Month: April 2022

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I love the French language. I’m rusty in my usage of it, but I love it nonetheless – so much so that I chose it for my children for their second language, even though by local standards, Spanish would make more sense. When I learned about Whistlefritz, I was super excited to try it out for my children.

For today’s review, I received a digital version of the Educator’s French Collection. This includes 4 videos, 3 audio “CDs,” and 2 PDFs (French lesson plans for kids and French matching cards).

I started by downloading all of the files to my computer. I was really hoping to be able to somehow “cast” those videos to the TV, but I haven’t figured that out yet so we just watched them on the laptop. It’s worked out okay using Windows Media Player. I moved the audio files to my phone for car listening. Ever since receiving the set, we’ve listened to this music in the car regularly. We’ve had it for just over a month and it’s not uncommon to hear Grasshopper (age 9) sing, “Quand je serai grand . . .” (when I grow up . . .) or my husband belt out, “Les petits poissons, dans l’eau . . .” (the little fish in the water . . .). Even my 3-year-old loves these songs. Whenever I start to sing “La tête, les épaules, genoux, et pieds” (Head, shoulders, knees, and toes) to him, he immediately gets a huge grin on his face. It’s been really rewarding seeing and hearing my family actually begin speaking (er, singing) French since we received this product.

When it comes to the videos, Whistlefritz is an immersion program (which I love!), which means there is no English whatsoever during the program (not even subtitles). The program is designed with a lot of repetition, which of course, is the best way to learn a language.  That’s how we all learned English, after all.

The host, Marie, has a really fun personality. She seems to truly be enjoying her time onscreen. She’s not the only one you see, though. There are les enfants (children) in the videos as well. The show also features “Fritzi,” an animated mouse, and “Rito,” an animated fox. The main talking points are all handled by Marie, though.

The first video, On va jouer, focuses on teaching parts of the body, clothes, numbers, and animals. The combination of speaking and singing, real people and animation, makes this a real joy to watch. Dedans et Dehors, the second DVD, focuses on rooms in the house and foods. The standout song in this film is the one about all the different fruits. Les Saisons (the seasons) covers the calendar, and the final video, L’Anniversaire de Fritzi (Fritzi’s birthday) talks about party words.

Whistlefritz suggests their products for ages 2-7, and I heartily agree with that recommendation. Due to its immersive nature, Whistlefritz might not be a good choice for older children. While they might learn the words, they’re likely to fight you a bit more because they can’t understand what’s going on. The younger kids are more malleable that way.

Because Whistlefritz is designed for younger learners, it’s not a curriculum per se. Really all you have to do is start the video and let the kids watch it. It’s colorful and vibrant enough that kids will be captivated by it, even during the first several viewings before they can understand any of it. It can, however, be a bit overwhelming before you start to understand some of the vocabulary (for us “older folks”). I found that for me personally, I could only handle about half of an episode the first few viewings. Not understanding much (or any) of the film can make one weary. Keep at it, though, and pretty soon you and your children will be well on their way to learning a new language.

I would heartily recommend this product to anyone looking for an immersion approach to foreign language teaching, especially for younger children with no previous training. And if you don’t want French, Whistlefritz also has a large selection of Spanish programs as well. The videos are also available to rent or buy from Amazon video, so that might be a viable option for some families (it would be ideal for ours, if we hadn’t received this review copy).

Head over to the Homeschool Review Crew site to learn more. Some of my colleagues are reviewing the French collection, like me, and some are reviewing the Spanish collection.

Blessings,

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Whenever any other homeschool moms ask my opinion on grammar curriculum, I always give the same answer: Fix It! Grammar from Institute for Excellence in Writing. We’ve been using this program in our homeschool for years, and it’s far and away my very favorite. The timing on receiving this review was pretty good for us, too, because Grasshopper (4th grade) was just finishing up level 1 of Fix It!, so we were primed and ready for the (new and improved) level 2.

About Fix It! Grammar

Fix It! Grammar gives your students one story to work on through the entire school year. They read one sentence (sometimes two, if they’re short) per day, and that sentence is full of errors! Your student systematically corrects the errors found in the text, identifies and defines the vocabulary word, and then re-copies the sentence correctly. As they move through the book, they also learn to identify different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc). These are marked in the “incorrect” sentence, before the student does the copywork.

Why I Love Fix It! Grammar

There are several reasons I love to use this program with my kids. First of all, it’s quick. The lessons get slightly more time consuming as you move through the books, but we have never spent more than 10-15 minutes on a single lesson.

Second, it’s easy to teach. There’s a teacher’s manual as well as a student book available, but if you’re decent at grammar you could probably get by with just the student book. The basics for teaching are found in both volumes, so as long as you have enough knowledge to be able to explain the concepts to your child, the student book will suffice. If you’re unsure of yourself, definitely get the teacher book too.

Third, because of the nature of the program, where students work through a single story and make similar corrections throughout the entire school year, the knowledge sticks. My teenagers used Fix It! Grammar when they were young, and both are competent writers now. We are now using the program with my 9-year-old, and he is fully understanding everything he learns too.

Finally, IEW has a very generous copyright policy. If you are using the program with more than one child, you can photocopy the pages under their copyright policy. However, if you are using it in a co-op setting, each family will need at least one copy of the student book to use. This means that you can also have photocopies made and save the student book for future children as well, which is what I will be doing this time around.

How Fix It! Grammar has changed over the years

When we first started using the program many years ago, the student book was divided up into “weeks.” Each page had four sentences, labeled “Day 1,” “Day 2,” and so on. Your student would make the corrections for the day, and then copy the sentences into a separate notebook (see picture at left, which is an old copy of The Nose Tree that Grasshopper has been working through this school year). The image above is the new version of Fix It!, which has each “day” on its own page. The corrections to be made are identical, but they’ve added some lines at the bottom of the page for the copy work. Additionally, instead of just showing the different types of words that need to be identified at the top, they’ve shown you exactly how many of each word there are. That is so helpful! I think it’s my favorite new feature.

Final Thoughts

I think it’s pretty clear that I love IEW’s Fix It! Grammar program. It will always be my go-to curriculum for teaching my children the ins and outs of writing in English. But don’t just take my word for it. Head over to the Homeschool Review Crew and read more reviews from other homeschool parents.

Blessings,

 

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

There are a lot of subjects where it’s easy to fit a Biblical worldview into. Math isn’t one of them. Math is so concrete and unchanging, that it just doesn’t make sense to try to make it spiritual. Well, Mary Carroll thought differently, and His Vessel Textbooks – Algebra I shows her commitment to making math faith-based brought to fruition.

At first glance, the book looks just like a normal Algebra textbook. It’s large, thick, and heavy. All the things you remember about high school math, right?! But what makes His Vessel different is the focus on God all throughout the entire text. For example, in the first chapter when talking about integers and absolute value (the distance a number is from zero, regardless of whether it’s on the positive or negative side of the number line), Mrs. Carroll says, “Isn’t it wonderful that God loves you so much that He sees your Absolute Value through Jesus Christ? You have Absolute Value!!!” I just love that!

His Vessel tackles all the normal Algebra I topics over the course of its 500+ pages. Everything from integers to graphing to the quadratic equation are covered. It’s definitely a full math course, and when Scorpion finishes it (likely by next year, June 2023), I will not hesitate to give him the Algebra I credit he’ll have earned through studying with this book. And he’ll be blessed with biblical truths and blessings all the while! What a lovely thing from a math book.

Besides being so inspiring with the Biblical approach to mathematics, the His Vessel text is very good on its merits alone. It’s definitely one of the better Algebra books I’ve come across. The explanations are clear and concise (but if you have any issues, there’s a YouTube channel with video lessons), and the practice problems are lesson-appropriate.

Scorpion has thus far been working on his own, and not too, too much with this book yet because he’s still finishing up his pre-algebra online course. At the beginning of this review period, he told me he was nearly done with pre-al, though, which is why we requested to review this book. I am so glad we did, too! Not only will he learn the math skills needed for this course, but he’ll get those little encouragements and have a bit of screen-free time too.

As of the writing of this post, Algebra I is the only textbook available from His Vessel, but Mrs. Carroll is currently working on the Geometry book which will be released this fall (2022). She also has plans to get pre-algebra, Algebra II, and elementary math in the future. What a blessing these books will be to families when she finishes them!

Make sure to head over to the Homeschool Review Crew to get more insight into His Vessel Textbooks!

Blessings,

 

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew

I’ve been noticing over the past few months that Grasshopper’s current math course hasn’t been challenging him very much. For this reason, I applied to review Educo Learning Center with him. We received a one-year subscription and matching workbook from Educo International Inc. for him to work with. I chose the 4th grade level because that’s where he is developmentally and in his math skills.

As I just mentioned, Educo is a combination online learning center and physical workbook. In order to access the online content, each student requires their own email to log in (separate from the parent email used for the educator dashboard). I used my main email for the parent side and one of my supplemental emails (the one I normally use for newsletters and giveaways) for Grasshopper’s student login. Once your student logs in and chooses the level they’re working on (we only have the single, 4th grade level in our dashboard), you’re taken to the lessons page. There are lots of options on this page. You can have your student take a pre-test or post-test for the entire unit, watch the unit tutorials, download practice sheets (which are basically the workbook pages), and take a post-lesson quiz on each section. I started by having my son take the small quizzes, one per day, until we got to a section he didn’t do so well on. That gave us a good place to start the program.

The tutorials are semi-interactive. You have to click each section before it will start, and rather than being a video lesson, it’s more like a Powerpoint presentation. You have to read the information and click each slide in order to continue. When the lesson is finished, you can have your student work through the workbook pages, or do the digital practice sheets.

In order to open the individual presentations and PDF practice pages, you have to turn your popup blocker off. I found this a bit frustrating, not because it’s a difficult thing to do (just click the “options” at the top of the internet page and allow them for the one specific website), but because the lessons then opened in another window instead of another tab. I prefer to run tabs; it’s easier for my mind to wrap around. I can understand why they might do it in new windows, though – it keeps everything cleaner for a child, and they’re less likely to accidentally click into the wrong tab.

The workbook pages are very good. They match the lessons very well, and they also give plenty of space for the student to write their answers. This is a common problem with math workbooks – they’ll often skimp on writing space because it’s “just numbers,” but little kids have big handwriting! It’s really nice to have a workbook that understands this and accommodates it.

When I asked Grasshopper this morning if he wanted to go back to his old math program or continue with Educo, he said he wanted to switch over to Educo. I wholeheartedly agree with his request – it’s a very complete program!

Make sure to head over to read more reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.

Blessings,