Running With Spears

My girls have been using the MaxScholar Reading Intervention Programs from MaxScholar for a little over a month now. The programs are designed to help kids with learning disabilities or who struggle with reading for any reason, by taking them through a comprehensive, multi-sensory approach using the five pillars of reading.

The MaxGuru program which we were given to review has programs ranging from teaching the basics of pre-k phonics all the way through teaching how to summarize and outline paragraphs, recognize Greek and Latin roots, prefixes and sufixes, and more.

Boo, who is 6, started at the beginning of the pre-k phonics program. It took her through all the letters with step by step instruction…this is the letter a  as in apple,  then a video of someone saying the sound it makes. Next it had her say those three things out loud with them, and then asked her to say them alone. The next step was showing her how the letter is written and having her write it on the screen herself (which would probably work better on a tablet than a computer so she could use her finger instead of the mouse). Finally it showed 9 pictures and asked her to select the ones that start with a  (when she moused over a picture it said the word for her so she could hear the starting sound).

After each set of 5 letters she reviewed the set by typing each letter when given the sound it makes. There are also songs for each set of letters.

The MaxPhonics program also includes a set of games including a sight word memory game and a game working on recognizing rhyming words.

Boo just finished going through all of the letters and has made great strides toward knowing them all! She still has a few she struggles with, especially ones like b, d, m,  and w,  but I’m really pleased with the progress she’s made!

She didn’t like how repetitive the lessons were, but it was necessary for her, and she did enjoy the games, so I felt like there was a really good balance there. 🙂

I can’t wait for her to start the next unit where she’ll begin working on sound blending! MaxScholar has proven to be quite effective  so far for Boo who has really  struggled with learning to read this year. I have high hopes that the program will help sound blending finally make more sense to her and she’ll be able to make the forward progress that thus far has been evading her. (And driving me insane…it’s so hard not to pull my hair out when she sounds out “rrrr-aaaaa-t” and then says, “mouse.” Oy vey. Goodness knows I’ve needed a lot more coffee this year…and wine. 😉 )

If you have a young reader who is struggling for any reason, I highly  recommend MaxScholar!!! 

——————————

Artist isn’t  in the target demographic for a program designed to help struggling readers, but she enjoys the activities for older kids.

She’s read all sorts of interesting articles that are educational in and of themselves, such as a biography of Helen Keller or an article about Moscow. They also have learning games such as hangman and word searches which she loves! She says hangman is her favorite, which is great because each word is more than just guessing letters, it gives her the definition of the word to help her guess it, so the game is improving her vocabulary while she plays! She also really loves getting to read about different animals through the recommended reading section of MaxReading. 🙂

I think her favorite area, though, is MaxMusic. She can identify verbs in the lyrics to popular songs, which has helped her a lot in her ability to recognize passive verbs. Then she can play the song on a picture of piano keys, which serves as fun motivation for a girl who loves playing piano!

There are also a couple music games, including a fun guitar game that challenges you to press arrow keys at the right time. I’m sure it’s working on a skill of some sort, but mostly it’s just addicting to try to not miss any notes. Not that I know from experience because I got sucked in when I tried it out or anything. 😉

Given the skills she’s been working on while having a good time, I’d also recommend MaxScholar for kids  like Artist who enjoy learning as they go, even if they’re already great readers! It feels to me like a great supplement for families like us who lean toward eclectic homeschooling or even unschooling.

Be sure to hop over the the MaxScholar review link up to check out what my fellow reviewers on the Schoolhouse Review Crew have to say. 

Thanks for stopping my! Be sure to let me know if you have any questions or anything. Have a great day! 🙂

For the past month or so my girls have been using the Complete Home Learning Suite from Essential Skills Advantage. I’m a big fan of doing school online, and ESA has been a great program for us.

ESA has online courses to supplement all the basic subjects for K-6. The lessons are engaging and rewarding, while remaining focused on educating rather than simply entertaining. There are printable certificates for a tangible reward, and a parent page that tracks your kids’ progress. Also, the curriculum is fully customizable. Each child can be working in multiple grades at once for each subject, and flip back and forth as needed, even within subjects. For example, within language and grammar, my 9 year old can do 6th grade spelling and 3rd grade writing fundamentals (and kindergarten phonics if she wanted to).  Unlike some programs, there are no limits on what grade levels each student uses, which is great for us since Artist is really not in any one specific grade at this point and does work in everything from 3rd to probably about 7th grade.

I started Boo out in the Kindergarten reading program, beginning with readiness skills. I was really pleased that it covered a lot of basics she needed to work on that I hadn’t seen addressed in learning programs before, like visual discrimination skills.

She also worked on auditory skills, basic concepts, and more. When she moved on to sight words, though, the activities were too advanced for her and she became frustrated, so I switched her over to the kindergarten math program.

The first unit there is focused on teaching a thorough grasp on numbers up to 100, as well as basic addition using a variety of engaging activities.

Boo has now finished most of unit one, and has gone from barely being able to count above 10 to counting to 100, and can now do basic addition as well. Numbers seem to have started really clicking for her, and she’s started begging me to ask her things like 5 + 3  so she can show me she knows the answer. I love seeing her make such great progress and gain confidence as well. 🙂

She also says she likes ESA, which is of course a huge plus! I think she’ll continue to learn a lot through the program. It’s a great fit for her!

For Artist, there wasn’t a particular skill I needed her to focus on, so I let her play around each day, trying whatever suited her fancy. She loves science, so she decided to check that out. Unfortunately the science curriculum only goes through 3rd grade, and everything in it was far too basic for her. She ended up deciding on 6th grade geography, instead. She found the map and globe skills interesting. Here, particularly, I felt the program would work best as a supplement to help reinforce material we covered outside of ESA, which I believe is the intended use anyway. But even without that, she still learned a good amount.

The most useful skill Artist chose to work on with ESA was spelling. She started out in 3rd grade spelling, which was ridiculously easy for her. I have no idea how it lines up with other 3rd grade spelling, but in any case, I had her move up to 6th grade.

The spelling lists there lined up with words that she needed to be working on, and the activities such as word scramblers, hangman type games, and word searches were fun and engaging, and most importantly painlessly improved her spelling skills! Yay!

Though Artist claims she finds everything at ESA boring, I think she just jumped to that conclusion when attempting 3rd grade material that wasn’t challenging for her. I plan to keep having her use ESA for language and grammar work, if nothing else.

All in all, I definitely recommend ESA as a supplemental curriculum for younger kids. I think Artist will outgrow it in about a year as it only goes through 6th grade (3rd for science) so it may not work well for older kids, especially if they’re more advanced in some areas. That said, for Boo it’s one of the best resources I’ve found. In fact, for kindergarten I think it could possibly be just about the only curriculum you need.

Also, be sure to check out what other reviewers have to say about ESA over at the Schoolhouse Review Crew link up.

Let me know if you have any questions or anything. Have a great day! 🙂