Ready-Made or Create Your Own Resources: A Review of HelpTeaching.com

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.

Our family was provided a HelpTeaching Pro Subscription to review which has given our homeschool access to many online and offline resources. We can use worksheets, lessons, and tests that have already been made or I can create our own resources made specifically for our homeschool lessons. There are quite a number of options for how to use the subscription from HelpTeaching.com as you can search by worksheet, test, grade, or subject area making it easy to meet the needs of your individual children and homeschool.

What Is Part of Your Subscription?

While HelpTeaching.com does offer access to their site for free, there are many benefits to having a Pro Subscription. You will have an ad-free experience (which is what most parents wish when using online resources with their children) and be able to save worksheets and tests as PDFs to print offline. So if you are concerned about screen time, this will help you use an online resource offline. Another feature is being able to use either their images in questions or upload your own images. You can see in the comparison chart below from their site the different benefits afforded to you.

How Did We Use HelpTeaching.com in Our Homeschool?

When we first received access, I went through the site and picked out materials I could use with our teen in his final weeks of our homeschool year. I was able to find lessons for him to complete that would review things he learned in his Botany course, a lesson with quotes from Shakespeare (he was reading Hamlet), I created a test on World War I using questions already created, and SAT vocabulary worksheets. The lessons and test were online and I scheduled them so he could take them online with an access code provided to his email.

For our younger two children, I used a variety of online lessons (using the videos and practice sheets) and printing out worksheets. I also toyed around with creating a test for our son's Latin vocabulary.

For our younger son, since we have been studying astronomy, I incorporated lessons on the planets into our homeschool days. I also printed out some of the seasonal and holiday worksheets for our kids to complete. They have a variety of summer worksheets from reading comprehension to word searches. There was even a summer math worksheet I asked our younger son to complete. The questions were money word problems so he had to work out the costs of products and admittance to events like fireworks.

I also printed out the reading challenge from HelpTeaching.com as we do not know if our library will be having their annual summer reading challenge. This way our son can complete it this summer. He was very excited by some of the book options such as "read a book your parents read as a child."

It was easiest to do online lessons with our daughter as she is still learning how to write neatly. I went through the Online Lessons for Self-Directed Learning page and then clicked through to either the English Language Arts Lessons or the Math Lessons. From there, I scrolled through the lessons listed to see which fit her grade and would seem to be of the most help to her. For example, we used the Read Aloud: Five Little Ducks lesson which had a video and summary worksheet that she completed online.

I did print out one worksheet for our daughter to complete as we had been studying punctuation marks together prior to starting to use HelpTeaching.com. The worksheet was a combination of multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blank questions. I liked the questions because it was just what we needed to review the information she had been studying.

What Do We Think?

When I was still a public school teacher, I used a number of worksheet and test generators. I did not find this to be easier or more difficult. It was pretty much as I expected it to be. The instructions are clear on the site as to how to input questions, select questions, and more when creating a test. I like that you can select from questions already created.

Our daughter enjoys watching the videos and answer the questions online. For her, we have just been going through and looking at the various options for lessons in English Language Arts Lessons. Her favorite thing so far has been completing the questions online.

Our younger son, who used both online and offline resources from HelpTeaching.com, said his favorite part has been the worksheets and questions that are connected to the lessons. So after he completes the practice questions and watches the video, he answers questions that relate to the video. We can print these out or do these online.

Our older son had no problems navigating the site. I like that I could assign the work online or print out the worksheets to give him hard copies to complete for his homeschool day.

I like that if I find something I would like our kids to work on, I do not have to save it to my laptop or print it out. I can schedule it for my kids and then they can complete it later. My only wish is that each child did not need to have an email address. It is easy to schedule things with our teenage son as he has his own email and computer to complete his homeschool assignments but our younger children do not have emails or their own computer so they need to use my email in order to receive scheduled lessons and tests. 

Note: If you are concerned about the material being Common Core-aligned then you can browse their library as a Pro Subscriber to see which questions are aligned. They have a selection of premium content that is aligned to Common Core standards in ELA and Math.

Do You Want to Know More? 

Other families used HelpTeaching.com in their homeschool from the Homeschool Review Crew. Be sure to check out their reviews to see how they incorporate the many different options into their homeschool.

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Reinforcing Important Skills: A Review of Math Shed and Spelling Shed

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.

Digital learning can be a great way to incorporate the practice of important skills such as math fact fluency and spelling. In our homeschool, when our kids can see learning as a game, they are even more excited about completing their daily tasks. Our family was given a one-year subscription to Spelling Shed and Math Shed to review in our homeschool. We used the program with our younger two children who are in kindergarten and second grade and used both the Spelling Shed and Math Shed platforms to practice different skills.

What is Spelling Shed? 

Spelling Shed is an online spelling platform designed by teachers with the goal of making spelling fun. While the practicing of spelling and learning new words is fun, it is also easy for adults – parents and teachers – to manage the platform. There is an entire curriculum available with the site that you can use or you can add your own spelling lists for your children. You can even assign weekly work in the Teacher Hub. 

So families (and schools) can use Spelling Shed either as a curriculum or a supplement to their own curriculum. I looked through the curriculum - which seems very thorough. There are 36 weekly spelling lists which contain one 20-30 minute lesson, resources to deliver the lesson, one spelling practice sheet, and one homework sheet. Since we already had a curriculum we were using, I put our spelling lists into Spelling Shed for our children.

Our daughter was able to select her spelling list from this page. As you can see she has
worked on some more than others as indicated by the drone and the egg. 

What is Math Shed?

Math Shed provides number skills practice ranging from number bonds, addition, and subtraction to multiplication, division, and negative numbers. Students select which skill they wish to practice and then complete as many questions as they can correctly in 60 seconds. Just like with Spelling Shed, you can assign weekly assignments in the Teacher Hub.

Once your child is logged in and selects Math Shed, they will pick from the planets below to practice their different math skills. Once they pick a planet, they can even further narrow down the skill they wish to practice.

What skill do you want to practice? 

Be even more specific – which area in multiplication? 

How Did We Use the Programs in Our Homeschool? 

We used Spelling Shed and Math Shed in two different ways in our homeschool. On some days, both children asked if they could play the games. They enjoyed working together to answer questions, played a modified version of hangman on Spelling Shed, and wanted to collect as many honeypots as they could so they could purchase clothing, backgrounds, and accessories for their avatar.

On other days, I asked each child to spend time completing at least one activity on each program. Depending on if they were eager to go do something other than homeschooling, they spent more or less time completing multiple activities.

For each of our children, I inputted their spelling lists and assigned them tasks to work with those lists. As they worked more and more with the lists, they saw that the characters transformed from larva to drone and to worker bee. Both children liked that they could go back and work on past assignments to practice those spelling lists again. 

What Do We Think? 

I really liked that both of our children enjoyed working with Math Shed and Spelling Shed. They asked to play and sometimes I had to stop them from working on the programs. Anytime that our children willingly complete homeschooling assignments, it makes life easier.

I also enjoyed playing the bonus game, Bee Keeper, with them. It was fun to see if we could identify a variety of words. I think this also helped them think outside the box and learn how to spell new and more difficult words. (The Bee Keeper game did get harder when it was pulling from their spelling lists.)

One of the bonus games from Spelling Shed.

I think that playing both Spelling Shed and Math Shed have helped both of our children increase their spelling fluency and math fact fluency. When working on his other math assignments, I see our son completing addition and subtraction questions more quickly and accurately. And I think the Spelling Shed has given our daughter encouragement with her reading and writing skills.

When children complete the spelling or math, it lists the words or problems and shows if they were correct or not.

I loved that we could include our own spelling lists into Spelling Shed using the Hub Dashboard. This made it very easy to incorporate Spelling Shed into our daily homeschooling routine. It also didn't make it seem like this was just another online program that we were using. It was connected to our children's lessons.

I appreciate that our children could use the keyboard to type their answers if they wished or they could use the mouse to click on each letter as they attempted to spell it. This gives them another online resource to help practice keyboarding skills along with their regular homeschool work. And you can turn music, sound effects, and the reading of letters on and off in Spelling Shed. (I love an online resource where you can silence the background music.)

Finally, I also like that there are different levels. Below you can see how the easy levels and hard levels are presented in Spelling Shed. In the easier levels, the words are presented before spelling with fewer letter choices.

Spelling the word we in hard level brings in some extra letter choices.

What Do Our Kids' Think? 

Our daughter's favorite part of Spelling Shed is the spelling of words. She likes counting in Math Shed. She also said she feels clever because the spelling is getting easier for her. She said it is helping her read better because she can read more books.

Our son loves that he can make his own lists in Spelling Shed. (He spends a lot of time looking around on his homeschool online resources to figure things out and find out what he can do.) He said, "I love that you can search for lists that people have made." He also likes the extreme level in Spelling Shed. He has set up his own lists where it requires him to capitalize letters (there is a button on the screen that acts as a shift key). When I asked him about Math Shed, he said, "I like the bonds to ten (number bonds)." He does see improvement in his math fact fluency after using the different parts of Math Shed. 

If you are looking for online programs to assist your children in spelling or mathematics, I recommend you taking a closer look at Spelling Shed and Math Shed. Our son said he would recommend Math Shed to someone if they were really struggling in mathematics. He also thinks Spelling Shed could help children of all ages who have difficulty with spelling. I think Spelling Shed and/or Math Shed might be good fits for your home during the summer break or your homeschool year-round if you want to practice skills. 

Do You Want to Learn More? 

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Many Homeschool Review Crew families were given the opportunity to use Math Shed and Spelling Shed in their homeschools. Please check out their reviews to see how they used them.

Creating Successful Readers: A Review of Reading Kingdom

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.

I am excited to review Reading Kingdom with our son for a second time. We first reviewed Reading Kingdom, an online reading program that customizes to your child, in 2018. (You can read that review here: Reviewing Reading Kingdom.) Even though our second grader is quite a skilled reader, he still struggles with spelling which I think is due to the fact that he picked up reading naturally. I also think he skips over words if he is unsure of the meaning on occasion. My hope is that, by using Reading Kingdom with him, he will bring all the skills that go into being a fluent and proficient reader together – that he will bring together comprehension and recalling his favorite stories.

What is Reading Kingdom?

This online reading program uses an innovative reading system so that your child can learn to read and write successfully. It is designed for ages 4-10 (with the option for parents to change the artwork to be more appropriate for older children). There are six key reading and writing skills that are taught together so that children will become successful readers. The "Six Skill Integrated Method," developed by Dr. Marion Blank, focuses upon the following:

• Sequencing 
• Writing 
• Sounds 
• Meaning 
• Grammar
• Comprehension 

Throughout the activities (which are fun and educational), children will use the words they are learning in context. Sentences are provided in which words are used and then illustrations follow which reinforce the words being taught. 

There are five reading levels that are further divided into books. These books are then divided to teach each of the words that will be used in the book (the final lesson for that section). As your child works through the lessons, they will have the opportunity to skip lessons for words. This is the adaptive nature of Reading Kingdom. It changes to fit your child's skills and abilities. In order to ensure that your child understands each word before they reach the story to read, they will use the "Intensive Word Teaching Method" which uses four formats to teach a single word's:

1. Spelling
2. Pronunciation
3. Meaning 
4. Usage in context

I really love this graphic that Reading Kingdom provides. It shows four of the ways children learn words.

How Did We Use Reading Kingdom?

As our son had previously used Reading Kingdom, I had him pick up with where we left off. Even though it has been about two years, I knew that the program would adapt to where our son was in regards to reading and writing. As he progresses through the level, he is skipping more and more words as the program continues to adapt. For example, in the current section he has skipped two words and probably would have skipped 'hop' if he remembered how to spell 'hopping.'

I required our son to complete a lesson on Reading Kingdom at least once a day so that he maintains using it for over five days a week. (It is recommended that a child uses Reading Kingdom at least four days a week – with using it five days being better.)

Your children will be listed here on the Dashboard. You can see when it was last used and for how many days per week.

After clicking through the dashboard, your child will be on the start page where they make a few decisions. If you have gotten subscriptions to other programs, they can use those instead of Reading Kingdom or they can use the Extra Games which are useful for reinforcing typing and memory skills.

When our son clicks to start, he is asked by the program to spell that lesson's word or to recognize it in a sentence. From there the program adapts to his skills and he progresses through as many as 21 screens depending upon his skills.

Here are some of the activities that our son completed during his lessons.

Each lesson offers similar activities ranging from having to pick out the word in sentences to spelling the word when only a few letters are provided in the word. Finally, to close the lesson, he has to type an entire sentence using the word.

For this activity, our son had to type in the words, spaces, and punctuation as the computer read the sentence.

Reading Kingdom has been his primary language arts lesson provider during the course of the review time. While we have continued with his spelling lessons, I have incorporated the words from Reading Kingdom into his spelling program so he can reinforce his knowledge of the words elsewhere. And since the lessons do not take a long time to complete, it has been very easy to even have him complete a lesson during the weekend.

What Do We Think?

I really like Reading Kingdom. I think it offers a variety of activities and educational games to reinforce the learning of each word. I think that, because each lesson follows a similar pattern, it will be of great benefit for some children as they like to know what is going to happen next.

Reflecting upon our previous review, I find that the biggest problem we had was the program not loading properly. I do not recall us having any similar problems (with the audio starting before the screen appeared or needed to reload or refresh the page) during our review period this time. Everything with Reading Kingdom is going very smoothly.

Our son does complain about having to complete his Reading Kingdom lessons. I really do think this is because the program is stretching his abilities. He still struggles with finding all the letters on the keyboard (even with using the games on Reading Kingdom available to help with typing). I think he allows this to influence his view of Reading Kingdom. Personally, I think the program is really helping him.

His favorite part is the Passport Feature which changes as he gets points. He is very eagerly awaiting the next level to see what the sun does next in the Passport.

When you click the Passport, the sun clock inside spins and has your child's name listed. 

What Else Do They Offer?

If you are looking for something to help your child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, there is ASD Reading available. This online program focuses on reading, writing, and comprehending. No prerequisite skills are required - meaning all children (even those who are non-verbal) are able to use the program which will adapt to the child's skills and needs. There are several members of the Homeschool Review Crew who reviewed ASD Reading so please be sure to check out their reviews.

And don't forget to check out the other reviews of Reading Kingdom from the Homeschool Review Crew!

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Learning Through Play: A Review of Matific Galaxy

Our son has been having a blast practicing and reviewing his math skills using Matific Galaxy—an online math resource for grades K-6. He has been working his way through unlocking ten different planets in the Matific Galaxy. This allows him to practice a number of different math skills through a variety of games.

For each level, our son needed to complete online math games in order to collect all the pixels necessary to unlock characters. Once the characters were unlocked, our son was able to dress the characters using the different outfits he won as prizes as he continued working through the different math games.

What is Matific Galaxy? 

Matific Galaxy is available for both the desktop and as an app for electronics such as tablets and phones with hundreds of fun math games. There are over 1,500 activities available across grades K-6. You can even try out Matific Galaxy before you purchase to see if it is the right fit for your homeschooling family.

In general, Matific Galaxy can be used almost entirely independently by your child. Our son was able to navigate most of the learning games without help from me. There were only a few activities which he had to ask me about and a few games where he needed assistance multiple times (example: Lucky Stars and Draw A Line). There are also audio and written instructions to help your child work through the planets, activities, and information by themselves. So, when our son let his sister take a turn, she could figure out the instructions even though she is not able to read everything yet.

I quite liked helping our son play this game. It is a lot fun to figure out which cards to use to collect the stars.

Be sure to check out the FAQ page if you have any questions and visit the site to try some of the learning games for yourself. When we were first told about the possibility to review Matific Galaxy, I asked our son to check out the site and try the games for himself to see if he liked it. After only a few minutes, he said he would like it if we got to review Matific Galaxy.

What Topics Has Our Son Been Practicing? 

The first grade topics practiced and reviewed include 60 different skills:

• Dusty: counting, addition 
• Kai: geometry
• Jung Jung: counting
• Blaze: counting, addition, basic fractions, subtraction 
• Rocky: counting, addition, numbers measurements 
• Icy: addition, counting, data analysis 
• Sweetie: measurements, counting, subtraction, patterns, numbers, addition, basic fractions
• Nickel: addition, problem solving, measurements, counting, subtraction 
• Sir Goldy: numbers, subtraction, addition, mixed operation, geometry 
• Queen D: addition, numbers, geometry 

The motivational messages are fantastic!

What Did Our Son Think? 

Since first playing, our 6-year-old son asks almost everyday if he will have a chance to play on Matific Galaxy. In addition to working on my laptop, I also let him play via the app on my phone. He will happily sit solving math problems and practicing his addition and subtraction.

"Turn Screen Time Into Learning Time"

Our son had so much fun the first day after we set up the accounts, he played for quite a long while. And when we downloaded the app to my phone, he was ecstatic!

One of his favorite learning games was with the first planet—Dusty: Get the Picture. He needs to correctly assign the bows, necklaces, and glasses to characters in a line by following ordinal directions. When everyone is wearing the correct article, a photo is taken of the Class of 2019.

Another favorite was Robot Lift-Off, where students need to add the number of robots (there are two different kinds). When the amounts are chosen correctly, the robots go onto the space ship and take off. Before this, they do a little dance, which our son likes seeing.

When our son completes all the first grade activities, he will receive a certificate. He is motivated by the prizes and achievements, so this is a perfect online learning opportunity for him.

My Thoughts 

I love that our son can work at his own pace. He can repeat games multiple times as he works on mastering skills and returns to play things again for more practice. The background music is also nice. So, if I am working at the table with his sister on something else while he is completing his math assignment, his playing the game is not distracting.

Another great aspect of Matific Galaxy is the Parent Zone. When I look at the Parent Zone, I can quickly see where our son's strongest subjects are and what areas he needs more practice in (geometry). I can also easily send him one of three motivational messages (which he enjoys).

Summary reports are available to be emailed to you once a week (or not at all, if you choose) or you can view them through the Parent Zone. I can view data based upon all-time, 3 months, one month, two weeks, or just the last week. The results are also displayed by topic with our son's score and the Matific average score.

And, finally, results are broken down by assignment. So, I can see how our son did on Dusty's planet, Kai's planet, or Jung Jung Planet's. After viewing these scores, I was able to ask him to focus on certain planets and games to practice certain skills as recommended.

The last thing in the summary report is the All-time Achievements which shows how many trophies our son has achieved during this time working with Matific Galaxy. I really like how easy it is to understand everything in the Parent Zone.

The only detraction I can find is that the progress from the desktop does not seem to transfer to the phone (they are not synchronized across different platforms). So, while our son is happy to repeat the same steps on the phone or tablet app as he had upon the desktop, I think maybe other children would be annoyed with having to repeat things.

Even though our son has everything unlocked on the desktop, they are still locked on the app.

We will continue to use the one-year subscription we received to review from Matific Galaxy through the rest of the year. Our son really enjoys it and I see it as a fun break to review and even introduce new math skills.

Do You Want to Learn More about Matific Galaxy? 

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If you wish to read more about the other levels—since our son worked with just the first grade level—be sure to read the other reviews!