The Critical Thinking Co.™ (Do You Diagram?) (Review)

The Critical Thinking Co.™ has long been a favorite provider of mine. They offer a variety of supplements and curriculum, including Critical Thinking/Logic, of course, but also a variety of Language Arts and Math, typically presented in a clear and engaging format. I mean really, who wouldn't be interested in a workbook entitled "Dr. DooRiddles" or "MindBenders."

I have both reviewed (2010, 2012, 2015) and purchased an assortment of their products, and been pretty happy with all of them, so was pleased to be offered the chance to review another book, Sentence Diagramming: Beginning Grades 3-12+.

I don't know what your public or other school education looked like, but I don't actually recall learning how to diagram sentences. It's possible that we did, but I truly do not have a clear recollection of diagramming, which is interesting, as I was a student who enjoyed my English Language classes (perhaps the personalities of my teachers overshadowed what they were teaching? Mr. Harrington's ability to throw a small bouncy ball caroming off the ceiling and the blackboard to hit a dozing student on the back of the head was somewhat legendary...).

I digress. Coming back to Sentence Diagramming: Beginning, I decided to use it with both my 4th grader and and my 10th grader, as it clearly wasn't something that we had done before. My 4th grader has been enjoying doing these "puzzles" and is possibly "competing" a little with his older brother.

Because we are working on it together, I am having them do most of their work in a notebook. The Critical Thinking Co.™does allow limited duplication within a home setting, but our ink supply needs replenished, so this works for us. Makes for a little more work for the boys, since they are drawing their own lines, but I figure that is good practice!

So, I sit on the couch with the book, one boy on either side with their notebooks, and we go through the lessons.

 

Each of the 12 lessons has 4 main parts, following the new concept explanation.

1. Find the errors and diagram correctly - sometimes it's a little tricky, others less so, but "finding the errors" is a great tool for learning. 
2. Fill in the diagram - using the provided sentence~ good practice
3. Write a sentence to match the diagram - This is a page that I do print, just because it makes life easier ~ worth the ink even when it's in short supply. ;) 
4. Diagram each sentence without the predrawn lines - mastering the technique

I really like the building block progression of each part, from finding tiny errors to diagramming with no assistance.

The diagrams go from simple + construction to multi-forked builds in the later lessons. Again, a building block progression, from simple to complicated, so that it makes perfect sense. I can see that this is a fantastic way to learn grammar, especially if you have a visual learner, and I'm quite surprised that more curricula don't utilize this, from the very beginning, as it shows very concretely what each word is, and how it relates to the other words in the sentence. It also turns grammar into a puzzle, which is much more exciting than  exercises like "find the noun____ " or "label the adjectives."

Lesson 1: Simple Subject and Main Verb
Lesson 2: Direct Object
Lesson 3: Adjectives
Lesson 4: Adverbs Modifying Verbs
Lesson 5: Predicate Adjectives
Lesson 6: Predicate Nouns
Lesson 7: Prepositional Phrases (Adjectival)
Lesson 8: Prepositional Phrases (Adverbial)
Lesson 9: Compound Subjects
Lesson 10: Compound Predicates
Lesson 11: Compound Direct Objects
Lesson 12: Compound Predicate Adjectives and Nouns

The book includes a review/test at the end that covers each lesson, and for those who aren't sure about their answers, there is an Answer Key at the back. I found this helpful, as I wasn't sure what to do with "the" and "a" when they showed up (makes perfect sense that they are diagrammed as adjectives, which is the way I understand it, because they describe that there is only "one" of the object. If I'm wrong in that assessment, feel free to explain it to me. ;) ).

I think this is also a helpful review for older students, which may come in handy if they have to break down sentences on their standardized tests ~ it's a comprehensive but gentle Charlotte Mason-ish approach also~ short lessons that encourage rather than overwhelm. :)

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: The Critical Thinking Co.™
• Product: Sentence Diagramming: Beginning
• Ages: Grades 3-12+
• Price: $12.99

You can visit The Critical Thinking Co.™ on their social media pages:
Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest

  

  

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say about this and the other titles reviewed: Language Smarts Level E (Which is a full 4th Grade Language Arts curriculum), and a variety of software downloads for Toddler/PreK to Grade 2 (Alphabet Song Game, Letter Sounds Song and Game, Vowel Sounds Song and Game, and Fun-Time Phonics). FYI, the Software is not MAC compatible, one of my few pet peeves for The Critical Thinking Co.™ , as I am a MAC girl.  As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Institute for Excellence in Writing/ Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization (Review)

As you may have noticed over the years (if you've been reading my blog for years...) that I am a fan of Andrew Pudewa, and the Institute for Excellence in Writing. We have been blessed to review many of IEW's products over the years, and have purchased a few besides, so I was very excited to be on the review for the newly revised, 2nd edition of Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization. The Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization set includes a teacher's manual, a folio of audio cds, and one of Andrew Pudewa's conference talk Nurturing Competent Communicators on DVD.

I appreciate poetry, but sometimes haven't made as much time for it in our daily life as I would like. This program helps, but addresses so much more than simply "poetry."

So, how exactly does linguistic development through poetry memorization make a difference, you ask? Good question! :) Here are some of the basic premises:

• Poetry offers extensive vocabulary
• Poetry is highly organized and patterned which means that 
• Poetry is somewhat easier to memorize, because of the rhythm and rhyme, as well as the typically interesting subject matter
• Poems are "highly concentrated," filled with snippets of rich, colorful language, which often has the effect of distilling a large concept into a smaller, thought-provoking package. 
• Poetry memorization is, scientifically, a boon to the neurological health of the brain (The more you memorize, the more neurons make connections, the healthier and stronger your brain)! 

The poems in this program are split into 4 levels of 19 poems with a spot for a "personal selection" bringing the total of poems learned in each level to 20. The poems vary widely in length, content, author, and style throughout each level, which adds to the interest level for the student.

The fifth and final level encompasses excerpts (mostly) from 20 speeches, spanning works from Plato all the way to a selection from modern day Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese founder of the National League for Democracy.

The Teacher's Manual and CD's come in this lovely folio box...
I put the optional printed/ bound Student book in the bottom so you could see everything we received! 

A closer look:

Teacher's Manual
The Teacher's Manual includes 21 pages of Introduction which cover the concept behind the program, and instructions on how to go about using it. Following that, it includes the text of all 96 poems and speeches with occasional literary notes, Author Biographies, and Lesson Enhancements. It also comes with access to download a Student e-book and six more Andrew Pudewa audio mp3s:

• Mastery Learning, Ability Development, and Individualized Education
• Ten Thousand Times and Then Begins Understanding
• On Listening
• On Speaking
• On Reading
• On Writing

CDs
The accompanying CD's are recordings of Andrew Pudewa's excellent recitations of the poems, which can be used to introduce the poem, as an aide to learning the poem (For those who memorize better through auditory channels), and as an example of recitation with feeling rather than rote recitation. If you have used any of IEW's writing materials that make use of Andrew Pudewa's recorded classes, your children will definitely recognize his distinctive voice! :)

Methodology
Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization uses the same methodology that is used in the Suzuki method of music, and if you've ever used the Navigators Scripture Memory system, it is also similar ~ mastery through repetition and review. Research shows that the more you memorize and review, the easier it will become to memorize and retain information. To this end, each section comes with a plan and a chart to record daily progress in memorization and review. By the time you reach the 4th level your child will daily be reciting each poem learned in the current level, with a "maintenance" schedule of 3 additional poems from the previous levels. Although this might sound like it will take up a ton of time, it really isn't bad (if you have a number of children, you could have them alternate their recitations, starting with a different child each day, expecting that they will be saying the words silently in their heads when their siblings are reciting the other poems).

Student Book
The student book comes as a printable ebook, as I mentioned above, or as an optional purchased, spiral bound workbook. As a bonus the Crew were sent this as well. The book comes with forms to keep track of where your child is, as well as pictures to color, which can be fun, and/or helpful if you have a kinesthetic learner. 

You can see that I took advantage of my printer's extra capabilities and printed my kids' copies in booklet form. None of my kids are particularly kinesthetic learners, so the coloring page aspect of the Student Book wasn't a huge draw for them (although they did enjoy the illustrations... just didn't want to color them), so the smaller, booklet form was fine for them, and was also a "different" shape, which made it easier to locate amongst school paraphernalia.  

MP3s
Andrew Pudewa never disappoints, and always has something to catch my attention in his talks. You can check out samples of his talks on the IEW website, as well as samples from this entire program.

My youngest has greatly enjoyed using this, and we will be continuing it beyond the review period, for sure! He is has a great aptitude for Scripture memory, but this is something different and he looks forward to learning new poems. In fact, he will randomly start reciting his poems throughout the day/week. What fun! Two Thumbs up from our family!!

Here is a video of youngest reciting the majority of the poems that he has memorized thus far (working on one poem per week on average). He did not include the first poem, because oddly enough, what is hysterical to most kids makes mine go "Ewwwww." ;) They memorized it, but don't tend to recite it (check out the "Ooey Gooey" poem in my photo above ;) ). He also didn't perfectly recite the longest poem learned to date but he's getting closer.
Enjoy! :)

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Institute for Excellence in Writing
• Product: 
• Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization ($65)
• Student Book ($19) 
• Ages: all grades

You can visit IEW's Social Media pages on
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,  and YouTube

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Talking Fingers Inc. Read, Write & Type (Review)

Whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay, and it is becoming a bigger part of our children's lives, earlier than ever. Because of this, it only makes sense to help our children develop not only their reading and writing skills, but also their keyboarding skills. Talking Fingers Inc.  offers a variety of programs that are useful in this endeavor, and as part of the TOS Review Crew, we were offered the opportunity to use and review their Read, Write & Type online subscription.

This program is for some of the earliest readers, as it emphasizes phonics and spelling along with reading and keyboarding skills. There is also a fair amount of research that suggests that using Read, Write & Type can be extremely beneficial for Learning Disabled students, including those with dyslexia/dysgraphia as it bypasses one of the major stumbling blocks, a motor/visual process. If you'd like to know more about that, please do read the materials found on their site. This is not an issue we currently have to accommodate in our family, but I know many families that do, so I wanted to be sure to mention it here.

So, what did my 8.5 year old use this program for, if he's already reading like a whiz, and is a fair hand at spelling? Keyboarding skills were the thing for us.
Here is a look of what his skills assessments looked like at one point in the program:
Not too shabby, and nice to see a basic assessment.

Add caption

Talking Fingers was designed by the developer of one of the landmark educational programs, Reader Rabbit. It should come as no surprise then that I would categorize this program as Edutainment. ;) The Intro was a tiny bit "cheesy" for my son, who is on the upper end of the age range, AND a prolific reader, so he wished that he could skip it before going to his next lesson/activity, but he still "Loved" the program, and I never had to ask him more than once to go do his "Talking Fingers" work. I can definitely see that it would be very interesting to the young, emergent reader.

Each letter on the keyboard is the home of a different character (letter), which helps cement "where" they are in your child's brain. Following is a semi-narration from my Youngest about the program:

Most of the time each letter goes into the Movie Theater, where there is a 10(-ish) question quiz, usually identifying the first letter sound of a word (the child types the letter they are learning if it is the correct beginning sound, and a space if it isn't). Once past that, the might go to the Video Store, where you hear middle letter sounds, or to the Circus Stand where there are ending letter sounds. 

There is a villain in this game, Vex Virus, who tries to kidnap the letters, in order to end stories for all time. The task of the child is to type the correct word(s) in a variety of locations. In the Garden, a word or phrase must be typed repeatedly, 

and in the StoryTree, entire sentences must be typed. 

There are some locations that the child can choose to visit once they've gotten a few letters under their belt. The Fountain checks their speed and accuracy, The Blimp chooses random letter sounds to review. The Email Tower lets your child write a short story, which they can send to another random user (often from a different country). Then they will send a story back. 

This story went from my son to Australia,

and he received this email back from "Zoe, aged 7, Australia"

The letters are learned in groups of 4 for each level. At the end of the level, they go to visit Vexor's Spaceship., where there is a longer quiz. When completed, a Certificate of Merit is earned, and stored in the The Hall of Fame.  The Certificates of Merit show the speed and score earned for that level.

This is an engaging program that teaches children using a multiplicity of input, Audio, Visual, and Tactile, which all help the brain retain the material more readily, and can be used by all types of learners. Although "some" of the content was "cheesy" to my son, he really has enjoyed using the program, and I expect that he will continue to log on and practice his keyboarding skills throughout the year.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Talking Fingers Inc. 
• Product: Read, Write & Type Online Subscription
• Ages: 6-9
• Price:
• 1 User $35
• 2 Users $55
• 3 Users $70
• 4 Users $85
• 5 Users $100

You can visit Talking Fingers Inc's Social Media pages on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

Nuggets of Gold ~ January 13 ~ (Some limited time offers here!) Music and Organization!

Hi all~

I've run across a couple of specials that I thought I would share with you!

First up~ for a limited time (This offer is for today the 13th, and the 14th)
FreeCCM is offering a Newsboys track from their new album, due to hit the streets in March. You may have heard "Guilty" playing on the radio (I did for the first time tonight). Now you can download "Crazy"  (Download Newsboys "Crazy" from FreeCCM)

Next, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine is offering their 2015/2016 digital planner(s) for free for one week only. You can choose to download one or more of the digital copies to use for the rest of the year. These are examples of some of the pages you might find in this year's planner. *Note, to save upload space, I'm using images from the 2010 planner...


You might want to download the Big Mama Planner (with over 800 pages), the High School Planner, the Intermediate Planner, the Primary Planner, or the Special Learners Planner.

Of course, all of the planners are free to download all of the time for SchoolhouseTeachers members. This in addition to over 200 courses created by some of the best of the best in the homeschool community, and other resources useful for all ages, including a streaming media library with over 10,000 videos. If you're interested, the TOS Review Crew has a special for our readers... For New Members only, purchase your first yearly membership using the code CREWFOLLOWER for 50% off!

And just for laughs, enjoy this clip my friend Marcy shared today~ how NOT to use the Thesaurus... (nothing objectionable in this clip)

I may update this later with a few more goodies, but wanted to get it out ASAP, since the music download has such a short window!

Blessings~

IXL Math and Language Arts Review

Youngest was delighted to know that we were selected to review IXL one more time, as he frequently requested to use it for math last year and occasionally over the summer. (You can read my previous reviews for IXL in 2012 and IXL in 2013 to see what my thoughts were for K/7^th grade and 1^st grade). 

This time I used it mostly with Youngest for 2^nd grade IXL Math and we tried out the 2^nd grade IXL Language Arts as well. Middlest is using an Algebra program that doesn’t totally follow a traditional track, so he only popped on to check it out a couple of times. There are skills for children from Pre-K -12th grade in Math, and 2nd-8th grade in Language Arts. 

Our experiences were very similar to in the past~ I appreciate the ability to check out the reports, of which there is a huge assortment! I would imagine that this would be especially useful to homeschoolers who live in states that require huge amounts of documentation.

• Status Updates include a pie chart as well as a Proficiency assessment, News flashes and a Report Card
• Usage (which includes the ability to see all of the problems attempted, only those with correct answers, or only those with wrong answers among other options) along with a list of the skills practiced and a Usage Log which shows the session time each day, the amount of actual time spent practicing, the number of problems attempted and the number of skills practiced. This is helpful for keeping kids accountable~ if the length of their session doesn’t correspond to the actual time spent engaged with the program you might want to talk about distractions and diligence… 

• Performance, by category and by skill
• Trouble Spots
• Progress (Improvement over Time)
• State Standards

As in the past, my Youngest has been very motivated to fill in his Math award chart with stickers (and we are somewhat disappointed that there isn’t a chart for the Language Arts program, but hopefully that is in the works). We do run into trouble sometimes if we try to do too many skills out of order, so I go between having him work on specific skills and work on completing the skills required to collect a sticker.

Here is what his Award Chart looks like currently:

A word about our general process~ this is something that can be an independent practice program. However, I have discovered that Youngest tends to do a little better when I’m next to him, reminding him to read the problems carefully and to check his answers before hitting submit, as a careless answer will end up creating more problems for him to complete, which will then take more time, and can occasionally cause frustration at the inability to complete the skill in a timely manner.

Initial LA Problem I intentionally got wrong
to show how to complete the problem.

Thoughts on the Language Arts portion: We used the first problem as a learning tool so that he would understand what was being requested (by purposely getting it wrong, so as to get to the instruction…). 

Generally speaking I was fairly happy with the skills, although Youngest wasn’t thrilled with the Language Arts portion~ as there is really no immediate incentive to complete skills, and they are fairly “workbook-ish” in nature, so not very attention grabbing. I do have to say that they receive nice certificates for completing certain amounts of questions, so that is helpful. :) 

I will also mention that there were some sentences used in the examples that I was not prepared for Youngest to read. Probably not an issue with most people, but it did cause some discussions that we hadn’t had. He hasn’t run into “step-family” situations personally, so he requested an explanation of Stepfather and Stepmother when they both showed up within minutes of one another. Yes… unfortunate facts of life, but I didn’t think a language arts program would introduce them.

As I mentioned above, Middlest only used the Algebra portion a little bit. He didn’t feel that it works well as a teaching tool, but is probably useful as a practice tool if it follows your Algebra program.

New to IXL is the ability to access IXL on your tablet. This is sometimes easier for my Youngest to manipulate, so he uses the ipad with regularity to get his IXL Math done. You can download the app and practice up to 20 free questions a day to get a feel for how it works before purchasing.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this has been a requested program by my youngest, so that speaks volumes about how he generally feels about it, and as a teacher, I am pleased with the scope and sequence of the mathematics in particular, somewhat less so with the LA, but if your kids thrive on workbook style curriculum, this might be a great way to get some great practice in, with good records to show at the end of the year. 

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: IXL 
• Product: IXL Math  and  IXL Language Arts 
• Ages: 
• Math ~ Pre-K- 12th (Pre-Calculus)
• Language Arts ~ Currently offering 2nd to 8th grade
• Price: 
• $9.95/month for Math OR Language, $15.95/month for both
• $79.00/year for Math OR Language, $129/year for both
• Additional children are $2/month extra or $20/year extra

You can visit IXL on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~