Reading Eggs

We've been using Reading eggs with Rocket boy since just before he turned 4.  He started off slow and even had several months when it wasn't utilized but then he would get hooked and you could can usually find him at the computer doing his daily lesson before I even get out of bed in the morning.  Now he's still doing a lesson at least once a day but usually not until mid morning.

So what is Reading Eggs?

It's an interactive website with 120 lessons designed to teach your child to read.  It's also a whole online world, where the child has their own avatar they can customize, a house they can decorate and places they can visit on 'Reggie's bus'

There are games and songs that helps with reading, typing and spelling.  You can also purchase book packs which support the lessons but we haven't bought these so can't say much about them.

Reading Eggs is a subscription website with options of 6 month or yearly subscriptions.  What's even better, if you're a New Zealand homeschooler you can join the National Council of Home Educators New Zealand for free and have access to a discounted rate around 25% of the full price.

Would I recommend Reading Eggs?

Yes!  But.... it's is not a complete reading curriculum in my opinion.  It does work well with Rocket Boy but I back it up with a lot of read books and early readers from the library. I also find that it's too easy to fake your way through some levels, as Rocket Boy may keep clicking on any answer until he finds the correct one without actually reading.

How did I choose Rocket Boys Curriculum?

In many of the homeschooling facebook groups I'm apart of there have been people asking about curriculum lately.  While what I use is all listed in Rocket boys exemption application I thought I might share how I actually came about choosing each piece.

I like to read blogs, and I read a lot of homeschooling blogs.  There are some very popular american homeschooling blogs who post about their curriculum choices at the beginning of their school year in September each year.  I look forward to these posts and check out all their curriculum choices.

This is how I find out about many different curriculum I've never heard about before.  The iHomeschool Network do a "Not Back to School Blog Hop" where hundreds and hundreds of bloggers have linked up their posts about their curriculum choices.

After reading many many blogs I learning about so many different kinds of curriculum choices I then started searching for reviews on any ones that look even slightly interesting.

My favourite thing I've found so far this way is the Handwriting without Tears curriculum.  I'm also very keen to look into the All about Reading and All about Spelling curriculum.

In New Zealand we're very fortunate to get paid a supervisory allowance which I can use towards the purchasing anything I choose to.  The amount is not a lot and will not cover all costs, but it any money helps.

Reading Journal

I first saw the  R.E.A.D. I.T. reading journal when my friends son was doing his homework from the local country school.  As part of his daily homework he had to read a book each night, the books were supplied by the school.  After reading his mother would list the name of the book, add a comment for the teacher and the son would add a mouth to the face.

As I’m Rocket Boys teacher I don’t need to add any comments.

After each 25 nights there is a certificate, the book comes with stickers to add to the certificates, which I’ve pulled out and hidden so neither Rocket Boy or Ladybug decide to use them.  Rocket Boy has achieved his 25 nights certificate but as it has his real name on it I decided not to show a picture of it.

There are also reading tips designed for the parents throughout the book.

At only $4.25 each this journals are great value.

Handwriting Without Tears

If there is one thing that Rocket boy just doesn't enjoy, it's handwriting. This also means it's now the one thing I do not enjoy teaching. It is always a struggle and he always ends up playing up before long and we never get through everything I had planned to cover.

To try to make handwriting more fun and less of a chore I started the Handwriting without Tears program with Rocket boy.

I can't remember which blog I read about this program first but after that one blog post I needed to know more and off to Google I went.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that this was the program for Rocket Boy.  It teaches using multisensory tools, and takes a lot of pressure off the actual handwriting part and for Rocket Boy it is fun and he loves it.

The different sensory tools we use are wooden pieces, a magnetic board with magnetic pieces you can use to ‘stamp’ the letter and a ‘chalk’ piece to write the letter, a chalk board, play dough, and a work book.

There are also HEAPS of videos on youtube with instructions on using the program and the following video which shows the wet, dry, try activity is what sold me on the program.



We’re just over half way through the alphabet and I see Rocket Boy completing the current work book within the next two months.  I already have the next two work books set aside waiting for him, as well as a second copy of the first work book waiting for Ladybug.

How do you teach your children handwriting? Have you ever tried Handwriting without tears?  

The Blue Book

I brought the Learning Language Arts Through Literature - The Blue Book last year when I was going through my ‘must buy stuff now’ phase.  I did end up buying some stuff which will probably never see the light of day at least not at my house (really need to start selling off some of this stuff) but this one has come out three different times so far.

It actually seems like a great program which covers phonics, reading, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, handwriting and higher-order reasoning.  The teacher book has weekly and daily lesson plans, so all you have to do is read ahead and make sure you have all the supplies needed.

The boxed set, which I got, comes with the Teacher’s Manual, 28 Story Readers, Colour Coded Cards (letter cards, sight word cards, game cards, and letter dice) and a Student Activity Book (as mine was 2^nd hand this was missing from the set but was easily replaced).  The program also uses classic children books (like Caps for Sale, and Goodnight Moon) which I was lucky to get about half of them with the program but the rest are available from my local library so I’ve been able to reserve the ones I need as I need them.

When I first got this when Rocket Boy was 4 years old I was into it as soon as it arrived and I was straight into it trying to get Rocket Boy on board but he just wasn’t ready, so it was put away and forgotten about.

As Rocket Boys reading level has improved with the online reading program we use (Reading Eggs, which I’ll post about later) I wanted him reading some real books rather than the ebooks he’s used to so I dug out the Readers from this program and it only took us a week to get through the first 12 books, but the next book was a little too difficult for him, as it was different sounds he had been focusing on.

This week I decided to pull the whole program out and we’ve started it for the last time from the very beginning.  It is a bit simple for him in some areas, but in others he’s right on par.

We did manage to complete a weeks’ worth of lesson plans in one morning, I did skip several things he didn’t need like identifying letters and learning sounds but I’m hoping that we can get through the first 17 lessons in only a couple of months (each lesson is designed to take a week)

I’ll post a weekly wrap up tomorrow which will show the kind of activities Rocket Boy completed this week.

Little Passports

How to teach young kids about geography? Needs to be fun and exciting and personalised, and of course involve as little effort/organisation by the parents as there is already plenty to do when you’re home schooling anyway.

So what’s the answer?  Well for me it was little passports.

I read a lot of home schooling blogs, and see all these great products and curriculum.  It makes things easier for me when I need to work out what curriculum I want to do with my kids, and I must admit it also helps me with the list of stuff I don’t want to do with my kids.

One of the products that kept coming up in these blogs with positive reviews was little passports.  This is a monthly subscription where your child is sent a parcel each month from two characters called Sam and Sofia. 
 

From the website

Every month, our globetrotting characters Sam and Sofia visit a new country and send your child an exciting package in the mail including a letter, fun and unique souvenirs, stickers, photos, access to online games/activities in our Boarding Zone and more! A total of 24 different adventures available

I contacted the company to see if there allowed international purchases and was very pleased to learn that while they can’t offer a subscription internationally they are happy to sell it as a package all I had to do was choose between the 12 or 24 month options.

This was a LOT of money especially as the postage worked out to be  just over $80NZ but after some saving I purchased the 24 month package which arrived in May last year.

In the huge box that arrived each months parcel was already sealed and addressed to both Rocket boy and Ladybug so all I had to do was look up which month came next and sneak the parcel out to the letter box when the kids weren’t looking.

Also as I control when the parcels are ‘sent’ I can work them around our busy life and if I feel we’re not ready for the next one I just wait a little longer before getting it out.

So far we’ve had the Explorer Kit which includes a cool little suitcase to store everything you receive, a map to put up on the wall so you can find all the different countries Sam and Sofia visit, a passport to put in the country flag stickers which you receive in each package and also stickers, a letter, photo and a code for their online games and activities.

So far we’ve covered Brazil, Japan and France.  Rocket boy is mainly only interested in the souvenirs that come in each parcel with an amethyst (pretty rock with purple crystals) from Brazil.  A sushi eraser and origami paper from Japan, of which the eraser was lost by the next day and the paper got used to make paper cranes until one of Rocket boys friends made a paper air plane so they got used up very fast.  The France package had a poster which either Rocket boy or Ladybug was interested in so it’s currently living in the suitcase.

We haven’t spent the time on the activity sheets or online games and activities as I would have liked but when we started this Rocket boy was online 4 and couldn’t read.  Now at 5 he can read although not a huge amount and is probably ready to do the online games with a little help. 

While Rocket boy is still on the young side for this program we still have over a years worth of packages to open and Rocket boy is only going to get older and more able to complete these activities with less and less parental help.

I believe this program was worth all the money and will be able to be used by all my kids to learn a bit about the world before stepping up to a more detailed geography curriculum.

Do you or your kids subscribe to little passports?  What do you think of it? 

Do you use another curriculum for geography?  If so I’ll love to know more.