phonics

Starfall Home Membership {Crew Review}

February 27, 2018 by Dana

Starfall Education Foundation has been a favorite in our household for 13 years now. I was so excited when I saw The Starfall Home Membership come up for review this year. Starfall has been such a blessing in our home over our years of homeschooling. It is one of our most recommended programs to other homeschoolers.

As always, Starfall Education Foundation provides a wonderful program to help children everywhere learn to read. The program is still free but they now have The Starfall Home Membership available for a low yearly fee. This part of the program offers an informative and fun curriculum that can be used with your young students both at home and in a classroom setting.

Starfall Education Foundation offers an app download to be used by your students. The app is available on both Android and iPad. It’s simple and fun to use.

As I mentioned, we began using Starfall many years ago with my oldest son. It was a program he found fun. Bonus that it was free to use with him. Extra bonus that he actually learned from it.

My daughter also began reading with Starfall. She loved the games and the fun videos that the program included. We could watch a few of the videos or play a few games and it wasn’t overwhelming. It was just the right amount of learning and fun.

Add in my third child. Our love of Starfall continued. Laycie loved the program just as much as her siblings.

And when the fourth baby came, well Starfall was sure to be a hit with him too. He was watching the videos with his siblings before he could sit up. He was singing the catchy songs before he could really talk well. He was learning and all thanks to this wonderful company that has kept my children interested for the past decade.

Now, though I am an avid lover of Starfall Education Foundation, I had never joined The Starfall Home Membership. We simply enjoyed the free parts of this wonderful program. So when this review came up, I wanted to know what it was all about. Seriously, how much better could this program get!

I logged in and set up our account. Through our membership we were able to add in Math and even more reading, phonics and fun. This program is for preschool, 1st and 2nd grade. It’s a great remedial resource for students who may be a bit older as well.

The program is not overwhelming. You can stop at any point and restart again when you’re ready. You can work all day or just 10 minutes. You can restart and replay whatever you need to.

This program has taught my kids so much. They’ve learned to read. It’s helped with reading struggles. It’s helped keep them interested. It was a savior in our household.

And the Starfall Home Membership is awesome. You gain access to so much more. There’s a parent/teacher center where you will find access to full curriculum units that help you teach the basics to your sweet children. You can download additional helps, like charts and images, readers and so much more.

These items are also available for purchase in the Starfall Store. Costs vary by product. These are not needed for the program but they are a great bonus if you wish to purchase while working through the program.

Starfall starts with teaching your child the ABC’s. We’ve watched these little videos and played the games endlessly. My kids LOVE them. They haven’t changed a lot over the years. They’ve only gotten better.

When your child has a good grasp of the ABC’s, you’ll move forward into Learning to Read. This just continues to build and build until eventually, your child is reading! I love it!

Through The Starfall Home Membership, your child learns so much more! You start with math songs, or you can learn about holidays, calendar math, ABC’s, Colors, Phonics, Nursery Rhymes and so so so much more!

All these things are developed to keep your child’s interest in learning. For us, it’s been one of the best educational programs we’ve ever encountered. I am more than thankful for all that Starfall Education Foundation has taught my children.

You can get your own subscription to The Starfall Home Membership for $35 a year. This is such a wonderful investment for young children and one you will love. You’ll see them truly enjoying learning right away.

You can find Starfall Education Foundation online at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/starfall.education/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/starfalledu Tag: @starfalledu
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/starfalleducation/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starfalleducation/ Tag: @starfalleducation

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The Starfall Home Membership {Starfall Education Foundation Reviews}

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The Crafty Classroom: R.E.A.D. {Crew Review}

July 27, 2017 by Dana

Have you ever been to The Crafty Classroom website? Have you seen the amazing products available there, like the Learning to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook and the R.E.A.D. Review Pack? There are LOADS of other great things there too.

First, let me say how much I love The Crafty Classroom and the amazing products there. You can seriously spend hours just looking through all the good things to use in your homeschooling. Curriculum for all ages. It’s good stuff, y’all. Check it out!

I’m planning to grab the Alphabet Curriculum Notebook pretty soon for Jackson. This is a 26 week curriculum that I think will be amazing for him to work on his letters with. And for $15, it’s a steal!!

For this review though, we were given a PDF copy of the Learning to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook, along with the R.E.A.D. Review Pack. These two products really made me fall in love with The Crafty Classroom. They are a complete reading curriculum for young students and they are packed with fun!

The Learning to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook is 798 pages long. This curriculum doesn’t cover the alphabet. That’s covered in the awesome Alphabet Curriculum Notebook. This Notebook concentrates on learning to read by providing a different word family each week with awesome activities that go along with it. Students also cover sight words that are easily recognized.

The week begins with a great brightly colored image that can be printed of the word family you’ll be working on. In the beginning of the file, you’ll find a Daily Warm-Up sheet. I chose to laminate this for Jack and Laycie. It has space for their first and last name, a clock to use hands to mark the time, as well as an analog box for learning to write the time. It has a place for temperature and weather for the day. There’s a calendar to make the month, day and year, as well as the day of the week. It’s a great little start up for each day.

The first sheet of learning provides the word family word underlined with an arrow that instructs you to follow the sounds to learn the word. Am is the first word so you would start with the “A” sound and follow through with the ‘M” sound to teach your child to say the word. This is quick and fun to do with your child to enforce learning to read.

The next part of the lesson jumps right into writing by putting a letter in front of “am” for your child to learn to relate words through rhyming. This begins your lesson in learning about words that are similar and helps your child with spelling. It’s great fun for your little one.

There are also printable cards for learning. These can be printed on cardstock or paper and laminated as well. They allow the child to see rhyming words as well as some sight words. These are a great way to learn to recognize words in print.

There are sounding out and matching activities to help reinforce what your child is learning. There are also grammar activities included in this curriculum which teach noun, verbs and other important grammar along with learning to read. There are so many activities that your child will love learning with like mine have.

The R.E.A.D. Review Pack is really awesome as well. This pack contains handy little readers that you print and staple together for your child to reinforce what they are learning in their Learning to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook. These are easy to make and use with your little ones.

I used these two items with Jack and Laycie who are both at different places in learning to read but both LOVE fun activities on worksheets for reading. There were so many activities to make this last all week for them. They looked forward to the daily lessons and enjoyed doing it together. Jack still needs some alphabet work but we will be working on that soon.

You can purchase the Learning to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook and the R.E.A.D. Review Pack from The Crafty Classroom. The notebook pack is $25 and the review pack is $15. Both are priced incredibly low for the content they provide.

You can find The Crafty Classroom online:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Crafty-Classroom-121821161222656/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CraftyClassroom Tag: @CraftyClassroom

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/craftyclassroom/ Tag: @craftyclassroom

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecraftyclassroom/ Tag: @thecraftyclassroom

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LiteracySoft: Phonics and Reading with McGuffey {Crew Review}

May 8, 2013 by Dana

LiteracySoft is a quality company dedicated to developing easy-to-use, inexpensive programs to teach reading to people of all ages. LiteracySoft uses lessons from McGuffey Readers to teach their simple method and get readers reading. Whether through their app or on PC, LiteracySoft is fun for all.

For this review, we were given a free download of the LiteracySoft app to try. Phonics and Reading with McGuffey contains 52 complete lessons for reading. These 52 lessons work to bring the student up to a first grade reading level. It is also a great reading review tool for those struggling with reading at any age.

Phonics and Reading with McGuffey allows the student to work at his/her own pace without having an instructor telling them what they need to do. Taking away the instructor often takes the pressure out of learning to read and puts it into the hands of the child, allowing them to grasp important reading concepts as they work through the program on their own. And what better way is there to do that then with an all time, tried and true great like the McGuffey Reader!

In this app, the student will find all 52 McGuffey Primer lessons, 44 letter sounds of English and their graphemes, over 60 letter sound animations, more than 400 practice vocabulary words, and an over 9000 nonsense word audio dictionary.

After downloading the app, the user will find the unique ABC icon on their iPad page and can immediately begin after downloading is finished. Spoken directions tell the user what to do when beginning. Choose a color button and type your name to get started with this app.

On the next page, the user can then read the Table of Contents, change their settings or begin the lesson. Choosing the Table of Contents allows the user to choose from any of the 53 included lessons on the app. This allows the user to jump around and repeat lessons as needed.

In the User Settings section, the user can choose to skip phonics rules explanations, not to sound out words in a phonics blender, use an Open Dyslexic font, monochrome letters in words and sentences for easier viewing and hide the previous and next lesson arrows throughout the program.

Upon clicking Begin Lesson, there is a brief instructional showing the student how to use the app. At the top, the user can find a repeat button. Below that is a menu button. There is also a previous and next part button to click back or ahead in a lesson. The lessons, as mentioned before, follow those in the McGuffey Primer, so they are simple and easy to follow along with.

Cute actions graphics are included along with the lesson, which also goes along with the original primer lessons in style, only more up-to-date for this time period. As the student works through, the program sounds out the word, completing this with the complete word’s spoken name: cat = c a t (kuh aa tuh) = cat.

As lessons increase, so do the activities included. A jump menu appears to allow the student to work on different activities throughout that lesson. Some of these activities include workings specifically on Letter Sounds, new words, Phonics with flashcards, blending phonics, viewing the lesson’s illustrations closer, practice of reading, quizes, spelling practice and sight word drilling. Students working through can pick and choose the activities they’d like to complete as they work through each lesson.

This app quickly became a family favorite for us. My children’s reading skills and development has increased greatly just in the review period of a few short weeks. This program is something that will be added into our homeschooling for all our readers. The kids all agree it’s a lot of fun to complete lessons. It’s also great for my interactive, video-game learner who hates learning to read anything in a book.

We used this app for several weeks. I was able to create a profile for every one of my children and myself to play with this app. It was very easy to set up lessons for each of them to complete. This app was a little advanced still for my 5 year old but she is gradually growing into it. It was perfect for my struggling reader to work with and he has made a lot of improvement in a short time. My advanced reader also found the app enjoyable and used it to hone in on her personal reading skills and goals.

Phonics and Reading with McGuffey app is available in through the LiteracySoft website. There is a free trail of the first 10 lessons available and also available for trial on PC.

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