Reviews

Making & Tinkering with STEM

September 18, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Normally today I would talk to you about one of the many creations my son has put together, but Making & Tinkering with STEM came into my mailbox and it’s such a neatly done book that I just had to share it with you. It has me salivating at the thought of making things with children in K-3! Just looks so fun!

What I like about STEM is that it encourages the builder to think. Open-ended STEM challenges, where there can be more than one solution to a problem, helps children develop problem solving abilities regardless of where they will end up in life.

A child designer (destined for the world of clothes and glamour) could use STEM to build a materials bridge (that is fashionably accessorized) out of cloth and pins and beads, whereas a structurally engineer-minded builder might use popsicles and duct table (or rope and sticks) that does the job at hand as strongly as possible. BOTH complete the task, but they go about it from a different point of view. So a properly run STEM class meets the needs of all it’s potential designers.

You see that orange strip? It tells you the concepts being taught. Handy eh?

In Making & Tinkering with STEM, Cate Heroman, since she’s designing challenges for young children, takes a picture book with a problem in it, for instance in the book Not A Box! A Bunny sees a box as ANYTHING other than a box. The challenge… what can YOU turn a box into? Will you use one of Bunny’s ideas or will you come up with something new? What materials do you need to make it? Then once it is built, is there anything you can do to make it better? Can you play a game with it? Tell a story? Can you share it with someone else and have some fun together?

Isn’t that a neat concept? Helping young children see the possibilities? Not leaving out the artistically minded, or the “I don’t like to make things” minded children. You are engaging them on all levels. I remember doing a hands-on class once with some children and there was one youngster who simple couldn’t cope with making anything.. too messy or sticky or …. You know, some kids just can’t. But this lad liked to watch and talk, so he still managed to be part of the class which was very cool.

The Book Cover:

A fun, accessible approach to the maker movement! With 25 classroom-ready engineering design challenges inspired by children’s favorite books, educators can seamlessly integrate making and tinkering and STEM concepts (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in preschool through third grade classrooms.

What you get:

An introductory section that is 20 pages long introducing you to the value of a STEM based educational time with young children, walking you through safety concerns, how to use it and how a design challenge is created. This section is well worth reading.

Then comes the Design Challenges, 25 challenges, arranged alphabetically by challenge name, not by the book used.

The books vary from the very familiar Goldilocks and the Three Bears, to the unknown The Paper Caper. It could easily be the books used are familiar to more people, but I only knew about half of them. I could easily see that using a book with a similar theme would work just as well.

The set up in the same for all of them.

Colourful page showing the possibilities along with the Project title and name of the book.

This is followed by questions about the story, for instance with the Squirrel-proof birdfeeder:

“Old man Fookwire loves watching and painting pictures of birds. He builds some birdfeeders and fills them with seeds and berries to keep the birds around in the winter — but those darn squirrels keep getting into the birdfeeders and eating all the treats! What does Old Man Fookwire do to keep the squirrels away? Does it work?”

With a materials list that vary in length and items used. For the birdfeeder challenge they children could use a variety of cardboard boxes and tubes, with tape, glue, brads etc along with decorating items. Safety equipment is also listed.

Then comes the design challenge, can you build a birdfeeder, just any type of bird feeder. With an additional challenge for the engineering minded: how tall can you build a stable, freestanding birdfeeder?

While working on the design challenge a number of questions are postulated to help the children in their task. These fall under the titles of “Think about it”, “Build or Create it”, “Try it”, “Revise or make it better” and “Share”.

The final page in the challenge lists some follow up questions to ask the children, along with ways to delve deeper into the subject matter, with others books you might want to use as well or instead of.

My Thoughts:

I am SO excited about this book. I want to dig into it and have a class for grades 2 and 3 at the local library, or perhaps talk to the town about putting something together. It would be a hoot to work through these challenges together don’t you think? Fostering a love for reading and thinking… just simply fantastic! Don’t you think it would be fun to see if a student could make a noise maker that could be heart 30 feet away? Or make a tower that can raise and lower an object? How about making a car that can move two feet under it’s own power? Or how about a house that can stand up to a fan blowing on it?

Making & Tinkering with STEM: solving design challenge with young children
Cate Heroman
National Association for the Education of Young Children
144 pages, tradepaperback
Grades K-3
STEM, engineering, Science, Math, Tinkering
Reviewed for: NAEYC

Where to find:

Who Owns These Bones?

September 15, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Do you remember I reviewed a book about Roadkill? I have a fantastic book to go along with that one! Anyways, the book I have today with called Who Owns These Bones? It has been a pleasure to review this book.

From the back

“Welcome to the secret world of skeletons! From the largest elephant to the smallest mouse, each animal is different, and that goes for their bones, too!

Meet a whole host of amazing skeletons and learn about what makes each one unique, from how to tell a gorilla from a human, to how to recognize a turtle just from its skull.

Lift the flaps to discover each skeleton’s animal owner, and find out amazing anatomy facts along the way! Can you work out Who Owns These Bones?”

The finer details:

40 pages fill out the space between the sturdy hardcovers, while finding simple illustrations in shades of white, black, grey and orange.

A variety of activities fill the pages with the bulk of them being lift-the-flap. Do you see all the information that dots the pages? This is no wee kids book of bones…this book is meant to delight and educate. Answers are always provided, sometimes on the back of a flap or on the bottom of a page.

My Thoughts:

This informative book would be an excellent addition to a course about bones, fossils or perhaps with a Dinosaur book or two. 🙂 Mind, it would also be an interesting add-along if you were doing a course with Northwest Treasures. Bones are an important part of understanding how animals are put together, this book is just filled with them. I wasn’t keen the evolutionary stuff but once we got past that paragraph or two the book just focused on bones. Bones, cartilage, exoskeletons, teeth, horns, fingers and toes, and all parts in-between. Bones, bones and more bones, and along with it lots of learning to be done. This book could fit into a lot of different studies it is just that good. I urge you to give it a gander. 🙂

Who Owns These Bones?
Henri Cap, Raphael Martin, Renaud Vigourt
Laurence King
Hardcover, 40 pages, Ages 7-11
Paleontology, Science, Archaeology
Reviewed for Raincoast Books.

Path to the Stars

September 13, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

The girl scouts has been an organization that has done a lot of good for girls over the ages, Ms. Sylvia Acevedo credits them for a lot of the good that happened in her life and for her eventual success in life. Path to the Stars is her story, this is my review.

From the back of the book:

A meningitis outbreak in their underprivileged neighborhood left Sylvia Acevedo’s family forever altered. As she struggled in the aftermath of loss, young Sylvia’s life transformed when she joined the Brownies. The Girl Scouts taught her how to take control of her world and nourished her love of numbers and science.
With new confidence, Sylvia navigated shifting cultural expectations at school and at home, forging her own trail to become one of the first Latinx to graduate with a master’s in engineering from Stanford University and going on to become a rocket scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

What do you get?

Sylvia Acevedo tells the story of her life from a personal point of view. She is upfront about problems with her family and the issues she faced as a child. Life was not easy for her, girl scouts help her to achieve confidence, they also helped her mom and younger sister as well. Girl Scouts was a very useful organization for their lives. The tome has 320 pages and is dotted with black and white images.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the publisher, and this book is geared toward middle school students. The font is larger and easily read. 18 chapters along with an epilogue. We learn abit about the Mexican sub-culture and a lot about girl guides and how they promote acceptance, teamwork and confidence.

My Thoughts:

I rarely get a book that leaves me feeling meh at the end. And unfortunately this is one of them. Let me try to explain my thoughts. Ms. Acevedo is obviously a huge fan of the girl scouts and loves everything about them. It’s cool that she’s so in love with the organization and wants everyone to know how important it was in her years growing up. I feel like something is missing in the end. Like the only thing worthwhile was girl scouts, yet when I read the book I found lots of other important parts of her life that seemed glossed over.

Though from another perspective, one good thing happening in a young person’s life can change the course of their path. Girl Scouts is credited for helping Ms. Acevedo. Therefore, I shouldn’t be surprised that in Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist, Ms. Acevedo speaks often of it’s positive influence for her.

Review: Picta Dicta Natural World

September 11, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Roman Roads Media proudly presents, Picta Dicta Natural World! It has been our absolute pleasure to review this classical Latin program over the past few weeks. Who would have thought learning Latin could be so much fun? Come on, let me tell you all about this flash card based online program.

Who is Roman Roads Media?

Roman Roads Media are people of faith, publishing classical Christian curriculum. They produce high quality product that is accessible, affordable, and flexible for the Christian homeschool community. If Picta Dicta is any indication, their materials are top-notch!

What is Picta Dicta?

An online, mobile if you wish it to be, program that teaches you Latin words. Picta Dicta Natural World focuses on words that you would find in nature. Cats, dogs, various other animals, plants, fruit, veggies and down the road… Arachnids (my son is looking forward to that lesson). Natural world has 256 chapters.

How is a chapter set up?

I’ve only completed the first six chapters to be honest… the lad is I think on 11. I’ll admit we’ve repeated lessons a few times. Chapter one presented an animal with a description with it. Pay attention to the description you will be tested on it! (ask me how I know!) 🙂 You are given the Latin and American English spelling, what it is grammatically, and it’s importance in Roman society.

Subsequent chapters increase the difficulty. All words are introduced and then mild quizzing starts. Can you pick the right word from a list. Can you match English word to Latin? and so forth. Plenty of pictures are included to help. Correction (with correct answer) is just a thumbs up away. The repetition is the key part. The word is always pronounced, sometimes by pressing on the Latin, and sometimes it comes automatically.

Each new chapter clearly spelled out the expectations for that chapter. You will also note that the topic and lesson grouping is clearly delineated at the top of every page. The percent sign I THINK shows how far you are into each lesson. (near as I can figure anyways).

How did we use it?

Originally we started on the laptops. It didn’t take us long though, to move over to the tablets. In the heat, having a tablet in your lap is WAY cooler than having a laptop and WAY more transportable to the great outdoors too! 🙂 We both chose to just leave the tab open in our tablets, making it really easy to log-in and continue our studies. I have to admit, my son is WAY more diligent about doing it than I do. I keep forgetting! The lad though, has his mom to remind him though I never get argument from him about it. YAY!!! That’s a win, you know?

Anyways, each lesson takes no more than 15 minutes to do. I have been slowly working through chapter 1 which has six subsections. The lad is well into chapter two. There are, I believe, 256 chapters in all, so we’ll have a good time yet going through each of them. You could easily go through several chapters a week, but my requirement is three sessions per week, and he can repeat lessons if he wants to. Honestly… I find MYSELF repeating lessons since my old brain just doesn’t remember the Latin as easily. 🙂 But LOOK! I’ve managed to get three stars on two of my lessons!!!!

My son is doing better. I briefly saw his screen the other day and he has some five stars. Kinda goes to figure why he helps me so easily! 🙂

Please note: the technical difficulties I was having was due to not having the tablet on a secure surface, normally the button works really easily. But filming and doing a lesson at the same time didn’t work as well as I would have liked. But don’t you just love my son piping up in the background helping me along? I JUST LOVE IT (well as a teacher, as a student it was a touch bit annoying). 🙂

I tried quite a few times to get a video of my lad working on it, but that was simply an exercise in frustration. The camera had a hard time with not focusing properly, automatically focusing in and out at weird intervals. I am simply not that good of a photographer to problem solve the issue either.

One of the things I appreciate about this mobile Latin course is how much repetition there is and how they try to help you learn the material. For instance, the lesson I was doing tonight was having me spell the Latin. I made some errors, but they would then give me the option of choosing the right word from a list. Then it would repeat the word I missed later on in the review. Giving me three chances all told to get the right word and learn the proper spelling. I messed up asinus more than once! 🙂

Suggestion For Improvement:

My son mentioned that with some of the programs he uses that autocorrect is turned off, he has to spell it correctly without any help at all. He would like this program to do the same. Otherwise “it’s cheating”. 🙂

Small annoyance. There is no such thing as a male cow. Call it a bull or a male cattle beast…..NOT a male cow. PLEASE…for all the farmers out there…change the terminology! 🙂

My Thoughts:

It made me laugh. I was working on my picta dicta (I’m intentionally a couple days behind my son) and they’d say a word and from across the room he’d say “that’s a chicken”, or “that’s a goat”, and so on and so forth. It was a tad bit frustrating but he was having so much fun going faster than me and I let him do it. 🙂 His dad after a while though told him to quit it otherwise how is mom ever going to learn all these words. And then he (dad) stated “lupus” “cervus” GAH!!!!! These guys! 🙂

Picta Dicta Natural World
Roman Roads Media
Elementary age and up
Latin, online, Classical education, classical curriculum, Picta Dicta
Subscription: 14 months, pricing here.

75 Reviewers, click below to visit them. We reviewed

Social Media Links:

Facebook: @romanroadsmedia
Instagram: @romanroadsmedia
YouTube: @romanroadsmedia
Pinterest: @romanroadsmedia

Find My Rocket

September 8, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My latest review, Find my Rocket, is a fun maze book filled with images of a boy chasing after his rocket. As this lad follows his red rocket on it’s adventures, the reader is faced with the challenge of following that rocket through a variety of interesting, well-drawn mazes.

From the back Cover:

This little boy’s super speedy rocket is on the loose and he needs your help to catch it! It’s zooming through the playroom, messing up the toolbox, ruining the racetrack, and toppling all the teddies-can you reach it before it causes more chaos?

With 11 mazes to solve and an immersive world to explore, Aleksandra Artymowska’s stunning follow-up to Amazed is perfect for anyone with an adventurous spirit.

The Nitty Gritty:

The start page lends us hints about the types of mazes we will find.

11 mazes with unique designs: paper cranes. alphabet, building blocks, race track, cars, around town, toolbox, airplanes, teddy bears, dominoes, and stars. Different pathways with simply drawn images that were fun to work my way through.

My favourite, following the different levels and touching down on all the planes. For some reason this maze just made my heart smile. Perhaps I was recalling to mind my piloting nephew and helicoptering brother. 🙂

My Thoughts:

These mazes are interesting! They are unique with different levels of challenge. There was one that I could figure out how to do…none of the paths I looked at seemed to work (perhaps it needed a better maze solver). 🙂 The toolbox and airplane mazes were simply fun to follow a path through. If you like mazes (or if your children do) this book is sure to be a hit!

Find My Rocket: A marvelous maze adventure
illustrated by Aleksandra Artymowska
Laurence King
Suited for any age
Hardcover, 11 mazes, 32 pages
Activity book, Mazes
Reviewed for Raincoast Books.

The Train to Impossible Places

September 6, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Oh, I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book. I finished The Train to Impossible Places and told my middle school boy “I think you’ll like this book”. Reviewing this book for Raincoast Books has been a total pleasure. Suzy, a young lass with a penchant for math and physics, hears a noise one night and her life takes a ride to impossible places.

From the back:

A train that travels through impossible places. A boy trapped in a snow globe. And a girl who’s about to go on the adventure of a lifetime. The Impossible Postal Express is no ordinary train. It’s a troll-operated delivery service that runs everywhere from ocean-bottom shipwrecks, to Trollville, to space. When this impossible train comes roaring through Suzy’s living room, her world turns upside down. After sneaking on board, Suzy suddenly finds herself Deputy Post Master aboard the train, and faced with her first delivery – to the evil Lady Crepuscula.

Then, the package itself begs Suzy not to deliver him. A talking snow globe, Frederick has information Crepuscula could use to take over the entire Union of Impossible Places. But when protecting Frederick means putting her friends in danger, Suzy has to make a difficult choice – with the fate of the entire Union at stake.

What do you get?

A middle-grade fantasy and nonstop adventure, The Train to Impossible Places by author P. G. Bell is as fun as it is full of heart, and the first book of a planned trilogy. Publishers Feiwel and Friends have produced a 304 page book geared to 10-14 year olds. A chapter book where each chapter is a good length, some are quite short but most are just a nice reading length.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed reading this book, the title intrigued and the idea of going to places that didn’t make sense was like hmm… wonder what that would be like. Talking with ghosts, rescuing talking snowglobes, going to the underside the was actually NOT, and more. It was in interesting book to read with twists that I didn’t expect, and I loved that loyalty and common sense won out in the end.

Review: GrammarPlanet

September 5, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been beta testing a review product called GrammarPlanet. It’s been an interesting ride! Seriously. There is much I like, and stuff we struggled with. Normal for testing a Beta program eh? This challenging program will cause you to slow down and really look at, and therefore better understand, the sentences that you read.

Who and What is Grammar Planet?

GrammarPlanet is a comprehensive and completely online grammar, punctuation, and usage curriculum. They are a mastery based program that is to be used for 15 minutes at a time. Started by Erin Karl and Jerry Bailey they wanted to find an online way to present Analytical Grammar.

What do you get:

An online computer program containing a PDF, a video, practice question and a test. These components make up each unit. The video is rather cool in that it teaches a part (for instance what makes up an article) and then it pauses for a short quiz to make sure you understand the material presented. Most videos have three or four of those quiz breaks. If you didn’t understand that section you can do it over again.

Once you have completed the video you can either watch it again or move on to the practice questions. The number of practice questions is completely dependent upon how well you are doing with the program. If you are struggling you get more, if you are progressing rapidly you get less. You cannot progress unless you pass the unit before. As a student you will need your parent/teacher to unlock the lesson so you can complete it again before moving forward. Being a mastery based program it’s important to take your time (their suggestion is 15 minutes per session). If you take your time and really read over the sentences you should be able to complete them correctly over time.

How does it work in real life?

Practice questions, show up in blue, as I mentioned earlier, vary in number dependent upon skill level. Feedback is immediate.

To mark the sentence you are shown a sentence, given a chance to read and understand it, and when you click on a word, another screen pops up over it. From this screen you choose what kind of word you have clicked on. If you make a wrong choice you can clear the screen or just click on what it should be.

Below is a picture showing how the “click” looks on screen. Make sure you didn’t make any user errors before you click submit.

When submitting you will be shown if you have a correct answer….

Or an incorrect answer that was so close…

If you are struggling encouragement is offered, or ….

If you have totally messed up, you are given firm advise. (note I marked it incorrectly to show encouragement):

The designers, I found, are kind in their comments but firm when needed.

There is opportunity to review what you have accomplished. The parent can login to see student progress, and the student can see the results as well. It is an American based program just so you know for spelling purposes.

Green check correct, red x incorrect. The sentences are marked as one complete unit.

The practice questions show up in blue, the test questions in brown/beige.

Test results are posted as soon as you have completed them. You can look over any errors so you can improve next time, each lesson builds on the one before it. Nouns, Proper nouns, Adjectives, Articles etc….

Our Use:

Mixed results to be honest.

We initially worked on it separately, trying it out, seeing how it worked for us. Lesson one was so-so, I was surprised at my struggle, the lad was set off by program issues. It is VERY easy to use. You simply set up your account, set up your student account, hit continue progress and bam, you are in working the program. Just very easy to use. All the steps follow one after the other.

Lesson two…we both failed at miserably so I helped the lad work through unit two again. Taking our time to read the questions through and talk about our choices. Again we had some errors and loud discussions, and internet searches to help us sort things out. We are still confused about somethings but we’re learning. In fact this lesson led to us learning about gerunds (Thanks crew), and watching articles (thanks Dad). The lad remained unconvinced.

Lesson three… we couldn’t get the video to play so we worked off the PDF file only, and we worked on it together. We have not completed the lesson on his profile. I have completed it on mine…I finally found a browser that would play it through! (Chrome). I got a 96% woot woot!!! I was VERY pleased with that!

My son, a perfectionist, really struggled with this program. He is SO not a beta-tester! I don’t know how else to put it. The variety of issues we struggled with set him up to fail. The being marked wrong if just one element of a sentence was wrong bothered him immensely, the loud commercials put him on edge, the odd program glitches and the not knowing exactly how many practice questions he would work through didn’t set well with him. Dad nixed him putting any more effort into the program until more of the bugs were worked out and until mom figures the program out better!

My Thoughts:

I am not a grammar person. I was raised in Canada with our grammatical ways. 🙂 We learned grammar but honestly.. I’ve never heard of a gerund before. It has left me thinking I’m am woefully inadequate when it comes to parsing sentences. BUT that’s not a bad thing really. It forces me to slow down and really, really think about what I am doing. I am, after doing three units, a bit more aware of the “odder” nouns. 🙂

Some of the answers seemed wrong to me…. but I don’t know if that is my lack of a strong grammatical background or a failure in the program. I wanted to show a picture because I thought I saved it but the nether world ate it I think. 🙂 I’m tending to think it’s more me though. 🙁

Our Concerns:

Please do not let my concerns be a detractor for you as when we were using it, it was still a beta program. This is more for the programmers as a heads up. 🙂

My understanding when we used the “wings” was that it would encompass everything from wing to wing. That proved not to be the case. I am not quite sure why… because if a wing is to show the WHOLE PN then that should include the words in the middle too right? Otherwise we could just PN all four words and be correct.

Even though I understand this is a mastery based program, it was a solid struggle for the lad to have complete sentences come up as a red X even if he only got one part incorrect. He wondered why they couldn’t make it a yellow X or something, just to show more work needed, not the everything was wrong. And if it were possible to have the program tell us WHY something was wrong or why we might have gotten confused.

We had a problem with videos not playing through and bouncing us to the practice questions. This didn’t help in the doing the actual lesson. Also some of the videos weren’t as explanatory as we needed them to be, or even when we listened to them again, it’s like some step would be missing. Gerunds are new to us, so learning more about them would have been delightful! It did give us the opportunity to go gerund hunting online though so that was good! 🙂

The commercials. I know they are to be a temporary thing but they are WAY too loud and when they pop up on the screen in front of a question and flash… that’s headache inducing! I have learned that the commercials will be part of a free program, and therefore will suggest that the loudness and flashiness of the commercials be worked on because it will turn people off. To avoid commercials, paying for the program is effective.

The Potential that I see:

Seeing how GrammarPlanet has helped me (imagine that eh?) to have a better understanding of some of the more obscure nouns is an excellent thing. Knowing that one needs to slow down and focus on parsing (like you would with dissecting a lab animal) is extremely helpful. Slowing down, really looking at the words and how they used. Following the steps as laid out by the program instructors. Doing these things, once the glitches are worked out, will make this an excellent “learning your grammar” program. The instant feedback, the encouragement to keep trying, this is all good stuff.

I love, LOVE, how you can go back over lessons again. You can see mistakes made in the past, progress again, how easy it is to find the nouns once you figure out the articles and ask the right questions to see the adjectives.

GrammarPlanet

Free as well as paid versions.

Free contains ads.

Paid is ad-free.

75 members of the HomeSchool Review Crew had a look at GrammarPlanet. Click here or on the image below to read our reviews.

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