As part of my duties as a TOS Crew member this year I was given the oppotunity to review a volume of The World’s Greatest Stories.  Our family was sent a copy of Volume 1: The Prophets, a CD featuring dramatic Bible readings directly from the biblical text by George Sarris.

The readings included on this CD are:

• The Blazing Furnace – Daniel 3
• The Handwriting on the Wall – Daniel 5
• Daniel in the Lion’s Den – Daniel 6
• Elijah and the Prophets of Baal – 1 Kings 17-18
• The Prophecy of Jonah – Jonah

This is such a unique way to expose and familiarize children with God’s word!  Word for word readings (you can get the CDs in KJV or NIV, we chose KJV) full of drama and excitement.  George Sarris reads very dramatically with different voices, lisps, breathing, and much more.  Sometimes Sarris reading was a bit overenthusiastic and we had some giggles, but it certainly did enliven the readings!  There is also a dramatic sound track with music and sound effects that really captivate listeners.

My daughters asked me to, “Play another story Mommy!” when we would come to the end of one of the tracks on the CD.  This CD is 55 minutes in length with each of the stories around 8-15 minutes in length.  We like listening to them when the girls are coloring or playing quietly, but they’d also make great CDs for car trips – even quick errands because no individual story is too long.  They’d also make great, engaging listening for family devotions, particularly if you have audio learners in your home!

At only $7.95/CD I think these recordings straight from God’s word are an excellent value!  I hope that they will be available as MP3 downloads in the future!  There are currently six volumes, and if you buy any combination of six CDs you receive free shipping!

You can find a list of all the available recordings here, and also listen to some audio clips online to see if this series would be a good fit for your family.  I plan to buy Volume 2: The Life of Christ to enjoy with our girls because it has one of my daughter’s FAVORITE stories from John 9 on it!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this CD in order to review it, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

You can read reviews of the other CDs in the series here at the TOS Crew blog!

Many of our blog readers know that we live in Canada (yay!) where French is an official second language.  I’ve always considered teaching some French to my children for this reason, French is everywhere in Canada – on packaging, ingredient lists, and those fluent in French have more job opportunities as well.

When I heard of Le Francaise Facile (The Easy French) from Great Commission Languages I was intrigued.  Not only does the
program include a variety of French accents as it progresses through the years and levels to help develop an international ear for French, but it also teaches French PHONETICALLY and from a Christian point of view.

Obviously, if there were ONE French program I was going to teach with my children, this would be my top pick!  I love phonics, and I love Jesus even more .  It is also designed by a native French speaker who is a homeschooler – I love programs made by REAL homeschooling moms!

There are a few different ways this program is presented; the Junior Level for K-3 is the one we will be trying because it is best for families with younger children.  Our oldest is 8, and I have a 5 and 3 year-old as well so I thought this would be best for us with so many littles tagging along!

There are 34 lessons in the text, with lots of stories and songs being included on the two audio CDs (they also have printables on them).  You can find the table of contents on the sample page here.

The classic-style The Easy French (Level I and Level II) is recommended for families with children of all ages.  Both the Junior and classic style levels are non-consumable (requiring printing from a CD).  There is a new format available that is consumable and designed for older students as well – IA, IB, IIA, and IIB.  If you’d like to read more about the different French programs they have for homeschoolers, you can see them all listed here.

I’m so excited that the Junior Level of Le Francaise Facile is waiting for me in the city to pick up on my next trip in!  I will update you when I’ve had a chance to try it for ourselves!

Until then – check out these samples of the program – they are what really convinced me of the value of the program – it is incredibly cute and smoothly integrates both French and English within the audio to ease children naturally into understanding French vocabulary and grammar without explicit drill-type instruction.  Very fun!  There are audio samples and pdf samples to learn more about the program.

The Easy French Junior Level or Le Francais Facile! Junior is available for $69.95 from Great Commission Languages.  It has

Keyboard Town PALS is a program that teaches children how to type by using fun and colorful puppets to help them remember where the letters of the alphabet live on the typical QWERTY keyboard.  This typing program is recommended for children between 7 and 10 years of age, and uses a relaxed, timer-free experiences for children to learn the basics.

 

I’ve really wanted to try this program out for a while, because typing is a vitally important skill for our children to learn in today’s technologically savvy age.  I was selected to review a web-based version of this program but technical difficulties (I was unable to access it online for some reason), led to the sending of a physical copy of the CD-delivered software.  Unfortunately it hasn’t arrived yet, so I can’t share our experiences with you today, watch for more details in the future.

It is available for purchase a web-based subscription, or as a physical CD (your choice of Windows or Mac) for $39.95.

It looks like their website is currently being upgraded, but hopefully you’ll be able to visit there soon to read all the details!

You can also click over to the TOS Crew Review blog to read the experiences of those who were able to use the program with their children!

Ooka Island Adventure is a brand new, comprehensive reading program for early readers (Pre-K to Grade 2) that incorporates sound principles for learning to read within an extraordinarily fun, game-like environment, complete with a motivating storyline and rewards that make learning fun for kids.

My children (like most) respond very well to game-based learning, so I was very excited to receive a subscription to review Ooka Island.

The 3-D computer-animated program features a compelling storyline – a villainous pig has taught his henchmen to read and used their increased mental prowess to capture the helpless (and illiterate) Ooka elves!  Your child’s mission is to free the Ooka elves by ‘reading’ books (not really reading them in the pre-levels but I’ll get to that later) – and along the way they’ll also have fun phonics lessons, alphabet lessons, phonological awareness games, and a whole lot more.  After the elves are freed, your child can play with them in the Pencil Playground – buy playground equipment, extra clothing, feed them snacks, and a lot more during their free play time (8 minutes that follows a 20 minute guided learning session).

My five-year-old has been using Ooka Island and she loves the fun games and the engaging storyline.  Your child gets to pick their own avatar who goes through all the on-screen activities, and can change her clothes during free play time, go on the play equipment etc. so it’s as if your child is really on the island having adventures.  The music is so catchy (we all get the theme song stuck in our heads), and she always ASKS to play Ooka Island – it’s really like a fun game for her, even though it includes very solid, comprehensive reading instruction.

She gets to earn stickers when she progresses through the activities (which are just plain fun in their own right), free Ooka elves, and unlock fun items for her Pencil Playground (even though the elves there are very hard to actually engage in play – some more work needed there).  It’s very motivating and fun.

From my point of view as a mom I love the phonological awareness activities that help to build blending skills, like the Clumsy Whacky moving factory game where there are a bunch of items floating in a river, a voice sounds out a word slowly, and your child needs to put the parts together and click the item that is being said.  There is also direct phonics teaching in the Cave of Sounds (although this doesn’t following a regular intensive phonics progression – they introduce two letter teams VERY early on, before even teaching all of the single letter sounds).  There is even a jet-ski game that uses microphone recognition to determine if your child is saying the displayed sound correctly.  There isn’t an easy way for me to skip ahead in the game and see how it works for older children, so I can only comment on the Pre-K levels that we’ve gone through ourselves.  In all there are 24 levels that go from Pre-K all the way to Grade 2.

For the most part, my five-year-old could complete the learning activities independently, but there was one section of the program that she struggled with, and that I, as a dedicated phonics-mommy wasn’t keen on either.

In the Popcorn Library, children ‘read’ books in the early levels, by watching a story being read to them on the screen with words that are highlighted as they go.  This is fine, my girls love digital ‘read to them’ stories, but what I DID NOT like was the emphasis on sight words that comes out of this reading activity.  There are some pictorial comprehension questions that were fine, but then comes the, “Click on the word that says _____.”  This frustrated my little five-year-old SO much, and it frustrated me too.  I don’t think the activity is developmentally appropriate, and I DO NOT want to teach her to just guess at words when she isn’t even really blending yet .

For the most part, I was happy with Ooka Island – it’s very comprehensive; all the skill building activities blend well together (except for those sight words in the Popcorn Library).  The phonological activities that lead to understanding of segmenting and blending are very promising, and I wish there was a way to do the program WITHOUT the sight word segments of the Popcorn Library.  It would be really awesome if that was the case.  As it is, I clearly have some mixed feelings about the program.

So, what does Ooka Island cost, and how does it work?  After signing up for a subscription you’ll need to download a BIG program – 2 GB, so make sure you’re ready for that!  It’s also a bit of a memory hog (and has some glitches and bugs that still need to be worked out, but there is supposed to be a patch coming for those soon), so close everything else before running it.  You’ll need an internet connection for logging in and keeping track of your child’s progress, but once you have the download, it really doesn’t take much bandwidth.

For one child the pricing is $12.95 for one month, $59.95 for six months, or $99.95 for a year.  For up to four children the price is $19.95 for one month, $99.95 for six months, or $129.95 for a year.  You can find all of the pricing details and sign-up information here.  There is even a 14-day free trial that you can sign up for to see if this program is a good fit for your family.  If you like it, you can use this code LAUNCHSPECIAL30 to save 30% on a monthly subscription!

Don’t forget!  You can also find many more TOS Crew reviews of Ooka Island Adventure here!

Disclosure: I received a 6 month subscription to Ooka Island for the purposes of this review.

Our family received a downloadable version of Visual Latin Level 1, Lessons 1-10 to review as part of our duties on the TOS Crew.  What a blessing it has proven to be!  Visual Latin is a lot like attending Latin class, only more fun!  These are visual Latin lessons (hence the name!!) that are recorded on video for your child to watch.  There are also pdfs included of worksheets and vocabulary lists for review.

I took a couple of years of Latin in high school and the instructor’s approach reminds me a lot of my high-school teacher’s.  Standing in front of a blackboard, teaching grammar, vocabulary, and sentences, Dwane makes it so much more engaging.  He’s a bit zany, his sentences are funny, and he gets students right into working with reading complete sentences and translations without bogging down in a LOT of grammar.

Each lesson is broken into three parts, the first teaches grammar, the second teaches sentences where you can see the grammar in action and develop translation skills, and the third teaches reading – this is sort of an immersive experience.  I’d have to summarize the program as more of a reading approach to Latin than an old school all grammar all the time approach; if you’re familiar with Cambridge, this is a bit similar.  So, there are 30 lessons per level, each level is a year’s worth of study (unless you are a high school student), so you can do one lesson each week, one part per day and one day of vocabulary review would make four days of Latin/week pretty easily – the lessons are short and easy to get done.

If you’re wondering about which pronunciation this program uses, there isn’t really an easy answer.  Dwane does his own Latin thing.  It’s a bit classical, a bit ecclesiastical, and a bit Dwane.  I love his approach (explained in the free lessons – see below), he’s pretty laid back about pronunciation approaches, his is a hybrid, but I love his accent.  My daughter is already mimicking his cadence and style of Latin speech.

Your child will need to be familiar with some basic grammatical concepts before diving in – verbs, nouns, and pronouns at this level.  My oldest daughter (8) is already pretty familiar with these ideas, and you need to make sure your child is comfortable with them, because the course dives right in and starts with the most important Latin verb ‘to be’ (sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt).  You can find the complete scope and sequence here as a pdf download.

Any beginning Latin student who can read English confidently and has basic grammatical knowledge can profit from this course regardless of age, though it is suggested that high school students supplement with further study using Lingua Latina Pars 1 and Lingua Latina Exercita 1 alongside level 1.

We purchased an iPad a couple of months ago and have been learning how to use it in our homeschool, and Latin on the iPad is amazing.  Visual Latin also has DVDs available to purchase, and the downloads can also be used on your computer, iPod or iPhone – there are two versions, high-resolution for the iPad and lower resolution for the iPhone/iPod.

My daughter has some sensory integration issues – especially when it comes to handling paper (that makes homeschooling fun).  I was so surprised when it was time to do the Latin worksheets – I had recently purchased PDF Expert which lets you write directly on pdfs, so I let her do her worksheet in that…and she had fun!

We did one part of a lesson a day, and there is one corresponding page for each part of the lesson.  When I said it was time to do her worksheet she said, “Woohoo!”  Okay, we study Latin and I have NEVER heard “Woohoo!” when it comes to doing a worksheet.  We’re in love with doing worksheets on the iPad now so I completely appreciate the all-digital option.  If you don’t have an iPad you can print the pdfs.

My daughter is literally BEGGING me to keep going with Visual Latin instead of our other program now, so we’re going to keep on with it and see how it progresses!  I can’t tell you how many times she’s told me how funny her Latin teacher is, she’s really enjoying the language now and actually starting to understand how to read it.  There is also Christian content that is very naturally presented within the course – double bonus!

Do you want to try Visual Latin out?  I recommend EVERYONE get the free introductory lessons if you are interested in learning Latin through ANY program.  The first four introductory sessions explain a bit about Latin as a language, and the many benefits to be had by learning Latin (there are MANY, trust me, Latin is worth it).  You also get two complete regular lessons to see how the course itself is structured and laid out.  And…they are free!

When you’re ready to purchase, you can buy lessons 1-10 as a download for a single family for $25, or get the DVD for $30.  If you buy the entire first level you can get lessons 1-30 (all of level one) for $80 on DVD – a bit of a discount on that.  Level 2 is also available and there are different prices if you want to show the recordings to a group or co-op.  There are also live online Latin courses for Lingua Latina available if you prefer to go that way.

You can find many more reviews of Visual Latin over at the TOS Crew blog here!

Disclosure: I received Visual Latin Lessons 1-10 Download for free to review this item.  All opinions are genuine and my own.

I have been working on a new page at our new Apps for Homeschooling website resource, and i wanted to do a quick shout out about it.

If you are looking for free apps for homeschooling, or want to make sure you don’t want to miss any great app sales, please drop by every few days!  I hope to update this page regularly with limied time free app offers, limited time sales, and I’ll also work on putting together a series of resource pages of FREE apps that you can use broken into subject categories.

I hope you find this new resource helpful!

The past few weeks our family has been busy preparing a new resource website for homeschooling parents.

AppsforHomeschooling.com is written by me (Jennifer Bogart) for homeschoolers, by a homeschooler. I’m a homeschooling mom of four, 8 months – 8 years. I’m an app-loving, aspiring geek dedicated to helping you hunt down the best homeschooling apps (iPhone/iPod/iPad) for your children. There are a lot of apps out there, let me help you narrow them down.

There are SO many apps out there now, how can you know which ones are worth your time and money?  Which are best for certain subjects and certain grades?  Our website is clearly organized to help you find what you’re looking for!

Our Apps for Homeschooling facebook page and twitter account list free apps every day, deep discounts, news, and more.

The MOST exciting news though, is that this week Apps for Homeschooling is having a week-long Grand Opening this week!  With over 30 giveaways and more than $260 worth of free download promo codes to giveaway, this is an event you won’t want to miss!

You can find the full list of giveaways at the main Grand Opening page - and stay tuned, more giveaways are being added EVERY day!

Getting Into Geometry is a teacher’s manual designed to help teachers introduce K-1 students to geometry in fun, hands-on, age-appropriate ways.  It includes 48 activities that progress from simple introductory two-dimensional explorations with shapes (circles, squares, triangles etc.) through to three-dimensional shapes (cones, cubes, spheres etc.) and its 264 pages includes all of the reproducibles you need for the activities.  There are some additional items needed for the book, but most were common household items, and a few we already had on hand – pattern blocks and attribute blocks for instance.  There were some that called for a pocket chart – but I heavily modified some of the activities for our use (read more below).

I used Getting Into Geometry with my entire brood of children, NONE of them wanted to be left out, so we tested the activities with children who were 8, 5, and 3 – and they all had a blast.  We cut out shapes, drew shapes on our porch with chalk, walked shapes on the ground, cut up straws and fastened them together with modeling clay to make shapes, colored shapes, cut shapes, described shapes, talked about shapes, and more.  I loved the pdf file that I received (it is also available in a printed form with a CD – both formats cost $24.95) because it included all of the pages I needed to print, so I just opened the file, found the activity I wanted to do, and printed the associated pages (if any) that I needed – they were always right after the activity they were needed for, minimizing prep time – very handy.

None of the activities took a long time to get ready for, or a long time to do, and they were such a fun way to get hands-in instruction time into our homeschooling day.  I’m a BAD homeschooling mom when it comes to hands-on, I’m happier to just read to them, but it was so fun to watch them BLOSSOM with these shape-related activities.

Getting Into Geometry does require some modification and flexibility on the part of a homeschooling mother with a small group of children – perhaps several children of various ages as I have.  Written for educators in a modern classroom (many students all of the same age) there is some mental translation and finessing that needs to take place to translate the instructions for teachers so that they’ll work for a homeschooling mom.

Sometimes this is pretty easy to do, other times activities need to be completely overhauled and restructured, or even skipped in some cases.  Some activities call for a lot of splitting into groups, group sharing, etc.  I was glad that I was able to pull off many of them with my three children, but they might be tough to do with a single child.  Some activities may also require additional research if you aren’t familiar with the terminology that teachers of early level math and science apparently are.  (I wasn’t sure what a concrete graph was for instance.

If you aren’t that great at thinking up fun, hands-on activities for your early elementary learners and you’d like to cover early geometry concepts in your homeschool, you’ll find Getting Into Geometry to have a wealth of activities to do with your children.  We haven’t used all 48 of them, and I don’t think we’ll need to in order to give my children a good conceptual understanding and familiarity with 2 and 3 dimensional shapes, there are quite a few to choose from – all of them surprisingly fun and developmentally appropriate for young children.  You can find a free online preview of Getting Into Geometry here that will show you the contents of the book and some of the activities as well!

Don’t forget that you can find more reviews of various titles from Aims Educational Foundation from other homeschooling moms at the TOS Crew blog here! 

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of Getting into Geometry for the purposes of this review.  All opinions are genuine and my own.

If your family is at ALL interested in studying Canada I highly recommend buying Michael Mitchell’s Canada is For Kids Teaching Kit!  We are Canadians ourselves, so naturally we are interested in the folk music of Canada, but Michael Mitchell’s superbly produced teaching kit includes not only three of his full CDs of Canadian music – both traditional and modern (Canada is For Kids Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3), but it also includes a teaching CD filled with a wealth of fun and educational resources.

The teaching resources are really incredible and I can’t recommend this kit highly enough.  My children have greatly enjoyed the Canadian coloring pages (printable and electronic), the “Canada in My Pocket” cartoon that helps children learn a bit more about Canadian money through Mitchell’s beloved song of the same title, the interactive Canada puzzle, and more.  We have learned the national anthem using Mitchell’s recording of it, and been able to use the folk songs associated with different places in Canada as a supplement to our studies of the Canadian provinces this year.

There are also some French songs included in the collection and a recording of the French national anthem (and a bi-lingual one as well).  Lyrics to the national anthem can be printed off in either English or French.  When we studied Quebec we were sure to take advantage of the French audio resources Mitchell has provided, and he has a great French accent!

If our family was more musically inclined we could also benefit from the music charts for all 40 of the songs in the Canada is for Kids music collection that are also included in the Teachers Guide CD.  If you can’t play music but just want to sing along there is a lyric sheet that is easy to print off (6 pages for all the songs).   The only down side is you do need to have the CD in your computer in order to access the resources, there doesn’t seem to be a way to install them to your own machine.

If you haven’t enjoyed Mitchell’s Canadiana music before, you are missing out.  His voice is clear, rich, and smooth, so the lyrics are easy to understand for children and adults alike.  He is a very expressive vocalist who brings much enthusiasm to his recordings and many a day has found my children hopping around in the living room to some of his more upbeat tunes.

It has been a real blessing to have this easy to use collection available to us so that we can instill an appreciation of traditional Canadian music in our children – something that would have been hard for us on our own because of our own limited exposure to Canadian folk songs.

Thanks Michael Mitchell for all you have done to keep Canadian folk music alive!

We received the first edition CD version of the teaching kit to review, but it has been repackaged as a USB product with fewer songs (25 of the most popular), you can buy it from Michael Mitchell’s website here.  He also has a new teaching kit you can download for $4.00 that just contains his Canadian national anthem resources.  Good deal!  Whether you decide to buy the teaching kit or the CDs themselves (also available as physical copies or downloads) from this website, you won’t be disappointed.

Disclosure: I received a copy of  the Canada Is For Kids Teaching Kit by Michael Mitchell for review.  All opinions are honest and my own.

 

Have you heard of Big IQ Kids before?  Most homeschoolers interested in online learning have, because they have a renowned free spelling and vocabulary program, as well as a free math drill and free geography program, but in case you haven’t, let me tell you about them.

First, I’ll tell you about their free program.  Big IQ Kids has free programs for learning basic math facts, a wide variety of spelling and vocabulary words (these two work on conjunction with each other), and the states, capitals, and major points of interest about each U.S. state.

Each time a lesson is completed in one of these programs the child is awarded a game coin that can be redeemed to play one fun game in the games area.  These are fairly brief in comparison to the lessons, which are around 10 minutes long, but they serve to keep children VERY motivated to do their lessons on Big IQ Kids, particularly if you limit screen time and electronic games in your home.

The Premium subscription gives you access to the same programs that are available for free to the general public, but with less advertising (there is still some unfortunately), and with timed quizzes enabled, reporting capabilities and tracking of mastery and progress.  The premium programs only move on once the subject matter has been mastered and it keeps track of your child’s advancement.

Children can also create their own customized ‘buddies’ – which are an avatar that can be modified for one game coin.  Game coins can also be saved between sessions by premium members and your children can then have their names recorded if they achieve a high score – very motivating or many children!  A wider selection of reward games is available for Premium members.

My oldest daughter (8) was the child best suited to try out Big IQ Kids.  Children who are independent readers will have the easiest time navigating the site, though there is a Premium-based Spelling Junior program designed for younger children.

The math program is an effective, if basic review of the four basic operations, it isn’t a teaching tool but is designed to practice and master the math facts once they have already been taught conceptually.  I really like that it is easy to customize the difficulty level of the questions and the number of questions presented in each session.

The spelling and vocabulary program is fairly traditional – assigning spelling words and reviewing them using a number of techniques.  There are some phonics and spelling rules provided, but it is fairly basic.  The nice thing about this program is that you can either progress through the many spelling lists available or manually input your own practice list to match the spelling concepts you are working with in your main spelling program.  That being said, the Big IQ Kids spelling and vocabulary can easily stand alone for a natural speller.

The geography (learn the states) program is pretty neat because it teaches the state’s name, location, abbreviation, capital, landmarks, economy etc. in one program.  This is sort of lecture-style direct instruction – the facts are presented with graphics and at the end some questions are asked.  I did have some technical problems with the voice and presentation not lining up properly with each other and being ‘laggy’ or slow.

There are some things we didn’t like as well – there is still advertising on the site – some of it is rather inappropriate for our family (ads for psychics etc. in the sidebar).  The site could also use a major upgrade – the navigation is a bit confusing and hard to learn; it doesn’t all connect well together and the programs.  The site really needs to be updated as well.  The learning programs are all a bit dated – from the graphic style to the awkward computer generated voices.

My daughter didn’t notice though and she was willing to plow through almost any number of rather rote math drills and spelling lists in order to earn those game coins and go have some fun!  When I asked her what she thought of Big IQ Kids she said, “I really like it.  I like the games.  4.5 stars.” (That’s out of 5 by the way.)

So, what should you do if you think your family is interested in Big IQ Kids?  Try out their free programs to get a good feel for how they would work for your family, then try their 7-day free trial of the Premium programs so you can determine how valuable the tracking and other benefits are to you.  To be honest, I only like to use programs that lead my children towards mastery of content once they are in second grade and over so I really appreciate the tracking and progression that the Premium program at Big IQ Kids provides.

The Premium membership costs $9.99/month or $49.99/year, which is actually a pretty good price for subscription-based online learning.

Don’t forget that you can find more reviews of Big IQ Kids from other homeschooling moms at the TOS Crew blog here! 

Disclosure: I received a one-year membership to Big IQ Kids for the purposes of this review.  All opinions are genuine and my own.