When we were preparing for him to start Kindergarten a couple of months ago my five-year-old informed me that he knew how to write the letter B for Benjamin and did not need any more letters.  I did not push the issue and decided that he would learn when he was ready. While he was not interested in sitting down and learning his letters with any traditional means, he enjoys more creative outlets like clay, sand, and dry erase markers. Knowing how much he likes dry erase markers I was excited to let him try Channie’s Dry Erase Flashcard For Alphabet & Number by Channie’s Visual Handwriting & Math workbooks. In addition, he loves math and numbers and we were able to check out their math workbook: Neat Numbers.

When we received these products my son was very eager to try out the dry erase flash cards.  For him, any excuse to use markers is a good one. For me, any program that will help him enjoy learning his letters is a win. This product was great because it included shaded blocks to help him maintain size uniformity, and dotted examples for him to trace and blank blocks for him to write independently. I really appreciated the fact that they were small and easy to finish even with a short attention span and developing fine motor skills.  Depending on his desire to work on them, we could take just a couple of minutes and do one letter or he could work on four or five different letters or numbers in a sitting if he was enjoying it and staying focused.

The Neat Numbers workbook has three different types of pages working on neat numbers as well as basic math facts. The first type of page allows them to trace the number multiple times. The second type of pages gives them an example and allows them to write the number independently into each block. As the learner progresses through the book, they reach pages which have basic addition and subtraction facts that they solve and write the number into the block. Those pages progress from facts with pictures to numbers only and eventually blank squares where they could write their own facts.

My son was doing very well with the tracing pages but is still working on using the blocks to help him with uniformity and sizing for his numbers. I found that sometimes there were so many blocks on a page that we needed to split it up into more than one session for him to focus and do his best on each practice.

If you have a student that is struggling with handwriting and needs more assistance, these and the other great products offered by Channies may be just the solution you have been looking for. The extra guides and colored shading can offer the support needed to make them successful. Other Review Crew families reviewed these and other Channies products so be sure to click on the graphic below to check out their reviews.

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library 

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

When the request came out for reviewers for the Smartick math program, we were just getting back into the swing of school and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add another program to the list. However, signed up for the free trial and let my daughter give a try. She stayed up way too late that night trying the program and was very quick to let me know she wanted in on this review. She was thrilled when she found out that she was going to get the chance to use Smartick on a regular basis, even though math is not her favorite subject.

Smartick recommends using the program about 15 minutes a day four to five times per week. Each day they give the student an assignment that takes about 15 minutes, in addition there are competitions that the child can choose to participate in to practice those skills and earn points, called “ticks”.  Each user also has a virtual house that they can decorate. As they earn ticks, they can spend them to buy things for their character or house. In addition, as they reach a certain number of ticks their house changes and new amenities are added. For example, my daughter is really excited that she has almost earned enough ticks to get the house with a swimming pool.

When I asked my daughter how she felt about the program after having used if for about a month she said, ” I love the program and how you can earn ticks and get things to decorate your house. The wishing well is really cool. I wished for a swimming pool and after I wished they showed me a button. It told me that after you got a certain amount of ticks you could get a house with a pool. I like how there are lessons that teach you things and also competitions that you can do to try and earn ticks, if you win. There is also a thing where you can get friends and you can see their house, get them presents, and see how many ticks they have. There is also a button in the middle where you can play games when you first log-in for the day you have to do a session and then you can decide what to do after your session is done. ”

When I asked her what she had learned from the program or how it had helped her, she said that the competitions had really helped her build speed with her multiplication facts.

I love that this program has made my daughter enjoy doing math. She is really motivated to earn the ticks and almost every day she has spent more time than required, sometimes as much as an hour, working on the program in order to earn more ticks. As a parent another component of this program that I appreciate is that each day they send me an e-mail that tells me how she did during her 15-minute session. It gives information on the types of problems, percentage correct, and speed of completion. This makes it very easy for me to know that she is staying on track or catch any problems early.

In addition to the e-mails, I can log into my parent dashboard and view lots of additional information. I can see a calendar of which days she completed a session, how she did on each session, a break down of the exact problems that she completed, any questions she has asked the wishing well, how many ticks she has earned, and how she has spent ticks. This makes it very easy to monitor her progress.

My only real concern with this program is the friends program. As a family our children are not allowed to have online friends that we do not have a personal connection with. On this program, anyone can request to be friends with any other user. We made the decision to have our daughter not accept friend request except for a few from children of other Review Crew families. She honored this request and we did not have any problems but I had to depend on her honesty in that policy. The friends feature also did not share very personal information but did allow them to see into the virtual house and see their ticks.

If you are looking for a way to get your student to willing spend time practicing math facts and concepts, a subscription to Smartick might just be the answer to your problems. In just 15 minutes a day your child can increase speed and accuracy while having fun with math. Be sure to check out the other Crew Reviews by clicking on the link below!

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library 

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

With four children ranging in age from 19 months to 13 years, it is not often that I find a toy or activity that they can all enjoy. However, Brain Blox has created a toy that worked for them all! We received a set of Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks a few weeks ago to review and they have become a family favorite. When I agreed to review them, I was mostly thinking about my five-year-old son but in the end, everyone enjoyed them.

The Wooden Building Planks are sets of 100, 200, or 300 wooden planks that can be put together in thousands of different ways to create. The planks are all made from 100% all-natural, precision-cut, chemical-free, New Zealand natural pine wood.  We received the 200-plank set which also includes a booklet of ideas and a nice red drawstring bag to keep all of the wooden planks together when they are not being used.

I started out by just letting the children play with the planks and decide what they wanted to build. Sometimes they built alone, other times they siblings worked together or had an adult help out. Through this they created a variety of really neat projects. My five-year-old make a pier with a boat launch and a ship. Then together we created a barn where he put his farm animals and tractor.   My older son created complex towers and games. The toddler would stack the planks on top of each other and knock them down again.

After they had some time to play around with them, I took some of the ideas from the Brain Blox website and used the planks for a bit of ‘school’ with my five-year-old. There were some ideas for creating letters from the planks and so I had him work on creating his name out of planks. This was far more entertaining to him that simply writing his name and provided good practice at making and recognizing the letters.

In addition to the basic building ideas the website includes puzzles which you use the planks and logic to solve, building suggestions that range from simple to complex, and even a spatial awareness curriculum based around the planks. We look forward to continuing to use these planks in a variety of ways for many years to come. We are even considering purchasing the larger set for Christmas.

As a mom of four children, I have gotten pretty picky about toys with lots of pieces. I hate hunting for missing pieces, stepping on pieces left out, etc. However, the fun, creativity, and engagement created by this set made the pieces totally worth it. The nice drawstring bag also makes it fairly easy to keep the pieces together.  I highly encourage you to visit Brain Blox for more information and then click on the graphic below and check out the experiences of the other Crew members. You can also purchase the set from Amazon. Also check out my review of another Brain Blox product, Family Fun Chess, from earlier this week.

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library 

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.