TOS Review: Eagles Wings: Considering God's Creation

Ah, science.  One of the subjects many new homeschoolers stress over.  "I can't teach science-I don't have the equipment and it's too expensive."  "I can't teach science, it's too hard." 

Enter Eagles Wings Considering God's Creation for elementary school. Considering God's Creation is a two book curriculum that covers a wide range of science topics.  Here is a list of the topics covered in this curriculum (taken from their website):

Creation

Universe Stars Solar System Earth Light Sound Wind Weather Clouds Rocks Plants

Insects Mammals Reptiles Birds Fish Amphibians Food Chains Reproduction and Genetics Human Animal Anatomy Physiology

The curriculum comes with a Teacher's Manual and workbook filled with reproducible activities.

You do not need to start at lesson one-you choose the subject you want to cover and begin at the first lesson for that subject.  We chose to do the lessons on weather.  There is a section in the Teacher's Manual for you to read to your children and then generally a simple experiment or an activity to do from the workbook.  The experiments use common household items-most found in your kitchen.  In addition, there are Bible tie-in's.  Of course, this is something we love!

There isn't a lot of prep work for the teacher.  You do want to look the lesson over a day or two early just in case you don't have something for a project.  (In the weather lesson, we needed eggs. I was stocked up but if not, it would have been simple to run to the store for a dozen.)  Although there isn't much prep work, the way this curriculum is written, it seems to be intended for the parent to read aloud to the children.  It's not designed necessarily to have your child work on their own.  That said, I think older children could just read from the teacher's manual on their own and do the activities without supervision, as long as the parent took a quick look at it ahead of time.

This curriculum is geared towards 2nd-7th grade and you could easily teach all your elementary students at the same time. You could use this with older children if you use some of the suggested activities to expand the lessons and with younger children, giving them extra help. 

The books come with a CD with songs on it for each of the units.  The songs are definitely geared towards younger ages, in my opinion.  My 9 year old and 11 year didn't really want to listen to the CD but I think most 5 year olds would enjoy it.

You could easily take a couple of years to go through this curriculum especially if you use some of the expanded activity suggestions.  They include things like researching a scientist, going on a field trip, making a "bug zoo" or further researching the subject itself.

At the end of each unit is a crossword puzzle for the children to do as a test.

The curriculum itself is pretty basic.  I didn't feel this was an in-depth science curriculum, delving deep into the subjects, but I think for elementary school, it was just the right amount of information.  Plus the lessons had "Digging Deeper" sections with ideas for looking into the subjects in more depth.  You could use this curriculum on its own or you could use it to supplement your current science curriculum.

We put the workbook pages in a notebook and used them as a notebooking activity.  You can go here to see more examples of the pages in the workbook.  Overall, the kids and I enjoyed the unit we studied. We have a science curriculum we have used for many years but I will now be pulling out Considering God's Creation to use along side with it.

Considering God's Creation costs $29.95 and you could order extra workbooks for your students for $13.95 if you didn't want to copy the pages in the workbook. 

Go here to see what my fellow crewmates had to say about Considering God's Creation.

(I received a free copy of Considering God's Creation in exchange for my honest opinion.  No other compensation was received.)

TOS review: Tiny Planets

Tiny Planets is "an animated television series and companion website" (description taken from their website.)  Your hosts are Bing and Bong, two adorable aliens.  The purpose of Tiny Planets is to educate children in space exploration while inspiring creativity and critical thinking through entertainment. 

There are a lot of free things to do on the Tiny Planets website however, there are some things that need to be unlocked with "keys" you purchase.  The prices are as follows:

10 keys    $1.95   (about 20 cents per key)
25 keys    $3.95   (about 16 cents per key)
85 keys    $9.95   (about 12 cents per key)
250 keys  $25.95  (about 10 cents per key)
600 keys  $49.95  (about 8 cents per key)

You need to have a parent account to purchase the keys and then you can transfer the keys to your children's accounts so they can use them. 

Starting at the home page, there are six main areas you can visit:

My Tiny Planet-Your child can build their own planet, adding trees, atmosphere and other items.  There are mini games to play that earn you stars.  You use the stars to purchase items for your planet. You can also use keys to purchase extra items for your planet.  This was the area Precise Prince, age 11, enjoyed the most.  It did take him a bit to get hang of the controls for moving the ship around, but once he got it, he really enjoyed it.  I think this area is geared toward elementary age and younger children (preschool/kindergarten) would find the controls frustrating.  Also, your child needs to be able to read to enjoy this area.

Tiny Planets TV-Here you can watch videos featuring Bing and Bong.  The first episode is free.  The rest require the keys to unlock them.  One episode was 5 keys, the rest are 10. The episodes are about 4-7 minutes long.  Once you purchase an episode you can go back and watch it as many times as you like.  I think the videos are geared more toward Preschool and Kindergarten age.  Creative Princess enjoyed the shows though and she is 9.  However, she still occasionally chooses some of the preschool TV shows to watch when she has screen time.  Precise Prince thought the episodes were cute but they wouldn't be his first choice to watch as they are geared to younger kids. 

Tiny Planets Lab-This area has mini-games to play.  The games are quick to play.  I would say this area is geared toward elementary age.  Most of the games we tried would be too difficult for preschoolers and kindergarteners. As they are free you can try them out yourself.  Precise Prince played a few of the games but quickly moved onto the My Tiny Planets section.



Tiny Planets Books-Here you can read online books about Bing and Bong.  The first one is free and the rest require keys to unlock.  These books are geared toward preschool age. 

Tiny Planets Fun-When I clicked on this, it brought me to the TV episodes.  Then I realized that the arrows at the top of the page were different.  Click on the Bong's Corner arrow for comics, coloring pages and puzzles to print out.  The Bing's Corner arrow takes you to the mini-games in Tiny Planets Lab.

Tiny Planets Learning-This area is geared toward Preschool/Kindergarten/Early Elementary age with colored worksheets you can print out so your child can work on their letters and numbers.  Clicking on the lesson plans arrow at the top of this page brings you to a list of lessons.  The lessons coordinate to the Tiny Planet episodes although you do not need to watch the TV episodes to use the lessons.  I looked through the lessons and I think that many would be fun to use with preschoolers and kindergartners.  I think this was my favorite part of the site and I would use it in our household if I had any preschoolers or kindergarteners.  The What's New arrow leads to the blog with parenting tips, science experiments and information for elementary age kids and other things.  I enjoyed reading through some of the blog posts.  You can check the blog out here.


In summary:

When I first started letting the kids play around in the website, well...honestly, I was thinking "I'm not getting the educational value here."  The games are pretty basic games you can find all over the internet in similar forms.  The free TV episode was cute and funny, but I didn't see anything educational about it.  Then I sat down and spent more time looking over the different areas and clicking around.  I think the Lesson Plan section under Tiny Planets Learning has some great ideas that are educational for the preschool/kindergarten age.  The kids and I watched a few of the episodes that you have to pay for and they seemed to be more educational for the preschool/kindergarten age.  The blog has some educational and fun ideas that would work well with older kids.  This website does have something for all ages preschool through late elementary.
The website is pretty big and navigation can be a challenge, but once I figured out where to find things, it wasn't so difficult to navigate.

The kids will continue to be allowed to play on the Tiny Planets website, but it will be during their allowed screen time (the term we use for when the kids can watch TV, play video games or play on the computer doing what they want rather than what I want them to do.) 

It's a good website to check out yourself.  There are plenty of free things to try.  Prices for the extras vary.

See what my fellow crewmates had to say about Tiny Planets here.

(To review Tiny Planets my children received some of the keys for free.  No other compensation was received.)