The Flat on Cabaniss Crescent

Hola Rosetta!

In Which we start another Learning Opportunity on the Computer...

After almost 2 weeks of listening to the Spanish CD for a few hours each day, we started the on line Rosetta Stone Spanish program.  It is great!  Tigger loves it and so do I.  I think we will have a lot of fun with this.

So Tigger is now spending a bit of time each day on the computer doing Math Games, playing the Little Einstein Games, playing with the Interactive Skeleton, looking at the DSO Music Site, and playing on the Dr. Seuss Site. 

Beethoven is now in our Home

In Which we talk about The Orchestra and begin our Composer Study...

It was this print from our Degas Study that got us started with our Music Appreciation Studies. 

We started last week with these books:

Both are on a 3rd-4th grade Reading Level but had good illustrations and several facts we were able to pick out.  I will definitely return to both these books over the years.  These books introduced us to the topic of instrument families nd also the different musical eras (Honestly, a good refresher for me!)

I found this on line and it is great:

FUN KIDS MUSIC INTERACTIVE WEB SITE

Then we read my favorite book as a review:

The kids are already familiar with this book, since we have been reading it for years, but it seemed appropriate to read again this week.  For a new spin on it, we went through the book and tried to identify which music family each of the instruments belonged to.

We started listening to a Beethoven Lives Upstairs CD at Bedtime.

This book goes well with the above CD and has nice pictures for the children to study.

 

This was a funny book, but I appreciated it and the kids found amusement with it. 

The best book we read about Beethoven (for facts at least) was a Great Names book I found at our local library: Beethoven Great Composer by Ann Carew-Miller and Vitali Konstantinov.  It had many facts interwoven into a story format.  Much of it was too advanced for the kids, but they still got a lot out of it.  I also enjoyed learning from this book. I will look for this book again to read to them in future years. 

FOR GEOGRAPHY:  We learned Beethoven was born in Germany and went to school in Austria. 

Eventually I'd like to make a timeline with all the Musical Eras and plug the Composers we know onto it.  This will be a nice history lesson.  But first we have to study several composers.  We will probably do this at the end of our school year as a review.

Tonight we will read this book:

We also discovered that our favorite TV show, Little Einsteins, has a great interactive website with preschool friendly games that teach instrument recognition.  This website is so engaging for the kids.  They love it and it gives me an instant hour off to do other things!

Our composer study will continue with Beethoven for another 2 weeks.  Then we will move on to Mozart.  We will continue to talk about the orchestra, the instruments, and all the instrument families throughout the year.  Click here to see my entire Music Education Plan.

Computer Software To Develop Math Skills

This list of software to develop Math Skills was provided to us by Tigger's Neuropsychologist:

Grade K-5 Alien Addition, DLM. Basic addition in a game format.

Grade K-6 Meteor Multiplication, DLM. Basic multiplication facts in an arcade game format.  Supports 1 to 2 players.

Grade K-12 Math Blaster-Plus, Davidson & Associates. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, & percents presented in a arcade game format.  The user can add more problems to the program.

Grade 3-5 Interactive Math Journey, The Learning Company, grades 3-5. Activities focus on pattern recognition, addition, subtraction, multiplication, fractions, measurement, place value, early geometry, & symmetry.

Age 3-6 James Discovers Math, Broderbund. Teaches counting, shape & pattern recognition, measurement & estimation skills. Entertaining animation.

Age 4-7 Math Rabbit, The Learning Company. Learn basic math skills within the context of 4 circus activities.  Focus on counting, number patterns, adding, subtracting, & matching numbers to sets of objects.

Age 5-14 Mighty Math, Edmark. Cartoon characters teach difficult concepts using easy analogies.  5 levels from addition to geometry.

Age 6-12 Mega Math Blaster, Davidson & Associates. Robots, spaceships, aliens, digitized speech, & excellent music & graphics combine to teach everything from basic addition & subtraction to fractions.  Numerous levels.

Local computer software stores have many of these products or can order them.  Some of the publishers’ phone numbers are listed below.

Broderbund - 800-521-6263
Davidson & Associates - 800-545-7677
D.C. Heath & Co. -
Design Ware -
DLM -
Edmark - 800-691-2985
The Learning Company - 800-227-5609
Microsoft - 800-426-9400
Mindscape -
Spinnaker -
Sierra On-Line - 800-757-7707

Computer Software- Reading, Spelling, & Written Expression Skills

This is a list reccomended to us by Tigger's Neuropsychologist:

Computer Software To Develop Reading, Spelling, & Written Expression Skills

Age 3-6 Reader Rabbit’s Interactive Reading Journey 1, The Learning Company. Kids journey to 20 different lands, each focusing on a different letter of the alphabet or sound.  Then they answer questions about the information they’ve read along the way.

Age 3-10 Arthur’s Teacher Trouble, Broderbund. Arthur the aardvark is having problems at school. He got stuck with the strictest teacher (Mr. Ratburn) & needs to prepare for a school-wide spelling bee. Kids help Arthur prepare.

Age 3-10 Sierra’s School House/English, Sierra On-Line. A friendly alien named Adi runs a multiple-choice quiz show on vocabulary, reading comprehension, proofreading, & more. Excellent graphics, animation, & video clips. Interactive learning games are accessible as a reward for good quiz performance.

Age 4-8 Reading Blaster, Jr., Davidson & Associates. Join Kid Blasternaut & his crew on missions in fanciful worlds. Learn beginning reading, decoding vowels & consonants, matching pictures, forming sentences.

Age 5-9 Reader Rabbit’s Reading Development Library (4 reading levels), The Learning Company. Stories told from 3 different points of view. These games help kids learn how plots work.

Age 6-12 The Amazing Writing Machine, Broderbund, ages 6-12. Helps kids express their thoughts by creating stories or adding to pre-written ones.  Hundreds of layouts feature different places to insert text & graphics.

Age 7-10 Reading Blaster: Invasion of the Word Snatchers, Davidson & Associates. Illitera has stolen all the words from Earth. Help get them back by completing reading activities.

Age 8+ Creative Writer II, Microsoft. Hundreds of “story starters.” Many fonts, music themes, pieces of clip art, & an Internet web project.

Grade preK-1 Kid Phonics 1, Davidson & Associates. Beginning reading and decoding skills.

Grade preK-3 Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing! For Kids, Mindscape.

Grade K-1 Reader Rabbit 1, The Learning Company. Improve letter & word recognition, memory skills & vocabulary.

Grade K-2, 2-3, 3-5 Explore-A-Story, D.C. Heath & Co., only for Apple. Students examine new possibilities & appreciate the variety of forms a story can assume as they move objects & characters on the screen & provide text for their own ideas.

Grade K-12 Language Experience Recorder Plus, Teacher Support Software, only for Apple

Grade 1-3 Reader Rabbit 2, The Learning Company. Work on compound words, consonant blends, homonyms, antonyms, & alphabetizing skills.

Grade 1-3 Kid Phonics 2, Davidson & Associates. Progress from decoding words to building whole sentences.

Grade 1-6 Kidwriter, Spinnaker. Create stories by selecting a variety of pictures & writing stories to go with them.

Grade 1-8 Read, Write, and Publish, D.C. Heath & Co. Creative writing is the focus.  The program helps generate ideas, take notes, organize information, write & edit, and revise the text.  Graphics included.

Grade 1-12 Spell-It!, Davidson & Associates. Practice spelling rules & 1,000 commonly misspelled words using drills presenting the word in sentence context. An arcade game format provides additional practice recognizing the word among incorrect spellings & in an unscrambling game.  Personal word lists can be created.

Grade 2-4 Reader Rabbit 3, The Learning Company. Join Reader Rabbit in an investigative journey that builds reading skills while improving writing, vocabulary, & thinking skills. Complete stories & even print a newspaper to display their skills.

Grade 2-12 Spellicopter, DLM, grade 2-12. Maneuver a helicopter through obstacles in the sky in order to pick up letters to spell a word. The word is presented in sentence context. Personal spelling lists can be added.

Grade 3-8 The Grammar Examiner, Design Ware. As a cub reporter, the student works in a newspaper.  To earn pay, kids edit paragraphs and practice punctuation, capitalization, subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, adverb & adjective usage, & homonyms.

Local computer software stores have many of these products or can order them.  Some of the publishers’ phone numbers are listed below.

Broderbund -          800-521-6263      
Davidson & Associates -          800-545-7677      
D.C. Heath & Co. -
Design Ware -
DLM -
Edmark -          800-691-2985      
The Learning Company -          800-227-5609      
Microsoft -          800-426-9400      
Mindscape -
Spinnaker -
Sierra On-Line -          800-757-7707