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Experience Biology – Journey Homeschool Academy

July 29, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS PRODUCT THROUGH THE HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW IN EXCHANGE FOR MY HONEST REVIEW. I WAS NOT REQUIRED TO WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW NOR WAS I COMPENSATED IN ANY OTHER WAY.

I need to tell you about Journey Homeschool Academy and their Highschool biology course. Wow… what a tremendously well done course! Experience Biology: Upper Level is a video based, online biology course, complete with labs, tests, quizzes, papers etc, to make a good highschool biology course. I can’t wait to tell you all about it in my review.

How I used it

I do need to tell that I took this course as an adult, wanting to see how it compared to another biology course that I grade. I didn’t do the labs, I didn’t the course work, but I read the textbook, watched videos and took the quizzes.

Journey Homeschool Academy’s biology course CAN be done without the textbook but adding the book to the course makes it more complete. You cannot, if you live in Canada, order the book through their program. I ordered mine off Amazon.ca.

What I am reviewing

I am reviewing an online biology course called Experience Biology: Upper Level. Experience Biology is the brainchild of Luke and Trish Gilkerson. You’ll find it a rigorous and thorough look at biology, preparing it’s students well for college. Journey Homeschool Academy currently has five programs: Elementary and Upper-Level Biology, Elementary and Upper-Level Astronomy and an Upper-Level bible survey class. Seeing the quality of their biology class has me planning to have my lad take their bible survey class as well! 🙂

As part of this course you will cover 35 lessons which will include quarter exams, hands-on labs with options to do video labs, quizzes, engaging videos and research questions.

How Is a Lesson Laid Out?

After printing off your lesson notes, watch the videos, taking care to actually fill in your lesson notes. 🙂 If you have the textbook read the assigned lesson, otherwise take the quiz. The quizzes are all multiple choice and you can see where you went wrong afterwards. Complete the research questions and submit your lab report. You can easily complete one lesson per week, and potentially two lessons per week.

Videos

Each video lasts about half-an-hour. They are interesting to watch and occasionally pose interesting questions.

Highlights of videos

overview
notes to write are highlighted/put up in text
connections to real-life
review

One of the things I really, really liked about these videos is they fit them perfectly to their workbooks. SOMETIME I was so engaged in the video lesson that I actually forgot to take notes. BUT going back through the video so that I could fill in the blanks was SUPER easy. You see, if you need to write it down, you’ll find it highlighted in the video. How super helpful is that eh? 🙂

This is a faith-based program, and you’ll find scripture and references to God interwoven throughout.

Luke Gilkerson teaches the classes. He has a light-hearted yet serious approach to science. You can tell how much he loves his field and teaching others about it. He does as all good teachers do. A brief overview, followed by specific details, followed by a wrap up.

I mentioned earlier about the workbooks. You get two with the course. The student Guidebook which you use to take notes. The Lab book spells out the assignments and what you’ll need to accomplish them.

Lots of room is given for taking notes. Important for a person like me with messy handwriting, and for a student like my son who likes to take extra notes. Even if you don’t need it, it’s lovely that the space is available don’t you think?

Quizzes, Assignments and Grading

I love the immediacy in grading. Quizzes require 70% to pass. All multiple choice. I haven’t reached the point of needing to take a quarterly exam, but I would assume in an online format that would be a similar system.

Don’t you just love the light-hearted options for some of the answers? I laughed when I saw them! 🙂 This online high school biology course is a pleasure to work through.

The Riot and the Dance

Although you can complete Experience Biology without this textbook, and complete it well, you will find that having the textbook adds a deeper layer of understanding. It’s a more complete program with the additional reading. Could you source out the various chapters? Yes, for instance in the space that it took for the book to arrive I had already sussed out learning about a bit of starter chemistry and about biomolecules. Having the textbook just makes it easier. 🙂

I found the text to be technical but an easily understood conversation. Written by Gordon Wilson who includes his faith in his understanding of science. Most of the illustrations within the text are done in grayscale, the photos are included in full colour. This textbook would be helpful in any high school biology course.

Research Assignments

Don’t you just love it when the research questions help advance your learning? Not just a “do this” but a “do this and you’ll understand your next lesson better”.

Should you Get Experience Biology?

Whether you want a faith-based Biology course, or prefer to avoid issues of faith, Experience Biology is a SOLID homeschool biology program. It’s extremely well done and worthy of a second look. High-quality videos that are easy to understand and well-laid out along with great research questions, and good labs. This is a well-rounded biology program that is academically rigorous. I do advise getting the textbook if you plan to go on in biology/science as it makes for a more in-depth course.

You can also find Journey Homeschool Academy on Facebook and Instagram.

Besides this homeschool biology course, other courses were reviewed by other Homeschool Review Crew families. These include Experience Biology: Elementary and Experience Astronomy: Elementary.

Please visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read some of these other reviews about the courses offered by Journey Homeschool Academy.

homeschool biology, homeschool science, high school biology online

Calvert Homeschool Review

October 30, 2019 By Annette1 4 Comments

Calvert Homeschool is a place where your students in grades 3-12 can meet all their schooling needs. Can you imagine the ease of life that creates? I do need to tell you though, their high school courses are just as intriguing for their parents (at least this parent!) I have got to tell you all about it. I’ve have, for the past few weeks been able to make good use of their mobile on-line program

What I am Reviewing.

Calvert Homeschool.
Calvert Homeschool Online.
Grades 3-12
Online homeschool, homeschool online
Individual and Family Subscriptions.

Providing quality education using multi-media lessons, hands-on experiences, customizable lesson plans, and easy to access dashboards for parent/teacher and student.

Giving you full online access to 45 courses, this online homeschooling option also provides numerous features such as interactive lessons, automatic grading, and monthly payments.

Details of Calvert Homeschool

It does take some getting used to, the system that Calvert uses as their base. You don’t go to the main site to do your learning, but to the online Calvert Homeschool site. This caused me no end of frustration until I figured that part out. 🙂 Learn from me… connect with their help department!

How we Used It

My original goal, was to have my son use the world history course. He’s currently working through material for world war 2 and I noted it had a few days on this topic. I struggled initially figuring out how to get him to this section and the amazingly helpful staff at Calvert helped me learn how to assign them and close off the rest of the course. WOOT WOOT!

He started, and he admittedly tried. But Calvert wasn’t a good fit for him. He is predominately an audio learner, and Calvert suits other learning styles better. Since Calvert DOES work for me, I stepped into the gap. I’ve been brushing up on my physics and engaging in a biology course.

Details of Calvert Homeschool On Line

Two sections to Calvert

There are two distinct sections to Calvert, the first is the parental section where you can choose lessons, customize how they will work, and grade assignments. The second section is where the student will find their assignments and complete their course work. Each requires their own login information.

Parental Dashboard

In the teacher or parental dashboard you can set up your courses, school, and students quite easily. As a parent you control how your child is able to complete their course. What constitutes an A, how they answer questions, and other important details. With the 3-12 package you can assign ANY course to your student. You will find them under each grade level. These are the options I had for grade nine.

I ended up choosing two courses from grade 10 and just one from grade nine. Grade 10 was Biology and World History, and grade nine was physics/chemistry. Adding another class later isn’t an issue, just go into the curriculum set up area and you are on the way.

If you ever get lost or don’t know what you are doing they have put together helpful manuals to assist you.

My desire is to walk you through EVERYTHING but that would make this review FAR too long, so let me just walk you through the sections I used the most.

Everything is easily right at hand. Everything that is clickable is in blue. I used the assigned work and grading tasks the most.

I absolutely loved how easy they made it for me to grade the assignments. Just click on the link and grade.

One thing that I couldn’t figure was how to know what mark to assign a given assignment. Should I give it a five out six, or a 2 out of 3? It wasn’t, at least for me, always an intuitive decision. How to fix that, I haven’t a clue. But we muddled through and grades were assigned.

Student Dashboard

Like the parent/teacher board, the student dashboard is easy to navigate.

You can see at a glance what you have to work on (a report, experiment or project) and what lesson is up next. A list of items needed for assignments can be found so it’s easy enough to have supplies at hand. One of the assignment (about needing to closely observe for experiments) called for a bowl of peanuts, my son and I (cause I told him about this one and he thought it sounded fun) used a bowl of dried fruit instead. We choose to not get lost on the details and peanuts we would have had to purchase. 🙂

Lesson Set up

One of the beauties of Calvert is that you aren’t tied down to working at home on a specified device. As long as you have the internet, you can work off your laptop, tablet or phone.

Each lesson follows a predictable format. Overview, lesson pages, questions based on the lesson. Each lesson can easily be completed in a day. Stopping and starting again is not a problem either, because we all know that things happen and sometimes lessons started have to wait.

Vocabulary Arcade

On the overview page the student is introduced to the vocabulary words used throughout. With these words comes the vocab arcade.

While I think it’s great to have a way to help students practice their vocabulary, I had to wonder why they chose to have animated characters that would clap for a correct answer. It makes sense for elementary school students, but not for high school. Neither I or my 14 year old were impressed with the arcade.

I found the flash cards to be helpful. It’s a simple platform that simply helps you learn new words.

What a lesson looks like

The overview pages introduces the lesson, showing the highlights, and giving needed vocabulary words to understand the lesson.

One of the things I really enjoyed was that videos come with transcripts! So for someone like me who would rather watch a video than listen to it. I can avoid the video and read my way through. Using this option of course is not mandatory, but it’s a lovely aid for those who have English as a second language, or other comprehension issues.

I do have a bone to pick though. Growing up in Canada, I am well used to the metric system. Using a centimeter/millimeter rule in a lesson for accuracy and then not actually being accurate. It’s just wrong. Accuracy is not guessing. If you are measuring something you DO need to be accurate but you can’t on a centimeter ruler be accurate to a 100th place value if they don’t have a 100th place value on the ruler. Anything else is just guessing.

Other than that particular math question, overall I found this secular, online homeschool option to be a good program.

Should You Use Calvert Homeschool?

There are mixed feelings in this household toward Calvert Homeschool. Read all the way through to understand why. 🙂

Normally I would have my son speak his mind, but his mind is not disposed kindly toward Calvert. He doesn’t like it. Would he adapt if I told him to, yes, but relationship is always before schooling. There are a myriad of things that he doesn’t like, but most of it comes down to personal preference and he has other avenues he’d rather pursue.

Therefore I ended up signing up the lad for two additional courses. These courses are Science300 and Integrated Physics and Chemistry. I did this so that I could review the program well. Calvert was kind enough to let us have six months, so they deserve someone reviewing their program well. The end result being: that although, like the lad, I dislike certain aspects, I do overall like the rest of the program.

What I think:

I love that if I know the material already I can skip ahead to the questions.

I love the the first page of each new section is an overview of what I will be learning about. It sets my brain in the right direction.

I dislike that for essay questions that it comes up in a F for the final grade (when you click on complete lesson). Like my lad I find that rather demotivating. I would rather it would say something like “awaiting marking by teacher”, or something, anything else than F.

I like that each page is focused. You can jump back and forth from one page to the next. You can rush through, or take your time. This aspect gives it a feel of a self-paced course. I love that the main page spells out what the next assignments are and that they are clickable.

Would it be useful for high school students?

In a nutshell yes, even though it is not a good fit for my lad, but I think I would have liked it at his age. The difference being in our learning styles. I like being able to jump back and forth, reading and re-reading and he likes to simply move straight-forward. He is an auditory learner and I’m a reader.

Calvert, I think, works best for students who like to read and who pick up on details quickly while reading. My son, reads, but when he doesn’t get something, falls back to searching for videos that will explain it better. He does not feel confident doing that with the world history course from Calvert as the questions are based directly on the lesson rather than on an overall concept.

The fact that there are a good variety of projects, it is highly customizable, and the excellent customer service makes Calvert an option you should explore further. Use the free trial period. See if it’s a good fit for your student, and give it a go. 🙂

45 members of the crew took part in reviewing Calvert. You should check out what they have to say! 🙂

Social Media Links

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CalvertHomeschool
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CalvertEdu
Instagram: www.instagram.com/calverthomeschool
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/CalvertHomeschool/

Review: CodeWizardsHQ

May 2, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

I wanted to share with you about a coding class from CodeWizardsHQ that my son recently completed. This online coding class had my son intrigued and wanting to do more. The ability to code is an extremely important skill that today’s youth will need for the jobs of tomorrow. Coding is required in so many positions today, the need for skilled computer savvy people is growing exponentially. CodeWizardsHQ also offers homeschool computer programs as well as online coding classes for all students.

CodeWizardsHQ set up an introductory Class for members of the Homeschool Review Crew. They had a number of timeslots we could pick from in order to see how their training program works. I have to admit…. my son wanted it to be much longer. He didn’t get to complete everything he wanted to due to the limitations of the one hour class and the very new to coding people who were part of his group.

I thought I would walk you through some of the technical stuff and let my son tell you about his experience later on. First a bit about the program from CodeWizardsHQ themselves.

What do you get?

As I mentioned earlier, we received a one hour online class to test out their program. This consisted of getting an email from David and Kevin walking us through the important aspects of the program. An introductory video was used to point out the benefits of using their program to teach coding (teacher support, classroom setting, learning from each other, feedback given), the exponential growth in the need for good coding skills, and how their program work. Regretfully I was unable to attend, but Kevin nicely sent me a PDF of the slides used in the presentation so I didn’t really miss it! Wasn’t that sweet of him?

My son took the class because we could only have one person on and listening well at a time. This review will be filled with overheard comments concluding with my son’s overall impression of the class.

At the start of the class, based on what I overheard, the instructor took a moment to learn a few things about each of the students. I heard my son say “I don’t know what I want to learn, but by what I have seen its an important skill to know” as well as the fact that he has done some coding in the past.

A quick complaint I heard was “I wish some of the people not talking would turn off their audio as I hear people talking in the background.” I mentioned to my son that is a hard issue to control and that CodeWizardsHQ had asked people to meet in a quiet area.

We weren’t initially aware that we would need to have two screens open so it took us a bit of time to get that part figured out. Once we did, the rest of the class moved smoothly. They use the Go Meeting program to conduct the teaching part of the program.

There is another open page with the students private dashboard. We received a special code that helped us open this page. I assume each person received their own code. The class we took was an introductory one.

At the top of the dashboard are the controls to learn the programming. The join class button takes you to the Go Meeting app. Editor is where items are edited, progress lets you see the changes you have made.

As you move to the editor page you will see a page like this. At times this page will just have a column of grey on the one side with words/names. And if you click on one of those words you will see either an image pop up or a bunch of code.

My son was taught with some pre-existing elements, examples follow.

By the end my son had officially made a checkerboard of conversation and images.

Comments overheard: “I now understand why learning in a classroom takes so much longer now”. “Some of the students are slow, so I have to wait, I can change anything I want while I wait.”

Instructor quality?

Good.

Sound?

Instructor good, everyone else horrible.

Ease of use?

“I found it very easy to use. I know a couple of students didn’t get the first thing done”

Do you like it?

Yes. Would have been nice if everyone could have figured it out.

Would you want to take a 12 week course?

Yes I would.

Anything you would change?

“”What they need to do is have two instructors. One to keep the advanced students going and one to help the ones who have fallen behind.”

“I would have liked them to spend some time explaining what html does rather than just how to change it.”
“Didn’t teach about elements, opening and closing brackets. Would have been better to start completely from scratch.”

“All we were taught was how to change part of an element and how to copy and paste an element.”

“One of the things I liked is that if you made a mistake with your HTML , such as you forgot to make a opening bracket or a closing bracket or if you added them something in that shouldn’t be there, it would pop up in red text if it needed to be changed.”

My lad thoroughly enjoyed being part of this class and would happily take a courses from CodeWizardsHQ if he had a chance to do so.

CodeWizards offers several classes, each 12 weeks long. One hour live class each week which comes with 24/7 access to the code writing platform, email support, one-to-one assistance as needed, weekly progress updates recorded classes along with the necessary web space to complete projects and an online student community. A certificate is issued for each completed courses.

CodeWizardHQ
I received a one hour introductory class into HTML coding.

Their normal classes run for 12 weeks and at the end of them you will get a certificate of completion.
Online, Coding Classes for Kids,
Three Levels to work through, Certificate upon Completion, Along with Internship.
For Class Pricing.
CodeWizardsHQ is not a homeschool curriculum company, but they are open to providing classes during the day for homeschooled students. Learn More Here.

60 members of the Homeschool Review Crew took this class, CLICK HERE to read them.

Facebook along with the Facebook group for parents who are interested in coding for their children
Twitter.
Pinterest.
YouTube.

Review: MathArt by NatureGlo’s eScience

March 13, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My son was very excited when he watch the trailer for NatureGlo’s eScience MathArt courses. The idea of combining math with art, science, history and more was very appealing to him. The MathArt Online 4-class bundle is proving to be just the ticket for him.

Gloria Brooks developed these classes with the idea of encouraging students to ask questions. As such she doesn’t say you have to do this, and then this, and then that. But rather sets out the teaching aspect and then encourages her students to follow up with what they want to learn more about. There is a lot of freedom in her classes and she builds the learning up one step at a time.

What course did we take?

My son has been busy learning about Fibonacci and the golden ratio. How it can be found everywhere in the world. He’s been enjoying this mostly on-line program with PDF’s.

This course includes

#1: Introduction & History of the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Numbers
#2: The Golden Number & Fibonacci in Art, Architecture & Nature
#3: The Fibonacci Numbers in Nature
#4: The History & the Golden Ratio of the Great Pyramid
#5: Phi & Quasicrystals
#6: The Mathematics of Music

How did we use this?

My original goal, based on watching the overview and the free sample, was to have my lad do two lessons per week. We downgraded my expectations to one lesson a week, once we truly understood Gloria’s methodology. We chose to spread out the workload thereby allowing my lad to really dig into the parts that he was most interested in. It was great to be able to slow down and research terms we were unfamiliar with. To break down the lesson into the bite sized pieces that my lad so enjoys. It’s been so interesting watching him learn and what has peaked his curiousity.

The first lesson, my son required a fair bit of hand-holding as he figured out how the program worked and that it was okay to stop and just research unfamiliar terms. It was a hard lesson for us, but we learned a lot! We actually emailed Gloria and told her what we were struggling, and then had the joy of seeing how responsive Gloria was to questions from her students. She reworked the first lesson plan just to help my lad better understand some terminology. Isn’t it wonderful when a creator is able to do that?

Our Basic Routine went as follows:

Mondays my son would watch the video or read through the slides.

The slides were basically the video without the audio component where she would read the slide and basically talk her way through them. As you can see, the slides are very clear.

Tuesday and Wednesday

He would read through project possibilities and start to work on them. Either by doing some research, watching videos and/or printing off materials needed and working through them.

The student is able to pick from a variety of options for their project. They can either choose to do a big project where they do a little bit every week, OR they can choose to do a smaller project every week. My son chose the options of working on something smaller every lesson.

One of the projects my son chose to do was making this tool to demonstrate the measuring for the Golden Ratio.

Thursday quizzes

My son made me laugh. We discovered the quizlets…and he sits beside me excitedly telling me that he beat his last score! “Mom, do you think I can get down to 10 seconds?” As you can see from the picture below they have different quizlets: Match, Learn, Test, Flashcards and Spell. Each of these quizzes teaches or tests the material the student needs to know for the lesson test.

I love having all the PDF’s, being able to download them and save it all the computer. Being able to print off JUST the pages that I want. My son enjoyed being able to print off the tests as well as being able to do them online. He didn’t like that the online tests would mark the answer as wrong if you capitalized the word rather than leave it as lowercase.

On the otherhand, he loved it, if he got an answer wrong, that it would tell him what the correct answer was.

I found that the PDF’s were very thorough. From the student workbook delineating projects for the class, to the study guide that goes through the powerpoint presentation, and lesson quiz (along with the answers), Gloria covers all the bases that she can.

Tip One:

When looking for the course you want and you can’t see it, click the “all courses” button. 🙂 For me, since I also have the free class listed as one of my courses, the all courses button screen looks like this:

Each class (Math Connections with the Real World, MathArt in Ancient Cultures, Mathematics in the Arts & Sciences, MathArt – Patterns in Nature) is six weeks long, my son is thinking he’ll work through the ancient cultures one next.

Tip Two:

Make sure you utilize the side panel. Makes working your way through the course a whole lot easier. As you complete each lesson and mark it off, the colour fades and gets crossed out. This does not mean you cannot refer back to lessons. Each link remains active.

Benefits:

NatureGlo’s eScience program is something a whole family can do together (at least the students 10 and up). One price for the whole family. It can be used by Christian and non-Christian families equally as origins are not discussed. It’s interactive, and self-paced. You can see where you are in the course and go back and forth as many times as you need to. You get a slideshow with PDF downloads showing those slides one page at a time, as well as great study guides and workbooks to help you work through the material. It all builds upon each other. Gloria is very responsive to inquiries which is completely wonderful. Content is provided for students who want to work beyond what is presented. Students can approach this course in a manner that best suits them.

My Thoughts:

It’s organized in a way that my son can mostly work through the material on his own. He tends to call me in when he’s working through a test, or trying to confirm just what a project is calling for. I loved that his first journal project included a topic he loves… he found the Fibonacci sequence in spiders! He was so delighted. 🙂

Quotes from My Lad:

“Natureglo, so far I like it. I like that I can either watch the video or I can just go through the slide show pictures on my own. Sometimes I like to listen and other times I like to just read.”

“One of the things I would have liked. With the slide show videos, because she did them live, it would be nice if she could edit out where the students are circling things.”

“I really like that it gives me a choice as to what project I can do.”

“I plan to work my way through all these courses Mom, I really like them. Make sure you tell them that!”

NatureGlo's eScience.
MathArt Online 4-Class Bundle.
Gloria Brooks
Class length vary.
Four Bundle unit of online combination math, 
science, art classes
Pricing: See here.
For PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android platforms.
One year subscription.
Ages 10+

70 families from the Homeschool Review Crew Checked out NatureGlo’s eScience courses. Click here or below.

Social Media Links:
Facebook:
Twitter: Tag: @natureglo1
Pinterest:
Google+:
YouTube:

Four Apps My Son Enjoys

March 2, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Today I thought I’d mention of few of the apps my 12 year likes to play. In our home we have a strict rule that we don’t spend money on games we can totally download for free. Games come in and out of favour too quickly to be wasting money them, so all these games are free.

Clash Royale.

This is a fun battle type game. Strategy, see who wins! We play as a family. Our clan is called “the wee beasties” if you’d like to join us. Only family friendly chatter happens. They have weekly challenges and consistently put up new content to intrigue and annoy (at times). Check it out if you like strategy games.

From site: Collect and upgrade dozens of cards featuring the Clash of Clans troops, spells and defenses you know and love, as well as the Royales: Princes, Knights, Baby Dragons and more. Knock the enemy King and Princesses from their towers to defeat your opponents and win Trophies, Crowns and glory in the Arena. Form a Clan to share cards and build your very own battle community.

Lead the Clash Royale Family to victory!

Cell labs

I have to admit, I originally didn’t see the appeal of this game until I saw what could be created with it. My son adores this game and has come up with some really cool creations. It takes time to understand how to play and I admittedly got lost on one of the tutorials so will need to ask my son for help! 🙂

From the site: Cell Lab also contains an experimental mode where the user can set the parameters of the environment and put designed organisms in it to see how they multiply (or die). It is also possible to seed this environment with random genomes and once a viable genome has been seeded one can see how it slowly evolves through tiny mutations to an organism well adapted to the environment it is in.

It is then possible to change the environment to see how they re-adapt, fast forward the simulation, and finally to save and share it.

Occidental Heroes

I freely admit I am horrible at this game. Everytime I play it I DIE DIE DIE. OR to be honest.. my trio of three quickly becomes a singleton who can’t really do anything except restart the game. I have managed to occasionally get new or odd quests which is WAY COOL. But overall my son (as always) rules this game quite nicely. It’s like being a middle ages game of combat and chivalry. Low tech but a decent game.

From the site: Broadly roguelike retro role-playing game with exploration, turn based combat and permadeath set in low fantasy world.

Yellow

This game… my lad keeps asking “mom, have you played it yet?” He loves for me to play the same games he does and sometimes they take and sometimes well.. I do horribly at them. 🙂 It’s all fun though since they are all free. I can try and discard to my hearts content. He tells me it’s a game I’d like to play as it’s a puzzle type game and he KNOWS I love those types of games. 🙂 Perhaps I should introduce you to a few of my favourites. (another post)!

From the site:

Yellow, a puzzle game for you!
Can you make the screen yellow in all 50 levels?

Each level has its own logic.

Anyways, these are all fun, easy-going games that just might end up intriguing your middle school students as well. Give them a go and see. Perhaps you know of a game or two that my lad might also enjoy? We only play on android!

Review: Drive Thru History Adventures

February 27, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

I have long wished over my years with the Homeschool Review Crew that I could review Drive Thru History but never had the opportunity to do so. FINALLY our moment arrived (YAY)! We could study Ancient History with Drive Thru History Adventures. Dave Stott’s well done program has my son so enthused that he will even watch an episode on Saturdays if we’ve missed a day throughout the week. It’s a winner in our household, so I invite you to read on, perhaps it will be a winner in yours as well!

What is Drive Thru History Adventures?

A series of three online courses. During these courses Dave Stott takes field trips around the world talking history, geography, archaeology, classic art, and Christian worldview. Right now three courses are available.. Biblical history (18 weeks), American History (12 weeks) and Ancient History (12 weeks). Into this conversation he interjects humour and stories. Each video is accompanied by discussion questions (also provided on PDF’s) and readings to extend the lesson.

How did we use it?

We watched two videos per week, normally at lunchtime, on Monday and Wednesday. We watched as a family and found the video’s very entertaining and educational. The Mr. Stott’s voice was pleasant to listen to, the images used helpful. My son enjoyed reading the quotes.

As my son will often say he doesn’t remember things, on the days between videos we did the worksheets. Testing his recall and then for things he didn’t remember, we’d look them up in a different format, which would help him recall information from the video. This gave us an opportunity to extend our knowledge of particular details via youtube videos or various websites. Always good when one had their curiousity peaked to explore more isn’t it?

Check out part of the history we learned on Rome. This was a few lessons back and my son still remembers it. 🙂

We looked at the readings provided, and I admittedly found them interesting, but at this point for my grade seven lad, they were a bit beyond his understanding. The neat thing about PDF’s is they can be stored for use at a later time! I can see them being of excellent value if he were a highschool student.

OH.. before I forget. My son was delighted one day to get some mail from Drive Thru History! He grinned and stashed them in his “I’m keeping this box”. 🙂 It was great to see his surprise.

How does it work?

It’s easy to work with. When you login you pick where you want to go. Curriculum leads you to the lessons. Resources are the PDF’s and extended information. Community links to their social media. Adventures TV (a cool resource I’ll talk on later)

Three programs are available at the moment. I have no clue if any more are planned. The ones currently on the plan are history courses for bible, American and ancient.

It’s just a matter of clicking on the one you want to view. If you were so inclined you could watch one episode per week of a different course. We are following along the Ancient History one, biblical history is on our radar. Each lesson starts with a video that I would chrome cast to the TV. This made it easy for us to watch the episodes as a family.

Numerous art work was portrayed as you worked your way down the page after viewing the video. Each lesson also came with a quote that my son delighted in reading to me. Sometimes we would talk about what that quote meant. The lad didn’t always know, but it made for good conversation. 🙂

I have to admit, sometimes we did the lessons backwards. 🙂 Working our way through what the discussion questions might be, reading the summary, looking at the images and everything else in the lesson. Sometimes my son knew the answers to discussion questions and other times we knew watching the video was the smart thing to do. 🙂 Answers are also provided.

The discussion were listed in the lesson, and were also available on PDF’s. As I mentioned earlier we would normally watch the video and go through the art work one day and the next my lad would fill out the discussion questions. Most of the time his recall was great but sometimes we would have to look up the answers. These discussion questions would often disappear the void that is his room so I was lucky to snap pics when I did! 🙂

We also received access to adventures TV. This requires a separate login. It is available as a free app on android and apple devices and it is available as tab through your dashboard on the computer. You do need a subscription to be able to access all the content, but the app itself is free to download. Once you install the app you can sign in with your email and than you receive an email that updates the app so you can use it. Pretty neat eh?

Adventures TV is a series of videos that vary in length, that are either just fun to watch (like the learning about cheese), interesting to watch/learn from or videos of the lessons (without the PDF’s). Subject areas include: History (Bible, American, Ancient), Dave’s adventures (various updates), Sideroads (history of groundhog day, coins, cheese etc), Behind the scenes (museum of the bible opening etc) and Dig Deeper (bible reading plans etc). They are well worth going through and picking what you’d like to know more about. We haven’t watched a lot of them as my son’s focus is on ancient history. As he says “we can watch those another time right? I want to do my history!” I’m just not going to argue with that logic eh? 🙂

My Concerns:

Sometimes the videos would go through a stretch of being highly pixelated. It never lasted beyond four minutes running time, but was a distraction when listening. This bothered the boys more than it did me. As far as we could tell this was simply a downloading issue.

My Appreciation:

Dave Stott is a highly engaging speaker who has put together a program that not only educates the listener, but entertains. He’s a funny man who is at sometimes just a goofy geek (so he’d fit well into our family). You can see his love for history in the way he speaks about it, communicating well the truths of history. He speaks well of how biblical characters fit into the history of the moment. I fully expect once we are done watching the ancient history episodes that we will continue going through the other history as well. My son mentioned that bible history was next on his “I want to do that” list.

Drive Thru History Adventures.
Dave Stott
On-line subscription (received full year)
Reviewed for Homeschool Review Crew
Pricing: see here.  They are currently offering
    a discount special so don't delay.
In the winter edition of TOS magazine 
 "Drive Thru History Adventures is offering 
20% off for readers of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine."
see page 19 for that discount.  
I don't know if they can be combined.

Do you want to know more?

100 people from the Homeschool Review Crew looked at Drive through History. You can find our reviews here.

These are the programs that we used:

+ Bible History (18 weeks on the Gospels)
+ American History (12 weeks on early American history)
+ Ancient History (12 weeks on early Greece, Rome and Asia Minor)

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Review: UltraKey Online

February 20, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Last year my son used a typing program, he worked with it on the desktop we have upstairs and overall it went well, but he still struggled with his keyboarding skills. When the option came to try out Ultrakey, by Bytes of Learning, my son was rather excited! “MOM! Will it help me type better?” I said “we can always try it out and see lad.” I invite you to come with me and see how the UltraKey Online Family Subscription can be as successful for your students.

I’m trying to think where to start, I honestly haven’t needed to use this program at all. I got my lad set up and have talked with him as he problem solves or tries to figure out how quickly he should do lessons and practices, but overall my lad has taken ownership of Ultrakey. They set it up so each user can arrange the program the way they like it. You can change the background, voice, speed, accuracy and so forth. My lad didn’t care what the voice sounded like, but perferred the building as a background.

How we used it:

I initially walked my son through the set up, helping him see how the program worked, setting up his preferences and just letting him run with it. The interface is easy to use. You will find this screen on every page, helping you quickly move from one section to another.

The skill check is separate from the lessons, allowing one to redo a lesson, or redo a skill check without having to do both if you don’t wish to. The typing forum allows you to take practice tests that are timed as well as more official tests. My son hasn’t quite reached the skill level needed to do these yet. He’s been repeating the skill checks until he feels confident in moving forward.

The lessons are in an easy to read font as well have having a voice over. The keyboard clearly shows where each letter is during the lessons.

Occasionally I would ask my son to show me how he was doing, we’d get screens like the one below. you could check to see what you missed, and then the program would tell you if you had improved or not.

I can’t say my lad is delighted at how slowly he is going through the course…but I’ve told him if he wants to improve he needs to spend longer than 10 minutes per day practicing, that I used to take typing classes for a whole hour! Oh my.. he was so startled when I told him that. He’s happy practicing for 10-20 minutes max per day and progressing slower. 🙂 I am seeing improvement now that he is not racing through the course. He’s taking his time practicing and learning where the keys are. I know in time he will be a proficient typist.

What we liked:

The lessons are straight-forward, and they give you lots of time to practice over and over again. Along with games to help you practice the skills you are learning. The skill tests have options so you can change what you are practicing or can pick the one that you are most interested in. They have tests you can take when you are ready to do so. You aren’t forced to do anything in a particular order. It has everything in it that my son wants to help him to improve his keyboarding skills. Their media-rich instruction make this an enjoyable program to use.

My son’s thoughts:

"Yay!  I just beat mom's score.  Look mom!   I'm faster and better than you!"
"I like that I can practice as much as I want to!"  
"I can do the skill checks over and over again".

Things that came up.

1. The spacebar randomly stopped working during a skill test. This is where I discovered how wonderful their customer service was. I mentioned it to them and they immediately connected with me. Putting me in on a conference call so we could work through what the problem was. GREAT Customer Service. We figured out it was just a random glitch and it hasn’t happened again.

2. Skill test: They used capital letters leaving my son feeling flummoxed. How does one type a capital letter properly? “Mom, they didn’t teach me how to do that yet!” It was a great time for me to teach him how to do that. 🙂 It’s just something to be aware of. It was just a step missed.

3. Games and The Test Forum are not done according to the progress of the student. This means if they play games or do the formal tests they will run into letters they haven’t been taught yet (if they haven’t finished the program).

My Thoughts:

Bytes of Learning has done a wonderful job of putting UltraKey together. They have worked hard to make their success-based learning program as accessible as possible. The finer details of their efforts is what sets it apart. Their excellent customer service is just icing on the cake. The fact that It focuses on teaching typing skills and isn’t child focused appeals to him.

UltraKey Online Family Subscription
Bytes of Learning
Pricing: Depends on package Click Here. 
Typing, Keyboarding, online learning,
success-based learning, media-rich instruction

Visit the other members of the crew who reviewed Bytes of Learning by CLICKING HERE.

Bytes of Learning can be found on Facebook.

Online

DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS PRODUCT THROUGH THE HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW IN EXCHANGE FOR MY HONEST REVIEW. I WAS NOT REQUIRED TO WRITE A POSITIVE REVIEW NOR WAS I COMPENSATED IN ANY OTHER WAY.

How I used it

What I am reviewing

How Is a Lesson Laid Out?

Videos

Quizzes, Assignments and Grading

The Riot and the Dance

Research Assignments

Should you Get Experience Biology?

What I am Reviewing.

Details of Calvert Homeschool

How we Used It

Details of Calvert Homeschool On Line

Two sections to Calvert

Parental Dashboard

Student Dashboard

Lesson Set up

Vocabulary Arcade

What a lesson looks like

Should You Use Calvert Homeschool?

What I think:

Would it be useful for high school students?

Social Media Links

What do you get?

Instructor quality?

Sound?

Ease of use?

Do you like it?

Would you want to take a 12 week course?

Anything you would change?

What course did we take?

How did we use this?

Our Basic Routine went as follows:

Tuesday and Wednesday

Thursday quizzes

Tip One:

Tip Two:

Benefits:

My Thoughts:

Quotes from My Lad:

Clash Royale.

What is Drive Thru History Adventures?

How did we use it?

How does it work?

My Concerns:

My Appreciation:

Do you want to know more?

How we used it:

What we liked:

My son’s thoughts:

Things that came up.

My Thoughts:

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