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Easter’s On It’s Way

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Review: Building Thinking Skills Book 1

I love having thinking skills as a class. I think it really helps with problem solving and quick thinking. Building Thinking Skills  has 10 chapters in it that go over lots of critical thinking concepts. It will cover shapes, similar and different, sequences, classifications, analogies and describing things. Some of the concepts will have figural and verbal chapters. All the answers are in the back of the book incase you need them. I absolutely love that the pages are perforated. I like being about to take the papers out and put the ones will be doing that week in her binder. One thing that I do not like is that the book is all in black and white. I wish it was more colorful. Somethings in this book have been a review for our daughter since she knows her shapes and other things. While somethings even if they are not knew the problems are more of a challenge for her.  Some of the problems will want the child to write in the blanks. If your child is not yet writing then maybe this workbo

Review: Critical and Creative 2

I really like having a critical thinking class in our homeschool. It is a really important skills that all children should learn. We have used this booklet previously and the reason I kept it was because our daughter really likes to use it. There will be coloring, drawing, fill in the blank, multiple choice questions, word scrabbles and a lot of writing in Critical and Creative 2 . Besides critical thinking skills there are also math and literacy skills in this workbook. There are 6 main subjects covered which are throughout the year, animals, places, time to eat, human body and my world. Each sub section has a 3 pages to complete over that topic. Some main topics have more sub sections than others the biggest being animals and my world. There is not a lot of work to complete on each page but the work is pretty fun for kids to do. Critical thinking class is one that our daughter always loves and I have no issues with her completing the assignments in a timely manner. All of the sub top

Review: Italic Handwriting C

If you have read our reviews before you may know that we use Italic Handwriting for our handwriting lessons in English class. I really like this workbook because the writing is very nice and neat. As the title suggest the letters are slightly italicized. Instead of writing in the booklet itself I put a sheet protector over them so that we can reuse the curriculum as many times as we like. We typically go through the book multiple times before moving onto the next one. Doing this allows our daughter to get more practice in then just doing every page one time. Italic Handwriting Books A  and B have the kid friendly paper with the special lines for when kids are just starting out with writing. This installment has the same kind of lines to write on but they get smaller as you go through the book. This way the child can transition into writing without having a top, middle and bottom line. When you first start with Book C there is a pre-test so that you can asses where your child is at be

Tips & Tricks: Spelling Lessons

 Here are some quick videos on English spelling lessons. Hope they help you out. /k/ at the beginning /k/ at the end Double F, L and S at the End

Tips & Tricks: Using A Planner

Recently I got asked how to use a planner. So here is how I use mine. First off I do not have a homeschool planner instead I have my regular personal planner and my homeschool schedule that I make on Timberdoodle's online scheduler . I love love love my Personal Planner. You can literally customize everything in it! I choose the covers, the layout, all the extras in it, holidays, special dates, what date the planner starts on and so much more. I have used them for 8 years and just recently ordered my 9th planner from them. I write what chores I need to get done for the week and anything that we are doing that week. You can get different sizes of planners. There is a huge one that I would suggest for those that want to use it as a homeschool planner. I get a month overview in my planner and use that to put stickers for the main things of the month. This will include things like if I get sick, the girls having a sleepover, field trips, appointments, etc. I also use planner stickers.

Tips & Tricks: Reading Lessons

Here are some quick videos on different English reading lessons. I hope these help explain why certain words are pronounced the way they are. There will always be exceptions to the rules but for the majority of English words these rules apply. VCCV Words (vowel consonant consonant vowel) Open VS Closed Syllables VCV Words Pt 1   (vowel consonant vowel) VCV Words Pt 2  (vowel consonant vowel) Compound Words Silent e Job 1

Review: Have I Got A Story For You!

We got an opportunity to check out Have I Got A Story For You! I had never heard of this company before but the videos are by HiGasfy. We are reviewing their renaissance curriculum. I went with this one because in history this year that the time period we are going over. This curriculum has 12 videos you download, a lesson plan, flashcards and a PowerPoint. Downloading the files was a bit annoying because every zip file was missing one of the files so I had to go back to the download link and download them individually. The lesson plans have different ideas of what you can do after you watch the episodes. There are a lot of different ideas so that you can incorporate the videos into other subjects that you teach. The other activities that you can do include art, writing, science and geography. There is a list vocabulary words and even critical thinking questions. I love that critical thinking is in there so that kids have to really think about the questions versus just giving a blanke