Review Crew

Book Review—The Fallacy Detective

August 18, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

A few months ago, my mom wrote a letter to one of my children, and mentioned looking something up in The Fallacy Detective. That piqued my interest in the book, and when, soon after that, I was offered a chance to review the book, I jumped at the chance! Of course, the fact that the authors, Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn, were willing to send us a physical copy made the book even more attractive. Not very many physical books are sent here for review.

We’ve been reading through The Fallacy Detective as a family. Several evenings a week, I read a lesson aloud at the dinner table, and then we discuss the questions at the end of the lesson and try to figure out the answers. It has been a lot of fun! We are really enjoying this book. We’re learning to recognize fallacies, too. Quite often, someone will call out, “That’s a red herring!” or “You’re using a straw man argument!” Today, one of our boys used equivocation, and when we were discussing a possible scenario, I said, “That’s special pleading!”

There are five sections in this book. The first, The Inquiring Mind, includes three chapters about the importance of exercising your mind and learning to listen to others. The second section, Avoiding the Question, includes a lesson or two about several different fallacies. We had a lot of fun with the chapters about Red Herrings, Special Pleading, and the Straw Man Fallacy. Some of the children like to say the words Ad Hominem and Tu Quoque—and trying to remember what they mean!

We’re working through the third section of the book right now, Making Assumptions. The first lesson in this section is a story, and then there are questions about whether statement were true according to the story, or not. It was fun to see what assumptions we made that weren’t actually in the story! We have also learned to recognize circular reasoning, equivocation and loaded questions in this section. The Slippery Slope was quite interesting, and I’m looking forward to the Part-to-Whole and Whole-to-Part lessons next.

Coming up, we have sections titled Statistical Fallacies and Propaganda. I’ve already been pointing out examples of these to the children when I see them in the media, so it will be interesting to read the lessons about them and learn what the Bluedorns have to say.

Each lesson describes a particular type of fallacy in an interesting way, using conversations or stories to get the point across. Most lessons have a comic strip (often Calvin and Hobbes or Snoopy), or a cartoon. My younger set love comics, so they like to look at the book just for those! In fact, the day it arrived in the mail, the book got soaked because someone was reading it while holding a cup of water (I was glad I had taken a photo for this post already!). After the fallacy is thoroughly described and illustrated, there are a number of conversations or short stories given, and the assignment is to identify the fallacy included, if there is one. Some of these questions poke fun at the authors. That always gets a laugh here! Some of the members of our family are getting very good at identifying the fallacies! We’re all glad there is an answer key at the end of the book.

The The Fallacy Detective is a great book from which to learn logical thinking and recognize bad reasoning. It’s also a lot of fun! We laugh a lot while we’re working on these lessons. Everyone in the family is enjoying it; if I forget to read a lesson, I’m usually reminded, and not always by the same person. Elijah and Esther are probably the most interested, but even Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination enjoy the lessons. Every family should get this book and have fun learning to recognize faulty reasoning together, although it is quite possible to go through it alone and learn a lot, too. It’s just not as fun! Be sure to click the image below to read other people’s reviews of this fascinating book!

Product Review—Home School in the Woods

July 7, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

We’re studying ancient history this year, from Creation to the time of Jesus. Therefore, when we were offered a product from Home School in the Woods to use and review, I chose one of the Project Passport World History Studies—the one about Ancient Egypt. We’ve never used a Project Passport study before. They looked too big and involved to me, the other times we were offered products from this company. I’m finding it fun, though, and fairly easy, although it will take us awhile to get through it. Because we’re using it as a supplement to the other history we’re doing (two courses simultaneously—yes, I’m a bit of a curriculum junkie!), we are doing no more than one “stop” a week, and last week we didn’t get anything done on it, due to Mom being sick, a first aid course one day, and dental appointments another day. We have made it through the first five stops, though, and I’m hoping to continue doing one a week. Mr. Sweetie (age 11), Mr. Imagination (9), and Little Miss (6) are doing this study, and I’m doing each project with them.

Each “stop” on our “itinerary” through Ancient Egypt has a few standard activities. We have been adding place names to our map on most stops, and pictures to our timeline. We often get to read and decorate a postcard, and many stops include an audio tour of something (once it was a trip on a boat down the Nile, and yesterday we listened to a man talking about how they were embalming the Pharoah). We also add to a newspaper we’re writing, with a news article or a couple of advertisements each time. Mr. Imagination loves that—he likes to draw! Each stop also includes some sort of craft and a few pages of text that I read aloud.

Some of our projects get hole punched and put into the ring binder we’re each filling up. We spent an entire week working on clothing for an Egyptian man and woman! Some of the pieces of clothing needed to be colored on cardstock, cut out and either put into slits in the person we were clothing, and we also cut out a few pieces of cloth for other items. Another project we really had fun with was the Game of Senet, based on board games found in the tombs. We spent our history time one morning assembling the game from the PDFs I downloaded, and playing it. It’s a two-player game, so we divided into two teams, since three children and I are working on this project together.

We’re also making items in most lessons to eventually assemble into a lap book. So far, we’ve made a mini-book about about the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, a wheel that turns with information on it about jobs in Egypt, a cookbook (which we plan to use!) and a mini book about mummies, coffins, and sarcophagi. Each of these items is very informative. They are also fairly easy, since the instructions in the Itinerary are so detailed.

There are also craft projects that won’t fit in the books! We skipped the first one, since noone was interested in actually dressing like an Egyptian, but Mr. Imagination and Little Miss are working on the second. They are making a mummy and a sarcophagus, from foil, newspaper, masking tape, strips of white cloth whenever I find them some, glue, and a shoe box—and lots of paint! We are given craft cards to print and store in the notebooks about these projects.

I am very impressed with this course. A lot of work went into making it! It has been organized very well, and I’ve found it easy to use. To prepare for a “stop”, I simply open and print the PDFs for the text and itinerary for that stop, and then read through the itinerary to see what needs to be printed for that stop. All the pages we’ll need for the crafts, lapbook, etc, are in one folder, and labeled by the lesson number, which makes it very easy to find the right ones. The instructions tell whether to print the pages on white or colored paper, or white or colored card stock. (I’m thankful that Esther has found a place we can order the card stock and colored paper online—I can’t get it locally!) We’re learning a lot about Egypt from this project, and I will certainly request more of these projects in the future if they’re offered (I would even buy these!). And, the children are enjoying doing this. Little Miss is the most enthusiastic. Mr. Imagination hates cutting and gluing, but he loves drawing pictures. Mr. Sweetie isn’t overly excited, but I don’t hear any grumbling from him. The variety of projects helps to keep up interest.

Home School in the Woods has downloadable timeline sets that look great! They include pictures of many people and events from various eras of history. The Creation to Christ one looks like it would be great for the study we’re doing right now. Click on the image below to read other people’s reviews of great products from this company.

Product Review—Words Rock from EdAlive

June 29, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I’m trying to find ways to make spelling, grammar, and other Language Arts topics more interesting. When we were offered the chance to try out a program from EdAlive, I decided to try Words Rock Online, which includes a spelling course. Mr. Sweetie doesn’t have too much trouble with spelling most of the time, but Mr. Imagination, well, uses his imagination when he spells! It’s a big challenge for him. So, I decided we would try out this program to see if it would help at all.

There are a lot of different types of questions that cover a wide variety of spelling patterns. Some cover high-frequency words, others offer practice with consonant digraphs or consonant blends. The questions are set up as a game, with different ways to answer each one. With some, you have to reorganize letters or syllables; with others, you have to click on the misspelled word and then correct it. Sometimes you add letters to or take them off of words to make other words. The variety helps to keep this from getting too boring! Here is one question:

Mr. Sweetie has been using the Grammar section of Words Rock, as well as the Spelling section. Proper pronoun use is covered, and there is also practice with verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. Farther on, all parts of speech are covered. Once again, there is quite a variety of types of questions and ways to answer them.

I checked out some of the questions in the Vocabulary on my own account, and found practice with labeling objects with the correct word, identifying synonyms and antonyms and homonyms (without calling them those names), and choosing the correct meaning of a proverb. There are also questions in which I had to choose the correct meanings of Greek and Latin words. They made me think!

All these programs use Adaptive Learning. In other words, if the questions seem quite easy for you, you are advanced to a higher level. If they are too hard (and you always have the option to click the “Too Hard” button if you don’t understand a question), you will be moved to a lower level.

The parent’s dashboard is very useful. It shows what the students have been doing, in several different ways and with varying levels of detail. These screenshots show some of the things I found there.

I asked Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie what they think of Words Rock. They aren’t impressed! (Am I surprised? No. It’s school work.) Mr. Sweetie says that “You aren’t taught anything. You’re just expected to know it, and it’s a review. You have to be a good reader to do it. I struggle with reading it.” My response to him is that with this program you learn by getting things wrong and trying again later, in a different way! Mr. Imagination doesn’t like the alien-type pictures. I liked that the concepts they have already learned in their regular Language Arts books are reviewed and reinforced with this program. We’ll continue using it for awhile, anyway, because we need something for Language Arts for Mr. Imagination. I really don’t know if it is doing any good, but extra spelling and grammar practice sure can’t hurt!

One thing that we have not used is the games that are built in. There is the option to choose “Questions Only,” and that’s what my boys always do. The games are typical video games, I think, and we just aren’t interested.

Click on the image below to see what other families have to say about Words Rock Online and two other programs from EdAlive.

Product Review—Creative Word Studio

June 8, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

One thing I want my children to learn is how to write. My oldest is a prolific writer, and my third-born son can write; I keep working on the others! It’s very helpful to have resources on hand that can help spark creativity in writing. That made me immediately interested in Sparkling Bits of Writing, from Creative Word Studio. I chose to use and review Book 1, which is intended for grades 5-6. I would love to someday use Book 2, as well, but at the moment I don’t have anyone in grades 7-8, which is the left it is written for. Mr. Diligence is working part time now, so even though he would be just over that level he doesn’t have time anymore for things like this!

I have been having Mr. Sweetie (grade 6) and Mr. Imagination (grade 4) do the assignments from Sparkling Bits of Writing. Little Miss (grade 1) wants to do everything they do, but the projects are almost too hard for her. She keeps trying, though! We received the book quite late in the review period, and then had some health issues crop up that have made it hard to spend the time I wanted to with this course, but made it through the first seven lessons. I am really liking this course!

There are three basic types of lessons in this course. The first lesson is classified as a Mini Writing Exercise. These teach various things about writing. The first was an acrostic, with a line beginning with each letter of the children’s names. Esther was inspired to write one about Miss Joy—it was pretty funny! Little Miss couldn’t understand the concept, but the boys did a little better. Other lessons teach how to use the thesaurus. Our physical one is very hard to use and is stored in an outside building, so we didn’t bother going out in the rain after dark to get it—I found a thesaurus online. That lesson was fun! I see that others talk about complete sentences or autumn words, or showing instead of telling.

The next type of lesson is Free Writing. You are supposed to take a topic and run with it—write everything you think of about a particular topic. The first was about how you are feeling right now. With boys—well, I’ll just say that was challenging. What matters to you was easier.

Reading Responses are fun. We’ve done one of those so far. It included a selection from A Secret Garden, which our children haven’t heard. They loved listening to it, and then enjoyed writing what they thought happened next. I loved what one of our boys came up with; it was totally unexpected to me. I see selections from Oliver Twist and Tom Sawyer coming up soon. Those will be fun!

There are also Friends lessons, in which two children need to work together to write something. The one the boys did (pictured here) had to do with cell phones. I thought they came up with some very good pros and cons. They enjoyed working together.

Gold piece lessons are intended to be polished until they are perfect, and then given a grade. That way, there is something to put in the report card! These are marked in the book with a star.

So, what do we think about Sparkling Bits of Writing? I really like this course! It’s creative, and laid out in a way that is very easy to use. The lessons are short and simple, but make the children think. I’m not getting the groans from this course that I normally do from writing courses. The boys won’t admit that they are enjoying it, but they act like they do. I highly recommend this course for any family who wants their children to learn to write creatively. Click on the image below to see what other families have to say about this course!

Book Review—Pursued to Eternity

June 3, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

Pursued to Eternity by John Riley sounded like quite an interesting book when I read the description. It sounded like quite a few topics pulled together into an adventure, so I signed up to receive a copy of the book. I thought I might read it aloud to my family, but when the book arrived (yes, he sent a physical copy to us here in New Zealand!), I saw that it would not work well as a read-aloud for us.

Several stories are put together into one story here. The first chapter is the author’s musings about God and time. He narrates the book through the eyes of a fictitious man, whose brother was an atheist. After that first chapter of introductory material about God’s work with mankind at various times throughout history, he tells a story about hunting dinosaurs in what is now Kenya, and then relates the story of the Exodus from the point of view of an Egyptian girl who kept a diary. After that, he switches to the present.

Alan and Conner Bridges joined their entire family for Thanksgiving Dinner. After dinner, the brothers had a discussion about God and why Conner believed in God and the Bible. Conner presented many good reasons for the truth of the Bible to his atheist brother. Later in the day, Alan announced that he was going to Kenya to explore for oil.

Conner was a high school biology teacher. He was required to teach evolution, and forbidden to mention Creation—but he found ways, even so, to plant doubts in his students’ minds. Soon, his students were building a website with questions that pointed out weak spots in the evolutionary theory. Eighteen pages of the book are devoted to those questions! Of course, the school board could not handle this questioning, and Conner was forced to resign. Meanwhile, Alan was finding some very interesting things in Kenya—what did those findings mean for his soul, and for Conner’s students’ questions?

I found this book a bit disjointed. Almost too many topics are presented to be a cohesive story. The author does pull things together somewhat at the end, but the continuity of the story is broken up by many lists of facts. Also, I found even the adventure parts of the story to be somewhat dry, told in a passive tone of voice. I do like the drawings that are at the beginning of each chapter! The book itself is an ordinary softcover, a very nice size to hold while reading.

John Riley has put together a Creation Apologetics course that is on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It looks quite interesting. It consists of video lessons with worksheets. I just watched parts of one of the lessons, and he has a variety of speakers, in many different settings. This course looks like it would be very encouraging, and would strengthen teenager’s faith in the truth of the Bible.

Upper teens who are interesting in the Creation/evolution debate would likely find Pursued to Eternity interesting. To see what other families thought about this book, click on the image below. I plan to check out some of the other reviews, because I’m quite curious what other people thought of this book.

Product Review—One More Story

May 27, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I had never heard of the website One More Story before the opportunity came up to review it. I knew, when I looked at the site, that my younger children would really enjoy this. They love having stories read to them, and after hearing research about the importance of reading picture books to children, I was very happy to have more for them. It’s hard to find time to read lots of picture books!

I really like the selection of picture books that are on One More Story. A lot of them are older books. There are several by Ezra Jack Keats! We have always loved his The Snowy Day; that one is included, as well as several others. I had wanted to read Stellaluna to them, too, but had never been able to lay hands on a copy, so now they have heard that story. This site is especially valuable to us because of the poor selection of books in the libraries in this country.

Little Miss (age 6) is the one who has used this site the most. She learned very fast how to use it (very simple—you basically just click the green arrow when it shows up!), and can spend a hour at a time listening to stories. Mr. Imagination (age 9) usually joins her; the two of them spend most of their time together these days. Miss Joy often sits and listens in, too, although she gets bored pretty soon and wanders off, only to come back and check out the next book they open.

There are three ways to read each book. Children can have the book read to them with the pages turning automatically, or they can have the book read to them and turn the pages themselves, or they can turn the sound off and read the story themselves. When the story is read to them, the text is highlighted word by word. This helps children to see how we read text from left to right, and helps to make the connection between written and spoken word. I can’t say how well it works, because Mr. Imagination and Little Miss both read already, but I can see that it would work if children spent a lot of time using this site. You can switch between modes of reading for each book. There is also a vocabulary button, which brings up a list of words from the book. A definition and sample sentence is given for each word. And, after you leave a book, you are asked if you want to listen to one more story!

The text has been taken off the pages of these picture books; instead, it appears in the bar below the pages of the book. Sometimes, the text from one double-page spread is stretched over several page turns; in those cases, different parts of the pictures are zoomed in to go with the text that is being read.

There is a parent’s dashboard, which is useful if you want to keep track of the books your children have been reading or hearing. It shows which books they have read in the past week. This is a great site for young children who can’t get enough stories read to them! I especially like it on wet days when my younger ones can’t be outside but I don’t have things for them to do inside. They can entertain themselves quite well for a long time with these stories—if I let them, they will spend an hour at it!

To see what other families have to say about One More Story, click on the banner below!

Book Review—Everybody, Always for Kids

May 18, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I like to read from a Bible story book or a children’s devotional every morning as we begin our school day. When the opportunity came up to review Everybody, Always for Kids from Tommy Nelson Publishing, and we were offered a print copy, it was a no-brainer. I wanted this book! I’m enjoying it, and the children seem to be, as well. We haven’t quite finished it, since we’re just reading one chapter a day, but I have liked everything I have seen so far.

Each chapter has a story from Bob Goff’s life, and he works a life lesson in naturally. These lessons are designed to help children learn to love other people. The story we read this morning hit me especially. It was about his son learning to fly, and then to fly seaplanes, and how he landed on a small lake. The takeaway was that when we love someone we let them do what they are doing, without giving constant directions and cautions. That’s something I need to learn with my older children!

A lot of the stories just give practical ways to show love to people around us, like making it possible for everyone, no matter what age, to participate in a race, or ordering cake pops for people you disagree with. There is encouragement to be patient and to be forgiving (even when an expensive vehicle ends up at the bottom of a cliff in the ocean because of someone’s mistake). This is really a book for all ages—not just children.

I really like the feel of this book. It has a very nice hard cover, with thick glossy pages. The pictures are full-color and quite nice, and I like the ribbon marker—it means I don’t have to keep putting the bookmark back after the toddler looks through the book! She often picks it up and studies the pretty pictures when I’m finished reading in the morning. The size is just right, too. It’s just right to hold comfortably. I am a bit disappointed in the ribbon, though. It started fraying almost immediately, and I need to melt the edges with a flame again, for the third time.

There is a five-day lesson plan that goes with Everybody, Always for Kids. I downloaded it to have a look, but we didn’t use it. Each plan gives directions for a craft project to go with one of the stories, in which children are challenged to think of ways to show love to other people. There are also questions to discuss to spark a conversation about the topic, and supplemental activities that you can use to add even more to the experience. In looking it over just now, I noticed that one of the lessons has to do with the chapter about a time capsule. After we read that one, one of my sons made a time capsule and hid it under the house somewhere! So, I guess we did one of the activities, though inadvertantly.

If you want a devotional to read with your children, this is a good one. I highly recommend it. Also, have a look at what a number of other families thought of it.

Product Review—Teaching Textbooks

April 28, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I have heard about Teaching Textbooks for many years. A friend of mine showed it to me back when we lived in Michigan—it must have been at least 15 years ago now! I was mildly interested, but at that time I had never so much as used a computer, so didn’t think about it much. Then, about six months ago, I was offered the chance to use this course for a review. Mr. Diligence needed something for math for this year, so I thought it would be an excellent course to try. The level he needed, Geometry, was one of the courses offered, so it worked perfectly. He started using level 3.0 in October, and after a break over the summer, he went back to it, using Teaching Textbooks 4.0—they upgraded in the meantime.

I’m quite impressed with Teaching Textbooks. It’s working very well for Mr. Diligence. He does his lessons with very little help from me. Once or twice, he has gotten stuck on a problem and asked for help, but otherwise, I don’t do anything with his lessons. Each lesson starts with a lecture, illustrated with animated slides, and then there are, I believe, five practice problems. After that, there are 20-25 problems, some having to do with the new concept taught in the day’s lecture, and some being review of concepts taught earlier. He is doing very well with this course, and really likes it.

Each problem is read aloud, and then needs to be answered in one of several ways. Sometimes there are multiple choices to click, other times it is a true/false question, and other times the answer needs to be calculated and typed in to the answer box. Immediately, the program lets you know if you got the answer right, and then you can choose to try again, or see how the solution is arrived at. A lot of the problems need to be worked out algebraically, of course. There is a “scratch pad” button, which allows you to write on the screen with the mouse. It’s a lot slower than using paper and pencil, but apparently works well with a tablet.

Do you remember doing proofs when you did Geometry in high school? I do, although I can’t remember details very well! This program has a way to do proofs. Some of the statements and some of the reasons are given; for the others, five choices are presented and you have to choose the correct one.

Version 3.0 was entirely online. He didn’t do a lot of lessons with it, because we were going into the summer holiday soon after we received it, but as far as I can tell, version 4.0 is easier to use and clearer. It is also not all online. You install an app on your device and several lessons at a time are downloaded into the computer. That makes it much more useful to us; my computer is getting very old and regularly loses connection with the internet for a minute or two. One of the features I really like about 4.0 is that I can pause our subscription, for a week or more at a time, when I know he won’t have time to use the course. This is very helpful, because we only have it for a year! 3.0 could be paused, as well, but I had to call and talk to someone to do that, and being international, that is difficult. Now, I can do it through the parent dashboard.

I am quite impressed with this program. I like the way the lessons are presented clearly, and that there is plenty of review. I like that I don’t have to do anything with them; I can just turn my boy loose and he can do the program all by himself. (This is something I’m learning about my children with dyslexia—computer programs that include lectures are very useful! I’ve been reading the lessons aloud to some of them all their lives to make sure they get it, but with a program like TT, I don’t have to!) I noticed on the website that you can get a free trial of the first 15 lessons of any level. That sounds really good to me! That would be enough to get a good feel for how the course works and if it will work for a particular child.

I like the Parent page, too. That is where I can manage the subscription (like pause it when needed!), and I can see exactly what scores he is getting on all lessons. The overall score so far for the course is shown, too. Now that we have tried Teaching Textbooks, I will likely have other children use it when we need math courses for high school.

Click on the image below to find reviews by a number of other families who also used Teaching Textbooks 4.0 recently!

Product Review—ARTistic Pursuits

April 15, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.

I have a son who loves to draw and dreams of becoming an artist. I want to encourage his dreams, so when the opportunity came up to try out a course from ARTistic Pursuits, I requested Beginner Level, Art Core 1, Drawing with Graphite Pencils. We worked our way through the first unit, Outline Drawing.

The first lesson described what an outline is. We watched a video lesson in which the instructor showed us how to find the outline of an object, trace it with our eyes, and then draw what we saw. Then, we were supposed to choose a selection of small objects, such as teacups or small toy animals, and draw them. I did this activity along with the children (Mr. Sweetie, age 11, Mr. Imagination, age 9, and Little Miss, age 6). I think we all agreed that Mr. Imagination did the best! Here are his drawings from the first two lessons, and mine and Little Miss’s from the first lesson.

For the remaining three lessons in this unit, we read a page or two from a book. Because we live outside of the United States, we had to use a digital version of the book. It works, but I think the physical book would be much easier to use. Lesson 2 talked about line as an element of art. Mr. Imagination went outside and drew several objects he found. Lesson 3 showed a painting by George Catlin, who painted many American Indians, and focused on the way the blanket draped over a chief’s lap. The assignment was to drape a cloth over something and draw the folds of the cloth. The last lesson in this unit gave the assignment to draw a person sitting on something. Mr. Imagination chose a picture of a child swinging and drew that. Unfortunately, the picture he drew got lost before I photographed it!

Each unit in this course focuses on one particular aspect of drawing, and each lesson builds on the ones before. As I mentioned already, Unit 1 teaches how to draw an outline. Unit 2 talks about space—showing what objects are closer than others—and then the units go on to teach about shape, texture, value (light or dark), and form. The last three units help students draw human, animal, and man-made forms.

Each unit begins with a video lesson, and an assignment to practice the concept that was introduced, using objects found around the student. The second lesson expands slightly on the first one. The third lesson studies a painting by a famous painter, and gives an assignment based on that study. The fourth lesson gives another assignment to expand on the topic a little more.

This course, the way we received it, did not work very well for us. I believe that if we had the physical book, Mr. Imagination would have used this course a lot more. He tends to pick up art books that are laying around and work through them, but if it’s online it is a lot harder for us to use. I am quite impressed with this course myself, though. I like the idea of learning to draw objects around you, rather than being shown a picture and walked through the steps of drawing it. This seems quite useful to me. So, bottom line? If you have an aspiring artist, and can get the book to go with the video lessons, or have an easy way to access the digital book, ARTistic Pursuits would be a great choice. Check out what several other families experienced with it by clicking on the image below!

Product Review—Superstar Spelling

March 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Disclosure: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew

When I was offered a choice of several products from The Crafty Classroom, it didn’t take much thought to decide that Superstar Spelling would the be most useful. Mr. Imagination uses his imagination fairly freely when he’s writing, and I was hoping that this would help him learn to spell better.

I love that I can choose the words that he practices. I have chosen the words for him by looking over things he has written, especially in his workbooks, and making a list to practice from the words he misspelled. The pages are editable; I simply open the PDF, type in the 20 words I want him to practice this week on the first page, and the words are filled in throughout the document. Each day, he works on a few pages of various activities, and every couple of days does either a practice or a final spelling test. (One thing I really like about the spelling tests is that he gets to grade them himself! He is supposed to either color or fill in an emoji for the ones he gets right, and copy the wrong ones correctly.)

There is quite a range of different activities. About half of them, I would say, are done alone; the rest are to be done with a friend. We have mostly used the ones that are done alone, since it’s hard to come up with someone to do the others with—no one is very excited about playing spelling games! Mr. Sweetie played Battleship Spelling with him one day. The two boys enjoyed it, but it took much longer than a regular game of Battleship. The words for the one board were all short ones, and the other board had long words; it was quite hard to fit all of them in, and then the boy who was guessing them had a hard time figuring out what the words were and which direction they were supposed to be going. It would have worked better to have a mix of longer and shorter words, but I guess that might be hard for a computer program to figure out. Little Miss played Bingo with Mr. Imagination one day, as I called out the words. They loved that, and especially playing with the new game markers we had gotten a few days before.

Robot Roll was one of Mr. Imagination’s favorite pages. He was to roll a die and write the word for whatever number was rolled. He loved seeing which robot won the game! Other pages had him figure out the words by identifying the letters with signs from American Sign Language, or a picture that began with that letter. On some pages, he chooses words he struggles with to practice.

Overall, I would say that Superstar Spelling is worth using. It’s a great way to add some fun to spelling practice. If you had two children using the same list, it would be even better, as they could play games together. I like that it’s editable, and can be used any number of times, with exactly the words that need to be learned. And now, I need to give Mr. Imagination a spelling test with his latest list!

Twenty-five families have been using various products from The Crafty Classroon, so click on the image below to see what they have to say about their experiences!

Fine Motor Alphabet Bundle, Superstar Spelling & Tracing Bundle {The Crafty Classroom Reviews}

Review Crew

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