{Review} Bible Dominos

Bible Dominoes is a set of sturdy and colorful dominoes designed for little hands. Each domino has a rainbow design on the back and the front has numbers and animals and people from the Bible. It's a perfect way to introduce colors, matching, numbers, and so much more to young learners. The age on the box says 3+, but I was able to use them with an almost three year old.

We didn't play them as a traditional game, but I used them in other ways. We went over colors and the animals on the cards. We also talked about the colors. I also just let him play with them as he wanted to.

"Ta dah!"

And my favorite part was this...

Disclosure (in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”): Opinions are 100% my own and NOT influenced by monetary compensation. I did receive a sample of the product in exchange for this review and post.

Review: Ideal Curriculum

Many parents do not send their children to preschool and use this time to figure out if homeschooling is for them. It's sometimes hard to figure out exactly what to do for preschool at home. Should I focus on letters? What about science? Do they need history? Math? How do I go about teaching all of this to a child who can't even read yet?

Enter Ideal Curriculum.

What is Ideal Curriculum? (taken from their website)

Ideal Curriculum was created by a family with a passion for education. 

We grew up with parents who were teachers, and the topic around the dinner table frequently revolved around the joys and trials of education.  This interest in education continued as we grew older, inspiring several of us to become teachers.

Our desire is to make it easy for parents and teachers to help children learn in ways that are fun and effective.  Together we have experience in education (especially early literacy), business management, marketing, website design, graphic arts, and music.  We have found that we make a great team.  Our goal is to take current educational research and translate it into products that really work.

Recently I was asked to try out Ideal Curriculum's "Month 1 Kit" for preschoolers. Each kit is focused around a theme - Month 1 was all about transportation. All monthly kits include and focus on the following skills:

• Daily lessons and activities for literacy, math, calendar, oral language, and science/social studies.
• Teaching guides
• Workbook
• Music CD (or downloads if buying the eBook)
• Science, sight words, and concepts about print books
• Supplemental activities
• Letters and sounds - letter names
• Phonological awareness - listening skills
• Concepts about print - print is all around
• Sight words - name recognition
• Math - rote counting

The kits can be purchased either as a download ($30/month) or a print version ($55/month).

I found it difficult to use the download for a couple of reasons. The first was that the student pages and the teaching guide were separate files. I didn't want to print everything out, however, I did print the first few pages in order to make it easier to teach. I would rather not teach off a computer screen. I did like that there was a "Read This First" pdf file. This file told you exactly what pages to print in the student files. Overall, the download, was set up well and easy to navigate. I just personally find eBooks difficult to use at times.

I just tried the "Initial Assessment" with both my youngest son, J6, and the little girl I babysit, Miss H, who is currently 2-1/2 years old. J6 blew through the assessment and really, this is probably too young for him. Miss H struggled with it but so wanted to "get it right." I think it would be something she'd do well with in about another six months to a year.

While the curriculum really didn't fit perfectly with the age of the children I currently I have, I do feel it is a solid curriculum. Lessons are kept short - no more than 10 minutes a day - and repetitive in order to help a child learn the concept presented. If you are a new homeschooling mom or just want to do preschool at home rather than send your child off to a preschool, you may find this curriculum  helpful. I did find the price a bit high, however, if you were to buy all nine months up front (scroll to the bottom of the page) it would be $444 for a printed version and $240 for a download. If you compare that to the cost of many of the boxed curriculum for homeschooling, it is very comparable in cost.

Be sure to head over to the TOS Homeschool Crew blog to see what other Crew members had to say about it.



*Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review. All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.

Review: Time4Learning Preschool

Time4Learning has been around for a bit. In fact, I did a review for them last summer of their regular program. They have recently added a preschool section. Time4Learning is an educational program based on the internet that uses animated lessons, interactive activities, and printable worksheets. There are levels for preschool up to eighth grade. 

J6 loved being able to have "computer" time and asked to work on it daily. There are two levels to the preschool program and J6 worked in both. 

Level 1 included:

• School Supplies
• Alphabet
• Colors
• Shapes
• Rhyme Time
• Numbers
• Weather
• On the Farm 
• Food
• At the Zoo
• Feelings
• Vehicles
• Tools
• On the Playground (different from the other playground time)
• Sports
• The Human Body
• Space
• Fruit
• The Human Face
• Garden

Level 2 included (above screenshot):

• At the Library
• Insects
• Color Mixing
• Seasons
• Playing Outside
• More Letters
• Healthy Habits
• Your Self
• More Numbers
• Out to Sea
• More Rhymes
• Staying Fit
• Manners
• Pets
• Days of the Week
• Time
• Making Music
• Measuring
• Nature 
• Money
• In Your Neighborhood

J6's favorite places to play were On the Farm, School Supplies, Garden and In Your Neighborhood. He really loved the "playground." I loved that he had to complete so many minutes in lesson-time before he could even access the playground. 

I liked that I could check to see which lessons were done. As he completed the activities in a section, a large check mark would appear on it. If I clicked on any of the others, it would also have check marks showing how much he had done in that area. Since this is still relatively new, the report feature is not functioning. Normally reports can be generated and printed to show your child's progress as well.

What I liked about this program is that J6 could do this on his own. It read to him and explained what to do so I could focus on helping the other boys. Poor J6 has been neglected some this year in his learning. It was nice to have something he could do on his own. 

Time4Learning typically runs $19.95 a month for one child and $14.95 for each additional child. You can put your account on hold if you are going on vacation or taking time off from school and you can buy by the month as well. 

There is also a demo online that you can try out before you buy just to see if it's something that would work for your family.

Check out what other TOS Homeschool Crew members had to say about Time4Learning.

*Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review. All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.

Homeschooling Preschool

I have a four year old at home. He wants to "do school" with us. I finally had a "moment" this past weekend after thinking about all the great preschool blogs I read.

One of my favorites is 1+1+1=1. Carisa has two adorable little boys & she does "Tot School" with her youngest. This has given me numerous ideas to use with J. She also mentioned just recently about how she manages all her tot school items for her little one.

Another great blog I stumbled on is called My Montessori Journey. It's a blog about a Montessori classroom. I love all the activities they use & the teacher is wonderful about posting where she gets them all. I also really liked the idea of having out the activities for the children to chose what they wanted to work on. I even followed this teacher when she started posting at another blog about what she does at home with her own children (A Day of Wonders).

So this past Sunday evening I took all the activity bag activities I had laying around & made sure I had them in Ziploc baggies - the kind with the large zipper on them so J could easily open & close them. As much as I would like to have a bookcase set up like in a Montessori classroom, I simply do not have the room.

About a year ago I participated in an activity bag swap so I still had a few items from that (I've given away some). I realized I had way more things than J could possibly want to play with in a given school day - at least I hope so!

Here is what is in his school basket.

This is a snowflake matching activity. I read about this on My Montessori Journey. I immediately printed them out because it's just so cute this time of year to play with snow INSIDE. ;-) At least I hoped my son would think so. Since my hubby is spending more time on the computer at night, I'm using that time to do other things. It didn't take me long to cut these out & then laminate them (with contact paper).

This is just a simple clipboard with scrap paper attached. I had these little stampers so I popped them in to a bag as well. The regular gallon size bags didn't hold this well. I happen to have some 2-1/2 gallon bags also & that fit much better.

This is an activity I received in the activity bag swap. It came with twenty index cards (5x7) with a number on one side & then the same number of small stickers on the back. The child should put one poker chip on each sticker to work with numbers. J already knows his 1-10 numbers well & can usually count to at least 20 out loud. I'm hoping this will help with better (and higher) number recognition.

Here's another activity from the swap. I'm tempted to do this one because I like sorting. Go figure. There are little plastic cups with one bead glued to the bottom of each. The child sorts all the matching colors into the correct cup.

Again, this activity came from the swap. It's a simple matching board. The child can match each color to the one of the game board.

Lacing cards from the swap. I should have had a number of these facing the other way for the photo. The lady who made these put in the details. For example, the tree has some apple stickers on the front. You can see the eye on the fish. I managed to have that one facing the right way.

My friend Deb made these cute bean bags for the swap. The round red circle is a target & there are three bean bags. The child can practice tossing.

This activity is taken from the book Family Math. It's just an egg carton cut up. I wrote the numbers 1-12 on each cup although having now started using Math-U-See with my older boys, I may make a new one that has 0-11 on it instead. I then counted out the exact number of beans needed. The child places the correct number of beans in each cup. J actually picked this to do the other day. He needs to work on his one-to-one counting. He should have had no beans left over but he was short so some cups had too many. His number seven cup only had four, his number 11 had twelve, etc., but it's a good self-correcting activity.

Last year CurrClick was giving away a sample from the book, Preschool Activities in a Bag. (BTW, CurrClick gives away a weekly freebie so be sure to sign up for their newsletter.) This is one from that sample. It's called "Snip-N-Cut" & J loves it. It's strips of construction paper, a bowl, and scissors. The child just snips the construction paper into small pieces into the bowl. It's a good activity to use to work on cutting skills.

Here's another activity that came in the swap I did. It's a farm animal match game. This could be played as a memory game or a simple matching game or a grouping game (like animals).

This activity was also included in the sample Preschool Activities in a bag. It came with the template (you can see it's double sided). I printed the template on to card stock. Then it is inside a page protector with the ring side cut off & a bit cut off the top. It's then taped shut. Included in the bag is a dry erase marker and a small piece of felt that is used as an eraser. The child just copies what's on the template to practice writing.

This was one of J's Christmas gifts. My sister hosted a Discovery Toy party just before Christmas. J hasn't used this yet but I'm hoping he will enjoy it.

Here's another Discovery Toy product. J does play with this but usually just with the bugs. I'm going to start introducing him to the easier cards (the color ones) to teach patterns.

Another Christmas gift for J - Melissa & Doug puzzles. There are four little wooden puzzles in this box. What I really liked about this is that each puzzle piece has a little shape on the back. There are four puzzles so there is one shape assigned to each puzzle. If they get all messed up, one can easily sort the pieces in to the right puzzles without going nutso. ;-)

I bought this for J last year. He didn't show much interest at the time, but I have added it to his basket all the same. I'm interested to see how he does with this one.

Here is what his basket looks like. Since I took this photo, I have actually changed out the basket. This was a shallow white plastic basket I bought at Wal-Mart. When I went shopping on Monday for groceries, I found a very neat square basket at the grocery store that seemed to work better.

I have also made another game that has been added. You can see it over at A Day of Wonders. It is super cute & very winter appropriate. They are Snowflake Count & Clip Cards. Again, I printed them all out & laminated them while watching a movie one night.

One last blog that I just recently found & really enjoy is called Teaching Tiny Tots Blog. She has some really neat ideas for little ones (or LO's as she calls them on her blog). I have one of her posts starred in my Google Reader. I have some of the items already to make the games she mentions in her post called Homemade Games.

Homeschooling preschool should be full of fun & games & I hope this helps anyone out there just starting out.

PS: Sorry to those who get my posts on a feed. I was re-reading this so I could share the link & found too many typos. I had to go back & fix them. ;-) Sorry! 1/21/09

More Preschool Fun

Our letter this week was "B." We decided to glue some beans on our "B" picture. J loved this. He also did very well with it.


After we were all done with our regular school, I let J paint. He was absolutely thrilled. Can't you tell? For those that know me IRL (in real life), you know that I am not big on messes. In fact, it's HARD for me to let the kids do messy things. I'm working on it. Really I am. Photo proof....


Okay, so why the photo of his paint palette? I was VERY impressed by it that's why! This summer took a three day art class with Barry Stebbing from How Great Thou Art. One thing that Mr. Stebbing really stresses is having a clean palette. The children were shown each day how to correctly mix their paint colors in order to keep their palettes clean.


J did not participate in the class. The class is for those five & up and I really didn't think J could sit through a two and a half hour class. However, Mr. Stebbing thought I should attempt the class with J so we did the first day. I'd like to say Mr. Stebbing was right & J was an avid student. However, J was J & while he did sit well that first day, a lot of the information was presented too fast & moved too quickly for him to follow. I did most of his work for him so I opted not to continue the next two days with him.

Having said that, as I mentioned earlier, Mr. Stebbing did show the children each day how to correctly mix colors. I tried to find a video of it, but couldn't find anyone who does it like Mr. Stebbing. So I'm going to try to describe it.

Each child was given a paper plate for a palette & the basic primary colors (red, blue, green, yellow) & white for mixing. To mix a color - let's say we are doing light green. You would take your brush & pull a blob of green off to the side. You would then (without cleaning your brush) take a dab of white & start mixing in to the new blob of green. If you do this correctly, you can have all of your color variations off of your main color without disturbing your main color.

Now go back & check out J's paint palette.

He told me he was going to "mix" colors. He drew out blobs of it & did mix. While he didn't do it as cleanly as someone older, I was still very impressed by this. The art class we took? That was back in July which is at least three "four year old" years I think. ;-)