Chess is one of those games that people seem to really love or really hate. My older children have been playing off and on for several years, but it was always too challenging for my five-year-old son, even though he wanted to play with them. You can imagine this created a bit of drama in our house at times, which is why I was delighted to give Fun Family Chess  by Brain Blox a try.

When the game arrived, they were excited to unbox it, check it out, and get started. They loved how it all fit together inside the box, and I loved how it was sturdy and durable (with four kids, I don’t need games that are easily destroyed). The contrast of the black and white pattern made it eye-catching and appealing.

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There were two sets of instructions included with the Fun Family Chess set. The first set was for a simplified game that is a great introduction to chess. In this game, you use a special die that tells you which piece to move instead of using more strategy to determine your next move. There are also two reference cards which show how each piece can move to help players get used to the various pieces. The board itself is a wooden board that folds in the middle to create a box to hold the pieces, die, and reference cards. It is painted black and white and the pieces are also black and white. Also, if you prefer, there are video instructions located on their website to help with any questions.

We had the opportunity to play the game multiple times over the last few weeks. The older children played against each other, taught their grandmother, and finally taught my five-year-old how to play chess. We would pull out the game in the evenings and two people would play while we all sat around the living room talking and laughing together.  The die and easier rules leveled the playing field for younger (or newer) players and gave everyone a chance to win while getting familiar with the rules of the game.

The older children felt like the easier set of rules was a step backwards for them and preferred sticking with the regular chess rules, but we found that the easier set of rules was perfect for my younger son. The great thing about the game is that you can use the same game with either set of rules making it something that the whole family can play. It packs neatly into the case and therefore would make a great game to bring with you on a vacation or road trip to keep everyone occupied in a hotel room or at a campsite.

Overall, we enjoyed the game and think it is a great fit for families with younger children or those who are new to chess. It probably is not necessary for those that are already actively playing, unless they are wanting to teach younger siblings or friends who are not familiar with the game. However, since it is a standard chess set it can be easily used by those that wish to play by the regular chess rules.

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 stay tuned for a review of another Brain Blox product, Wooden Building Planks, later this week.

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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.

Literature is one of my favorite subjects to teach because our entire family loves good books.  When I looked over the titles that were offered for this Progeny Press review, I was very excited to get one for each of my older children to work through on books that I knew they would love. For my daughter, an eleven-year-old sixth grader, I chose the Little House on the Prairie Study Guide because I knew she would love that book and we had not gotten around to reading it with her. My son is a thirteen-year-old eighth grader but a very strong reader, therefore, I decided that he could handle the Hound of the Baskervilles Study Guide even though it was recommended for grades 9-12.

When I started looking over the Hound of the Baskervilles Study Guide it recommended having my son read the entire book,then go back and work through the book and the study guide section by section. This approach works well with for my son because he hates to stop reading in the middle of a good book in order to answer questions. Since he is working on being more independent with his work, I gave him the book and the study guide, showed him what to do and gave him four weeks to complete the process. This is a shorter time frame than typically allowed for this study guide but I did not have him complete all of the activities and I knew that he was a fast reader and could complete it with-in that time frame. This set up worked really well for him.

He read the book the first week and then set to work on the study guide. The study guide is designed as a fillable PDF so he was able to download it onto his laptop and fill in the answers, then save it for me to check.  The Hound of the Baskervilles Study Guide broke the book down into 6 sections (with an additional overview section at the end) and had a variety of assignments for each section. These included comprehension questions, vocabulary, analysis, sections about literary elements, and optional hands-on activities and writing assignments. My son answered the questions for each section and completed a few of the hands on activities. Since he is working through a different writing program, I chose to let him skip the optional writing assignments but they would work well to make it a complete language arts program.

My daughter reads a bit slower and prefers to be thinking about the questions as she reads. I felt like having her read the whole book and then go back and re-read the sections would feel very challenging for her, and so I had her just read a section of the novel each week and complete the accompanying section in the Little House on the Prairie Study Guide. These sections were set up very similarly to the Hound of Baskervilles Study Guide but the questions were geared towards upper elementary and early middle grades.  She completed all of the questions and an option activity from each section. Some of the activities that she chose were weaving a place mat from paper, watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie from our DVD collection, and her favorite was pretending to be Laura while eating a peppermint stick. She had to lick the stick into a sharp point like Laura did in one of the chapters of the book.

We enjoyed these study guides. While I personally would not want to do that much analysis and questioning with each book that we complete, I think that these are a great way to really dig deep into the novel. I highly encourage you to visit Progeny Press for more information and then click on the graphic below and check out the experiences of the other Crew members who reviewed a variety of different titles.. You can also check out our review of Progeny Press The Scavengers eGuide from last year.

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.

While not formally diagnosed, my oldest son has struggled with ADHD since he was in kindergarten. When the opportunity to review Soundsory presented itself, I let him decide if it was a program he wanted to try.  He is very bright but sometimes struggles with focus and completing routine tasks. He has been working on various strategies to help him be successful with his focus and decided that this would be a good program to try.

Soundsory was created by Sound for Life Ltd and is a program designed to help people with ADHD, sensory disorders, motor delays, Autism, and more. The program involves music which has been processed with neuro-acoustic modifications. For approximately twenty-five minutes each day the child listens to this music which is included on the headphones that come with the program. (The program also comes with a nice case for the headphones to help keep them safe.) Sound for Life Ltd states that, ” The music is delivered through air and bone-conduction (the bone-conduction transducer is on top of the skull), for a complete auditory stimulation.” While they are listening, they are encouraged to do other things such as walking, drawing, Legos, or crafts.  My son enjoyed the time working on Legos in his room most days, though he would occasionally listen while we were riding or while he took a walk.

Then he listened to an additional three to five minutes of music while completing a series of movement based exercises. These exercises are not strenuous and require no additional props.  There are online videos of each exercise so that the child knows what to do. Some examples of the exercises include body taps, downward dog, front/back jumping, x-stretch, and hopping in place.

In total, this program took about thirty minutes a day and is designed to last for forty daily sessions. Since the child can be doing other things while they listen it doesn’t really take thirty minutes of time out of your day and is easily fit into most schedules.

My son said that the headphones were very comfortable and the music was fine, though not as exciting as the music that he normally chooses. He enjoyed the chance to relax with the music and his Legos each day. Honestly, we are struggling a bit with whether or not it helped his focus. Since the focus is very subjective and already varied a bit from day to day it is harder to give an objective measure. He is planning to finish out the program (we have not quite completed all 40 days) and is open to trying the program again in a few weeks. Sound for Life Ltd recommends that you take a two-week break in between each 40 day session of Soundsory .

There were a variety of families that tried out Soundsory for many different needs and situations. If you have a child that is struggling with sensory disorders, processing disorders, focus issues or autism, I highly encourage you to visit Sound for Life Ltd for more information and then click on the graphic below and check out the experiences of the other Crew members.

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 opportunity to review the HiGASFY Art History Video Series was opened, I showed the children a sample and they decided they were willing to give it a try even though it meant starting it before our summer break was officially over. Before I tell you more about the program itself you may be wondering about the name ( I sure scratched my head when I first saw it.) The meaning of the name is two-fold. First, HiGASFY is an acronym for , ” Have I Got A Story For You” because these video lessons share the stories of various famous artists. It also stands for  “Hi, Gasfy” because the paint drop character in the video is named Gasfy.

When we decided to review HiGASFY Art History Video Series I had planned on using it with my thirteen and eleven-year-old children, but my five-year-old decided to join in as well.  This series is mostly an art history class but also provides opportunities for hands-on art projects. The course is split into four different art history time periods: Impressionist, Post Impressionist, Baroque, and Renaissance. Each period includes a series of videos, lesson plans, and flash cards. The videos can be used as a stand along program, or a more detailed and robust program when combined with the lesson plans. Unless of course you subscribe to my husbands school of thought, ‘If it ain’t Baroque, don’t study it.’

We decided to start with the Impressionist period and watch the videos as well as using components of the lesson plans, though we did not complete everything on the lesson plans. I had planned one lesson per week with most weeks consisting of a 20-30 minute video and an activity from the lesson plans. My children enjoyed it so much that they often requested more lessons. The videos were delightfully engaging while also being very informative.  Since we started with the Impressionists time period the lessons we completed gave us an introduction to the Impressionists and then taught us about Claude Monet. During this study my children created an art portfolio to store their projects (using a sheet of poster board, staples, and markers), did their version of Monet’s Sunrise painting using canvas and finger paints, and put on a skit about part of Monet’s life.

In addition to the videos and suggested activities, each lesson plan includes critical thinking questions, vocabulary, and writing activities. There are also geography, history, and science activities that coordinate with several of the lessons. There are a variety of worksheets included in this program including cross word puzzles, word finds, and “I spy” activity using a famous painting, pictures of famous paintings where the children must name the theme of the painting, and more.  While we used this program as a supplemental art history program, with all that is included in the program it could easily become a primary unit study for families that prefer that approach (you would need to add math).

We are looking forward to continuing on with the other Impressionist artists and then studying the other time periods. Some of the wonderful artists that are featured include: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso. Each time period includes 16 lessons with twelve videos. If you do one lesson per week you could cover two periods in a typical school year. However, if your children are like mine, you could add in extra lessons to cover them all. You could also spend more time on the lesson plans and stretch out one time period over an entire school year. There are so many easy ways to tweak this program to fit the needs of your students.

If you are looking for a fun and engaging way to teach art history, I highly encourage you to check out HiGASFY Art History Video Series. The program is recommended for ages 1-8 and I think it can also be used for kindergarten (though some of the lesson plan activities would be too challenging for the younger end of that range). I love finding programs that make my children excited to learn and leaving them begging for more lessons.  To check out how other Crew Members used this program be sure to click on the graphic below and check out the other 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.

 

Some children love to memorize math facts while others struggle with the memorization. My son does well with math but never completely memorized his multiplication tables and it was slowing him down with his Algebra. Online Times Alive by City Creek Press, Inc. sounded like it might be a unique way to reinforce those facts that he needed to practice.

In this program each multiplication fact is attached to a story to help the student remember the facts. When a student first logs into the program, they are given a pretest which gauges how many of the facts they know and how long it takes them to complete the test.  Then they can work through the short lesson for each fact. There are periodic progress checks to see how well they are retaining the lessons that they have completed.  When the student has completed all of the lessons they can take a test which will show you if they were able to get a higher percentage correct and if they increased their speed.

My son went through the program and really enjoyed it. ” I think it helped me get more comfortable with my math facts.” He started in a good place with 94% on the pre-test and finished with 98%. While this may not seem like huge growth since he started so high, the bigger success was that he feels more comfortable with the multiplication facts and feels like they are easier to recall now that he has stories associated with them. His favorite was 7 x 7 is 49 because the 7s are soldiers which sit in their 4 (fort) and make sure America stays clean. The sign looks like a 9… 49.

Each fact lesson took him only a few minutes to work through and he enjoyed the process (and didn’t even complain about having to do additional math). He would often do several lessons in one sitting and went through the entire program in about a month. If you have a student who is new to multiplication or starting at a lower proficiency, they would probably take longer to complete the program. Also note that this program is about memorizing the facts and not really about teaching the multiplication concept. This was perfect for us because my son knew and understood how to multiply he just struggled with the quick recall of facts.

One thing that I think is important to note about this program, is that the data from their progress is stored on the computer and not online even though it is an online subscription based program. This may not be a big deal for most families, but it does mean that all work must be done on the same computer to be saved.  It is also available as an app on iOS 9.0 and above. We do not have any applicable devices so I have not tried the app, but some of the other Crew members checked it out and you can find out more about how that worked in their reviews.

If you have a child that struggles with learning their multiplication facts or is finding themselves slowed down in higher math because of their multiplication speed, Online Times Alive may be the program for you! It is a fun and engaging way to remember the multiplication facts with just a few minutes of work each day. If you want to give the program a try, City Creek Press, Inc  has been generous enough to offer my readers a coupon code to waive the sign up fee($6.95 value) It is— lovetolearn. Also, be sure to click on the graphic below and read all of the other Crew Reviews to see how other families used this product.

 

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.

*Some links are affiliate links; see disclosure below*

If you are like me, when you hear the name Reading Eggs you think of reading, but this great program has come out with some wonderful math resources as well. I recently had the opportunity to review one of their new workbooks: 200 Essential Math Skills for Kindergarten. My five-year-old started ‘kindergarten’ a few days ago, and I thought it was a great book for him to try.

Each lesson in the book was four pages long and had about 8-10 questions/activities for him to work through. This included items like matching, tracing, drawing, coloring, and writing numbers. The book begins by covering numbers, colors, and shapes. Later it covers time, patterns, adding, three-dimensional shapes, and more.   After every five lessons, there is a quiz to review what was learned, an achievement certificate, and some fun activities such as color by number that they can complete. If you pair the workbook with the online program, there is a spot to mark at the end of each lesson showing what you did online. The programs pair well together; however, this book can also be used as a stand-alone program.

He was excited to receive it in the mail and wanted to get started right away. He enjoyed most of the activities and could normally complete a lesson in one session. A few of them were taking him longer, and we broke them into two sessions. The book is broken up into 50 lessons with an additional 10 quizzes, which means that for a traditional 36-week school year, you have to complete less than two lessons each week to finish the program. This gives you lots of flexibility to let them work at their own pace. He was learning and mastering the lessons well, except that he struggled a little bit with the number and color words. I felt like this was a good concept to be introduced to, but since he was a little young to expect mastery, we just let him work through those parts as he could and move on. He mastered writing the numbers and making the shapes without any problems.

I loved that it was colorful and engaging. I also found that having it in a book like that, as opposed to on the computer or something with many parts and pieces, made it very easy to do math wherever we were. We started the book towards the end of the summer before we started our regular school year. Since it was only taking him a few minutes a day to complete a lesson, he was happy to work on it three to four days a week. We had a couple weeks of family visiting and spending time on the river planned. He could bring it with him and work on it while he rested in the afternoons. Once we came home and started our school year, he has been completing half a lesson to a full lesson each day at his desk.

In addition to 200 Essential Math Skills for Kindergarten the Crew reviewed a variety of other grade levels as well as their reading workbooks, so even if you don’t have a kindergarten student be sure to click the graphic below and check out the other Crew Reviews. In addition, Reading Eggs is generously giving all of my readers a four-week free trial of their online program.

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.

After an unusually crazy year (thanks to Hurricane Florence) we were finally finishing up our school year at the end of June. About that same time, I was given the opportunity to review one of the Time Travelers U.S. History Studies by Home School in the Woods. I was tired, the children were tired, and we all needed a break. I almost turned down the review without even discussing it with them. However, I casually mentioned it to them because I knew they had really enjoyed it when we used the Project Passport World History Studies last year to study Ancient Egypt. To my surprise they both enthusiastically told me they wanted to review the product, even though it meant working through it on their summer break.

Since the children were excited about it, I agreed to the review and we turned it into a summer family learning project. We would gather as a family in the evenings a few nights a week and work through a lesson or two. We chose to review Time Travelers: The Early 19th Century because that was a time period my children were interested in learning more about. This program includes 25 days of lessons (five of which are project days to complete projects associated with the other lessons). The lessons include a text (generally 2-3 pages) which I read aloud to the family at the beginning of each lesson. This was the new information that we were learning for the lessons.

Then for each lesson there was a variety of activities. You could have each student complete all of the activities, especially if you were using this as a primary history curriculum or unit study. However, since we were enjoying this as a summer family project, I chose to just have each of my older children do one or two activities per lesson. This was enough to reinforce what was being taught but still kept it light and fun.

The activities that were offered included a timeline, lap book components, copywork, maps, a song book, hands-on projects, and recipes. Students could also create a newspaper and write articles related to the lessons. We chose to primarily focus on the song book, maps, and timeline. In addition, we are collecting the recipes and looking forward to having a celebratory dinner when we finish this program in a few weeks. She even has a post on her blog with ideas on incorporating recipes.

I think that the timeline is so helpful, especially for old students, in helping to understand what things were happening concurrently and how different events impacted other events. My son enjoyed cutting out the timeline figures that went with each lesson and adding them to our timeline pages.

The map component for this program was really well thought out and added a lot to our discussions. It started with a base map in the first lesson and then added maps on clear overlays to help students understand how the country was changing during this time period. We printed off the maps, cut out the parts that had changed and glued them onto the clear sheets. Then the clear sheets were placed on top of the other maps making it very easy to conceptualize the changes.

My daughter has recently taken a strong interest in music and enjoyed creating the song book.  For the lessons that had songs, we would print out the words that were included with the lesson, read over them, and then find the song performed and listen to the song. They really enjoyed this component of the study.

While we did not have time to do all of the hands-on projects there were some really neat ideas included and we plan to go back and complete more of them. My five year old who was listening along with us, would really like to make the coon skin cap project once I get the needed materials. There were other projects like making corn husk dolls and making jumping jack toys (that one is coming up in our lessons this week and I know my son will enjoy it).

Overall, we found this to be a really fun summer learning project for our family. I think it offers a lot of flexibility to be used as a family or to be used as a more formal curriculum. If you were using it as a curriculum, I would recommend it for upper elementary school and possibly middle grades students. For our history loving family, I would probably have my middle school student take some of the lessons a bit deeper with further research but it would be a good base of study. If you were using this program for the year you would probably want to go through at least three or four of the various time periods over the course of a school year. You could also use these programs to supplement and add a more creative component to your other history studies. If you were using a program that briefly covered the time period, this could be a great way to go deeper into an area of interest.

I encourage you to check out all of the Time Travelers U.S. History Studies and to click on the graphic below to check out the other Crew Reviews which cover a variety of time periods as well as some of the other Home School in the Woods products. You can also see our review of Project Passport: Ancient Egypt from last year. Have you tried any of these products? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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.