different versions and cost, plus what is included HERE.
Why would I want to pay for Timez Attack?
As your child is successful in learning the times tables, he/she will advance. The free version only has one world (the dungeon world). However, your child can practice all the times tables with the free version.
Paid version has more worlds. Some examples are rock tower, ruins with a jungle, volcano, and the machine world.
Basically, by paying for Timez Attack, you give your child more opportunity to practice and challenge what they have learned.
In summary: Timez Attack meets the needs of several different ages – in our house from age six to 14! It is nice to have a math drill resource that is fun as well as challenging. We use Timez Attack throughout the school year to boost confidence or help a struggling child get back up to speed. But we’ve also found that summer time is a perfect time to use Timez Attack for some fun review.
Special Discount Code just for Curriculum Choice Readers! Enjoy a 25% discount when you purchase from Big Brainz. Just enter code ireadcc at checkout
Now for the giveaway! Big Brainz is giving away a Deluxe version of Timez Attack Multiplication and Division – a $59.99 value!!
Homeschooling for over a decade now, Tricia faces a daily dose of chaos with five children. She shares a mixture of free art lessons, recipes and helpful homeschool habits at Hodgepodge. Her husband, Steve, also writes reviews here at Curriculum Choice.
I think the favored 19th century educator would agree – this resource is far from ‘twaddle’.
Jimmie over at The Notebooking Fairy has made available an e-book which clearly and concisely explains the art of notebooking. Not at all new to using this method, I was pleasantly surprised to find my definition of notebooking greatly expanded!
It’s so much more than simple lines on a paper and a drawing, graphic or clipart at the top (or the bottom, or across the page…). Notebooking is not another subject to complete, nor does it need to be done everyday.
The author describes it as “a way to integrate subject areas and a way of teaching and learning.” Incredibly versatile, having children keep a notebook of learning experiences is an excellent way to cement the knowledge gained!
Notebooking Success will equip parents with:
Seven solid reasons why notebooking is fitting for any learning style
Step-by-step instructions for creating notebooks
General guidelines for implementing at each grade level from 1st to 12th
Three notebooking pitfalls to avoid
Using notebooks with Charlotte Mason, Classical and Textbook styles
Extra resources :: 50 different things that can be kept in a notebook (organized by grade level), links to notebooking pages and more!
My favorite part of the this e-book resource was the instruction and encouragement on teaching children organizational skills by using notebooking. While this seems obvious to me now, I hadn’t considered the critical thinking skills my children were gaining by putting their notebooks together — this section is worth a read!
Reasonably priced for homeschool budgets, Notebooking Success is a valuable resource, an excellent addition to any parent’s list of homeschooling guides and helps.
Is your family looking forward to the Olympic Games this summer? My children are already talking about which events they hope to catch on TV. (My secret hope is that the stations show more sports coverage and less chit-chat, but that’s just me.) Even if Olympics fever hasn’t yet hit your house, now is a great time for Olympic Games: A Study of the Olympic Games from Ancient Times to the Present, by Charlene Notgrass and Mary Evelyn McCurdy.
Available from home education publisher the Notgrass Company, this study provides 40 lessons on Olympic history, sports education, and notable athletes. Each lesson contains some sort of written or artistic response, including creative writing, sports vocabulary, mapwork, and puzzles. The puzzles are particularly intriguing and comprise missing letter, crossword, word search, acrostic, and word scramble varieties.
Moreover, the lessons encompass a wide variety of subjects, such as Bible study, world history, geography, and language arts. I was especially impressed with the scriptural tie-ins. For example, in the section on archery, the directions read: “The Bible often speaks of bows and arrows. One passage is Psalm 127:4. Copy it on these lines. . . . Read about King David, his friend Jonathan, and what they did with arrows in 1 Samuel 20.”
The artwork is another highlight. More than mere afterthoughts, the photographs are fascinating and pertinent to the text. Vivid color photographs of events and places of interest, as well as historical black and white photos of people and places, such as Wilma Rudolph crossing the finish line in first place, are integral to the study.
Olympic Games is officially for ages 7-14, and the activities are designed for this age group. But the subject matter, related in a well-written style, is engrossing enough for older students and even adults. I myself enjoyed reading the lessons, especially those covering an Olympic timeline.
This fun and engaging study is available as both an Ebook and a spiral-bound consumable workbook; I reviewed the latter. The high quality and reasonable price makes Olympic Games an excellent value. What’s more, it would be a fantastic accompaniment to your 2012 London Games viewing!
I am sharing a game that has made learning easy, effortless and fun. Silly Sentence is produced by D.K. Games and you can find at: DK Games. Here is what the game is:
What: Silly Sentences
How Much: Around $8.99
What It Covers: All the basic parts of a sentence
Silly sentence takes apart the elements of a sentence in a fun and engaging manner. There is a playing board, a hexagonal shaped dice, a spinner, place markers, a sentence board that has an easy side with no prepositions and a more advanced side with a preposition place, and hundreds of cards that are labeled noun, preposition, adjective, adverb, and verb. Each card has a word, (e.g., run, hop, scared, the, a, over, under, etc) or a picture if it is a noun card: horse, girl, dog, or fox, etc.
On the player’s turn he will roll the dice. Depending on what is rolled, he will either move his marker, spin or chose a category and even sometimes both. The object of the game is to be the first to complete your silly sentence and then read it off laughing your head off!
My kids LOVE this game. My five-year-old requests it almost daily and he doesn’t even realize that he is understanding prepositions as he repeats, ” Prepositions find the noun.” This game is very simple to play.
There are two minor things that I do not care for with this game and feel that it is important to bring to your attention. One is that the hexagonal shaped die is not sturdy at all. You have to put it together when the game arrives and it is very flimsy. I have ended up placing clear tape all the way around it so that it maintains its shape but if an unassuming toddler steps on the die, it is crushed. Also, our adjective and adverb spots on our dice are the same color, yellow, but on the board the adjectives are blue and the adverbs are yellow. This makes it a bit confusing for non-readers when they question which card to take.
Besides the issues mentioned above, I still feel that purchasing the game and its benefits far outweighs the die and color issue. I highly recommend this game and hope your family enjoys it just as much as ours!
You are in for a treat at the end. Don’t miss the giveaway!
Dear homeschool parent,
Are you like me? Do you long to enrich your homeschool with studies of composers and artists? Do you wish that someone would just do it all for you? You know, invest the time in research, find the online links, point you to the resources you need? All I really wanted to be able to do was open something up and teach. Have it all right there and not have to pull it all together myself.
It’s done. Yes, really. It’s all done for you. Barb-Harmony Art Mom has created just what you need. She, too, was like us. Here is what Barb has to say about the Harmony Fine Arts (HFA) plans she created:
The idea behind this program came from my own home schooling experience. I was always searching for a plan for picture study and composer study. It seemed simple enough to do myself but I just never did it. I also wanted to use the classical style and Charlotte Mason’s ideas for our art and music. I wanted all the great resources organized in the four-year cycle of history. I wanted it to be flexible and easy to use. I never found what I was searching for so I decided to do it myself!
This is the art and music appreciation program for busy people. We have done all the research and organizing. You are able to open our plan and offer a great program for your children.
As mentioned above, the plans are organized by the four-year cycle of history. They are presented as follows but plans for individual grades are available:
Grammar – Grades 1-4
Logic – Grades 5-8
Rhetoric – Grades 9-12
(First grade plans are a general overview and gentle introduction to composers and artists. Starting with grade 2, the plans work chronologically through the four year history cycle.)
Art Plans:
Offer three options so you can choose what is best for your homeschool.
You can simply choose picture study with links to view all the art online for easy viewing.
You can add in an art appreciation study with short activities.
You can even follow along in certain grades with the formal art program Artistic Pursuits or Drawing with Children or Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad – depending on the grade level.
Depending on which option you choose within the art plans – you can allow for one or two 45-minute art periods per week.
Composer Study:
Choose to study the composers and listen to their music or
Enhance your music study with suggested books
Included: artist and composer notebooking pages, coloring pages of famous art.
How we use Harmony Fine Arts Plans in our home: we adopted Angie and her boys at Petra School’s Wednesday habit of artist and composer study. All this means is that we push back the dishes from lunch. I open up the Harmony Fine Art Plans on my computer. I turn on the music of the composer we are studying. Or I click over to the optional online listening of Classics for Kids. We might work on a notebook page while listening.
Next, depending on the day, I might click over to view artwork of the artist we are studying. We may follow with an artist notebook page or a Draw Squad lesson. This takes 15 to 30 minutes once a week. But building a weekly habit has tuned us all in and made us want more the rest of the week.
“Can we play that again? I really like it.” 14-year-old
Six-year-old whistling along to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony when I turn on the classical music just for listening fun.
Cost: All costs are listed on the order page of the Harmony Fine Arts website. Bundles are available as well as individual year plans. I purchased the Middle School Medieval/Renaissance Plans at the start of this school year for $17.44. A whole year of study for the whole family for less than $20 – one that brings that much learning and enjoyment? What a bargain!
Print or ebook? Harmony Fine Arts Plans are available in both print or ebook format.
In Summary:What I originally intended for my middle-schoolers to study has extended to full blown appreciation for the whole family – all five children.
The artist and composer studies compliment our Tapestry of Grace studies beautifully.
For this mama, using HFA plans is easy. I just click to open the plans, click to print what we might like to compliment our studies, click to print a coloring page for the younger ones.
Not to mention, this type of enrichment is pure delight. It might just be what your homeschool needs too.
“All my music I wrote for God.” ~ J. S. Bach
I shared about our studies on my Hodgepodge site and my friend Kimberly, a pianist and life-long musician, had this to say…
“It warms my heart when I hear children learning about classical music! So many of those composers had such a love for God and were certainly gifted. When you mention Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Debussy, etc. to most children, they have no idea who they are. It’s so sad because these musicians have had such an impact on our world. It’s wonderful that you’re sharing this education with your children!” ~Kimberly
I agree – there is so much history and part of HIS story we can learn from those gifted and Godly. With thanks to Harmony Fine Arts for creating a wonderful tool for just such an education.
Homeschooling for over a decade now, Tricia faces a daily dose of chaos with five children. She shares a mixture of free art lessons, recipes and the practical at Hodgepodge. Her husband, Steve, also shares reviews here at Curriculum Choice.
I am so excited to share with you a curriculum that has allowed my children to move past the traditional black and white numbers and into a world where numbers create characters and characters stories. Allow me to introduce you to Addition the Fun Way! by Judy Liautaud with City Creek Press.
The curriculum is a fun, picture method of learning and the addition facts, per the author. I whole heartedly agree. Let me explain how the method of learning the addition facts work. First, the author goes into great detail to explain how to use and teach this book. I found this area very helpful simply because this was an entirely new way for me to think about numbers and for my children as well. Any question that you may encounter will more than likely be answered in this section and if not, Judy Liautuad is incredibly prompt at answering any email request AND phone calls that you may have have! This is based on personal experience!
The book then goes on to explain who each of the number characters are. Each number becomes a constant character throughout the entire book. For example, there is ” 3 bee” and ” sick 6″. The stories are constructed around these characters and a new addition fact is learned after each story.
The curriculum covers EVERYTHING from adding zero through ten. Learning the one’s and two’s addition facts are covered in the beginning and not used as character in stories. Rather the numbers are given the staircase picture of going up one step if you add one and two steps up the stairs if you add two to a number.
Silly and memorable number characters are a great way to describe how the author draws the children into learning in a very visual and interesting manner. For example, one of our favorite stories is 3+3=6. The story, in summary, talks about how sick 6 was picking flowers on a beautiful spring day but there were 2 bees in the flower who stung him. The author then recaps each story with,
” Remember: When its 3+3, the 3-bees sting the 6 and make him sick.”
Now, for the best part, our experience with the curriculum! I received this curriculum in February and was not sure how long it would take for me to accurately write this review, based on my children’s results. However, the method and results with the picture methodology presented in Addition the Fun Way! is incredible!
We began with two stories a day. That is all. Then after my boys became familiar with each character they would go through the book and pick out stories that appeared interesting to them. We did not go through any specific order. Rather we simply enjoyed reading the stories and learning the characters.
After a couple of weeks, I began pulling out some manipulatives that I had in our home. I did this for the purpose of observing if they were understanding the concepts behind the stories ( they were!!). I began to incorporate the flashcards that can be purchased along with the curriculum. The fun part about these flashcards is that they show the characters on them thus further helping to press the pictures as well as the addition facts into a child’s long-term memory.
I cannot, honestly, say enough great things about this incredibly fun and EASY way to learn the addition facts. After a few short weeks my boys were rattling off EVERY single addition fact while smiling about them. We all know those “flash card” moments where we sit with a black and white fact and continually repeat, ” you know this, what is this, what is this??”. Now, I hold up a flashcard and it is still black and white (the book is all in color) yet the difference is with the picture association built into the addition fact there is an immediate recognition and recall from the stories. I find this so encouraging and incredibly helpful in building the math foundation!
The author has addition and subtraction as well as multiplication and division programs for you to choose from on her website: City Creek Press.
The addition book that we have will cost $19.95 and the flash cards at $8.95.
There are also great options to buy for one student on her site that include basic and deluxe kits.
I encourage anyone who is looking for an addition program that is engaging and fun to try out Addition the Fun Way! We have not been disappointed!
One day, while doing phonics with my first grader, I realized that we needed a break from our regular curriculum – for both of us. My daughter understood the concepts in her phonics book but was just becoming tired of it. I wanted reading to be enjoyable and hands on! I searched our local teacher’s bookstore. I found a book that worked for us: Scholastic’s Reading Success Mini Books – Word Families.
This book turned reading into fun by helping my daughter make her own Word Family Mini Books. Now, I could have developed this activity myself but I liked the way this book made the whole thing easier for me and fun for my daughter! All that is needed to make the Mini Books is a pair of scissors, some crayons and felt pens, if desired. There are 20 Word family Mini Books to make in all.
Benefits:
Builds your child’s reading vocabulary through learning word families.
Includes all the pages that you need to make 20 Interactive Mini-Books to read aloud, color and collect.
Each book features the same sounding word ending, such as ack, ag, am, ape, ing, ink, ug ump, etc, thereby teaching the concepts of word families.
This offers practice in writing and reading word families, with lines to write in.
Includes illustrations of each rhyming word, ideal for students who like to color.
Builds self-confidence through hands-on learning.
My daughter not only enjoyed making her mini books, but also loved sharing them. She prided herself on her writing, and enjoyed reading it out loud all to her family – especially to her dad at dinner! This gave her a feeling of confidence in the sometimes difficult process of learning to read. And being the author of the book herself didn’t hurt! My favorite experience with this book was when my daughter would read her word family mini books to her dolls! (I think they must have learned a lot too!)
When we returned to our regular phonics curriculum, my daughter had not only gained new vocabulary words but also brought with her new confidence to the whole process of reading!
If you are looking for a nice, hands on break from the usual, I recommend Word Families – Reading Success Mini-Books for any of your early readers.
Look for more reviews of other Scholastic books for young learners by this author.
~Betsy lives with her husband, daughter and two cats near Puget Sound in the northwest. A waldorf-inspired and unit study-loving homeschooler, she offers Homeschool Consulting to new families at Jane Sproger.
Let’s be honest. In the ocean of children’s books, there’s a whole lot of flotsam and jetsam. Just because a book is popular doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile. On the flip side, just because a book is decades old doesn’t mean it’s a classic. Parents, particularly homeschooling parents, need someone whom they can trust to help them guide their children toward high-quality literature.
A superb resource that has directed me for years is Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life, by Gladys Hunt. Familiar to many homeschooling families, this excellent book makes a strong case for a life of literature. Hunt writes:
“Children and books go together in a special way. I can’t imagine any pleasure greater than bringing to the uncluttered, supple mind of a child the delight of knowing the many rich things God has given us to enjoy. Parents have this wonderful privilege, and books are their keenest tools.”
Honey for a Child’s Heart is divided into two parts. The first part, “Using Books to Help Children Grow,” offers many good discussions and much food for thought. Hunt underscores the extreme importance of reading and offers suggestions on how to foster a literary atmosphere in our homes. She challenges us to consider who or what we allow to influence our children. Moreover, Hunt discusses aspects of good literature and how to discern the quality of books our children read.
Part two, “Best-Loved Books for Children,” is an annotated book list for children up to age 14. Hunt divides the lists into groups such as classic picture books, books for beginning readers, classic children’s novels, historical novels, and animal lovers’ books, among others. She also offers a chapter on poetry.
Hunt’s writing style is rich and vivid, and her love for literature is reflected in every chapter. Moreover, I appreciate her Christian perspective, her awe of God as Creator of all things lovely, her expansive tastes, and her cautious stance on wholesale censorship. Every time I pick up this book to read, I find myself nodding in agreement with her. Yellow highlighter glows on so many pages of my copy!
Books are a powerful medium, engaging our imaginations, emotions, spirits, and understanding. As informed parents, we want to guide our children through the murky waters of children’s literature and help them select worthwhile books instead of twaddle. With Honey for a Child’s Heart in hand, you’ll be better equipped to help your children make the best literary decisions.
Ellen stays busy home educating two middle-grade daughters, chasing two corgis, managing the family’s busy household, reading as much as she can, and writing about life at Bluestocking Belle.
We have really struggled with math in our homeschool. I think that it is partly because math just isn’t our strongest subject. For a few of my children it is also from not learning certain concepts thoroughly in public school.
