Reviews written by hcr

After 3 years of Rosetta Stone Mandarin I finally gave up. We had very little progress and my kids weren't coming close to learning how to read or write Mandarin with Rosetta Stone. I decided on Better Chinese and it has been great. They are learning and when they watch Mandarin DVDs now they are able to pick out characters they know. I am using supplements to cover learning pinyin and how to perfect their tones.

It didn't work for us, but it is a great program. My son needed more explicit instruction for writing and grammar. He had a love of language and literature, but grew to hate this program. He was so happy to move to a workbook-based program with diagramming instead. The vocabulary for the Grammar Island level was pretty easy while the grammar was too difficult. Grammar Island and Sentence Island presented concepts in a story format. My son had difficulty when it came time to apply those concepts in Practice Island. The concepts in a story format didn't click with him. The poetry book was excellent. It taught concepts that are normally not taught at that level. There were a few errors in phonology I noticed when reading the book with my son, but they have updated the book since then. I do recommend the program, but it won't suit every learning style out there. I will continue to use other vocabulary books and poetry books by Michael Clay Thompson.

I was excited to use Explode the Code Online. I had been using the standard Explode the Code curriculum and thought the online version would be a great fit for my son who loves the computer. My son hated the program. It was quite repetitive and required him to fully master each, respond quickly, and make no mouse or clicking mistakes in order to go on to the next lesson. He was frustrated and not progressing. It seemed to require perfection while being imperfect in how quickly it loaded pages or processed clicks. If you use this program I highly recommend sitting with your child and using the mouse to record your child's answers.

Math was one of my best subjects back when I was in school, but my mental math abilities stunk! I had to write many problems down to figure it out. After using this for over a year my mental math abilities have grown so much. I can add larger numbers in my head and so can my children. The standard algorithm is taught as well, but only after a child practices how to complete the new concepts mentally. This, I find, seems to bring about greater understanding of mathematical concepts. I switched over from another program and my son tested a year lower than his grade even though he was running ahead in the math program we were using. I started him a year below his grade level. I gave him a standardized test at the end of our first school year using Singapore and he aced it. I find Singapore to be a very strong math program.

A few months ago my son told me he wanted to learn about the elements. I picked up a few things at the library, but nothing interested him. It seemed like most of books that focused on the elements of the periodic table were designed for someone ready for high school level Chemistry. However, I recently checked out a periodic table coloring book designed for kids. I was a bit skeptical that a coloring book would give my son the information he craves, but it surprised me.

The Periodic Table of Elements Coloring Book by Teresa Bondora of www.HowtoTeachScience.com was designed for children. It is designed to be used along side a study of chemistry. The author’s website offers a program to go along with the coloring book. Now, this isn’t simply a coloring book – it is full of facts. You will find two pages for each element. One page gives you information about the element, when it was discovered, and how it is used. The other page is a coloring page. The coloring page has the element’s symbol and name written in fill-in letters and the element’s number with a fill-in number. The page also features several small pictures to color. These small pictures relate to how the element is used. For instance, the element Magnesium has a picture of an airplane flying, a flower in a pot, and a sparkler.

This coloring book is no small book either. The whole thing is a whopping 172 pages. All of the elements from 1-86 are included with the exception of the man-made elements 58-71. At the end of the coloring book there is information on heavy metal pollution as well as a description of how lead can affect your body. An activity on the metals found in the Earth’s crust is included at the end of the coloring book along with instructions on how to use the activity with different age levels. This book is designed for children age 5 and up.

I am pleased to have found a resource that will give my son information in a child-friendly way. You can find samples of the coloring book at the http://www.HowtoTeachScience.com website. The coloring book is available at that site for immediate download. If you have a child interested in chemistry or if you want something more hands-on to go with your study of the chemical elements then take a look at the Periodic Table of Elements Coloring Book. I’m happy that I did.

I recently sat down to read Signs & Seasons Understanding the Elements of Classical Astronomy by Jay Ryan. Signs & Seasons is an astronomy curriculum with a Biblical perspective, but it is not your typical astronomy curriculum. I have a son in love with astronomy and I was expecting a course on the beautiful heavens, the planets, and things like black holes and NASA missions. To my surprise I learned that classical astronomy is quite different.

Classical astronomy is about learning about the times and seasons by just looking at the sky with your eyes. No telescope is necessary. I must admit, unless the sun is rising or setting I do not know what direction is north, south, east, or west. And there is no way I could figure it out at night. Yet, the sky is what mankind has used for most of history in order to tell time and direction. Once I stopped to think about it, I realized how useful this course could be. Sure my son loves learning about the moons of a far away planet, but can he look up at the sky and know which way is north?

Signs & Seasons by Jay Ryan is a beautifully bound hardcover textbook. The Field Journal and Test Manual is a great companion to the course. While the hardcover textbook does have Field Activities, the Field Journal gives you space to jot down your observations. The field activities will get you outside looking up at the sky and making observations. The Field Journal and Test Manual also contains 8 different tests which correspond to each chapter. The tests consist of things like fill in the blank, labeling, and true/false questions.

It is a course designed for high school credit, but can be used for younger children with parental guidance. The bulk of the time spent in the course is in the field activities. To complete the course it would probably take a high school student 3-6 months and a younger student an entire school year. I’ve found this course to be a good companion to a study of ancient and medieval history. The text is full of quotes about the sky from the Bible as well as individuals who lived long ago.

While this course is Biblically based, it is not focused on a young earth or old earth perspective. It is simply a course on how to observe the sky and not on how the sky came to be so it can be used by old earth and young earth Christians without any difficulty. In addition to learning how to observe the sky it covers the history of the calendar.

I highly recommend Signs & Seasons. While my son is still a little young for this course I plan to use it with him when he is in middle school. I will learn right along with him. I can’t count the times in my life where knowing how to understand time and direction from the sky alone would have been very useful.

You can view a detailed table of contents and sample pages at ClassicalAstronomy.com. Take a peek. Maybe you will be pleasantly surprised like I was.

I am so happy that I found this curriculum. It has been a great fit for my kids. I love how it isn't page after page of similar activities. Even the pages with lots of math problems have a dot to dot connected to them so the child completes the dot to dot with correct answers to his math problems.

I didn't purchase the teacher's manual and I regret it now. My son may have enjoyed it more if I had. I quit using this curriculum part way through my son's Kindergarten year because he hated it. I changed to a curriculum that fit his learning style better. He is a global learner and needs to see the why so Mathematical Reasoning by the Critical Thinking Company fit him better.

I used this book as a geography spine in our study of different countries around the world. I really enjoyed this book, but my kids found the text boring. They were below the suggested age levels so I improvised and we looked at the pictures and talked about them. It covers the USA more than other countries. I expect to use this book for many years.