Evan Moor Skill Sharpeners Spell Write Grade 4 Homeschool Curriculum Review

okay hello everybody this is Robbie have another review for you from one of the even more skilled sharpener series and just for the record have soon-to-be third ish fourth grader 11th grader and then have one that graduated so I'll be bringing you some high school curriculum reviews here pretty soon just FYI but for now I'm focusing on the younger one because there's just lot more content for him so he's technically going into third grade he's in fourth grade in some subjects third grade in others so when review some of this stuff it's gonna be little all over the place in terms of grade level so apologize for that but it's mainly so that you can see what type of content is in these things and make decision and do some research on you know for yourself as to whether or not you think the program will work for you based on how its laid out and how its what its philosophy isn't that sort of thing so today I'm working on reviewing the spell and right skill sharpeners book from Evan Moore really like these skills sharpeners books these believe were created more as supplemental curricula instead of primary curricula because they're not typically as in well there's just not as much content and I'll show you what mean by that but like these because for us workbooks like this don't typically work real well as standalone curriculum for us not because they can't but because we just tend to be so eclectic and all over the place that feel like we don't get our money's worth sometimes you know when we go into workbook that is supposed to be year-long program so we might we'll do some of it but not necessarily all of it so in this case there's only 12 units and therefore it's very doable as supplement it's also really good for summer refreshing and or you know keeping skills sharp best of skill sharpeners yes II get it you know over the summer so wanted to try this because again I'm gonna try to go through all of the skill sharpeners books and this one actually really intrigues me so we haven't worked in this yet so I'll just go through kind of flip through and an overview of what it is and how it works so it's connecting school at home and it goes over punctuation it's got test practice it's got spelling words but you'll see in minute also goes into vocabulary which really appreciate so each unit there's 12 units and each unit will have story or an article which contains the spelling words spelling lists some activities grammar and punctuation exercises which again is nice writing skills and tests practice and the 12 units include the wild winds comets the Greeks were first unusual pets they change the world the buried city of Pompeii rain forests frogs animals in space American symbols travel diary hero of the sky animal helpers and I'm real excited about this because every single topic in here will be topic that know my son will really like this one right here obviously mean I've got weather kind of geek anyway and especially when it comes to tornadoes we are from Oklahoma and tornadoes fascinate this kid so this unit right here is gonna be really fun for him so it starts off you get story or article you have to find the words these are the spelling words are going to be going over and honestly they just want you to check them off think it would be little more effective to either circle or highlight the words in the story because not every kid's gonna do this but it's very possible that if you could just literally just check them all off and you don't know whether they found the words in there or not right so that would be you know my how probably have my son do it it's just highlight our circle of words then they get to copy and spell it twice which again the more they write it the more likely they are to remember it so like the fact that they include that with the words that they're newbies filling they need to then circle the misspelled words that are in these sentences and then write the word correctly so they're getting another opportunity to write some of these words as they find them misspelled in the sentence they'll then have to match the meanings of the words to the vocab with the definition so they get some vocabulary practice here it doesn't give you any definitions to go from so they're not studying the vocabulary so this is based on knowledge current knowledge they need to know what the words mean if they're going to get these rights so this is think probably more more effective way to figure out you know what words they don't know more so then teaching them what they do but again that's also something that could be valuable also if you want to work on context clues or want them to work on context clues suppose they can refer to this to try to figure out the definitions based on the context clues when they're filling these out if they don't know what word means so that's another idea like the fact that this is independent and even though I've got student is very reluctant to do independent work mean it's little frustrating to be honest with you but the engagement is what he thrives on and home schooling is perfect for that because we can obviously he's got the one-on-one engagement but really want practice with independent work also so now that want him to always completely be independent but you know it's important that they can work independently and not asking me 20 million questions all the time when it's not necessary so like that about this then we have the the different types of sentences so it does give little teaching box here and they need to go in and figure out whether or not these senses or deque that declarative interrogative imperative or exclamatory and again that's grammar practice which appreciate the words are then incorporated into the sentence here and they've got to fill in the blank with the appropriate word and then they get another chance to actually practice writing these words and think you know this is some people might consider this busy work but really it's just another opportunity to write the words it gives them something kind of fun to do they have to write the words and follow the shape of the tornado as they write them and believe all the units pretty much have this exercise again just another chance to practice writing these words so the more they write them the more or the less that they'll have to study them when they do their test create an acrostic poem write word or phrase that starts with each other and the topic word use words in the story to help you would probably not give this independently because know what mine would do and want to go to the story and find the first word they see that that has that begins with that letter and just write those down so would probably need to sit with mine as they do this and make it little more of critical thinking exercise and then read all about it they get to little bit of writing practice here which this is looks like really fun writing assignment write lead paragraph for newspaper article about tornado that ripped through your town describe all the things you heard saw and felt be sure to add headline that will grab your readers attention use at least for spelling words in your article so they don't have to do them all which is would be overwhelming to me so like the fact that they don't have to use them all that they only need to use for but that they get some writing practice and then they have to check off the boxes showing that they use complete sentences they use correct spelling and they use correct capitalization and punctuation and then they have to again practice what they've learned about the interrogative declarative exclamatory sentences they also get to practice you know finding misspelled words and some of the other little things that they practice in the unit and then the spelling test so then we would then read the letter or words to them and they would have to write them out and then there's little practice on grammar here where they have to find the errors and rewrite the sentence so it's you know it's kind of meaty little thing it's not don't think it's too overwhelming think it's great way to practice and learn new spelling words and again because there's only 12 units if you make this week long each unit week you're looking at 12 weeks was just perfect for summer or perfect for supplemental so really like it the Komets is the next unit and again we've got crossword here so they're gonna kind of rotate some different exercises for them to do simple compound sentences word search here's the spell in the doodle which again it's just another way to write the words and think they do this throughout but we'll kind of flip through here and give you an idea here's another writing assignment here's another little exercise and then your spelling tests here's the Greeks we're first so we've got the paragraph and the writing of the words and then some exercises there's another word search like that they are working on pronouns again little bit of grammar practice another spell module you fill in the blank sorry all right spelling test so we'll just kind of click through here and this is the one on the pets unusual pets doodle this looks fun little critical thinking exercise they have to make up pet and give the pet name and love these kind of exercises it's something that doesn't come easy for my student so when see these appreciate them because it's little bit of challenge on my little black and white thinking child they changed the world Pompeii rainforest frogs and like out this book because it's considered supplemental kind of covers even though its primary focus is spelling it covers some of these other things again just to give practice so if you didn't want you know separate book for Grandma or separate book for vocab separate book for you know writing separate book for what was the other thing they did in here the critical thinking you know you could get some of that in this book and you'd still get the practice without having to overload with all the different subjects you know over the summer or as supplemental again they have to make up bird symbol another bird that would be good symbol for America so and critical thinking did miss it yeah travel diary yeah like missed story here travel diary my photobombing cat hero of the sky I'm in your heart and animal helpers this is the last unit another caustic all right so there's record sheet you want to keep track what lessons have been done these are all perforated you can tear them out so you don't have to work from the book if you don't want to it will also include the spelling list that you can pull out that way when they're doing their test you have these lists handy there's also the answer key in the back again since the perforated you could pull these out if you have have funny story friend of Mines child figured out that the answers were in the back of the book and they didn't realize it was cheating literally didn't realize it was cheating they just thought they were being really clever and smart by finding the answers in the back and filling in the content from the answer key and they got really upset when they found out that it was considered cheating because they really truly innocently didn't realize that that's what that was so anyway those thought that was pretty funny but anyway if you have clever child who figures out that the answers are in the back you might want to play these out remove the temptation to take piece of these and they're all in color too so love the fact that this is in color have very visual child they don't complain he doesn't complain when we do black and white activity books but it just having it in color is bonus in my opinion and so really love these these are really inexpensive believe the price on these is around ten dollars new and then they run specials if find code if have code that can put down below for any of the even more products will definitely am an affiliate for them so they do send items to me in exchange for my review this is one of them do have lot of Evan Moore on my own though that purchased so will do reviews on those as well and will have playlist already created in my my channel for the Evan Moore reviews if you want to see them all at glance so hope this was helpful if you have any questions leave them below I'll do my best to answer them and appreciate the fact that you came and saw viewed my channel to take sorry I've cut noise in the background distracting me anyway appreciate you coming to to visit my channel today and hope you have wonderful day