Middlebury Interactive Languages

My daughter, Hannah, was born in China.  For the first three and a half years of her life, she spoke Mandarin Chinese.  In the last 6 years, most of her Chinese has been replaced by English.  So I was very happy to get to review Elementary Chinese, grades 3-5, from Middlebury Interactive Languages.   We received access to the program for one year, which sells for $238.

My hope for Hannah is to keep Chinese familiar enough to her that if she chooses to re-learn it as a teen or adult, she won't be starting completely from scratch.  Mandarin is a tonal language, and it's difficult for a non-native speaker to distinguish the tones.

Middlebury Interactive Languages helps me with that goal.  She's exposed to stories and cultural information, in addition to learning Chinese vocabulary and characters.  I appreciate the variety of ways information is presented.  The program holds her interest well.

Middlebury currently offers courses in Chinese, French, Spanish, and German.  In the Chinese language courses, Middlebury has two elementary levels (K-2 and 3-5), two middle school levels, and 4 high school levels.

Hannah likes "doing Chinese" because the lessons are interesting and engaging.  She likes to hear the stories.

I like that she's actually learning how to write characters.  I know a few characters, but I am pretty sure she has passed me up already.  The paper you see in front of her is a special printout designed for learning to write Chinese characters.  I like that I can print as much of this as we need.

Here, Hannah is learning to print the characters representing the numbers 1-10.

Middlebury is an online program.  You need a computer, an internet connection, and a microphone.  For some lessons, the program will say a word and have Hannah repeat it into the microphone so she can hear herself say it and know if it sounds the same as the computer or not.

I think Middlebury is a great solution for homeschool families that want to teach a second language that the parents themselves do not speak.  Since I'm getting ready to go back to China on an advocacy trip, it's been helpful to me to "hang out" in the room with Hannah while she's working on her Chinese to brush up on the Mandarin few phrases that I know.

Progress is visible in the grade book area of the program.

Plus there's an "at a glance" progress report available under grade report.  At the time of this screenshot, Hannah was getting an 87%, and had completed 11% of the program so far.

Many years ago, most people lived and died within 100 miles of the house they were born in, but in today's global society, travel is safer and easier, and people are on the move.  Kids who learn a second language are more employable and have more opportunities available to them.  Knowing about other cultures in our world is a wonderful side benefit to using Middlebury.

You can connect with Middlebury Interactive Languages on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.  Other Crew families reviewed a variety of languages and levels, and you can read their reviews by clicking the box below.




This post may be linked up at these linky parties.

Thanks for clicking for us!

Our Week with a Spot of Sewing

My friend is home from the hospital and doing well.  Her kids are happy to have their mama home.

We got back to art this week!  The first project involved soft pastels, which are messy.  We keep diaper wipes with the art supplies for things like this.

Our first project involved creating an animal shaped stencil and then using pastels to color around it several times.

Then we put a small piece of cardboard under the stencil and glued it onto the page, creating a 3 dimensional effect.

Still loving the Can Do Cubes.  Actually, we're still enjoying the Jolly Phonics books, too.  Katie's working through book 2 now.  Here, she's using the cubes to spell out words.  I find myself reaching for these when Katie misspells a word in her spelling book so I can show her the way it should look.  Especially with 2 letter vowels and ch, sh, th, etc.

Math drill work.  Not a favorite, but a necessary evil.

When my friend's kids were here last week, I made a discovery.  We had no crib sheets.  After Luke left the first time, I decluttered down to just two of them:  the ones I made for him and Katie when I decorated the panda room.  When he came back, we used them to death.  He often slammed his face into the crib to self sooth, and I'd go in to get him in the morning and find blood (from his nose) all over him and the crib.  When he moved again, those two sheets were gross, so I threw them away.

After having to "make do" with what we had around the house while we had 6 spare kids here last week, I decided we should probably have some crib sheets.  And since I have oodles of fabric, I should make them.  Left sheet is a travel print with landmarks from around the world.  Center sheet is fabric from Alaska.

Sheet on the right is a purple calico print.  If you're curious, this is How I Make Crib Sheets.

Our second art project this week, also from the Home Art Studio 4th grade DVD, was treat bags for Halloween.  The tutorial was on how to make a monster or Frankenstein treat bag, but she mentioned you could also make them to match a costume.  I told Jack and Hannah they could choose.

Jack decided to go with a monster, and Hannah decided to match her costume.  She's going to be a tiger.  Katie was working on her math, but I made her a panda bag to go with her panda costume.

When I pulled out the pipe cleaners chenille stems, Jack played with them for a while, and ended up chained to his chair at one point.  Boys!

Our finished treat bags.

What's this?  We're at another pumpkin patch?  Yes.  I confess, I'm really, really enjoying being able to get out of the house and meet up with friends to enjoy all the special fun that only happens in the autumn.

We hung out with some other homeschoolers we don't get to see very often at our local pumpkin patch.

It was really, really good for Jack to get to run with a flock of boys his age.

Hannah and Katie had a great time, too.

We went on a hay ride.

 They posed for silly pictures.

And they got to pet animals.

It was perfect fall weather; sunny and nice, with lots to see and do.  I took new pictures of Jack, Hannah and Katie to update the blog sidebar.

My China trip is only a couple weeks away now, and I'm starting to get things ready.  We got a letter from Josiah, and we heard from his commander when graduation will be, so it looks like we'll be traveling again for that, just a short while after my return from China.  Exciting!


This post may be linked up at these linky parties.

Thanks for clicking for us!

Educeri

I have really enjoyed being part of the Homeschool Review Crew and getting to try out a wide range of educational products.  I had never heard of Educeri... Educeri a division of DataWORKS prior to receiving their Educeri Lesson Subscription Service for review purposes.  We received a full year of access.


While Educeri is an online program, it's different than the online programs we've reviewed in the past.  Those were designed for the student to be online and interact with the computer to do the lesson.  Educeri is designed for the teacher to be online and have access to lessons and resources for doing the teaching to their students.

There are dozens of lessons available in a wide variety of subjects.  They range from kindergarten level through high school level.  I found a lot of lessons in both the kindergarten and the first grade sections that would be good for Katie to do.

Here, Katie is working on a worksheet printed from the first grade lesson Memorize Addition Facts.  The way we used Educeri for this lesson was to have Katie stand next to me at the computer, while I clicked through the slides and taught the lesson.  Katie has a basic grasp of addition through her regular math curriculum, but I liked presenting the materials in a slightly different way, and having her learn new vocabulary, including the word "memorize," which I had not thought to define for her prior to seeing the Educeri lesson.


With Jack and Hannah, we started with a lesson on commas and quotation marks.  Again, this was review for them, but it's an area I felt they could use additional practice in.

We went over the lesson together, and then I had them do a page from the printable student handbook each day for a week.

In Jack's math, he's been working on fractions, so I thought presenting the Generate Equivalent Fractions lesson might be helpful for him.  Sometimes approaching something from a slightly different angle helps a concept click.

Since he's older, the way we used Educeri together was for him to sit in the chair and have control of the mouse, while I hover and explain and say, "Click next," a lot.

There are also a few "teacher development" lessons.  Homeschooling is very different from classroom schooling, so they did not apply to our way of doing things, but I found them interesting to read over.

In this picture, Katie is doing a handout from Answer Questions About a Story.  We read the story together, and then Katie answered the questions beneath it, demonstrating that she understood what happened in the story.  This was from the first grade section.  I would love to see Educeri add similar reading comprehension lessons to all the elementary grade levels.

We've been using Educeri for about a month now, and I feel like we've barely waded into all the options available for us.  I can easily see us continuing to refer back to these lessons to teach a variety of topics as we come across them in our usual curriculum.

Educeri would also be a super fit for a classroom teacher who is new to homeschooling and wants a familiar framework for presenting lessons.


You can connect with Educeri on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest (which includes a board of printable classroom posters).  To read what over 60 other Crew families have to say about their experience with Educeri, please click the box below.



This post may be linked up at these linky parties.

Thanks for clicking for us!