Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Essential Skills Advantage Complete Home Learning Suite Review

Essential Skills Advantage Review

We are testing out a program known as Essential Skills Advantage . They have several options but we received the Complete Home Learning Suite for this review. This is an online supplemental program. It has lessons on different topics, math, science, language arts, reading, geography etc. Has lessons for grade levels K-6th.  How ever not all subjects are offered in all grade levels. The program is composed of 43 individual programs 998 units totaling over 14,000 interactive lessons.
Since we are at the end of our standard school year. We have been using this as our summer curriculum. Three days a week the girls do one unit a day under each subject that is available for the grade level that they are in. While this is not a complete curriculum it is a wonderful supplemental program. 
Essential Skills Advantage Review
Like I noted above this is an online program so you will need an internet connection to use this program. I felt it covers a wide range of subject areas. All though I would not call this a complete curriculum because it doesn't cover quite everything needed to meet GLE. I do give it high points for a fun supplemental program

Essential Skills Advantage Review My girls have really liked using this as there summer curriculum. My oldest has a high opinion of the spelling section. It gives her things like word searches instead of just typing or writing the words over and over, and I think that's what draws her to it. I have actually seen an improvement in her spelling and her understanding of what the words mean. 
They have both enjoyed the science units we have tried. We used two of them to go along with what we had just finished up in our regular curriculum. We started with one on the solar system. It was great for filling gaps and brushing up on the topic before we took the end of year test. It covered some things like phases of the moon that our other curriculum did not cover. It really rounded things out well. The girls wanted me to mention that the graphics were great and the activities or experiments were FUN even though they were on a computer.

My little one is my math nut she said the lessons were fun and she didn't mind doing them. She felt they were explained well and frequently ask to do ESA math over a paper workbook. She had no real issues with it and seemed to glide on through each unit. My 3rd grader was a little frustrated at times but we seemed to be able to work though it after I played with the math lessons my self to see how they worked. Her least favorite part was the riddles, but she doesn't like riddles any way so that was no surprise.

Grammar was also an area that my 3rd grader spent some time on. She took to it quite well, She liked the bite sized lessons. She said the smaller shorter lessons made it less over whelming to do. That's a bonus in my book. Grammar can be so over whelming for younger kids. This is broke down about as simple as it can get. 

We hit up the reading section last week. So we haven't been using it all that long and we have only used the story time section. But I like what I see and what I am hearing from the girls. Story time gives a short story then some questions about the story after. The questions all fit the story and the stories are entertaining enough that the girls are not complaining about having to read them. I did find a few things in the first grade reading that I felt were a little below first grade. But you can easily skip over them or just do them quickly as a review. Every child reads at a different level so may be its just my child. 

 I was a little disappointed that all the subjects are not offered for each grade level. But that was my only disappointment and I was only disappointed because we like it so well I want my little one to be able to do all the subjects. 

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Essential Skills Advantage Review
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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Zonderkidz Faith Builders Bible Review

Faith Builders Bible {Zonderkidz Review}
Faith Builders Bible {Zonderkidz Review}
This weeks review is from Zonderkidz. We are reviewing the Faith Builders Bible. The Faith Builders Bible sells for about $24.99. Its a fairly priced kids bible and has some super cool kid friendly features. It is a hard back bible so its probably a little more durable than a leather bound. It has a cool brick building theme to it. Reminds me of Lego's. You get 24 full color pages of illustrations. This is a NIrV,  for those of you un-familiar it is the New International Reader's Version of the Bible. It comes in a 9 point font which is a bigger font than most Bibles come in. 

The girls stalked the door all morning for the UPS man. They were very excited when they pulled it out of the box it just looks cool. I usually buy leather bound bibles. But I was surprised at how happy I was with the hard back for a kid.  It feels kid tough and I like that, I want the girls to handle it a lot and that means it needs to be durable. The cover has building blocks all over it and the theme continues throughout the Bible. If you have little builder this is going to be the Bible for them.

Faith Builders Bible {Zonderkidz Review}At the beginning it has building with books of the Bible. This teaches kids that each book of the Bible is like a layer and it gives kids a task to help them remember the order of the books. I had never thought to explain it to my girls that way. It actually uses colored pictures of the building blocks to demonstrate the layers or books of the bible.  

Next I want to mention Building Block Verses You will find these through out the Bible. These are great memory verses above each verse is a little lesson that goes along with it. Super helpful for younger kids. We also discovered a small dictionary in the back its only about 5 pages long but it has a lot of words in it that your child might not know as they are reading through the Bible. We also found a list of Bible stories and get this it tells what book they are in so finding them is easy. 

Hotrod girl wants me to mention the font. She says she prefers the bigger print to that of the small print in her other Bible. She tells me it makes it easier to read and helps her to keep her place. She also likes how it helps her learn the order of the Books of the Bible.  Snoopy would like me to talk about the colors. She loves the design on the cover and the "super cool" pictures that are throughout the bible. She says the pictures make it fun and helps her to remember the story and the verse.  They took it to Sunday school this past Sunday and it was the talk of the class. 
Zonderkidz has some really great items they never seem to disappoint me. I would love for everyone to read what the other crew reviewers have to say about the Faith Builders Bible.


Faith Builders Bible {Zonderkidz Review}


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Friday, December 21, 2012

SoapTime


Everyone knows when kids get sick the hole house ends up getting sick. The best way to prevent a illness is proper hand washing. With cold and flue season in full swing. I thought there was no better time than now to show off a great new product called SoapTime! SoapTime uses a multimedia "Edutainment" experience of lights, music, and fun facts to keep kids at the sink for 20 seconds. the proper time to ensure clean hands. SoapTime's elephant, ABC and Earth shaped soap bottles snap onto the SoapTime smart Base. The Smart base provides 6 unique songs and factoids for each bottle, which play during its custom LED light shows. Sells for $16.95 for a 4 piece set you get 1 Smart Base 1 Elephant bottle, 1 ABC bottle, and 1 Earth shaped bottle. Each soap bottle is 8.4 oz.


You can click HERE to buy it at SoapTime's secure E-commerce site.
You can check out the SoapTime website http://mysoaptime.com has some really great stuff and you can even listen to some demos of the SoapTime smart base.


I love SoapTime its adorable and it works!  SoapTime gets my girls to wash there hands.We have been using it for about two weeks now and we have use three bottles of soap. Yup we have really really clean hands in our house. The girls love this thing so much they are even singing along with the songs. Check out the video below of the HotRod Princess and Snoopy singing along as she washed up before bed.
The Base has some cool fun lights the girls like to wash there hands in the dark because they think the lights are cool. The lights show up really well in the light too. The volume is great, Its loud enough for them to hear it well but not so loud that it runs you out of the bathroom. The Smart base runs on 3 AAA batteries and is still going strong after 2 weeks and three bottles of soap. Led lights help keep the batteries going stronger longer.
All the bottle shapes are nice but the girls have taken to the elephant for some reason could be the cute elephant head. The soap doesn't have much of a smell to me and I like that, I hate heavy scented soap. All of the SoapTime soap is Non-Toxic and Non-Antibacterial. The Elephants soap is beautiful purple colored and has a very light lavender scent. The ABC soap is orange in color and has a light citrus scent. The Earth bottle is a nice shade of green and has a light apple scent. I love the apple scent the most the girls don't seem to have a scent preference.

I thought everyone might like to see what SoapTime looks like in the dark so I did a video with the three different bottles. I played one audio from each of the bottles. The earth shaped bottle was first, the ABC bottle was second, and the elephant bottle was last playing my daughters new favorite tune.

 I can see SoapTime sticking around our bathroom for a long time to come. 

Disclosure: I received this product at no cost for review. All opinions are my own or what my kids thought of the product.