Rosetta Stone Level 1 giveaway from Trivium Pursuit

Now is the perfect time to give your child the gift of possibilities for the holidays with Rosetta Stone Homeschool — and you can WIN a Level 1 Homeschool program, language of your choice (valued at $249)!

Right now Rosetta Stone is having a special Holiday promotion on our Homeschool Edition program and we’d like you to help spread the word! Everyone can save up to $150 on Rosetta Stone Homeschool by visiting our website at http://www.RosettaStone.com/hsw1110.

By helping us spread the word you can win a Rosetta Stone Homeschool Edition Level 1 program, language of your choice, valued at $249.

This is a computer based curriculum and Rosetta Stone will also include a headset with microphone, and a supplementary “Audio Companion” CD so you can practice lessons in the car, on the go, or where-ever!

Students participate in life-like conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program. Rosetta Stone incorporates listening, reading, grammar, vocabulary and writing along with speaking and pronunciation lessons. For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program to allow parents to easily enroll up to ten students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, grade completed work (the program grades the work automatically as the students progress), and you can view and print reports for transcripts. Homeschooling a lot of kids at your house? This program is designed to enroll and track up to ten students (five users on two computers) and will work for nearly all ages — from beginning readers up to college students.

To win this program, copy these paragraphs and post them in (or as) your next blog post, and/OR post about this contest on your facebook page. Then go to the original page at http://www.triviumpursuit.com/blog/2010/12/28/rosetta-stone-giveaway/
and leave a comment saying that you’ve posted about, or have linked to, the contest. Please make sure the link works to get back to the original contest page when you post, and good luck!

TOS Review: Easy Classical Early Modern History Schedule

As part of the TOS Crew, I was given a free copy of Easy Classical Early Modern History Schedule to review. The schedule is based on The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and it is intended for use between K-6th. Follow these links to see more Sample History Schedule Pages and Sample Lesson Pages.

This schedule contains activities for each day of the school week for 36 weeks. Included is a list of resources a parent may purchase or check out from their local library. The topics included in the schedule are Writing, Geography, Project, Read Aloud and a historic focus (a different one each week) such as “The Massachusetts Bay Colony” in week 10 or “Lewis and Clark” in week 34.

At the bottom of the schedule are Comprehension Questions, complete with answers in blue ink and a shopping list for the following week! How convenient! Behind each week’s schedule is a Comprehension Quiz that may be given as an oral or written quiz. This is a great way to see if the students a) are listening and b) understand what they are listening to.

Overall I am impressed by this schedule and would certainly use it within my family. The convenience of the questions being on the same page as the week’s schedule is of great value to someone like myself, trying to make the most of our home school hours.

Easy Classical also carries science schedules, which I will be looking at, writing guides and copy books. Schedules that are coming soon are Old Testament and Ancient Egypt, New Testament, Greece and Rome and Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. Currently the Early Modern History Schedule is available in two formats. The Digital Download is $29.95 and the Notebook is $35.95.

Take a look around the website and you’re likely to find something that will help in your classical home educating family!

I was given a free copy of this product in exchange for my honest review.

TOS Review: “Good Morning, God” by Davis Carman

“Good Morning, God” by Davis Carman is a simple, sweet book with touching illustrations by Alice Ratterree. The book is designed for ages one to eight years, and is just right for our family!

The premise of the book, quoted in its early pages, is Deuteronomy 6:6-7 “These commands that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

The book begins on Sunday when Mom and Dad instruct the child in the story how to sit and stand at church and how to worship God. At bedtime, the child prays to God and the days closes with “Good night, Sunday. Good night, God.” This pattern continues through the week until the next Sunday, each day focusing on various activities for the child and training by the parents. Reading through the book a number of times most young children will pick up the days of the week as well as the times of day -morning and bedtime.

Following the story are pages with a list of questions and scriptures for each day of the week related to the day in the story. These will be useful in a family conversation about the book and to see how much a child understands.

My four and five-year old children were especially captivated and asked to read the book several times. The three-year old enjoyed seeing the pictures of children in activities very familiar to him – playing with his older brother, jumping on the bed, riding his bike.

A simple straight-forward and lovely book with examples of parents training their children in the Christian faith from the earliest age, I highly recommend this book. It could become a fast favorite gift for family’s with young children!

“Good Morning, God” is published by Apologia Press and can be purchased for $14.00. A perfect gift for a preschooler or early elementary age child, there is also a coloring book available. If I were to give my reviews stars, this resource would get the full five!

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I received no compensation.

TOS Review: Nanuq, My Animal Family

This month I’m pleased to review the book Nanuq: A Polar Bear’s Story which is part of the My Animal Family collection.  Other books available in this series tell the story about a baby lion (Leo), a baby chimpanzee (Korow) and a baby elephant (Ella).  Included with each hardback book is a live-action DVD with wildlife footage.  It has been edited for younger viewers and gives children a look at how animals survive in the wild.  You also receive the official My Animal Family (MAF) Kids Club membership card.  The card has a password that will allow you and your family to use the My Animal Family website which contains related games and activities.

 

My children liked looking at the pictures and hearing the story of the baby polar bear, Nanuq.  Nanuq and his brother, Suka, learn to hunt and generally have fun like only a polar bear can.  The story’s simplicity makes it geared towards younger children as factual information was not included, to my seven-year-old’s surprise.  These days he reads to gather information, and this is where the DVD came in handy!  Fun and informative, the DVD makes this book a terrific gift idea for any child between 3 and 9 years old.

 

Nanuq is a cute book with colorful artwork and a bonus DVD.  The book alone would make a nice gift for a young child but the DVD footage will capture even the interest of an older child.  This book sells for 12.99.  It and other titles may be purchased at My Animal Family.

 

I was given this book for review purposes only.  I received no other compensation.

TOS Review: Talking Fingers, Inc

Product

I really appreciate the recent opportunity our family was given to try out and review this typing program as part of the TOS Homeschool Crew.  Talking Fingers, Inc is an online program that sells for $35 for a 5 year subscription per student.  The character named Vexor or the Blobfather, as my son called him, is the antagonist intended to motivate the student.  He has stolen the letters from their “homes” or keys and the child must correctly type a letter repeatedly to restore the letter to its home.

Check out a demo of the program at Talking Fingers to see if it’s a good fit for your family.

Our Experience

Overall, my 7-year old son and 5-year old daughter enjoyed using this typing program.  My son is a willing reader and enjoyed getting to type his own stories later into the program.  My daughter is a beginning reader so the reading in this program is a great review for her.  A highlight of the program for both children is the certificate they earned each time they learned to type four letters.  We proudly hung them on the refrigerator door.  As of today, my son is able to use his fingers to type the correct keys (he has learned so far) whereas, my daughter is now more aware of the keys but has not yet moved beyond “hunt and peck”.

Nearly every day, my son and daughter beg to use Talking Fingers.  It can be a challenge to determine if their interest is due to the novelty of “playing” on the computer or a reaction to the program.  A few days into using this program, I looked over to see my son’s face in a frown and his lower lip poised to cry.  Then I heard the nasty voice of Vexor comment, “You’ll never be able to do this” or some similar remark.  I quickly countered what the character said and told him I knew he could do it and he had already been doing so well.  It’s really a shame that the program doesn’t have a nicer character to motivate the student.  I am certain this story line would be just as effective if the antagonist wasn’t as negative when speaking directly to the child.  I was so saddened to see my son’s expression that I would not choose to use this program in our family.

In summary, I am pleased that my son has been learning to keyboard, but I will have to continue looking to find the right program for our family.  

 

TOS Review: Schleich figures

One summer afternoon, I received a package.  On this day, every child in our home was in need of a little something to encourage their cooperation and I was missing that component.  This package from Schleich had arrived right on time.

Schleich is a company I was somewhat familiar with prior to this review.  Every time we visit a certain craft store, my children spot one or more small animal figures they would like to have.  So you can see why receiving a box full of these beautifully crafted animal figures was a thrill for all of us.  As I handed out one animal at a time, the kids immediately began doing what kids do best.  They played.  For a long time their animals stampeded, fought each other and talked to each other.  Eventually we looked through the catalog included in the box to find the name of each animal we had received.  The animals are each very detailed and, except for size, are very life-like.

These animal figures are sure to please and would make a great Christmas present or birthday gift.  Check out their selection.  Schleich has a wide assortment of figures to choose from – along with wild life, there are farm animals, dinosaurs, domestic animals, knights, American indians and more.

Prices vary as Schleich figures can be found at a wide range of retail locations.  Amazon, FAO Schwarz, Toys R Us carry these darling figures.

Disclaimer:  I received these products for review purposes.

TOS Review: Salem Ridge Press

Two of my loves meet often in dusty pages.  They are not all that unique to me – History and Books – but both are to whom I would spend all my time with if I had no other responsibilities or relationships in life.  In my youth, my favorite series of books were historical fiction.  I remember fondly the books I spent hours with.  Sometimes I felt I truly had experienced history, if that were possible, through reading those books.

Salem Ridge Press is a company that specializes in republishing books from the 1800 and 1900’s.  The books are edited in an effort to keep them “wholesome ‘living books’ for the whole family”.  On their website, one can search their wide selection by name of author, age range, title or time period and location.  The books run between $ 10.95 and $ 22.95 in soft and hard cover editions.

The package I eagerly opened was a book from Salem Ridge Press: “Soldier Fritz and The Enemies He Fought” by Emma Leslie.  By the title alone, it interested my seven-year-old son.  Given the time period in which the book was written, 1871, the author’s style took some getting used to, but that’s barely worth mentioning.  I was very pleased that Salem Ridge included definitions for uncommon words at the bottom of the page.  For instance, the clothing item called a “jerkin” is not common place today and without the included definition, I would not have known it is a short, close-fitting, sleeveless jacket.

The story, overall, taught very clear lessons in fighting the enemies of pride and anger,  as well as living selflessly.  The book is set in Germany during the Reformation.  It seriously explores the cost of reading the Bible to learn God’s ways, turning from the tradition of the powerful, authoritarian church.  This book is geared for 8 year olds and older.  My seven-year-old seemed to understand most of it as the main themes were repeated several times throughout the book.

I am pleased to learn about this company that publishes a great product.  They certainly meet a need for quality period literature for children and families.  I hope to continue adding books from Salem Ridge Press to our library.

Disclaimer:  I was given a copy of this book and two e-books in exchange for my review.  Further reviews are forthcoming.

TOS Review: Pyramath

I am always pleased to see fun methods of teaching and reinforcing mathematic concepts. In fact, I chose our current math curriculum because of the manipulatives and many game-based teaching methods it relies on. So I was eager to receive, for review purposes, a deck of the game Pyramath created by I See Cards. A deck sells for 6.95 and can be purchased www.iseecards.com

The Product
The Pyramath deck consists of 56 playing cards and an instruction card. It is meant for Kindergarten on up and is intended to be a one or two player game. Each playing card is brightly colored and has a number in the center facing both directions and the number written out along the edges in English, Spanish, French, Roman Numeral, Chinese and Arabic along with their translations.

On the box, Pyramath claims that playing this game kids learn: “Math Skills, Multiple Languages, Hand Eye Coordination”.  Playing Pyramath certainly is more fun than worksheets or flash cards and the number written in multiple languages is a nice touch that may expose a child to different languages. After giving it a lot of thought and seeing and playing the game, I’m still not sure how this game will teach a child hand-eye coordination.

How to Play
This game is similar to solitaire in that each player is building off the original five (or seven) cards that are laid out. From the instructions, “The objective of the game is to complete a pyramid using math operations multiplication, addition, subtraction and division.” A player picks up a card from the deck and plays it by laying it between and below two side-by-side cards. The card may only be played between two cards whose sum, product, dividend OR difference is equal to the number of the card in play.  Important to know is that the cards are all single digit numbers. Therefore if there is a 7 and 6 laying side by side, I’m allowed to play a “3” because there is no “13” card in the deck. I will admit that I was confused the first few times I read through the instructions. It’s not intuitive to me to consider leaving off the very important tens column in a math game.

My Thoughts
While it is a fun game for older children who are confident in their mathematic facts, I believe this game could potentially confuse certain children. When the answer is a two digit number, a child is asked to only think of the ones column because none of the Pyramath cards have two digits. (If an answer is “11”, the child would play the “1” card, if the answer is “14”, play the “4” card, etc) I would expect an older child could play just fine only considering the ones column; however, in the early elementary years, I believe learning ones, tens, hundreds and thousands columns is still too fresh in a child’s mind to risk confusing his current understanding of place value.

Pyramath is a unique math game and I could recommend it to students who are further along and confident in their understanding of place value in mathematics.

Disclaimer: I received this product in exchange for my review and I received no other compensation.

TOS Review: Time 4 Learning

A curriculum I was given to review this past month is an online interactive program called Time 4 Learning.  Time 4 Learning is an online interactive multimedia curriculum for PreK to 8th grade.  It covers Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies and lessons are correlated to state standards and reports of your student’s progress are available for record-keeping purposes.  Related online curriculum are Time 4 Writing and Spelling City.

Something changed in our house about a month ago…“Can I do school on the computer?” became the new “Can I have another cookie?”  I first logged on to the program and each child, from the 2-year-old up to my 7-year-old was instantly engaged by the animated characters, music and activities within the program.  This educational program is a virtual Pied Piper!

After logging in with a user name and password, subject links appear and the child then selects “yes” or “no” to continue in the subject.  Prior to using this program, none of my children had spent time on my computer but they caught on quickly to the games and activities which require “touch and drag” and tapping to select.  I’m so proud of them!  Silly, I know.

Since I was given the Preschool level to review, I’ll talk about my 4 and 5 year olds who spent the most time using the program.  My non-reading four-year-old gained the most from the Preschool level activities, whereas, the same activities were all review for my reading five-year-old.  I would select one grade up for her if I were to purchase a membership for her to use.

The Preschool level includes such subjects: the alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors, feelings and weather.  Each subject consists of four or five activities such as story time (with song), matching and memory games and coloring.  At the completion of the activities within the subject, the child is asked to select whether they thought it was “not very fun”, “sort of fun” or “very fun”.  My children selected “very fun” 100 percent of the time!

I loved not having to download any files to my computer to utilize this program.  The ease of use is unrivaled.  I also enjoyed being able to assign school to a child and then for that child to be independent for a while as he or she worked through whichever subjects interested them.  The reinforcement of what we have been learning was valuable and it was fun to watch their faces light up with every animated badge they earned or “good job!” from an animated character.  Having four young children at home, Time 4 Learning is a fabulous tool to keep certain children busy while I work one on one with another child.

At $19.95 a month for the first child and $14.95 a month per additional student, the cost is a little much for me to justify for our family.  That said, under different circumstances, I would purchase a couple of Time 4 Learning memberships to use as a computer time reward, as a supplement or as a back-up plan for days when mommy isn’t feeling well enough to conduct the usual lessons.

Overall, I recommend this program for home school and non home school children.  Also, I can see this program being especially beneficial for children who would rather play games than learn.  *wink*

Check out the interactive lesson demos to see why Time 4 Learning may be a good fit for your child(ren)!

This product was given to me in exchange for review.  I did not receive any other form of compensation.

TOS Review: Peterson Directed Handwriting

Recently I was given a handwriting program to try out in our home school. There are many useful products at Peterson Directed Handwriting but I am focusing this review on the Reproducible Lessons Grade 2 E-Workbook which is the 80 page cursive program that sells for 19.95.  Peterson Directed Handwriting is the most unique handwriting program I’ve experienced.  It teaches techniques that encourage legible and fluent handwriting in a non-tortuous way. Practically unheard of!  Until recently, I have given minimal direction to my seven-year-old son regarding his writing.  He picked it up well enough by tracing and a little coaching from myself while he was in Kindergarten.  Being that I had been given only minimal direction to my son’s writing, I was a tad intimidated by this very “directed” handwriting program, but after using it a few times, it was easy to use and more fun than simple tracing.

What’s behind this program is the idea of creating muscle memory which helps a child to write more fluently and legibly.  Peterson Directed Handwriting teaches the following steps be used:

1.  First the teacher illustrates for the child how to form a letter and speak as it is drawn. Each stroke of the letter has a word or words to describe it, called Action Words, and spoken rhythmically.
2.  Next the child writes the letter in the air and says the Action Words for each stroke along with the teacher.

3.  Then, the child finger traces the letters on their paper, again speaking the appropriate Action Words for each stroke of the letter.

4.  Finally, the child may use their pencil to write each stroke or letter and speak the Action Words while writing.

From the E-book Peterson Directed Handwriting says, “The trick is to PRACTICE the right kind of movement.” So, the child need not focus on practicing the letters but first focus on the movements that make up the letters. Smooth and controlled movement should be the goal.

The Difference is Rhythm!
In the Peterson Directed Handwriting program, there are four basic strokes which make up every letter in the cursive alphabet: Sharp Top, Loop Top, Round Top and Roll Top.  Saying the Action Words while making each stroke in rhythmic movement is the right way to practice each stroke.  If done properly, the child will be able to say the Action Words and write the letter accurately with their eyes closed.  That’s not to say the program wants children to write with their eyes close, but that this ability demonstrates the child has accomplished muscle memory by way of the Action Words and rhythmic writing.

Customer Service I was very pleased by the live online training with Rand Nelson of Peterson Directed Handwriting.  He provided a very clear description of the program and showed how to implement each technique.  Something that I’ve been thinking about since that meeting is the idea of gross motor skills and their relation to handwriting.  Mr. Nelson described gross motor skills like “a super highway with traffic going all different directions”.  Gross motor skills will translate well into fine motor skills.  However, fine motor skills are like a one-way street and do not influence a child’s gross motor skills.  Therefore, it’s of great value for a child to spend enough time writing their letters in large-scale before writing in adult-like small-scale.

Another aspect of the online training with Rand Nelson was a discussion about writing position.  The writer should be able to see their goal as well as the words they have already written. For my left-handed son, I turned his paper even further clock-wise so he can see what he has written. He isn’t as likely hook his wrist when the paper is turned far enough in that direction. Can you tell how excited I am?  My right hand dominated self is thrilled to know how to help my left-handed son and his younger brothers (also left-handed) when it’s their turn!

On cursive writing, Rand Nelson shared in the online training that print writing wasn’t used in the U.S. until the 1930’s and that, historically, students learned cursive writing with chalk (gross motor skills) and didn’t use a quill or pen until 4th or 5th grade.

Personally, I decided to use cursive in Kindergarten for my son because it’s a more fluid way of writing which made sense as he was learning to read around that time, blending sounds together to form a word. So he also blended the cursive strokes together to write his name. I also recalled back when I was in 3rd grade how other children hated writing cursive and did not want my son to be so put off by it.  Finally, I didn’t want him to start over again learning to write the alphabet when he reached “that age”.  He does know how to print – how could he not? – he reads print all the time!

If you’re not certain which handwriting program to try or if you would like to feel more confident in instructing your child in handwriting, check out Peterson Directed Handwriting.  Browse their website and you will find many resources that will help you decide if this is the right program for you.  For an Individual License (reproducible pages) of the E-Workbook, the price is 19.95. You can download and reproduce it to use with each of your children.  The program offers your choice of the Basic Kit or the Complete Kit.