TOS

Review: Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership

January 9, 2020 By Annette1 2 Comments

Are you looking for a complete curriculum, all in one place, where one price meets the needs of your entire family? Let me introduce you to SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It is my pleasure to once again review their Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. In this membership you will find a variety of video-based, printable text-based, and/or interactive courses.

Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership, image for review

What I am Reviewing

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a premier homeschooling site, particularly if you use their Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership. It is host to a complete PreK-12 education. Loaded with resources for child, youth, teen and their parents you will find it a treasure trove of information. Many of these courses are video-based, others are PDF’s, and yet others are interactive lessons. You get parent resources and access to World Book Online (a fascinating resource).

You can find SchoolhouseTeachers.com on facebook, twitter, and pinterest. Normal price is $179 for the Ultimate Membership, or $19.95 monthly. Stayed tuned for the current sale later in this post!

Learn more about SchoolhouseTeachers.com

SchoolhouseTeachers.com has so much potential to explore. There is quite literally something for everyone.

I would like to show you two of the programs we are actively using. My son is a high school student, and this past semester he is using French.

My son loves that he gets to hear the French spoken, and has easy to print off PDF’s. He saves them to his laptop and then prints off what is needful. This class is just PDF’s to download and listen to, standard worksheets to fill out and learn from. I would love to show you some of his work, but my 14 year is becoming quite private in his studies (at least in an online format).

I’ve been investing some time in learning the Inkscape program. This is a video series that walks you through the different aspects of using a graphic design course. I started it back in October but then hit a spell of bad health and am just picking it up again. Learning how to make rectangles and ovals all over again. 🙂

Future Plans

Next semester I will pick up a bible class called foundations for teens. Videos from RightNow Media along with worksheets makes a class that sounds appealing to my lad.

schoolhouseteachers - foundation for teens banner

We will also be doing a daily grammar, working through the world war materials in the World Book Encyclopedia Online and Dr.D’s geometry course over the next semester. Plans are in the works to take Latin down the road as well.

Doing the courses is easy, you can do a couple of things depending on the class. Go straight to the class lessons, or open the lesson plan.

Most of the courses have a lesson plan which is a suggested plan of action for completing the course. Just like with anything homeschooling though, tweak as needed. Most of the time you’ll find an overview, and then a daily activity list. Some courses will have both, others will just have the overview, it all depends on the needs of the course.

My son gains access to these courses easily by using the bookmarks feature. This feature is found through the member dashboard. You can make a new section for every member of your household. My son has a desire to take Latin down the road, will be taking geometry with Dr. D in semester two and is currently studying WW2. We’ll be adding the foundations for teens to his collection.

Focused Learning Centres

One of the interesting parts of SchoolhouseTeachers.com that many people are not aware of is the focused learning centres. These focused centres narrow in on one topic such as math, reading, science, highschool, careers and seasonal just to name a few.

Opening up the highschool centre led me to discover the mirade of help for highschool like making transcripts, exploring careers, and figuring out the scope and sequence of each grade level.

Flexible and Customizable

One of my favourite things about SchoolhouseTeachers.com is how you can make it your own. You can make a curriculum for your children just by letting them pick what they want to learn (with your guidance). Alternatively you can use the scope and sequence to choose.

They present their material in a variety of formats. You can look under subject matter, grade level, or see all the courses in the grade level chart.

Below you can see a comparison of the various math courses (just part of the list).

schoolhouseteachers.com - grade level chart

Whatever method works best for you, use it. The process of choosing curriculum is made as user friendly as possible.

Video Library

If you can think of a topic, the chances are high that it will be covered somewhere in SchoolhouseTeachers.com video library. Art, bible, history, math and so much more. Watch for fun, watch to learn.

Do I Recommend?

I’ve been using The Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership by SchoolhouseTeachers.com for much of my son’s educational needs. We don’t use it for everything as we are Canadian, therefore we need more Canadian content in our learning. 🙂

I could easily have my son do most of his schooling through SchoolhouseTeachers.com even without the wanted Canadian content. Perhaps, I should help create more Canadian focused content on SchoolhouseTeachers.com just to make it even better. What do you think? 🙂

Promotion

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is currently running a promotion. The Fresh Start sale where you can get the year for $99 (only99 is the code you’d use). Or monthly for $12 (need code only12). My affiliate link for this deal.

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: College-Ready Writing Essentials™

September 9, 2019 By Annette1 2 Comments

Are you looking for a program to help your students get ready for college level writing? Look no further! BetterRhetor has come out with a college writing course for your high school students. Help your students succeed with College-Ready Writing Essentials™ (CRWE)! 25 lessons to teach your children, your students what is expected of them in a college level assignment. This review is of the full package of CRWE.

College ready writing essentials BetterRhetor

What I am Reviewing

BetterRhetor.
College-Ready Writing Essentials™.
William Bryant, PhD.
I reviewed the full package.
Reviewed for: Homeschool Review Crew
Age: highschool (junior/seniors), graduated highschool, early college.

Writing, college, writing essentials, college readiness, student success, academic writing

You can learn more about Mr. Bryant at his website.

The Details of College-Ready Writing Essentials™

25 lessons are presented to the student in this online writing program. It specifically targets the skill of writing a college level paper. These 25 lessons are divided into five sections.

Overview (one lesson)
Planning (lessons 2-11)
Drafting (lessons 12-19)
Revising (lessons 20-23)
Finalizing (lessons 23-25)

Two additional resources are provided. A PDF of Key Terms, and bonus guide to the culture of college. Using the students knowledge, skills, behaviors, and awareness to form a piece of writing to inform and persuade their readers.

Since my lad has a love of writing research papers I thought this course would be a good fit for him advancing into highschool. He’s just in grade nine so I wasn’t sure if it would be too advanced for him. He likes it so that’s a good thing eh? 🙂

I love that this online course is so nicely laid out. The lesson order provided on the left side of the screen, the made text on the right. Part of me wished there was a video component, but my son wisely pointed out that having it all written down meant he could reread easily instead of having to hunt down the specific portion he didn’t understand.

When it came to doing the lessons, my ninth-grade son said “It wasn’t hard to read, but it also wasn’t extremely easy.” He took his time doing the lessons, I expected one lesson completed each week. In three weeks he easily got four lessons done before heading off to camp.

Easy to read

Sometimes when working on a on-line program it is difficult to maintain your progress. This academic writing program allows you to save your progress, helping you to easily move forward from lesson to lesson.

CRWE is meant to be completed over the course of five weeks. At 25 lessons that would be one lesson daily. Go at the speed of your student. Some may need longer to complete each lesson. My son commented “Younger students will want to read the lesson one day, and then do the assignment the next day. Older students would have no problem doing it all in one day.“

The assignments for each lesson are found at the close of the lesson. These files open as PDF’s that you can either print off or store on your computer.

PDF’s mean options

The advantage of a PDF file is the option to print or not. Your student can easily do all their work in a notebook, or you can print off each worksheet for your student to write directly on it. They are done in black/white making it easy on the printer. Since it’s a PDF there is no time limit on completing the work other than what you arbitrarily set.

CRWE is a self-paced course. It is meant to be done over five weeks but you can easily stretch that out as needed. It is an online program and you are granted life-time access so you can use it with all family members. Their goal is to help your students be better prepared for college level writing, utilizing all their skills in persuasion and information gathering.

Don’t let your students be part of the 75% of young people not prepared for college. Learn more about this gap and how to address it at The Writing Gap. Help them learn the skills necessary to succeed pursuing their dreams. Let them write, and write well in the subjects of their choosing.

Thoughts/Recommendations

I asked my son what he thought of College-Ready Writing Essentials™. “It has a lot of reading and I couldn’t do it as fast as I wanted to. I liked it though and want to finish doing it“.

I loved the responsiveness of customer service. My son does his work on his own laptop and for whatever reason I couldn’t transfer over to him. I wrote and asked customer service what to do and they happily set my son up with his own account. My lad loved this! His own account, mom can’t mess things up by checking future lessons and messing up bookmarks or whatever. It was excellent in his mind, and for me as a parent, it was just the answer I needed.

One of the benefits of the BetterRhetor program is they offer two levels, the full and the premium. I can totally see the advantage of doing this program twice. Once in grades 9/10 doing the full program then doing the premium package in grade 12. Read the reviews, come to your own conclusions. 🙂

Read Other Reviews

Did you know that 31 other members of the crew reviewed BetterRhetor? Some of us reviewed the full package, others the premium. I know you don’t want to miss reading those reviews. You can check them out over at the Homeschool Review Crew Blog.

You can find BetterRhetor on the following social media accounts.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/collegereadywriting
Twitter: https://twitter.com/collreadywrite
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/collegereadywriting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collegereadywriting

Review: Simply Music

July 15, 2019 By Annette1 4 Comments

Today I am reviewing for you a free to use program for you from Simply Music called the Music & Creativity course. It is their foundation course. Taught by Neil Moore who has a strong desire to help his students learn to play music right the first time.

What I Am Reviewing

Simply Music.
Music & Creativity – Foundation Course.
Neil Moore.
On-line, all ages, internet access required.
Video Based
piano lessons, online piano lessons, learn piano online
Reviewed for Homeschool Review Crew.

This course introduces you to Simply Music’s unique, playing-based approach, and has you playing great-sounding music from your very first lessons.

The Basics of Simply Music

The Music & Creativity Foundation Course (MAC) is a video based program. Through video Mr. Moore introduces all music, terms, styles, drawings etc to help you learn to play piano. He provides PDF’s to supplement the videos.

Three PDF”s round out the videos.

Reference Book – music, chords, pictograms, fingering
Music and the Art of Long term Relationships – outline of his theory behind playing music. 14 chapters. Challenging assumptions about music, encouraging everyone to have a relationship with music.
Practice Pad – keyboard you can print out to practice on

My original intent was to have my lad work through this music program. He is a complete beginner and has a vague interest in learning to play some sort of musical instrument.

I did manage to get him started but then life intervened in the way of a part-time job. Suddenly he found his free time quite truncated. Since he is only 13 years old (oops now 14) I didn’t want him to not be able to enjoy his summer as well, something had to give and that something was music.

Ergo I filled in the gap.

My free-time isn’t what I would like it to be either so I listened to the online piano lessons usually while doing something else. Pausing to check out his visuals, referencing his PDF’s as needed. I know how to play piano (rather organ/keyboard) so wasn’t too concerned about the mechanics.

It was easy for me, since I’m used to how music flows, to move out the music with my fingers. I could use his practice keyboard, my real keyboard, or just tap it out on my table. I have no pictures because taking pictures of yourself playing doesn’t work well when no one else is around. 🙂

The Details of Simply Music

One thing that Mr. Moore frequently referenced was stopping to think about what you wanted to play. Listening to the rhythm of the music and getting a feel for it in your head before you started to play. This would help you minimize any errors, which would save you time in the long run. You wouldn’t have to UNLEARN those errors first. I liked that.

Each lesson consisted of Mr. Moore teaching us how to learn his program. Seeing the music, learning hand movements, learning to listen, and learning how to diagram music.

Then learning how to translation that rhythm (so seeing the pattern that emerges from a sentence/line of music) into hand movements.

This video will help you understand this concept better. 🙂

The set up of the Music & Creativity Course helps you to know exactly where you are in the lesson.

You do need to tell the computer when you have completed each lesson so that you can move on to the next one. Marking it complete does not stop you from being able to redo the lessons, it just acts as a bookmark for when you next access your course.

I found some lag in moving from one lesson to the other. It wasn’t overly long but it was notice-able enough that I paid attention. Mr. Moore takes his time to explain how he wants us to think about music and gives us a variety of genres to provide interest. Blues, classical and contemporary pieces are some of what he plays. “Dreams Come True”, “Eliza”, “Christowel”, and “Black is Blue” are among the titles used.

My Thoughts and Recommendations

My Recommendation is easy. It’s free! Mr. Moore has a love for helping students learn to play music. It’s is easily accessible as long as you have an internet connection. Use it! It is an excellent way to evaluate his course to see if you want to upgrade. The upgrade itself is not expensive making it very doable.

If I could change anything: I would like a written transcript of the videos right with the videos. I would rather read what I need than listen to a video. My son likes the video but would like to have at least the main points witten along with the video. He says that would be helpful to him when listening to know what to pay attention to.

Check out the Reviews for Simply Music

45 members of the crew have reviewed the free program Simply Music. I urge you to click on the image below so you can read them.

Social Media Links:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/simplymusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/simplymusic
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/simplymusicinst/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplymusic/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/simplymusic

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

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