And Now, for This Week’s Encouraging Hearts & Home Blog Hop!
The Encouraging Hearts & Home Bloggers
Join your Encouraging Hearts & Home Co-Hosts each week for encouragement and support for your heart & your home. We hope to provide a space that builds each other up and lends a helping hand along the way. With all the negativity in the world, let’s shine a positive light!
Use the form below to share your posts this week, and please consider these nice things you can do:
Visit a few other bloggers and show them your support. We all love getting comments, and who knows what inspiration you may find? Be sure to share the love–that’s what a blog hop is all about!
Teaching a foreign language in a homeschool setting can be somewhat of a challenge sometimes. We have recently had the opportunity to add Excelerate SPANISH Streaming from Excelerate SPANISH to our homeschool which has made learning a foreign language a much easier process in our homeschool.
Excelerate SPANISH Streaming has two levels with 24 lessons in each level. The lessons are generally 30-35 minutes in length, however some are up to 50 minutes long. Since this is an online course and each lesson can be viewed as many times as desired, families can move at their own pace through the course, repeating lessons as often as necessary to ensure mastery. The streaming subscription is a one year membership which gives access to both levels and is considered a one year course.
The lessons are based on a classroom setting where the teacher, Caryn Hommel, encourages classroom participation; both in the recorded classroom and for those watching the streaming video. At the start of the lesson, she writes that lesson’s vocabulary words on the white board, pronounces them clearly and gives a definition for the vocabulary words. She also uses hand gestures and body movements to help the students remember the new words as part of Total Physical Response (TPR) which is shown to help students learn a foreign language.
Excelerate SPANISH does not focus on memorizing endless lists of words from a textbook. In fact, it is the complete opposite of that approach. Each lesson starts with a group of vocabulary words that are related to each other in a story approach. This approach lends itself well to hands-on interactive lessons, hand gestures and skits. It is set up much more like we learn our primary language, by being immersed into conversation.
Books are not included in the streaming membership however they can be purchased if desired through the website, however, flashcards, games and quizzes are available for FREE on the Quizlet website. This has been an invaluable part of the Excelerate SPANISH course!
The screenshots below are from within the Quizlet website. The first shows the opening page where you can choose which lesson to review.
The next two screenshots show flashcard samples and also the “learn” section:
What Do We Think of Excelerate SPANISH?
I have enjoyed using Excelerate SPANISH as I’ve been relearning Spanish, way back in high school I took Spanish for two years. I wish I would have continued learning and using Spanish but I did not, so now I am relearning. I really like the approach that Excelerate SPANISH uses as it is much easier for me to retain the lessons than by memorizing endless lists.
The kids have split reviews of the course. The lessons are fairly long for the younger kids which makes them seem long and overwhelming. For them, I have tried breaking the lessons up and that seems to be helping. Overall, we have enjoyed Excelerate SPANISH and are thankful to be part of this review.
Connect with Excelerate SPANISH on These Social Media Links:
And Now, for This Week’s Encouraging Hearts & Home Blog Hop!
The Encouraging Hearts & Home Bloggers
Join your Encouraging Hearts & Home Co-Hosts each week for encouragement and support for your heart & your home. We hope to provide a space that builds each other up and lends a helping hand along the way. With all the negativity in the world, let’s shine a positive light!
Use the form below to share your posts this week, and please consider these nice things you can do:
Visit a few other bloggers and show them your support. We all love getting comments, and who knows what inspiration you may find? Be sure to share the love–that’s what a blog hop is all about!
Lately, we’ve had an interesting phenomenon in our house. Kids that are doing math even on the weekend. Let me tell you this is definitly not the norm in our home. Smartick has made learning math really fun in our house. Like an eight year old that grabs the computer and works on it without being told on a Saturday morning-kind of fun. I mean seriously-who is this kid?!
Smartick is designed to be used as a math supplement for children between the ages of four and fourteen. It can be used both as a remedial program and as an accelerated program because it adjusts the lessons according to the individual student’s abilities.
In getting acquainted with Smartick intitally I checked out the FAQ. I found the response to the question of what methodiology is utilized quite interesting: “Our methodology incorporates the best of traditional learning methods (Japan, the Singapore method, etc.), combined with studies from top research centers and Universities, such as Harvard and the University of Chicago. State of the art technology and pedagogical adaptation is added to the mix by our outstanding team of Engineers, Mathematicians, Educators, and Psychologists.”
How Have We Used Smartick?
When I originally signed up to review Smartick I had Eli and Rebekah in mind for the review. So upon receipt I signed the two of them up, then they started working on it. Well as per normal, the younger kids are often checking out what the older kids are working on. So when Quinton saw Eli and Rebekah having so much fun with math he wanted to get in on the action. So I signed him up. A little more time goes by and Hannah decides she needs to get in on the action. Now instead of just two kids I have four kids working on Smartick and they all LOVE it.
The lessons really do last 15 minutes and there’s a timer to show them how long they’ve worked. If they get all the questions right and your time isn’t out you can get complete bonus questions to get more “ticks” (reward stars). The ticks can then be used as currency to purchase things like pets.
Below are various screenshots from within the program.
At the completion of each lesson, I receive a personalized email (for each child) detailing what types of questions were asked during the lesson and how many questions were answered correctly. Smartick also rates their performance to give me an idea of how well they understand the concepts based on the number of correct answers and by the amount of time it takes them to answer the questons. The rankings come back as Improvable, Satisfactory, and Outstanding. Here is a screenshot from one of the emails.
From the Parent Dashboard I can see how active the kids have been on Smartick and how they did each day. On the calendar below the colored circles represent different levels; red = improvable, orange = satisfactory, green = outstanding. The pencil and paper icon represents the Level Assessment. The light bulb represents a logic lesson. The scroll represents a review session.
The kids have been able to interact with each other on Smartick by friending each other. They can go to each other’s house within the program and see the how they’ve decorated their room and see the pets they’ve been able to purchase. There are different locations within the program such as the gym, treehouse, and school. There are special activities within each of those locations. These fun activities seem to be effective at motivating the kids especially since they compare with each other.
What Have We Thought of Smartick?
To say that Smartick has been a hit around here is a major understatement. The kids haven’t argued about doing it at all. It is fun to watch them actually looking forward to math. This is certainly a review that I’m thankful we have been able to be part of!
The kids and I have been working on our drawing skills with the Drawing Program from Creating a Masterpiece. For this review, we received a one year subscription to this online art instruction. If you’ve been reading for a few years you might remember that we had the opportunity to review Creating a Materpiece a few years ago. You can read that review here.
How is the Drawing Program Set Up?
Creating a Masterpiece is taught by master artist and teacher Sharon Hofer. The Drawing Program is an online program with lessons for Beginners through Level 3; where you can move at your own pace. The lessons are presented in such a way that the youngest to the oldest can particpate and enjoy the material.
Included in each lesson is a list of necessary supplies with links to purchase the supplies online if you don’t have a local source and a step-by-step video. There are 30 different drawing projects.
You can see that the drawing lessons included a variety of techniques including; pencil, charcoal, and colored pencils. There are also a wide variety of project ideas that have appealed to the wide variety of interests in my household. The skills taught throughout the course include: Incorporating Value, Shading, Two Point Perspective, Three Point Perspective and many more!
How Have We Used the Drawing Program?
We have focused on the Beginning Level because none of the kids have had much instruction in drawing. We started with the lesson called Giraffe in Cartoon which the kids found really fun. I got tickled at Quinton because he intitially had trouble drawing a giraffe and decided it looked more like a runner duck so he changed his whole picture to a runner duck. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. 🙂
I asked the kids for quotes for the Drawing Program here’s what I got:
It’s AWESOME! I love it!
It is so much fun because I get to draw.
The kids were also agreeable for me to share their versions of the Hoot Owl.
Once the kids got started with the drawing courses they just couldn’t get enough. Especially, Rebekah, Quinton and Hannah. They really found drawing charactures to be lots of fun. I now have pictures of ducks, dogs, pigs, cows, goats, and characture pictures of giraffes decorating my home.
I really like it when a review item fills a gap I didn’t even know we had. The Drawing Program has been such a fun review! I’m glad we will get to continue using the program for several more months! I’ve personally been enjoying doing some of my own drawing; and while my drawings are not great, I do find it enjoyable to sit and draw while the kids are drawing. I can also see that as we continue to work on our drawings we are all getting better. I am excited to see our improvement as we continue to work through the course.
Be Sure to Connect with Create a Masterpiece on Social Media:
