Vocabulary/Spelling City...

One of my favorite sites asked for reviewers of their premium membership for my honest review of their site. Hopefully, I won't be too biased about it, you see we've used the free membership for about two years now when it was just Spelling City...I still have a hard time calling it Vocabulary/Spelling City!! In fact this is the same company that sent me 5 vendor hall passes for the ISTE this past July in Philadelphia and I was quite happy to forward two of those passes onto a fellow homeschooler.

So, yes......I (we) love Spelling City but I.....errrrrr....my son, yeah my son....hasn't had the chance yet to use the vocabulary part of the site. I'm.....ahhhhhh.....HE's quite anxious to try it out since playing a bit with it at the ISTE convention.
We, yes we, can't wait to try everything out now. My disclosure is below and this review will be coming up in three weeks.
Meanwhile, you can try the Spelling City functions for free to see if you might be interested in winning a Premium Membership later.
Oh....and its not just for homeschoolers by the way. There are a lot of school spelling lists and you can easily add your child's spelling list from your homeschool or public school to give the kids a different and fun way of learning and testing themselves. The link for their site is below the disclosure information.

Disclosure:

I've been given a premium membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for  a candid, personal, online review.

VocabularySpellingCity.com helps students study word lists using 25  different learning activities such as MatchIt Sentences, HangMouse,  and Word-O-Rama.  Parents can create their own spelling lists, find published lists already available on the  site, or use any of dozens of  free  teaching resources on topics such as analogies and compound words.  Be sure to come back in three weeks to  read about my experience.
There might be more  free memberships available for bloggers.  If you're interested, find out  how you can review  VocabularySpellingCity.com.

http://www.spellingcity.com/

Best laid plans.....HAH!

Life is what happens when you are busy making plans....

Oh, so true!
Today was going to be all about telling and sharing pictures of our first two days of 3rd grade with you...Ahem, WAS going to be...
Instead, a virus wiped out my laptop - along with ALL of the lessons I JUST got organized -

We do have the next two days off, because DH is off from work and we will pick things back up on Friday. By then I hope to have some of the stuff back that I need and I'll share the next installment of the "Not Back to School Hop", which is a peek inside our classroom. I can however still do the MathBlaster review and giveaway because I need DH computer anyway for that. So, check back tomorrow or Thursday for that.

Right  now, I'm going to go kick "Life" in the butt.....

Curriculum Week 2011 - Not Back To School Blog Hop

Its time for a new homeschool year, we are actually starting this coming Monday, August 8th. Its also time for the Not Back To School Blog Hop from Heart of the Matter Online.

Week 1 is Curriculum week and here is what we've chosen this year for third grade for our son.

Base Comprehensive Curriculum - Learn at Home, grade 3 and Flashkids grade 3 (from B&N).
Math - Math U See Foundations (finishing up) into Gamma series. And MathBlaster Website.
Grammar - Finishing Easy Grammar Daily Guided for 2nd/3rd Grades, then starting Easy Grammar and Daily Grams 3rd and 4th Grade.
History - Story of the World - all volumes with Activity Guides, calendar/holiday led and Historical Timeline.
Reading - Finishing McGuffey's 1st Reader to be followed with McGuffey's 2nd Reader. Also, Thomas Jefferson Education Classics (TJED) and Learn at Home weekly curriculum reading (LAH).
Spelling - McGuffey's Reader's and Vocabulary/Spelling City Website.
Vocabulary - Seasonal/Monthly and LAH.
Geography - USA and World/Country studies through various sources. 
 Science - LAH and Supercharged Science website.

**For some FREE online science lessons you can use this link:
401 Science Activity Manual and Video Collection ($30 value)
http://www.sciencelearningspace.com/members/go.php?r=5556&i=l23

***Or you can order the whole thing from this link:

Try e-Science - 30-day money-back guarantee

We started both Math U See and Easy Grammar programs recently and found that they really work beautifully with the LAH and Flashkids base curriculum's. The Red Ranger also wants to learn cursive writing so we have a couple of books to start using to see how it all goes. We also have lots of supplemental materials to work with but that's for another week's blog.
I'll also be adding more on both the Mathblaster website, including a giveaway and Vocabulary/Spelling City.
Both sites offer free content for you and your children to try out. If you are interested then I'll be having that giveaway for Mathblaster, which is a full 3 month subscription coming up soon.

Next week is School Room Week in the blog hop. Have a look and join in.

I have a few pictures to share but we still are waiting on a couple of books to be delivered so here is what we have so far.

Learn At Home Series Week 1 - All Subjects

   

Join the blog hop!