Asia group activity day

Our activity day last month - sorry for posting it late but was hit with health problems.

I will be honest and say this topic (one the kids voted for) filled us parents with dread - that said, we all managed to create some amazing activities.

We looked at the Mongolian Empire, lifestyle and how they made felt.

Studied the Terracotta Army and had a go at making our own.

Looked at the countries in Asia and drew their flags for the giant map.

Read all about moon lanterns and had a go at lantern making.

Explored Rangoli and drew our own.

Made edible maps of the rivers and mountains in Asia.

I was very impressed by one childs' take on Mt.Everest - the tallest mountain of marshmallows :)

CHSH-Teach.com TOS Review

Over the summer we have had the privilege to review CHSH-Teach.com otherwise known as the 

Christian HomeSchool Hub Download Club. I was given a years subscription to the CHSH Download Club

CHSH-Teach.com is the creation of  homeschooler, Lynda Ackert. She decided to put her love of creating to good use and designed a website that acts as a hub for all her educational resources - it has over 50,000 down loadable pages including; worksheets, lapbooks, flashcards, notebook pages, reading comprehension, languages, writing prompts, workbooks, posters and many more. It even remembers us and has pages of organisational materials including; planning forms, graphic organisers, awards and calendars as well as daily devotionals and discussion forums. Lynda is continuously adding new contents to the site as she creates them so the list is ever evolving.

CHSH-Teach.com is incredibly easy to use. Once you have registered online created your account you can browse the resource bank and search by subject, search by topic or keyword, search by grade level or search by monthly events. The subjects are broken down into the main topics areas of Bible Related Resources, Languages, Arts Music and Crafts, Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Electives, Health.

You can opt to search by grade level - Kindergarden, 1st-3rd grades, 4th-8th grades, 9th-12th grades.

There are two ways to search by month as well.

 

I selected a summer math activity for the girls (fractions) and then gave them free reign to select their own 'lessons' for the summer. 

Rose being the wannabe inventor decided she wanted to know more about inventors and how they did it so we opted for a pack on Thomas Edison. Sunflower and Tulip wanted to look at the industrial revolution (more as an excuse to visit the local museums again) so I downloaded their pack. Basically this had something for every child (even Lilly downloaded some English Lit activities to go alongside her coursework), I downloaded some nice grammar rules and math posters to use as prompts for the new school year.

If you are after simple worksheets for practise or for a more complete lesson plan - its all here. For example the Industrial Revolution pack we used is a 24 page pack including reading, questions, vocab, timelines, discussions, reading comprehension and more. There are a number of additional worksheets and activities to go alongside the main pack.

I've got to be honest and say I'm very impressed with CHSH-Teach.com - whatever we are studying there seems to be something here for every age group. I love that its all in one place and saves me hours of trawling the Internet for suitable materials and I love how versatile it is, whether we want to do lapbooking, notebooking, worksheets, discuss, fill in the blanks, narrate etc. there is something in the hub to use. It makes it so much simpler to homeschool and teach your children.

CHSH-Teach.com offers an annual subscription fee of  $25 or for lifetime only for $99.99. They have freebies so you can trial the site and they have options to buy individual worksheets or workbooks.

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the TOS Blog.

ArtAchieve - TOS Review

Art is not my strength but the girls love it. I've always struggled to come up with any lesson plans so I was very happy (and so were the girls) when the chance came up to review Entire Level ll  from ArtAchieve.

ArtAchieve is a complete homeschool art curriculum providing drawing lessons for kids (and adults), it was created by John Hofland (a veteran homeschooler) who firmly believes that anyone can learn to draw, that drawing is essential skill and that like math, that skill can be taught. Puling on his combined experiences of teaching in school, homeschooling and studying with the masters he has created a hassle free on line curriculum that does the teaching for you.

We received a years access to the Entire Level ll for review. Its so simple to use - you literally create an account and the lessons are all on line and available once you have logged in.

There are 14 lessons in level 2. You can opt to print a pdf of the lesson or watch a video (approx 25 mins) outlining it step by step. Each lesson starts with some tips on how to relax and prepare yourself mentally and physically for art - my favourite tip was when he said to paint/draw without talking to improve concentration and to see the girls take this on board while I sat enjoying the silence while they worked (Sunflower even told her sisters "please be quiet, I need to concentrate"). Next comes a  'warm up' which is a grid with some of the squares containing elements from the picture for you to copy, then it moves on to discussing different aspects of art like types of lines, motifs etc before showing you how to draw. Lessons also include elements of geography, history or literature which are a great addition (I love sneaking in extra lessons) and he even has a play list of inspirational music to help you.

The lessons are professional, engaging and memorable (I've spotted Rose using one of his relaxation techniques when her sisters were annoying her) - they are so easy to use and I was really impressed with how someone with no historical art skills (me) could even produce an amazing piece of art and enjoy doing it.

This really has been so simple to incorporate into our schedule, the girls have loved this and it has fast become a firm favourite in our house. Lilly has spent hours working on minute detail within her pictures and has adopted a couple of his techniques in her various doodles. Sunflower said that this was the best lesson of the week while Rose has requested to do more. Tulip summed it all up nicely when she said 'I never knew that art was so much fun - can you get me some more paints'

I loved the confidence it gave me to include art in our weekly schedule and I loved the impact it had on the girls. I was also impressed by how varied their work was even though they were working from the same instructions.

ArtAchieve Entire Level ll is available for $53 and there are various different options to buy (including single lessons).

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the TOS Blog

 

Notebooking Pages - TOS Review

We do lots of notebooking here, this means I've spent hours scouring the internet for pages that would work for us or having to design them. Thankfully that part of my life is over now we've been given a Notebooking Pages Lifetime Membership for NotebookingPages.com to review.

Notebooking is an amazing way to cut out the busy work and really improve your learning, it's flexible, creative and is an excellent way for journaling your students work. Notebooking can be used to assist hand writing, copywork, vocab or spelling lessons, map work, history, grammar, project work, unit studies and more. It can be used for all topics and fits in with many learning styles and most curriculum.

 

NotebookingPages.com was created by Debra Reed, a homeschool Mum of ten, she has designed vast array of notebooking pages for your use. There are thousands of topics to choose from and they are divided into subjects for ease of navigation, these include;

• Any Study (generic pages, mini-books and 3D pages)
• A-Z (alphabet copy work, A-Z animals, A-Z sports, A-Z transportation)
• Bible/character
• Famous People
• Fine Arts
• Geography
• History
• Holidays
• Language Arts
• Science/Nature

Debra's pages are well thought out, she seems to have thought of everything - some are plain, others include spaces to draw in or stick pictures in, some have beautiful images for the child to colour in, still more have fill in the blank spaces and more.

We downloaded some work from her artist study of Georgia O'Keeffe to go along with our current art studies

 

and also from her Plant and Tree study for our nature and botany work,

both were enjoyed by all the girls, they fitted easily into our existing studies and were simple to use.

I was very impressed by both the range available and the quality. I loved that she had created an easy start guide and tutorials to help those who haven't notebooked before. I received a number of emailed tips and video links when I first signed up which were very useful.

My favourite aspect by far was that all the work was done for me, I no longer have to trawl various sites to try and find something suitable - its all in one place, there is a massive variety to choose from and it only takes seconds to download. You just need to pick and choose what page layout and style will work best for your students.

Debra has even added lapbook templates including mini layered books, matchbook books, popup book, top tab books and bordered templates, which you can use to make your own lapbooks.

The lifetime membership is available for $97 which full you full access to all the notebooking pages and any new ones that are added. She even has some free resources for you to try so you can see how it works for your family.

You can see what my crew mates thought over at the TOS Blog.

MaxScholar - TOS Review

I'm always excited when we get offered the chance to review something we really need. Step up the MaxScholar Reading Intervention Program by MaxScholar.

MaxScholar have created a systematic, comprehensive and multi-sensory online program designed to help students improve their reading and language skills. It was specifically created to help students that have dyslexia, learning disablitlies, ADHD, processing problems and those who are struggling to read and need extra help. They have put lots of research into creating this (including utilising methods from the Orton-Gillingham approach and the Lindamood-Bell Process) and have included a read-aloud feature for struggling readers. 


They start by asking your student to take a pre-test to work out exactly where they are in terms of comprehension and reading skills so they can put your child where they need to be, but you can ask the company to adjust that placement later if you feel the need to. They then go on to do activities at their level, progressing through the levels as they improve. For the best results it should ideally be used three to four times a week, each lesson takes on average 20-30 minutes per lesson.

We were given a years access to the MaxGuru pack which included;

MaxPhonics - this uses a multi-sensory phonics approach to work on letter sounds, blends, digraphs and even work on your handwriting. Activities include movies, drills and fun games that really reinforce what they are learning.

MaxWords - offering multiple levels that look at prefixes, suffixes, Latin and Greek roots, spelling rules and syllabication. They work on decoding words through multiple games and activities that allow them to really work with and understand the roots and rules. There are also timed readings that help improve fluency.

MaxVocab - a dictionary like no other, this section teaches thousands of word meanings through games like matching definitions and hangman.

MaxReading - with 13 levels there is something for everyone. This section teaches strategies to improve reading comprehension and introduces the concepts of highlighting, summarising, outlining and how to pick out the topic, main idea, and important details within a passage. Comprehension questions at the end of the text include multiple choice. You are
automatically scored as you progress so you can opt redo the chapter, look at the correct answers or progress to the next chapter.

MaxBio - by selecting famous people from the past and present they get to practise reading, comprehension and organising skills while reading biographies from sportsmen, musicians, political leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists etc.

MaxMusic - this is a really fun section where you get to use music and games to work on memory skills, recognition, grammar and auditory skills. It uses well known songs and asks you to identify parts of speech, remember words and play along on a virtual piano or guitar.

MaxPlaces - here you get to select from 51 countries around the world. After reading the passage and highlighting parts, it test your comprehension and reading by asking a series of questions. Although similar in set up to MaxReading and MaxBio it also sneaks in some additional history and geography knowledge.

MaxReports - this is the parents section that allow you to see the last time your students were logged in and where they were doing. This allows independent working.

I real like that MaxScholar have really tried to utilise relevant material to engage interest (the music choices and reading passages were spot on). I was also impressed by the balance of games to learning - too often I find programmes can be all about entertaining the child so that the content suffers or all about content so they are dry and boring. I felt that MaxScholar hit the balance perfectly, they were entertaining but still had a high level of educational content. I loved the fact that the programme is designed to reacts to your students evolving reading level.

My favourite aspect was the extra teaching I got from what I expected to be a reading programme - history, geography, grammar, music, vocabulary, Latin etc.

Tulip was the child that benefited most from this and in her words
 'I find reading abit easier and I learnt to find all the important bits on a page' 
' it made reading more fun'

MaxScholar is currently offering a 20% discount making MaxGuru available for $279

If you are looking for a fun and painless way to improve reading skills and comprehension then its definitely worth checking out.

You can see what my crewmates thought over at the TOS Blog

Book Basket April

We are still busy working on books from last month (they are BIG chapter books) but I have managed to introduce a couple of new books

History
Celtic Tales and Legends

Realms of Gold, Myths and Legends from around the world

They're favourite book so far has been the Enid Blyton Animal Lovers story - they even turned to it for advice when they discovered newts in the garden last week.

Grapevine Studies - The Birth of Jesus TOS Review

I love this time of year because TOS always manage to find a great Christmas product to review which brings the spirit of Christ into our home. And Grapevine Studies doesn't disappoint - we received the Birth of Jesus: Multi Level (7+)

Grapevine Studies have created a unique multi sensory way (hear - draw - review) for your family to study scriptures, by drawing stick figures as the lesson is presented to them and then answering questions about what they have learnt the scriptures become more engaging and really memorable. Its a great way to improve your understanding the Bible.

I received three digital downloads. 
The Birth of Jesus multi level teacher book

This contains the goals, methodology and lesson narratives which really simplifies planning as its all outlined for you (all you have to do is print and provide coloured pencils/pens). It also contains the completed (drawn) lessons - Each lesson consists of reading a scripture verse, stick figuring (drawing) and discussion questions to review. They suggest a weekly memory verse and timeline review, there are also maps and vocabulary to look up in the Bible Dictionary. Their suggested lesson outline is;

Day 1 - Timeline Review Page
Day 2: Lesson page 1
Day 3: Lesson page 2
Day 4: Student Drawing Page

 


The Birth of Jesus multi level Student book

This contains the printable outlines for the timelines and student pages. the lessons are broken down into timeline, the announcement, birth of Jesus, the proclamation, the Wise Men and Herod and a final review.

The Birth of Jesus multi level Student book traceable

The same as the student book but with traceable outlines

I love how flexible this product is - you can use exactly as outlined without any hassle and little prep or you can tweak to suit how your family works. We used it as outlined mostly but did make two small changes - first they suggested the teacher draws the stick figures on a whiteboard for the kids to copy but I choose to show them it from my laptop, second we printed a space copy of the timeline and cut it up to make timeline cards which we used in our weekly review.

I loved that it covered many topics - bible study, history, geography, dictionary usage, spelling, art etc.

The girls really, really enjoyed this - they loved the drawing and the timeline (and the timeline cards) and its a perfect way to study over Christmas. They even memorised bible verses with no complaints :)

The Teacher book is $12.50 and the Student book and Traceable book are $8 each

You can see what my crew mated thought of this and other Grapevine Studies products over at the TOS Blog.