Review: Spanish For You!

I get super excited when I get to review a foreign language curriculum. It is very important to me that my kids learn to speak Spanish, so when Spanish For You needed reviewers, I jumped at the chance. 

Spanish For You's unique design has students speaking, reading and writing through themes like celebrations, seasons and travel, which is available June 2013. We reviewed Estaciones, which is the seasons theme. Along with a soft cover book, you will also get access to download MP3 of the whole book, a PDF lesson guide, a PDF set of worksheets and pictures for making flash cards or other materials.

Spanish For You is available in a 3rd-4th grade set, a 5th-6th grade set and a 7th-8th grade set. Each set sells for $39.95. You can download several mini-lessons to see if the curriculum is the right fit for you.

This curriculum is so easy to set up. I would print out the lesson guide because I get tired of staring at a computer screen. I would make copies of what pages we needed for each lesson. We did the pages for grade 3-4 for my 8 and 10 year olds. I liked the variety of sheets- a little bit of writing, a bit of reading and a bit of drawing. I really liked this because it seems that my 10 year old learns so much more if he draws something, whereas my 8 year old does better with reading and writing the words. 

We only made a set of flashcards for the first lesson because it was just laborious and didn't seem to aide too much in their learning. 

What we love:

• ALL black and white printing
• Affordable, especially since you can use it for several kids
• Conjugation taught with each new word
• Variety of levels and activities
• Simple drawings made it feel so kid-friendly

What we would improve on:

• Seemed to jump in pretty deep into the vocabulary even for 3rd and 4th grade. True beginners of Spanish at this age might be overwhelmed. 

HUGE Giveaway!

One of my fellow TBA blogging friends is hosting a HUGE giveaway.

In fact, there's so much to to give away, she had to split it up into 2!

I am happy to be participating in this giveaway with my new
CLASSROOM BEAUTIFUL 

set in Bubblegum colors.
(there are many more sets coming soon)

So, hop on over and enter to win some fabulous things for your class!

For The Birds!

The weather is heating up fast here in Northern California. Flowers are in bloom and the birds are chirping.

I saw a few ideas on Pinterest for bird feeders but I was really drawn to this one because it was easy. 

Yeah, I go for easy! Plus it was something that was simple enough that all of my kids could do it without too much help from me. Hey, someone has to take the pictures and I didn't want peanut butter on my phone. 

Here is what you will need:

Peanut Butter (or allergy-free replacement)

Empty toilet paper rolls

bird seed

knifes or spoons for spreading peanut butter

container to hold bird seed

Step 1:
Spread a thick layer of peanut butter all around the tube.

This might be messy but hey, it's peanut butter!

Step 2:

Roll the tube in the bird seed.
Gently push down so that the bird seed sticks.

Step 3:

Find a branch on a bush or tree to place your new bird feeder.

On a side note-

We had ducks in our pool the next morning. Now, I don't think their presence 

had anything to do with our bird feeders but was a funny coincidence. 

My Post on The Homeschool Classroom

I am thrilled to share with you that I am now a contributing writer at The Homeschool Classroom. I am in some amazing company of homeschool ladies over there!
Last week, my first post went up and I would love to share it with all of you.
5 Things To Remember When One Child Excels But The Other Struggles

Take a look around while you're there! It's a great site for ideas, encouragement, and help.

Review: Leadership Garden Legacy

Developing leadership qualities in our children is certainly a priority for us. I was excited to hear that Leadership Garden Legacy had created a set of books and lesson for families. We received the following physical books:

-U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS: Growing My Leadership Garden

$18.95

This book is written for children ages 5 and up.

-U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within

$18.95

This book is written for the teenager or parent.

-The Leadership Garden Guidebook
$18.95
This book is also written for the teenager or parent.

We also received the following downloads:

-U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS Activity Guide & My Leadership Garden Journal
$8.95
The Guide and Journal are written for grades 3-5.

-U.N.I.Q.U.E. KIDS Audio Book
$8.95
Grades 3-5

-U.N.I.Q.U.E. Growing the Leader Within Audio Book
$14.95

This book is written for teenagers and adults. 

I began my review by reading the book, U.N.I.Q.U.E.: Growing the Leader Within. I wanted to get an idea of what my kids would be learning. The story is a fable or an allegory that follows the main character, Hugh. Hugh is a lamb who has been scared away from his flock. On his journey, he meets Leda, a gardener who teaches him about planting and maintaining his leadership garden. In this metaphor, the garden is your leadership life and the seeds you plant are your actions. You must be sure to prune and weed your garden of bad stuff. The bad stuff are the thoughts and feelings we allow ourselves to believe.

For our lessons,  I would read a chapter to my kids and then we would find the activity to go along with it. Some of the lessons were fun, like researching the meaning of our names. However, the Leader Balance Inventory left my kids stumped. They could not figure out how or why they were asked to rank if they say, "I think," or, "I should." The concept of synergy was very confusing for my 8 and 10 year old. My kids had a hard time sticking with the metaphor through each chapter.

I tried a few of the activities in the Leadership Garden Guidebook but I would quit a lesson before I finished. I am not good at analyzing my thoughts, feelings, actions, etc. This could just be me, but I didn't see the reason for doing these things. Thus, I had a very hard time pulling those things out of my kids. 

The series states that it wants to cultivate the following:

• not being judgmental
• not enabling
• being empathetic
• pruning gossip
• eliminating blame
• eradicating victimization

While I believe these are excellent and important concepts to cultivate, it just didn't happend for us with these books. I think this book might be good for a family that is looking for a secular approach to developing leadership skills. I felt like the concepts presented were too far from our beliefs.

To find out more information, take a look at the FAQ section.

If you are interested in purchasing the bundle, Leadership Garden Legace is offering you a Spring Special Discount of 20% the Empowerment Tools.

To receive the discount, enter the code TOS-SS20D at checkout. The offer is good until 5-31-13

Review: Supercharged Science

When my kids hear the word science, they don't think of a big boring textbook. They think of experimenting with something in the kitchen or out in the backyard. To them, science is cool! Well, science got a whole lot cooler when Supercharged Science showed up in our house. 

The e-Science program contains over 20 units and each unit is so in-depth. Each unit is so comprehensive I doubt you will have to find extensions. The lessons are broken down like this:
1. Unit Description
2. Outcomes & Goals
3. Highlights & Objectives

4. Introduction

5. Development

6. Practice

7. Further study

8. Evaluation

9. Closure

Supercharged Science was created by Aurora Lipper who's background in engineering. She believes that science should be taught from the inside out. So rather than reading about science, then doing an experiment, she thinks kids should play with science first. Let them experience the science and develop their own questions. This approach to learning reaches all kinds of learners.

We were really hoping to explore Unit 20 which is Earth Science but is hasn't been released yet. So, we started with Unit 1, Mechanics: Gravity, Force and Friction. The hands-on experiments for this unit were very basic but they really got my kids thinking, even the 4 year old. Like, why does a brick fall faster than a feather? It was awesome to see my kids learn from something that they were experiencing not just reading in a book. Don't get me wrong, we love books! But it the meaning and memory from these lessons will stick a whole lot longer than just reading about it.

We do science about 2-3 times a week just depending on the other things we have going on. With this program, my kids were begging to do science everyday! What's great about this program is that you can work on it as much or as little as you'd like. The experiments don't take a ton of time to set up, but read ahead so you can plan accordingly. I am sure there are some that require more set up and actual hands-on time than the ones we did. 

Are you ready to sign up? A subscription to the e-Science program is $37 a month for the k-8 program. If you'd like to take a look at the quality of Aurora's lesson, you can get a free copy of an eBook she's giving away. 

I have only been on the Review Crew for a few months, but I must say that this program is one we will certainly be sticking with for many years to come. 

Roman Numerals

We are studying Rome in history right now, so I thought that it would be a perfect time to study Roman Numerals. My daughter saw a clock the other day that had Roman Numerals rather than numbers and I realized that many people might overlook this skill! 

This packet has 3 game sets with 12 matches each. They are all black and white (your printer says, "YAY!"). I did include a colored page of graphics to print on the opposite side. This helps to keep the sets organized but it also helps to disguise the cards. I don't always print my stuff on cardstock, so it helps to have something on the other side of the card.

This set sells for only $1.50.

Teachers Notebook

Teachers Pay Teachers

This week is turning into a week of First 5 Freebies!