Friday, August 14, 2020

Supplementing Our Homeschool with Resources from Super Teacher Worksheets {A Homeschool Review Crew Review}

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.



Thanks to the Homeschool Review Crew, we had the opportunity to review Super Teacher Worksheets for the third time. The first time was five years ago, back when I still had preschoolers. The second time was three years ago when all of the children were elementary school aged. This time around, I have children who are 8, 10, 12, and 13. Due to the fact that the majority of the worksheets are designed for elementary school children, I chose to use this with Harold and Hannah these past several weeks. 


Super Teacher Worksheets is a wonderful resource for busy homeschool parents. However, it can also be used by teachers, as they do offer school licenses. We have been given a full year's membership with complete access to all the available worksheets. When we first reviewed this site five years ago, there were over 10,000 worksheets available. There are currently over 16,000 worksheets for parents and teachers to choose from in many different subjects. 

You'll find supplemental worksheets in the following areas:
  • Math
  • Reading Comprehension (grades 1-6)
  • Reading & Writing
  • Phonics
  • Early Literacy
  • Grammar
  • Spelling Lists (grades 1-5)
  • Chapter Books (literacy units)
  • Science
  • Social Studies
  • Holidays
  • Puzzles & Brain Teasers
  • Teacher Helpers (teaching tools, award certificates)
  • Pre-K and Kindergarten
  • Worksheet Generator 
When you first come to the site, you will notice these subjects listed on the left side of the screen, along with a listing of topics to choose from.


When you click on the topic you are interested in, you will come to a menu that shows a listing of the available worksheets. I appreciate the fact that it gives a description and also the grade each worksheet is appropriate for. 

What's really awesome, is that you can use the site for free, though you won't have access to the full collection of worksheets. As shown in the screenshot below, the site indicates which worksheets you have access to with the "free" icon.


If you click on any worksheets that do not have the "free" icon, as a non-member, you will be shown a preview of the worksheet.

Once I am logged into my account, all of the worksheets are available to me.


I debated what I wanted to use with the children, and I really didn't want to overwhelm them as we were supposed to be on our summer break. I also wanted to use this time to decide how I would use this site during the upcoming school year. 

Obviously we are no longer in need of any of the preschool materials, but I have to say, I am impressed with all of the different resources available for learning the alphabet, numbers and shapes, along with phonics and sight word materials. I just wanted to share a few of the things that stood out to me. 

Printing Practice


Letter Recognition and Matching

Alphabetical Order



These, along with many others (such as games and flashcards, phonics resources, and sight word materials) are definitely resources I would have utilized if our children were still young enough. 

But alas, my children are growing up, so I decided we would focus on several different subjects. We have been using Reading Comprehension, Spelling, and Daily Math Word Problems. Plus I checked out the science offerings. I also have utilized the Worksheet Generator.

There are Reading Comprehension worksheets for children in grades 1-6. You will find fiction stories, reader's theater (little plays), poems, non-fiction articles, biographies, short passages, and read-aloud practice. The child will read the story/poem/passage and will then answer different kinds of questions, work on vocabulary, and also have opportunity for some creative writing of their own.





I've decided, once the school year starts, the children will have 2-3 of these to work on each week. 

I also liked the look of the Spelling List resources. I appreciate that the lists are logically organized, and phonics-based, though there are sight word lists as well. First grade begins with short-a words and works its way through all the vowels, then goes on to long vowels, and then blends and digraphs. Second grade it similar, though the words are harder. Harold and Hannah have been working with the third grade spelling lists. These begin with long and short a, moving on through the other vowels, different blends, and consonants, then homophones, easy to confuse words, and more. 

As a parent who has watched her older children struggle through spelling in public school due to word lists based on words in stories that are being read, I truly appreciate the organization of these spelling lists and we will continue to use these this year. 

I love that there are different activities for the students to use throughout the week. 

Writing each word twice. I have the children write once in print and once in cursive.


Alphabetical Order




Finding and fixing the misspelled spelling words


Unscrambling the spelling words. This has proven to be a bit tricky for Harold, but we will continue trying.




Hannah had no problems with it though.


They even have crossword puzzles (which help with vocabulary too because they learn what the words mean) and word searches.


I also decided that I would give them a daily word problem in math to work on.


I was a little confused because the site states there should be enough for a full school year, yet I am only finding five week's worth of problems for each grade. I'm assuming that means they are working on adding more.


Seeing as we have been learning about biology, I thought it would be fun to use some of the science resources. The children enjoyed this Butterfly Word Maze and are hoping to do similar activities for different topics. 


So, my plan for our school year is to give the children 2-3 reading comprehension stories, plus a new spelling list each week. They will have daily math problems, starting with the word problems and then moving on to the daily review worksheets (which there do seem to be enough of for the year). And then I will see what other math, science, social studies, etc, worksheets we can find to accompany what we are working on with our normal curriculum. 

That brings me to the final aspect of the site that I wanted to tell you about. I absolutely love the word find generator. I am able to put in any words we have been learning about in our other subjects. So, when we were learning about cells and DNA and such in science, I made them a biology word search.


It is so easy to use this resource. You just choose your level, give it a header and a title, you can list who created it, and choose to alphabetize the word list. This is a great option, because then the parent can just enter the words and the generator alphabetizes them for you. Then you enter your word list, following the instructions.


Super Teacher Worksheets is a wonderful resource for parents (and teachers) and one I highly recommend. There are so many worksheets and other printables that can be used to supplement your curriculum. 

I also invite you to check out my first review and my second review of Super Teacher Worksheets to see some of the resources we have used in the past, and what we thought of those.

You can find Super Teacher Worksheets on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Don't forget to click on the banner below to check out what my fellow Crew Mates though of this wonderful resource.


Printable Activities and Worksheets! {Super Teacher Worksheets Reviews}

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Experiencing Biology with Journey Homeschool Academy {A Homeschool Review Crew Review}

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.



The younger children and I have enjoyed using a new science program for the last several weeks. This Experience Biology: Elementary program is being created by Luke and Trisha Gilkerson, as is an Experience Astronomy: Elementary program, both of which are a part of Journey Homeschool Academy. They also have an astronomy course for high school.


We have lifetime access to this course that is geared toward children ages 6-11. Though the main portion of the program is online, the program has been designed with different learning styles in mind. While online we watch the main video lesson and the memory video, but there are also book recommendations, hands-on activities (very important in our homeschool), memory work, copywork, and quizzes. So, a person who is interested in using this program would need a computer with internet access, a printer, access to the recommended (but not mandatory) books, and supplies for activities (there is a section where you can find the complete activity supply list, plus they are listed in each lesson). 

When I first log into the program, I come to my dashboard.


From here the children or I click onto the Experience Biology: Elementary course.


Luke and Trisha Gilkerson join us onscreen to teach the lesson.


They are planning for the program to have a total of 30 lessons. If you do one lesson a week, the course will last an entire school year.

To the left of the screen you will find the list of lessons. When you click to expand it will reveal the lesson, memory video and the link for the extra material. This extra material includes the hands-on activity instructions plus any needed printables for the activity, copywork pages in print and cursive, and flashcards for the memory work.

Here is a list of all the lessons that have been added to the program so far. 
  • Lesson 1: What is Life? 
  • Lesson 2: The Building Blocks of Life
  • Lesson 3: The Secret Code of Life!
  • Lesson 4: Fueled Up!
  • Lesson 5: What's in a Name?
  • Lesson 6: Biomes Everywhere!
  • Lesson 7: Itsy Bitsy Teeny Tiny Creatures
  • Lesson 8: The Junk Drawer Kingdom
  • Lesson 9: The Fungus Among Us!
  • Lesson 10: What is a Plant?
  • Lesson 11; The Wide World of Plants
  • Lesson 12: Mean, Green, Energy Making Machine
  • Lesson 13: Roots and Shoots
  • Lesson 14: The Reason for Flowers
  • Lesson 15: It Begins with Seed
  • Lesson 16: Amazing Animals
  • Lesson 17: Silly Sponges
  • Lesson 18: Wiggly Worms
  • Lesson 19: Majestic Medusas and Patient Polyps (Cnidarians)
As we work our way through the lessons, we can mark them complete.



Luke and Trisha do a great job teaching the individual lessons. I love that they also take us "Back in Time" to learn the history behind the lessons. 


I especially like that they use props from the Back to the Future movies (the Delorean and the Flux Capacitor make an appearance in each lesson).


So far, while going back in time, we have learned about some interesting scientific history facts.

In Lesson 1 we went back to the beginning of creation.
In Lesson 2 we went to the year 1665 and learned a bit about Robert Hook and his homemade microscope and his work in discovering and naming cells.
In Lesson 3 we found ourselves in Cambridge in the mid 1900's with James Watson and Francis Crick discovering DNA.
In Lesson 4 we learned about Jan Baptista van Helmont who lived in the early 1600's in Belgium. Did you know back then there was the belief that trees ate the soil to grow?
In Lesson 5 we went to the year 1732 and learned about Carl Linnaeus and his exploration of plants, animals, and minerals as he worked on a classification system.

I can't wait to see where and when we go next.

After watching the lesson video, the children watch the memory video. Luke and Trisha will tell the students what specific details out of the lesson they want them to focus on and memorize. And we have flashcards to help us do just that.


 Plus there are different quotes or Bible verses that the children get to use as copywork.

I have the children work on both their print and cursive.



I love that Harold has been particularly excited about practicing his cursive. It has improved quite a bit during this past month.



What is really exciting is that the program also includes a hands-on activity with every lesson. 

Their favorite activity was creating DNA out of licorice, toothpicks and colorful mini marshmallows.





But they've also colored different types of cells, following the instructions which also gave descriptions of each of the different cell parts.



The did some cutting and gluing while figuring out whether the picture was a producer, consumer or decomposer.


And they have used cute little monster/creature cards to work on their classifying skills. I loved that they both had some unique ways of sorting their creatures.



And we finish up our week by having the children take the lesson's quiz. There are usually 7-9 questions, either multiple choice or true/false.


I love that these lessons have a variety of ways for the children to learn, and that it is very flexible. The children are introduced to some detailed information, but aren't expected to remember everything they are introduced to. And because we have lifetime access, we can go back through the course when they get older, to have them work on learning more information, if we so choose. Maybe at that point we will add in the recommended books. Unfortunately that was something we couldn't do this time because of limited library access due to covid-19. However, there was enough information given in the videos, that I wasn't concerned about not having the books. 

I appreciate the resources that are provided, such as the quiz answer key (in case mommy isn't quite sure what answer they are looking for), a complete recommended reading list given in both lesson order and alphabetical order, and a complete supply list for all the activities. 

This is a wonderful science curriculum for elementary aged children, and I look forward to working through the remainder of the course in the coming school year. I highly recommend it for your homeschoolers.

You can find Luke and Trisha Gilkerson on Facebook and Instagram on the Intoxicated on Life pages.

Don't forget to click on the banner below to see what my fellow Crew Mates had to say about the different science courses available from Journey Homeschool Academy.


Experience Biology: Elementary Level, Upper Level and Experience Astronomy: Elementary {Journey Homeschool Academy Reviews}
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