Today's review will be for Homeschool Complete and specifically, we are trying out the Fourth Grade Complete. Well, we are doing the first semester specifically.
This is designed to be a whole homeschool curriculum for a fourth grader. What does that mean? It not only includes social studies, math, science, writing, grammar and reading but also much more than that. It has fun activities that enhance learning.
For Homeschool Complete I really love and appreciate not just all the work that went into creating this curriculum but how well it was thought out and the ideology behind the curriculum itself. It is very clear that the ideology of this curriculum is that you can learn from anything and that lines up with my ideology as well.
When we get to teach kids to think like that (with the methodology in mind that you learn from anything in life) they have a much higher success rate in life. Because they see everything as a learning experience rather than just to take a test and that's incredibly important.
This was used my 8-year-old son, who by public school standards is in 2nd grade, but is advanced in some subjects. This was super perfect for him the way it was set up and written.
What units are covered?
Units
* Back to School
* Southeast States
* Baseball
* Penguins
* Tall Tales
* World War I
* Behaviour
* Economics
What is in each unit??
* Math
* Spelling
* Science
* History
* Vocabulary
* Writing/Grammar
* A fun activity or game to enhance the learning experience
The way that this is set up is that the unit is the overall topic and within that topic, you have a series of lessons ranging from science, math, spelling, writing etc to really go in depth with each subject. I used to do this on my own when homeschooling my first and so I am glad to see a well-done product like this that makes it easier than doing it on your on as a parent.
It also keeps kids more engaged in their learning.
How to Use this Product:
For Parent:
* You can get in PDF format or buy the book.
This is great for many reasons not to mention saving trees because if your student doesn't need all the pages you can print out only what you need. While you can do it digitally it is not interactive.
* There is a student workbook but also a parent/teacher handbook. Utilise them both. The parent handbook goes more in depth about how to take the lessons off the lesson plans and go further into depth on it. The parent guide has ideas and step by step guides to how to do some of the activities.
* The parent guide also has the guidelines for how to grade-- which means it is not self graded by the student, it is done by the teacher-- the hundreds charts, graph paper and more. This is essential when finishing the lessons.
* The objectives for each subject for the complete semester are within the teacher's guide which I love because then when you have to take your curriculum up for review, you can easily show what you have been doing in order for it to be marked off by the state. Sometimes doing this can seem overly tedious to do.
* The lessons are adaptable so you can easily add a lesson into a unit as a parent/teacher. This is HUGE. Kids often times excel at one aspect of a lesson versus another. For example, my son does great at math but doesn't like writing. So I can pull some handwriting lessons out of it and make him practice writing out things a little more.
For Child:
* Your child can sit down and do lessons as a separate day or sit down and do the whole unit in a day. Sometimes students can learn better doing a unit in a few days rather than spacing it out. However, it is meant to be done over the long haul (a period of time of say a week or two).
* You can have your child work on this digitally for those children who don't like to write things out or sometimes have challenges doing so. This doesn't mean it's interactive such as an app, because it's not, but it does allow students who learn different ways to practice those skills. For mine, he was able to take the lessons as a PDF and be able to use his fingers to do the worksheets on the computer for the crossword puzzle.
* You can print out only the worksheets you need to or have them do the work in a notebook. We did a little bit of digital and writing in a notebook (since we don't have a printer).
* Games within the program-- this is a great way to encourage kids to do the rest of the lessons. You can say, "we can play the 'sink your battleship' after you do the vocabulary." Which is great as a mum and the kids like looking forward to the game with mum/dad.
* The math that he did I loved because it incorporated learning how math is equated 2 between algebra and addition and he picked up on the concept immediately.
* With the baseball unit what I loved is that it incorporated a little bit of math a little bit of history a little bit of social learning because I don't ever remember learning about the different bases in Baseball and all that kind of stuff when I was younger it was something I learned outside of that. What is great about this is both social learning (about baseball) and incorporating it into something that they can pull "traditional school lessons" from.
What I like about this product:
* This is written in a whole learning style. This means that you can easily know that each subject matter (or most) are being touched on in each unit in a progressive learning way. This is hugely beneficial to students as I do believe they learn best this way.
* As a mum with advanced kids, it is nice to see the words that are being used for vocabulary and spelling are challenging. The spelling words like Tuberculosis are not just words that are fluff words to learn but also real-life words that need to be learned. Sometimes I find that other curriculums can pick words that don't have deep or real life meaning. This hinders learning in my honest opinion.
* It even not touches on racism and baseball and teaches kids how to do word searches and things that I don't feel that is touched on in school nowadays as much.
* My younger son who is a little bit advanced sat down with me with this curriculum and he actually really enjoyed doing it. This is not easy to achieve with him sometimes as (since I definitely believe he has ADHD) he has a hard time sitting down and finishing lessons.
What I don't like about this product:
* Wish I had the book to review because I do love this a lot. I love being able to throw the book in my bag and take it with us. But you can do this with worksheets and just print and bring them. I just happen to have a non-working printer right now, but I can easily save to my google drive too and have my son complete that way too.
* I wish aspects of it were more challenging because some of it was easier for him to do. Now, not everyone will feel this way. For mine, he found some of it too easy and some of it perfect for his level. I think that honestly this is so minor because every kid experiences that in any curriculum.
My Son's (8 years old) Review:
At first, I didn't know what it was. Then I realised it is kind of fun to do little things like they help you to find the answer in the beginning sometimes. Like math. They show you how to do it first. And they tell you what to do- like find the words. I like that you can do it on the computer but there is a little bit of things I was annoyed. Like the map, there wasn't space for you to type it in fully in the state. But it is really good because I am talking about the bad things first. What I meant is, I am talking about the bad things and those aren't major... but the good things are! It's challenging for some kids like find-a-word one-- it was hard to find the words. But not for me, because I was just looking for the start letter. But this is good for kids that usually haven't started or have school. I love school but I am lazy... This one I like because it is simple and it is challenging (for some kids). And people who are introverted don't need to worry because it isn't public (school).
For Homeschool Complete I really love and appreciate not just all the work that went into creating this curriculum but how well it was thought out and the ideology behind the curriculum itself. It is very clear that the ideology of this curriculum is that you can learn from anything and that lines up with my ideology as well.
When we get to teach kids to think like that (with the methodology in mind that you learn from anything in life) they have a much higher success rate in life. Because they see everything as a learning experience rather than just to take a test and that's incredibly important.
This was used my 8-year-old son, who by public school standards is in 2nd grade, but is advanced in some subjects. This was super perfect for him the way it was set up and written.
What units are covered?
Units
* Back to School
* Southeast States
* Baseball
* Penguins
* Tall Tales
* World War I
* Behaviour
* Economics
What is in each unit??
* Math
* Spelling
* Science
* History
* Vocabulary
* Writing/Grammar
* A fun activity or game to enhance the learning experience
The way that this is set up is that the unit is the overall topic and within that topic, you have a series of lessons ranging from science, math, spelling, writing etc to really go in depth with each subject. I used to do this on my own when homeschooling my first and so I am glad to see a well-done product like this that makes it easier than doing it on your on as a parent.
It also keeps kids more engaged in their learning.
10% off code with my readers.
You just need to use the code CREW2019 and can get 10% off their orders until 3/31/2019.
How to Use this Product:
For Parent:
* You can get in PDF format or buy the book.
This is great for many reasons not to mention saving trees because if your student doesn't need all the pages you can print out only what you need. While you can do it digitally it is not interactive.
* There is a student workbook but also a parent/teacher handbook. Utilise them both. The parent handbook goes more in depth about how to take the lessons off the lesson plans and go further into depth on it. The parent guide has ideas and step by step guides to how to do some of the activities.
* The parent guide also has the guidelines for how to grade-- which means it is not self graded by the student, it is done by the teacher-- the hundreds charts, graph paper and more. This is essential when finishing the lessons.
* The objectives for each subject for the complete semester are within the teacher's guide which I love because then when you have to take your curriculum up for review, you can easily show what you have been doing in order for it to be marked off by the state. Sometimes doing this can seem overly tedious to do.
* The lessons are adaptable so you can easily add a lesson into a unit as a parent/teacher. This is HUGE. Kids often times excel at one aspect of a lesson versus another. For example, my son does great at math but doesn't like writing. So I can pull some handwriting lessons out of it and make him practice writing out things a little more.
For Child:
* Your child can sit down and do lessons as a separate day or sit down and do the whole unit in a day. Sometimes students can learn better doing a unit in a few days rather than spacing it out. However, it is meant to be done over the long haul (a period of time of say a week or two).
* You can have your child work on this digitally for those children who don't like to write things out or sometimes have challenges doing so. This doesn't mean it's interactive such as an app, because it's not, but it does allow students who learn different ways to practice those skills. For mine, he was able to take the lessons as a PDF and be able to use his fingers to do the worksheets on the computer for the crossword puzzle.
* You can print out only the worksheets you need to or have them do the work in a notebook. We did a little bit of digital and writing in a notebook (since we don't have a printer).
* Games within the program-- this is a great way to encourage kids to do the rest of the lessons. You can say, "we can play the 'sink your battleship' after you do the vocabulary." Which is great as a mum and the kids like looking forward to the game with mum/dad.
* The math that he did I loved because it incorporated learning how math is equated 2 between algebra and addition and he picked up on the concept immediately.
* With the baseball unit what I loved is that it incorporated a little bit of math a little bit of history a little bit of social learning because I don't ever remember learning about the different bases in Baseball and all that kind of stuff when I was younger it was something I learned outside of that. What is great about this is both social learning (about baseball) and incorporating it into something that they can pull "traditional school lessons" from.
What I like about this product:
* This is written in a whole learning style. This means that you can easily know that each subject matter (or most) are being touched on in each unit in a progressive learning way. This is hugely beneficial to students as I do believe they learn best this way.
* As a mum with advanced kids, it is nice to see the words that are being used for vocabulary and spelling are challenging. The spelling words like Tuberculosis are not just words that are fluff words to learn but also real-life words that need to be learned. Sometimes I find that other curriculums can pick words that don't have deep or real life meaning. This hinders learning in my honest opinion.
* It even not touches on racism and baseball and teaches kids how to do word searches and things that I don't feel that is touched on in school nowadays as much.
* My younger son who is a little bit advanced sat down with me with this curriculum and he actually really enjoyed doing it. This is not easy to achieve with him sometimes as (since I definitely believe he has ADHD) he has a hard time sitting down and finishing lessons.
* Also very important is that the lessons were simple enough yet compact in information that my son could actually pay attention to sit down and complete it. Because I believe my son may have ADHD like I do, this is incredibly huge!
* I do love that they touch on social-cultural lessons in some of the readings and that they ask questions of the kids to help them think about how it relates to them. To me, in the climate we live in, we need to be socially and culturally aware and I feel this lesson plan does a good job of addressing those.
* I absolutely love this curriculum and I love that you can skip around to different lessons if you need to because if we face reality is not every kid is at the same level. You can skip a unit if you think your child knows it or even skip and come back to a lesson. This is less true of math since that is built upon like building blocks, but I do like that for the majority of all the lessons this is true.
* Even though that this is a semester-long lesson plan I can see a kid sitting down and enjoying it enough to do it and much less than a semester while other kids may struggle a little bit and take a little bit longer.
* Again because of the adaptability of the lessons and the accessibility of it as well I think that this lesson really is a Homeschool Complete.
What I don't like about this product:
* Wish I had the book to review because I do love this a lot. I love being able to throw the book in my bag and take it with us. But you can do this with worksheets and just print and bring them. I just happen to have a non-working printer right now, but I can easily save to my google drive too and have my son complete that way too.
* I wish aspects of it were more challenging because some of it was easier for him to do. Now, not everyone will feel this way. For mine, he found some of it too easy and some of it perfect for his level. I think that honestly this is so minor because every kid experiences that in any curriculum.
My Son's (8 years old) Review:
At first, I didn't know what it was. Then I realised it is kind of fun to do little things like they help you to find the answer in the beginning sometimes. Like math. They show you how to do it first. And they tell you what to do- like find the words. I like that you can do it on the computer but there is a little bit of things I was annoyed. Like the map, there wasn't space for you to type it in fully in the state. But it is really good because I am talking about the bad things first. What I meant is, I am talking about the bad things and those aren't major... but the good things are! It's challenging for some kids like find-a-word one-- it was hard to find the words. But not for me, because I was just looking for the start letter. But this is good for kids that usually haven't started or have school. I love school but I am lazy... This one I like because it is simple and it is challenging (for some kids). And people who are introverted don't need to worry because it isn't public (school).
You can check out all their products here:
Kindergarten Complete
First Grade Complete
Second Grade Complete
Third Grade Complete
Fourth Grade Complete
Unit Studies: (K-6)
First Grade Complete
Second Grade Complete
Third Grade Complete
Fourth Grade Complete
Unit Studies: (K-6)
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Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kcomplete/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5aqEg8dpPHxHSr_p-x5u7w
Come Read the Crew Reviews below!
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