I wanted to share this video, and I apologize in advance, because the quality is pretty horrendous. We were in a diner and it was loud and I’m definitely not cut out to be a cinematographer by any means. I just really feel that this shows so much of TB’s innate personality – outgoing, friendly and incredibly curious.

I’m getting more and more glimpses lately into how TB’s mind works. The wheels are always turning, from the moment he gets up until the time when he finally rests at night. He plays hard and he sleeps hard. He is getting more creative as the days go by. The other day he called Tornado Dad and I into the bathroom to show us his new “hat”. Besides the fact that he couldn’t see it from the vantage point that we could, I thought that this was pretty clever:

My final tidbit actually happened tonight. We were playing around with Dreambox Learning. It’s a K-3 Online Math program that I’d read several reviews of recently. Tornado Boy is totally loving it. He’s spent about 5 hours with it and is still doing their “assessment” exercises. So far their program has him in the early 2nd grade area. I’ve been sort of surprised at some of the things that he’s been able to speed through – like comparing 3 digit numbers. I’ve also been somewhat surprised at some of the things that have been more challenging – like working with a number line. It is interesting for me to watch. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with him from a math perspective. I’ve been pretty resistant to just drilling the facts with him because I don’t want him to get bored. He also seems to have a more natural grasp on multiplication than his does on addition. He seems to like to play with the mental math facts more with multiplication.

Anyway… the Dreambox trial has a countdown that it shows each time that you log in and it tells you how many days are left in your trial. It also is on display on the top of the play screen as well. This seems particularly troublesome to TB. I think that he’s worried that Dreambox will just disappear at the end of the trial. I told him that we’ll consider purchasing a membership if we like it enough. Tonight after we finished our work, he asked if he could play with our Math-U-See blocks and I said sure. About a minute later he asked me to come over, that he had something to show me and I found this:

Tornado Boy decided that he wanted to show me exactly when Dreambox was going to go away. We have ten days left in our trial, and he represented each day with a corresponding Math-U-See block. He told me that the blue 10 block was today, and after today, we would only have 9 days left, the day after tomorrow, we would have 8, then two days after tomorrow we would have 7 and so on. I was intrigued, so I asked him what today was, and he said “Monday”. I said if today is Monday, what day will our trial run out? He counted out the days by name, through next Wednesday and then announced dramatically that on next Thursday, there would be no more Dreambox. I told him not to worry about it just yet.

I was truly impressed by TB’s conceptual understanding of math and dates. He’s still using his fingers for most addition problems, but he clearly gets how it all works together. I love that he’s really enjoying and soaking in math, but I’m really wondering what to work on with him next. I’m going to link this post to the Hip Homeschool Hop. Please feel free to leave me any suggestions! Thanks!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

I have to admit, I was very excited when I saw my name on the TOS Homeschool Crew review list for the “Read, Write, Type” software from Talking Fingers. I had seen a bit about the software at an online homeschool conference and I wanted to learn more about it. We received an electronic version of the software. I had to set up a teacher (parent) account and a student account for Tornado Boy. I had some issues with the password on the student account. No matter what I tried, I could not reset it to allow Tornado Boy to start working. I emailed technical support and they were able to quickly reset it for me so that we could get to work.

My son is a proficient reader and very skilled with phonics, so my main goal with the software was that he learn how to type. He can write, but doesn’t really enjoy it. He does enjoy using the computer, so I figured that it would be helpful if he knew how to type since he might be more willing to create words, sentences and later stories on the computer. One of our biggest hurdles with this goal was that he didn’t know where the letters were on the keyboard and he would get frustrated while trying to “write” on the computer. He was translating the stories to me and I would type them. I wanted to be less of a middle man for him.

My initial reaction to the software was that the graphics were pretty rudimentary. The good news is that they didn’t bother Tornado Boy in the least. He really, really likes this program and asks to play it. There is an engaging storyline where the two hands (Lefty and Rightway) that you see above, engage the student to be their helper in defeating a villain named Vexor. Along the way, the student learns proper hand-positioning and then how to type different characters to progress in the story. Each letter is associated with a named character and the student learns where they “live” on the keyboard. They also participate in drills where the have to type the letter that corresponds with the sounds (phonics) that they are given. The student earns certificates every few letters. The children are also rewarded after each typing ‘victory’ with stories at the story tree.

The program grows in complexity as the children learn more letters and sounds. Eventually they’ll use their skills to create words and stories as part of the game. We haven’t gotten that far yet, though Tornado Boy is already learning to type some simple words like cat.

The Talking Fingers website has some reporting capabilities, so that you can see how your student is doing in the areas of typing, phonics and reading along the way. You can use the Talking Fingers website to see how Read, Write, Type correlates to your individual state’s standards. For our state, it matches up with many Kindergarten and First Grade standards. That seems to be about right. The website states that the program is for children 6-9; Tornado Boy is 5 and this program is a great fit for him. He is able to use the program with minimal guidance from me.

The Read, Write, Type Learning System costs $79 for the Home Edition on CD. It includes the lessons, games and challenges in the online game as well as a CD-ROM of additional challenges. You can print out 18 leveled stories from the website as well. I must note that the CD is NOT compatible with Windows 7 or MAC 10.6. Thankfully, there is the online program that we tested out and that can be used on Windows 7 without issue (that’s what I’m using). The licenses for the online product are per student and they start at $35. Each additional student up to 5 is discounted. You can check out a parent sample of the program, or a demo of the first 8 lessons for your child here. The program also contains aids for children who are learning English as a second language (ESL). If you have an older child, Talking Fingers also produces a reading and spelling program for 2nd and 3rd graders called Wordy Qwerty.

We really enjoyed being able to review this program and will definitely continue to use it. I’m very pleased with Tornado Boy’s typing progress and the phonics review has been good, too.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of this product, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

Our week in pictures:
Spelling:

Playing with homophones

Spelling - before FIN became FUN!

Science:

Touching Horseshoe and Spider Crabs

We observed a praying mantis on our house.

Tornado Boy predicted a hurricane would hit Colorado

Physical:

He built a pyramid - then took a rest

Practical:

He worked on cutting and taping

Playtime:

He built several big Lego buildings with Tornado Dad

Legos have really given me hope. Tornado Boy and Dad are playing with them nearly every night for very long periods of time. They made a tower that was nearly 5 feet tall the other night. Tornado Boy was on a ladder to put on the finishing touches. I’m really thrilled that he’s found something that he will pay attention to for long periods of time. He’s growing up!

To see what other families are up to this week – hop on over to Homeschool Creations.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

This little game started by accident when I told Tornado Boy that he was going to get to go to C-A-M-P last week. He really had a lot of fun trying to guess what word I was spelling, so I made it into a game. I quickly figured out that he could handle just about any three letter word; so I moved on to longer words. I had fun watching him try to identify the word sounds and make the combinations in his head.

Our toughest word was S-T-O-M-P – which Tornado Boy decoded as stamp. I have a feeling that I’ve created a monster and the days of Tornado Dad and I being able to spell things to each other are quickly coming to a close!

Tips for helping your child to be successful with the game:

• Break longer words up into syllables and help them meld them together.
• Use this as a chance to reinforce any phonics rules you may be learning. This is a great chance to work with things like silent e.
• If we’re at home and Tornado Boy is unable to figure out the word in his head; he will use magnetic letters to create the word and then tell us what it is.

The nice thing with this game is that you can truly play it anywhere. It’s a nice diversion if you’re stuck waiting in line at the store or in traffic or the like.

Check out what other kids are playing at Childhood 101.

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Tornado Boy has been having a blast. We’ve been on a bunch of playdates and he also had his first week of camp. He’s been enjoying the festivals, trying new things and getting out and about. I think we’ve hit every “sprayground” in town in the past two weeks. It’s nice that they’re not completely overrun busy since school isn’t out yet.

We’ve been pretty relaxed with our schooling while things are so crazy. We do like to fit in a bit of learning here and there while we’re out, though. I love these tile boards at our local playground. They’re great for playing with patterns.

We’ve been testing out a couple of programs here at home. I picked up a copy of Wordly Wise 3000, book 2 at our homeschool conference. I’d been to their website before, but I hadn’t used the books. I’m still on the fence about teaching spelling this year, but I really wanted to make sure that we’re working on vocabulary. I entered the word lists from the book into Spelling City so that we could play around with the words. Tornado Boy absolutely loved it and quickly learned the meanings of the first lesson’s words. Wordly Wise has much better definitions for the words, but Spelling City has a huge number of options to use with the words. You can create writing worksheets, play games, learn the spellings and take tests. I definitely think this will be a good fit for us this fall.

Another thing that we’ve been testing out is Time4Learning. The Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op has a $5 for one month trial right now. We’ve used it 3 or 4 times in the past couple of weeks and I really am liking the way that it works. It’s really what I wish Rusty and Rosy had been like. It’s got a good amount of flexibility for setting up lessons for the student. I typically sit with Tornado Boy as he works through the lessons. I was easily able to change his grade level after a few lessons. I also like that we can take a test for a level in advance to see if we need to cover the material or not. We can move on at will. I like the variety of topics and the characters are engaging. The only thing that I really don’t care for is the “playground” which is really just a bunch of websites like PBS Kids. You can set up the amount of time that the child can use the playground for, but I’d rather select the sites by hand that I want my child to use. I’m not sure if I want to pay $20/month for Time4Learning, but I may consider it if I find that we need to supplement our regular curriculum. Tornado Boy really likes it.

So anyway, we’re here, just crazy busy and having lots of fun!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.

Reading:
We’ve been very excited about participating in the “Book It” program this year. I ended up buying a copy of John Lithgow’s “I Got Two Dogs” since Tornado Boy was so enchanted by the webcast of it. I laugh because he doesn’t read it, he sings it. The book came with a CD, but we’ve yet to put it into the CD player. The book is fun and a quick read. It’s in seriously heavy rotation right now.

Chick-Fil-A has a great promo in their kid’s meals right now. It’s a paperback book from the “I Wonder Why” series. They are really great books. We got the “I Wonder Why Horses Wear Shoes” version. It is chock full of information about horses. There is a ton of information to digest, so we only read a few pages at a time. There are six books in the series from Chick-Fil-A and a bunch of others are available through Amazon.

We’re starting to listen to some audio books in the car. Right now we’re listening to “Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume. Tornado Boy is enjoying it and listening more closely than I thought he would. Our local library has quite a selection of books on CD, so I’m hoping to make this a regular thing during our longer car outings.

Writing/Language Arts:
We’re still working on the lower case letters. I really should be more consistent with this, but it’s really not Tornado Boy’s favorite thing to do, so I try not to over-do it. We are working on his name more than anything else. He writes it fine with upper case letters, but I’m really trying to help him with the lower case version. I’ve also made a couple of worksheets with words that interest him for practice. His tolerance is about 3 or 4 words at a time and then he wants to move on to something else. I found another worksheet generator and I liked that this one had an option for larger letters on the example words. You can find it here. It’s nice that you can create whatever words that you want.

I introduced Tornado Boy to more parts of speech this week. We had talked about nouns some time ago, but I introduced proper nouns, verbs and adjectives this week when we played “Silly Sentences”. It’s sort of like a younger version of Mad Libs. Each card has sentences with blanks in them. The parts of speech are color-coded. The child picks a word of the appropriate color and puts it in their blank space. At the end, they read the sentences that they made. It can be played in a competitive mode (the parent judges whose sentence is sillier) or just used as reading practice.

Spelling:
I found a new resource through a friend this week called Spelling City. I love it. It’s free, they have stock lists, or you can create your own. There are lots of built in games that you can use. You can also do tests if you like. A premium membership allows you to track grades for a class on the site as well. I introduced the concept of alphabetical order to Tornado Boy and we played a couple of games where you drag words into the correct order. We did a spelling test from one of the beginner lists. I was sort of pleasantly surprised by how well Tornado Boy did. His strong phonics showed as he spelled the words by making the sound of each letter and then typing the letter. The hardest part for him is that he doesn’t know where a lot of the keys are on the keyboard. He seems to enjoy the process through. He’s been asking how to spell a lot of words lately, so this is a good fit. He really loves that he gets a certificate that he can show Daddy at the end of the test.

Science:

Solar System Puzzle

We got a new puzzle this week. Tornado Boy is still very interested in learning more about the planets. He picked out this puzzle during our trip to the teaching store. I was tickled to overhear him singing “How Many Planets” by They Might Be Giants (see video here) while he was putting the puzzle together. It’s nice to see him making those kinds of connections. We also watched a video on the planets at Brain Pop Jr (membership required).

Thinkin' Science

We also started playing around with the computer program “Thinkin’ Science”. I got this as part of a ridiculous deal at Hooked on Phonics. The graphics aren’t so hot, but Tornado Boy seems to like it. It allows him to explore some physics concepts (catapults, rolling objects, etc) and learn about scientific exploration. The program allows him to try to identify an object by learning about its qualities. Overall, it’s fun for him and it allows me a few minutes to cook dinner!

Miscellaneous:
I worked on teaching Tornado Boy the “Pledge of Allegiance” this week. Wow – did that drum up a lot of questions. There are a lot of massive vocabulary words in the Pledge and I wonder how many people really think about what it means. Tornado Boy is interested, but he’s a little intimidated by it. I laughed yesterday when we passed a building with a U.S. Flag on display and he said “Look, Mom – it’s the Allegiance Flag!”. He asked me to print out a copy of the words for him. He’ll often do this when he’s trying to learn the lyrics to a song as well.

Speaking of songs, we had two songs that were heavily requested by Tornado Boy this week. Both were from Disney rides. Thank goodness for YouTube. I like that they both have a very nice message. We’ve been listening to “There’s a Great, Big Beautiful Tomorrow” (from the Carousel of Progress) and “It’s A Small World” from a Disney CD that I have a LOT this week.

Arithmetic:

Creating the link between numbers and quantity - Doesn't he look old in this picture???

Math was huge this week. We spent a lot of time exploring and talking about it. I had a feeling that we’d go through a period like this with Tornado Boy once the concept of addition really sunk in. We’ve been working on the concept of “counting on” to help him get past using his fingers or having to have visual items in order to perform addition. He quickly leapt from adding single digit numbers to being able to add a double and a single. He sometimes has a harder time if the tens digit advances – like if I ask him to add 28+3, but generally he’s able to do it. He can count to 100, skip count by 2 to 20, by 5 to 50 and by 10 to 100. He is extremely interested in numbers right now and he’s asking a lot of good questions.

I really wanted to help him be able to visualize the quantities of numbers, so I brought out the abacus and the Base Ten blocks for the first time in a while. He’s using them reliably to count and to add. The Base Ten blocks are allowing for larger quantities, so I created a set of number cards like those used in Montessori schools that allow him to really understand how place value works. I’ll give him a number to create – like 172, and he’ll pull out the numbers first – 100, 70 and 2, and then combine them into one number and select the matching blocks that represent the number. I uploaded the number cards that I created. It’s a pdf file that you can print out and laminate. Feel free to download it and make your own copy for your own use.

It has been a very intense teaching week, but after the week of vacation, Tornado Boy was really excited about learning new things. I think I really need to find some good Kindergarten/1st Grade blogs to haunt for some fresh ideas! If you know of any good ones, please leave me a link. Thanks!

To see what other preschoolers are doing this week, head on over to Homeschool Creations!

©2012 One Little Room.... All Rights Reserved.