My Full Heart

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Using Super Teacher Worksheets in our Homeschool - TOS Review

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

Super Teacher Worksheets is a huge resource for homeschoolers and public schoolers alike! This website has thousands of printable worksheets, games, flashcards, and activities for preschoolers through around 5th grade (although there are some resources for slightly older grades). I've had a subscription to Super Teacher Worksheets for many years, so I was very excited to get my yearly membership renewed in exchange for my review!

Even though there are thousands of resources on Super Teacher Worksheets, they are are organized very well! On the left, they are listed by category: Math, Reading Comprehension, Reading and Writing, Phonics, Early Literacy, Spelling, Grammar, Chapter Books, Science, Social Studies, Holidays, Puzzles and Brain Teasers, Teacher Helpers, PreK and Kindergarten, and even a Worksheet Generator! Below each of these categories are subcategories, making it really easy to find the worksheet or printable you're looking for!

Each resource has a short description of the printable, a suggested grade level, and buttons to preview, print, or save the file. This is very helpful when you're searching for a resource! I can usually read the description and glance at the grade levels and quickly know if it's a resource I'd like to preview or not. The resources open as a PDF and are really easy to print. There are answer keys that follow most of the worksheets, so you don't have to open them as a separate file.

The worksheet generator is a really neat feature on Super Teacher Worksheets! There are so many different options for making your own worksheets - math, flashcards, bingo games, puzzles, quizzes, and more! I made a fun cryptogram worksheet for the first day of homeschool with a neat quote.

One of the newer resources (to me) are the Daily Math Review and Fix the Sentences. These would be a really great way to start the day with independent review worksheets! I printed out the 4th grade Daily Math Review worksheets for Titus, even though he is in 5th grade so it will be review topics that he can do on his own.

There are lots of fun cutting and gluing worksheets for Zeke! These will be great to have on hand when he wants "school" and I'm busy with the older boys. I have printed several and plan to print several more to keep in a folder. Coloring, cutting, and gluing are great fine motor skills that he can work on by himself - plus it should keep him busy for several minutes at a time!

He's getting pretty good with scissors!

This is fruits cut and glue worksheet - great for tying into a theme!

Color by Number worksheets are also always a hit at my house, and I love that the worksheets have addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts to work out before coloring by number! It's such a fun way to practice those math facts.

We have used some of the chapter book guides, the spelling lists, lots of maps for geography, and grammar review worksheets in the past. I've always been really pleased with the quality and content on all of the resources I've used from Super Teacher Worksheets. The yearly membership is only $24.95, which comes out to about 7 cents per day! A membership gives you unlimited access to all of the resources on this website. Click the banner below to read even more reviews of Super Teacher Worksheets from other Crew members.

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Blogging From A to Z: Learning Journal for Preschoolers

Today I'm going to plug for my own product - but at the bottom of this post, I'm giving you a great deal on this!

Zeke is going to be using The Gentle + Classical Preschool this year, but I wanted to add in a worksheet a day to his curriculum. He loves worksheets, and I like having a record of how much he is learning. I designed this Page-A-Day Preschool Journal for him to use in conjunction with his curriculum, but I also made it where it can be a free-standing preschool journal for any preschooler! This would be an excellent supplement to any preschool curriculum, and it would also be great to use on its own for a quick lesson time with your child. You could also use it as a great jumping-off point and add in books, crafts, and other activities if you wish.

There are four worksheets for each week. The first three focus on a letter-a-week, and the fourth worksheet is a math worksheet. These math worksheets touch on different early math topics and skills such as counting, number recognition, shapes, colors, and patterns.

The first three worksheets for each week focus on a letter and follow a predictable pattern. The first worksheet has the letter to trace and a picture to embellish.

The second worksheet has uppercase and lowercase dot recogniton and pictures to color that begin with that letter. This is great for speech and vocabulary building!

The third worksheet has a large letter outline with an idea for filling the letter and tracing lines at the bottom.

Zeke's curriculum will not go through the alphabet in order, so I made these worksheets where they don't have to be used in order. This Page-A-Day Preschool Learning Journal is 104 pages and prints in black and white. I have it for $10.00 in my Etsy shop (link in sidebar!), but I have it for 70% right now! It's only $3.00. Check it out!!

Link up your "L" posts this week!

Monday, August 15, 2022

Studying Literature with Progeny Press - TOS Review

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

For the past month, Silas and Titus have been using literature study guides from Progeny Press. We've used several of their literature guides in the past and have always been very pleased with them! For the purpose of this review, we received these E-Guides: The Last Battle Study Guide by C. S. Lewis and Farmer Boy Study Guide by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

WHAT IS AN E-GUIDE?

Progeny Press's E-Guides are Interactive Study Guides that open in Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can either print off the study guides (which is what we do) or your child can type their answers directly into the program. All of their literature guides for 4th grade through 12th grade are now available as an Interactive Study Guide. You can also purchase the Progeny Press literature study guides as a physical, paper book or on a CD. The guides are reproducible and can be used with multiple children over and over again.

HOW THE LITERATURE GUIDES WORK:

The literature study guides are very user-friendly! Each guide takes around 8-12 weeks to complete (less time for the younger grades). Progeny Press recommends reading the book before completing the literature guide, but you can also just read the chapters each section covers before working on that section in the guide.

The guides are broken down into sections based on several chapters. There are vocabulary exercises, character analysis, reading comprehension questions, writing exercises, and dig deeper questions. The "dig deeper" questions are usually based on scripture and really make your child think deeper!

Each section also contains extra project and activity ideas, like arts and crafts, cooking, research, discussion, and games to play. These are optional, and I usually had my boys pick one of the suggestions to complete for each section.

The literature guides a synopsis, author information, pre-reading activities, and final projects and activities. They are full of great ideas and information!

HOW WE USED THIS:

The first thing I did was buy The Last Battle. Progeny Press also offers many of the books for sale on their website! We already owned Farmer Boy, so I just pulled it from the bookshelf. Next I printed off both of the guides in their entirety. The Last Battle Study Guide was 67 pages, and Farmer Boy Study Guide was 57 pages. The pages are all black and white, no color, so it's very print-friendly. I three-hole-punched the pages for each guide and placed them in a three-prong folder for each boy.

Farmer Boy Study Guide is written for grades 4-6, and Titus is entering the 5th grade this year. I knew this book would be a challenge for him to read on his own because he struggles with long chapter books. Titus and I are reading Farmer Boy aloud together, alternating pages. This makes it much easier for him, and he's remembering so much from the book! We read the chapters for each section (usually around four chapters) in a week and then we take a week to work through the questions and activities.

We usually completed a page a day in this guide, working together. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Titus answered the reading comprehension questions! He would read the question aloud, and then I had him give me his answer. We worked together to shorten the answer as he wrote it in his guide. Not all children in this age range will need this much hand-holding, but some will.

For the first section, he chose to do a really neat activity! In the book, Almanzo was eating popcorn, apples, and milk as a nighttime snack. The book mentions that if you get a cup full to the brim with milk and a cup full to the brim with popped popcorn, you can put each piece of popcorn in the cup of milk and the milk will not overflow. This activity was the first suggestion, and Titus quickly decided we had to try it! He was surprised to see that it actually worked. We put every piece of popcorn into the cup of milk and it never overflowed. We talked about why he thought this worked.

The Last Battle Study Guide is written for grades 5-8, and Silas is entering 7th grade this year. This book is in the Chronicles of Narnia series, and he is really enjoying it! He reads the chapters for each section on his own and completes the corresponding pages. Each section is pretty long, and he works about a page or a page and a half a day. When he reads the questions to me and answers them, I can tell he really does understand what's going on in the story. The questions are really thoughtful and make him think about the "whys" and "hows" of the book.

He almost always chooses to draw when it's one of the suggested optional activities! He loves to draw. Drawing also makes him visualize the characters and scenes more.

WHAT DID WE THINK?

I knew we would love these literature study guides from Progeny Press, and we do! We are going to continue with these guides until we finish them, and then move on to the other guides I've already purchased for them to use this year! We have reviewed these guides in the past:

The Minstrel in the Tower (grades 2-4)

A New Coat for Anna (K-3)

My Side of the Mountain (5-8)

There are so many things I appreciate about the literature study guides from Progeny Press - the book choices are excellent, the questions are well-written, and the activities are relevant to the book. You can take as little or as much time as you'd like to work through the guides. I plan to have my boys complete two more of these guides this year for a total of three guides. To see what other Crew members thought about Progeny Press literature study guides, click the banner below!

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Homeschooling with CTCMath - TOS Review

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

Math is the subject that I worry about the most in regard to homeschooling. I worry that they're going to fall behind, struggle with concepts, or miss out on learning something they're going to need later on. Math is a subject that builds on itself year after year, and mastery of math concepts is critical to moving on to more difficult topics.

Silas and Titus have been using CTCMath over the summer to work on their math skills. We were given a 12-month family membership to this online math curriculum. CTCMath offers prerecorded video tutorials and interactive math questions, games, and tests for kindergarten through 12th grade. I selected the 5th grade level for Titus who will be going into 5th grade this year and the Basic Math and Pre-Algebra for Silas who will be entering 7th grade this year.

CTCMath is very easy to use! Silas and Titus log-in around three times a week to complete a lesson. There is a video tutorial for every single lesson, and they would watch these videos first. Each video is 4-9 minutes long and explain the math concepts really well. The narrator's voice is very calming and easy to listen to. He has a gift for teaching math! He provides plenty of example problems that increase in difficulty for each concept so your child can really see how to work a variety of the problems.

After watching the video tutorial, there are interactive practice questions your child can work. There are around ten questions for each concept, and your child receives immediate feedback on their answer. They receive a percentage grade for each set of questions, and this grade is averaged with all of the other percentages in the category for a cumulative percentage. They also have a level that shows how well they are doing - platinum for 100%, gold, silver, and bronze levels for less than that. Each time your child gets a question right, they get a star on the "mastery" bar - when they answer a certain number of questions correctly, they have mastered the topic with a blue star. Sometimes the boys had to repeat the questions (with different problems) to attain mastery, even with they got a 100%. Titus wasn't as worried about having all blue stars beside the topics he completed, but Silas wanted all of his to show mastery.

There is also an option to print a worksheet with the questions. This is great if your child doesn't like working on the computer, if the concepts require space to work out, or if you want a paper record of what your child is doing.

There are weekly reports for the parents that show your child's progress. These reports have everything from the dates and times your child was logged in, the tutorials they watched and questions they answered, their percentage grade, and how many lessons they completed for the week. These are great for at-a-glance summaries. They are emailed to the parent email each week and are available to view from your online account.

Titus has also really enjoyed playing one of the extra games, Times Tables Shoot 'Em Up. It's a space-themed game focusing on multiplication facts. This is one area that I've really wanted him to practice this summer, so he's gotten a good bit of practice playing this game. You can choose which times table to work on, and although he usually chooses an easier one so he'll win the game, I do ask him to try the harder ones sometimes.

We have been very pleased with CTCMath! Silas and Titus both don't mind logging in to do a math lesson a few times a week, even though it is summer! They have both learned quite a bit from the video tutorials. There was only one lesson that Silas did where the interactive questions were a bit difficult to complete for him - the long multiplication lesson. He would have been better off to work them on paper, but he wanted to do it online. Every other lesson has been really easy to navigate and complete. The entire lesson, video and questions, takes them each less than 15 minutes a day to complete. I really think it's been great for them and helped to prevent the "summer slide" of math concepts.

CTCMath is a full online math curriculum but can also be used as a supplement. I believe I'll have Titus keep using this as a supplement to his regular math program this school year. It doesn't take long each day and you can choose which topics to work on each day. I fully believe that you can use this as a full curriculum. The best part is - homeschoolers get 50% off the cost of the membership! If you'd like to see what other Crew members thought of CTCMath, click the banner below!

Monday, August 8, 2022

Blogging from A to Z: Kicking off a New School Year!

We officially start homeschooling for the 2022/2023 school year next Monday! This is my last week for preparations and organizing. I'm trying to get everything together and ready to go.

I'm expecting a baby the end of September, plus I have a preschooler, so I really felt the need this year to have the boys be mostly independent in their work. We chose curriculum with this in mind. As I've been looking through their books and getting familiar with everything, I've kept that concept in the forefront of my thoughts - independence.

Here are a few things I'm doing to prepare to kick off our school year.

The thing I've been doing that I think will be one of the biggest helps this year is getting the boys a box for their science supplies. This subject calls for the most supplies for both of them. I know that if I don't have what we need on-hand, it will be pushed aside and not done. Both of their science books have three different sections for the year. I went through the first section in both of their books and made very extensive lists of the supplies they need. I've been buying and collecting the things they will need and storing them in one of our empty bins on our school shelf. This way, when they have an experiment (which is several times a week each), they will have everything they need right there. Other than perishable items and craft items, everything will be in this box. After they are finished with their first section, I will do this for the second section as well.

I may need to put these supplies in two bins rather than one because it's getting heavy!

I've also been organizing our school shelf. The boys each have their own shelf for their books, and the bins contain loose items that we need. I made sure their books are accessible to them and placed where they won't get lost. They will grab the books they need for one subject at a time and put them back on the shelf when they are finished, grabbing the next subject. Last year, we had bins for all of their books, and it got messy and disorganized. The bins their books were stored in also tore, bent, and even broke. By having their books upright and visible, I think this will curtail some of the mess and disorganization.

Silas has his on the top and Titus right below.

I purchased more pencils, markers, colored pencils, crayons, and glue sticks. I went through our pencil caddy and threw away small and broken pencils, dried out markers, and broken crayons. I went through the boy's pencil boxes from last year and decided not to give them a pencil box this year. I put the markers, pencils, crayons, and so forth in the caddies we have to be used by all of us this year.

We share this caddy for pencils, markers (thin and fat), and pens.

We also have caddies for colored pencils, scissors, and glue sticks.

I've ordered the picture books Zeke will need for his preschool and restocked some of our art supplies - jewels, googly eyes, paper, and glue sticks. I'm starting to print out worksheets to supplement his curriculum and keep him busy when he begs for more schoolwork like his brothers.

I keep all of Zeke's preschool work on this shelf. I think I'm going to have a small caddy for his scissors, glue, crayons, and markers as well.

Mercie will be attending a small, private school this year, so we purchased the supplies she needed. They're in her backpack, ready to go on the 22nd of this month! We still have to buy paper towels, toilet paper, and a few things like that.

Mercie's backpack full of her supplies!

I set up Silas's account with Nicole the Math Lady. He will be using her videos along with Saxon Math 7/6. It's ready to go, and we may do a few lessons this week to show him how it works!

Monday, I plan to have a fun kick-off morning with a big breakfast and some gifts. I haven't totally decided what I'm doing this year, but I always want the first day to be special, something to look forward to.

We plan to get six or so weeks under our belt before Zoey gets here, so we're hoping we get a good routine going by then. That way the boys can continue with homeschooling while I'm recovering!

Our main school shelf.

What do you do to kick-off a new homeschool year? Link up your "K" posts this week!

Monday, August 1, 2022

Blogging From A to Z: June and July 2022

July went by just as quickly as June did! The summer break is almost over, and our new school year will be starting in a few weeks. For the letter "J" this week, I am going to do a recap in pictures with a few words of how June and July went for us! These are in no particular order, by the way.