We have used enrichment worksheets in the past for math and we have used online drill programs for math facts, but we have never used a math course quite like ALEKS. The acronym stands for Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces. It is an online assessment program to see what the student already knows and what they are ready to learn next.
ALEKS is designed for grades 3-12 to complete online lessons independently. Each student has a pie chart of different math topics, of which they can choose to work each day. The concepts that they have mastered are darkened and the lighter ones still need work. The goal is to master the concepts and fill in your pie chart.
While I like the fact that questions were presented in a few different ways, which is helpful to find if a student has really retained the information, I found the program boring and knew my children would as well. We are used to a dynamic, graphic-filled online math program with interchangable, encouraging avatars. They grumbled through their initial lesson with ALEKS and the second day felt they were being punished. I feel like the program needs to be "beefed up" in the graphics program if they are to compete with the products that are on the market today. For high school students, they may not mind the straightforward, get-down-to-business approach--in fact they probably don't want a cartoon monkey telling them "Good job!". So in this case, ALEKS is perfect for older students.
There are a few issues in the maneuverability of the program as well. The cursor doesn't automatically prompt the student in the answer square and you can't use the tab key. So you have to constantly be mindful of where your cursor is or fool with clicking your mouse in the right block to give the answer. This wastes time and makes it very frustrating for the student.
On the plus side, parents are able to check the student's progress at any time and the student can see their mastery progress as well on a tab labeled "My Pie". It can be used with English or Spanish speaking students. On the downside, it just isn't very fun for younger students in my opinion.
ALEKS is available as a subscription. The price is $19.95 per student per month; $99.95 every 6 months or $179.05 per year. They also offer Family Discount Plans.
Check out the free trial by clicking below....
**Disclaimer: I was provided a trial version of ALEKS to use with my family in exchange for an honest review, which I have provided here.
See what the other folks at The Homeschool Crew Review thought of this product by clicking here
This month, we tested "Math Rider", a software program that drills addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. Each operation has four levels, from "easy" to "master". I had almost given up trying to teach multiplication facts to my 4th and 6th grade sons, so we decided to give Math Rider a try.
The program is pleasantly narrated throughout and has a fantasty theme with elves, castles, damsels in distress, an of course, a hurdling horse named Shadow. My children are used to playing alot of war games with their Playstation, so I thought they would balk at using this product. But pleasantly enough, they didn't complain and even asked if they could do Math Rider for their regular math assignment several days. I think they liked the way that even a less than perfect score is praised, as long as there was improvement from the previous lesson.
Instead of randomly spitting out problems that have already been mastered, Math Rider is able to tailor each adventure to that particular child, only drilling what needs to be reviewed. Statistics can be easily viewed as well, showing the students where they are on the road to mastery.
When a child doesn't know an answer, or takes too long to answer, the horse simply stops and the correct response is shown. If the studen knows the answer, Shadow jumps the obstacle. It really was a pleasant way to present the math problems without being annoying, which is where some learning programs fall short. Children don't need to be blasted with noise to learn and the people at Math Rider understand that.
Math Rider sells for $37 here. I think this is a fair value for this program, especially if you have multiple children that will use this program at some point in their school career.
See what the other folks at the Homeschool Crew thought of this product here.
**Disclaimer: I received a trial subsciption to Math Rider in exchange for my honest opinion. No other compensation was granted to me.
Elizabethan England. A study of it would be incomplete and well, soul-less, without The Bard.......We have had a flavorful two weeks learning about Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Talk about bad behavior! Those Tudors were shameless. But Elizabeth, aka "Good Queen Bess" loved the theatre, especially Shakespeare. Who wouldn't? History, Comedy, Tragedy......Murder, Mistaken Identity, Men Dressed As Women Dressed As Men (Twelfth Night), and of course, lots of dueling.
I started with a read-aloud selection, "William Shakespeare & The Globe" by Aliki. Don't you just love Aliki? I grew up seeing her books featured on Reading Rainbow nearly every week. This book introduces Shakespeare and tells about his youth and the early days of the travelling theatres, which eventually led to a permanent theatre being built to perform his plays.
I had also purchased "Who Was William Shakespeare?" from the "Who Was?" series of childrens' biographies. Once we read the Aliki selection, it seems we had covered the material pretty well.
We used Lois Burdett's "Shakespeare Can Be Fun!" series as we dove right into MacBeth. Lois Burdett teaches Shakespeare to children as young as 2nd grade and has them illustrate and summarize the play in their own words throughout the book. The play is condensed to its essence and retold in an appealing rhyming verse, while retaining some of the most famous phrases from the original play. Macbeth is the perfect selection to make Shakespeare seem "cool" to boys. It's easy to identify with Macbeth. He already had some power, but when presented with the idea that he could have more, he became prideful. It didn't help that he had married someone even more greedy and self-righteous than himself. Between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, there weren't many people left in Scotland that they hadn't killed or plotted to have killed and in the end....well, you'll have to read it.
I found this really cute summarization of Hamlet for kids. It pretty much says it all, but there's no way we're going to miss watching the Mel Gibson/Glenn Close version, which came in the mail today in a little red envelope! Hurray! Watch this clip and see what you think. It piqued the interest of both of my boys. They begged me to order the movie so they could see the exciting swordfighting/poison wine scene in the end!
If you live in Britain, you are lucky enough to have the series, Horrible Histories! They have a humorous video clip on nearly every stage of European history, including The Plague, Henry VIII (divorced, beheaded, and died, divorced, beheaded, survived....I'm Henry VIII, I had six sorry wives....some would say I ruined their lives..). For the rest of us, we have grainy, somewhat shaky recorded versions of the series on YouTube. Still, they are so good, I've used them for our Middle Ages/Renaissance studies. You can't even purchase them in the U.S. and if you go straight to the Horrible Histories website, you are unable to view the videos if you live outside Britain. I'm not happy about this. Someone please fix it.
For their final Shakespeare project, the kids are developing an elaborate stagefighting video, complete with fake blood, daggers and choreographed fencing. Stay tuned for the video! Of course, they can't rightly stagefight in camo shorts and a t-shirt, so I may be breaking out the sewing machine and fashioning some Elizabethan duds.
After our unit on bivalves through Apologia, the boys dissected a clam, which we purchased through Home Science Tools here. We've learned that dissections need to take place outside! Although don't smell like anything, I just don't like the idea of guts on my kitchen table.
We have come to the end of our Renaissance study and I wanted to make sure I mentioned some of the fantastic films we have enjoyed!
We really liked Joan of Arc, the 1999 version starring Leelee Sobieski and Jacqueline Bissett. Netflix didn't carry this, so I got a 30-day trial membership to Blockbuster Online just to receive it in the mail. We really, really enjoyed it, but split it up over 2 days since it was long. They do a fantastic job showing Joan's calling, her passion for leading the French to defeat the English and help Charles VII realize his place on the throne (played by Neil Patrick Harris in a terrible bowl haircut).
The memory work for this week was....."During the Hundred Years' War, Joan of Arc and King Charles VII led the French to defeat the English in the Battle of Orleans. In the late 1340's, rats carrying The Plague killed one in three Europeans."
During a study of the Reformation and Martin Luther, we rented the film "Luther". It stars Joseph Fiennes (of Shakespeare in Love) and Alfred Molina (your kids might recognize him as Dr. Octopus from Spiderman 2). If you are studying the Reformation, it would be a great way to bring the story to life. It's available on Netflix and you can read the review here. It is PG-13 for unscrupulous behavior by a few cardinals and some burning at the stake by those who possess Luther's writing. I felt like it was a great way to show how the people of Europe were used to a message of hellfire and brimstone until Martin Luther came on the scene. He preached a message of a loving Heavenly Father and believed that everyone should be able to read the scriptures for themselves.
The memory sentence that the boys memorized this week (thank you, Classical Conversations teachers' guide) was......
"In 1517, Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation by printing the 95 Theses, which made Pope Leo X excommunicate him." (of course, we make up an awesome song and hand movements to help them AND ME remember this forevermore). Songs are the key to memorization.
Of course, I'm watching Showtime's The Tudors to get more insight into the time period of Henry VIII and Martin Luther (I never knew that Henry used Martin Luther's new teachings to justify his divorce from his first wife Katherine of Aragon). I'm afraid the kids will never see this while under my roof (mature doesn't even begin to describe some of the courtier's behavior, especially the King), but Mama is enjoying it!
Seriously, I didn't blog AT ALL during the holidays? Wow, I must have been busy.
But now I am back in full throttle mode with reviewing my first product of 2012---Zeezok's Z-Guides to the Movies! If you are like me, you try to find suitable movie titles for everything you study. My kids live in the digital age like yours and they are wired to respond to media as well as print. I think it rounds out a good curriculum nicely and reinforces the written word, but only if the film version is done well and not "twaddle" that would appall Charlotte Mason. Zeezok meticulously chose their movie titles because I didn't see a lemon on the list anywhere, thank you.
What are Z-Guides, you ask? They are basically unit studies with a myriad of activities to complete and questions to answer after you have viewed a family film together. Usually the movie is of some historical significance. There are review questions, open ended family discussion questions, coloring pages, crosswords, vocabulary activities and more. They always open with a quick background on the setting of each movie so it is easy to follow along with the film.
Our family will be delving into a study of the American Revolution in a few months, so we chose Johnny Tremain, the 1957 Disney version. The Z-Guide to the Movies gave background on the Boston Tea Party and basic character sketches of people like John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and why they had important roles in the American Revolution. This is the type of movie that would have appeared on "The Wonderful World of Disney", which I always loved as a kid. This guide was designed for middle school children. My 4th and 6th grade boys enjoyed the movie and were able to complete most of the questions without any trouble. But we love history. If you haven't been teaching a thorough history curriculum, some of the situations might be a blur. But the background information is helpful here and tries to catch up the student who may not have studied these topics yet. There are plenty of activities to keep children busy based soley on the movie content, though.
I liked this guide and I'm anxious to order more, since I'm really impressed by the Z- Guide selection of titles, which include To Kill A Mockingbird, Les Miserables, Driving Miss Daisy, Flyboys, The Great Escape, A Man For All Seasons, Amazing Grace, and many more selections for all age groups. Some movies are for certain ages only, while some titles have guides available for several age groups. The guides are $12.99 and the prices for the movies (also sold by Zeezok) vary by title. However, all movies are easily available at Netflix or your local public library.
Check out a complete list of movie guide titles here. You can see a sample of one of the Z-Guides here.
I am a 30-something homeschool mom, married to a smokin-hot man and mother to two boys. I live in smoldering central Florida and enjoy baking, gardening, leading the Sweet Potato Bookclub and making artsy-craftsy stuff. We have embarked on our third year of homeschooling! Our classroom is a mostly classical set-up with a bit of Charlotte Mason sprinkled in. I love chatting with other moms about nerdy academic stuff and seeing what has worked and not worked in their homeschool. Stop here often and hang out with me :)
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