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Behind the Movie: Scholastic War Horse Teaching Guide

December 14, 2011 By 3 Comments

WAR HORSE is based on the young adult novel by Michael Morpurgo, first published in 1982. While the film is rated PG-13, it’s a great way to educate older children. I saw War Horse over a week ago and I really can’t wait to see it again. I found it very well made as it presented World War 1 to me in a way that it had never been presented to me before. Scholastic has created a War Horse Teaching Guide and I suggest that you check It out.

Scholastic War Horse Worksheet 1

The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse—an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. “War Horse” is one of the great stories of friendship and war— a successful book, it was turned into a hugely successful international theatrical hit that is currently on Broadway. It now comes to screen in an epic adaptation by one of the great directors in film history.

Scholastic War Horse Worksheet 2

You can download these worksheets at Scholastic War Horse.

Scholastic War Horse Worksheet 3

Scholastic also created a children’s version of the story War Horse. It’s a very quick and easy read. 

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Teach My, Award Winning All-In-One Learning Kits For Babies, Toddlers & Preschoolers

June 2, 2011 By 280 Comments

When Zoe was born and I only had one child, I was really good at teaching her stuff. She new her letters at a very young age. We sang songs together and it was just easy to have that one on one time. With Miles, it’s been quite a challenge for me to sit down with him. My goal for this summer is to make sure that Miles knows his ABC’s and I wasn’t quite sure how to do it, because Zoe is also going to be home from preschool and every since preschool, she’s needed more stimulation when she’s at home. She always wants to go somewhere, and well I’m not up for doing something outside of the house every day. What am I going to do to entertain them and teach them at the same time???

This was about where my thought mentality was when Teach My contacted me and asked me to review their product.

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Teach My, is an award winning all-in-one learning kit available for Baby, Toddlers, and Preschoolers. Teach My was founded in 2007 by Mompreneur, Christy Cook. Realizing that parents are the most important teachers, Christy scoured educational supply stores to find learning activities to educate her 18-month old son, Finn. Not finding an all-in-one kit, Christy aimed to make it easier and less expensive for parents, so she created Teach My Toddler, the award winning first and only all-in-one learning kit for toddlers. After the toddler kit was such a success, the baby and preschooler kit followed. I decided to skip the baby and toddler kits and jump straight into preschool activities. The Teach My Preschooler kit comes with four sections, Ready to Read, Ready to Print, Ready for 1-100, and Ready for Math.

Zoe already has already experience one year of preschool, she knows how to write most of her letters and is about at the stage of learning to read and write words. She already writes words if we give her all the letters, making the Ready to Print portion of the kit a good starting place for her.

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In addition to making sure Miles knows his numbers I thought it would be good to introduce him to numbers. He jumped right into matching them and wanted to start learning his numbers beyond the first ten. With the Ready for 1-100 he will be able to learn quite a few numbers.

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Each section contains coordinated learning activities. The innovative and creative teaching tools encourage preschool learning and school readiness. The consistent nature of the tools and supervised one-on-one time provides plenty of opportunity for repetition and focused learning. Children I’ve noticed in mine at least, have short attention spans, in order to maximize their learning time it’s recommended that you limit the learning period to 20 minutes a day. You can see, he quickly lost his attention and reverted to playing with the rubber band.

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This giveaway ends June 20th. All rules can be found under giveaway rules.

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The Dragon and the Turtle Children’s Book Review

January 28, 2011 By 3 Comments

By Summer:

I’m so blessed that both of my children – 4 years old and 18 months old – love to read. My sons have never met a book they don’t like, which is great for early literacy and preparation for school. My sons “read” books all the time alone just looking through the book and possibly (and hopefully) recalling the stories in their heads as they thumb through each page slowly.

clip_image002A new addition to our library is The Dragon and the Turtle: Go On Safari, which is the second book about friends Roger and Padraig in what looks to be the beginning of a series of adventures. My sons, especially the 4 year old, are into dragons so this was one of the main draws for them to read this book. In this adventure of the Dragon and the Turtle, they are camping out in a surprise location where they keep coming in contact with the rarest of beasts in their natural habitat. Together they learn there really isn’t anything to be afraid of on their camping experience, especially if they’re together. The book claims to help children with their fears, but I don’t think the book really addresses this topic, not in text or picture; I had a lot of explaining to do throughout the book about the imaginary animals they were creating by combining animals such as a raccoon and an elephant.

In The Dragon and the Turtle: Go On Safari the pictures are colorful and eye catching for both parents and kids alike. However, I did find, as the reader, that the text seemed more British than American English; for my kids it didn’t seem to draw them out of the story though I did have to concentrate more on my reading as this makes it difficult for me to become captivated. I also feel many of the concepts on the book are unspoken and I had to tell my sons what was happening instead of the story explaining it, clip_image004even through suggestion.

I do like that the authors have taken plain, old story telling to the next level. At the end of the book they have an interaction page where parents are encouraged to make the story real to the child through real life questions and occurrences. However, this is only scratching the surface for how children can become braver and overcome fear. On the Dragon and Turtle website you can expand your child’s adventures with games, crafts, coloring, mazes, and puzzles; and your adventures as you expand your child’s learning.

You can currently find The Dragon and the Turtle: Go On Safari on Amazon.com for about $9 plus free shipping with Amazon Prime. Also check out the original adventure, The Dragon and the Turtle. You can also purchase these fine titles at Barnes and Noble and Christianbook.com*.

* Though this book seems to claim to be a Christian book the only reference to God, Christianity, or the Bible is a verse on the back cover, Deuteronomy 31:6.

The Dragon and the Turtle: Go On Safari book was supplied to me by WaterBrook Press in order to write this review.

About Summer:

Summer is the President of our Local MOMS Club chapter, she is the mother of two adorable active boys, and is always thinking of ways to help others. She is a friend, a wife, and always busy as all mommies are. She is very active on Facebook, addicted to Geocaching and very interested in organic and green living.

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Your Baby Can Read Review and #giveaway

September 20, 2009 By 535 Comments

Your Baby Can Read - Success StoriesWe were sent the introduction kit of your baby can read. It came with a DVD for the kids to watch and instructional DVD for me to watch and flash cards and a book. I’ve been quite impressed with the quality of the book and flash cards because the kids have been playing with them unsupervised.

I’ve been too busy to sit down with them and work with them for the amount of time every day that the program really requires to work. I do believe it works though, especially after reading all of the material and seeing the charts and graphs about what to expect on word recognition verses actual reading and how it increases exponentially starting around age three.

Your Baby Can Read introduces words using pictures. In a way, it’s just backwards memorization. You see the word and have to remember what the picture looks like. So the word is no longer abstract. They can see all the letters. So the symbols come together in their brain.

parentsThinking back on blogging while moving into a new house, I should have taken a break. That way I would have more time to dedicate to doing reviews, but right now I have to spend so much time unpacking and cleaning everything that I’m really not sitting down with my kids and teaching them. They are learning but I know my little sponges could learn how to read if I would follow all of the instructions that were provided in the DVD. And if I would read more to them. I don’t think once a day is enough and that’s about all I’m doing right now. Read to your children that’s what I need to do and you should to. The props that you get from these Your Baby Can Read sets are pretty cool though. It’s just memorization but isn’t that all learning is sometimes.

 

About Dr. Titzer

Recognized expert, infant researcher Dr. Robert C. Titzer, Ph.D., has a grand vision of making the world a better place by allowing children greater opportunities and successes throughout life by developing reading skills earlier.

A professor and teacher for over 15 years, Dr. Titzer has extensively researched infant learning and development. After teaching in the public school system, Dr. Titzer went on to complete his Masters degree at Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in Human Performance at Indiana University, where he developed this revolutionary early learning approach with his own infant children.

His research on reading during infant and toddler years captured the interest of educators, researchers, parents, government agencies, and the media worldwide. Dr. Titzer’s research has been published in scientific journals, including the prestigious Psychological Review.

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Your baby Can Read Starter Kit.  The kit includes the Parents’ Guide, Early Learning Workshop DVD, Starter DVD, Learn to Read Word Cards (with 1 wipe-clean word card, and 1 erasable non-toxic pen), and the Starter Book.

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