Tag Archives: spelling

Reading Eggs Review

If you are looking for a fun, no fuss way, to improve your kids reading skills, then you might want to check out Reading Eggs and their award winning online reading program.

Reading Eggs is used by over 10 million kids worldwide. That is quite an accomplishment for a reading program. They have also achieved numerous awards and can be found in many homes and schools. We were recently asked to review a six month subscription to Reading Eggs which also includes Reading Eggs JR and Reading Eggspress. We were also given a subscription to Math Seeds. You can get your very own 4 Week Free Trial and see if Reading Eggs is a good fit for your family.

Reading Eggs

Online Subscription

Reading Eggs Jr. for Ages 2-4

Reading Eggs Ages for 3-7

Reading Eggspress for Ages 7-13

24/7/365 Access

Reading Eggs Special Features

Reading Eggs is an online reading program available for either a 6 month or 1 year subscription.

Reading Eggs contains 120 animated reading lessons (plus additional lessons in Reading Eggs Jr. and Reading Eggspress). Each lesson involves around 12+ tasks or mini-lessons. Some of the other special features of Reading Eggs includes:

Student Dashboard for independent student navigation (and motivation) of lessons, spelling, games, books read, etc.
Phonics
Phonemic Awareness
Letters
Sight Words
Vocabulary
Grammar
Reading Comprehension
Fluency
Songs
Games
Kids earn spending “eggs” they earned for completing lessons and quizzes that can be used in the arcade, designing their avatar, spend in the store, etc.
Printables: Worksheets, Awards for completing Lesson Maps and Quizzes
Over 2,500 Online Books To Read each with a Comprehension Quiz (of 5 to 10 questions each).
Spelling Quizzes / Driving Tests
Parent Dashboard: track lessons and quizzes completed, scores, and books read.
Parent Emails (also keep you updated of student progress)
Homeschool Guide (Grades K-2)
Additional Supplemental Books Available

How Does It Work?

Reading Eggs helps kids succeed in their reading abilities by focusing on mastering skills and strategies which are essential for reading success. The Reading Eggs developers are an experienced team of teachers, educational writers, animators, and website and app developers. Reading Eggs is beneficial for kids just learning to read as well as kids with strong reading skills. It is also beneficial for kids with learning difficulties, struggling readers, and English As A Second Language (ESL).

There are 3 Levels to Reading Eggs and in all it covers kids from ages 2 to 13. No prior knowledge is needed to start the program at the lowest level, Reading Eggs Jr, however those in Kindergarten (and some Preschoolers too) should be able to begin at the Reading Eggs level.

Reading Eggs will actually teach the kids to read through a series of progressive lessons that takes them from not yet able to read to master a second grade reading level. Students with stronger reading skills will progress quicker than beginners. Reading Eggspress is the next level in the program and covers skills from first through sixth grades. This level offers lots of reading comprehension challenges, books, and more learning games.

There is a comprehensive 35 page User Guide available to help parents learn to use the programs.

The basic motivation for kids is to make progress is earning golden eggs they can store up and spend like cash within the program by doing tasks like lessons, quizzes, books, etc. In the Reading Eggs program there are 12 Maps with 10 lessons on each map to master (120 lessons). At the end of each Lesson Map is a quiz for kids to take before they can move forward to the next Map.

Lessons also contain printable black and white activity worksheets as well as colourful activity pages to complete.

The worksheet printables also include lesson plans for each lesson. There are 120 Lesson Plans to help the parent understand the big picture of what the child is learning and how the online lesson and worksheets go together and additional suggestions to enhance the learning skills.

The links for the downloadable printable worksheets that include lesson plans, and more colorful activity pages for each lesson are found in the “bonus” section of the parent dashboard for additional practice.

After completing about five (5) lessons in Reading Eggs, kids will have earned enough eggs to begin using the Games section. At Games, they can choose a game they want to play. The more eggs they earn, the more they can spend, and the more games they can play. Kids love playing games, and games become a reward for the efforts they make, and it motivates them to want to do more.

Reading Eggs now offers a Homeschool Guide for parents for kids in grades K-2. There is a schedule for each grade and it integrates reading, math, science, and social studies and offers a suggested schedule of lessons, activity pages to complete, spelling, books to read, and learning themes. The Homeschool Guide can also be found in the “bonus” section.

Videos:

Watch this video to learn more about Reading Eggs (Math Seeds is now a separate subscription):

Watch this video to learn more about Reading Eggspress (ages 7-13):

Requirements:

Reading Eggs online programs can be accessed on a Computer with high speed internet service and an operating system of Windows 7 (or higher), or Mac 10 (or higher), iPad, and is available on some Smart Phones (Apple, Android, etc). It is currently not supported on some devices (Dell Venue 7, Kindle Fire Tablets, Pendo Pad, Thompson Tablet, or Tesco Hudl Tablets).

Our Experience:

My kids love using Reading Eggs. Reading Eggs is colorful and engaging. This fun program has helped my kids practice reading, spelling, and grammar skills in a fun interactive way.

For the purpose of this review, I will focus on the Reading Eggs level of the program and share with you some of our experience using this program with my 5 year old son who is new to Reading Eggs, and my 10 year old daughter who has some previous experience.

Though it is a “no-fuss” learning program (meaning the kids are not frustrated and resisting to use it), instead it is just the opposite and my kids do fuss if I they don’t get to use it. The kids are very motivated to get on the computer and practice their reading skills each day.

I have my own dashboard when logged in as the parent. I can see my kids progress in each program we are subscribed to. I also receive an email after my kids complete quizzes describing their reading progress and what skills and concepts they learned.

A special feature that I like is the option to choose starting my kids off at a specific lesson (there are about 120 different lessons), or letting them start at default mode which is at the beginning lesson on Map 1, or I can have the kids take the placement test. The placement test includes 60 questions. The test stops when the kids miss 3 questions and places them at the level where the missed questions corresponds to their skills. A parent can choose for the kids to continue where the placement test says they should be, or have them “Redo Placement Test”, or you can just adjust the lesson they are on within any level without retaking the test.

My kids also have their own dashboard when logged in as the student.

Even the youngest of kids are able to learn how to navigate their dashboard after a few times of using it because of the colorful pictures.

From the kids dashboard they can navigate around Reading Eggs. They can read stories, do spelling, quizzes, games, shop, etc. To get to their Lesson Map, they choose the “My Program” link and it takes them to their books and lesson options. Then they can choose the Lesson link and it brings them to their Lesson Map.

Here is my 5 year old son pointing to his avatar when it was on lesson 9 on Map 1.

Another fun feature for Kids is to design their own avatar for their dashboard. There are unlimited options in the design.

When they have unlocked more of the program based on their lessons, more options show up on their “Program” page. In this picture below, you can see how my daughter’s page differs from her younger brother’s page. She had master 106 lessons and was ready to start lesson 107.

After they choose “Lesson”, it takes them to the Lessons Map and hers opens up to lesson 107 on Map 11.

Another favorite feature for my kids is the driving test. Each of my kids are different, but my daughter especially enjoys doing these.

Math Seeds

We were also given a complimentary subscription to Math Seeds and I wanted to briefly mention it here. It is an online math program that operates in a similar way to Reading Eggs.

Math Seeds was created by the same team that created Reading Eggs and shares the same dashboard with Reading Eggs if you have subscribed to both programs. However, you have the option to only subscribe to Math Seeds or only to Reading Eggs if you wish.

In Math Seeds, my kids collected golden acorns to spend instead of eggs. Math Seeds involves 180 lessons with numbers and math skills for kids ages 3 to 9 years old. They have recently expanded the program to cover some skills at the third grade level (including times tables fractions, angles, subtraction with regrouping, etc).

Math Seeds Video

Here you can see the parent dashboard that shows one of my kids Math Seeds progress. We haven’t spent a lot of time in Math Seeds yet as we mainly focused on Reading Eggs during this review.

Final Thoughts

Pros:

Access 24/7/365 (use it anytime on your schedule)
Kids love it.
Kids can complete online lessons independently or you can expand learning with parents and additional lesson printables and suggested reading that reinforce the learning.
Proven reading improvement.
Affordable ($49 for 6 months and $59 for 1 year).
Keeps parents/teachers informed of progress (emails and dashboard reports).
Parents can tweak program by moving child ahead or back in lessons, and can have child repeat placement test if desired.
Printables
Homeschool Guide

Cons:

Non-Christian Worldview. May or may not be a good fit for everyone.

This “con” won’t pertain to everyone, but some religious objections may arise to the non-Christian worldview and undertones of some lessons and book options within the program. Some families choose to homeschool rather than send their kids to public school for religious reasons. This program is used in state sponsored public schools in the USA, and other countries and corresponds to common core education and also has many non-Christian themes that some families do not wish their kids to participate in.

Thankfully, parents can tweak the lessons if they see themes they might object to by skipping a specific lesson and moving the child up to the next lesson, or choosing not to read a specific book. Another way to use the program is avoid using the books that you object too, but still have the kids take the lessons and read other books, and then use what was in the lesson as a teaching point of discussion about your faith with your kids, and this is the way we handled it. You have some flexibility to make these adjustments through the parent dashboard.

Overall, kids of all ages like the Reading Eggs programs. With all of it’s colorful interactive games and ability to earn spendable eggs and awards for achievements, it is easy understand why it is so successful in teaching and motivating kids to read.

If you would like to try before you buy, be sure to try out the free lesson on their website, or sign up to get your 4 Week Free Trial subscription.

Social Media

Keep up with all the lasted news, product updates, free offers, and special sales at the social media links for Reading Eggs:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/readingeggsUSCA/
• Instagram (handle): readingeggs
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/readingeggs @readingeggs
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/readingeggs/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ABCReadingEggs

Homeschool Review Crew

Be sure to check out what others on the Homeschool Review Crew had to say about using Reading Eggs in their home.

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Phonetic Zoo Review

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Do your kids struggle with spelling? Most kids do because the way sounds are spelled in the English language can be confusing. If you want your kids to become great spellers, you might want to check out The Phonetic Zoo Spelling Level A [Starter Set] by Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW).

The Phonetic Zoo

Levels A, B, or C.
Take the placement test and choose the right level for your child before you begin.

Grades 3 – 8

Retails for $99.00

Each Phonetic Zoo Starter Set includes:

5+ audio CDs (includes MP3 downloads)
or also available for purchase as MP3 downloads and no CDs
Lesson Cards with spelling words and jingles
Personal Spelling Cards to keep track of your student’s typical misspellings
Zoo Cards that serve as a way to practice jingles or as rewards
75 page Downloadable Phonetic Zoo Teacher’s Notes PDF file

In addition to the materials, you are encouraged to watch two videos to help you as the parent / teacher: the “Excellence in Spelling” video and the “Spelling and the Brain Video Seminar”.

Each Lesson in The Phonetic Zoo has similar steps:

Phonetic Rule, Cards with Corresponding Zoo Animal, Jingle or Hint,
Discussion,
Word Lists (audio and print), Spelling Test, and Correction.

You move through the lessons at the pace set by your child. Each lesson takes about 10 minutes and they will learn a phonetic rule, have discussion built into the lesson, and learn to master spelling 15 to 20 new words using the rule they have learned.

It is suggested to go as slow as, or as fast as it takes for your student to get a 100% score two times on a lesson to show they have mastered the material. So a lesson may only take you two days, if your child can get 100% each time, or a lesson may take you 7 or 10 days. Just keep repeating the material for 10 minutes a day, until they have mastered the given lesson twice before moving ahead to the next lesson. If you taught the same lesson and did the same spelling words for 4 or 5 days each week, then start a new lesson the following week, program should last you the full school year. But again, the key is to remain flexible and allow your student to progress at their own pace.

How we used Phonetic Zoo:

We were sent the Phonetic Zoo Level A Starter Set for the purpose of this review. Level A contains 47 Lessons on 5 Audio CD’s (or MP3) ; large zoo rule and word cards, small flashcards, and the Teacher’s Notes e Book also includes all of the lessons, teaching notes, the final exam, printable word posters, zoo card pages, word lists and printouts.

I decided to write this story as a series of HOW TO steps. WHY? Because it helped me and it might help you too. You can follow these steps too to help make sense of what you need to do, what your child needs to do to complete this wonderful program. It is different than other spelling programs, and I think it may help you to see some steps we took to make it successful for us. It is divided into two sets of steps: “Prep”, and “Lessons”.

Prep

Step 1: I watched the 9 minute “Excellence in Spelling” video.

Step 2: We took the FREE Placement Test. This is a great resource and helps your child start right where they need too. There are three levels to this program: Level A, Level B, and Level C. You will want to place your child in the right level so they can be successful.

Step 3: Placed my order for the correct level (A, B, or C) of Phonetic Zoo my student needed based on what we learned from the results of the free placement test (see the red link above). We ordered Level A.

Step 4: Watched the 1 hour Spelling and The Brain video seminar. You can wait for the product to arrive before you watch the video, or you can get jump started while you are waiting by watching this video now!

Step 5: Organize my Zoo (my materials for Phonetic Zoo).

Have you ever heard the saying “not my monkeys, not my zoo” ? Well in this case these are my monkeys and this is my zoo.

We are homeschooling 6 kids and it is so easy for the shelves and stacks of books and supplies to get messy and piled up fast (see the example behind him, that shelf holds math manipulatives, crayons, pencils, flash cards, and notebooks and the kids get in a hurry and when they are done using them, they just shove their stuff in fast and go, and it quickly becomes a mess). Since we were about to enter the Phonetic Zoo, and knowing how fast books and supplies can go missing or stacked in the wrong place in “our zoo”, it is best to set my self up for success, be a good “zoo keeper”, and get my self organized!

When you receive your Phonetic Zoo shipment, organize the kit you receive and your supplies (large and small zoo cards, CD’s, headphones, notebook, pens NOT pencils (or use a pencil without the eraser), etc.), in an easy to access storage box (shoe box, milk crate, table organizer, book basket, shelf, or whatever works for your family, etc.).

Put a metal ring (or use a clip) on the large cards, and a rubber band (or a baggy) around the small cards.

Be sure you have a computer that can play an audio CD (or MP3 device), and it is helpful to have headphones (we have ear buds) for your student to use while listening to the CD’s (or MP3).

Step 6: PRINT out the Phonetic Zoo Teacher’s Notes e-Book (Teacher’s Guide) from the link on the IEW website you are provided with after making your purchase, and put your teacher’s guide into a binder. This is a 70+ page teaching resource you will want to keep handy. You can also download the MP3 files of the CD’s and store them on your computer device too.

Teacher’s Notes e-Book, Phonetic Zoo Level A

Step 6: Yahoo! We let out a shout and smacked ourselves on the back! Great Job! We finished our prep work and were ready to get started!

Lessons:

In this section, I will walk you through Lesson 1. It may look like a lot, but each lesson only takes about 10 minutes a day.

Step 1: We got out our zoo supply basket we made. This was so nice to have everything all together and ready. I read through our first lesson in the Teacher’s Notes that I also keep in the basket with everything.

Lesson 1, Phonetic Zoo Level A

Step 2: I read the phonetic rule from the lesson and provided him with the large zoo flash card to review. The rule is listed on the back, and on the front are a picture that corresponds with the rule and words to practice using the rule. It is a nice way to practice going over the rule and remembering it.

Step 3: Next I gave him the small flash card to read. It has the rule we just learned on one side and the zoo animal on the other side. He can use this to remind himself about the rule we learned.

Step 4: He set out his paper to write on, set out his flash cards, put in the CD for Lesson 1, and his ear buds. When he started the lesson, on the screen popped up a small box that controls the lesson. The lesson is all audio (not a visual lesson) and requires him to listen closely to what is being said on the CD.

Step 5: My son numbered the lines on his paper from 1 to 19 (some lessons were to 18 and some were to 19). You can pause the CD lesson as needed. If you don’t want to print out your own numbers, there is a pre-numbered printable you can keep re-printing for your student to use for each lesson. We just used a spiral bound notebook instead.

Step 6: Next he wrote out the words in the spelling test spoken by the instructor on the CD.

Step 7: Next he corrected his words on the list by writing a second column of the same words on the same lines next to the first words he wrote. The correct words are both on the CD and on the zoo flashcards. This process allowed him to see how he did and where he needed more practice. The instructions from the curriculum are that he must receive two 100% scores on the material before he can proceed to the next lesson.

Step 8: Personal Spelling. We repeated the same steps for every 4 lessons BUT on the 5th lesson (lessons 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 47) we were instructed to use his favorite words he picked himself. These words could come from each section of 4 lessons, or be other words he wanted to use.

Step 9: Final Exam. We have not completed this yet.

That is it in a nut shell. 10 minutes a day. Master the spelling test by 100% twice then move forward to the next lesson. BOOM!!!

I am excited about using this spelling curriculum with my kids. For the purpose of this review, I started this program with my 5th grade son. But now that we have used it and know how simple it is and how much confidence he feels from mastering this technique, I will be using it with my other children as well. This will give them all the added confidence in knowing how to spell a variety of words, and it only cost them 10 minutes of their day. WOW! I wish everything could be accomplished in 10 minutes a day. Maybe it can and I just need to see a new perspective on how it can be done, just like mastering spelling. Definitely worth it for both of us.

Institute for Excellence in Writing makes learning fun and easy. IEW has a way of making Language Arts skills easy and interesting to kids, those very skills that kids might otherwise find hard or boring. Kids develop an internal motivation to challenge themselves and reach their achievable goal. They have developed simple systems of teaching parents and teachers how kids really learn effectively and their materials are top notch. I would encourage you to check out how you can fit these wonderful curriculum resources into your homeschool learning.

Social Media

Be sure to connect with IEW on their Social Media links to keep up with all the latest teaching tips, news, and product updates.

IEW BLOG http://iew.com/help-support/blog

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/excellenceinwriting

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/iewriting

Vimeo http://vimeo.com/iewtv

Twitter https://twitter.com/iew

You Tube https://www.youtube.com/user/iewtv

Google+ https://plus.google.com/+Iewriting/

Instagram https://instagram.com/iew/

Check out what others on the TOS Review Crew had to say about using The Phonetic Zoo and other products from IEW with their families.

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USAopoly Games Review

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FUN! FUN! FUN! We were sent two learning games from USAopoly for review! Our family had so much FUN playing Tapple: Fast Word Fun for Everyone and Wonky: The Crazy Cubes Card Game.

USAopoly has been encouraging families with fun creative board games and puzzles since 1994, that is over 20 years!

Games We Recieved:

Wonky: The Crazy Cubes Card Game

Ages: 8 to Adult
2 or more players
Retails for $19.95

Wonky Game Includes:

9 Blue and Green Wonky Blocks; 54 Strategy Cards; Storage Bag to keep the blocks in; and Instructions.

If you like to build painstakingly, and don’t mind your creation leaning like the Tower of Pisa, this game is for you!

Each block is a confusing optical illusion as they are shaped normal on three sides and the other sides are curved and it causes the tower to wobble when a big block is placed on top of a smaller block.

The goal is to cause your opponents to make the tower fall and force them to have as many cards in their hands as possible at the end of the game as you stack a large block on a small one and make the tower wobble! Two cards work in your favor, the reverse play card and the pass card, forcing those around you to take a turn instead of you. The first player to get rid of all their cards without causing the tower to fall, wins the game.

AWARDS:

Awards Won By Wonky (source)

How We Used WONKY in our home:

My kids love to build, BUT they are used to building with things with flat, even surfaces. WONKY is completely wonky!

It takes a lot of skill and patience to stack a misshaped block and keep the tower of blocks from falling over.

You literally concentrate and hold your breath with every block you stack on top!

This is a great game and so fun for several ages to play together. You really don’t have an advantage if you are older in this one! Lots of concentration and slowing down to find the right spot to place your block and stack them while following the clue cards. We would definitely encourage our friends to look into getting this fun game for this family.

Now if speed is more your style, you might want to give Tapple a try.

Tapple: Fast Word Fun For Everyone

Ages: 8 to Adult
2-8 Players
10-20 minutes play time, depending on how many rounds you play.
Retails for $19.95

Tapple Game Includes:

The Tapple Letter Wheel, 36 Category Cards (each card has 4 categories =144 categories total), and Instructions.

Tapple is a game of speed and word association. You have 10 seconds to name a word in a category and beat the timer. BUT watch out because you only get 10 seconds to think of your word and the first letter of the word must match an available letter on the wheel. There are 20 Letters available of the alphabet and six letters, (Q,U,V,X,Y,Z,) have been left off the wheel. If the timer expires before you can think of a word, your turn in that round is over. The last person to finish a round wins the category card. The person with the most category cards at the end wins the game. You can decide ahead of time if you plan to include all categories in a game, or limit the number of categories, for example, limit to 3 or 5.

This is a fantastic game and has won many awards in several categories.

Awards:

Awards won by Tapple (source)

How we used Tapple in our home:

This game is hilarious! We used this game as a supplement to our Language learning skills for the whole family. Basically you have a random category on a card and everyone has to come up with a word for that category card that begins with one of the letters on the Tapple wheel. If the letter has already been used, it cannot be used again in that round. Each player takes a turn saying a word that starts with a letter available on the wheel. After they say a word in the category that matched an available letter, then the player taps the timer and the play starts for the next player. If you don’t answer within 10 seconds, the timer ends and that player looses the round. If a player looses a round, they cannot begin to play again until the entire category round is through and there is a clear winner. You win the round by being the last person standing and receive the category card.

The kids had so much fun with this game. It gets more and more challenging as the common letters are used up and you still need to find a new word to match an available letter.

With this game, age is an advantage. The older you are, the more words you will likely know and also the factor of thinking ahead for your turn, you can kind of plan out what you are going to say if there are several players in a round. So at our house, if 8 of us are playing, you will have about 80 seconds or less to figure out your word (each player gets 10 seconds or less). When the game gets down to just a few players left, it goes very quickly. We definitely enjoy playing this game and would encourage every homeschool family to have one on hand.

When not in game mode, you can use this one on one with a younger child and teach them words that start with a letter. We did this and just did not use the timer for this activity.

Social Media

Be sure to follow USAopoly on their social media sites for all the latest news, special sales, and product updates. Be sure to check out USAopoly’s blog. They do giveaways!

Blog: http://usaopoly.com/blog
Twitter https://twitter.com/USAopoly
Instagram https://instagram.com/usaopoly/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/usaopoly
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/usaopoly/

Check out what other homeschool families on the TOS Review Crew had to say about using USAopoly Games in their homes.

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Super Teacher Worksheets

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How would you like to have just about any worksheet you need (or imagine) at any time through out the school year, right at your fingertips?

Have no fear! Super Teacher Worksheets are here!

I just love this special Super Hero who has come to save the day! We were sent a 1 year Individual Membership for our family to use. This wonderful site has so many awesome resources to enhance the learning going on with your kids and make it even more fun.

Super Teacher Worksheets

Membership $19.95 year

Grades K-5, but there are many worksheets for middle and high school too, and more will be developed for the upper grades.

Unlimited 24/7 Access to over 10,000 pdf worksheets, activities, flash cards, games, and more.

New worksheets are added each week.

“Members have unlimited access to thousands of worksheets and printable materials on Super Teacher Worksheets. We offer math worksheets, reading comprehension stories, spelling lists, handwriting practice sheets, grammar worksheets, holiday printables, and much more!” source

Screenshot (127)

Just A Few Of The Subjects Covered:

There are wonderful high quality printables for more subjects than I can tell you about. It is really mind boggling just the number of worksheets and resources on this site. But here is a short list of some of the subject areas covered.

Math
Reading & Writing
Phonics & Early Literacy
Handwriting
Grammar
Spellings Lists & Worksheets (Gr. 1-5)
Science
Social Studies
Geography
History
Holiday
Health and Nutrition
Puzzles & Brain Teasers
Games
Flash Cards
Teacher Helpers
Pre-K and Kindergarten Resources
Make Your Own Worksheets

Super Teacher Worksheets company was created by Tim Weibel in 2007. Tim worked as a 3rd and 4th grade elementary school teacher for over 10 years and saw a need for easy access to affordable high quality worksheets for teachers and parents.

How We Are Using Super Teacher Worksheets In Our Home

I am so excited to have this resource! It has enhanced what we are doing. If I want the kids to practice more on certain skills we have a worksheet for that. If I want them to do a quiz, I can find several worksheets to cover it. If I want to expand their learning with unit study on a specific subject, I have found so many great resources on this website that I can include to further the learning. I am just thrilled!

We are using these worksheets to supplement almost every subject of our learning this fall. So far I have printed off math, language arts, phonics, spelling, history, geography, nutrition, and found worksheets for our dinosaur unit study, human body unit study, and more.

There is something to go along with everything you are doing, and if something isn’t there, you can create your own using the tools on the site too. There is also a feature for the kids to create their own calendars. I can’t wait to be able to use these worksheets for the up coming holiday season this fall. These resources will give a nice touch to our learning during the holidays too.

We are studying the History and Geography of the USA. I found maps of the USA and some with latitude and longitude coordinates. The kids had to use the clues to locate the city and state the meet the coordinates listed. I found a wonderful State Report for the kids to work on. The report is about 9 pages long and there are interesting things to do on each page that relate to the state you are studying. We started off learning about Indiana state history and geography since we live in Indiana. Really proud of my 12 year old son’s handwriting. He is doing such a great job since taking a handwriting course, and all of these awesome worksheets are giving him plenty of hands on practice to implement his writing skills. I also saw there were handwriting worksheets to get in more practice and guided instruction as needed too. I plan to implement the handwriting worksheets with all the children next week.

My opinion is that every homeschool family (and anyone else working with kids) needs to subscribe to this program. There is so much to do and learn and the kids will have fun learning too.

More About Super Teacher Worksheets:

Members can make their own customized math worksheets, calendars, flashcards, quizzes, and word puzzles with the generators.

Members can save their favorite files in an online filing cabinet for easy access and to help save room on their own computer’s data storage. I usually just save the worksheet to a file in my own computer. This has really helped with planning out our learning schedule by having such easy access to these resources.

Look over their blog http://blog.superteacherworksheets.com/ for ongoing CONTESTS, GIVEAWAYS, FREE learning resources, and great ideas. They write great articles to help parents and teachers and have given away microscopes, science kits, and all kinds of great stuff so keep an eye out for what is happening over there.

Super Teacher Worksheets also has a site called ModernChalkboard.com with SMART Board Notebook resources for teachers.

Social Media

Be sure to follow Super Teacher Worksheets on their Social Medial links for all the latest news and updates.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/superteacherworksheets/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/superteacherwks/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/superteacherworksheets/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/superteacherwks/

Now that you read what we think about these wonderful worksheets, be sure to check out what other homeschool families on the TOS Revew Crew had to say about using this product in their home.

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IEW Teacher and Student Writing Package Review

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If you haven’t yet heard of the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) curriculum company, I would encourage you to check them out. We were sent their Teaching Writing: Structure and Style, Student Writing Intensive Level A Package for review. This would be a great curriculum to add to your schedule this coming school year.

Teaching Writing / Student Writing Package Level A

Package Combo Retails for $249 (Save $49.00!)

Teaching Writing: Structure and Style DVD seminar

Student Writing Intensive Level A

For Elementary Grades 3-5.

What We Received

Teaching Writing: Structure and Style DVD Package Level A:

12 Seminar DVDs

Nine DVDs with instruction on the nine structural models and multiple stylistic techniques (14 hours total viewing time).
Three DVDs of sample Student Workshops at four different grade levels.

TWSS Seminar and Practicum Workbook

3 ring binder with dividers and printouts. The binder serves as the syllabus and workbook for the seminar and contains charts, word lists, sample lesson plans, and more.

1 year Online Subscription

Streaming video of the entire Teaching Writing: Structure and Style teacher training course, providing instruction on the nine structural models and multiple stylistic techniques (14 hours total viewing time—may be watched all at once, or viewed one disc at a time throughout the school year)
Streaming video of sample Student Workshops at four different grade levels to help you with the first lesson
Free access to our monthly training webinars, August through May
Audio MP3 downloads of Andrew Pudewa’s most popular conference talks
Several PDF downloads

Student Writing Intensive Level A
5 DVDs
SWI Level A Student Notebook with student handouts, a student 3 ring binder with dividers, and daily lesson suggestions for the teacher/parent

Here is the author Dr. Pudewa, explaining more about the program.

How We Used IEW Writing Curriculum

We did a trial run for a few weeks at the end of our school year to see if we want to include this curriculum in our studies this fall. I was really impressed with the quality of the materials we recieved. The 3 ring binders are heavy duty and we were sent over 100 pages plus nice dividers to put into each of them and help us stay organized and on plan. The case that holds the Teachers Seminar DVD’s is really nice too.

I found the Level A Package to be a wonderful writing program and useful for teaching English to Elementary 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. This curriculum fits right into our life right now as we have several in this grade range, and some older ones who can sharpen their skills too. This program is helping improve my skills as a teacher so really all of my children will benefit from this.

For this review, I used this program with my 12 year old to help him get a better understanding and improve his writing skills. This program will work great for older students who might not like writing. My 12 year old does not enjoy writing and would much rather do math. This curriculum would also be useful for teaching English as a Second Language, and also for remedial learning for older students who need more practice with writing skills.

IEW has put so much together for the parent teacher. The Teacher Seminar gives you the tools you need to confidently teach your students to write well, think and express themselves clearly. It helps parent teachers learn how to effectively teach their kids to:

Outline and summarize
Write paragraphs
Create stories
Write critiques and reports
Develop essays
Communicate their thoughts and ideas into writing
Change sentence structure
Use vocabulary in interesting ways

When we first received the materials, I put the binder notebooks together. Then I viewed the lesson on the corresponding disk in the Teacher’s Seminar DVD’s before having my son watch it with me. Then we watched the lesson together, and followed the teacher notes and presented the lesson to my son.

The lessons are designed to do one a week, but some students will take two weeks to do a lesson. The teacher’s portion of teaching the lesson and use of the DVD takes about 1 hour at the start of the week. Then he can work on the daily practice assignments the rest of the week. We did not need to watch the Student version of Structure and Style overview as it is basically the same as the teachers DVD.

After watching the Lesson on the DVD, we used the checklists to complete the lesson assignment. The workbook has sample assignments and ideas to help, and there are also student workshop videos to watch that can help give more ideas on implementing the lesson. I found these to be very helpful. In a nut shell so to speak, my son is learning how to create an outline from a paragraph using key words. Then learning how to use his outline to write and add adverbs and verbs to make it more interesting. He is learning to be more creative in writing stories.

Our first few weeks of lessons:

Teacher’s Notes: Lesson 1

“Sea Snakes”

Key Word Outline,

Composition Checklist

Key Word Sentence: 1 word

Key Word Sentence: 2-5 words

Key Word Sentence: 6 words

“Desert Tarantula” Optional Resource

Repeat steps learned

“Pillbug” and Composition Checklist

Repeat steps learned

Teacher’s Notes: Lesson 2

“The Boy and the Nuts”

“The Cocks and the Eagle”

Once we complete the first lesson in the teacher’s seminar (or student set), we can move ahead and master the material in the next one. Not all of the lessons use the disk system, some can be completed without it. For example, Lesson 1 used the disk, but Lesson 2 did not. You can easily keep track of what’s what as everything is layed out very nice and easy to follow. I am saving the rest of the work to begin in the Fall at the start of our school year.

IEW

IEW Review

Before we start our next school year, I hope to get a couple of my boys set up with this curriculum too so they can work through it together. You are allowed to make copies of the student workbook for use within the same family, so this will be really nice to have the boys working on this together and strengthen their writing skills.

There are some additional items available through IEW to help with this curriculum. I hope to purchase the Portable Word Walls and A Word Write Now before our Fall school year begins too. IEW also has a clearance section and you can find a lot of discontinued items there. Many of these are previous versions that have now been updated. For example, I found some Word Walls and Bible Based Writing Lessons workbook on clearance for 4th-12th grades. Kids learn to outline bible passages, diagram them, and write paragraphs retelling the story. There are also US History Writing Lessons too. How cool is that?

I can really see how this curriculum is going to help my kids learn how to write with excellence and help me learn how to better help them too. I am thrilled to schedule this material for their daily writing curriculum for the coming school year.

I hope you will check it out IEW, and all of their various writing curriculum products and see if their curriculum would be a good fit for your family too.

Social Media

Be sure to follow IEW on social media for all the latest news and product updates.
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/excellenceinwriting
Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/iewriting
Vimeo http://vimeo.com/iewtv
Twitter https://twitter.com/iew
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/iewtv
Google+ https://plus.google.com/+Iewriting/
Blog http://iew.com/help-support/blog

Be sure to check out what other homeschool families on the Schoolhouse Review Crew had to say about using IEW writing products with their families.

Please share.

Ancient Achievements Spelling You See Review

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I’ve got 5 boys and 1 girl. If there is one thing I have learned after having all of these boys especially, they don’t mind reading by the time they hit third or fourth grade, but they do not like to write, at least through their grade school and middle school years. As parents we have discussed their reluctance and have wanted to see them improve in their hand-writing and spelling skills. The kids say that “writing is not fun”. But I think it is not fun because spelling and English gramatical rules can be challenging. I am hoping their desire to write will change as they get older.

Thankfully there are companies creating fun products that can bridge the gap and inspire kids to write more and feel confident about their writing and spelling skills. We were asked to review a spelling and writing curriculum called Ancient Achievements (Level F) by Spelling You See.

Ancient Acheivements
Level F

Contains 3 soft cover books:
Instructors Manual $14,
and Student Workbook 1 and 2 and colored pencils for $30.

In Ancient Achievements, kids read about ancient events and far away places and build their excitement as they gain new skills with each story. The stories work as a bridge to get your student from point “A” to point “B” in their learning and helps them go from the Skill Development Stage to the Word Extension stage of spelling. Kids gain experience reading and writing and improve their basic spelling skills while learning interesting facts.

This curriculum contains 36 weekly lessons with nonfiction stories. Students need the colored pencils or highlighters and a regular pencil to complete the workbook assignments.

Historical subjects kids will read about in their workbooks cover a wide range including cave paintings, Viking ships, historical writing systems, the production of silk in China, mountain terraces in the Philippines, Marco Polo, Incan counting systems, archery and the English longbow, and more.

Three central activities are repeated through out this this curriculum and are the basis for the learning method of Spelling You See:
chunking – provides hands-on experience with irregular letter patterns
copywork – requires the brain to pay attention to written details
dictation – gives an opportunity to demonstrate decoding and encoding in a meaningful context.

The instructors manual is very helpful with an over view of the program, a getting started guide with layout of the lessons, a color coded answer key for each lesson, and more.

How we used this in our home:

I used Ancient Achievements with my son. He wasn’t to sure he wanted to do it, but I told him it was a must because his Dad and I want to see his handwriting and spelling improve. So he reluctantly agreed as long as I would let him work on it sitting on the couch. Fine by me, whatever works to help him be successful is what I say, and that is the beauty of homeschooling. Kids have the flexibility to learn the way they enjoy and are comfortable. I am really glad he was willing to give this a try, even on the couch, because it turns out he likes it and is self motivated to work on it! That is music to my ears!

This curriculum covers 36 weeks of learning and is to be done 5 days each week. The student activities for each day of the week Monday – Friday are labeled week 1A, week 1B, week 1C, week 1D, week 1E, in the student workbook and every week follows this same pattern. The assignments are somewhat repetitive and each lesson builds a new skill onto the last assignment.

Each week for the “A” assignment, he has a passage about ancient events or cultures to read aloud to me (or the instructor) and I help him with any words that are difficult for him to pronounce.

Letter paterns in the stories are assigned a color code. Then he is to go through the story and use the color code to “chunk” the patterns. This helps the student recognize letter patterns.

Each day of the week he re-reads the passage again and does the copy work assignment again. For the next 2 days, “B”, “C”, and he re-reads the passages each day and re-writes (copies) the story onto pre-printed lines on the facing page the best he can in 10 minutes just as he did on the first day. Then he is to mark the chunking patterns again like he did on the first day.

On day “C” he also completes the Spotlight activity in his workbook. It introduces him to ryhming words and associates words with similar patterns. It points out interesting facts about words that he didn’t know before. Such as not all ryhming words have matching letters, even though they often do. It also shows him how endings are added to words, and word relationships that can help him with spelling. The Spotlight helps him pay closer attention.

On the last two days of the week, day “D” and “E”, he is to write the passage from dictation. He is allowed to ask for help if needed on day “D”, but must complete day “E” without asking for help.

He is enjoying writing and learning spelling patterns with this curriculum. This is a whole new approach for our family and I can see this practice with chunking, cop-work, and dictation is very beneficial in addition to being fun to read the variety of stories. I would like to use additional levels of Spelling You See with my other children as I think this method of learning spelling patterns would benefit our whole family.

Social Media

Be sure to follow Spelling You See on their social media links for a the latest news and updates:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpellingYouSee
G+: https://plus.google.com/+SpellingYouSeePage/posts
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SpellingYouSee
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/SpellingYouSee/

Be sure to check out what other families on the Schoolhouse Review Crew had to say about products created by Spelling You See.

Please share.

Reading Eggs

Reading Eggs Special Features

How Does It Work?

Our Experience:

Final Thoughts

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Homeschool Review Crew

The Phonetic Zoo

Each Phonetic Zoo Starter Set includes:

How we used Phonetic Zoo:

Prep

Lessons:

In this section, I will walk you through Lesson 1. It may look like a lot, but each lesson only takes about 10 minutes a day.

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Games We Recieved:

Wonky: The Crazy Cubes Card Game

How We Used WONKY in our home:

Now if speed is more your style, you might want to give Tapple a try.

Tapple: Fast Word Fun For Everyone

How we used Tapple in our home:

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Super Teacher Worksheets

Just A Few Of The Subjects Covered:

How We Are Using Super Teacher Worksheets In Our Home

More About Super Teacher Worksheets:

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Teaching Writing / Student Writing Package Level A

What We Received

How We Used IEW Writing Curriculum

IEW

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Ancient Acheivements Level F

Contains 3 soft cover books: Instructors Manual $14, and Student Workbook 1 and 2 and colored pencils for $30.

How we used this in our home:

Social Media

Ancient Acheivements
Level F

Contains 3 soft cover books:
Instructors Manual $14,
and Student Workbook 1 and 2 and colored pencils for $30.