Showing posts with label to. Show all posts
Showing posts with label to. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Time4Writing Review: Extreme Paragraphs

Pros: Small time commitment,personally coached by individual teacher, simple way to develop practical skills

Cons: Small icons were at first confusing to navigate after logging in, would love to see more teaching videos, animations to teach writing concepts, or interactive lessons like Time4Learning.

Summary: Overall a great little course with lots of helpful writing tools. My daughter was able to finish with minimal time commitment. Writing teacher was helpful and kind. She usually graded assignments within a 24 hours. Instructions were simple to follow and explained well. I feel that my daughter learned some useful information and had fun using her imagination to write paragraphs.

Full Review: After reading the parent info on the site, we decided that the "Extreme Paragraph" course looked like the right level for our 8 year old. J started off her writing course introducing herself to her teacher Mrs. Jennifer. The course began slowly with exercises and assignments to practice writing all the parts of a paragraph, beginning with topic sentences. 

Each lesson began with a short video clip that explained the concept that she would be learning. Then practice activities and quizzes came before the assignment. After completing her assignments, J's kind writing teacher, Mrs. Jennifer graded her writing and left a grade and helpful feedback to either correct the assignment, or to move on to the next lesson.

J seemed to fly through the lessons and quizzes with ease, but took a lot longer finishing the writing assignments. Once she was finished she was proud of her accomplishment and very excited to get feedback from Mrs. Jennifer.

Overall we thought the course had a lot of useful writing tools and clear instructions. My daughter learned some useful information and had fun using her imagination to write paragraphs. She seems a little more confident and has even expressed an interest in writing a book someday. :)  At the end of the course, J earned an Extreme Paragraph writing certificate. 

Monday, August 12, 2013

Teaching your kids to ride a bike...the easy (and cheap) way.


So after having tried all kinds of methods and after many tears and crashes, training wheels, no training wheels, running with little biker,etc...we've finally learned the secret! 

I was recently searching on line for the best ways to teach children to ride on two wheels and learned that bikes with no pedals, which are often quite pricey, work amazingly well. My hubby also heard that the best way to teach adults and kids with special needs is to just take all the pedals and training wheels off. 

We had kids "bike" by pushing with their feet in big "walking on the moon" steps. We made it a game to see how long they could balance without touching their feet to the ground. A few short weeks of practicing and they were balancing for about 10-20 seconds without touching the ground.
We put the pedals back on, and just like magic they all took off riding!

*Note:When removing the pedals, the left pedal is usually threaded differently than the right pedal to avoid unintentional unscrewing during riding. The LEFT pedal is RIGHTY-LOOSEY (clockwise), LEFTY-TIGHTY (counter-clockwise). 

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Coming Soon: A Review of Time4Writing



We will be using Time4Writing as a summer writing program for the next couple of months.  We are excited to get started with the interactive lessons.  Our online tutor will correct our work and give us writing tips on how to sharpen our writing skills.  Come visit in a few weeks to see how we like it.