Congratulations Betsy! I will contact you by email and get your mailing address. I hope that the Yankz! will help your daughter feel like she can do things more successfully! We love ours!

“I wanted to show you these shoe laces I’ve been using. I think that D1 would really benefit from having a pair of these, with his fine motor struggles.”  His occupational therapist pointed to her shoelaces, called Yankz!, and explained how they work.

“You just lace them in, cinch them down, and go. He could just slide his feet into his shoes and eliminate a whole bunch of steps in getting ready for the day.”
Seriously?! Eliminate steps? Just slide his feet in? Save time?!?!

Having kids with fine motor difficulties, shoe tying has been a bit of a blessing and a bit of a curse. It has been a blessing because they finally learned HOW and were ABLE to get them tight enough that they stayed tied. Mostly. It’s also been a curse because now I depend on them to get ready to leave. And it takes time. Lots. of. time.

Motor planning that comes naturally to you and I does NOT come naturally to a child with developmental dyspraxia. Motor planning is the whole issue. When you give them a task that has a lots of steps, it’s hard enough. Give him a task that has lots of fine motor steps, and you’ve got…. enough time to make lunch for four people, and EAT, while you wait for him to put on his shoes and get them tied. Yes, really. What I need is a way to save time. Enter Yankz!

I asked for, and received, some Yankz! to try out. I discovered that they were MUCH more generous than I ever hoped for, when this arrived in the mail:

We immediately set to choosing and, er, installing them. It is rather a bit of a process, lacing in these elastic strings with the plastic pulley hook thingy, but we followed the directions on the inside of the package, and went to it. Even the boys set to work on their own. D1, our budding pre-adolescent 11 year old, chose royal blue laces, the same color as the trim on his Cons. D2 chose light blue, which didn’t exactly match his shoes, but he’s a 9-year old boy. They don’t care about things matching. He just likes blue.

As for me, I was super excited to see REFLECTIVE Yankz! Laces, with reflectors on them! You may think I’ve lost it, but you don’t go running at 6am, when it’s still dark out. The only thing that would be cooler is if they lit up. With our newly laced Yankz!, we went about our business.

Our experience:

Yankz! have definitely improved our time-out-the-door. I can tell the boys that it’s time to leave, and they can have their shoes on their feet in moments. Record time! D1 has really appreciated them because he knows how long it takes him to go through the process of putting on his shoes. He likes that he can easily tighten or loosen them, depending on how his feet are feeling, with just a tug or two. His occupational therapist was right. These are perfect for him!

Our other son, 9-year old D2, also likes his Yankz!, but his experience hasn’t been quite as good. This boy is the human equivalent of the Tasmanian Devil. He CAN tear apart a steel anvil, on accident, and not even slow down to view the destruction.  Things disintegrate in his presence. So did his Yankz!  It is probably also due to the fact that he has these really heavy, wide skater shoes and Yankz! were definitely NOT made for skater shoes.

For me, Yankz! are fantastic. My running shoes are happy. I am happy. I am reflective!! And my shoes never, ever come untied any more.

And now I have goodies to share with you!  Enter to win a family pack of FOUR pairs of Yankz! for one lucky winner!  How does 3 Pairs of Yankz! and 1 pair of Yankz! Reflectives sound?!

You have two chances to win:

First- mandatory entry, leave a comment telling me why you need them! And second, follow me @MommaKnows on Twitter and come back here and let me know that you did!  One winner will be drawn Saturday morning and announced here, on Twitter, and on my Facebook page.

When I launched this site on my birthday, I kicked it off by having a week of giveaways from some fantastic sponsors.  One of my prize sponsors was Heritage History, and one lucky winner received FOUR of Heritage History’s Compact Libraries! Teresa from Heritage History contacted me and asked if I would be willing to review their new Ancient Greece Curriculum, so of course I said yes!

You may not have heard of Heritage History before, but you should. And you will. Heritage History is taking those wonderful out of print, public domain books and making them easy to use for everyone. The Ancient Greece Curriculum I received contains 46 titles, as well as maps, outline maps, and a study guide for Ancient Greece. Designed for self-motivated learners, there are accountability forms included for your students to keep track of which books they are reading.  A good set of notebooking pages or a lapbook would go along nicely.

This curriculum is set up to run in your regular Internet web browser, but does not require an Internet connection.  The format makes it feel “familiar”, since it operates just like a website. You just put in the CD, and click RUN. (Click images to zoom in.)This simple setup does cover up one little thing that I considered a goldmine when I found it: There are MOBI and ePUB files on the CD! These are the files that allow you to read the books with an eReader, such as a Kindle or Nook!  Every book title on the CD comes in PDF, MOBI, and ePUB formats. No matter which reader you use, you will be able to use these books. To access these files, click Open to View Files instead of RUN.

The curriculum itself is divided into sections, which are linked in the sidebar.  I received a printed hardcopy as well as the CD, so I was able to compare.  They are identical in content. You can print out the Curriculum Guide as well, if you prefer to have it in a notebook.

The Introduction explains the reasons you should use living books, as well as gives a Getting Started guide.

Ancient Greece Study Guide contains the bones of the program, with an Overview, Recommended Reading (as well as links to PDFs of all of the books), summaries of the Historical Eras of Ancient Greece, and Historical and Outline Maps.

Accountability Forms give your students a place to keep track of their progress and log completed readings, as well as write their comments on each book.

Curriculum User Guide explains Heritage History’s philosophy on education, how to use the curriculum, sequence of material, and using their resources along with other curricula.

The Electronic Text section gives detailed information on printing and printers, and how to use the MOBI and ePUB formats with your eReader or iPad. The format of the PDF books is unique because they really tried to make them so easy to print that ANYONE can do it.  The books are formatted 2 pages per side, and you only have to just click PRINT. They come out looking like this:

Wars and Battles of Ancient Greece is a section included purely for students who have an interest in world wars. Many boys enjoy reading up on wartimes, and all of the major Greek wars are outlined here. This could definitely be considered a study guide, but they don’t recommend you print it and have your kids use it unless there is real interest in the topic.

There are so many wonderful books on this CD, and each Curriculum or Compact Library contains many more for you to explore and delve into. We have other titles from Heritage History and LOVE all of the wonderful, high quality literature that they provide!  If you are a blogger and would like to get to know Heritage History better by doing a review, please visit their reviews page.

Now for the fun: Since we’ve already covered Ancient Greece (twice!) I am going to give away my copy of Heritage History’s Ancient Greece Curriculum. (This would be the CD only. The notebook I have contains the same pages that are on the CD.)

To enter, just leave me a comment! I’ll draw a name late Friday night. The winner will be announced on The Momma Knows Facebook page Saturday morning!

Also, don’t forget that it’s H Week for the ABC’s of Homeschooling, and now it’s your turn to link up YOUR H post! 

Read past posts from the ABC’s of Homeschooling

Disclosure: I was provided with one copy of the CD and Curriculum Guide for review purposes. I did not receive any monetary compensation and I was not expected to write a favorable review. My opinions are my own.  This post contains one or more affiliate links.

Spelling is not my sons’ favorite subject.

They know it’s a necessary one, but still, not their favorite.  To combat boredom, we began using a site called VocabularySpellingCity.com several years ago.  A basic membership is free, and allows you to enter and save your childrens’ spelling lists, and to access lots of activities that help them practice them.  My favorite feature of this program has always been Test Me!  Yes, they can take their spelling tests right online using their own spelling lists.  I LOVE THAT.

Once complete, they click on Check Me! and it scores their test, showing which words were incorrect. They can print out their graded test, which is great for record-keeping. I always have my boys go back and do Teach Me!, which walks them through the spelling of their misspelled words, and then they have the option to retest on just their missed words.

We have used the basic membership for years.  I had considered a Premium membership, but when we first began looking at it, all they had was a classroom teacher’s license, and at $49.99, it was out of our price range.  Just recently they created a Family Membership which is affordable, and allows up to five children to access it.  I had the opportunity to try out the Premium Membership recently.  I decided not only to try it out on our computer, but to also try it out on our new iPad2! I will go over iPad compatibility at the end.

Here is a graphic that illustrates the differences in the memberships.  The red check marks indicate the most recent additions to the activity lineup.

VocabularySpelling City gives you some fantastic tools with the Premium Membership.  I love that I can create Assignments for my kids, with due dates!  We use two different spelling programs.  D1, who is in 6th grade but has developmental delays, uses Sequential Spelling.  For him, there is a new word-family based spelling list every day.  I enter the lists online for him, create an assignment (“Day 15″ or whatever list # it is) and set up activities for him to do.  His assignments are due daily. You can save an assignment list as a preset, to be used over and over, or create different ones. The presets are also easily edited. to add or remove activities.

For D2, our 4th grader, we use The WISE Guide for Spelling, which gives a list per week.  His assignments have many more activities than his brother’s do, but his due date is always Thursday rather than daily. It’s up to him how many things he completes each day, as long as he completes his spelling and vocabulary tests on Thursday afternoon. (We have co-op on Fridays.)  The site not only helps them practice but it also scores them on all activities and tests, and keeps track of their scores. Both boys use VocabularySpelling City exclusively for spelling. We no longer use our spelling programs as written. *Grin* It’s my school and I make the rules here.  ;)

More Spelling and Vocabulary activities:

 iPad Compatibility

VocabularySpelling City is sort of compatible with the iPad.  We have the iPad2 and bought Photon, a Flash browser, so we could use the site. Even so, there are certain games that will not work.  We tried out everything on the iPad. All the activities that require either typing, clicking or both work just fine.  Any activities that require you to drag and drop or swipe something do not work.

Five games do not work:

• Alphabetize
• Sentence Unscramble
• Letter Fall
• Word Search
• Crossword wouldn’t even load

iPad aside, both of my sons LOVE VocabularySpelling City, and often ask to do spelling first.  We used the basic membership for a long time, but now that I have the assignment creator and the score reports I don’t see how I can go back to the Basic!  We love it!

My Disclosure for this review here.

I’ve been given a premium membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for a candid, personal, online review.

VocabularySpellingCity.com helps students study word lists using 25 different learning activities such as Crossword Puzzle, HangMan, and Handwriting Worksheets.  Parents can create their own spelling lists, find published lists already available on the site, or use any of dozens of  free teaching resources such as sound-alike words, and contractions.  Be sure to come back in three weeks to read about my experience.

There might be more free memberships available for bloggers.  If you’re interested, find out how you can review VocabularySpellingCity.com.

]]> http://themommaknows.com/2011/08/spelling-fun/feed/ 0