Reading Kingdom Online Reading Course Review -TOS #hsreviews

Reading Kingdom is an online reading course available for use in schools or at home to help teach children to read and help them learn to read better.  It is designed for children ages 4-10 or grades preschool through third grade as well as struggling readers who would read at one of these levels.  In our home it has been used primarily by our oldest who is 8 years old and in 2nd grade this fall.  As part of the review we received a full year subscription for up to three children in our house.  The other two who I've decided get to use Reading Kingdom are in 1st grade this fall ages 8 and 7.

This program teaches reading and writing including working on sequencing, motor skills, sounds, meaning, grammar, and comprehension.  The thing that sets this program apart from other online programs is that it is customized for each child, individually.  The customization and how it allows the child to work on something until they master it are my favorite things of the program.  Oh and that the computer has more patience than me! Somedays I'd just say okay we're done for the day even though they hadn't grasped the concept because I didn't want to lose  my patience with my children.  The computer never does that!

Created by Dr. Marion Blank, this program is affordable.  You can sign up for a 30 day free trial, and after that it is only $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year for the first child with each child after costing an additional $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year.  Though not required, you can purchase other materials to use with the program on their site as well.  These include Early Reader story books, Story Smarts for Reading Comprehension, handwriting help, phonics help, the Reading Remedy book by Dr. Blank, and Steps to Stories for children on the Autism spectrum.

There are also several free online resources that you can take advantage of.  You will find extra worksheets and sample pages as well as activities, apps, books, games, and learning tips.  This is an intensive program which requires your child to work at their own pace but to do so on a regular basis.  It is recommended that they work on this daily for 4-5 days a week so that they can continue to progress.  Reading Kingdom also helps parents as well as students by providing progress reports including strengths and weaknesses.  This shows their improvement through the course.  Your child, through the individualization, will receive extra help in areas that they were weaker in while not having to repeat and work on areas that they are strong in.  They give an example of skipping over words that your child can already read and spell so as not to bore the child.

 

The "struggling" reader in our house is an 8 year old girl who is slowly working her way along her academic route.  She has a few things limiting her growth and has trouble comprehending and learning at times.  This made me think that the program would be wonderful for her and really help her to grasp and hopefully progress faster.  We have not used a lot of online resources for her but had been going the paper and pencil route. So, this was her first computer program.  She was very excited to get started and get to use the computer.  Right now we are a one computer family so we had to be a bit creative in what times of the day she could work on her reading.

I have tried several phonics programs with her and she can sound out things wonderfully, except for those dreaded words that don't follow the rules.  She has troubles with them.  This program has really helped her with the rule breakers.

Now I have to admit I wasn't too sold on this at the beginning.  It seemed like I had to help her a lot and I thought everyone always raved about computer classes like this being so great for independence.  To this I have to say, stick with it because at the beginning it is definitely not independent work, or at least it wasn't in our house.  But now, after using it for several weeks she is blossoming and emerging onto new areas that she hasn't been able to do before and really starting to show progress!

Stop back next week if you wonder what taking a week off of the reading program will do to their progress.  I'm not sure I want to know but with the death of my grandmother(the children's great grandmother) we are taking the week off so I can help with funeral arrangements and to attend the funeral.  I'm not sure that I can handle teaching them this week, nor am I sure they could handle the stress of school this week.

We did get 3 spots for a full year with this review, but so far have only used one.  With how intense and how long it took our oldest in the beginning I didn't want to start any of the others yet.  I am prepared to start two other girls who struggle with reading next week when we start back after our little hiatus.  One really struggles more than the other.  She can sound out the word but can't put the sounds together into a word.  I'm interested to see how she does with the program.

If you would like to hear and see how others responded to the program and what they thought make sure to check out the Main Crew Blog Post and look around!

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ABeCeDarian Company Review -TOS CREW #hsreview

I have always loved to read.  I think it comes naturally to me.  My children like to read but would rather I read to them than have to read the book themselves.  While this is probably natural for children I was excited for them when we received a package from ABeCeDarian Company to review.  In our package we received their level A-1 teacher and student workbooks, A-2 teacher and student workbooks, B-1 teacher and student workbooks, a set of 10 storybooks for children to read aloud(these correspond with the level A workbooks), and a collection of 11 Aesop fables.  The Aesop fables are geared to go with the B level workbook and only include the sounds/words that the children can already sound out/read.

This is the great packet we received to review.

We primarily used the level B-1 with the set of 10 storybooks and the Aesop's Fables.  The entire program is geared towards a Kindergarten through early 2nd grade readers.  I used it primarily with my first grader who thought she couldn't read because she still had to sound out the words.  After finishing the program I have to say(with lots of excitement) that she now tells people that she CAN read!  Yeah!  She still has to sound things out at times, but she is much more confident of herself and no longer gives up as easily over words that she does not know!

Level B-1 includes a teacher's book which can be purchased for $25.50 as well as the student book which is available for purchase for $10.25.  If you order over a certain number(50) the price drops on the student books to $1.50 per book.  This would be a great deal if you planned to use it in a school setting or with a homeschool group/coop.

In some situations, you can get by without buying the teachers books to go with the student books.  I feel that you do need the teacher book for this program  It would just not work the same way if you only had the student book.   There is so much extra in the Teacher book to help you as well as your student that I think it is definitely worth the cost.

The set of ten storybooks costs $21.50.  They are sold as being part of the Level A program, but you also will be using them in the B level.  If your child tests at a point that they should start at the B level like my daughter did then you should still purchase the storybooks as they are needed.  In the teachers manual it will have your child reading these stories.  If you do not have them it says to skip that part, but I think the extra reading materials are beneficial.

The Aesop's Fables was a favorite of all my children.  They enjoyed hearing either their sister or me reading the stories to them.  The cost for the set of eleven fables in one book is $2.50.  This book of fables has been adapted to only contain sounds/letters that your student should be able to read at that level.  They are the same great stories, but at your child's level.

I am very pleased with what ABeCeDarian has been able to do for us reading wise and am looking forward to seeing what others have to say about it as well.

Since we didn't use the two lower levels this time(I probably will use them this fall with my now kindergarteners) I really am not going to discuss them.  If you want to learn more about those levels and what they were like or what reviewers thought of them please make sure to visit the main Crew blog post.  Lots of great reviews are available for you there.

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Primary Arts of Language Review -TOS

Recently with the TOS Crew I was able to receive and review Institute for Excellence, Primary Arts of Language including help in reading, writing, and spelling. My kids are always thrilled with new school activities so this was no exception!  There is so much involved in this curriculum that I am just going to highlight the parts that we loved the most.  You will be able to read other reviews of this curriculum by going to the TOS Crewhomepage(which I strongly recommend you do) and get other homeschool families points of view.  This will give you more information about this program and what others liked or disliked about it.

 

 

 

I received two kits to review. 

 

Reading Kit

 

 

Kit 1-  The PAL Reading kit which costs $69( $98 if you purchase the parts separately). This kit includes: 

Primary Arts of Language: Reading Teacher’s Manual

Primary Arts of Language: Reading DVD-ROM

Instructional Video by Jill Pike

The Four Language Arts MP3 Audio by Andrew Pudewa

Nurturing Competent Communicators MP3 Audio by Andrew Pudewa

Poetry as an Integrator MP3 Audio by Anna Ingham

Intro to the Blended Sound Sight Program MP3 Audio by Anna Ingham

Primary Arts of Language: Reading Student Book (e-book)

Primary Arts of Language: Phonetic Games

Primary Arts of Language: Phonetic Farm folder with Stickers

 

 

Writing Kit

 

 

Kit 2- PAL Writing Kit which costs $89 ($113 if the items are purchased separately).  This kit includes: 

Primary Arts of Language: Writing Teacher’s Manual

Primary Arts of Language: Writing DVD-ROM

Instructional Video by Jill Pike

Reading Comprehension MP3 Audio by Adam Andrews

Dictation, Narration, and Public Speaking MP3 Audio by Andrew Pudewa

The Four Language Arts MP3 Audio by Andrew Pudewa

Primary Arts of Language: Writing Student Books (e-book)

All About Spelling Basic Interactive Kit

All About Spelling Level 1 (Teacher’s Manual and One Student Material Packet) By Marie Rippel

Bonus e-audio downloads:

Units 1 & 2 in the K–2 Classroom MP3 Audio by Shirley George

Unit 3 in the K–2 Classroom MP3 Audio by Shirley George

Preparing the K-2 Writing Environment MP3 Audio by Richelle Palmer

Let's start with my children's favorite part. The Phonetic Farm. They loved that farm and putting all the animal stickers on it. The stickers may not have all gotten put on straight, but they're all in the correct spot and that did not impede the children from learning! I loved how on the welcome card it says in small letters that you may want to hide the phonetic farm stickers until you are ready to use them! Very good advice and I'm glad we took it! The Phonetics Farm also comes with an ebook that you can download in PDF format. Did I mention my kids loved all the animals!? I think this portion made this their favorite just because we have several of the animals here on our farm. They were upset though that there was no baby horse inside the barn as we do have one right now.

 

This is our sticker farm!

 

Primary Arts of Language is abbreviated to PAL(I'm hoping you've figured that out by now). I really enjoyed that there were some online components and that help was readily accessible. On the starting card that I've mentioned before it also gives you an email address for any questions that you may have(love when those are straight forward and easy to find). I also love how the starting card gives you four steps to using their curriculum. (1) view the reading dvd, (2) assemble the phonetics games--makes it so much faster when you need them, (3) view the first section of the writing dvd--watch the rest when needed and (4) start enjoying PAL with your children!! My kids definitely have enjoyed this and I loved that not all of it was worksheet based so I did not have to copy so many pages for all of my children to use it. I am also able to save it and use it with my younger ones as well which makes me very happy!!

PAL Spelling:

The spelling portion of this curriculum was very easy to use and many children friendly. Part of it was having them spell words with magnetic tile letters. It says that the tiles will fit comfortably on a magnetic board that is 2'H by 3'W. We did not have a board like that and instead of buying one we just used our refrigerator. My kids loved this! We did have to have one use regular magnets on our fridge to keep them occupied while the other used the tiles so there was no fighting over the tiles. That is one question that I'm going to be asking: Can we buy any additional magnetic tile kits? I think that would be helpful when you're using the curriculum with more than one child. My 1st graders would use it in the mornings and my kindergarteners would use it in the afternoons. I did not use it with my preschoolers or pre-preschoolers yet. I feel that my preschoolers will get good use out of it next year and the two year olds still have a few years.

 

Our magnetic tiles out on notebook paper,
they're easier to see here than on the fridge for photo purposes.

The vowels section!

This shows how the tiles are supposed to be laid out for the children to use.

 

Also with the spelling portion are phonogram cards for learning letters; sound cards for helping to connect the sound to the letter(teacher says sound kids write the letter); key cards asking common spelling questions about capitalizing, vowels, etc; and word cards for learning sight words. The word cards are also used for the spelling words. The children can see, make the words with tiles, spell the words on paper, etc. I loved this approach to spelling as it didn't require me to make up spelling lists for the kids to have and copy. It saved us paper and still ensured that they learned 170 sight words!

Phonogram cards

sound cards

key cards

word cards

 

PAL Reading Manual:

I have to share my favorite page in the PAL: Reading Teacher's Manual. It is the letter stories. I loved their descriptions of the letters and found that my beginning readers remembered their letters a lot more after learning these descriptions. They are cute and amusing and definitely stick in your mind. I had never heard these before. One letter for an example is "l is the licking letter-This tall letter starts at the top and is just a long line. It looks like a lollipop stick that soemone has licked clean." Now who won't remember that "l" is a lollipop after that cute little description!

The Letter Stories: make sure to make this big and read as it is so cute!

 

Also in the teachers reading manual for student use is the set of discovery cards. There are 30 packs of 10 words each. The student is supposed to read and figure out each set of words and then if they tell them to the teacher correctly they can cross off that numbered set and move to the next. It was a challenge to see which of my kiddos could figure them out first. Once the words were all read and learned it allowed them to proceed to the library!

PAL: Writing

This shows proper ways to hold the pencil, tilt the page and make the strokes necessary for forming the letters.  I loved the tilting the page portion.  I am a very right handed person but I have a very left handed son and have been struggling with teaching him how to write correctly as I don’t really know all the specifics of writing with my left hand!  It incorporates the letter stories that I talked about from the reading manual.  It also has a “story summary” per lesson which helps them break down stories and figure out the characters, setting, problem, climax, resolution, and clincher.  I personally had not even thought about introducing these concepts to my children but was amazed at how well they picked up on them and understood the stories! 

Throughout the writing manual it also has them do copywork and start learning to create and write their own stories.  It has them do outlines, brainstorm for ideas, and even scrapbook!  My kids enjoyed the creativeness that this allowed for.

PAL: Phonetic Games

This book held all the worksheet type pages that I could copy and have the kids work on.  It helps them understand consonants versus vowels as well as match things that are the same.  It is also where you find the directions for the phonics farm sticker pages that my kids loved so well!  It includes lots of fun games for the kids to use that teach them while letting them have fun which is the most important part of learning!

The one thing that we haven’t mastered yet is the counting to 100.  I’m not sure what is up with my kids but they can count to 20, they can count by 10’s but we’re having the hardest time actually counting to 100.  I am hoping that as we continue to use this part of the curriculum that my children will get this figured out so that we can graduate!  

 

Our overall rating of this is excellent.  We love it and I would highly recommend that others give it a try if they are homeschooling or even if they just want to help their children learn more.  Once again make sure you check out the other TOS Crew Reviews!

 

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are mine.

My opinion has not been influenced or altered in anyway by the company and only includes my honest thoughts on the product.

 

 

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Activity Bags- Science and Reading -TOS

I recently got the awesome opportunity to review a new product with The Schoolhouse Crew.  The product in question is Activity Bags. 

Activity Bags has created a rather large line of kits that you create in individual bags for kids to do.  I was fortunate enough to receive the Science Bags(ebook 1, ebook 2, and ebook 3) as well as the Reading Bag.  The science series are geared towards an age range of kindergarten through 8th grade.  Of course, by covering such a large expanse it stands to reason that you would have to adjust for the age of your children.  I found myself doing quite a bit more of the experiments than a mom of older kids would as my oldest is only 7.

Book 1 costs $15 by itself. If you wish to purchase books one and two you can do so for a reduced cost of $27, or you can purchase all three books for a discount of $39.  The reading games in a bag ebook is also only $15. 

Science ebook #1

Science ebook 1 contains experiments pertaining to biology, nature, and general science.  We started out working our way through this one.  I have to admit that we didn't do many of the experiments from the other two books for a couple of reasons.  The main one was the smells.  I know, I know, that probably sounds wierd, but trust me the smells of some of the experiments sent me running to the bathroom.  Here is where I cough and explain that I have some bad morning sickness and nausea and science did not go well with it.

My kids loved the science that we did do though!  Their favorites were the fruit fly experiment and the mold experiment.  Book one contains 25 experiments and a total of 164 pages.  We only printed out the worksheet pages as we needed them, but as the kids get older I think printing the entire book out and placing it in a binder would be wonderful for them to use as their science course!

Fruit Fly Experiment:  With this experiment we were told to place a peeled banana in a jar and leave it on the counter for several days to "rot" and attract fruit flies.   We don't ever seem to have an extra banana laying around so we used a cut up apple.  It definitely attracted the fruit flies!!  After the flies began to congregate on the fruit in the jar we placed a length of pantyhose on top of the jar and sealed with a rubber band.  Leaving the band and net on the jar for four days, we then took the jar outside and let the flies loose.  After coming back into the house we placed the hose back on top of the jar and secured with the rubber band.  We left it that way for another two weeks(understanding a bit of the smell yet?).  During that time we watched as new flies appeared.  My kids loved this!  We had to get on the computer and get detailed pictures of each stage of the fruit fly life and look at the jar through a magnifying glass so they could see the itty bitty little ones.  I would have to say that this was the favorite activity of all the science that we did.

Mold experiment:  I will have to say this one we tweeked a bit.  You were supposed to place one piece of bread(preferably preservative free) in a sandwich bag and one piece of citrus fruit in another.  You then were to place 13 drops of water with each and leave unzipped for one day(24 hours) in a warm place but not in the sunlight.  Then you were to close the bags(seal) and place in a warm spot not in sunlight for up to 2 weeks. 

What we did:  We took one slice of homemade gluten free bread(we eat gluten free in our house) in one bag and had the kids grandma place one slice of her homemade whole wheat bread in one bag at her house.  We left her bread at her house for the first day and did not bring it home until it was sealed.  We then had both sealed bags placed on our kitchen counter out of direct sunlight for two weeks.  The gluten free bread molded quite a bit faster than the whole wheat bread did.  I expected this as it seems that our gluten free products mold rather quickly and we normally keep them in the refrigerator.  The kids were thrilled and we had to discuss the ingredients in each loaf of bread.  They decided that the fact that my bread contains no sugars at all while Mama's bread(grandma) contains honey must have been the reason.  I didn't contradict them or discourage them because I loved how they reasoned out that conclusion and loved how their brains were thinking!

Science ebook #2

Ebook #2 for Science contains the chemistry, humand body, and general sciences.  I'm afraid that we did not do a lot of the experiments from this book.  One that we did do that I have seen done before was color confusion.  I found this one particularly fun with my kiddos.  Half of my kids can read the color names and half cannot.  It was very funny to listen to the two sets argue with each other about what the color was!  Book 2 contains a total of 25 experiments and 153 downloadable pages.  Again, I just printed off the pages as we were using them, but if you have older children having the whole book in a binder would be a great idea!

Color Confusion:  For this experiment you need 5 different colored crayons.  We used yellow, green, red, black, and blue.  You write the color name on a sheet of paper only you use a different color to do so.  For instance, I wrote green in the blue crayon, blue in the yellow crayon, yellow in the black crayon, red in the green crayon, and black in the red crayon.  You then later write the names of animals using the different colors.  It will take you longer to comprehend and say the correct word/color combination than it will to say the correct written word.

Ebook for Science #3

Ebook #3 for Science contains only chemistry.  I feel these were the more advanced of the experiments.  There are 25 experiments and 151 pages in this ebook.  We did the floating egg experiment which teaches about the density of fresh and salt water. 

Floating Egg:  You will need two plastic cups.  Fill both cups with regular tap water.  Into one of the cups place 8 Tb of salt.  Stir the salt into the water and then place one egg in each cup.  Watch what happens to the egg.  Please note our experiment failed the first time.  We used old eggs(farm fresh) and I did not do the float test on them both in fresh water first.  As a result they both floated.  Oops bad science mommy, bad.

Reading Games in a Bag

Reading Games was wonderful!  I see that it says book one on the cover and am hoping that that means more are coming!  This book contains 20 games and 124 pages.  The game that I had my kids do the most was the sight words.  I have been working with them on sight words for a while so that they don't continue to sound out the easy words and can read more fluently. 

Sight Words:  The sight words game includes 126 words for your child to learn to help make reading easier.  You will need to print them off on a cardstock or as I didn't have cardstock but did have some notecards, you can write them out on the notecards.  I ended up making three sets of this game.  One for my each set of two of the older six to share.  At first I had to help the kids to remember what the words were, but now they quiz each other with the notecards!  I love seeing my kids learn and master things!  We have used this one daily from day one until today.  They have mastered this set of words now, but I think I shall make up some new notecards with other words and we'll start doing those. I think this is how we are going to be memorizing our spelling words from now on!

As you can tell, we enjoyed all of our books from Activity Bags.  I think they are definitely worth the price you would pay for them.  These are adjustable for your children and can grow with them.  I see myself using these a lot in the future with ALL of our children.  I give them an A+ for coming up with this idea.  They also have ebooks for math, travel, and preschool that would be wonderful to try out at some point.

Make sure to head over the read the other Crew members thoughts on what products they reviewed(we all were able to do different ones) and find out about the other activity books on the Crew homepage. 

I must end with a bit of an apology. My camera battery died and I was not able to find the charger until yesterday so we really do not have any pictures of my children using this program.  I hope that my description of them and the fun they had while using these books has brought some cute mental pictures to your mind though!

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are mine.

My opinion has not been influenced or altered in anyway by the company and only includes my honest thoughts on the product.

Shared on Mama's Monday Moments, 

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