Maestro Classics TOS Review

We were offered a chance to review Swan Lake from Maestro Classics

These Cd's are recorded by the London Philharmonic and are available for $16.98 (or as a download for $9.98).  The CD is 7 tracks, the first being the Swan Lake story (about 34mins) and the remaining tracks consisting of information on Tchaikovsky, what to listen for in the music, a metal version of the song, sing along song and more.

Both options come with a 24-page activity book containing a biography of Tchaikovsky, information on acoustic and electric guitars, sheet music and words for a sing-along song, explanation of major and minor keys, puzzles and mazes.

Maestro's suggested age range is 6-12 but my 5yo and 3yo happily listened in with their older sisters. (it was all I could do to stop my 3yo from dancing around the room to it).
I really liked the music and your curriculum guides on their website with enough expansion work to create a whole unit based on Swan Lake. Another favourite of mine was the explanation of happy and sad chords.

Overall a very pleasurable experience and a great way to introduce some classics into you homeschool.

Disclaimer
I was provided with a free copy of Swan Lake so I could provide an honest review of the product.

School catch up.

Its been an interesting school week here. We've managed to squeeze alot in to a small amount of time and I'm wishing tomorrow was Saturday and not Friday ; )

We started the week focusing on our simple machines unit by looking at inclined planes (ramps and screws)

Lilly and Sunflower decided to count all the coins in the change jar (almost £30)

Both Lilly and Sunflower have been working on fraction addition,

finishing their animal research, poetry and building challenges.

Tulip has worked with the insets

while Rose has focused on her numbers.

Rose and Tulip worked hard to create a Chinese Dragon for our co-op class

where the girls explored various activities including food tasting with chopsticks, calligraphy, mah jong, Chinese zodiac, making paper lanterns, leaning about the panda and building a great wall of China.

Lilly has also decided she wants to progress from recorder to the flute and has made a good start this week.

Planning

Over Christmas I've spent some time organising our work and thought you might like a peak.


I print off a monthly pack, starting with a school calender

followed by 4 weekly pages - outlining the topics to cover that week.

both are available as on my Download page (the weekly planner is a word doc so you can alter it to suit you.)

Real Homeschool Spanish TOS review

Relax, Enjoy, Aspire and Learn

Comforting words when you consider my foreign language skills are non-existent, I've been looking at various curriculum for a while so when the chance to review REAL Homeschool Spanish came up I was very excited.


I received the download version, which did involve alot of printing and binding.(available as hard copy for $89.95 or download for $49.95 - both packages include the book, activity book, answer book, and audio files. There is also a Daily Curriculum Guide for an additional $10)


This curriculum is created specifically for homeschoolers enabling the whole family to learn together whilst using it in their daily lives and conversation - a must for any true learning to occur.
The curriculum is organised into 10 units.  Each unit has 33 vocabulary clusters and 15 "idea" sections full of fun suggestions to extend the learning experience.  The activity book provides plenty of pen and paper practise.  The Daily curriculum guide breaks the planning down into 48 weeks for a traditional school year and there are free cultural links are available on the website.


As this is written to use either individually or with children of different ages simultaneously, it is working well for us. The older girls (7 & 9) appreciate the paper activities and the younger ones (3 & 5) laugh at my pronunciation efforts (yes, the audio files have a dual purpose - to teach you the correct pronunciation and to humiliate Mum)
I found the Tips for the Home Educator section very useful and found the email support very beneficial.
Overall I like this product and I've noticed that my skills are improving - at least now it won't be so  embarrassing as I won't need my 9yo to order food for us (yes my Spanish was that poor)

If you want to try some free lessons click here and you can see my shipmates reviews over at the crew blog

Disclaimer
I was provided with a free copy of Real Homeschool Spanish so I could provide an honest review.

More gifts the girls made

The girls have almost finished.
Felt hop scotch,

felt shooting stars,

notebooks,

a clay nativity (that still needs painting), seed pearl bracelets

and matching hair clips.

We finished off by decorating our gingerbread house

and tomorrow the baking starts.