Category:

Essentials in Writing Review

3/14/2013

The product I am reviewing today is called Essentials In Writing. This is a program that focuses on grammar and composition. The goal of this program is to produce confident writers who enjoy the study of language.

Since I have never focused on either of these language arts activities with the lad, we chose to do grade one. The product I used came as a DVD with lesson-by-lesson video instruction and printable worksheets/assignment sheets/answer key in PDF format.

How the Program Works

I received a DVD and a link to the PDF document used. To do the program I would play the lesson and then have my lad do the printed handouts.

The recommendation for starting this program is:

It is recommended that students begin first grade AFTER they have a basic understanding of spelling phonetically.

From the website

The Essentials in Writing strategy involves several components:

1. Students watch Mr. Stephens as he teaches/reviews each concept in a methodical, step-by-step approach. Then students proceed with worksheet activities or writing assignments.

2. Mr. Stephens presents content and writing assignments small "chunks" to help students understand, apply, and retain concepts.

3. Writing assignments are modeled by Mr. Stephens. After a new or reviewed concept has been taught, he actually "shows" students HOW to apply the new concept in writing.

Here you can see where I wrote out an example because he was getting all stressed out about it. So I showed him what was needed and then it was OH... I get it. He was then able to move forward confidently.

Essentials in Writing Grade 1 photo EIW1stgrade_zpsd9238df9.jpg

My Thoughts

I enjoyed this program and think I may purchase it for next year. It is very clear in the teaching about all the different grammar aspects. The expected workload per lesson is quite easy to accomplish. Short and sweet when it comes to grammar/composition works well with my lad. I really like that I don't have to print off everything immediately but can just print off a day or two as needed. Putting together a whole book would set my boys' back up against doing it, but just having a page (or three) at hand makes it quite doable for the lad.

I do have to admit to not having him write out the complete sentences if there was not need to do so. I taught him what editors do. They take a pen (usually red because it stands out) and they make corrections right on the work itself. So that's what the lad did. He did take some creative license at times and drew pictures of capitals jumping in or pigs dragging in a period. Where writing had to be done (as in completing a sentence) I did have him write the actual sentence which gave us "sounding out the word" time as well.

This program worked well for my son and was a good fit.

We continue to work on holding the pencil properly but some days the battle needs to be elsewhere. Here he's drawing in capitals that have to chase away the little letters.

The Lad's thoughts

He liked the program and is learning a lot. He disliked all the writing and often found the quickest ways to make a sentence complete.

We often had a helper who enjoyed being taught all the different grammar aspects that the lad was learning. This Peeg Pig. :)

Suggestions for Improvement.

Chapter headings on the video itself. The lessons run into each other which makes it too easy to listen "ahead". While not a bad thing to do as it's often how we do things, it makes it frustrating at times to know just where to stop.

If you would like to read what other crew members opinions are for the grades 1, 3-11 just click to read more reviews.

Disclaimer

I received a free copy of this product to use in my own household in exchange for my review of it for the Schoolhouse review crew. I was not required to give a positive review of it. I was not compensated in any other way. All opinions expressed are my own or my families. I am revealing this information according to FTC regulations.

A Day in the Life....

3/6/2013

I've been reading lately about struggling homeschool moms (for the most part). Some are dads, but most are moms.   Struggling with children not wanting to learn, struggling managing their time, their households, their...well...most anything.   Raising and educating a family keeps a body busy.   When I read things like this I need to make sure I keep my focus where it aught to be....doing what works for OUR family. Not getting caught up in the "keep up with xyz family".   They are their own family, this one is MINE.

So today we started off the day doing dishes... I know... totally exciting isn't it? I had a lad wanting very much to play the new levels of bad piggies. What?   Let my boy play Bad Piggies rather than do "real homeschool?"   Bad Piggies IS real homeschool. It's problem solving, working out engineering problems, paying attention to details and all sorts of things.    He has to work hard to figure out some of those levels and he's better at it than I am.   He was feeling a ... what's the word I want...unsure if he had his focus in the right spot and came in asking "mom, is it okay if I play Bad Piggies? Am I learning things?"   I told him yes, you are...but what do YOU think you are learning?

His response
1. I have to keep trying and trying mom.
2. I have to figure out why it's not working and sometimes I just don't know. I have to ask Dad for help!   Some of those levels are VERY hard mom.

For a seven year old, I thought those good answers.

Dishes done, we had breakfast, and looked at the paper

From the News

Part of the headline had this "the N-word".

I said to the lad...The N word? Do you know any N words?
Does Angry birds or Bad Piggies have any N words?

Led to a whole discussion on N-words which is good practice for a beginnging reader....this lead to him wanting to know what the N-word in the paper was and we talked about how one councillor used a word beginning with N that made people get all upset with her. I said that sometimes too people make too big of a deal over something and need to just let it go.

Normal things

We read and discussed a story in his primer that we are reading. Todays story was about a man who trusted a friend to tell the truth and what happened when the friend (who said he was ever so brave) was proven to not be ever so brave and what the result of that was.

TWO lessons done with our music program Adventus. My but the lad enjoys this on-line music course. :) I don't get arguments about doing it and he'll often ask to do another lesson. So happy I get to review this program for the Schoolhouse Review Crew. The lad has so much fun with it though today he was disappointed...they took away the story time...and that was just another bust a gut laughing time for him. :) Maybe they will bring it back....

After this we did our Essentials in Writing Lessons. This lesson caused some momentary confusion in the lad because he was rushing his learning. Once he slowed down it went quite smoothly. He had to do some thinking which, of course, is generally a good thing to do.

Lunch and then upstairs to do some book work. Things kinda broke down here. The lad and I worked through telling time several times over the past while but he's having some difficulty retaining this information. So I have a clock poster from the dollarama that I just wrote on all the five minute increments. Then a lightbulb went off. :) AH>> "okay.. I understand mom. BUT MOM>>> Why can't people always just say 3:15 and not a quarter past 3? Why can't they just do it all the same?!??!" He's much aggrieved by this.

How would YOU answer this??

Canada Study - First Nations

Doing this activity resulted in the lad saying "mom, this was good homeschooling today".

The lad loves angry birds, I love teaching him. It doesn't matter to me if I use angry birds to instill a love of learning in him. So our dogs are really yellow angry birds pulling a sled. Does he know that dogs helped the Inuit get around more quickly than walking? YEP! We built fish (For the birds to tease the pigs with)...but the main diet of the Inuit consisted of fish, whale and such like. Does the lad know this? For sure! :) Same with the igloo, the cache, and such...angry bird theme-ing it just helps the knowledge be retained and he has retained alot. It's very cool to see some of this stuff sink into his brain.

We are doing Canada much slower than I anticipated..but that's okay... we have a whole life ahead of us. :)

Tomorrow we paint! :)

Bannock - recipe

Came across (in our Inuit studies) this recipe for Bannock. So we made it for supper.

Ingredients

4 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
5 teaspoons baking powder
1½ cups water

Directions

Mix ingredients together to form a stiff dough.
Sprinkle flour on a clean work surface. With very clean hands, knead the dough. Dust hands and dough with flour if the dough is sticky.
Form in a round loaf about 1 inch high. Bake on a greased baking sheet at 350° F for 30 minutes.
Serve warm with butter and jam or honey.

We served it with Honey. The lad very much enjoyed it. It was fairly decent, not as good as the fried bread though....not sure which we'll make for the project fair.....

Before I forget, the lad's crystals continue to grow
This was a dollar store purchase...thus far...worth the $1.25 spent on it. :)

We added to the experiment a bit. The rocks on the right hand side, tray, green stuff came with the kit. The popsicle stick and the large rock came from the lad. He wanted to know if the rocks used made any difference and what would happen if you left the popsicle stick in it.

What do you think??

Very tired household today

2/27/2013

We started off our actual homsechooling day doing language arts. The lad had already spent a good portion of the morning learning about making his own film. He's seven and is just starting to learn about not showing EVERYTHING, that you can stop, set up the shot and then go on from there.   He's learning to be aware of back ground noise.   To zoom and out and such like. It's a work in progress.

Language arts: We read a story from our reader and then I asked the lad a variety of questions.   What would you do in that situation?   What do you think of what the boys did?   Are you glad they figured out how to get help?   Do you think what they did could really have worked?

Then we went to Adventus.   The lad LOVED this lesson (did it three times) and wanted to go on to another lesson but I said let's do our question from Target the Question first as well as our Essentials in Writing lesson.    That of course led to our doing our first DO IT multiplication question through A+Tutorsoft interactive math.   He did well with this once he figured out exactly what they were asking from him. It's hard to focus on things today.

So once we were done all that I said... GO PLAY for while. We both need to let our brains chill out. :)

We're going to make some indian bread this afternoon and do some more picture making for our First Nations work. Also we plan to build a paper castle. We're using these plans from My Little House.

Today's Efforts In Learning

2/26/2013

We started off our day with Adventus. Today's lesson was a bit of a challenge for him to figure it out. We needed to work together to bring understanding. We did our question from Target the Question. We did another lesson from A+Tutorsoft math, we did the starter lesson for multiplication. I told him all he needed to do today was listen to it.

We plan to do the Essentials in Writing lesson when we return from the library.

At the library we drew some more First Nation Lodges, find more First Nations recipes we can make at home, and work through immigration - when people came to Canada. Ended up working on the timeline for immigration to Canada. It needs some fine tuning yet.

Had gym time with the Homeschool group.

Then home to make supper.

This is what we are having

Easy Crockpot Pulled Pork

Yield: 6-8 servings

INGREDIENTS:1 large Vidalia onion, sliced thin
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
2 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 (4-6 lb) boneless pork butt or shoulder
¾ cup cider vinegar
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 ½ teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoons dry mustard
½ teaspoon garlic salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

DIRECTIONS:1. Rinse pork roast under cold water and pat dry with paper towels.

2. Place onions in crock-pot. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, paprika, kosher salt and pepper; mix thoroughly. Rub mixture all over roast and place the roast on top of the onions.

3. In a medium bowl, combine vinegar, Worcestershire, red pepper flakes, sugar, mustard, garlic salt and cayenne pepper; whisk to combine. Drizzle about 1/3 of vinegar mixture over roast. Cover and refrigerate remaining vinegar mixture.

4. Cover crockpot; cook on low for 10-12 hours. Drizzle about 1/3 of reserved vinegar mixture over roast during last ½ hour of cooking.

5. Remove meat and onions; drain. Chop or shred meat and onions. Serve with remaining vinegar mixture or your favorite barbeque sauce.

Changed Plans

2/20/2013

Originally our homeschooling day today was to have consisted of visiting a dairy farm and taking part in Dairy Day activities in Stratford. Well... overnight we received about 8-10 inches of snow. That caused buses to be cancelled and well.. roads are still being cleared so we're not doing that. :)

Ergo we stay home and do other things.

We will therefore engage in regular homeschooling activities.

Human Body

Today we looked over what a cell is made up of. Kid Discover has an infographic in the human cell. Will the lad understand it all? No.. but exposure over time will help him retain the information long term. He was quite intrigued by this and asked good questions.

Canada Study

We'll continue our efforts in drawing lodging of the First Nations people. We ran out of time to do this today, but there's always tomorrow. :)

OH! Almost forgot to add that right now (since our heritage is Dutch) that we are reading through an book called Kit and Kat about some twins who are Dutch. It talks about the things that children and families would have needed to do in the past. The lad is quite enjoying the book. It's only available as an e-book to the best of my knowledge.

Our Regular Stuff

We started off our day with Adventus.   The lad did well with it, and even asked to do the lesson over again. This morning he earned a new game to do.   He did struggle with understanding how to do the rhythm part and is part of I think why he wanted to do the lesson over again. He wanted to get it right from the get go.   We did our question from Target the Question.    We did another lesson from A+Tutorsoft math, he finally understands regrouping with subtraction over 10's   So nice to see that confidence now.    Then on the Essentials in Writing lesson. Again there were two pages to do, and he accomplished both quite handily.

We've gone back to reading from a reader.   Right now we are using a reader called: The New Days and Deeds.   i find it useful to specifically read things the lad might not necessarily choose because I find it a good way to broaden his horizons and to have something different that I can ask him questions about.

We went through our book on Telling Time. With this book he learned all the 1/2 and quarter ways to tell time. He learned how to write it digitally and manually.   It's a wipe book which makes it easy to correct mistakes.

We've started using a product called "Slide'n Solve Language Flash Cards". This is a simple product that helps with critical thinking with language arts. Asks a question, you need to draw or say the answer, and then look on the opposite side to see if you answered it correctly. The lad is having fun with this, and it only takes a minute to do.

We did a number of pages in Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills. Skills such as finding the blended letters, reading comprehension, regrouping when adding groups of numbers and such like. It's a good book, American focused, but it approaches things a bit differently and the Canadian Curriculum book which is not a bad thing. Keeps the lad thinking which is a good thing. We will probably alternate books daily.

Science

Yesterday the lad came up with his own science experiment which today he followed up with. "I wanted to know if water would taste good if I melted Valentine Candies in it."

The result: yes! the water is GOOD!

Skating, The Basics and First Nations

2/14/2013

We started the day by going Skating. My goal is to skate for 1/2 an hour, more if I can do it. Today we got to 1/2 hr and the lad was done. I skated a bit longer as he learned how to remove his own skates. :) This I've learned works much better if he does it without anyone around.

Did the Regular Basics

I needed to run an errand so we did that first then home to do our regular work. Two questions from Target the Question..which he did a good job at , we did two since tomorrow we are going out for the day. We listened again to regrouping for Subtraction with A+Tutorsoft math he's almost got the gist of it. I"m going to send him to gramma's this weekend with some very basic math subtraction just to give him a bit of confidence that he can do this. Doing the 100's is just messing with his mind. We easily did The Essentials in Writing lesson. Two pages to do today which he was surprised by, but he did the job well and had a basically good understanding as well.

Math - an Issue

Despite me doing a few different things to help my lad learn his basic math facts nothing has really worked so I"m going to the straight rote memorization. To that end today we made some flash cards. i wrote the facts on the front and the answers on the back so they will be self-correcting. He knows the facts up to about the 3+'s, but sometimes he still counts in his fingers (mentally). Though today he told me he figured out how to do the 8 and 9"s.

Mom.. I know they are close to 10 and adding 10's is EASY so I just pretend it's 10 and then I just take away 1 or 2.

I told him Good Job figuring that out. :)

First Nations

We didn't build the sleeping racks in our longhouse yesterday, we're going to build them today but without building the actual longhouse. We're hoping to make it a "see into" type of structure so we can show how it was used. The goal is to put this into our homeschool groups project fair at the end of the year.

And the lad got inspired to do some other building as well. He made some furniture for his angry bird/bad piggies toys. Made from a simple dollar store kit.

From AW I don't wanna to .... Mom, this was the best EVER!

2/13/2013

My goodness....talk about fighting homeschooling this morning. The lad was full of complaints and general disagreeableness this morning.

We struggled through Target the Question..which he did a good job at (sans the complaining). We listened to two math teachings and one Q & A with A+Tutorsoft math.   The one lesson is just listening to so he can let the concept ruminate in his head for a bit as he's struggling with understanding it.   He's better today than he was last Friday so ruminating is good.   We easily did The Essentials in Writing lesson.   Once again...filled with complaints and I don't want to.. I want to PLAY mom. I just want to PLAY.

That's all he's got on his brain this morning.
Tough luck he has to school eh?

Then we got onto our Canadian studies.   We've been learning about the First Nations people and today I had planned we'd work on a longhouse (building) and make some Indian bread.   I DON"T WANNA I wanna PLAY!!!!   Was the beseechme

Son, this will be fun. You go get some sticks and bark, I'll go get some branches.   This will be interesting come on... no playing without getting our schooling done.

Long house - -such as what the Huron's built

The Huron people lived right about where we live now. We've seen the one they have up in London. We thought it would be cool to build our own. In the spring we'd like to build a wigwam outside which will be a fun place for a boy child to play in out of the sun and he can put all his own "Stuff" into it. Please mom! :)

But it's winter, one toy sized long house to build.

We used these places as inspiration in our building design but ultimately did our own thing. The Lenage longhouse. F1W Longhouse.

Supplies: birch bark, Construction paper, Apple branches, hot glue and gun, something to use as a base, and a picture as inspiration.

We ended up rejecting the styrofoam as a base as it wasn't strong enough. We went with a cardboard box instead.

The apple branches were used as they are somewhat flexible. We curved them around and hot glued them in place.

We wanted to tie them together like the First Nation people would have done but couldn't for the life of us figure out how to do that so we decided to use construction paper over top. Is it accurate? NO. One can't soak construction paper to make it pliable to stitch it together with stitching to go around logs. Just won't happen. BUT this will do the trick.

Indian Bread

The recipe is found on page 13, it's called Blackfoot Fried Indian bread.Directions

1. Sprinkle one package of dry active yeast over 1 cup of lukewarm water. Let sit for five minutes.
2. then add 2 tbsp soft butter, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, and then 2.5-3 cups of flour.
3. Knead. you add just as much flour as you need to make a stiff dough. Our recipe used about 2 3/4 cup flour.
4. Let sit for one hour in a warmish place (we turned the oven on for a while then shut it off, letting the bread sit over the oven vent)
5. heat some oil in a saucepan til it's decently hot (about 175 celcius). We used canola oil as that's my preference in cooking.
6. Form the dough into cakes approximately 3 inches across by 2 inches wide and drop into the oil carefully. I DID THIS PART.
7. deep fry for about one minute per side or until golden brown.

As they cooked we discussed what the First Nations people might have eaten with these. Berries! Meat maybe mom?
Hmm.. what about honey? I asked.
The enthusiastic response was "OH YES MOM Honey! They could find honey from bees right"?
Indeed they can lad, was my smiled response. :)

So we enjoyed them with honey. They were DELICIOUS! :)

Online Learning, Review work and First Nations work

2/6/2013

The lad did his math through A+Tutorsoft. He did exceptionally well on this today and earned two small stickers.

We then did "target the question". We did two questions today so tomorrow we don't need to. The lad found this somewhat bothersome.

working with A+Tutorsoft

Continued Essentials in Writing. He doing the grade one material as I haven't focused on doing writing with him and I figure we can zip through things we already know and move on from there. We did lesson 5B. I did not have him write out the whole sentence, but he did need to read it to me and correct the mistakes in the sentences.

Correcting sentences and reading them. He did well at this. And yes, I allowed him to draw pictures of letters jumping ... the "DAD" letters helped the "child" letters behave themselves. :)

We worked some more on our First Nations people pages.
the lad got inspired to draw larger pictures of the various homes they used.

Essentials in Writing Review

How the Program Works

My Thoughts

The Lad's thoughts

Suggestions for Improvement.

Disclaimer

A Day in the Life....

From the News

Normal things

Canada Study - First Nations

Bannock - recipe

Very tired household today

Today's Efforts In Learning

This is what we are having

Changed Plans

Human Body

Canada Study

Our Regular Stuff

Science

Skating, The Basics and First Nations

Did the Regular Basics

Math - an Issue

First Nations

From AW I don't wanna to .... Mom, this was the best EVER!

Long house - -such as what the Huron's built

Indian Bread

Online Learning, Review work and First Nations work

Here are some of the books we used today and yesterday

some of the work the lad did on First Nations People

Who Am I?

Archives

Categories

2013 TOS Reviews

Other Reviews

How the Program Works

My Thoughts

The Lad's thoughts

Suggestions for Improvement.

Disclaimer

From the News

Normal things

Canada Study - First Nations

Bannock - recipe

This is what we are having

Human Body

Canada Study

Our Regular Stuff

Science

Did the Regular Basics

Math - an Issue

First Nations

Long house - -such as what the Huron's built

Indian Bread

Here are some of the books we used today and yesterday

some of the work the lad did on First Nations People

Who Am I?

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Archives

Categories

2013 TOS Reviews

Other Reviews