This week's TBT is about my experience on The Crew back when I first started back on the 2010/2011 Crew Year.
I also listed my top five favorite products that were truly a blessing to me from that Crew Year, and honestly I think they are still my favorite, and at least in the top 10 if not still the top 5!
This book takes each letter of the alphabet and includes a short poem and bible verse on each page that is related to the picture. A is for ants...B is for bow, and so on.
The book is beautiful. It has a nice glossy, hardback cover, and the binding is really nice.
The quality of the book and the pages matters to me. I love books, and I love for them to not only look nice, but to also be of a good quality so that they will last.
"The Reformed Free Publishing Association is an independent, non-profit organization that was founded in 1924 for the purpose of witnessing to the distinctive reformed truth."
This book is a very good quality book. Your child would have a hard time pulling the pages out of this book. (Yes, I checked)!
My son likes this book. He plays "wheres the letter" when he reads it.
I think this is a great book to introduce when your child is learning their ABC's. You could use it along with a letter of the week program.
Your child could copy the poem that goes along with the letter for their handwriting or copy work. The poems are short, so this would be perfect for younger children.
The author, Connie L. Meyer, has written this and other children's books, along with a christian art curriculum series for children.
She has also written short stories and articles for magazines.
She is a 1982 graduate of Calvin College and holds a BA is art education. She is also a wife, mother, and grandmother.
She wants us to "Use this book to instruct our children in the truths of salvation for all of God's people and especially his little lambs."
I think this is a wonderful book to do just that!
I know that this will be a book that we pick up and use all along our early learning.
As I mentioned earlier, I plan on using it as we are learning our letters, and using the rhymes for copy work.
What is M.E.S.S.Y Learning? It is a system for ages 3 through 6 that focuses on Early Brain Building through Reading and STEM.
It is a 3 part system. In each course you will receive a story book, a video and a workbook that are all about the same story.
You will read the book and watch the video with your child.
Then you can work on the workbook about 2 to 3 days a week. All of the activities are based on the book and video.
We received three different courses.
We decided to focus on Mommy's Baby.
It seemed a little easier than the other 2, and my son is only 3, so I thought this would be the best one for us to focus on for our review. (Plus it is just so cute!)
The other two courses are very similar, just with different themes. (The skunk course is super cute too!)
I need to go ahead and let you know that while we received all digital material, they will be offering a printed book option, as well as a digital option.
I printed out the entire workbook. (Sorry it's a little worn. I should have taken pictures when we first printed them out!)
I have a monthly ink subscription, so it is not a big deal for me to print out all of the pages, however I understand that it can be a large cost for those who don't. It would use a lot of colored ink, and I just don't think that printing them out in black and white would be as fun for the kids.
While I have no problem printing them out, I do have a problem with the fact that we can't use the stickers that you would get in a printed version.
We could cut them all out and glue them, but honestly that's a lot of work for me, and I just don't want to do that. These are the cute sticker pages. If you get the physical book they will be in actual sticker format.
We just did the pages differently than intended when we were supposed to use stickers.
In the workbook your child will have pages that ask them to remember stuff from the story, such as how someone was feeling, or who was in the story.
Your child will learn the letters from the story and how to write them.
They will learn shapes, colors, big and small, pattern recognition, feelings and emotions, matching, etc..
We learned all about how animals have tails and how some animals use their tails for balance, or to defend themselves from danger.
He didn't want to do everything I asked. He decided to give the tiger more legs instead! lol But he did do some of it correctly!
There really is a lot to learn in the workbook, and they do make it really fun!
My son really liked the videos and the online book, and doing the workbook pages. The online book was the first book that I have ever read to him that I got to actually finish the book. He normally takes the book away from me and wants to "read it to me". lol So we enjoyed reading the book together on the laptop.
My son really liked the videos, and asked several times to watch it. We didn't watch it every time we did the workbook. We watched it a few times in the beginning and just did the workbook pages whenever we wanted.
He would go and get the pages out of the drawer and ask to do his school, so that says something right there.
You can purchase each digital course individually for anywhere from $9.95 to $14.95, or you can subscribe for only $9.95 a month. That is really not a bad price.
There are two physical options. One is that you can get the physical workbook, but a PDF story book for only $14.95 aor you can get both the storybook and the workbook in physical form for $24.95 a month.
There doesn't seem to be an option to purchase individual courses in the digital format just yet.
Now, personally I did not mind the story book being digital, but would much prefer the workbook to be physical. Plus I think that would be part of the fun for the kids, and the adults, to get a new schoolbook in the mail each month! SO I would go with the $14.95 option for sure.
My child did not really understand much of what we were doing yet. He is in his early 3's, but I do think that when he got a little bit older that he would really enjoy having a monthly subscription.
I do think that getting a new workbook, and perhaps story book in the mail each month would get kids excited about learning, and looking forward to their new school books!
Here is what my son has to say about how he likes this curriculum!
