Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Thinking Skills Grade 3 Homeschool Curriculum Review

hello everybody this is Robbie and am homeschool mom of two kids one is in tenth grade this year one is in second grade but doing mostly third grade work so second third grade and then have one that's already graduated and today I'm coming to you with product from Evan Moore called skill sharper nose critical thinking connecting school and home it's grade three book and am gonna fill it with Evan Moore so am very excited to be talking to you today about this because have number of even more products and we have really enjoyed those so when got the opportunity to do this was very excited this is going to be the first of series because I'll be reviewing these one at time and usually prefer to review things as group but since the subject matter is going to be all over the place I'm gonna do these one at time and I'll create app playlist so that you can just kind of go through and see what items you might be interested in looking at and view them that way rather than just try to do these all in one video so this is the first video and chose the critical thinking book because feel critical thinking skills are very important and basically treat that subject like any other course subject for my younger one mainly and we do this we do these skills or we practice these skills daily and the reason for that is because number one think it's important to have critical thinking skills and number two because think it's something that my student in particular needs to work on and know there are some you know teaching methods that that truly believe that critical thinking skills come little bit later developmentally anyway and they don't even really try to focus on critical thinking until the child is later mean older and would have to agree with that based on my personal experience that you know kids that are you know young kids tend to be very black and white and the way they see things they're very good at memorization they're very good at recalling answers they're very good at you know just knowing what the answer is but not necessarily why the answer is what it is so like to as long as it's not pushing too hard or you know way to beyond their abilities like to encourage critical thinking skills because know mine is just very black and white and and it's very hard to get him to articulate why he believes an answer is what it is or why he thinks something is the way that it is or why he even feels the way he is he does so when saw this was very curious about it so to go through this book and they go up to into little blurb here about why they believe you know critical thinking is important and then it's divided into topics so we've got animals things places and our world and then when within each of those topics you've got couple of different sections so under animals you've got monkeys and bees under things we've got things we use things we like under places we have at home and at school and under our world we've got mother nature and earth needs plants and so we have completed the first section here on monkeys and so I'll go through that one section because each section is very similar in the way it approaches the topic and it covers most of the same things as you know in each under each topic so I'll go through what we what we did here for monkeys and then kind of flip through so you can see what's in the rest of it and then there's check sheet at the beginning of each section so that if you want to check off what's been completed or if your student appreciates being able to see the progression you know and what they've completed then of course you have that available so the different section starts off or each section starts off with the facts page and so there's some text it is within their reading ability so it's can be completely independent if your subject or your student is reading that level and then there to go in and answer the questions on each page some of them are you know where they have to articulate you know things that they may not normally have to think about in this case how would you describe him lucky to someone who's never seen one that was tough for mine so you know it's him monkeys are cute monkeys have tails monkeys you know the very basic thing so well.look monkeys are cute see that was the first thing he wrote so had to give him to expand on that so it's good exercise these you know there's some clues they have to come up with the answers there's some math you'll see this throughout all of these throughout this book should say some different math problems write this sentence correctly they're supposed to identify you know any misspellings or any errors and the sentence he recognized that he's supposed to spell that out he recognized this was spelled incorrectly and it looks like he did that fine so then there is section here about thinking what's same and what's different between monkeys and humans thought that wasn't an interesting exercise and we have lot of fun with that one do sit with him on these kinds of things don't just give him these worksheets to do on his own her busy work use them as opportunities to to teach and to help him learn things this was an idiom he'd never heard of and tried to walk him through you know get him to figure out when it was he couldn't figure it out because he's never heard this expression before so and then on the next page there's whole page on idioms so again it was something he really couldn't logically figure out he would have had to have heard these expressions so if you you know like my kid doesn't know those and you want to skip it skip it thought it was he thought it was actually really fun to to learn these so we went ahead and did it there's little math problem here again these are math word problems which again math problems are our word problems are we you know require critical thinking skills they have to figure out it's not just having problem there that they have to solve they have to figure out how to solve it first so appreciated that here they get to draw monkey so you have to it's following directions and you know then fine motor skills as well again this is one that might have chosen to skip as little more on the busy work side of things but thought it was good exercise for him and he enjoyed it so we did it like the fact that you know this might have more than one answer to it there's not really right and wrong answer mean guess there is but you know it it was monkey can be cute you see what mean like that could have been anything but that's his basic answer for everything is that it's cute whatever let's do animals so there you go thought this was an interesting exercise monkey begins with Mon and so they have word exercise here for words that have Mon in them but the thing is they need to have knowledge of these terms in order to be able to solve this so had to sit with him and help him through it but you know it was good exercise on vocabulary but again you know you can use your own judgment on whether or not you felt like this was page worth doing it was really mostly in my mind I'm thinking you know he would already have to know these words in order to be able to figure these out so there's that all right so this one really liked because they go through step by step here on it's also its paragraph writing but it's also being able to step-by-step describe process that you wouldn't normally need to describe this was about eating banana so what process do you go through when you eat banana and they walk him through the process and then they have them do it on their own with different subject so he had to describe how to eat an orange to someone who wouldn't know how to eat an orange and thought that was interesting and again it took it took thinking skills to be able to do this really like that exercise this one this was good exercise too had to help him with it though because again depending upon their knowledge base you know coming up with different kinds of foods that begin with the letters at the end so pizza you then had to come up with word they begin with asparagus he'd never even heard of asparagus because none of us liked it so never make it but like you know again now he's got to come up with the were food item that begins with he came up with sandwich and hamburger and ravioli which he came up with on his own which surprised me because we don't usually eat ravioli because he doesn't like it you know so this worked out okay there were couple of things in here that had to help with but thought this was good exercise enjoyed it this one no this wouldn't this is interesting because as we went through this exercise my 16 year old commented as was going through the instruction cuz mahom that sounds hard don't even know if could do that so literally this kid is wanting to watch the animals get fed at the zoo and there's schedule here when the animals are getting fed and how long they're going to be fed and we're supposed to he was supposed to design schedule for Tyson so that he could see as many animals being fed as possible and of course he just wanted to go in order and I'm like no we can't do that because he wants to see each animal being fed for the full time he cannot see more than one animal at time so this was this was tough for him so we went through the first few and then he was able to finish it up like he got it at that point and then he was able to finish it up so thought this was really good but just keep in mind some of these maybe you know you may have student that doesn't struggle with these but then if you do you might need to sit with them you know when they do these and kind of walk them through the thought process that it's gonna take to do them and appreciate that to me that's good if it's way to above their head than we all get frustrated but don't think these are but it does require some guidance on my part and I'm okay with that this was where they make the monkey paper chains and you know did skip this one think it's good for fine motor skills think he would have just been you know it's just not his thing he'll cut stuff out but he won't want to do this intricate kind of cutting and think he would just rush through it and so just didn't didn't do that and then skipped this it once you do the paper change you glue them here and then they answer questions about monkeys and to me that just seemed like recall and so just skipped it you know but you can do what you want and then we get into the subject of bees and we haven't started this yet but he loves bees so I'm actually excited to do this one so I'm gonna kind of flip through here on these and I'll stop whenever see something that looks interesting to me like this where they have to classify things like these comparative exercises too we do lot of this kind of stuff in other thinking skills resources that we have we have games that we use we have other workbooks that we use and so we kind of rotate through so that's why we haven't done whole lot of this one but the do plan to continue to use this so what else do we have here word problems again are always thinking skills in my book what else do we have here this is look at this this is awesome okay so you discovered new kind of insect answer the questions about your insect so they have to make up an insect this is the kind of stuff really like because this is so hard for him to do not in the frustrating kind of way but it's just you know he wants to just talk about things he knows okay so now he's got to come up with an insect that nobody's ever heard of and make that up this one inference this gives some clues about what's gonna go in the word box which don't know that that's necessary really but here's another cutting exercise and folding exercise that looks like it would be really fun we'll probably do that one okay so now we're getting into new subject things we use okay have to describe how they use different things pencils would you like better and why love these kinds of things you know it helps them to identify why they like certain things and why they want to do certain things they don't always necessarily know why and like the idea that they have to kind of think about that and figure it out again if it's not too painful and pushing too hard some kids are very literal and I've got one of those so let's just kind of go through here here's another crafty kind of exercise okay now we're in two things we'd like okay we like parties we like pets get to talk about what they like and why like that you like superheroes if you could have one superpower what would it be this is fantastic so you can see I'm fan like this book you know once in while come across something think is just yeah we can just take it or leave it but really actually like this book lot and do plan on using it next year mean like said this is the end of third grade for us for the most part but because this is skill that's little more difficult for him didn't want to ask for the fourth grade book and then have it be too difficult so felt like the third grade book was good good place for him and we'll continue to do it next year don't think it's going to be too easy for him but you can always you know take look at these books and view the samples the sample pages and seeing you know which grade level you think is gonna be more appropriate for your student my family my grandmother's daughter is your see this is this requires some thinking and even struggle with some of this kind of stuff you know so you know what mean these are simple but you know mother's father's grandmother's daughters cousin would be my yo anyway she won't ask him with three reasons why she won't ask for help okay so again this is the kind of thinking stuff that he needs that my kid needs Jessica's having trouble with her math homework but she won't ask anyone to help her give three possible reasons why she won't ask for help he has to put himself in the shoes of another person or think about what it might be like for him and why he might not ask for help and then come up with the answers and think that's fantastic you know this is you know crossword puzzles you know he he likes those but you know they can be kind of you know recall so you just use your own judgement whether or not you you want to to do those you know as homeschooler this is where it gets little vague in terms of you know life experience but we do have one day week where he goes to classes so he has classroom environment for that stuff it's very you know it's fun classes like art and music and PE and stuff like that but you know this section you may find that you have to skip some things that if they can't relate to them so that's the only thing here but I'm sure you know field trips that you might take with other homeschool families or do it as family they can relate to that so yeah where should we go and then they've got list here and they get to rank them find the answer to each clue by using the letters in these words those can be tough so that's looks like good one might need little little help now we got mother nature reuse and recycle so they're getting some you know lessons in here on environment as well rainbows here's some other some more worth problems garbage okay write sentence it's always true about garbage sometimes she that's good thinking exercise that's but you can see it some of these it seems like it's getting progressively little more difficult so but not excessively so but can tell that this is you know these kind of exercises are it seems to be getting little more thought-provoking as we go along this is this is you know skill if they have this skill set this is going to really easy so again you can decide if you want to to do that or if they just skip it but for the most part think this is gonna be really great resource and am happy about it plants write three reasons the earth needs plants three things that all trees have in common like this one seems to be more information recall based on the fact sheet but this one is definitely something that requires more thought so anyway think there's plenty of material in here I've seen few things that we may or may not do depending cuz you know when you're covering so many different things in home school day you know sometimes some of this kind of stuff seems unnecessary but see lot in here that think is valuable and so do recommend the book they have the answer key in the back which appreciate and these are pages are all perforated so you can tear these out you can copy them think they're don't know what their rules are reproducing shouldn't say that but the you can't tear them out at least and of course if you don't want them to have the answers in the back you can tear those out as they're working through this if you work from the book itself so there's other skill sharpener books in the series so hopefully I'll be doing all of these at some point but definitely keep watching do have several more books in my possession that purchased myself that I'm going to review so if you like this kind of thing do specialize in reviews on my channel do some other topics as well but for the most part reviews are my what I'm known for and so if you like this sort of thing please do subscribe and click that little notification bell so that you know when list more list more when post more videos do these when have time so they were sporadic I'm not one of those that you know does video do videos week on Monday Wednesday Friday can't do that wish could so do them when have time and over the summer do way more videos and do during the school year when I'm busy homeschooling so thank you so much for coming by and taking look at this and hope you have great day and that this was helpful for you thanks