Passages GIVEAWAY at the Johns Family

My friends over at The Johns Family are hosting a giveaway along with their review of the book Passages.

Head over and check it out and enter for your chance to own the book.

The Johns Family: Passages Review and GIVEAWAY: From the Publisher: Many Christians feel guilty when they think of reading the Bible. Though they want to love reading Scripture, they rar...

Roman numeral blocks, #homeschool #math success

Recently we shared a  review for Math Mammoth with you. This past week, Cameron was struggling with the larger Roman Numerals and was getting very frustrated, so Mommy stepped in with a break and idea. Let's make a set of blocks especially for Roman Numerals. 

I have a large bag of blank wooden dice I received from a retired teacher and thought this would be a great way to practice writing the Roman Numerals but also give him a chance to make something he can use in his lessons.  Using a black sharpie marker we wrote the various letters that represent the Roman Numerals on the faces of the dice.
Cameron was then able to build the Roman Numeral combinations on his worksheet before he wrote the answers.  He had gotten away from using manipulatives with his math worksheets but was reminded how handy they can be when you are struggling.  He also gained a sense of ownership in the project making them himself.
We have a small plastic lidded dish they store in so he can use them whenever he needs them.
I will be doing reviews of roman numbers often with him and I think he will be using his blocks.

I am so glad that Cameron was able to create something that will help him learn and that we can pass on to his little brother when he starts learning Roman Numerals.
Stay tuned.... We are making a set of creative writing dice and will share that once we get them finished.

Get ready to Read and Play #hsreviews

Are you ready to have some serious fun reading? My boys sure where!

The reading game combines fundamental reading and a action packed game of memory.
The game includes a set of 6 pen and ink illustrated books in an animal theme along with the 6 matching decks of cards.

The game is set up in bite size activities so that the child or children don't get overwhelmed. When the children finish the entire game they will have 180 vocabulary words solidly ready to read and use.


The game incorporates animals into unusual stories that help make the learning fun and the game time even more fun.



The reading game website sells the game for $24.95 and offers a bulk purchase discount of 15% off with 8 or more games.

Also on the website you will find assessment forms as well as a set of tests to match the books.

Both my boys love memory matching games and this was an instant hit for Nathan.
Cameron wasn't sure at first but after reading the first book and playing one round of the card game he was hooked.  We have been through the whole set at least twice and the boys are asking if they can play it at Thanksgiving dinner with their cousins. They want to teach their cousins to read using the game, which for his Mom is music to my ears as I believe teaching something to someone else is the perfect test of their knowledge.

This game is an affordable program that sets up a good foundation for basic reading and positive interaction between my boys.

The reading game can be found on Facebook 

Check out what the rest of the crew thought of the Reading Game HERE


***We received the above game as a member of the Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for our honest opinion of the product.****

Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday with Hands of a Child #HOAC

***This post was written by In the Hands of A Child and posted here because Unionvale Homeschool loves ln the Hands of a Child and supports this amazing Small Business*****

Our 5th Annual Black Friday Sale is Almost Here!

Are YOU Ready to save upto 45% discounts on Hands of a Child Products!

As always we will be offering a HUGE Black Friday Discount on Hands of a Child Products*

This year we will also be doing an additional discount on all products we offer during Cyber Monday*

and NEW This Year Small Business Saturday

Please join us in celebrating our success and endurance as a small business. On Saturday, November 26th we are offering 1-year Super Memberships for $50.00 (retail $75.00).   Purchase a Super Membership on Small Business Saturday and not only do you save $25.00, but you make a HUGE impact on our business.  Most importantly, a Super Membership at In the Hands of a Child will put laughter and learning into the hands of YOUR child all year long!

But WAIT are you already a Super Member?

Super Members can start saving TODAY, no need to wait until Black Friday to begin saving BIG!

Use the coupon code SuperThanks to get 45% off all Hands of a Child Products*

Use the coupon code SuperFun to save 30% on all non Hands of a Child Products**

Use the coupon code SuperMember to save $25 on your 1 year Super Member renewal
 

* Excludes Custom Designed Project Packs, already discounted products and Super Memberships
** Quantities are limited, backorders will not be excepted

Are you ready to Read Live in your #homeschool? #hsreviews

Reading is a big part of home education, at least in our house, so when Read Live was made available to us as members of the Homeschool Crew I was pretty excited to try it out.


Like I said I was excited to try it out. Keeping that in mind, I tried very hard to project that excitement onto Cameron as we started using the system.  The program itself is a great assessment tool and can have mulitple students.  For this review I added both boys but focused on Cameron.


Before I get into our personal experiences with the program and how we will continue to use it, let me share some basic information about Read Live with you.









What is Read Live?  Read Live is the web-based section  of Read Naturally’s fluency intervention program. 


What is the goal of the program?  The main goal of fluency intervention is ,  help the student  read as well as they speak, and  make sense of what they read without stopping to  decode words as they read. 


What other areas are impacted by Read Naturally?   Read Natually Live assists in the vocabulary development as well as reading comprehension. 


How much for Read Naturally Live cost? a  subscription costs $149.00


What is included in the subscription? 12 months of access, 6 phonics levels, and 13 sequential curriculum levels oral fluency benchmark passages, teacher training videos online and great technical support




So now that you know the basic information on the program I can tell you about our experiences with the program and my personal thoughts on it. 
I love the concept behind the program and signed up for it thinking it would help my struggling reader. I did an assessment with Cameron and found out he was miserable doing the assessment. We talked about what he didn't like about the program and  what might have helped.  A big thing for him was the topic of the assessment reading was not of interest to him so it made it very hard to read. Keeping that in mind I explained to him everything we read doesn't always interest us and sometimes we need to read something to see where we are and make sure we are at least reading at a level that is appropriate for us.   


After the exchange and ordeal of the assessment I did find him reading a book that I had been trying to get him to read that was an appropriate grade level, so if nothing else the assessment pushed him to look at the books he was suppose to be reading.  


We did go back and do another assessment this past week to see if he was improving or if there was something at that level we needed to work on some more. The good news was from the first assessment to this one there was a marked improvement in reading words per minute and correctly, although the assessment experience itself was not improved. (he still didn't like it) This time though he was able to explain to me that he really doesn't like reading on the computer screen and that he would much rather do any kind of assessments from a book instead of the computer screen. 


I have downloaded the extras available and will be using printouts to do anymore assessments with him. He really is an old fashion kind of kid, while he likes playing some games on the computer, he would much rather learn out of a book or hands on.  Lesson learned for Mom.


On a side note, Nathan my youngest saw us working in the program this last week and asked if he could give it a try. I told him we would give it a try "next week" which for those of you reading this review will end up being Thanksgiving week and beyond. 


Since I have mentioned cost in previous reviews, I will mention it here. In now knowing that Cameron prefers to do testing in book format  I don't think the Read Live subscription is a cost that I can justify for just 1 child if it does work for Nathan.  Although, as a Mom and an lover of all things reading related I love the concept of the program and the interface with the program. 




Check out what the rest of the Crew had to say about this program HERE 
You can find Read Naturally on Facebook

Math Mammoth Moving into new Homeschool territory

When we found out we would be reviewing Math Mammoth and I began the process of selecting the program for Cameron I wasn't sure what I was going to do. We have been happy with our current program but as we are working on 3rd grade and will be doing the state testing at the end of the year I decided we would work through the 3rd grade Complete program.


Cameron wasn't sure when we started as he is a little behind schedule on his math but he jumped in with both feet and gave it his all.  We started with the addition review and found out that the foundations we had been working on merged perfectly into the Math Mammoth program. We only had one minor difference and we worked through the terminology without too much issue.


I was so happy with the way ordinal numbers were explained and worked through, as a homeschooler it is sometimes hard to explain concepts where a classroom full of students comes in handy, Mrs. Miller did a wonderful job using images of people  (like stick figures)  to explain ordinal numbers and placement.


Cameron really enjoyed learning Roman numerals as well , he thinks it is some kind of secret code, which made it fun to teach.
Since we don't do math everyday in worksheet form , it  will take us the rest of the year to go through the whole program but as a supplement to our current program this is going to be a great combination.


I love the online worksheet generator that came with the ebook and all the little extras that made the program adaptable. There are print outs for various non U.S. currency was a added bonus as I want to include currency as we begin to study neighboring countries as well as world cultures. 


Math Mammoth is a supplemental or a complete Math curriculum that is adaptable for language and country. The website also has wonderful resources including links to Math Mammoth videos, their blog , as well as as series of placement tests.  I love how the website covers so many concerns about switching and placement of a student. 


The complete curriculum graded programs average $34 for the complete downloadable set. 
Some of the main features of the program (from the website)

• mastery oriented: it concentrates fairly long on one topic, with fairly few topics per grade;
• focuses on conceptual understanding;
• uses lots of visual models and exercises based on those;
• emphasizes mental math and developing number sense;
• nearly self-teaching since the explanations of concepts are found in the student worktext. Thus this curriculum requires fairly little preparation time from the teacher

There is also a series of supplemental materials by topic as well as by grade level, this is great if you student is struggling in one particular area.  Within the supplementals there is also a program for each state using real life data about each state, this could be a fun activity to include in geography studies as a way to combine the two subjects. The other program that caught my eye in the supplementals,  Making it Real, teaching math using real life scenarios.


When we complete the program we are currently using and need to either purchase the next level or a new program, Math Mammoth is high on my list to consider.  I have happy with the format, like the ebook  format, and loved that Cameron enjoyed learning with the program. 


Don't just take my word for it, check out what other crew members thought of the program HERE






***we were given the Light Blue series, 3rd grade complete curriculum as a member of the Old SchoolHouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for our opinion, all experiences and opinions are our own and no other monetary compensation was received.****

Wordless Wednesday 11/16

Homeschool Co-Op Library Duty for Mommy means Kiddo gets floppy in the pillow cubes.