Homeschool Curriculum

Polar Husky Alert: View-as-Book

February 16, 2009 By Barb Leave a Comment

Exciting news! I have moved blogs. I am in the process of slowly moving all the posts over. Please join me at MomOffTrack.com.

Passing on some information from Education Basecamp!

Happy Presidents Day from Education Basecamp!

We wanted to let you know that Module 1 is now available through the view-as-book feature in Get Curriculum of Support at PolarHuksy.com. Please take some time to familiarize yourself with this resource-saving feature.

There are multiple ways to utilize this feature and there are many ways one could search for a particular page within Module 1.

Here is an example we have come-up with for helping you with the ‘Search the publication’ feature:

You are looking for Teacher Notes 1-6a “Amundsen” to project as suggested in the CAAG.

Type Amundsen in the ‘Search this publication’ field and click return. Five pages are returned that contain the word Amundsen. Click on the thumbnail version that most resembles the page you are searching for (in this case it would be that last page with the color map and image of a person with a
flag.)

Please note: searching by “Teacher Notes” or “Teacher Notes 1-6a” will bring back all pages that have the words Teacher Notes and also all pages that have a 1, 6 or ‘a’ following these words Teacher Notes. This may not be the most effective way to search.

As time allows, please familiarize yourself with how the view-as-book feature works and learn what is the best way for you to navigate to what you are looking for. We’ve heard that many of you find it to be a great time saver (and we love that it helps save trees too!).

If you come-up with an ingenious way to search, please share it with us! Beginning March 2, Technical Stuff in Forum of Support will be the place to let everyone know so that they can benefit from what you’ve found/learned. In the interim, share it with Education Basecamp at howl@polarhusky.com and we’ll share your EUREKA! moment with everyone.

Share what you learn. You never know how we might choose to say thanks.

Think Snow!

Education Basecamp
GoNorth! adventure learning series for the K-12 classroom

University of Minnesota
130D Peik Hall
159 Pillsbury Dr SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

P: 612-625-8550
F: 612-624-8277
E: info@polarhusky.com

Explore the Arctic and experience adventure learning online!
Visit: http://www.PolarHuksy.com

Click here & then scroll down to leave me a comment!

Filed Under: Homeschool Curriculum, Homeschool News

Train Your Brain More

February 2, 2009 By Barb 13 Comments

Last week I received an email from a publicist asking if I would like to review this latest book by Dr. Kawashima. I recognized the name, and you probably will too, from the popular Brain Age games we play on our Nintendo DS. Definitely intrigued, I said yes and I was glad that I did.

This book was not what I expected. It was much more ‘workbook’ like than I had thought it would be.
Click here to see and print a sample page!
But, it was fun to time our progress. In the 5 days I had Connor (12 year old) work on it, he became faster and faster. While I do call him my little math genius, it was interesting to see the first day how the simple calculations were, well, not that simple anymore. Proving that we can all use a little daily brain exercise. The pages take less than 3 minutes (for him) and it is a great little vitamin boost for the day.

I loved the first few pages of the book where it shows images taken by a brain imaging device while people performed certain activities. Now I had proof that watching TV was not nearly as good for you as reading a book!

Not only do I recommend this book but I am giving away 2 Train Your Brain More books. Would you like to win one?

INITIAL ENTRY: Leave me a comment below introducing yourself! You must complete this entry to be eligible for the Bonus ones listed below.

Bonus Entries: You can do any of these that you want. Do 1 or do all!

1. Follow me on Twitter @chaotic_barb (leave your Twitter ID)

2. Tweet This Giveaway. You may do this once a day. Just Copy and Paste this —-> Win Train Your Brain More book by author of Nintendo Brain Age http://snipr.com/b6m6v @chaotic_barb PLS RT

3. Blog about this giveaway. (You must leave the link to the post, not your blog)

4. Stumble this giveaway. Leave your stumble ID.

Please leave a separate Comment for each Entry. Giveaway is open to USA and Canada Residents 18 years of age or older. Any posts not including the requested information will be deleted. I reserve the right to remove any entry from this giveaway. This giveaway ends February 12th at 11:59pm est. Please allow up to 2 weeks to receive your item.

Click here & then scroll down to leave me a comment!

Filed Under: Homeschool Curriculum Tagged With: homeschool software, reviews & giveaways

PrezQuest

January 17, 2009 By Barb 3 Comments

Looking for something unique to do this week for the Inauguration? This may be your answer! This week the kids and I had the opportunity to do our first live online learning event. It was really cool. There is a live teacher that walks the kids through the lesson which makes it different from any other online learning program that I know of. When the kids answered questions correctly, our ‘teacher’ would give them a high five, which they thought was really neat. They enjoyed being actively engaged in the lesson and hearing their names used.

The event that we did was called PrezQuest.

During the event the live teacher acted as the kids campaign manager. The teacher walked them through the qualifications to be the President, the five main jobs of the President, and the Election process. The event is peppered with cute animations of past presidents that share fun facts and interactive games.

I loved that the process is meant to be shared with a parent. This is not something you sit the kids down to do while you make dinner. The intent is to spark conversation and interaction between parents and kids. In other words, it is the perfect medium to do something a little different during your homeschool week.

I was most impressed to have Ranjy Thomas, the president of Flying Rhinoceros (the development company behind PrezQuest) personally call me after the event to ask for my feedback. We talked about a few of the ‘glitches’ I encountered, namely the initial log in process not going smoothly and he assured me that they are working on ironing small things like that out. He was very warm and friendly and had a real interest in learning about the homeschool community and how their company can best serve our needs. They plan to do many more live events with different topics. PrezQuest is available to families for $6.99 per event, or $11.99 for the event and the book “Wooden Teeth & Jelly Beans.” In either case you get a great activity book to print and access to the online games after the event as well.

I absolutely recommend PrezQuest and I am looking forward to see more from this company. I think they are a real bright star to watch in the future of children’s online education! They already have a great site of free educational games to play on so even if you don’t get to do PrezQuest, make your way over to The Fraboom Network and check them out. If you do take part in PrezQuest please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought of the experience!

Click here & then scroll down to leave me a comment!