Curriculum

Review: The Critical Thinking Co.

May 8, 2019 By Annette1 3 Comments

Knowing how to think through issues is something that my son is VERY interested in lately. To that end we’ve been learning debate and some of the fallacies that go into having a debate. When we were offered the chance to go through another critical thinking product, my son was delighted! A chance to problem solve? What fun!

So over the past few weeks my son has been learning new vocabulary as he solves mysteries from the The Critical Thinking Co. What has he been using?
Critical Thinking Detective – Vocabulary Book 2 which is geared to Grades 5-12+. The fun of solving a mystery and the hunt to learn new words, what more could a 13 year ask for?

Critical Thinking Detective Vocabulary 2

What I am Reviewing

Critical Thinking Detective – Vocabulary Book 2
The Critical Thinking Co.
Diane Hartsig
Grades 5-12+
PDF Ebook, downloadable program
Thinking skills, Math, Vocabulary, Critical Thinking, Language Arts

Detective mystery cases (12 in all) with include new vocabulary words. As you read the mystery you need to define these vocabulary words as you seek to unravel the clues provided. As Critical Thinking Co. says

Each mystery requires careful reading, critical thinking, and synthesizing information to identify the innocent and guilty. The cases also develop observation skills, reading comprehension, deductive and inductive thinking skills. Learning to identify and evaluate evidence is the very heart of critical thinking.

The Finer Details

My son, once I printed off the 40 pages that make up this ebook, divided them into three sections. He stapled them together so he had the answers in one section, and the rest of the book divided in half.

One of the things I love about Critical Thinking Co. is their dedication to helping their students learn how to think logically. Learning how to use deductive reasoning is a skill that helps each student throughout their life.

Detective Vocabulary 2 takes that one step further, adding new vocabulary words taken from the ACT and SAT word lists and more.

As you can see from the above example, statements are numbered, vocabulary words are mixed in, and careful reading is required.

There are 12 individual cases

The Thieving Blatherskite
The Disruptive Denizen
The Pernicious Polluter
The Prevaricator
The Trying Troglodyte
The Insolent Imposter
The Malingering Manager
The Careless Curator
The Emphatic Editor
The Jackleg Carpenter
The Fluent Finagler
The Bellicose Hoarder

Each case is set up in a similar fashion. Scenario with statements, followed by images of the suspects.

After those images, are particular statements by the suspects along with an injunction to figure out who the guilty party is.

The suggestion is that students complete one case every two weeks. Despite that suggestion, my son really liked working through these. Over our review period he has completed most of the mysteries (has two left to go).

You can complete these just viewing them on your device (it downloads a program on your computer), but I will suggest that you print them off. As you can see from the image below, my son wrote all over them as he worked through each mystery.

After each mystery there is a vocabulary section. They provided a word list and a number of sentences. You needed to plug in a word to complete the sentence.

The enclosed answer key allowed my son to easily check his own work. He told me that he liked that they told him how they came to the answer. A couple of incorrect answers happened, but their key showed him where he went wrong.

One of the nice things in this detective book is you don’t have to discern truth from lie. All statements made are true. This leaves you with just needing to deduce the culprit.

Our Review

To be honest, I looked over the program before giving it to my lad and thought, good, looks like another solid Critical Thinking product. Printed it off and handed it to my lad. That was the extent of my interaction with it, beyond taking pictures for this review.

Ergo, moving on to my son’s review.

It was a good program, I got most everything correct. The only thing I wish was different is they should put a shortened definition under the blanks. Sometimes multiple words can fit into the same spot, making the sentence mean different things but still being grammatically correct. The end result is that you have to guess, and then sometimes you guess wrongly.

I liked that the cases are reasonably difficult to solve. The vocabulary words are included at the just right amount. Not too many to make it overwhelming, but enough that you need to define them in order to solve the case.

Promotion Code

Here is a promotion and coupon The Critical Thinking Co. would like to share with you my readers. 🙂 Pretty cool eh?

Free Shipping + 15% Off Any Size Order!

Coupon: TOSCREW19 Expires: 12/31/2019

I urge you to check out their website. You can get a weekly puzzle sent to you. There is much to explore. Find the time to do so eh? I think you will as impressed as we are.

Other Critical Thinking Co. reviews I have done in the past are: Critical Thinking Detective 1.

Read Other’s Reviews!

75 people have been busy reviewing for The Critical Thinking Co. We’ve been looking at the following:

Pattern Explorer Beginning (Grades 3-4)
Elementary Math Games (Grades 3-5)
Critical Thinking Detective – Vocabulary Book 2 (Grades 5-12+)
Dare to Compare: Math Level 2 (Grades 6-7)
Middle School Math Games (Grades 6-8)
Building Writing Skills – Essential Tips & Techniques (Grades 6-12+)
Vocabulary Virtuoso PSAT-SAT Book 1 (Grades 8-12+)
Vocabulary Virtuoso PSAT-SAT Book 2 (Grades 8-12+)

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCriticalThinkingCo
Twitter: www.twitter.com/criticalthinks
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/criticalthinks/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsVEVNa6UpVqXxo_t5sbb7Q
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecriticalthinkingco/

Review: CrossWired Science

April 16, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

We happen to love science in our household. A long time ago we learned that science encourages us to ask questions that cross a wide spectrum of study. CrossWired Science proved encourage the same type of questions. Walk with us through this question inducing science program with two main courses of study: Fluid Dynamics and Sound.

What I am Reviewing

Fluid Dynamics and Sound.
CrossWired Science.
On-line program
Science, Multi-level
Online Science Lessons, Learning Online, Homeschool Science

Who is CrossWired?

CrossWired Science (CWS) showcases a desire by the creators to share science with families and their children. Faith is central to how they put their online science program together. They want to help young people cement their knowledge of science and of how God fits into the bigger picture of it.

Through the use of scripture and the work of other individuals, they want to help youth understand the connection of God the creator and the bible.

What CWS intends to build is a science program that is put together as distinct projects. So far they have given us sound and fluid dynamics. They intend to give us additional projects as well.

The Finer Details:

As we were using CrossWired Science it was fairly evident that it was still a work in progress. It was fascinating to see the responsiveness of the creators with aspects that we liked, or would rather see modified. That is one of the joys of being Beta testers… seeing changes happen right before our eyes!

For instance, my son kept asking “In what order am I supposed to do things?” The response of the CWS crew? A calendar! The general goal is for each of these global projects to take a month to complete.

You can see the care they have for their students in the very fact that they don’t insist that there is only one way to work through their projects. They provide additional calendars such as this 1.5 month option.

The target audience is students aged 4 to 18. My son is currently 13, he worked on Fluid Dynamics, I worked on sound. There are two tracks to use, first times and second timers. At this point in the learning process my son and I haven’t found a lot of difference between the two.

As you can see from the calendars above, they do like to encourage their students to read. This was a bit of a stickler for my lad, “Mom, I have lots to read already, why can’t I just look things up online or watch a video?” I had to agree with him. He’s a fairly busy lad .. often working on his own projects or doing extra work for his schooling or programs he is involved in. I did go the library for him when he mentioned something he wanted to learn about AND….. got him to pose for a picture!

As much as we know CWS likes to encourage it’s students to read, when it comes right down to it, my lad lives in a digital age and has embraced that concept completely. He loves the immediacy of “I’m interested in learning more about vortices, and then searching out more information online”.

And just LOOK at all the options he has for learning! All these things to stimulate questions being asked and then answers being looked up.

Videos make up a big portion of each project, followed by worksheets (for each video), experiments, digging deeper, a choice of research projects, and more. They even suggest field trips you can do! I will mention some of the sections individually below.

They encourage students to share what field trips they go on so they can build a data-base of ideas for all the students to work from.

Videos

These are an important part of CWS. You watch the videos, and then answer a worksheet. You can either print them off or answer them online. There are the links they put together as well as (under General Links) links to helpful youtube videos. Below is one of them.

Experiments

As you can see they provide a lot of options for experiments. The experiments open up in PDF files. We found that each experiment page contained links for additional research as well as more than one experiment you could do. All those additional links we loved. They spawned additional research by the lad and myself.

The information on vortices led my lad down the path of airplanes which coincided nicely with our research on the airplanes of WW1. I decided with the shark video to learn more about dogfish sharks. The experiments did what was intended, helping us to dig deeper into the project. 🙂

I have to admit, we struggled with some of the experiments in that they didn’t give clear instructions on how to complete it. For instance, what are the ingredients for making a cornstarch oobleck?

Encouragement to see science in a bunch of different ways. Who would have thought that a study of Fluid Dynamics would lead me to watching a video on a shark dissection?

Gold Digs

These are longer study which led from one point to the next. Designed in such a way that older students could help younger ones. You can go indepth, or just touch the surface.

Each section when clicked leads directly to the named section, which is great for the point of convenience if you remember what letter you stop at. It’s a fairly long section so rather than complete it in one day, my lad divided it over three. Some of the information he knew already, but much he didn’t. He enjoyed this study on bones.

Thoughts and Recommendations

My intention was to keep pace with the lad as he went through his course. I um.. didn’t. I got distracted by spring weather and gardening! I absolutely love that I am not committed to following one project through before checking out the other project. I started with Fluid Dynamics just like the lad, but then he asked if I could do the other project so he knows what to look forward to.

His intention is to complete both projects, at his own schedule. He loves having the calendar to follow but doesn’t want to do as much in day as it asks him to do. It’s no mattering to me how long it takes him to complete it as I know he will get through it.

He has made some comments to me about how some of the videos aren’t very in-depth and seem for a lower grade level, they often have music playing the background which for him is distracting, and he wants to see more professionalism in them. All that said, after working through the course over these past three weeks he is commenting on how much he is learning and his freedom to follow rabbit trails.

Get it?

YES. My recommendation (and my son’s) is that you go out and get it. Their end goal is to have 25-30 projects by the time they are finished.

Their projects will encourage your children to ask questions, their experiments are set up so you don’t have to do ones you’d rather not, and the videos are easy to watch and build leads off of. It’s a solid science program that will help you connect God with creation and all that he has done BUT if you aren’t a person of faith, you can easily incorporate the science into your studies without feeling overly influenced. A solidly good program that is well on it’s way to becoming a stellar one. Creators who care about the people using it… CrossWired Science, it’s a win-win. 🙂

I strongly urge you to check out all the other reviews. There are 80 of by the crew. You can find them here or by clicking the image above.

Review: Introduction to Robotics and Automation

February 15, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

My son has an enjoyment of robotics, he’s taken a few courses over the years. Last year he was fortunate enough to be able to an engineering course at a local business and was able to build his own robot. This was almost the best thing ever. 🙂

This year I was looking at course from Innovator’s Tribe and offered to do a review in exchange for the course. Mr. K agreed! WOOT WOOT! I want to tell you how much my lad has been enjoying this course.

The course: Introduction to Robotics and Automation.

Course Description

This exciting course introduces students to the modern world of robotics. Using interactive lessons and exciting hands-on activities, students will learn how to design, build and program a virtual robot.

30 hours of learning material right at your fingertips. Easy login, Sidebar for lesson placement, units of study and encouragement to try something more.

What you Get

A self-paced, self-contained, completely on-line (except for hands-on projects) that your student can do completely on their own.

Occasionally you will be directed to a video outside of the course. Videos such as the one below. One of the things I like about these referrals is that they open the door to viewing other videos on robotics. My son would often tell me the things he was learning about.

The layout of each lesson is really obvious. This is on the things my son really liked. He knew what kind of lesson it was going to be just by checking the sidebar. Lesson variations are: Multimedia, quiz, text, and video. Activities are clearly labeled.

The page is laid out in such a way that you can see where you are in the lesson by checking the sidebar, while your lesson plays on the mainscreen.

Since this is a self-paced course, my son wanted to do all the book learning first. This isn’t unusual for him. He likes to learn the material well before trying it out in real life. At this point he has completed all the “Book-learning” that has been created (there is more to come).

Over the next three or four weeks he hopes to complete the hammer-bot and water clock. He is hoping we can find some Arduino to work with. He says it is really interesting and he wants to do it all himself. So I have a project to complete.. FIND SOME!

Our Thoughts

From my son: I found the course fun. It was enjoyable. I learned names for robotic components which I really liked. Knowing this kind of information is great. I would happily take another Mr. K class because he is good at explaining things and making them interesting. How the lessons are done with the different slides is good. And how they have videos in the slides. The web-page isn’t complicated, it’s easy to use.

From Me: When they say this is a self-directed course, it’s exactly that. My son would say “I’m doing innovators!” And off he’d go. If I asked him what he learned about (sometimes 15 minutes later, sometimes an hour later) he’d tell me, sometimes prefaced with “I’m sorry, I got interested in learning so I was watching other videos”.

Do we recommend this course? Definitely. Just like the first course we took from them called Thinking Like An Engineer. Well taught courses that engage the learner in a variety of formats to work with all learning styles. Great teacher too!

Introduction to Robotics and Automation.
Innovator's Tribe.
Mr. Kroeplin (teacher)
Grades 5-9
On-line
Self-directed, robotics, automation,

Review: Teach Sunday School

October 3, 2018 By Annette1 17 Comments

For the past few weeks my son has been testing out a new bible knowledge program. He likes it! 🙂 That’s always a win you know? When you discover a program that works for how you think. Books of the Bible At-a-Glance from Teach Sunday School gives us an overview of each book of the bible. Simply laid out, clear and crisp one page glances at each bible book. Wonderful!

Who is Teach Sunday School?

Teach Sunday School is a company who wants to help parents and teachers have the tools they need to help themselves and their charges understand God’s word better. Bible-at-a-glance is designed to help individuals better understand the theme, purpose and main verses of each bible book. Teach Sunday School has a variety of other programs to help you understand the bible better. Their purpose? To help you teach the bible with joy!

There are things like:

– Print and go lesson plans which are complete curriculums for ages 4-12,
– Bible printables (like mazes, word search, crossword puzzles, and journal prompts for ages 5-18)
– Bible Games (like Jeopardy, Tic-Tac-Toe, Bingo, and Treasure Hunts)
– Seasonal items for Back-t0-school, holidays, and even Summer
– Bible Crafts for ages 4-18
– Christian Skits and Plays for pageants, plays, and puppet shows
– Christian Parenting material for teaching kids morals, defending their faith and so much more.

What do you get with Bible-at-a-glance?

As you can see, with these bible summary sheets, you have a clear bible book name followed by information that is laid out the same for every book of the bible.

Where you can find it, who wrote it and approximately when. You will then learn the famous stories and pivotal bible verses, complete with main ideas.

How did we use it?

I have to admit, it took us a little while to decide how to use Books of the Bible at a glance. This is the schedule my son and I came up with.

After I print each page off, we place it in a binder for ease of use and reference back. Having all the information on one sheet makes it very easy to use. Coming as a PDF means I can print off as many copies as I want if I were using for a Sunday School or adult learning class. Everything is right at my finger tips!

Before starting his copywork on Monday he would take the time to learn the bible book name and where it was located.

The first day he copied out the main verses, taking the time to read them over a few times and think about what they meant so that on Tuesday he was able to work on memorization. Some weeks were easy (like Genesis took him no time at all) but Leviticus he struggled with.

Below you’ll find his copywork for Exodus. He’s been practicing his cursive using these bible lessons.

On Wednesday’s we had a deal… if there were more than four stories all he needed to do was look up half of the stories and then tell me about the stories he found. Narration is a good skill to maintain you know, and doing it from bible lessons like these, all the better eh? 🙂

Thursday was pretty straight forward, learn the major points, be able to explain them. Expand upon them if you can.

Fridays were a review day where he pulled all the information together, being able to tell me everything he had learned.

My Thoughts:

Well laid out, I like it. I like how the information is succinct, easily seen, each page has the same layout, making it easy to teach or work through. My son could do it independently with just checking in once or twice with me.

Son’s thoughts:

I like how it is set up, I know what to expect. I like that it has bible verses for me to memorize and that I can learn all the basic facts about a book of the bible and I can do them over again if I forget something.

My Pastor Hubby’s thoughts:

They didn’t do a bad job. It’s definitely not laid out from a reformed viewpoint, but overall information presented is pretty decent.

Area of struggle

I disliked this being part of the Leviticus study. Setting people up to not want to read one of books of the bible doesn’t seem right in my eyes. My son commented: “Why would learning laws make people not want to read a bible book?”

Teach Sunday School
Books of the Bible At-a-Glance
Faith based, Bible, Summary Cards, Books of the Bible, Christian, Bible Lessons
Current price $9, normally $19!

I urge you to check out this very helpful resource. It’s an excellent way to help you and your students learn God’s word better in a seamless, easy manner.

75 members of the crew had a chance to look at Bible at a Glance,

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SundaySchoolLessons/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/biblefun/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachsundayschool/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SundaySchoolSample

Cleopatra and Ancient Egypt

September 27, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Have I ever told you how much I enjoy the “for kids” series from Chicago Review Press? They are written for kids and all contain 21 different activities for students to complete. They are fantastically written with loads of pictures and interesting tidbits throughout. Today I am reviewing Cleopatra and Ancient Egypt for Kids.

From the Cover:

Cleopatra has been called intelligent and scheming, ambitious and ruthless, sensual and indulgent. This unique biography captures the excitement of her life story, including portions that have been largely neglected, such as her interest in literature and science and her role as a mother, and allows readers to draw their own conclusions. Cleopatra and Ancient Egypt for Kids also includes maps, time lines, online resources, a glossary, and 21 engaging hands-on activities to help readers better appreciate the ancient culture and era in which Cleopatra lived.

What You Get:

Over the course of 144 pages students are led through the life of Cleopatra, starting with her life as a young princess and closing with the end of the era. Each of the 8 chapters contains up to three activities for students to engage the student in active learning from science experiments to art projects to making food.

Cleopatra worked hard to keep her family on the throne of Egypt and throughout her reign she kept Egypt stable. As a child in the Ptolomy household, she was well-educated. They put a strong emphasis on learning, as Egyptian queens played an essential role in the governing of the land. Cleopatra kept learning all her life. In the pages of the book you learn these facts and more.The student will understand how this tough, smart lady kept a country going in the time of growing Roman domination.

You’ll find 21 different activities to do. Some of them are creating a writing a tablet, build a shadoof, make a garland, create an Egyptian style necklace, mummify a hot dog and many more. Each assignment comes with a materials list and clear instructions to complete it. I loved the variety in the assignments.

You’ll find a timeline at the start of the book from when Cleopatra VII is born, through to the death of Cleopatra and Anthony. Span of some 40 years.

Scattered throughout the pages you’ll find maps, busts, coins, plants and buildings from the era. All those images that bring history to life that normally you’d have to go to a museum to see and piece together, brought all together in one book.

The close of the book lists the Egyptian Dynasties, Additional Resources with grade ranges – not just books but museums as well, and a glossary. All in all a complete walk through of the life of Cleopatra.

My Thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoy these books. Every single one I review I keep for my book shelves with the full intent of going through them with my lad.. grade nine is coming yet! 🙂 Very thorough, written so that upper elementary students can understand, complete enough for high school students to work through, filled with ideas for taking rabbit trails, with great variety in hands-on activities. They’d be perfect for doing a history course all year long (each taking about 8-9 weeks to complete).

Others that I’ve reviewed: Albert Einstein, Marine Science, Michelangelo, and Marie Curie.

Cleopatra and Ancient Egypt: her life and world, with 21 activities
Simonetta Carr
Chicago Review Press
For Kids Series
21 activities.
144 pages, trade paperback
History, hands-on learning, upper elementary
Reviewed for Chicago Review Press

Where to buy: Amazon.

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

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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