Home School Interaction part 1

This is my first year where I'll actually be accountable for Home schooling 2 children.  I will be doing Kindergarten, and 2nd/1st grade too.  We are in our own place now, and actually worked all summer on creating a fun, school area/room for me and the kids.  Since we're going to be stable in our own place I no longer needed to have a Home School on the Go.  So now I'm focusing on a fun, interactive home school experience for myself as Teacher, and for each of my children.  To start this interactive focus off with, I found some awesome calendar/ weather charts that are high quality enough/ strong enough that kids can use it without ruining them.  First off, my Calendar package that I bought on Amazon here.

package

what's included

well sewn quality

here's what it looks like today!

Pros: I love this whole package, love the images, love the colors, love the ease of use for children

Cons: none

My Rating: THUMBS UP

 Secondly, here's my Weather package.  I bought it from Amazon here.  My children and I love charting weather over a monthly basis.  It helps make our school day more fun, and brings in science weather into a more focused understanding.

Here's the company who sold this product online

Kaplan mailed my packed all bent up...not cool

numbers, days of the week, and weather images galore!

There are no perforated lines, so I had to free hand cut these out.

I was able to get all the pieces to lay flat after a few
days of being flattened by heavy books.

Their cards for "past, present, future" measuring were WAY too big, so I cut off about 2/3s off.

here's what it looks like today as we use it!

Pros: love the chart idea, love the images, love the hot, cold, windy, foggy cards as well, easy for K-2 aged children to use

Cons: I don't like how I had to free hand cut all these cards out, I don't like how I don't have any storage options attached to this chart, I am still disappointing that this company bent the chart when shipping it

My Rating: Thumbs Up still works well over all

Science in a Box for Kids

Details:  Groovy Lab in a Box is a subscription service, great for children ages 8 and up.  It focuses on young STEM scientists giving them fun, hands on projects with engineering design challenges.  Each box comes with a Lab Notebook where they read and learn and experiment about the month's theme/ topic.  Groovy Lab Box teaches or rather helps reinforce investigating, brainstorming, planning, building, testing, and redesigning scientific projects.  Going with the STEMist box program your young scientists gain access to our online learning program Beyond in a Box.  Which gives deeper more detailed ideas, suggestions and fun online learning opportunities for each month's theme/ topic.  Topics change each month!

Disclaimer:  I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

My Review: As a home school teacher of a very active, creative, soon to be Second Grader, I am always looking for fun, creative, thinking out side the box ideas for him to learn science topics and skills.  When I first heard about Groovy Box I just knew this would be a really big hit with my soon to be 8 year old.  I love that you get all the supplies you need within that box.  I love that these are simple, fun, and easy projects that your kids can do, with adult supervision of course, but they can easily be done.  When I first opened the box I was a little over whelmed, I haven't done anything scientific since graduating college a decade ago.  But was pleasantly relieved that I could understand what needed to be done, and how to help my son achieve the results we were hoping for with the experiments.  Our first experiment we did from Groovy box, I chose, so we did the sun paper experiment.  I let both my 7 year old and 4 year old choose the objects that sat on top of the sun paper, so they chose Fisher Price Trio Blocks.  My 7 year old carefully put the paper in the sunlight and helped us keep track of time (it needed to be in the sun for 2-5 minutes).  Then I also let him remove the objects and paper from the sun and finish the rest of the steps by himself.  That was a super easy project.  What he learned is that even though we tried to get away from shadows we couldn't 100%, but that the shadows were just as cool as the image from his toys.

For the second experiment he chose the battery/ electricity experiment.  We needed to strip wires with our finger nails, tape them to a 9 Volt battery, and get them to buzz, then go around the house to see what else conducts electricity, including a plastic bowl of water.  It was really fun to test, but he did not want to write down his discoveries.  Since these 2 experiments weren't actual parts of school, I didn't mind him choosing not to write down everything the Lab book prompts you do, but come school I would actually make him finish his experiment.  Regarding the second experiment my 4 year old wanted to help and enjoy, but quickly found it boring and too much for his little mind and ended up going back to playing with his toys.  From this I can easily see how these projects are for children 8 and older.  Do I wish they had projects preschoolers and kindergartners can do?  Yes, absolutely, but you know what, that's okay I have pinterest for those projects.

Over all I'm very pleased with this product, I can easily see myself getting a year supply of subscriptions so each month my 2nd Grader has fun excited science experiments that Mommy didn't create on the whim.  I highly recommend this company and their STEMist products!

Pros: fun, exciting, creative, great for age appropriate children

Cons: you don't always get to choose what goes in the box

Contest: want a chance to test this product out for yourself?  Check out our facebook page for the details.

My Rating: Thumbs UP

Learn Spanish on the Go

Details: Pimsleur Approach: Gold Edition: Pimsleur Spanish Level 1( comprehensive 1).  Get started instantly with access to a whole new world of learning a new language via CDs.  This approach to learning a new language has been proven to be the fastest and easiest way of learning.  What to expect: when pressing play you open the doors to the language of Spanish where you will listen in sequence, follow along, speak out loud and it only takes one lesson a day.  Your Pimsleur Spanish package comes with 16 CDs, 2 lessons on each CD, each lesson is roughly 30 minutes.

Disclaimer: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

My Review:  I am very interested in learning to hold meaningful conversations in Spanish as I now have family who speaks only Spanish.  Its not fun being the only one in the room unable to communicate, and sit there looking dumb, at the same time wondering are they talking about you? As a home school teacher I am also interested in giving my children secondary languages as they ask for them.  My children want to learn Spanish, so if this Pimsleur program can work for adults I find no reason to try it with children as well.  But since our current school year is almost over, I will be holding onto this until the next school year starts in the fall before I introduce my children to this program.

For this review I very quickly played the CDs to see what to expect.  Each lesson is a conversation, but with different components of conversations, or speaking parts of speech.  For example, you will learn how to ask for directions;  how to speak to a man or woman, how to be polite while conversing with Latinos, and much more.  I was a little surprised when I first started listening to the CDs because I was expecting to learn numbers, then colors, shapes, simple house hold words, then phrases, questions, answers etc...like how they teach you in school.  but this approach really is different, and more engaging than text book lessons.  I started listening to the CDs as I do my chores around the house, or while cooking dinner for my family.  Because these are CDs I highly recommend that you get a CD player that you can easily carry around with you, because a big one isn't as convenient.

How it works: there are two voices a man and a woman who you hear converse with each other on various topics that would actually be important to learn when speaking to people of a Spanish speaking country, or heritage.  They each take turns repeating specific words, and phrases; in between spaces for you to follow along by saying what they say out loud.  Each lesson builds off the previous lesson, and gives you ample ability to continue to build off what you are learning before moving on.   I know this program will be even bigger or more popular if they go to itune type files that you can have on your ipod, ipad, tablet, or phone as they want this program to be accessible for people who travel via planes.

Pros: handy, easy to engage with, easy to follow along with, lots of recitation and repetition,

Cons: because this is a CD course, you need a portable CD player,

My Rating: Thumbs Up