A typical day finds Emily working in a variety of places and positions. She definitely doesn’t sit at a desk for 4 hours a day! Here are a few shots of homeschooling at the Lott home...
Notice the parakeet on Emily’s shoulder!
Studying flash cards….
Hands on learning…
I’m Blogging Through the Alphabet with “Ben and Me.”
Are you looking for a way for your child to practice math concepts? IXL may be just what you need. This site covers hundreds of math concepts from pre-K through algebra. It is not quite a complete curriculum because its emphasis is on practice, not teaching concepts. However, when a child needs help on a concept or misses a problem, he or she can view an explanation of the concept. The scope of this program is huge! The child is able to choose which topics to practice at any time, making IXL a perfect supplement for a child who needs additional practice in a specific area.
The topic categories for seventh grade (the level Emily was using) included:
Each of these categories has 5 to 30 activities within it. The activities are bright and colorful. Kids can win “prizes” by completing activities.
Each activity is mastered when the child’s score reaches 100. As the child correctly answers questions, the score rises. If the child misses a question, the scores drops, requiring that the child do extra practice to reach a mastery level. I loved this for Emily. She tends to be careless with her work, missing problems simply from sloppiness. With IXL, she received immediate feedback of her score dropping, which motivated her to work more carefully. I’ve been struggling with finding a way to motivate her toward excellence for years and am finding IXL a great tool for this!
Home Page (7th grade)
As a parent, I received email notification of the time spent on the program and of activities mastered. At the site, I am able to view a parent report that details every skill that Emily has practiced and her level of mastery of that skill as well as the amount of time that she practiced each week.
Parent Report
Each of these categories has 5 to 30 activities within it. The activities are bright and colorful. Kids can win “prizes” by completing activities.
Each activity is mastered when the child’s score reaches 100. As the child correctly answers questions, the score rises. If the child misses a question, the scores drops, requiring that the child do extra practice to reach a mastery level. I loved this for Emily. She tends to be careless with her work, missing problems simply from sloppiness. With IXL, she received immediate feedback of her score dropping, which motivated her to work more carefully. I’ve been struggling with finding a way to motivate her toward excellence for years and am finding IXL a great tool for this!
Emily has enjoyed using IXL and I think it provides valuable math practice. We will definitely continue using this program.
5/5 stars 
A subscription to IXL is $9.95 a month or $79 a year.
Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received a free membership to IXL in order to write this review. All opinions are my own.
Over the past year, I’ve been hearing references to the “Life of Fred” math program. I heard glowing reviews and finally had to investigate this program with the strange name for myself!
Life of Fred, by Stanley F. Schmidt, Ph.D, is a math program in story form. The books revolve around 5 1/2 year old Fred, who is a professor of mathematics at Kittens University. This child prodigy sleeps under his desk in his office and has all sorts of strange adventures happen to him that require him (and the reader) to use his mathematical skills along the way. Each short chapter is followed by several problems for the student to work. The solutions immediately follow the problem sets, so Emily covers them with an index card while she works. The book is intended to be self-teaching. After every 7 chapters, the student has to cross a quiz called “bridge” to progress to the next chapter. There are several bridge quizzes and once the student passes one with a 90% grade, he or she can skip to the next chapter. The bridges are graded by the teacher/parent, so this is the opportunity to assess what the child is learning.
The Life of Fred Pre-Algebra program actually includes 4 books, which can be used in the 4th-9th grades:
Topics covered in Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology are:
Although this is not a complete biology course, it covers quite a bit of information, including:
This is truly an innovative way to teach math! Every problem given is tied into the storyline, illustrating the practical use of mathematics in everyday life. Different types of problems are given in each lesson, so the student never faces a page of nearly identical problems, but continues to review previous concepts while learning new ones. The “bridges” are like end-of-chapter tests. Emily has been very motivated to do well on the bridges so that she can skip straight to the next lesson. Since she tends to be careless about her work, this is a good technique to motivate her toward excellence.
I’m undecided about whether the books provide enough practice opportunities for students who don’t grasp concepts quickly. The lessons are very short! At this point, nearly everything Emily has encountered has been a review for her, so I can’t say whether the book would provide enough practice for new topics. I can say that she has enjoyed the book very much, is doing 2-3 lessons a day, and that the varied review is helpful to her.
The biology is presented in a fun way, allowing students to learn about a variety of interesting topics. Like the math topics, the biology is also relevant to the story line.
If you have a reluctant math student OR a student who loves to read OR a self-initiated student who prefer to teach himself, Life of Fred is definitely worth a look. You can see samples of each book on their website.
5/5 stars 
Life of Fred: Pre-Algebra 1 with Biology sells for $29.00 with free U.S. shipping through the publisher, PolkaDotPublishing, --a very reasonable price, especially considering there isn’t an additional teacher’s book to purchase.
Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher in order to write this post. All opinions are my own.
Beverly Lewis, known for her many novels about Amish life, is one of my favorite authors. I always look forward to another book book of hers coming out. The Fiddler tells the stories of two young people- Michael Hostetler, a young Amish man who is considering leaving the Amish church and community, and Amelia Devries, an “Englisher” who is a world-class violinist. Both struggle with the expectations put upon them by their families when their hearts are leading them in a different direction. When they serendipitously meet each other, they discover a likeness of mind and attraction that is unexpected, given their very different lives and backgrounds.
This novel pulled me in from the first chapter. I loved the story and found it hard to put down. Although this book appears to be the first of a series, I was glad to discover that the storyline was fully resolved by the close of the book. Many of Beverly Lewis’s books leave part of the story hanging until the next book in the series. Because of this fact, The Fiddler is one of my favorites.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Bethany House for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
Our cocker puppy, Macy, is 6 months old now, and full of energy. She’s coming along pretty well with her training and LOVES everyone she meets.
Here she is at 2 months old…
And now….
She is NOT allowed on the couch, but seems to have claimed it anyway. We throw her off 8 or 10 times a day. This is how we find her if she’s left alone in the family room. She puts all of her toys on the couch, then hops up to take a nap!
I’m Blogging Through the Alphabet with “Ben and Me.”
This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Quaker Oats for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
Granola or breakfast bars are a staple at our house. We actually seldom eat them at home, but I always try to keep a few in the car for when we're running around doing errands or going from one activity to another. Since we are on a very tight budget, I like to have some wholesome food on hand as a way to avoid having to stop to buy unhealthy fast food when we are starving!
We're heading to Walt Disney World next week (hurray!), taking granola or breakfast bars both in the car and into the parks as snacks. Carrying our own healthy snacks can save a LOT of money while in the parks!
I am eager to try out the NEW Quaker Soft Baked Bar, which is loaded with real fruit and nuts and can be either eaten cold or heated in the microwave. It comes in two flavors--Cinnamon Pecan Bread and Banana Nut Bread, both of which sound scrumptious! I'm also happy to see that each 140 calorie bar contains 5g of fiber and 6g of protein, as well as 5 B-vitamins. I always look for a breakfast snack with plenty of fiber and protein, so this sounds like a good option.
Which flavor sounds best to you?
The Story Builder App, by Mobile Education Store, is designed to help children accomplish the following goals: 1) Improve paragraph formation; 2) Improve integration of ideas; and 3) Improve higher level abstractions by inference. This app is designed for younger elementary and special needs children and helps children learn to narrate stories.
Features include:
I downloaded the app onto Emily’s iPod Touch. She found it simple to use. In level one, a colorful cartoon is shown with a question asked, both audible and in print. The child presses the record button and records a full sentence answer to the question. In level one, 4 questions are asked and the answers are easily answered by looking at the picture. When all the questions are answered, the child presses the “play story” button to hear the entire story read back.
Level 2 includes 7 questions. The answers require some inference or creative skills to answer.
Level 3 merely shows a picture and allows the child to make up and record a story without cuing questions.
Emily had a lot of fun with this app. Although it is geared for younger children, she enjoyed making up creative (silly, crazy!)stories. I encouraged her to use good vocal expression while recording and to use descriptive, complex sentences instead of simple ones—the same things I encourage in her creative writing, so I think this was beneficial even for a 12 year old. Emily did have trouble at first remembering that every answer needed to be a complete sentence or her story wouldn’t make sense (although there was a prompt to start the sentence). This would likely be a bigger issue for younger children.
As a speech pathologist, I think this would be a helpful app for me to use in therapy and I would recommend it to parents of language-delayed children. I like the methodical way it helps children tell a complete story, building it sentence by sentence. Level 1 is beneficial for building comprehension and question-answering skills, while levels 2 and 3 are good for developing more complex inference and language expression skills.
The ability for children to record and immediately play back their stories makes it especially reinforcing. Actually, I could see myself using this app with children with articulation or fluency issues as well. When doing therapy, I use a lot of games to make practice fun, but find it a bit harder to find “fun” conversational activities.
The iPod/iPhone version of Story Builder is $5.99 at the iTunes Store. An iPad version is also available.
Please visit the Schoolhouse Review Blog to read more reviews of Mobile Education Store apps.
Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this app free in order to write this review. All opinions are my own.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Cleaning House: A Mom’s 12-month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement, by Kay Wills Wyma. I even loved the title! I am surrounded by kids, including my own, that seem to think that adults exist merely to make their lives easier. The author, realizing that her own children were unable to clean a bathroom, do laundry, cook, or even keep their rooms clean, embarked on a year-long project to train her children in the skills they would need to grow into responsible adults who could both take care of themselves and would be appreciative and thoughtful of others.
Each month, the family added a new habit or skill to their routine. The first month was making beds and maintaining clean rooms; the second was meal preparation and kitchen clean-up. Further months included home maintenance, outside chores, and hospitality. Despite her children’s grumbling at the new expectations, she found that they learned new skills, developed pride in their abilities, and began to show more consideration for other as the months passed.
I found this book to be inspiring. Although my child does chores and is probably more competent than many her age, there are some tasks that she has never done and I love the idea of using a methodical method to ensure that she learns all the skills she needs before she leaves home. Additionally, while she is pretty good about doing what she’s asked, she fails in the area of self-initiative. I think she’d be perfectly happy to live in total chaos! I will definitely be drawing from some of the the ideas in Cleaning House in the next months!
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Waterbrook-Multnomah for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
Emily ran into a door last week and gave herself this “lovely” black eye.
I’m Blogging Through the Alphabet with “Ben and Me.”
The girls and I just got back from a trip to Disney World. Our schedules have been so hectic lately, it’s very hard to find a week when everybody is free to actually take a trip, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. We stayed at the Pop Century Resort, spent 3 days in the parks, and one day at Blizzard Beach Water Park.
Ready for a day at the Magic Kingdom!
We usually skip Dumbo because the lines are so long, but now that the new Dumbo ride is hidden away in the old Tune Town, the wait was only 10 min. We loved the new circus theming to the ride.
Honorary bugs!
Trying the “Beverly” at Club Station Cool in Epcot.
Yes, I was there, too!
