My School Year, a Review

It's no secret, I love a well planned day. So of course I was excited to use and review My School Year(Homeschool Record Keeping) from MySchoolYear.com to plan and organize our homeschool. MySchoolYear.com is an online, subscription based tool that makes record keeping a breeze. It is simple and sufficient for all of your organizing and documentation needs, whether that be creating lesson plans, preparing transcripts, printing report cards and more. 

The Homeroom is the place to start. It provides a great "at a glance" visual of everything going on in your classroom including upcoming lessons, events, attendance, special awards and more. 

The Planbook feature allows you to create your lesson plans, course despriptions and class schedules with a nice rapid repeat or quick split option. Once lessons are made, you can also mark them complete or modify as you go. To make room for flexibility, you can also change or entirely reschedule those plans as your homeschool demands. Either way, it's completely customizable to your needs and your individual student. Moreover, it's very user friendly and takes no time at all to set up your students!

Here's a simple glance at the list of classes I put together for Evan's first grade year, next I'll go into each subject and customize a lesson plan and schedule. As the year progresses, you can see on the right how it will give us a nice visual of our progress. 

Already it looks like I've left out spelling and our new history curriculum. No problem! My School Year makes it easy to edit and add new materials with a few simple clicks of the mouse. 

If you're having trouble navigating through anything, the Teachers Aide is your handy homeschool helper to guide you through next steps. It will also send you helpful reminders as things are missing in your schedule or come up due. There is often a learning curve to conquer with just about every new program or curriculum we encounter. Thankfully, this one isn't too steep and the teachers aid is there to be your gaurdrails. 

Depending on what state you live in, you will likely be required to keep attendance. One of my favorite aspects of this tool is that it enables you to easily generate all kinds of reports, including attendance. Having these reports readily available is a great feature. 

Attendence Screenshot

Another feature I like about My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping is that it allows you to share lesson plans with others. This is especially helpful with including dad or other family in on your homeschool week.

The only thing I've seen lacking in this program is the ability to upload one's own important documents. For example, our state requires us to keep immunization records, and it would be nice if there was an area available to upload whatever personal documents that may be pertinent to your homeschool record keeping. That one add on would really put this program over the top as a one stop shop for all of your lesson planning and documentation needs. Otherwise I have been very impressed and think it's a superior online planning resource; we will definitely continue to use our subscription through the year! 

Read more reviews from the schoolhouse crew here:

And, be sure to check out My School Year(Homeschool Record Keeping) on social media at the links below:

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/MySchoolYearWeb/

Google+:  https://plus.google.com/+MyschoolyearWeb
Twitter

Complete Home Learning Suite with Essential Skills Advantage-A Review

Over the past month Evan and I have been enjoying the Complete Home Learning Suite by Essential Skills Advantage. We received a one year, online subscription to ESA for up to two students.This online resource has been an excellent supplement to our regular curriculum and given us a fun outlet for both practicing what we've learned already and introducing new concepts. The Complete Home Learning Suite offers access to various subjects including reading, spelling, math, geography and science for children in kindergarten thru sixth grade.

Lessons(there are over 14,000 of them!) are self paced, colorful and engaging. For younger children, parents will appreciate that they are shorter and many are dictated or have an audio feature if your student isn't yet reading on his own. Overall the program is very user friendly and easy to navigate.  How we used it: I found the program to be most useful as a tool to practice those early math and reading skills. The interactive online platform makes refreshing those addition and subtraction facts fun, almost like a new and improved flash card. Tried and true, it's six year old approved! ESA is easily accessed on mobile devices, and has been a nice addition to our library of educational activities on the boys' kindle fires. Since everything is online it's completely portable and a great way to do school on the road or in the waiting room. I have really enjoyed incorporating online educational resources into our homeschool because they are easy to access from just about anywhere, and save space on the bookshelf and weight in the backpack.  Another nice feature of The Complete Learning Suite is the  "marks manager" tool. It allows teachers and parents to be able to check detailed progress in each subject area and print out reports for record keeping or certificates just for fun. My only complaint about the product would be that the scores given at the end of each lesson were inconsistent and did not always accurately reflect the students work. For example, Evan could miss 7 out of 10 questions in a math lesson and still receive 100%. Again, this did not happen every time but was noticeable on more than one occasion.  Product Details: This is a digital product that you can purchase as low as $7.99 per month, or buy as a package deal for 6 or 12 months with the option of adding more students. Here's a more detailed snapshot of the variety of subjects covered in The Complete Learning Suite.

Click on the banner below to see what the fellow crew thought of learning with ESA!

And, be sure to check out ESA on social media at the following links: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skillsadvantage/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SkillsAdvantage @SkillsAdvantage
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SkillsAdvantage
Google +: https://plus.google.com/u/0/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/skillsadvantage
Blog: http://buyesa.com/blog/

Homeschool Copywork-A Review

We recently had an opportunity to review a lifetime membership to Homeschool Copywork.  This product features copywork pages to print for all ages inspired by great composers from Bach to Beethoven, poets like Lewis Carroll and Emily Dickinson, infamous inventors, artists and more. Homeschool Copywork is an excellent resource if you teach through a classical lens or in the style of Charlotte Mason, and for us a perfect help to handwriting practice and more.

What is Copywork?
Copywork is so much more than penmanship practice, especially when the content is as thoughtful and engaging as Homeschool Copywork presents it. There are so many benefits to practicing copywork at a young age. Over time copywork has the ability to improve spelling and grammar as well as reading and writing skills. Just as practicing dance and choreography gets movement into the body, copying good and beautiful passages of writing from great writers and thinkers helps to get into a child's "motor memory" the flow of a correctly composed sentence. Good spelling, spacing and punctuation in-good spelling, spacing and punctation out! Even in our short time reviewing this product with Evan I can see that it has noticeably ironed out his knack for goofy spacing between words.

Another hidden gem to practicing copywork is the opportunity to discuss with your growing thinker the material being copied, which is often a springboard to search out even more. I really enjoyed using Homeschool Copywork for it's vast variety of quality and thought provoking content. Right off the Wright brothers pages caught my eye since we currently have their biography checked out from the library-what a great opportunity to share!

How we used Homeschool Copywork:
We primarily worked with the Early Elementary copywork pages, which feature shorter sentences in a variation of fonts with fun images to color. We jumped in with two feet and started with the Wright Brothers pages. The Wilber and Orville Wright book contains a mammoth 177 pages. On these pages you will find quotes from both inventors in five line styles and with flight oriented graphics, like airplanes and eagles.
Here's a sample of a page Evan worked on...

And here's an example of a cursive page...

Another fast favorite of mine is the artist studies, featuring famous artists such as Monet, Da Vinci and Van Gogh. We chose to start with the Van Gogh pages. Each book in this series opens with a short biographical sketch of the artist and contains 5-7 beautiful images with quotes in a variety of prints-regular print, lined cursive and d'nealian manuscript. Psstt..don't feel terrible if you have to google "d'nealian"-I did! :-) 

All of the downloads available are well done and print very neatly. All together, there is a wonderful variety of content available with the lifetime membership.

Practically, I like to use copywork in our homeschool because it is easy to implement and encourages independent work. Plus, it's portable! Whether your'e at your school desk, at an appointment, or waiting in the preschool carline, you can do copywork anywhere. I easily printed off a variety of pages from Homeschool Copywork to keep on a clipboard slated especially for "on the go" work.

Product Details:
A lifetime membership is $45.00 and includes access to all products available on site plus any bonuses for as long as Homeschool Copywork exists.

At the heart of it copywork really is just that-imitation. If you believe like me that it's good to imitate good things, than Homeschool Copywork is an excellent resource to explore.

To see what the rest of the crew has to say, read more reviews by clicking the banner below.

Social Media Links:

Facebook:  http://facebook.com/HomeschoolCopywork
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AmyBlevins  @AmyBlevins
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/hscopywork
Google+: http://plus.google.com/+AmyBlevins
Instagram: http://instagram.com/homeschoolencouragement

Laying a strong foundation through Logic of English-a Review

For the past several weeks Evan and I have been working through Foundations Level B from Logic of English. An English enthusiast myself, I was so excited to get my hands on this product to review and use in our homeschool. The Foundations program is specifically geared towards children ages 4-7 and is a comprehensive, multi sensory language arts curriculum. Level B is appropriate for children who have basic phonemic awareness skills, are already familiar with short vowel sounds and can read short vowel words. If you are unfamiliar with Logic of English, their tagline says it all-"Combining the science of reading with the joy of learning." The program aims to teach language arts through phonemic awareness, reading, handwriting and spelling to produce strong readers and writers.

The Level B student workbook was an instant win for us-just look at the cover! It's full of engaging activities and colorful worksheet pages that make phonics fun and approachable to the struggling reader. Right away Evan enjoyed the phonogram and reading skills games(cleverly disguised as Bingo, tic tac toe and so on). Let's face it, the English language is one tough cookie to crack! Logic of English does a great job breaking it down and making it less intimidating for little learners.

Tongue signals serious concentration going on here hehe!

The readers were also a home run with us. Other than doing a great job re enforcing lessons learned, they are cute little books filled with silly stories sure to entertain young readers. As both a mom and a homeschool teacher, I love readers like these because they build confidence. When you're 5 years old and having a hard day struggling to understand reading rules, I imagine its so nice to be able to say "Hey I read that!" Also, I appreciated the diversity in characters illustrated throughout these Logic of English readers. Here's a video of Evan reading from the Level B Reader "Can Pete Pick a Pet?"

Foundations helps children to develop solid phonemic awareness by learning the way sounds are formed with the mouth and tongue, and how to listen for and feel these sounds as they are pronounced. This is brick and mortar to learning to read, write and speak the English language well. In the introduction to the teacher's manual there is a really helpful list all of the phonograms and high frequency words covered in the book-I found myself referencing often. You can find the scope and sequence outlined there as well and how it aligns with Common Core standards. 

From a teacher's perspective, I have to note that this curriculum is incredibly comprehensive. If you are not one to spend as much consistent time on your preparation and planning on this Kindergarten level, this is probably not the best fit for you. There is no skirting the teacher manual here, it is essential to the program as a whole and you will be lost without it. Whether it's a pro or con in your book, the lesson plans are very detailed if you plan to use the program to it's fullest potential. Each lesson includes objectives relating to phonemic awareness, phonograms, handwriting and spelling, with reviews and reading assessments included throughout. Lessons are scripted, so that's a plus for me! And, the little "teacher help" boxes in the margin are full of helpful tips and tricks as well.

To teach Foundations B you need the teacher manual, student workbook and set of corresponding readers. Level B picks up right where A leaves off, with lessons 41-80. You can buy both A and B as a set to get the best value. If you do buy sets individually, they would also recommend a few extra reusable materials like phonogram flashcards, game tiles and more. At first glance this program does seem to fall on the expensive end of the spectrum, but it helps to remember that you are buying a comprehensive language arts curriculum covering phonics, reading, handwriting and spelling. 

Click on the picture below to read more review from the crew!

 

And, learn more about Logic of English on social media at the links below...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheLogicOfEnglish/  @LogicOfEnglishYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LogicofEnglish
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/logicofenglish/

Demme Learning's Math-U-See Digital Pack-A Review

Math is by far Evan's favorite subject, so we were very excited to review the Alpha level Digital Pack of Math-U-See by Demme Learning. Thanks to the generosity of Demme Learning we also received a full physical set as well! Math-U-See is a complete K-12 skill-based, multi-sensory curriculum with video instruction.

The Alpha Digital Pack was a win for us. For little learners, the online computer aspect adds a whole new level of interaction and really complements the concepts they are learning. For homeschooling teachers, the online instructional videos are ready to go at your fingertips and the quick and easy streaming saves the step of maneuvering a DVD. The digital pack and online interface also allows you to print off worksheets for extra practice, and easily access other downloads like skip counting songs. If I'm being honest the style of the songs isn't my cup of tea, but to each his own!

The Alpha Digital Pack is available to purchase for $38, which is a nice cost effective alternative to the physical, universal set. It does not include the student workbook, but does come with...

-12-Month Access to streaming instruction videos
-Instruction Manual PDF
-Lesson Solutions
-Skip Counting Songs mp3
-Songbook PDF
-Digital Manipulatives

Pictured above is Mr. Steve Demme. He is the creator of Math-U-See and the teacher of the online lessons, which are also available in the parent instruction DVD. I have never used this type of platform in our homeschool or even as a "teach the teacher" tool, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I have to say, I'm a fan of Steve! He explains math in a way that is easy to understand, and you can easily learn and watch alongside your child(in the video he is actually teaching to a first grade class). He is especially engaging to watch and is full of all kinds of tips and tricks that have me wishing he was my high school math teacher! Since math is not my forte, I can imagine this type of video instruction would be especially handy when approaching higher math.

Another key feature of the Digital Pack is the online manipulatives.  Math-U-See’s integer blocks are a cornerstone component of its "Build-Write-Say" method, and are great for helping the tactile learner see and understand what the numbers mean. For younger kids I would prefer to use the physical manipulatives, but as they grow older and your supply closet shrinks, these digital manipulatives provide a convenient alternative. Also, if you happen to have a baby or crawler in the house and want to avoid small choking hazards, the digital set is an excellent solution.

Here is Evan using the physical units...

and below is a screenshot of the online manipulatives. The integer blocks and Mr. Steve's "Decimal Street" illustration have been so helpful in bringing to life the concept of place value. Getting hands on and adding that extra digital layer to each lesson really helps it to "click."

One last thing to note is that Math-U-See is a sequential and mastery based program. Primer is generally the starting place for kindergarten math, and covers numbers adding to 10, telling time, and an introduction to subtraction. The next set, Alpha, focuses largely on place value, addition, and subtraction.The Beta level teaches regrouping for addition and subtraction. Gamma teaches multiplication, and so on.  

We had fun reviewing the Alpha Digital Pack(yes, math can be fun!) and will enjoy using our Math-U-See products beyond the time of this review. 

To read more reviews from the Schoolhouse Review Crew, please click the banner below:

And, be sure to check out Math-U-See on social media!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mathusee

Instagram: https://instagram.com/mathusee/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mathusee  @mathusee #​mathusee #homeschoolmath​ #hsreview

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/mathusee

The Faith Builders Bible, a TOS Review

Thanks to the TOS review crew I am excited to share with you another review on a product we had the privilege of using in our homeschool. The Faith Builders Bible by Zonderkidz is a great fit for creative kids who love learning God's word and building bricks. Of course, I'm excited about any material that encourages a love of scripture and the bible, and the Faith Builders Bible is an awesome resource that does just that. On top of that, what kid doesn't love legos?!

This bible comes in the NIrV version, which is short for the New Readers International Version. Because our family is partial to the ESV, I found it very helpful that they included a good description of this new version in its introduction. It is a simplified version of the NIV geared especially towards children and new readers, written on about a third grade level with easier words and shorter sentences, and in a nice font(.9) size. Two other very important technical details--it lays flat when open, and is perfect backpack size!

Here's a comparison of Romans 8:28:

In the ESV... "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,  for those who are called according to his purpose."

In the NIrV... "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. He appointed them to be saved in keeping with his purpose." 

Johns 3:16 reads "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son. Anyone who believes in Him will not die but will have eternal life." 

Included in its 24 full color pages of illustrations is this "Building with Books of the Bible" page. This stuck out to me as an excellent visual for children seeking to understand the order and divisions of the Old and New Testaments. We are currently working on memorizing the order of the New Testament books for our church's AWANA club, so this has become a handy reference! There's also a great dictionary at the end which is so helpful for a little learner.

 

We also especially enjoyed the "Can you build" pages that feature specific bible verses complete with a simple hands on building project. My son is almost 6, and was immediately engaged with these focused building pages-he wanted to do all of them at once!

Outside of school Evan proudly totes this bible to the AWANA club at our local church. Each week he is required to memorize and say a specific scripture verse. This bible has been a great resource to refer to as we learn God's word together. And it doesn't hurt to reinforce the lesson with some fun, hands on brick building! Overall I have been very impressed with this bible and would say it's a great way to introduce young children to a love of the scriptures.

This product is hard cover and available for $24.99. Take a look at what my fellow crew members thought of the Faith Builders Bible by clicking on the banner below.

 
And, check out Zondervan on social media at:
 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Zonderkidz/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zonderkidz

SchoolhouseTeachers.com Yearly Membership Review

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is the online curriculum arm of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine. Whether you're looking for preschool alphabet activities or to print a high school transcript, a Yearly Membership to this site offers a wide variety of quality homeschool resources-including complete online courses. Over 200 of them! Visit www.SchoolhouseTeachers.com to explore for yourself. At the beginning of our homeschool journey ourselves, I'm so impressed and encouraged to see amazing homeschool helps like this available at my fingertips-this yearly subscription offers so many resources and does not disappoint!

How we used our membership:

In the weeks spent reviewing this online resource, we mostly hung out here...

I feel like we've barely scratched the surface-so.many.choices! Spelling, copywork, Spanish, history, electives and so on...you name it and it's available. For those of you homeschooling older children, I've read some pretty awesome reviews on the quality and variety of courses offered in the middle and high school arenas-economics, architecture and web game design to name a few. And bonus-academic weighting for transcripts of many high school classes is included.

Our favorite stops on the site far have been the Elementary Art and Explorers courses, as well as the Figures in History lessons.

The figures in History unit serves as a great complement to your regular history studies. Each characater portrait includes a printable standing cutout(paper doll style to be used for plays/ reenactments ), a coloring page or word search puzzle, and an "accent on art" lesson comprised of a project relating to the life of that historical hero or heroine.

Here is Evan with his cut out of Robert E. Lee. The "accent on art" lesson in this unit was a map of the battle of Gettysburg with corresponding questions. I'll definitely be revisiting these weekly lessons once we get into the Revolutionary war.

The elementary art units each focus on a different area of art such as color theory, primary colors, famous artits and more. We took a dive into the Renaissance and enjoyed lessons on Michelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci(inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of course). These lessons came nicely in printout form and contained a short biographical sketch as well as art project ideas and book recommendations. For Michelangelo we read about how he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and did a bit of upside-down drawing ourselves as our art project.

The art project suggested under Davinchi's lesson was to sketch a portrait in the style of Mona Lisa. Now my Bennett is no Mona Lisa, but his expression was pretty right on.  ;-)

Also, most all courses I've seen come with a printable course completion certificate, which is a pretty big deal when you're five. Here's an example I'm hoping to present to my own little learner soon.

In addition to the quality course content and Applecore record keeping software(a topic for another blog!), another huge perk of a schoolhouseteachers.com subscription is access to the RightNow Media Library. RightNow Media offers the golden ticket to over 10,000+ streaming video recourses. I'm especially excited to watch the "Torchlighters" biography series with both boys. I downloaded the app to our ipad and let Evan watch his selection of videos on our breaks or for an extra special treat-this is especially handy since we've taken the dive to drop our cable connection this past year.

And in case you've graduated Kindergarten, there's a great selection of instructional videos and biblical historical documentaries I can't wait to dive into myself. 

How much does it cost?

You can subscribe to SchoolhouseTeachers.com monthly for $12.95 each month or save over 10% on a one-year membership for $139. One fee covers your entire family, and you have the option to cancel anytime. And, special pricing is available for small groups and co-cops!

Even better news? Drumroll please....You can buy a subscription for half off thru Jan 31 with the code CREWFOLLOWER!

You can see what my fellow Review Crew Members thought of it by checking out the Crew Blog Post for this product. It's a fun window to look through and see how other people used the same product in their homeschools, especially as it applies to different age groups. I've already made several mental bookmarks of new places to visit and courses to research based on these fellow reviewer's notes.