The UPS Elf!

Our “12 Hours of Christmas” and “Homeschool Homestretch” events are done. Many happy prize winners have already received their goodies, or have their noses pressed to their front door windows eagerly awaiting them! Now it’s time to focus on my home, family and our church festivities.

WPDBUT I wanted to share what came in MY mail today! Santa’s brown elf (not to be confused with wood elves, LOTR fans) visited us today. I know we homeschoolers get a special thrill from receiving boxes of books, so I thought I’d post a pic so we can squeal together!

I’ll be reviewing these items here after the New Year. Some of my favorite things, and I get to test drive them for free!

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This felt like “Merry Christmas to me” when I opened it!

 

Homeschool Product Review: Order Out of Chaos Academic Planner

chaos1My sweet friend Leslie Josel, sent me a couple of her beautiful Academic Planners to take for a test drive this school year. I was going to wait until we were actually using them to post a review; but I’m so excited about them that I wanted to jump right on it and get the word out, so folks could get theirs ordered before August rolls around!

The planner is available in four different styles, to suit your taste. I loved the blue kaleidoscope design! The front and back are beautifully colored vinyl…very durable! I love the size of this planner, too…a generous 7″ x 11″ which gives plenty of space to write, as compared to impractical “pocket” planners. It is also 3-hole punched to fit into a binder, if you so wish!

I’ll post some photos here to show you the inside (click to enlarge). This is a great, intuitive organizational tool that is easy to use, without a lot of flipping around…and it teaches the student how to own their school planning!

If you need help, Leslie will hold your hand a little bit!
If you need help, Leslie will hold your hand a little bit!
Write in your subjects and activities once on the left, and they line up with each day's pages!
Write in your subjects and activities once on the left…
Neat vinyl storage pocket in back!
Neat vinyl storage pocket in back!

Here is a nifty video, explaining the perks of this great tool:

As a perfect accompaniment to the planners, Leslie was gracious enough to include her new book, “What’s the Deal With Teens and Time Management?”  What a great pairing! The handy little book covers everything from procrastination (oh boy!) to homework strategies. These are important life skills for your teen! Click here to preview!

Speaking of teens managing their time, while you’re at it, sign up for the FREE Back to School Webinar (Monday, August 17, 8pm EST), targeted specifically for middle and high schoolers, titled “Have You Done Your Homework Yet?”–click here!

Homeschool Product Review: Daily Grams

dailygramsGrammar is one of those things that most students find pretty boring. So, as homeschooling parents, we look for palatable ways to accomplish what we know needs to be done…covering the basics of grammar so that our students can express themselves well. I’m going to tell you about a tool which can help you reach this goal!

I first heard about Daily Grams from a missionary friend who had used it for her children. When we hit a road block with our current program, I decided to finally look into it.

I chose to use the Junior/Senior High version for our son, who is a freshman. He had battled with some reading disability through his earlier school years, so I was looking for something that would keep things fresh but without being cumbersome. Daily Grams did just that.

This level of Daily Grams is set up more as a review of what is learned in earlier grades. There is a worksheet for each day, featuring reviews on basic concepts like capitalization and punctuation (often requiring a re-write of a given sentence which includes some errors). There are also some simple exercises to remind students of the various parts of speech, as well as sentence combining sections which help with composition skills.

The information on a day’s worksheet is challenging enough not to be tedious, and varied enough to keep all of these aspects of grammar well-groomed. The workbook has 180 daily lessons in it…enough to carry a student through an entire school year. The answers are included in an index in the back of the workbook.

In doing these daily review pages, the teacher/parent can make note of skills which are a bit rusty and may require a bit of refreshing. I’ve found this to be a well-rounded, thorough (but concise) review workbook which reminds students of types of letters, types of sentences and clauses, subject/verb agreement, active/passive voice and more. It is not designed to teach a lesson (although some questions may provide a little “retrieval cue”) as much as it is to keep things sharp for the larger papers and projects which will be written during the upper level years.

I would recommend this product for students who have had a solid foundation in grammar. It will be frustrating for a teen who can’t define terms such as gerund or predicate nominative. A good grasp of more than just the basic parts of speech is a prerequisite to using this particular workbook. Check out the earlier levels of Easy Grammar by clicking here!

Note: I received a copy of the featured workbook in exchange for an honest review.