reviews

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

Reading should be fun. If it’s not, kids will rebel against the process of learning it (ask me how I know…). So I’m always on the lookout for products that help in that goal, and as such I was really excited about getting to review The Reading Game, 2nd Edition from Allsaid and Duun, LLC.

I have two kids who are on the spectrum of “learning to read.” My 8-year-old, Grasshopper, is one who’s rebelled against reading. (He’s just like his oldest brother in that regard.) My 5-year-old, Dragonfly, is super excited about learning to read – in fact, he had mastered some simple words when he was still 4. (He takes after his second oldest brother.) So something that would make the idea of reading fun for both of them seemed like a win in my book.

Contents of The Reading Game:

• Six decks of 60 cards: Skunk, Snake, Bear, Penguin, Unicorn, and Zebra
• Six sets of 3 flashcards that match the animal decks
• Six books that match the animal decks
• Game play instructions

The Reading Game is very similar to the age-old game of Memory, but with a twist. It comes with 6 decks of cards, each assigned a color and an animal. Each deck of cards has six sets of 5 pairs of words, and they are numbered on the backs. So for example, your kids start with the Skunk deck, which has sixty cards. 10 of these have a 1, 10 have a 2, and so on. Because there are 10 cards of each number, that’s 5 words with which to play Memory. You start with level 1 of the Skunk deck. You can have basically an unlimited number of kids (within reason, of course), but you do need one person who is a strong reader already (parent, teacher, etc). Just like in regular Memory, kids choose 2 cards. They need to read each word on the cards. If the words match, the child keeps the cards. If not, they put them back and the next child takes a turn. When the teacher feels like the students have mastered the words in the 1 series, they add in the 2s, then the 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s.

As they move through and master the words, there are flashcards for each deck (3 per deck – 1s and 2s; 3s and 4s; and 5s and 6s). These flashcards create sentences from the words they’ve worked on in those sets – only those words. And when all six sets from an animal group are mastered, the child is ready to read the matching book, and then move on to the next animal to repeat the process with new words.

Grasshopper, Dragonfly, and I played the game a few times a week. I started them both at Skunk 1, and we gradually moved up as the boys mastered the words. Grasshopper (8) was able to move more quickly than Dragonfly, but they both made incredible progress as we played. As we continued to add word cards, the kids quickly realized that they had better luck if they chose their cards with the same numbers on the back. (This was obvious to me, but they were very pleased when they “discovered” it themselves.)

When it was time to read the book because they’d done so well with the card game portion, the boys were a bit intimidated (especially Dragonfly – he’s done lots of reading of individual words but not much in the way of full stories). But when they could do it, they were so excited! And I was so proud of them too.

We will absolutely keep using The Reading Game. It is a wonderful resource for teaching kids to read – or for encouraging struggling (or rebelling) readers if that’s what your family needs.

Make sure to read more reviews on the Homeschool Review Crew. Also on the Crew blog, there’s a giveaway for The Reading Game. Five lucky winners will each win a copy, so please head over there and enter today! (Open to US addresses, ages 18+ only. Giveaway runs March 8-15, 2021. Void where prohibited.)

Blessings,

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

For the past few weeks, Grasshopper (8 years old) has been working with the Failure Free Reading Home Edition. As a kid who’s struggled with reading, I thought it might be helpful for him.

When I first received access to this program, it was easy enough to set up the account. There are two options for student login: with a picture or without one. I set Grasshopper up using the “with a picture” option. This means that when you click “log in,” you only have to type the password. From there, a grid of pictures is on the next page and your student has to choose the correct one associated with their account to complete the login process. Once we had that set up, the first thing the program had us do was the placement test.

I liked how all throughout the placement test process, we were reminded that it wasn’t a big deal. It’s important, obviously, but it was okay for students to get some of the answers wrong – that’s the point of a placement test, after all. This test was long. It took us 2 schooldays to get through it, and that was with me helping him heavily. There would have been no way Grasshopper could have made it through the test at all without my help.

But we did make it through, and Grasshopper was put into a vocabulary building section of the program. We used the program 3-4 days a week, except for the week we didn’t have WiFi because of the winter storms. (We were lucky to never have lost power, but our internet was down for an entire week, which caused problems for homeschooling.)

The word building part of the program introduces lots of new words (I think 5 per week, but I never actually counted them), and they are complicated words, especially for a child. I think that’s great though. The words are vocabulary that an older teen or adult probably use regularly, but are new and difficult for a younger child (think obstinate, recalcitrant, and other words like that). This is perfect for a vocabulary program! Each day, the process is a little different from the day before, but all the lessons build on one another.

First, the word is introduced. The program doesn’t require your student to know the words or be able to read them in advance – good thing for a vocabulary lesson! It will read everything out loud to them. The student should listen to what’s being said and examine the word carefully as everything is happening though. They’ll need all the information about each word that they can absorb during the lesson. When they feel comfortable with this, they can click continue to move on to the next step.

After learning and hearing the word (and hopefully examining its spelling), a synonym and definition is introduced. For most of the words, I found the synonym to be more helpful than the definition. And for words with multiple (but similar) definitions, I thought the voiceover reading was a bit too quick between the definitions. They tended to run together too much for my taste. But my son didn’t seem to have any qualms over the speed, so maybe it was just me. Again, here students should examine the screen and really focus on the word and its definition(s).

The next step is comprehension – using the word in context. The program gives a sentence using the word and the student’s job is to determine whether that word has been used correctly based on the context of the sentence. This comes in handy because in later lessons of the week, a paragraph is provided using all the words of the week (these can be a bit clunky and unnatural; imagine a 3-4 sentence paragraph incorporating 5 vocabulary words). Having had a bit of introduction to sentences with the words already makes that a bit easier to wrap young minds around.

Remember before when I said students should examine and memorize the word? That’s because they’re going to be asked to type it correctly before the day’s lesson is over. This will happen with each word of the week.

These steps repeat for each word. And this is all on the first day of the new list. Activities change throughout the week, but they all use the same set of words.

So what did we think? I’m a bit torn, honestly. First of all, I thought the placement test was way too hard. Maybe that’s because my son doesn’t care about reading (he takes after his oldest brother in that regard), so getting through it was like pulling teeth. But when we did, and we were able to move on to the actual lessons, it was smooth sailing. I liked the vocabulary aspect. I don’t think it provides “failure free reading,” but I think it is a fantastic resource for vocabulary words.

Make sure to read more reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew, too.

Blessings,

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way.

Please enjoy this guest post from Ballet Boy!

I am a homeschool student. I am also 17 years old. This means that I’m nearing the point to think about graduating. For me, that doesn’t mean a diploma. After talking with my dad, I decided to pursue a GED instead, and that means I will need to take a GED test. A key part of this test is economics, so I was very pleased to find out that we had the opportunity to review the Online Economics Course Bundle from Boundary Stone at just the right time.

The course is a combination of online videos and a physical textbook. When I was getting ready to start the course, I decided to go through a couple of the video sessions first. The videos have a different tone than the textbook. However, both are excellent. My favorite of the videos I watched was the first section of the tax series. It had a very interesting way of framing how to think about taxes and how to explain them. I liked that it felt very “real world” as opposed to simply stating facts. There was a lot more realism than I expected, and it let off a very fun vibe. It broke down taxes by demonstrating all of the different places taxes come from and what those taxes are for, as well as how to calculate how much of a certain pay grade will be taxable. It also got into different types of tax (sales tax, flat tax, income tax, etc). I also liked how these sections were broken into bite-sized pieces. They fit all of that into a video that was only about 15 minutes long. Each section of the introduction video was then expanded into a video of its own for further clarification. Even though each topic was expanded upon separately, none were neglected in the first video. I consider it to be one of the most satisfying introduction videos I’ve ever seen, regardless of topic. It really did a good job getting you excited about the subject at hand.

The textbook has a very different tone than the videos, as I mentioned above. But it was just as interesting. The videos are more of a pragmatic approach, whereas the textbook really gets into the “why” of economics. It was interesting reading through it and seeing the places where it tied economics into the Bible. One of the ways it does this that I found particularly noteworthy was when the book was answering the question “Why Basic Economics?” (which is the title of the first chapter). It basically said, and I think this is true, that in the Garden of Eden mankind was given the mission of dominating the Earth and organizing it. Since Adam and Eve were also instructed to populate and fill the Earth, that would mean leaving the Garden, even though the Garden provided everything they needed. Thus was created the idea of work to fulfill a purpose – as well as the realization that one cannot accomplish all of the work that needs to be done alone. With this concept came the need of camaraderie of working toward a common goal an in turn, the need for a currency – whether through actual money or simply bartering using items. It was a very elegant way to explain the why as opposed to the general “well, we have it so you might as well learn how it works” or “the reason we have money is to buy things and pay bills.”

This program is full of little nuggets of information and delightful ways to answer questions that you haven’t asked since you were a little kid. All in all, I would say this is a stunning program. Having gone through just a little bit of it so far, I feel very comfortable recommending this. I am sure that by the time I finish the entire course, I will be more than ready for the economics portion of my GED test.

Thank you, Boundary Stone, for providing such a great product!

Blessings,

Ballet Boy

Make sure to visit the Homeschool Review Crew for more reviews this week!

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way.

Have you heard of Drive Thru History® Adventures before? We’ve used a few of their videos in our homeschool in the past, and my kids quite enjoyed them. Well, they have a brand-new course now called Bible Unearthed, and for the past few weeks, Scorpion has been digging into Biblical history with this video series.

The course includes 12 videos as well as some supplementary material to go along with them. Because Scorpion was the kid who watched these videos, I’m going to give him a moment to tell you about them:

The videos are about archaeology and how it’s useful today. They go in depth in how it’s been used in the past to solidify Bible stories. They spend a lot of time talking about the history of archaeology as well as real artifacts that have been used in the past. There are parts of each video where the hosts explore real-life archaeological sites. Some of the sites are places like David’s temple. This was the first ever evidence that King David was a real person, not just a biblical (fictional) character. When they finish showing the on-site footage, there is a secondary portion with the hosts having a sort of round-table discussion about what they saw. They often look at artifacts that have been previously found, like the Rosetta Stone, rather than finding new things themselves. They don’t find a lot of new things themselves; it’s mostly just exploring, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The course content is:

1. What is Archaeology?
2. The Impact of Archaeology
3. Locating Archaeological Sites
4. The Life of an Archaeologist
5. What is being discovered today?
6. Archaeological Mysteries
7. Top Discoveries in Bible Archaeology
8. Getting Involved in Archaeology
9. Trends in Archaeology
10. Weird Archaeology
11. Accidental Discoveries in Archaeology
12. What is left to be discovered?

The series is hosted by Dave Stotts and Randall Niles of Drive Thru History® Adventures along with archaeologist Dr. Titus Kennedy. Each episode includes its own PDF of the “digging deeper” section, which includes things like Bible memory verses and optional hands-on activities (like map making).

Each of the videos runs about 15 minutes, and my son tells me that they were about half and half between exploration and table talk. We didn’t really use the curriculum, but I could tell that he was learning just from the videos from the way he was talking about the course with me after he’d finished each video. I think he rather enjoyed having an “easy” class that he found interesting, and it gave him a few minutes of time each day when he could simply relax while still “working.” Because I received lifetime access to this course, I might have both of my high schoolers go over the entire course in its entirety for a history credit in the next year or so. I think it would be a fantastic resource for that! With some modification, this course would also be a great unit study for middle school students, and using the videos alone would be a great jumping off point for some fantastic family discussions.

There are a total of 84 reviews for Drive Thru History® Adventures this week; please click over to the Homeschool Review Crew site for more of them.

Blessings,

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way.

I’m not much of a music person. I know that’s probably not a popular thing to say, but it’s true. Given the choice, I’d sit in silence before I turned on music any day of the week. I (usually) find it oppressive and aggravating. I would never choose to do a music class in our homeschool because I wouldn’t enjoy teaching it, and that disdain would simply push the thought from my mind. But I know that I’m the anomaly, and I know in my heart of hearts that it’s not fair to the people around me to push that view. So I signed up to review Musik at Home. Using the Musik at Home Membership, I have been able to introduce my younger kids to some very basic music education, and it’s been lovely.

The courses in Musik at Home are divided up by age range. You can choose a course for Babies and Toddlers (birth to 24 months); Mixed Ages (1-5), Preschoolers (3-5), and Family Music for ages 4-7. Each level has 6-9 video lessons which each last under half an hour (perfect for younger kids and their short attention spans!). Some of the lessons ask you to use super basic musical instruments like shakers or drumsticks as well as a scarf or large piece of fabric. You can easily substitute things around the house for these (a plastic container filled with rice for the shaker, sticks from outside or wooden spoons for the drumsticks…). There are also dancing and singing activities. It’s really easy to navigate the website and find the best category, and then lesson, for your child(ren).

Even though the classes are quite short, they incorporate a lot of different activities within each one – again perfect for keeping young children engaged. My kids (2, 4, and 8) really enjoyed the Mixed Ages class. Even the baby was able to mimic what he saw on the screen during these lessons, and it was super fun to watch him get so excited about the classes. The older kids really liked using the sticks to bang on stuff the most, but Bumblebee (the baby) loved to dance and twirl.

If (on the off chance) you’re like me and aren’t that into music but you still want to give your young children a gentle introduction to the topic, I recommend giving Musik at Home a chance. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Make sure to head over to the Review Crew blog for more information and additional reviews.

Blessings,

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review,  nor was I compensated in any other way.

Science has the possibility to be tricky, especially as your kids get older. We use a textbook for Ballet Boy (16), but Scorpion (14) isn’t quite ready for that particular text. So when I saw that there were review slots open for NatureGlo’s eScience MathArt & Science Course Bundle, I applied. The course is completely digital, and there are 25 different unit studies for ages 10 and up. I let Scorpion look over the lesson options when we first got access and choose which one he wanted to work on first. He chose the one on Komodo Dragons.

The Komodo Dragon study in NatureGlo’s eScience includes 7 lessons:

• Main lesson slideshow with study guide (this is sort of like the syllabus for the course)
• 10 amazing facts about Komodo Dragons
• History connection (a short video with questions about Joan Beauchamp Procter – fascinating lady)
• Geography connection (a lesson on the Indonesian islands)
• Art connection (how to draw a Komodo Dragon)
• Literature connection (read an Indonesian folk tale)
• Creative writing (write your own version of that folk tale)

Some of these lessons take a little longer than others (the writing one, particularly), and for that reason some of them would spill over into multiple days for us. Generally speaking, though, Scorpion was able to work through one lesson each time he sat down. I had him work an average of twice a week, so he was able to finish this unit study in under a month. He liked it so much that when he finished, he chose to continue in the Herps Explorers series and moved into Frogs, Geckos, Chameleons, and More.

This second unit study is much longer than the first one. The Komodo Dragons study is considered to be a “one lesson” unit, while the Frogs (etc) study is classified as a 6-week study. It wasn’t until I got into that study with Scorpion that I realized we probably moved a bit too slowly in the Komodo Dragons study. Comparing the “one lesson” to the “6 week course,” I could see that each of the 6 components in the latter have the same number of lessons, so I’ve had him start logging in each day to work on science instead of just a couple times a week.

The lessons in the Frogs study are not the same as in the Komodo Dragons study. The Frogs, because it’s broken down into six individual lessons each with its own focus animal or group of animals, pulls different “connections” (art, literature, etc) in throughout the six weeks (and therefore during a different animal focus) rather than all being present in each animal’s lessons. This keeps things from becoming predictable, monotonous, and overwhelming. Over the course of the six lessons, though, all of the components are there – as well as much more, as you could probably guess based on the longer length of the study.

Animals covered in this study are: Frogs and Toads; Dwarf Geckos and Chameleons; Geckos; Giant Salamanders; Turtles; and Marine Turtles. At the end of the six lesson course, there is a review and a certificate of completion.

Animals aren’t the only options for lessons on the NatureGlo’s eScience program, though. For example, there’s one on Bubbeology, which is another “one lesson” course. When I opened up that one, I could see easily how that would be done in just one lesson (as opposed to seven, like what we did with the Komodo Dragons). There are only two things in this lesson: the overview and “projects, activities, and videos.” I didn’t see any of the “projects,” but there were some pre-lesson questions/activities listed in the overview lesson. Grasshopper saw me looking over the lessons to write this review and expressed some interest in the Bubbleology one, so even though he’s below the age range I’ll probably find some of the videos listed on YouTube for him to watch.

Beyond the science aspect of NatureGlo’s eScience, there’s the MathArt aspect. We haven’t explored that very much, but the concept strikes me as pretty awesome. As it sounds like, it’s a way of combining math and art in the real world by looking at things like patterns in nature, architecture, plant growth, and more. It also teaches about the Golden Rectangle and Fibonacci Numbers.

So, what did we think overall?

From Scorpion:

I liked the topic of the Komodo Dragons study. It was pretty straightforward and didn’t take me too long per lesson to finish. I liked that it covered a lot of different subjects within one topic. I haven’t done a unit study since I was a little kid, and this reminded me how fun they can be.

From Mom:

The content of the lessons is really good, and well thought out. I had a bit of frustration in the logging in process each time because moving from the log in page to the courses list isn’t very intuitive, and sometimes required me to log in twice. But once we got the hang of exactly where to click to avoid having to do that, I thought the program was awesome!

Click through to the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read more reviews from other families.

Blessings,

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review, nor was I compensated in any other way.

You might recall that Dragonfly, my 4-year-old has been learning to read this summer. He’s super excited, and I want to encourage that hunger to learn, so I was really interested to have him review Reading Eggs from Blake eLearning Inc. I’d heard of Reading Eggs before (if you’ve homeschooled little kids for any length of time, you probably have too), but never really tried it, so this was an adventure for both of us. 

When you set up the account, there’s one log-in for your family, but each child has their own “map” within the account. When you get logged in, you choose the student and where you want them to work. There are 4 levels of reading: Reading Eggs Jr (ages 2-4), Reading Eggs (ages 3-7), Fast Phonics (ages 5-10), and Reading Eggspress (ages 7-13). We also got access to Math Seeds. I had Dragonfly start at the beginning of Reading Eggs. I probably could have (maybe even should have) had him start partway up since he’d learned quite a bit previously, but it made sense to me at the time to start at the beginning since the program was an unknown quantity to us. 

Reading Eggs is available as a website (on a phone, tablet, or computer) as well as an app (phone or tablet). I didn’t realize at first that there was an app available, so we used the website. When I learned about the app, though, I downloaded it right away to my iPad. I was able to log in using the same credentials as the site, and all of Dragonfly’s progress was there. That was great, because now we don’t need to log in every single time anymore. Since then, we have used the app exclusively. 

The program itself is really fun. Each lesson consists of about 10 different activities/games, all centered around a specific letter or sight word. The first activity always introduces the sound with a fun song, usually sung by mascot Sam the Ant. Then the letter (or word) pops up in different places on the screen and the student clicks or taps on them. The final activity of each lesson is reading a book that focuses on the letter of the day. This is usually a little 4-8 page booklet that has single words, each beginning with the letter. There is an option to have the book read to you, which you can turn off with a little toggle switch at the top of the screen. We always left it on.

The games in between the first and last one each time vary somewhat. I never really counted them, but there seemed to be about 10-12 total games on an (approximate) 8-game rotation. This means that the games get repeated a lot, just with different letters. But don’t take that to mean that it was boring or repetitive, because it definitely wasn’t. And even if it was, kids at this age thrive with repetition anyway. But even for me, as the teacher/monitor, it still felt pretty fresh each day. Obviously, there were some games that I liked better than others (and my preferences were usually based on what was easier for him to succeed at!), but all of the games were fun and really pushed the letter sound of the day. Let’s take a quick look at a few of the games.

Listen for the sounds: The child sees two pictures and has to determine which one has the sound of the day in it (for a single letter, the sound should be at the beginning; for another type of sound, it just has to be in the word).

Picture Match: There are six pictures taking up most of the screen, and six words down below. When you click on a word, it is read to you and you drag the word to the correct pictures. This is done twice with the same words, but they get mixed up between.

Word Blending: Sounds are shown, each in a bubble. The sounds are read, then blended into a word, and the child repeats.

Frog Hop: There are many iterations of this game, but the concept is the same. The sound or a word with the sound is shown amongst two others and your child chooses the correct one. They do this ten times to get the frog all the way across the pond.

Dot to Dot: Touch the spots in order to create the letter of the day.

Word building: The final sound(s) are shown along with a picture and three possible starting sounds. The child chooses the correct one.

Letter Grid: In a 6×6 grid, there are 6 of the letter of the day (in different fonts). The child finds them all. The game is repeated with the capital version of the letter.

This is just a small sampling of the different games; as I mentioned, they go on something of a rotation from lesson to lesson. With each game, the child is allowed 3 mistakes. If they succeed with fewer than three errors, they can move on. With the third error, they are automatically restarted on the game.

At the end of the lesson, your child is awarded with some sort of creature that hatches from an egg on their map. This creature is based on the letter of the lesson (Pram Lamb for the “am” sound, for example). Each lesson took Dragonfly about 20 minutes to complete.

So what did we think? We love it! Dragonfly is always asking to do Reading Eggs. Seriously, not a single day goes by when he doesn’t ask to do a lesson (even the weekends). That’s a raving review if ever there was one!

Blessings,

 

 

Make sure to hit the Homeschool Review Crew blog for more Reading Eggs reviews!