Red Chair Press Tickles your Funny Bone

 Elementary, Hands On, Language Arts, Phonics  5 Responses »
Aug 252010
 

Red Chair Press graciously allowed me to review their Funny Bone Readers: Developing  Character series of books along with the lesson plan and activity book.  Having one child just entering the world of reading, I was excited to get started on this series, especially since it focused on character development.  These colorful and delightful books help a child learn to read while nurturing a quality character.

Funny Bone Readers uses fun and silly characters to make connections to several important character traits.

  • Fairness
  • Trustworthiness
  • Respect
  • Responsibility
  • Caring
  • Citizenship

I found these books to be truly enjoyable.  My daughter and I had a wonderful time reading all the stories.  Even my older children loved reading these books to my younger children.  This is a wonderful way to reinforce reaching skills and character development in one sitting.

The lesson plan and activity book enhanced the books by giving you plenty of ideas to reinforce the lessons.  Along with the lesson plan book, you can divide up these books by traits, phonics, or into weeks to gain the full  benefit.  You could plan a six week study using two books a week that focus on each character trait.  You could plan a 12 week study using one book a week to focus on phonics and one character trait every two weeks.  The books are short and flexible enough to add into your current reading or character development  program.

Red Chair Press offers a few ways to purchase the sets.  You can purchase 12 books and ebooks (on CD) for $48.00 until August 31st.  You can purchase the Lesson Plan and Activity book for $29.95.  If you are in a co-op you can purchase Complete Classroom Set 72 books (6 each of all 12 titles) plus a Lesson Planner and interactive eBooks CD-ROM for $295.00.  You may also purchase additional sets if your co-op has more than six children.

Editor in Chief

 Junior High Language Arts, Language Arts, Writing  1 Response »
Feb 112010
 

My last review I shared about my search for a grammar text that would finish our study of grammar. I found Our Mother Tongue, and I am pleased with the way it teaches grammar. But, it doesn’t include sentence mechanics. (There is an appendix for the topic, but I don’t find it adequate.) It doesn’t address topics such as where to put commas, semi-colons, and quotation marks; or how to correct sentence fragments and run-on sentences. I realized that I wanted something extra that would provide review for those English topics.

I decided to try Editor in Chief by The Critical Thinking Company. This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. Each lesson consists of a short passage. The student must read through the passage, find the specified number of errors, and make the necessary corrections. (Sample page)

It has turned out to be a great fit for my almost 12 year old son. He’s at the age where he’s always finding mistakes anyway, so I’m finding this is a great way to put this (often annoying) tendency to good use. Good editing skills are vital to good writing, and I like the way this requires more thought than an assignment that simply instructs the student to put the commas in the correct place or to capitalize all the necessary words. In editing, the student has to find the mistake and figure out why it is wrong in order to correct it.

I would NOT recommend this product for a student that did not already have a good understanding of the concepts. As I mentioned in my previous review, my son was demonstrating that he did understand grammar and sentence mechanics. Editor in Chief provides a way to test if a student can apply his knowledge at a higher level, while reviewing important concepts. This would not be the way I would recommend learning new material. I think that a student should spend time initially in studying correctly written sentences.

The only negative about this product is the price. My son will complete both of the B level workbooks this year. At $17 each, that’s pretty expensive for a supplement. But I was encouraged to see my son enjoying his work for a change, and decided that it was worth the extra expense to us.

Written by Kristen, Neo-classical mom of 4. Kristen blogs at A Day in the Life.