Big IQ Kids Review

I was super excited to be given the chance to review Big IQ kids - the reputation of their spelling and vocabulary program is phenomenal!
For the last month both Sunflower (6) and Lilly (9) have both been using the Big IQ kids spelling, math and US state programmes.

You can read about their programme and trial it here - it provides a 10-15 minute lesson each day aiming for mastery by the end of the week. They have free programs for memorising basic math facts, spelling/vocabulary words and the U.S. states. For each completed lesson your child earns a coin to play one of the 'fun' games, providing great incentive. The core progammes seemed to be geared towards ages 6 - 14 but they do have a junior spelling bee on their site that look suitable for younger ages.

I was given access to their premium subscription (prices start from $7.99 a month/ $39.99 a year  - full details here) which provided me with emailed reports as well as monitoring the girls answers, analysing their progress and automatically progressing them once they had achieved mastery. Additional benefits of the premium service include a personalised buddy, no advertising on the children's lesson pages, timed quizzes and built in review.

The grade specific lists were a little easy so the fact that both the spelling and math programmes can be customised was great because I could work to each child's specific needs and strengths.

The spelling / vocabulary lessons were a surprise at first with the word clearly listed on the top of the screen with a space for you to spell it underneath (Lilly had her own way of compensating for this and covered the top half of the screen with a piece of paper) this was only present in the first lesson of each list and not in the following lessons (various review tools like spelling bee, unscramble, spelling tests etc.). Although Lilly would have liked the first lesson not to have the word available to copy, Sunflower benefited from it and her spelling has shown a dramatic improvement.

The math programme proved an effective review tool - great practice for keeping those skills sharp and much more enjoyable than worksheets :)

The geography (U.S states) program is great because it is a stand alone teaching tool, introducing location, name/abbreviation, capital city, economy etc. These facts are presented alongside graphics and followed by a quick quiz at the end of each lesson.
Being based in the UK we haven't covered US Stares prior to this so all the girls new found knowledge stems purely from this program

So what did we like about this site:

• The emailed reports meant I could let the kids work without supervision and still know which areas they needed more practice on.
• The lack of advertising on the lesson pages again meant no supervision worries.
• Once you have set a good starting level, the program automatically progressed in difficulty.
• The 'buddy' let each of my girls feel their activities were personalised.
• Sunflower and Lilly have both shown great progress.

Any improvements:

• The navigation of the site took abit of practice and usually involved me logging the girls onto the lesson pages before I could leave them to it.
• You really do have to use it each day - which did cause some problems initially trying to fit it into our schedules (especilly with Lilly trying to fit a whole weeks worth into one day)
• Would be great to see a world geography section in addition to the U.S state section.

You can read more reviews from homeschoolers for Big IQ Kids over at  TOS crew

Disclaimer

This product was provided free to me for the purpose of review. I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.

Autumn nature table

I realised I missed the first official day of Autumn and that we still had a seaside based nature table from our summer theme.

In an effort to remedy this the girls and I set out to collect the start of our (late) autumn table - we found various seed pods - which lead to a great recap about the various methods plants use to spread their seeds (and Sunflower's comment that the birds really should realise that her swing was NOT a great place to deposit their seed poo)

and Nanny kindly provided the best resource yet, lupine seeds! Tulip has a very tactile nature and these seeds are soft and fury to the touch so needless to say she hasn't left them alone and can be seen at various times, rubbing them gently in her fingers or on her cheeks :) I am now on the hunt for some pussy willow for her.

she also decided yesterday to sit down and draw everything on the table.

water electrolysis and preschol fun.

Lilly had some science work today - she was seperating water into hydrogen and oxygen using a battery and pencil leads.

she was very impressed when she could finally see the bubbles appearing on each electrode.(oxygen on one and hydrogen on the other - she was convinced the electrode with the larger bubbles was hydrogen as there are more hydrogen molecules than oxygen molecules in water)

Tulip was working some more with her sound basket and cvc reading but her favourite activity of the day was her space puzzle - seemed someone else liked it too.

Rose worked with our pink tower - as a space saver I bought the nesting pink tower (in natural) from Absorbent Minds and just putting it away in the right order proved a great extension activity

she also worked with her colour beanbags - I would call a colour and she would thow it to me to catch.

Sunflower did some history and then worked some more on her 'space book' - she wrote up some facts about Jupiter and Saturn and added them to her collection, when this is finished she wants to bind the book and add a cover  - she has already made the cover, homemade textured paint (white paint mixed with flour) for the moon and glitter paint for the stars.

Catch up

Ok it's been a very, very busy weekend - and another birthday DD4 just turned 5 :)
These are the gifts from her sisters - heart pillow from DD6, mattress for her dolls from DD8 and cakes from DD2.

As suggested the girls have all decided on a name change to stop people getting confused when their ages and names don't match up.
DD8 picked Lilly, DD6 Sunflower, DD4 Tulip and DD2 is Rose.

Montessori and phonics part 2

I posted here about using Montessori alphabet activities to reinforce the Jolly Phonics books DD4 is using and I realised that she had worked on a 2nd basket over the weekend that I never got round to posting (because I skived for a week)

This is basket 2 - it covers the letters ck, h, d, e, r and m.

when she finished the activity we moved onto a 3 period lesson - this is a m/d/e/etc. then show me the m/d/e etc. finishing with, what is this?(pointing to the letter)

She then took it a step further and came up with two games. The first game involved me making the sign for the letter and her identifying it by sound and pointing to the correct letter and the second game was to call out the letter sound and pop it in the bowl  - I think this was her way of telling me it was time to finish :)

Linked up to

Montessori Monday