I’ve found that one of the best ways for my children to learn history is through age appropriate video documentaries, audio books, and in visiting many different types of field trip destinations. During the Summer season, my family had the opportunity to go on vacation for several days. Our destination was several hours from home and that meant a good amount of time would be spent in the car. I’d been pondering activities to do in the car to and from to keep the entire family occupied that would be interesting, engaging, and educational. My daughter tends to get car sick when playing on electric devices and when reading books in the car so those options were completely out. However, a good audio drama seemed to be an excellent choice.
As part of the Schoolhouse Crew Review team, I was given the opportunity to share my thoughts upon Heirloom Audio Productions latest audio theatrical drama adapted from a book, by G.A. Henty. This particular tale presents the history of the civil war with focus on Confederate generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee. With Lee in Virginia includes a physical 2 CD set, a digital download study guide, MP3 soundtrack, and a few other things. The package has everything one would need to delve deeply into this portion of American history in a fun, adventurous, and memorable way.
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I like supplementing our schooling with educational shows, movies, and documentaries. While going through unit studies, I plan ahead and usually can find what I need at our local library but not always. But when life gets busy and I need to put something on as a substitute from our normal studies I can’t always plan ahead. This leaves me to search on the net and sift through a few of our subscription services. These services aren’t terrible but there typically is a lot of other content to sift through to find the educational material hoped for. Much of the content is not always family friendly or appropriate to browse through with my children around. We’ve happened across things on-line and through these services that have had ads that contained bad language, inappropriate images, and so on. The ease of being able to move to unsafe destinations is simply unraveling and not something I want my children privy to.
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My seven year old second grader has started becoming more interested in reading. She’s grown out of early readers and has shown a desire to seek out more age appropriate materials. I know that since she can sight read quite well that it is important to ensure that her reading comprehension grows along with it. I wanted an approach to Vocabulary that would appeal to her learning style. My preferred features would be a no pressure, fun independent online program, that teaches a number of concepts at a pace that wouldn’t be rushed and could adjust to the skill level of the student. You can’t imagine my joy when I discovered that such a vocabulary program exist! Continue reading
Field Trips are something that most children enjoy. In getting out on the field, children are often completely engaged in their topic of study. Multiple senses being awakened increase every learning experience . Field Trips trump learning through a book or video because you just can’t substitute the real thing. In realizing the importance of these experiences, I’ve been planning many field trips to supplement our schooling. Our trips mainly revolve around personal interest and age appropriate educational experiences that I feel my son and daughter should witness first hand. Continue reading
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