Our Review of Essential Reading Skills for Kindergarten by Reading Eggs

OUR REVIEW

Sometimes a little one, especially in kindergarten, can be a little reluctant to learn. They are full of energy and curiosity but if they aren't ready to learn, it can be a challenge. This was the case with my grandchild who is almost five years old. That was, up until we had the opportunity to receive and review 240 Essential Reading Skills for Kindergarten by Reading Eggs. Reading Eggs offers many reading skills and math skills workbooks across various grades. The 250-page plus certificates workbook is compiled in a manner that allows for great ease of use by having a content page at the front which provides each lesson and the corresponding page number as well as an explanation on how to use the workbook. For our review, since it's self-paced, we used the workbook four times a week and at least a page a day.

Background on the 240 Essential Reading Skills for Kindergarten Workbook:

• It is built on the five pillars of reading success: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
• The 240 Essential Reading Skills for Kindergarten workbook covers the first 60 lessons of the Reading Eggs program for Kindergarten.
• Each lesson provides four pages that reinforce learning. This was a key feature that really helped him to retain what he learned. At the end of the majority of each lesson is a lesson check that ensured he was learning and retaining everything. 
• There is also the online program that can be used along side the workbook to really reinforce the learning activities. 
• There is a year planner that provides the entire book in sections called Maps. Each of the six maps are indexed by lesson, lesson focus, pages and more to help guide teaching the curriculum.

Interesting Fact:

"Reading Eggs is a multi-award winning #1 learn-to-read site trusted by 12,000 schools, and 10 million children!"

The lessons were short enough at approximately 15 minutes a day so he stayed interested with 1-2 pages completed a day yet enough for him to retain the information. He was very eager to do his school work and felt just like his big sister and his aunts who are also homeschooled. It's logical as it set him up to learn sight words such as in lesson 3, the sight word "am" was used and he was able to remember it. It really helped him with his fine motor skills by working on his handwriting and coloring skills. He loved the pictures and graphics and thought many were "cute!"  In the short amount of time we reviewed the workbook, the sound and identification of letters really clicked with him. His writing has even improved. Another feature that was nice was the open and go concept as there was nothing else needed to teach.

An example from Lesson 1 compared to the short time to Lesson 4 and the letters are better such as "M."

Looking ahead, the lessons become robust such as reading and word families and fun activities like hidden pictures and connect the dots.

One of the later quizzes.

Completion certificate.

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This pretty much sums up our review of Reading Eggs' 240 Essential Reading Skills for Kindergarten. It was a hit, he loved completing the assignments and is learning so much!

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Special Offer

Reading Eggs has a wonderful online program too. We didn't utilize it for this review but have in the past for our other children. It's a program designed by experts that provide self-paced and one-on-one lessons that are geared towards each child. From my memory, it has adorable graphics, fun songs and engaging activities to keep them busy that they don't realize they are learning. There are other levels from Reading Eggs Junior (ages 2-4), to Reading Eggs (ages 3-7), Reading Eggpress (ages 7-13), and Math Seeds (ages 3-9). Reading Eggs is providing 4 FREE weeks of Reading Eggs by clicking this Reading Eggs 4 FREE weeks link.

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Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades by Zeezok Publishing Review

Some of the classes I took relative to the arts and humanities as a child were the ones that seemed to be the most fun. Although when the book work instruction was discussed, it wasn't always as fun as the hands on activity. When given the opportunity to dive in to music appreciation in a different manner, I couldn't wait to try it out with my homeschool. Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades by Zeezok Publishing grabbed my interest because it was not just a book with words. It's a user-friendly, multi-grade curriculum that consists of nine biographies of seven composers and a student book. The curriculum, although the main subject is music, covers grammar, history, character trait studies and much more turning it into an excellent resource for introducing music while re-emphasizing other subjects.

The Curriculum Details

The one year curriculum utilizes the nine biographies, the Student Activity Book and the optional use of a lapbook (sold separately) or notebook and QR codes. There are two sets of books to utilize across different grades. Book 1 is intended for K-6 and Book 2, what is being utilized for this review, is for grades 5-8. The curriculum's expectations are that each composer will require approximately four weeks which special notation that it is allowable to adapt to your child's abilities and schedule as needed.

The Student Activity Book provides lessons that were written for a variety of learners. As a supplement to the reading books, it provides activities that include geography lessons, history lessons, and much more.

The Student Activity Book provides an additional option of having the student(s) create a journaling notebook which are contained within each week's lesson. The optional lapbook provides further activities by having the student create a lapbook for all the composers with pre-printed pages that can be purchased separately. 

These are the books and eBooks for the nine composers:

• Frederick Chopin: The Early Years
• Frederick Chopin: The Later Years
• Robert Schumann and Mascot Ziff
• Adventures of Richard Wagner
• Stephen Foster and His Little Dog Tray
• The Young Brahms
• The Story of Peter Tchaikovsky
• Peter Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker Ballet
• Edward MacDowell and His Cabin in the Pines

Each book is complete with interesting facts and information about the composers. The drawings are black and white. Each book had an old school feel which I liked and challenged my student. I was disappointed that I couldn't get her as thrilled about the curriculum as I was at first but as we kept moving forward, she find herself liking it more and more. I really enjoyed the first two books on Chopin and learned a lot. As she completed each lesson, she didn't resist me as much and would tell me little facts she had learned.

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Another cool feature that is also new is the Music Appreciation for the Middle Grades App. The app allows the user to click on the link to play the composition linked to that particular lesson as shown above. There is also a QR code feature that can be utilized that I will discuss further in the review. The app contains many cool features and activities that coincide with each lesson. For example, this video about Chopin:

I have to admit that I was pretty amused over the QR codes and having the ability to hear the specific songs from each composer with the use of my phone. The technology of today is something to marvel at especially from an educational level. While studying our first composer, Chopin, it was nice to be able to play the songs as we learned more about him. The App also provides the links. Here is a quick sample of using the QR code to hear one of Chopin's compositions and then Schumann. I don't have my phone and QR code app set up to optimally use the program but it will provide a quick example:

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Our Review

Our seven week review period allowed us to complete our lessons for Chopin and start on Schumann. In future assignments, we will complete Wagner, Foster, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and McDowell. As we started with Chopin, it included a book for his earlier years and a book for his later years.

The Student Activity Book provides a Scope and Sequence that allows the teacher/parent a chance to see how each composer matches up to Music Appreciation Standards:

The Student Activity Book provides a weekly outline for each composer with all the assignments for each four weeks:

As she progressed through the weeks, she found that reading the chapter assignments and working close with the Student Activity Book helped her to be able to complete the Comprehension Questions. The answers are contained in the book.

The entire course is set up so nice to maximize the educational opportunities from the vocabulary words to even sections like Tidbits of Interest that provided fun facts such as:

"Frederic's (Chopin) thinness and weakness seems to be something he struggled with his entire life. He weighed less than a hundred pounds even as an adult."

Once we reached Schumann, she had experienced a great volume of information and enjoyed the musical notes, key signatures, music symbols and vocabulary, and the grand staff. The pages of the Student Activity Book have tab like sections to easily find each composer. Looking ahead, I reviewed each of the composers and loved the layout, the information presented and how the music lessons continued to build on the previous knowledge learned. I really look forward to my student having a chance to learn about each composer, the time period, significant world events, and much more! The bonus recipes throughout each composer's biography was a hit with my student as well and we look forward to using them during our home economics time. My plan is to have her help cook some of the recipes and provide a note-card detailing the significance of the composer at hand relative to each recipes.

Overall, I think it's an innovative, fun, creative and highly educational curriculum. We both loved the special features of the apps to hear the music or watch a video and much more. It's the right mixture of reading and activities that make up one of the most robust music curriculum I have seen.  We recommend Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades by Zeezok Publishing. I plan on purchasing another Study Activity Book for my other daughter as well as my granddaughter.



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Our Review of Britfield & the Lost Crown and Study Guide

We had an opportunity to review Britfield & the Lost Crown as well as the 83 page Study Guide. I'm pretty much game for any and all things English since I'm a dual citizen and just love England. I've been there several times so providing my children an opportunity to learn more about their grandmother's home country, is something I like to encourage. I offered the adventure novel to both my children and they both wanted to read it. For this review, however, I will utilize my 12 year old's thoughts and work. Before I dive into the novel, study guide and more, here is a quick overview of Britfield & the Lost Crown:

• Available in a 394 page physical book (soft cover or hard cover) or eBook.
• Written by C.R. Stewart, a native Californian, he has 20 years of experience in writing.
• An 83 page study guide provides additional opportunities to engage students into a fun learning experience. 
• Provides the reader with an opportunity to learn more about England as they follow best friends Tom and Sarah, orphans, through a mystery that teaches about family, loyalty and friendship. 
• The entire book and study guide are intended to be utilized over eight weeks depending on each student's ability. 
• Britfield & the Lost Crown has already received numerous awards in a short time period to include Book Excellent Award, Chanticleer (5 out of 5), 2019 Purple Dragonfly 1st Place Book Awards, Kids Buzz (5 out of 5), Story Monsters and many more!

The Book

The novel begins at Weatherly Orphanage in Aysgarth, Yorkshire, England. Weatherly was an old Elizabethan castle that has all the security built-in to keep those that were suppose to stay in, in and those not wanted, out. Tom, the main character is 12 years old, is liked by the other orphans and has a best friend named Sarah. Sarah is also 12, but is from Scotland. Tom has been at Weatherly all his life and only knows the cold, cruel, poverty of life there. On the other hand is Sarah, who only arrived two years earlier after her wealthy parents died in a mysterious accident. 

Mr. and Mrs. Grievous are the mean, unscrupulous, greedy and nasty owners of Weatherly who employ Mr. Speckle as their shady caretaker. The Grievous' purchased the castle years prior and if the orphanage remains private, the British government will continue to help pay for it. It is in their best interest to keep the orphanage to appear to be running smooth since they pocket most of the money. It was obvious by the appearance of the castle and the children, there was no oversight into their well being. The orphans occasionally sneak out to the Grievous' beautiful mansion to borrow a new book while exchanging an old one and outsmarting Wind the vicious watchdog of Mr. Speckles.

One night after Sarah got in trouble and was sent to the attic, Tom broke her out and the real adventures begin with the only clue to his past, the word BRITFIELD. The journey continues with added characters such as Detective Gowerstone and Dr. Hainsworth. Students feel part of the experience as they are transported across some of the most wonderful and beautiful places in England to which the book brings alive. Who wouldn't want to fly a hot air balloon all the way to Windsor Castle for a glimpse of the Queen? I don't want to give the book away as it has an ending that will reveal itself when you read it. There is another book following their adventures titled Britfield & the Rise of the Lion, Book II due to be released in 2020.

"I really liked how the characters developed through the story. Tom's background was sad but the adventures and mystery kept me wanting to read more," Jamie. 

My daughter LOVED the utilization of Latin at various parts of the novel.

On a side note, if the student wants to learn more about the locations and facts about the novel, the website provides excellent information to supplement from history to maps to glorious photographs. 

Also, students who want to learn more, enter contests, win prizes and collect merchandise can join the Britfield Academy and the Britfield Explorer's Club.

Study Guide

The downloadable study guide provides all the instructions needed to cover 17 chapters of the book with additional resources and answer key sections. Each section of the study guide is broken down to allow for one to two chapters to be read and discussed a week. For my review, I did have my student write her answers on a separate piece of paper because although the study guide is beautifully done with an old English paper appearance, I wanted to get the most out of my ink cartridge. With the answer keys residing in the back of the guide, she was able to complete the questions by working online from the downloaded guide.

Each section provides an opportunity for the student such as:

• Vocabulary with challenges such as finding the correct synonym for the underlined word, word searches, complete the sentence and more.
• Comprehension questions that ensures the student understood what they read.
• Going Deeper requires the student to think a bit further and helps to bring out critical thinking while utilizing grammar skills.
• Learn More with Technology allows the student to utilize research skills by looking up a specified topic and recording/reporting what was requested.

There are some other fun items on the website such as printable creativity quotes, ideas to make one's classroom more creative and much more.

Overall, I like how the study guide provides an opportunity to bring a cross array of educational learning to coincide with reading the novel. The novel is adventurous, fun and full of immense excitement. It's not a Christian based novel but there is nothing that detracts from it being an overall great educational opportunity while encouraging reading. As I always tell my children, knowledge truly is power and reading provides the opportunity. The reader never knows what will happen next which is the marking of good adventurous novel to me! As fellow authors, C.R. Stewart created a thrilling novel that inspired me and my 12 year old to write more. I would recommend the Britfield & the Lost Crown and the study guide.

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Annual Membership Plan by My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping Review

Planners and schedules are a hit or miss for me. I try to use them faithfully but always fall off the bandwagon. I do tend to write things down a lot and that has been my preferred way to track what I need to do. The problem with that, for me, is organization. I have notes everywhere to include planners and am constantly reminding my two girls to complete their work or inquiring if they did complete their work. This is why I was interested in reviewing the Annual Membership Plan by My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping. It's a planner and a calendar all in one. 

First, I'll discuss these two features. The Calendar provides a resource to track and handle appointments, errands, extra curricular activities and much more. It's also versatile in that the user can change the layout as well as color code each child's schedule. Another bonus is it can be exported and printed and is mobile. The user can even sign up for daily or weekly updates that are automatically sent to either the user's e-mail or the student's or even both. Here is an example screen shot of the calendar for today:

The Planbook provides a quick resource to stay on top of current, upcoming and overdue lessons, quizzes, tests, and projects. Lessons are marked completed or can be rescheduled or changed.

The Planbook is where the classes and details are added for each student. Once classes are added, assignments are then added. The versatility is a key to the entire program in that one can choose all the specific details for each lesson allowing the very basic information to more detailed to include dates, times and more.

Below provides a look of the lessons that I entered for one of my students. From this screen, I can edit one or all, mark done and grade.

There are many features within every functionality of the lessons. Once a lesson has been entered for the student, the user can enter a preset date to be completed by and the amount of time that it took to complete are both optional. Grade options are very versatile and do not constraint the user from providing a canned approach to each lesson and/or student. For example, types include assignment to experiment to not graded and much more.

There is always a cancel feature so the user functionality is really nice if you want to spend time exploring or if a mistake was made. 

Within the Planbook, there are options to change the course, school days, class time, grading settings and more. It's easy to add new courses as update current ones assigned.

Another feature I like is what is called Create-A-Plan. This has four options:

1. Quick Split which will divide the material into evenly distributed lessons. This is good for books which is why I used it for her reading assignment.
2. Quick Split Advanced is for more complex assignments with naming patterns.
3. Rapid Repeat is for pre-selected lessons such as household chores or other repeating tasks.
4. Rapid Repeat Advanced provides more flexibility with the steps or increments.

For my example on the Quick Split, I'm going to utilize her reading assignments. I can set the start date of the term or utilize "today." What is also nice is you can share the details across students thus saving time in having to keep re-entering information.

After completing the specifics, the lessons are generated for the student.

There are many other great features with drop down menus for each student allowing quick access to topics such as Attendance, Awards, Standardized Tests and much more.

The next features include the Homeroom and Reports. Homeroom provides the user a quick look as to each student's progress. This view is only a sampling of the page that is shown but provides a great look at to the complexity of what is provided. It's sort of the one stop shop for looking at where your child is with their lessons and the term they are in. 

Reports are a really nice feature since it allows the user to create lesson plans, course descriptions, transcripts, report cards and more. Here is an example of a transcript which to me, looks really professional:

The Teacher's Aid Homework Helper provides all the assistance needed to get started and continue with the tools to aid in success.  It also provides alerts to bring items that need attention to the user as well as the ability to see when assignments are completed.

Other key features to note:

• 100% mobile friendly - also uses QR codes
• Generate lessons on iPads
• Generate and download transcripts on phones
• Creation of unlimited students

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I only covered a portion of what is offered with the Annual Membership Plan by My School Year Homeschool Record Keeping. It's really a great resource to have for the homeschool parent.

Check out what others on the Homeschool Review Crew, a division of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, thought by clicking on the (photo) link below: 

Our Review of Eighth Grade Literature Guide Set by Memoria Press

One of the reasons I chose to homeschool is I want to be able to teach from a classical Christian education standpoint. I've been homeschooling for many years and have tried a variety of different homeschool curriculum even before joining the Crew which is how I have been introduced to Memoria Press. I was delighted to participate in the review for the Eighth Grade Literature Guide Set. This was an amazing comprehensive curriculum that provided some of the classics with accompanied literature guides such as Wind in the Willows Literature Guide, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Literature Guide, Treasure Island Literature Guide, and As You Like It Literature Guide. The premise behind the literature study guides is that they train the students to become active readers. Fortunately for me, my girls already love to read.

The curriculum, four literature guides with four corresponding novels to include teachers guides, works by utilizing spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing skills. Each lesson contains a work study that helps to build the student's vocabulary. The comprehension questions helps to build a student's comfort and confidence in understanding what they read and the important part of what they read. This is vital for educational tests from my experience as they tend to always ask those type of questions. The composition gears them to write clearly and concise. The expectation is the child/student will complete each novel in approximately six or seven weeks.

For my review, I will cover Treasure Island a bit more thorough than the others with examples. Other items, such as Contents, Introductions, etc., that are the same across all Literature Guides, will be reviewed first. 

Teacher Guide

Teacher's Guide begins with a clear table of contents that helps to navigate quickly across chapters, discussion question keys, quizzes and final test with keys as well as an appendix of terms specific to the literature classic that Guide corresponds to. The Teacher's Guide provides helpful information on utilizing the Literature Guides with older or younger students. This is an active course for the teacher/parent to help the student progress through each lesson which I really enjoyed learning more along side my daughter. 

Student Study Guide

The Student Study Guide has the same table of contents and information on beginning the Literature Guide. There is an introduction of the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, that was very interesting and provided a nice beginning for answering the assignments.

The Guide contains one or more chapters per set of questions that appear across all the Literature Guides that include:

• Reading Notes includes important aspects of the novel such as Jim Hawkins, the narrator of the story or the Captain Billy Bones who was the old seaman.
• Vocabulary words are words or phrases obtained from the novel that will require the student to write out the meaning. The instructional states to encourage the student to say one synonym for each word as well.
• Comprehension Questions are either written or can be completed orally if one would be better suited for your child/student. The task of writing helps to prepare the child/student to learn and think as well as write concisely.
• Quotation and Discussion Questions can be utilized orally or written in the Student Study Guide. It provides an opportunity to encourage the child/student to think higher about the topic at hand. 
• Enrichment activities include composition, copywork, dictation, research, mapping, drawing, poetry, and more.
• Unit Review and Tests.

Treasure Island Literature Guide

The 89 page Student Guide provides lessons for the novel's 36 chapters. For Chapters 1 and 2 of Treasure Island, my daughter began working on the Student Study Guide questions after reading.

For Chapter 3, she continued working on her own which was nice she was able to complete her work with little supervision. We did discuss the answers and we worked on the Discussion questions orally.

There is an appendix to this Student Guide that provides a quick reference to the vocabulary words and other great information like parts of a ship and sails. The extra information that corresponds with the novel is a nice feature.

She tends to switch from room to room and floor to desk when completing her school work. She's gearing up to take the first quiz and did a good job.

The Wind in the Willows Literature Guide

The 53 page Student Guide covered the novel's 12 chapters. I just started this one with my other daughter as it seemed like a good place to start with her. Treasure Island seemed to be a little more difficult than The Wind in the Willows is what guided my decision. The novels chosen are lesser known to this generation and I think it's a great way to expand their breadth of literary works and writing styles. The questions and format is similar to Treasure Island's Literature Guide. Here is a sample from one of her pages and prior to sitting down and discussing her answers:

As was the Treasure Island assignments, Memoria Press does an excellent job with thought-provoking questions requiring the child/student to think and not just jot down what they remembered.

She is a budding author and tends to like literature programs where she can increase her knowledge and skill. She said she liked how the questions made her think deeper. Unfortunately, I didn't get to dive deeper into this classic as she decided late in the review cycle to want to try it out.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Literature Guide and 
As You Like It Literature Guide are set up like the other two Literature Guides with the question and other lesson activities. I plan to utilize all four with my one daughter and will also purchase extra Student Guides for each one so my other daughter can complete the course. I am a huge fan of Memoria Press and always look forward to their next course or curriculum we try.

Stay up to date with Memoria Press on the following social media platforms:  Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube. and Instagram.

Overall, I highly recommend Memoria Press and the Eighth Grade Literature Guide Set.

Check out what others on the Homeschool Review Crew, a division of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, thought by clicking on the (photo) link below: