|
Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. Every now and again, I come across a curriculum that not only inspires my children but inspires me and reminds me of why I embarked on the journey to homeschool. This week, I’m excited to share our experience using the Wisdom Wonder Project! We checked out their Little Wonders Kindergarten Program, but they offer an array of different levels from junior kindergarten to second grade. For our first month of the Kindergarten Program, we received a downloadable Literature Unit, a Block Play unit, along with Little Masters Art Program. For ease of use, I printed and bound them.  The Literature Unit consisted of a weekly book to read accompanied by activities to bring the story, and learning to life. In September, we read “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” which we were quite familiar with, “King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub,” a new-to-us story that we were able to find on YouTube, “A Sick Day for Amos McGee” and “How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.” The stories were so fun, and each had a variety of activities. The Literature Unit seems to be the foundation of the kindergarten program, with one book per week and eight accompanying activities. We strove to do three to four of the activities with each story. For “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” we took a nature walk to a high place, just like Harold climbs up a tree to get a better view, and we made fun purple collages inspired by the story, painted with water colors, and made purple snacks!  Though I intended to use this program with my 4 year old, all of my children enjoyed participating in the crafts and activities- even my 3rd grader! Part of the September Literary Unit also involved memorizing a lovely stanza of the poem September by Helen Hunt Jackson. My kids enjoyed reciting it after me, and I was pleased to have committed it to memory as well! Each week has additional recommended books to read, a feature that I love as it’s like having a homeschool mom friend to point out the best titles in the children’s section of the library!
This program reminded me of my first years of education in a Montessori classroom. With the emphasis on art, creativity, rich literature, and developing formative math skills, the Wisdom Wonder Project is a beautiful curriculum to inspire a love of learning in small children. Simply put: I adore this program! Wisdom Wonder Project is a great fit for homeschool families looking for a classical, literature rich foundation for their emerging scholars! Other members of the Homeschool Review Crew checked out the Wisdom Wonder Project, and you can see their reviews by clicking the image below! 
0 Comments
My emotions have been running on high and I've been fueled by adrenaline and espresso. Moving is brutal. Our landlord required us to paint the house before we left, and with 20 foot ceilings and 4 kids running around, this has been insane.
Plus, there's no break from work, no break from school, and never a break from being a mom. I'm thankful that an end is in sight, and soon, I'll emerge on the other side of the chaos. Until then, you can follow our journey south on Instagram! I hope your week is going better than ours! xo This week, I'm pleased to be hosting a guest post from a talented student at Fiveable. Fiveable offers free AP resources for students looking to deepen their learning. The following was written by one of their students about AP Literature point of view.
AP Lit: Point of View by Dylan Black In literature, point of view is an incredibly useful device that authors can use to portray their stories in different ways. In AP Lit, you must know how to identify which point of view a passage is in and what this tells about the story. Let's go into some points of view. 💮 First-Person Point of ViewThe story is told from a character within the narrative. ✨ Keywords: I, me, our, we, my ⚫️ Effect: First-person P.O.V. is effective in creating a speaker's persona. By revealing their inner thoughts and feelings, complex characterization is achieved. In the first-person point of view, the main character is directly addressing the reader and acting as the narrator for the story. For example, from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece – all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round – more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out." As you can see from this passage, Huckleberry Finn is using a conversational tone and a very specific dialect which is emphasized especially by Huck Finn's use of words like "I", "we", and "me". 💮 💮 Second-Person Point of View - The reader is put in the story. ✨ Keywords: You, your, yours ⚫️ Effect: Second person P.O.V. is used when the author is trying to call attention to something. By directly addressing the reader and putting them in the story, they convey meaning unambiguously. The second-person point of view is certainly the rarest and most likely you have not seen it very much in literature. However, one place you most definitely have seen it is in "Choose Your Own Adventure Books". In these books, the author will state things like, "You run down the football field, the wind in your face, and catch the ball cleanly between your hands". This point of view is especially useful in these scenarios because it pulls the reader in. Rather than it being a character facing these issues, you the reader are the character! This creates more emotional attachment from the reader and creates a more compelling novel sometimes. 💮 💮 💮 Third person point of view - The story is told from the perspective of an outsider. ✨ Keywords: They, them, it, he, she You've likely read many stories whose use of a third person perspective gave you a broader idea of plot and character. Some of these may even be featured on your May exam! In light of this, it is important to note that third person point of view can be recognized from the use of the "they/them", "he/him", "she/her" or "it" pronouns. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 🌷 Objective = The speaker reports as a neutral observer. The narrative is presented without interpretation or bias from any of the characters. 🌼 Limited = The speaker knows only one character's thoughts and feelings. This one-sided perspective is usually, but not always, reserved for the protagonist. 🌹 Omniscient = The speaker knows the thoughts and feelings of all characters. The outside nature of the narrator typically leads to greater reliability ⚫️ Effect: Third person P.O.V. is common, though with the variance between its three different forms. Stories written from this perspective can come off as distant, but they allow for a complex plotline as more information is available to the reader. Congratulations! You now have a basic understanding of the three main points of view. However, in order to keep honing your skills, read as many texts as you can and be sure to analyze along with identifying elements of the text. Good luck! This article was written by a talented student for Fiveable. Visit Fiveable's Website where you will find an extensive library of study guides, trivia, and livestreams. If you would like to take a class to prepare for an AP test, sign up for Fiveable's Courses. Our move is in full swing, and I all I can say is it's brutal. Paint, boxes, spackle, it's everywhere... as is my brain! For this weeks post, I'll send you to a past article I wrote about 5 Tips for Moving, advice from a less stressful time. But, I know that is a few short days [hopefully] we'll be on the flip side of moving, in a new house, with a big backyard and our biggest challenge will be finding the hairbrush again! Catch ya on the flip side of the move!  Every now and again, I come across a curriculum that not only inspires my children but reminds me why I chose this journey. This time around, it's the Wisdom Wonder Project. We're using their kindergarten level and it;s rich literature base and activities brought me right back to my own kindergarten Montessori classroom, something I've long to implement in our home school. Today, we read Harold and the Purple Crayon, then made a purple collage and talked a bit about the letter H. My 4 and 6 year old daughters so enjoyed the lesson, as did I. Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. Reading Eggs has been a staple in our house since we began homeschooling in 2017. My children have loved their time exploring Reading Eggs lessons, adored Mathseeds , and I've been able to watch them grow in leaps and bounds as they play. We received a one year subscription from Blake eLearning Inc and my three oldest students were thrilled to dive back into Reading Eggs! On day one of the review period, my son remarked, "This is the best learning day ever!"  Reading Eggs offers material for children 2-13. My 8, 6, and 4-year-old were able to explore different areas of Reading Eggs and learn at their individual levels. My students would work through a lesson 3-4 days per week. My four-year-old used readings Reading Eggs Junior, which offers simple letter lessons as well as tons of educational games and videos. There's not an activity that she doesn't like, and every morning after breakfast, she asks to play Reading Eggs! Reading Eggs Junior’s material is suitable for pre-k students like her, but students aren’t limited to what they can access, so she’d also venture into the Reading Eggs and Mathseeds Lessons, which begin at a kindergarten level. One activity I encouraged her to practice involved sorting blocks to spell three letter words. It was a perfect exercise for her as she understands what letters say and is beginning to form words.  My 6 year old used Reading Eggs and Math Seeds starting at lesson 50 for first grade. The lessons seemed fairly simple for her, but I wanted to start her there for some fun extra practice. Online learning hasn't been a particular strong suit. Whenever she gets something wrong she informs me that the computer isn't working correctly- so that's how my day is going... nonetheless, she enjoyed the diverse learning games each lesson presented. My 8-year-old was able to use Reading Express after having completed the entire Reading Eggs and Math Seeds program in the past three years. Mathseeds just "clicked" for him, and spurred him on a lifelong love of numbers. He was able to cruise through at his own pace and complete years of math at a quicker speed. Here's his proud "graduation" picture!  Reading Eggspress, designed for students 7-13 introduces children to real book, with comprehension questions and spelling practice. Older students are also able to enjoy the library of online books of every topic imaginable! Whenever students complete a map at any level, they take a quiz and earn a certificate, which is proudly displayed on the laptop and then we print it and stick it on the fridge! Reading Eggs also sends parents email reports that go over what their child has learned and accomplished in the last map. Since our last review of the Reading Eggs Workbook last fall, the program has expanded with new areas to explore! One change we noticed was that each lesson closes with a quiz, this is helpful to keep students from guessing their way though the maps, rather than learning. Mental Math is another new area for students to practice new math equations. There's an option to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Fast Phonics has also been added to help students master reading words!  Ultimately, our family gets so much out of our Reading Eggs subscription. From practicing words in Fast Phonics to learning entirely new math concepts in Mathseeds, and of course the step by step instruction reinforce with learning games to teach children to read with Reading Eggs! I highly recommend this program to homeschool families who are looking for proven, engaging, online learning for their students. To check of the rest of the Homeschool Review Crew's thoughts on Reading Eggs, click the graphic below! Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.  ThemeVille Math offers a complete, comprehensive math curriculum for grades 1-5. We received level 4 for my 8-year-old, which consists of a workbook and an answer book, and he was excited to dive in! If you’re unsure of the level to start with, their website offers a placement test so you can see which program would be the best fit. Level 4 consists of 126 lessons. Each lesson is composed of pre-lessons that act as a warmup and then the lesson that expands upon the topics covered. We’d work through 4-6 pages of material, which offered different equation types to keep the work from becoming redundant. I was pleased to see that many questions used images like tens and hundreds blocks to aid visual learners. This curriculum aligns with common core standards and level 4 covers fractions, adding and subtracting fractions, factors, prime numbers, rounding of numbers, long division, decimals, multiplication, and division by 10 or 100, time calculation, word problems, area, and perimeter.  Overall, I was impressed with the content and quality of the curriculum. The material provides ample practice, review, and ventures into new content. The ThemeVille website offers some videos that go over content for groups of lessons and offer some explanations for students. But being solely a workbook for the student, I found myself referring to the answer book to try to explain how and why equations were performed a certain way which felt a bit clumsy on my part. I found it helpful to review the lessons myself before my son started, so I could get a sense of what would be new for him and what I’d need to explain.  Ultimately, ThemeVille math offers a thorough, common core aligned math curriculum, with great aids for visual learners. The topics were equations were laid out in a very clear format, the lessons were diverse in material so that if a child struggled on rounding to the nearest hundreds, they’d only do 3-4 questions before moving on to another type of question they might be able to tackle with ease. I was impressed with ThemeVille Math, and many more members of the Homeschool Review Crew checked out the program to offer their thoughts. Click below to check them out! This year, man. Covid, racism, natural disasters, political upheaval- and I’m topping off the chaos with surgery on the 9th followed by moving on the 18th, while I go to school full time and homeschool my own crew? There are very few words to describe life right now, and when I’m dry on words, I like to take a look back at some of the historic figures I admire to draw on their strength. This week, it has been a rough riding, war fighting, amazon exploring, President Theodore Roosevelt. I was reading some of his notable quotes, and I decided to lay them out as a dose of monthly inspiration for our homeschool year- hopefully, I’ll commit them to memory as we go!  Theodore Roosevelt 1904 September, resuming schooling always feels a bit like falling down the stairs. You start out excited at the top, and before you know it, you're bruised at the bottom. But, Teddy says, “It’s hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” October, rhythm is building and progress is happening, but not without error. Teddy says: “The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.” November, the season to celebrate thankfulness, family, and heritage. Teddy reminds us, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” December, game over? Candy, Christmas, Fun. Who really get's much done in December? Teddy's advice: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” January feels like jetlag when the Christmas season lays behind you, but you have to claw your way back into reality. Teddy's word: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” February, back to the rhythm, the depth, and the love of educating. Teddy reminds us, “To educate a person in the mind but no in morals is to educate a menace to society.” March, a little life advice from Mr. Roosevelt, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”  Painting published by Encyclopædia Britannica April: “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
May: “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” June: “When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.” July: “I am an American: free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.” August: “Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children.” Which one's your favorite?? Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.  Figuring out where to begin homeschooling, what topics to cover, and how much to do each day can be a challenge. Homeschool Easy provides parents with a complete year’s curriculum for a very reasonable price, making homeschooling- well, easy! As a member of the Homeschool Review Crew, I received the 1st Grade Entire School Year Curriculum in a downloadable format and was asked to provide an informed review as we weren’t able to use this daily during the time period. Homeschool Easy arrived in downloadable folders that were conveniently labeled “1st Grade Reading, 1st Grade Grammar, 1st Grade History, 1st Grade Math, 1st Grade Science, 1st Grade Writing,” along with an overview and how to use guide. This made accessing what I needed simple and straightforward. It’s recommended that you print the worksheets you need week by week to keep things, though some topics are presented in monthly themes and it might be beneficial to download and print the month’s pages to stay organized.  OverviewFor reading, selected book titles are available online, and then students use the pertaining worksheets to answer the questions after they read the online book. It’s recommended that weekly vocabulary words are studied in flashcard form until they become fluent and easy to read. Science consists of monthly themes including “plants, bugs, mammals, birds, and water animals.” Some themes carry into more than one month, but each unit consists of online teaching videos and some accompanying questions and worksheets. History is also broken down into monthly themes in a similar format to the science program. For 1st grade, the themes include patriotism, presidents, followed by six months of various geography studies. The geography units focus on American States and provide links to videos to watch and accompanying projects and worksheets.  Grammar lessons are about 5 pages each and there is one lesson per week. For 1st grade, grammar includes types of sentences, nouns, verbs, tenses, contractions, irregulars, adjectives, synonyms, and antonyms. I was really impressed with the amount of topics covered, for grade one, this is would be effective in building a solid foundation! Math is broken down into weekly assignments. The first week includes 29 pages of worksheets which cover adding and use picture blocks to assist visual learners. Writing is covered twice a week with creative writing prompts, and fun assignments. Writing is also reinforced throughout the other subjects and worksheets used daily. I felt like for 1st grade, there was more than sufficient writing practice, and would likely have students answer some questions verbally while they’re starting grade one. I really appreciated the simplicity of this program. Monthly science themes are a terrific idea to streamline learning, allow for endless learning rabbit trails, while maintaining coherent structure. I felt like this program would be a great fit for families beginning their homeschool journey. I remember starting our homeschooling and spending ample time trying to figure out what to cover for each grade. Having it neatly organized is helpful and provides a great starting place. Homeschool Easy is also priced very well, making it a reasonable option for homeschool families. Overall, I felt like Homeschool Easy would be a great fit for homeschool families looking to streamline their learning and avoid curriculum overload! Other members of the crew reviewed different levels, so be sure to check out their thoughts by clicking the image below! |
  
Alexandrais an author, blogger, and homeschooling mom of four, giving her excellent credentials to run her own circus one day! 
Archives
August 2020
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed