TOS

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: Transcripts Made Easy

April 10, 2019 By Annette1 4 Comments

Did you know that my son is going into grade nine? GAH! I am trying NOT to join in with frantic homeschooling parents getting bent out of shape over highschool. Trying hard but not necessarily succeeding! 🙂

Everyday Education has come to my rescue… at least in the area of transcripts and grading. Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschooler’s Guide to High-School Paperwork has been a boon to quieting my mind over this important part of record keeping.

Transcripts made Easy by Everyday Education

What I am Reviewing

Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschooler’s Guide to High-School Paperwork.
Everyday Education.
Janice Campbell
Digital ebook, PDF.

$24.95
138 pages. 4th edition.
high school transcripts, homeschool transcripts, homeschool high school

Transcripts made easy is a comfortable read filled with a wealth of information. It comes as a PDF document easy to store on my laptop. At 138 pages I chose not to print off most of it, but I will be printing off some of the record keeping pages.

This is the fourth edition of this helpful guide for making highschool transcripts. You will find helpful tips from the following experts included: Professor Carol Reynolds, Judith Munday, and Kathy Kuhl.

The six sections of Transcripts Made Easy are:

Meet the Transcript
Plan with the End in Mind
Keep Simple Records
Grades, Credit and GPA
Create the Transcript
References, Resources and Reproducibles

Transcripts Made Easy Details

Janice Campbell starts off by explaining what a transcript is (a record of what a student has studied.). She walks us through the different sections of a transcript, what to put into them and why they are important. SUPER helpful.

Transcripts Made Easy is designed so that you can jump in at any point and use only the parts you need. If you pick up this ebook from upper elementary school you would start at the very beginning. If you are just finishing highschool though, you might want to just skip to how to actually fill out the transcript.

From just learning how to keep records, what to record, how to track hours and more, there are many options provided. When it comes to transcripts, regardless of where you are in the process you can still come up with a usable transcript, so fret not. Help is here.. make full use of it!

One of the Things I most appreciated was Ms. Campbell’s careful explanations as to why we need to be careful how we put our transcripts together. When explaining why grading on transcripts is important, she helped me understand the mindset of the person who would be looking at that transcript. She then proceeded to walk me through the different ways of grading material, extremely helpful to someone who has never graded her child in his work. 🙂

Section Details

As much as you can just jump into the area that you most have need of, really the whole book is helpful.

Meet the Transcript: Talks about what a transcript is, the different areas, and what needs to be included.
Plan with the End in Mind: How to plan out your highschool education, sample methods, how to make sure you are meeting requirements, developing study skills and more.
Keep Simple Records: Simple is best right? Why by complicated. Keep good records to make the end product easier to manage. I only skimmed the special needs section, just know it’s there.
Grades, Credit and GPA: How to grade, how to manage grades if you are an unschooler, different ways to mark, and a helpful writing evaluation rubric is included.
Create the Transcript: different types of transcripts are given, along with directions on how to create them. Pros and cons are listed for each helping you make an informed decision.
References, Resources and Reproducibles: forms you can use to make your homeschooling journey easier. Forms I intend to use are the class profile, the subject worksheets, and the line transcript.

My Thoughts

Janice Campbell writes with a personal tone. I LOVE how she disseminated her information in an easy-going, practical format. She even reminded me that if I have a question about how to do something with a document, just ask google and there will be an answer. Sometimes I forget that!

She takes what would seem to be an overwhelming task and breaks it down into simple record keeping. Some for the homeschool parent to do, and some that the student can do. I have been pleased to talk through some of her material with my son. His first question was “Is there a sheet I can fill out?” I could happily tell him “yes!” 🙂

The loads of examples provided, to show the variety of transcripts and type of record keeping amazed me. There is more than one way to do it all, it’s just a matter of finding a system that works for the parent.

An excellent resource for anyone looking at how to put a transcript together for their student.

Suggestion:

Something I would LOVE to see is .. oh, how do I put it? With PDF’s you can use the fill and sign feature. So I would love to either see separate PDF’s for each of the forms that can be filled out OR….

A link to a google docs folder with pre-made forms already to use. That was my first thought when I saw the sample diploma along with instructions on how to recreate it. It was like… OH.. if only this were a google doc so I wouldn’t have to recreate it! I could then just fill in my son’s name and the name of our school. THAT would be the best! (YES, I admit to having a lazy side!) 🙂 I don’t know which would be better. Separate PDF forms could get cumbersome, but be really useful. BUT the google docs aspect could simply be an embedded link. I don’t know. I just LOVE the idea of having ready made forms that are fully editable, and available as a separate file.

My Recommendation:

If you are homeschooling highschool, regardless of your methodology, go get this book. It’s chock full of important information to consider in regards to homeschooling. It’s more than just transcripts, it’s grading, legal requirements, options, how to grade and so much more. It is well worth your time invested.

50 members of the Homeschool Review Crew have looked at the offerings of Everyday Education. Click here or on the banner below to go read the reviews.

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janicepcampbell
Twitter: https://twitter.com/janicecampbell
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/janicecampbell/

#hsreviews #highschooltranscripts #homeschoolhighschool #homeschooltranscripts

Review: For The Temple

February 13, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

For The Temple is a story I have been listening to for the past three weeks. Heirloom Audio is the producer of this captivating and dramatic tale, telling the story of the first-century Jewish revolt from the perspective of a fictional young Jewish man, John of Gamala.

The Story

G.A. Henty writes a tale with John of Gamala at the centre of it. It takes place during the years of Roman occupation. Political infighting and lawlessness ruled the day. In the end, the destruction of the Temple.

John ends up in the middle of a losing battle between Rome, greedy political groups and bands of robbers from Palestine. He makes and loses friends along the way.

John, a fictional character, maintains his honour and integrity throughout this conflict, eventually becomes procurator.

What you Get

How do I break this down for you? I could tell you that you get 27 tracks, cut into manageable sound bites running 4-8 minutes. I could say that they tell the story in a logical manner that doesn’t jump around from past to present.

But how do I tell you an Heirloom Audio story differs from, for instance, an audible story? Frankly, I LOVE listening to audio books. Listening to a good story while I fold the laundry is one of my greatest pleasure in the course of a day.

Heirloom Audio is more than one or two people reading a story. It’s a whole cast of people, retelling a story. All the voices and dramatic action make it a compelling listen, you just want to know what is going to happen next. They have a well-rounded cast that presents their parts well.

This audio comes with an excellent study guide with is formed out three basic sections: Listening well, Thinking further, and Defining words. I have to admit, I looked them over, but I didn’t really use them. As I looked through I found some questions I thought were good.

“John says that the first duty of any Jew is to protect the temple. Why should that be?” and “Some people are opposed to violence in books, particularly in books meant for young people. What do you think of this? Is it wrong to portray war as it is? Does it need to be portrayed graphically? Why can’t the author just say “Many men died that day?”

I listened to the audio as an adult, the study guide is designed for parents who want help talking their younger children through the storyline and its lessons. It can also serve as series of written assignments for older students. Each lesson is meant to go with each track.

I have to tell you, this study guide was well put together and worth going through if you have your family listening with you. It will also help you delve into the story of this battle deeper.

My Thoughts

Though I enjoyed listening to the story, I was completely lost. I listened to it twice all the way through, and then bits and pieces just to see if I could figure out the entire story. I know there was storm and boat scene, and I know there was a terrific battle. But try as I might I couldn’t connect all the pieces. I don’t know why. I have listened to Heirloom Audio tracks before and not had a problem, I own a few of them as digital recordings. But with For the Temple something just wasn’t working for me..

I’ve been thinking about who would this audio drama be good for. ANYONE, except perhaps not sensitive littles. Mind.. I’ve never had one of those in my house, so I’m not sure. I didn’t find anything objectionable.

It’s an excellent way to learn history, to see how political infighting from the Jewish leadership harmed the Jews as they fought to save the temple. How Rome got annoyed with bands of rebels making things hard for them. There is so much history in this story.

I strongly urge you to go check out other reviews. 🙂

For the Temple
Heirloom Audio
Digital Download,
audio drama, audio theatre, audio theater, radio drama, radio theatre, radio theater, audio book, G.A. Henty, heirloom audio, Christian audio drama, Christian radio theatre, focus on the family radio theatre, homeschooling, Christian homeschooling, homeschooling curriculum

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeirloomAudio
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeirloomStories
Instagram: @HeirloomAudioOfficial

Top of the Pack Crew Reviews

November 27, 2018 By Annette1 6 Comments

Over the past year I have reviewed 18 products for the Homeschool Review Crew. I don’t review a whole lot for the crew (some have reviewed some 50 products!!!) but I live in Canada and only have one child. 🙂 I’ve also learned to be a bit picky. There are the odd products that I want but don’t really need so am happy enough to let others have first dibs at them. There are usually four or so that I REALLY WANT but can’t get because I don’t live stateside. It’s part of being part of a State side crew though eh? Here are my top of the pack, our blue ribbon winners!

Anyways, I just thought I would talk a bit about my son and I’s favourite reviews and link to others that we had an appreciation for.

My son’s top reviews

Drive through history. It wasn’t stale, Dave is interesting to listen to. It was interesting that he actually travelled to places so you could see real pictures of everything.

Code for teens: they put together well, I like how they formatted it together. I’ve learned a lot and I find it interesting to learn coding.

My Favourites

Drive through History. I liked this program because Dave is funny without being an idiot. He walks you through different places and gives small ancedotes about where you are as well as giving a good history lesson. He connects scripture and art into history seamlessly. The worksheets are just an added bonus. We still watch episodes weekly.

Home School in the Woods and also the game that we received. Why do I like them? It will make our study of world war 2 much easier. Less material to look up, built in hands on projects to keep a lad intrigued. YET not so formatted we can’t expand the learning as desired.

Contenders:

Silverdale Press: this is a high school level course that teaches rhetoric and the art of persuasive speech. We really liked how it was set up but the work load was a bit beyond what my lad was up for. We are using the reading speeches and talking about them as part of our World War Studies.

Nature Glo Math-Art: The way the Glo runs her course clicked with my lad. It was so much fun watching him dig in her math/art/science/history courses. The conversations we had about the things he was learning filled me with delight. If you have an ecletic learner I urge you to check out her e-science courses.

Picta-Dicta. My son is actually annoyed with me that I keep forgetting to do this flashcard Latin learning app. He faithfullly works on it and is making great progress. I can see getting another in the series for him to follow up with.

CursiveLogic. This is a handwriting course that my son took a firm liking to. He has plans to follow up with how to do capital letters once our lives stop being quite so busy. He’s worked at them off and on but wants to gain more confidence in writing them. He very much likes how they do this course.

Books of the Bible. Laid out in a straight-forward manner, each book of the bible is presented in a clear format. Verses and stories for each book of the bible.

I urge you to check out what reviews were favourites for other members of the crew. We each have our own and for our own reasons. Who knows, you might find your next favourite resource waiting for you. 🙂 See the other top posts here.

Review: Teach Sunday School

October 3, 2018 By Annette1 2 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

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.

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