Read and Share Give Away

Jump on over and check out the Read and Share Give Away.
Its a cute Bible program geared towards preschool/elementary students.

http://domanandaba.blogspot.com/2011/04/read-and-share-bible-giveaway.html?showComment=1302303054508#c1578321048703284387

HUGE Montessori Giveaway

Have you ever drempt of having an unlimited amount of Montessori curriculum at your disposal? Well look no more.
Two websites are currently holding a HUGE Montessori give away.



Montessori Print Shop is one of my favorite Montessori suppliers, offering over 940 beautiful printable Montessori materials in digital file format. I’m extremely excited to be able to offer such a wonderful prize (all the Montessori Print Shop PDF files) for my giveaway!!! And the giveaway is open to my readers worldwide! Perfect for school or home use for children ages 18 months-early elementary!

What You Will Win: Montessori Print Shop Deluxe CD Rom 2-Disc Collection – 944 Montessori Materials AND 4 Primary Teaching Manuals!

all PDF Files listed at the store at this time

944 Montessori materials

all PDF Files listed at the store at this time

944 Montessori materials

4 Primary Teaching Manuals in PDF File format

(Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Math)

Instructions on how to prepare and use:

Toddler Cards and Books

3-Part Cards

Nomenclature Books and Cards

Match-Up and Memory

FREE Xpresspost shipping

Current Value: $580.25. If you were to purchase all of these files individually it would cost $2152.27!

Montessori Print Shop will ship the product at no cost to the winner. Winner must provide Montessori Print Shop with full shipping address (including phone number). Winner will be contacted directly by e-mail for shipping address (address and phone number is kept confidential). Be sure to use an e-mail address through which you can be easily reached if you win.



Where can you get all of this stuff? Go to www.livingmontessorinow.com and www.countingcoconuts.blogspot.com

Brillkids Discount Offer

I am happy to say I'm loving this. Anything to share something with someone else always makes me feel really excited.
With the myriad of things making their way onto the market for babies and young children. Its not hard to get excited when some kind of offer or discount comes my way.

With the many things I've used with Maggie to teach her to read I'll have to admit that as for an all in one program I love Brillkids.
You say to yourself, well what about Your Baby Can Read and Monkisee? To me these are the most excellent video programs out on the market for little ones. But as for a computer based reading program, well, Brillkids is the bomb!

We have been very fortunate that we've been able to use Brillkids. It all started innocently one day when I joined a Yahoo group and saw a link. I just had to click it! By doing so it took me to another world that I had no idea existed. You know, a world where little children actually have the ability to learn whatever it is you give them. Wow! You mean that they don't have to be school aged to learn this stuff?

So hence we gave the Brillkids program a try. They have a 9 day trial to see if its something you and your child would like. I'll admit the first few times Maggie wasn't all to interested. But then again we were doing the Your Baby Can Read at the time and that was more interesting. After a few days though all of a sudden she became VERY interested in it because you can download a ton of videos, powerpoints and so on to your Little Reader and I came upon this cute little video, I then downloaded. So after she was finished watching YBCR she quickly wanted to watch her favorite video. Every since Brillkids is something we do everyday.

There are several things I love about the program. I like that its all done for me. I don't have to waste marker ink to make cards, I don't have to worry about when to switch to new words, or count. The Little Reader program does that all for me. On top of that I can find lots of fun educational videos for Maggie to watch. Which she loves by the way. I can find lots of Encyclopedic Knowledge information all there, ready for me to print out. No need to spend countless hours of making them myself. Last, but not at all the least is the access to countless foreign languages. Maggie has been on a Chinese kick. So I can pull up Powerpoints and the Little Reader Chinese program and she can sit and watch. She loves it! My older daughters very much love that part of the program. Just the other day Marilyn and Maggie were home with the ick and we sat and watched the Chinese slides on Little Reader. Fun was had by all that day that's for sure. He, he

With all of this said Brillkids is a wonderful product. Something I wished was around about , oh say, 13 years ago.
what's even more amazing that I've learned so far is that not only can 'healthy' children learn to read but children with special needs can too. I have seen amazing blogs, videos etc , on children with Down's syndrome, autism, and brain injured children actually learn to read. I mean seeing a child like Maggie , who has physical health problems ( no mental challenges) learn to read so well its amazing. But its even more amazing to see children with special needs learn to read.

Brillkids also think its amazing and is offering an awesome offer. You can go to this blog to read more about it :
http://downsyndromeupupupandaway.blogspot.com/2011/03/exciting-announcement-from-brillkids.html

Flashcard fun

I remember when I first started to teach Maggie reading. I learned very quickly on that she loves flashcards. She loves them because she knows that we can play games with them after we're through using them.

I have the set of Your Baby Can Read cards. These were the first type of flashcards that I used for reading. She loved their sliding cards, and I thought they were pretty neat too , with the word in the front and the picture that you could pull out the side.



We played lots of word games with them and she loved the little dry erase board that came with them as she could copy the words on them. That was just so super fun for her.

After we finished YBCR we moved on to Monkisee. Maggie loves these flashcards. I like them too because they are ready made and I don't have to do anything but to pull them out of the box. You can't get any better than that!

That leads me up to right now. Maggie still watches her Monkisee, and she even watches the Your Child Can Read that we have right now. But most times, especially the end of the day she cuddles up right beside me on my chair and she watches her Little Reader. This program too comes with printable cards. I know right now they are working on some ideas on maybe selling word card sets but I'm sure that won't be for a while. I do like their feature and you can print different sized cards. You can make large cards that you could easily slide into the paper protectors ( like I showed in my Monkisee review) and can be used that way. You can print them so that they fit in their Brillkids Binder (something I eventually would like to get) , and cards that are nice and big. Maggie loves these nice big cards. The words are big and I found a great way to laminate them. Granted I'm not sure how economically sound my idea is but it does involve packaging tape, and recycling cereal boxes.


As much as I love the Monkisee flashcards they aren't made to withstand a 4yr old who likes to step on them. No matter how much I tell Maggie not to step on them , she does anyways. So I only use them if we are sitting at the kitchen table, or involving a game where she is sitting flat on her bottom. Thankfully we haven't destroyed any of the cards yet but I'm trying to prevent that.

So what do you do with a four year old that likes to step on cards? Well, you make them yourself of course. So with the magic of Little Reader they already have the cards made online. You pull them up with Little Reader and select the style, type face, color etc. and then press the print button. Easy as apple pie.

So how do you make them sturdy enough to last through trampling by your toddler? Well let me show you.



First you need the materials. The flashcard, the packaging tape, scissors, and cereal boxes that were cut up and stored ( see, I finally found a use to my crazy keeping of cereal boxes).


Next you want to cut the cardboard from your cereal box just big enough to fit on the inside of your flashcard,, the flashcard is folded in half as it usually has a word and a picture on back. For phonics words I write the word on the back so when I flash them to Maggie I don't have to fickle around with the flashcard to see the word.



Stick that piece of cardboard right on the inside of the flashcard.





After you've done that, begin to tape "laminate" your flashcard by going across it. The Little Reader flashcards require about 4 strips across on each side, front then back.



Once you've finished taping both front and back of the card, cut around the edges. Try and be careful that you don't cut to close otherwise you'll have spots where the flashcard didn't seal. I've done this a few times. Its hard not to do, but try and keep just a little bit around it so it keeps a seal. Once you've finished cutting around the card, voila'!
You've got flashcards sturdy enough for at least some fun word playing games that require feet stomping!

Monkisee Giveaway Winner

Hello everyone. So sorry that I didn't get to the giveaway winner sooner. I'm sure you all wanted to know who it was.

My little one caught a viral crud that just didn't want to go away, and I was so superbusy with Girl Scout cookie money retrival that I almost forgot about it.

Thankfully enough I just remembered yesterday so I wrote all of the names on paper and we put them in a bucket that I had from Halloween and I had Miss Maggie pick the winner out of the Halloween Bucket. I should have video taped it but of course didn't think to do that.

So without further adue the Monkisee winner of the Three DVD set is ..........

Erica!!!

Erica you have two days to contact me with your name, address so we can get these sent out to you. If not I will have to draw another name out of the Halloween bucket. My email address is : reedfamilypa@yahoo.com

Thank you everyone for participating. That was super fun and I'm hoping to be able to do another one sometime soon

Monkisee Review and Give Away

The one thing that I and any parent out there wants for their child is the very best. To give them the best life, the best education, the best of everything they possibly can give. Glenn Doman set out to prove to the world a little bit at a time that young children are capable of much more than then they are given credited for. This is why he founded the Institutes for the Achievement for Human Potential. His philosophy and the philosophy of all parents who are involved in early education is that learning should be a joyus, pleasant experience for the child. That babies and young children can learn anything that is taught to them in a joyous, factual and honest way.

With this said this leads me to my review of Monkisee. When I first learned of the product Your Baby Can Read I was super excited. Here was something that was educational that I could present to my daughter. The purpose was actually two fold as my youngest has to sit for a while on her potty for potty time. This being because we do enemas to keep her artificially contient due to a birth defect that she was born with. Previously I had let her watch tv to pass the time away. I bought her a little desk to let her color on or eat snacks. The one thing I had noticed though was she was watching WAY to much of nothing. I wanted something fun for her to watch yet educational. Thus Your Baby Can Read was bought for her at Christmas time and Maggie was super excited. She ate the program up, and literally went through it in one months' time. Her reading was just amazing and her confidence totally soared. Unfortunately we had gone through all 5 DVD's in such a short period of time and I didn't want to end it there. Some days Maggie loved watching her DVD's. Some days she did not want to watch them and she loved her books. Some days she wanted to play with the flash cards. Teaching 'older' young children to read requires some creativity to keep those juices flowing.

So along came Monkisee. We were excited to get our box in the mail. My daughter had seen some previews online and she knew right away that she would love " Monkey".

Our box included :
1.all of the DVD's , Baby's First Words, All About Colors, All About Shapes, two Memoflix DVD's, and the Teaching Baby to Read DVD.
2. We also recieved three boxes of flashcards
3.and two of the Monkisee books to read

The first DVD I viewed was the Teaching Baby to Read DVD. If you do not get the program this DVD can easily get you started in teaching your child to read without having to even buy the rest of the DVD set. The creator of Monkisee ,Krista Guerrero nicely presents how to teach your baby/child to read. She presents all the information clearly and its easy to understand. I think my favorite part of the DVD was the creative ways to get your child to read. She presents how to make flashcards,books, and gives ideas for games to play to keep your child engaged in learning to read. Some ideas I had already known about and read about, and some I did not. I loved the idea of using folders (with prongs in the middle) to make books. Maggie enjoys using them to look at when she copies words on her dry erase board.

The first DVD that we watched was the Baby's first words and I think had Maggie not known the words she would have been interested in it. Since she knew but maybe two or three words she lost interest. The same for the colors DVD. She knows most of the color words except for the advanced color words like gold, silver etc. that she was interested but not because the words she didn't know were more towards the end. It had nothing to do with the DVD but with the fact she knew how to read most of the words. She did like watching it though. The DVD she was most interested in was the shapes. She loves Howie and Skip and loves to sing the Monkisee theme song. The Color and Shape DVD are fun for children to watch. I would say they are between a Your Baby Can Read/ Baby Einstein/Sesame Street all rolled into one. There are words flashed on the screen like Your Baby Can Read, puppets and children. I can honestly say my daughter loved to see the kids. The DVD really has held her attention and in a short time my daughter has learned almost all of the words. I will secretly admit I wished there were some words like pyramid, cone, cylinder, rectangular prism,sphere, and quadralateral on there. But hey that could be an idea for a next DVD, or book, right? Over all we have been extremely happy with the DVD's and they have definitely held my daughter's attention more than the Your Baby Can Read.
We have also viewed the Memoflix DVDs. These dvds are like having flashcards but on your television. We have enjoyed using these and Maggie has days that she just wants to look at the flashcards on the television too. Like to forwarn that my daughter is sitting on her potty. She is covered but this is the time we usually break out the DVDs.




The next thing we played with was the flashcards. My daughter LOVES to play games with the flashcards and I will admit it was super nice to have them already made. After eight years of homeschooling and always making our own cards it was really nice to have it already done for me. We play card games quite frequently and this gives Maggie another alternative to learn her words without always having to depend on the television to do it. The cards are that, cards. They are not sturdy enough to endure a young child's. grip. They can be ripped if tugged on enough, they can get bent if stomped on enough too. Luckily we haven't managed that, but I can see that happening. They are meant for the adult to use. Maggie loves to play " Find that word!" I put the cards on the floor and I let her know which card to find and she goes and finds it. Sounds simple enough but its her favorite game. Sometimes we jazz it up with " March to the word, diamond." Or " Walk on your tippy toes and find pentagon."



Last but not at all least are the Monkisee books. There are two books, Know your Monkey and Monkey's Like Color. These cute books make a nice addition to the program. These books finally give your child the chance to take everything they have learned and put it together to read to their parent. Of course parents can read it to them too. The one thing I really like is the fact the words are presented before the picture. This helps the child learn the word and not be distracted or focused on the picture. Maggie has thoroughly enjoyed reading her books.

To sum this all up we are very happy with Monkisee. Its definitely a great product that will surely teach your baby or child to read. The price is also right and I love the fact you can buy parts of the product you want. For instance with Your Baby Can Read if you don't buy the entire program from their website you will be missing out on other components of the program that you are not able to purchase on their website. You have to try and find parts of it on ebay. Here with Monkisee should you need new cards, or your child has ripped their precious book you can easily go to their website and purchase a new one. The customer service is beyond excellent. I didn't have any problems with the product, but did talk to the creator of the product via email and she was very prompt to answer any questions that I had. Monkisee is geared towards children ages 0 months to 3 years but you can easily use this program with a 4 or 5 yr old. You could possibly get away using this program with a 6 or 7yr old. My 7yr old has sat and watched this along side her sister and has learned new words too. I definitely hope to see new products from Monkisee, and highly recommend it as an aide for parents to teach their children to read. Monkisee definitely fits the bill of being joyous, factual and educational all rolled into one for children.

This review is linked to Homeschool Curriculum Review Round Up

Thank you to Monkisee for providing the products to review. The opinions are that of my own ,and I was not paid in anyway to give my unbiased opinion.

So would you like to give Monkisee a try for your child? Here is your chance.
This giveaway will include the first three DVDs in the series: Baby's First Words All About Colors and All About Shapes.

What do you need to do to enter?
1. Go to Monkisee and look at the website. Tell me about one thing that you think you would enjoy using with your child from Monkisee.
2. Follow me on my blog
3. Like Monkisee on Facebook
Please leave a seperate comment for each action you've followed,and leave your email address should you win so I can contact you. The winner will be emailed and have 48hrs to contact me.


The winner will be randomly drawn on March 10,2011 @ 11:59pm EST.
Give away is closed ............................................................

Montessori PrePrimary Teachers Course Giveaway

I've posted lots of Giveaways (which stay tuned for my next Giveaway for Monkisee), but none of them really have been a benefit for the parent. Meaning that the giveaways usually done are for things for the education of the child, and not neccessarily the education of the parent.

This one is very different as its a Giveaway for those who are interested in teaching using the Montessori method. This would be great for those that would like to work in a Montessori school or want to use the Montessori method in their homeschool.

One lucky winner will win a $240 teaching course to learn the Montessori method for children ages 2-6 yrs old.

Just visit this link : TheWizKidsofOz and follow the directions and see if you are one of the lucky winners.