Archives for October 2009

Writing is an area that needed a lot of improvement in our home, and EDUDPS came to the rescue. We received Write with the Best Vol. 1 and Roots and Fruits.

Write with the Best Vol. 1 teaches students to model writing after great works of literature.

• Describing an Object from Jules Verne
  
• Describing a Place from Charles Dickens
  
• Describing a Character from Daniel Defoe
• Dialogue from Kenneth Grahame
• The Short Story from O. Henry
• Fables from Aesop
• Friendly Letters from Robert Louis Stevenson
• Poetry – Rhyming Verse from William Wordsworth
• The Ballad or Narrative Poem from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The lessons are short and we really enjoyed the variety of activities. We read the passage, talked about descriptive writing, and searched for different parts of speech in the story. You can sample the first two units here.

Something to Note: EDUDPS has an unusual security feature on their ebooks. You are only allowed two printings, so you need to print the entire book at once. I understand their desire to protect their product, but I wish there was a way to only print a page or section at a time.

The Nitty Gritty:

• e-book $19.95 on sale for a limited time for $14.95
• pages only – no binder  $22.95
• 3-ring binder $24.95

Things I Like:

• Very teacher friendly – just open and go.
• You can go through the material as quickly or slowly as you want. We needed some extra work with adjectives and adverbs, so we stretched that part of the lesson out a bit longer.
• This is very easy to use with students in different grades.
• Kids are exposed to classic literature.

Value: I think this is a great price for what you get, especially if you buy it on sale. We will probably stretch ours out for the entire school year.

Roots and Fruits makes learning vocabulary easy. It teaches your child to decode words by learning roots and prefixes and their meanings. I learned to decode words like this in school and I still use this method as an adult.

You can see a sample here.

The Nitty Gritty:

• e-book $14.98 on sale for a limited time for $11.25
• pages only – no binding $17.48
• comb binding $19.98

Things I Like:

• It covers grades K-12
• Very teacher friendly – just open & go. (I’m seeing a pattern here. LOL)
• The list of words is extensive with 673 roots and prefixes.
  
• There a several fun games to play to reinforce the vocabulary words.
• It only takes a few minutes a day.

Value: I think this is a steal! You get a K-12 vocabulary curriculum for less than $15.

Note: This has the same security restrictions that I mentioned above.

See what my TOS Crew Mates have to say about EDUDPS!