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rebereid

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Everything posted by rebereid

  1. http://www.knowitall.org/instantreplay/content/LanguageIndex.cfm try these for fourth grade but I never watch them so don't know if they are any good
  2. Salsa Spanish is perfect for preK to maybe 1st or 2nd. Much like Sesame Street in feel. Free. Free lesson plans to if you are working with a group. Not overwhelming at all and every word is in Spanish.
  3. Just watch Salsa Spanish. It is free, it builds on itself, and is tons of fun. My guy began talking in Spanish phrases after 5-10 episodes. Littlle Pim was okay.Whistlefritz was very similar to little pim, but maybe a little less annoying.. I hated Muzzy and Hooked on Spanish which was very uninteresting to my little guy. I tried all of those via library copies. My son just isn't a fan of pointless repetition but the stories in salsa have interested him. http://HTTP://WWW.gpb.org/salsa
  4. Nope not interesting or hands on enough for us. I was very disappointed. I am making up our own, but still feel it's hard to find hands activities on for my son.
  5. I have a nook color that I rooted so now it works as an Android tablet. Most of the apps I've downloaded were free. And we find it works really well! I can't speak for any other Android tablets but this is very useful for our schooling. The nook color was not that expensive and if you are computer competent it is not too hard to root the nook.
  6. My mother is an educator so she gets access to this for free. She lets me use her log in to view the videos. Short answer: no. I would never pay $200 a year for the service. Long answer. My son is in Kindergarten so we do more informal science. I search for videos to go along with history and science whenever he has questions or interests. They have all the Magic School Bus videos and those are nice. It is nice to be able to go find something to answer a question: he asked the other day how fish breathe underwater and I was able to find a video about fish respiration geared towards k-2 graders and it was just perfect. I use it maybe twice a month to help solidify a concept. Why not more frequently? Because the search is awful. It is so hard to find something useful. Even if you know what a video is called it is hard to find it. It is nice to be able to sort by K-2, 3-5, and other grade levels, but in general it's a pain to find something useful. The quality is not good. I have not found any video that is in HD. While we have projected it onto a big screen just be aware that is will be bad quality. My son doesn't care. I don't care. But I would be mad if I had paid $200 a year for it. The videos are good that we've watched. But it's hard to find just what I'm looking for, it's bad quality, and they don't have nearly enough. I read that they used to have Sid the Science Kid, Liberty Kids, and other animated educational shows. I would have really liked to have those since my son is young. They don't have those any more. I think they are losing content, which is never a good sign.... Anyway, my son is young so maybe you'd find it more helpful. Do a search for other input. I know others have lots to say about Discovery Education Streaming. What I've seen, however, has been mostly negative. Although some people find it a valuable homeschool investment, I believe the consensus is that it's not worth the high price.
  7. I'm doing Salsa Spanish with my 5 yr old and it is wonderful for spiral review. But it's more pk-2nd grade age range, rather than later elementary. View Salsa Episodes here. View Teacher’s Guides here. Plus, it's free. Probably not what you're looking for, but it builds wonderfully from lesson to lesson so I have to mention it
  8. We aren't doing ancient history this year but I stumbled on this fun "typewriter" that I think is lots of fun: http://www.eyelid.co.uk/hieroglyphic-typewriter.html. If you are doing Ancient Egypt this year, maybe you could write secret messages to each other or something...Enjoy :001_smile:
  9. my son and I are doing aas1 and we rarely use the cards. We just use the tiles (not the AAS brand ones, just some ABC tiles I got elsewhere, plus I made the phonograms out of some of them) and practice dictation. I don't worry about keeping the cards in order of "reviewed" or mastered" or whatever. I just go back and we review words orally every now and then.
  10. I purchased Elemental History because I though it was just what I wanted for my son's K4 year: cheap, superficial, all-in-one. It turns out I'm not a fan of all-in-one, it's-right-there curriculum. I was pretty disappointed in the weekly readings and the copywork assignments. The student work book is exactly the same for every single week: a page to color, a page to copy a sentence on, and a state page. (My son is not a sit and color kind of kid.) I do like the weekly activities ideas and will use some of those. I also will use the general outline as in the Table of Contents, but I'm mostly going to rely on picture books for the learning session and I'm making up my own copywork sentence each week that is shorter. Many of those provided are awkwardly worded. I too am finding the Maestro books fantastic for our purposes. If you're curious in my cobbled-together plan, see here. I'm updating it as I plan it. I have the bones but not the meat for all of it at this point.
  11. I am just starting a basic timeline with my son but we're doing it online. tiki-toki.com. I can't link to the one we've started because I made it private. We so far only have his birthday, his sister's birthday, Jesus's birthday, etc, but I plan on adding dates as we study American history. You can link pictures and/or videos to the dates/events you add. So far it seems to be working well and it's saving paper. Plus, it's fun and easy to browse through media relating to the history.
  12. I grew up with The Safety Kids! I didn't know it was still around! In fact, about six months ago I taught my 4-yr-old son our phone number using the phone number song and he still sings it to himself. I wish I could get this but I already spent my homeschooling money for the next few months:001_huh:. How much is it normally? $30 still seems like a lot to me, but it looks like there are three cds of songs? Does that include the books? (if you know...the website doesn't say what's included exactly...)
  13. I bought this to do with my son too. I also am quite disappointed in the complex sentences in the text. It is so awkwardly written! So I'll use the concepts and the read along selections but probably not read her selections as is.
  14. A little background: My son (age 4) taught himself to read last year and now he reads really well, probably the 3rd or 4th grade level. We've started doing AAS 1 mostly because he's always writing stories or notes or letters (either typing on the computer which he loves to play on or writing them by hand) and asking me how to spell everything. He's definitely interested in learning to spell. We've done about 10 lessons from AAS1 and he hasn't had any problems with the spelling. We do the tiles most days to spell the words. The other day, we reviewed orally -- out of all the word cards (I don't know how many but a lot, probably 60 or so) he only mispelled about two or three when we did it orally, and it took less than 10 minutes for him to do so. But I know AAS suggests writing words from dictation as well as the titles. Whenever we try to do that, we get through maybe one word in ten minutes. Is it worth the practice writing? Because he is so young, his coordination just isn't there for the handwriting. Is it important to also practice handwriting the words, or should we just skip it? I must admit we've been skipping it, but I do know handwriting is important too. Any suggestions for improving handwriting? Or, because he's so young, should I just not worry about it and let him practice writing notes and stories whenever he feels like it? I don't want to kill the love.
  15. :iagree: I see your comment about E&P now that I'm about to post this. Maybe give it a break and come back to it after a while. We didn't discover them until my son was already able to read them and he loved being Elephant while I was Piggie and vice versa. But maybe it's just not for her.:001_huh: Other ideas: the Read with me books. There is one page with a very short sentence for the child to read and the other side is a page for the parent to read. I'd say check out lots of library books and leave them around the house. I let me son stay up late if he is "reading." He'd go through his favorite picture books by himself over and over again, even before he could actually read them by himself. She'll get there soon enough if she's finished Bob Books. Just enjoy the reading journey together! Oh, and my son still finds Dr. Seuss far too long to read by himself.
  16. oops... tried to quote some of you but it didn't work. I'd agree that you'll want to stay at Early Readers for now. My ds is at the same point. Although he is physically ABLE to read The Magic Treehouse and other chapter books, he is far too overwhelmed with the amount of words on each page. Besides the fact that there are not enough pictures (he is only 4, he likes pictures!). Keep reading Henry and Mudge and the other books mentioned by Farrar. It may be a long time before he's ready for chapter books. But of course YOU could read aloud chapter books that are more challenging. Sometimes my ds wants to take a turn and read a page to ME. He can do it, and if I'm acting all surprised he thinks it's a hoot to "surprise" me every now and then by reading some of our read aloud to ME.
  17. Play and Learn Spanish apparently has come out with a second edition! I'm very excited by the table of contents because it looks like it cleared up some of the frustrating things I found from the first edition. I did like the first edition too, though. I remember seeing some posts on here about Play and Learn Spanish by Ana Lomba in the past saying "I can't figure out how to use it to teach Spanish!" So I thought I'd just share my thoughts why I think it's a great system. I just wrote up my thoughts on it on my blog here. In short, it does require the parent to learn vocab words along with the child and then to USE them in daily conversation. The point is learning language by immersion in the language. I have studied Spanish in the past so, granted, this is much easier for me to do. I did not know "kid" words, though, so this really helped me. But in general, I think repetition of phrases kids regularly use makes it a very valuable program. I know it's not for everyone (especially those that are not as familiar with Spanish or interested in learning it along with your child) but for those willing to make it a parent-child playtime, I think it is fantastic!
  18. I'm new around here... what grade range are the videos geared toward? Looks like a great deal for $10 a year!
  19. I second Frog and Toad and Henry and Mudge. There is also a spin off series about Henry's cousin Annie. My son loves them all. He also likes Bones (mysteries by the same author as Henry and Mudge), Minnie and Moo, Young Cam Jansen, and Poppleton. I think Cam Jansen is the hardest to read on that list. The good news is that there are a gazillion books in each of these series so find one she likes and you'll be set for a while!
  20. :iagree:I also got the student kit with the cards but I don't see them as necessary honestly. You could make them yourself if you want but they are handy to have. I found a mini-chalk board with about 100 abc magnets on it for $1 at a garage sale and we use that instead of paying for their letter tiles and magnets. I plan on putting stickers on the magnets with the phonograms that are beyond the basic ABCs. (My ds is only on AAS1 so we'll see how it goes for the future.)
  21. I love classic literature. It's hard to know what level books work for which kid so take these suggestions with a grain of salt. You know what he can take and how much patience he has with reading. *Treasure Island. Pirates, buried treasure, what could be better? *Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol is a short nice place to start. (I also love Oliver Twist but it does have some situations that some kids might not be able to handle until a little older. David Copperfield is also recommended for kids but I haven't read that one yet.) *Jules Verne. Especially for the science appreciating kid, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. I've also enjoyed Around the world in 80 days. (I haven't read Journey to the Center of the Earth yet but I assume it's also good.) *The Phantom Tollbooth. *Tom Sawyer. LOVED it as a kid. (+ Huck Finn, but that's probably better appreciated a little older.) *Jungle Book/Just So Stories. *Little Women. *The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. These are both rather long but I think a strong reader will love the stories (adventure! Mystery!). Maybe not at 9 but in the later tween years, probably.... Also the regularly suggested ones: Swiss Family Robinson, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Secret Garden, Charlotte's Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'd assume a strong reader 9 year old has read those? If not, he should!
  22. I grew up with it, loved it, reread it many many times. I remember it very very well and can't wait to introduce it to my son. I've always had an abiding love for the Greek myths because of it.
  23. I spent a long time (i.e., more than an hour) yesterday making up a "famous places"/find the landmark game for my young boy. He really enjoyed it and wants me to do more for the other countries/continents. Of course it only took him about 10-20 minutes to do so I want to share it with others so it will get used to make it worth all that time it took pulling it together! Pretty much the only thing he didn't like was that I had "Geography Kid" be the main guy and my son was the helper. He wanted it to be all about HIM, lol. Here's a link to where you can download the pages. I hope someone else likes it too :) http://homeschool.rebeccareid.com/famous-places-race-europe-edition/
  24. Glad to hear this as I'm considering for my K4 boy! I want something I didn't have to plan :)
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