Luv'N Lambert Life

A blog about living with Epilepsy, IBHS, Homeschooling and so much more

pre-k

Starfall Home Membership {Crew Review}

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Starfall

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:



Read More Reviews:

The Starfall Home Membership {Starfall Education Foundation Reviews}

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Crew Disclaimer

Gryphon House: The Homegrown Preschool {Crew Review}

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Gryphon House Publishers graciously offered the Schoolhouse Review crew their choice of two products for this review: Global Art and The Homegrown Preschooler.  I must say I was extremely torn over which I would chose.  Art is a HUGE deal in our house but so is preschool learning for my younger two.
Weighing my choices, I chose to review The Homegrown Preschooler: Teaching Your Kids in the Places They Live, which actually went very well with my last review, Circle Time by Kendra Fletcher {Read that review here!}.  The books complemented each other well for our lessons but enough about that.
The Homegrown Preschooler was a great reminder of many of the concepts I have previously used in our homeschooling.  It gives a great explanation of using play and hands-on activities for active lessons with younger children.  The Homegrown Preschooler gives examples throughout the book of activities, ideas and games that can be used with children of any age to develop their learning and life skills.
This 204 page book is packed with beautiful images of children engaging in various activities.  This fully-colored guide for “Teaching You Kids in the Places They Live”, is jam-packed full with activities dealing with math, science, reading, and much more.  It includes great meal planning recipes for kids along with great recipes for play dough and other useful preschool tools.
The Homegrown Preschooler guides you in turning your home into an environment in which your children can learn.  This book teaches the parent how to use the things that are available to them to bring learning home, and how to create a safe and educational place for the learning to be done in.  Preschool is about play and fun and all the things that children love to do!
Inspirational stories can be found throughout this book from the authors and others who have been there done that.  Fingerplays, songs and other fun activities are shared for you to utilize in your own preschool environment.  There’s also a great section of printables and design instructions in the back of the book for your personal use.
The Homegrown Preschooler is written for parents of preschoolers between the ages of one and five.  I chose to read and use this book with my five year old, who is a bit old for some of the activities.  We were able to use much of the books suggestions though since Laycie is slightly delayed in learning due to her Epilepsy.
After reading this book, I decided making my own play dough doesn’t sound too bad.  I also started using more hands-on elements with Laycie, creating a few sensory bins using toys, rice and other things we have around our house.  Some of these sensory play times have also made it into our bath where Laycie enjoys making a mess and then washing it up, teaching her the skills of homekeeping as she works.
Many of the suggestions in the book, are things we have been doing a long time.  We work together and have Circle Times and field trips that allow our family to bond and socialize.  We clean together too, learning skills from one another as we work.  Sometimes I even let each child teach another the skills they are good at.
The Homegrown Preschooler is a great book for any parent with a young child.  I know I will be pulling it out in the future as Jackson grows and I am in need of a reminder for activities to do with him.  This book will be beneficial for years to come as it teaches you skills and techniques that can really be used throughout the child’s younger years.
The Homegrown Preschooler is available from Gyphon House for $29.95 plus shipping.  For more reviews of The Homegrown Preschooler, please click the banner below!

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Reading The Alphabet: Now Available As A Bundle Pack!

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Have you seen this very awesome curriculum from Becky @ This Reading Mama? It is now available as a bundle pack just for your easy convenience.  That’s right! All of the Reading The Alphabet materials are now included in this download for the low price of $10!
To learn more about how Reading The Alphabet works, you can visit the introduction post on This Reading Mama.
All together this bundle contains over 1500 educational pages.  Because of it’s massive size, it comes in SIX download files which are all included in this bundle.
For this week ONLY {July 15-19}:
Enter coupon code back2school 
to receive $2 OFF your purchase.
Also find out how to win a FREE Bundle Pack of 
*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

TouchMath {Crew Review}

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Laycie is turning 5 next month and with her impending birth date, comes the realization that it’s also time to start a more structured version of homeschooling with her.  As I was researching curriculum ideas, the opportunity to review TouchMath came.  Needless to say, I was estatic to be offered the TouchMath Pre-K Homeschool program for product review.
TouchMath is a multisensory mathematics program developed to be used with children in grades Pre-K through 3rd.  The TouchMath program uses TouchPoints to teach children important counting skills, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and more.  This innovative math program allows children to touch, count and repeat which reinforces the math problem with audio repetition to better establish fact mastery.
Since this program puts all of Laycie’s senses to work, I immediately knew it would be the perfect curriculum to use with her!  We began with the TouchMath Pre-K Homeschool program which covers counting, number sense, comparing, classifying, sorting, graphing, patterning, identifying and so very much more.  Since we were given this product as a review, we were gifted several of the basic manipulatives to use along with our TouchMath Pre-K lessons.  Laycie absolutely LOVED the manipulatives and I must admit that I do too!
Our absolute favorite of the manipulatives has been the 3-D Numerals.  These solid plastic pieces are vibrant in color and sturdy for even the most active child to handle.  They have the signature touch points on them to be used specifically with the TouchMath program.  But even better, they are in the shapes of the actual numerals which allows the child to see and feel the number shape, better allowing them to absorb and learn each specific numeral.  
Another favorite manipulative for us was the Texture cards.  Being able to touch the numbers and touch points with various textures helps Laycie to learn the numbers through sensory.  She loved the cute character drawings on many of the cards.  This manipulative really brought learning to life for her and coincided so well with the actual printed lessons from the Homeschool program.
The bulk and best part of the TouchMath Pre-K Homeschooling program is the actual curriculum itself though.  As great as the extra manipulatives are, they work best with the program itself, allowing the student to get the maximum sensory learning experience.  For purpose of this review, we received the full Pre-K unit download of the TouchMath program.
As I mentioned above, the TouchMath program is designed to teach counting numerals through touch.  Numerals one through five have single TouchPoints meaning each point is touched once while counting, and numerals six through nine have double TouchPoints meaning each point is touched twice while counting.  As students learn the numbers they also learn the number value by counting the TouchPoints.
The TouchMath Pre-K lessons are broken into 6 lesson modules containing around 15 workmats to be completed in while using each module.  Each lesson module focuses on a different aspect of Math.  Module one teaches counting and number sense, module two covers comparing and classifying, and so on as the modules are broken down to teach important concepts.
The workmats are blackline masters which is really nice since they don’t take a lot of ink to print out.  The programs PDF download itself is in color and black and white but does not need to be completely printed out.  It can simply be viewed on a computer and only the blackline master workmats need to be printed out for use off the computer.
The workmats are fairly simple, yet challenging enough for the Pre-K child.  Coloring skills are implemented throughout helping the child develop better writing skills and also occupational skills.  Simple activities like color one pig pink and color the group with four milk cartons.
Laycie really loved completing her workmats.  She enjoys coloring and caught on really easily with the materials, allowing her to work through fairly quickly.  I found as she worked that she knew quite a bit of the material in the lessons.  Had I begun using this product a year ago when she was 3 turning 4, we would have benefited from it greatly.  The lessons were great for me to use with her to ensure that she has learned these important early math skills though and we will continue to use this program for her math for this year and possibly into the future.
The TouchMath Homeschool program is available online.  TouchMath Pre-K Homeschool Program cost $59.95 for the program unit download.  This includes the implementation guide, workmat activity sheets, module guides, answer sheets and more.  It does not include the math manipulatives to use with the program.  The manipulatives are a wonderful addition but they are not necessary for completion of this program.  If you are interested in using the manipulatives, you can find the links to each specific one at the bottom of each product download page.  Many of the manipulatives can be used with each subsequent product download.
For more reviews of the TouchMath Homeschool program and to see other reviews of different Math grade levels with this program, please visit the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog!