I have had a hard time finding a comprehensive curriculum for reading and Writing for the kids, one that they actually like. We recently had the chance to review Home School Navigator. For this review we received a online subscription to Home School Navigator Reading and Language Arts Curriculum. You can use this curriculum for grades K – 5. One of the things that really caught my interest about this curriculum was that once a month there is an interactive notebook book study. I will get into that more later in the review.
The Home School Navigator Reading and Language Arts Curriculum is a 36 week program. There are 6 different levels and each level is a different color. You have your own parent dashboard to see the assignments that are uploaded from the student account, or while your in the lesson in the student account you can mark it done when completed. You can see the progress are you are working through it on both the parent dashboard and the dashboard for the student. You log in through your parent account and you set the kids up. Each child has their own password to log into their account right from the site (note: after you log into the parent account first).
You can print out the hand outs for a full month right away. You have the monthly schedule and then the weekly schedule and each day has a schedule with the hand outs. You can also print the handouts as your students are using the lessons. One thing that makes this different from most is that there are videos that explain different concepts and they show examples. For example: you might have a video for comparing and contrasting in a story. It explains using another story of how you make the comparison and how it is different. Another thing is that there are word studies. You might have word wall words to learn or vocabulary and definitions. There is writing in this class everyday. For the level Green and higher you will find interactive notebook book studies each month.
How I Used This:
I used this with both of my kids. I used the Yellow Level with my son. I started with the Green Level but decided to move my daughter up to the Indigo Level as she was handling all the reading and writing well. The levels are similar to a point but teach different concepts as they get higher up. One thing you might see differently is when we talk about the plot of the story. My son drew what the Grandmas house looked like, and say my daughter we would be discussing this in greater detail. I noticed that there is some repetition of what is learned in early levels.
If you look at the picture above you will see that you can put this in your childs grammar notebook. They have these through the different levels and some are repeats as I did notice this printable in the Blue Level and it was also in the Yellow Level. So from looking at it, it is also a nice review for the older ones. In the beginning it tells you to set up different notebooks and binders. I didn’t do that. I had my kids typing during their writing as I felt that it was a long period of time. My son has a hard time with writing so the typing was a benefit to him. My daughter really got into the writing when she could type it. So that eliminated a binder for us as I just put them in their bins. I am doing the writing a little bit differently. I let them write in the beginning to get a feel. I didn’t correct the mistakes as I wanted them to be comfortable with writing. As we keep working on this, I will be correcting the writing and having them correct it. I have put everything into a regular notebook. Mine is not separate that way it is all in one place for us.
Now all units have word studies. The yellow one had a word wall. Each day you did something different with and at the end of the week was a spelling test. My sons words I kept in his folder each week so that we could access them. I like how they incorporated writing the words into hand writing practice. I also like how they used the words in sentences. Now the picture above is from my daughters level. You can keep these in a baggie but I chose to have her match them and glue them. We looked them over each day and I even had her write sentences using the words. There was an idea for a game to play as well. We didn’t try the game but I do plan to use it in the future as it spices things up.
One of the things that I am looking most forward to is the monthly interactive notebook book studies each month. I didn’t get to this in the level as I started out on a level and bumped my daughter up another level. The interactive notebooks focus on the most important elements in the story. I love this because it’s not a ton of questions that have to be answered and written out. The fun is cutting things out and putting them into a notebook. We are not strangers to this. I love this method of teaching. These books were meant to be used to get a deeper and more meaningful discussions surrounding the book that is read. I noticed that I still saw vocabulary words, grammar, other things like foreshadowing and prediction. I loved that you defined and then used synonyms and antonyms. There is so much more too! These also make great memory keepsakes too!
We really enjoyed using this. I noticed that the kids were more excited to write. The stories that were picked some were ones that we have already read and others were ones we didn’t. My daughters favorite was the story that was like Goldilocks and Three Bears but with Dinosaurs. My daughter enjoyed reading that book over and over again. I like that everything is already laid out for you so you don’t have to do planning. We tweaked a few things as we worked through it. I also had my kids read a big independently for 20 minutes instead of 30. I also like the free write time and the suggestions they give if your stuck and can’t think of anything to write. The instructional videos were great. I just wish that they were a little louder then what they were. Even when turned up all the way on my make I found it to be not so loud. Please don’t let that comment deter you in anyway. You can hear the videos. Also some of the videos of the book you can get read to you. We didn’t use that function as the kids and I took turn reading pages….or if they were into they read it out loud. There is also poetry each week. You do have to look online to find them but they can be easily found. So there is a whole lot of stuff inside one curriculum. There really is a lot to like.
For More Visit:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/homeschoolnavigation/
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/Home School Navigator/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeschoolnavigator/
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