Crew Review: Dive into Your Imagination DVD

Over the past few weeks we've had the change to review our last product for the 2011-2012 Crew Review year:  Dive into Diversity, a DVD unit study about the ocean habitat.

This DVD is one of three DVDs produced specifically for children and the educational  market. The others are:  What Makes a Fish a Fish?  and What Lives in the Sea?  All three are $19.95 each.

The DVDs (meant for ages preK and up) are beautiful filmed by Annie Crawley, who is an underwater cinematographer, educator, and motivational speaker. You can definitely sense Annie's passion about the ocean, teaching and following your dreams as you read her bio at the website.

The DVD I reviewed had the following chapters:

Crusty Crustaceans  • Night Diving • Coral Reef Living • Be A Submarine Pilot • Swim in a Kelp Forest • Sea Animals with Backbones •  Diversity • Invertebrates of the Sea • The Ocean Song see the clip):

Our DVD Experience: The kids loved most of the DVD.  At the beginning (and sporatically throughout), they thought the DVD was a little too pre-schooly for them.  What made them think this?  In the beginning part of the DVD, scenes of toddlers and pre-schoolers were shown learning to swim.  Once the kids got past that part, all three were watching and listening to the amazing footage of that mysterious place under the surface of the water.

A note:  Speaking about the diversity of life in the ocean, Annie mentions briefly that clownfish can change from male to female (she mentions the wrasses fish that changes from girl to boy).  This is called sequential hermaphroditism (something I looked up on Wikipedia just now).  It is a response that God has given to the animals in a situation where the female has been killed or leaves the structured society within which clownfish live; in order to continue to populate their region one of the males becomes female (see the Wikipedia page about clownfish, specifically the reproduction section).  Now, Annie does not use the term "sequential hermaphroditism" nor does she mention that this is in response to physical changes in the clownfish community. This is pretty complex stuff for early elementary aged students. But I mention this in case you want to preview the chapter "Diversity" or are hesitant to introduce this topic within your family.

Also made available to us for this review was a two part teaching guide for the DVD.  The first part was for creating unit studies on each of the DVD's chapters for grades 1-3 and the second part was for upper elementary-aged students.  The grade 1-3 guide is over 300 (!!) pages of materials.  For each chapter on the DVD, the educator's guide has:

1. Character education and imagination play for your students.
2. A set of student questions correlating to the lessons designed to prompt discussion and enhance learning during video and multi-media viewing.
3. Ideas and support materials you can use to build learning centers in your classroom which combine science with other core subjects.
4. A glossary of scientific terms, eco-tips and websites for educator content support.
5. Suggested book lists and extension activities that can be used to bring an ocean of imagination flooding into your class. [taken from the guide, p.9]

Additional instructions were:

"This book is designed for educators to use in planning ocean based activities for students combining science, literacy, math, geography, and character education.... Though each unit provides several learning station activities, we suggest choosing 2-3 of them for use at any one time. Our goal is to provide you with many tools and options in order for you to customize a program appropriate for your class." [also found on p. 9]

We used several of the ideas in the guide to springboard discussion after watching the movie.  I printed off a worksheet to target vocabulary and had Luke and Levi work together to unscramble to words. I think there is a LOT of material in the guides that can be used to create a whole unit study of learning.

A note about the guides: The guides are available as a printed version for $299 (for the whole set of them) or as individual PDFs for $69.95. As a special for the Homeschool Crew and The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and followers, Annie Crawley of Dive Into Your Imagination will gift you a set of PDFs with purchase of the DVDs. When you place your DVD order, just let her know in the notes that you are a Homeschool Parent!

To read what other reviewers thought of the DVDs, head over to the crew:

Disclaimer: In exchange for a copy of the product reviewed above, I was asked to give my honest opinion.  No other compensation was received.  All opinions are my own.

TOS Review Crew Fav List for 2011-12

In the next week I'll be posting my final review for this 2011-12 school year.  This was my second year on The Crew, and it was infinitely more manageable than the first year because I knew what I was doing a little bit more than my inaugural year.

One of the fun things at the end of the year that The Crew gets to do is vote on our favorites.  You can read the whole post at TOS Review Crew website.

I've also posted links to each of these products that I reviewed so you can see what I thought.

Favorite Reading Instruction Product:  Reading Eggs / My review
Favorite Writing Product:  Write Shop
Favorite Language Arts Product: Progeny Press / My review of PP's Across Five Aprils
Favorite Social Studies Product: TruthQuest History
Favorite Science Product: Amazing Science / My review
Favorite Math Product: Math Mammoth
Favorite Online Math Product: Math Rider / My review
Favorite Foreign Language Product: Visual Latin / My review
Favorite Fine Arts Product: Artistic Pursuits
Favorite Christian Education Product:  Apologia: Who Am I?
~~~
Favorite Preschool Product: Before Five in a Row
Favorite Elementary Product: All About Reading
Favorite Middle School Product:  Write with WORLD / My review
Favorite High School Product: Excellence in Literature / My review
Favorite College or College-Prep Product:  Excellence in Literature
~~~
Best Online Resource:  Reading Eggs
Best e-Product: Heritage History
Best Homeschool Resource: Apologia: Educating the Wholehearted Child
Best Book, Novel, or Magazine: Apologia: How to Have a HEART for Your Kids / My review
Best Children’s Book: Amazing Animals by Design / My review
Best Game or Toy: Northstar Games: Wits and Wagers and Say Anything / My review
Best Hands-On Resource: Pitsco Education
~~~
Best Resource I Didn’t Know I Needed: eMeals / My review
Best Customer Service: K5 Learning / My review
Most Adaptable Resource: Creek Edge Press / My review
Most Family-Oriented Resource: Northstar Games: Wits and Wagers and Say Anything
~~~
Kids’ Choice (favorite of CHILDREN ages 0-12):  Reading Eggs
Teens’ Choice (favorite per the TEENAGERS): Pitsco Education
All Around Crew Favorite: Visual Latin

I had some favorites that did not make the cut.  Levi and Luke both loved Reading Eggs, and it certainly deserves a win, but I have to credit Ooka Island as really jumpstarting Levi's reading this school year. Shortly after our trial subscription ran out, we were able to use Reading Eggs, and Levi continued to blast through that program's reading skills. He is now reading Magic Tree House books (still could use some help decoding longer words, but I'm not complaining right now!).

My favorite science product was Classical Astronomy Finally, star charts that make sense to me!  I love the idea of learning useful astronomy and doing more than learning about "just" the planets.  This product was great, too, because we involved the whole family and dragged Daddy out to look at the starts (that makes is sound like Dave is totally uninvolved in our home schooling -- which is not the case).  We are planning a camping vacation this summer, and I plan to purchase a monthly guide so we can watch the heavens as we camp!

My Levi's favorite fine arts product was Kinder Bach (since we did not review Artistic Pursuits this year). It was a program that he grew to love and even request as time when on!
 
Each winning vendor has received this wonderful award to display with pride:

 
Congratulations to our winning vendors! We hope you will sail with us again! Many Crew Members are blogging about these awards as well. Click here to see the Crew Blog Posts.

Crew Review: CapJaxMathFax

For the past few crazy weeks, my younger boys have been trying out CapJaxMathFax to help them with their subtraction (Levi) and beginning multiplication (Luke).  Both boys use Math U See for their primary program, and I do like to add in some additional math fact help too give them a bit of a boost with what they are currently learning or to help keep fresh all that they previously learned.

CapJaxMathFax is available for $29.95 as a download.  For an additional $5.95, you can purchase the program on a disk.  You can download an evaluation/ trial program, which apparently has additional notes to help you understand the fullness of the program (I have not tried the evaluation copy).

As I do with all the math fact programs we've tried, I quickly downloaded the software and added it to the boys' schedules. This start up screen (which can be disabled once you've started using the program) explains that there are two modes -- a practice mode and a rating mode (click on the picture to read the descriptions):

After clicking "close" in the yellow box, you will get to the main screen, where you can select the types of problems for your kids to work on:

I really do love all the options that are here.  It can be totally customized to your child's needs.  Math U See teaches math facts 0-10, but there are some programs that teach 0-12 facts, so I love that you can set this program to include those or not.

Right now, Levi is working on learning subtraction with the 2s facts.  I can set the practice level to work on just -2s on the "LEVEL" selector or I can have him practice them with -1s.  I also like being able to set the number of math problems to include in each practice.  For Levi, I usually try to have him work through 15 to 20 at a time.

One thing to note:  you do have to re-enter the facts you want your child to practice daily.  My kids have gotten fairly good at asking what I want them to do.  

I think that the "SUPER SECONDS" setting is very handy.  The idea behind it is this:  if it takes longer than 3 seconds to answer a math problem, then your child is probably counting it out and hasn't memorized/learned it yet.  Levi is only getting about 3 or so SUPER scores, so we are parked at -2 for a little while more.  I like that the kids and I can review their answers when they are done and count how many SUPERS they got.

Another thing I really like about this program is that it presents math facts both vertically and horizontally within the same set of facts.  And, with ,multiplication, CapJax uses the dot between two numbers (sort of like the "*" in 6*1=) as well as the "x."  I like that different notations are used from the beginning.

I think CapJax has some good "bones" to it in terms of flexibility.

We didn't really use the RATING mode, except to just see what it did.   The RATING part of the program is supposed to be the part of the program that helps your child reach mastery of their facts. At the RATINGS level, your child completes math facts to earn points and badges.  It even compiles a nifty graph which is informative and motivating.  You can see a great, informative PDF to learn about the distinctives of CapJax.

Why didn't we use the RATING part?  Well, I have to say that this particular math fact program was not a favorite of my kids.  While I appreciate a "back to basics," no fluff program, my kids just thought it was too boring.  There is no animation at all in this program (which is not a bad thing...).  It is a pretty straightforward math program.  Now, it does not matter too much to me if my kids think something in school is boring -- I operate our school under the "Life is sometimes boring so we need to learn to be grateful and make the best of it" philosophy.  However, we've been struggling with doing our school work consistently over the past few weeks, so I've learned to pick my battles.

Now, please, go visit some other reviewers to who had kids who loved CapJax.  For me as a mom, I see lots more pluses to this program than my kids' did.

Disclaimer: As a member of the TOS Crew, I received this product, at no cost to me, in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are mine.