We went ahead and began our first day of Download N Go instead of waiting until Monday. {We usually have school M, T, W, Th and Sat…taking Fri and Sun off-because of our ministry schedule}. We started with the first unit, Winter Wonders.
I know those of you who are considering buying these units are wondering if they are worth it, and since I did go ahead and buy them, I wanted to share my thoughts to try and help you make your decision.
There is a lot of printing involved, so there is an additional expense to consider {and prep time}, although you do not have to print everything, I did for the 1st 2 units so I could get a feel for it. I am creating each unit in a 1/2” binder {I get these in bulk at Costco} to make it easier for Pac Man to work through. After he completes the unit, I plan to put them all nicely in one bigger binder for storage and to look back at!
Each unit is 5 days worth of material, which I divided in the notebook so he will know where to begin and end. You can see the tabs I made on the right. I put the Daily Objectives in the front of the notebook.
One aspect of each unit is vocabulary/spelling words. I really like this aspect, but really wanted 1 sheet with all of the words for the unit in one place, so I made this myself, that’s what you see here. The little snowman cards are provided to write words/definitions on. I keep these in the front inside pocket of the binder for him to do 2-4 words per day.
At the end of each tab I placed a clear sheet protector which holds the lapbooking components for the day. I cut out and prepared these for him, so all he has to do is go in and complete them.
The extra lapbook pieces {pockets and such} are stored in the back flap of the binder, this is also where I will have him put completed lapbook components until we finish the unit and put the lapbook together.
You do need a computer with internet to take full advantage of these units. There are MANY links right in the PDF files. Today we watched videos, read articles, and went to a cool website for kids about seasons. I hope to teach him to work more and more independently through these units as time goes on and the format is repeated.
As for Pac Man’s thoughts? He LOVED It, actually way more than I thought he would. He seemed to like the layout, the division of activities, and the changes between what we did {watching videos, reading, drawing, writing, etc.} He was blown away with one particular aspect {which is actually the main thing that drew me to make my final purchase}. He was reading the page below, and ran into the room I was in with Ladybug and said, “Mom, you have to come see this.” He then showed me a line that said… “God created earth in such a perfect way that we experience these four seasons in just the right order and at just the right time to help things grow and for people to be able
to live here.”
Pac Man was so excited that this would be a Christian based unit!!! I was obviously thrilled to see him so happy about that!!! This is one of my favorite things about these awesome units.
Being someone who creates stuff myself, I am VERY impressed with the quality of graphics, layouts, links, font choices 😉 and so on. They are really well put together units. I am loving it so far and will continue to share how it’s going.
As for how I plan to fit this into normal school days…I am having Pac do these in the mornings while my main focus is on Krash. I am not going to be strict about finishing each day in ONE day, but working along as much as we can each morning ~ I want these to be really fun for him. We’ll see how this aspect goes, because as I prepared both notebooks, I did notice that some days seemed to have more work than others. I will probably be able to judge better after we have a few weeks in.
So, yes I am very HAPPY I bought these and very thankful I bought them with the great deal.