When we started homeschooling, one of my goals was to find a way for my kids to learn another language before the age of twelve. At that point, your brain starts to wire itself differently, and it becomes harder to learn a new language. However, although we tried a variety of options, it was hard to find one that really worked for us.

That’s why we were excited for the opportunity to review Excelerate SPANISH from Excelerate SPANISH Streaming.

Excelerate SPANISH is a video-based curriculum that makes use of hand motions and signals paired with vocabulary words and language structures to help students learn. This motions are called ‘Total Physical Response,’ and this makes Excelerate SPANISH very different from other foreign language programs on the market. The motions are not sign language, but there is a distinct movement for each word or phrase taught. The videos make use of much repetition, which helps your mind to connect the motion with the meaning. It is recommended that you make the motions along with the video, which helps to make those mental connections for you.

It is not completely immersive, but it doesn’t follow the standard mode of ‘learn all the colors, then the numbers, then move on,’ either. Each lesson begins with the teacher walking the class through the new vocabulary being introduced in that particular lesson. As each new word or phrase is introduced, she writes it on a large whiteboard at the front of the room. (As a very visual learner, I really appreciated this element. It helped me immensely to be able to see the word and how it’s spelled as I’m hearing it.) This also makes for a nice place to look if you forget what one of the new words during that same lesson.

I found that happening as I watched, too, because there are many words and phrases introduced each time, and the teacher moves quickly – and the lesson moves faster as you move through the program. The students in the video didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up, however.

My Little Man isn’t really interested in learning another language. He loves playing with words and reading them, but this is much harder for him. He grudgingly agreed to try Excelerate SPANISH when I reminded him that he does have to learn another language, and here are his thoughts:

• The hand signals help you remember the words better. Although he didn’t really want to use them, he found that they really helped him to learn new words and phrases – and he remembered them.
• The Total Physical Response motions made him feel very self-conscious, and so he would kick us all out of the living room while he worked on the lessons. Although he came to appreciate them, he hasn’t yet become comfortable with being around other people while using them. This fits his rather introverted personality, but he’s also twelve – a time when many kids feel rather self-conscious. I think this wouldn’t be such a big deal if he were starting the program for the first time at either a younger or older age.
• Each lesson includes stories. The stories helped him to remember the words, and they made the lessons much more interesting than only direct teaching, or if the words were chunked by category as in most other programs (where you learn all the numbers, then the colors, etc.).
• On the flip side, sometimes these stories included words that he hadn’t learned yet, and that stressed him. He didn’t want to move on to the next video until he had mastered each word and phrase, so he watched each one many times. (That is a plus of this program for homeschoolers – because we don’t have to keep up with the Jones,’ so to speak, you can go at your own pace and do what works for you. For us, that means spending more than one week on each lesson.)
• This is really picky, but this bothered my always-been-homeschooled son: the camera moves around the classroom, and sometimes it flips completely to show you the audience, and you can’t see the teacher at all. Since my Little Man has spent little time in ‘traditional’ classrooms, and he’s oriented to learn something, he doesn’t care what the people around him are doing – he wants to see the teacher at all times so he can be focused on learning new words and phrases. I think the intent is for you to feel a part of the class that is being recorded as it’s taught; it just didn’t quite work for My Little Man. It didn’t bother me, however.
• The videos themselves contain little review. If you’re using only the videos, this may pose a problem for you; however, there are other resources available. The videos provide a complete lesson, and the available workbooks provide a means for review. There are also other resources available online and linked through the program.

Although we didn’t get very far into the program because we spent so much time with each lesson, I watched lessons throughout Spanish 1 and 2 (each level contains 24 individual lessons). In the beginning, the lessons move slowly and have a smallish amount of new words and phrases. As you move throughout the program, however, this increases greatly. The program is quite rigorous by the end and, according to the website, could be considered high school level, at least in some places.

Ultimately, Excelerate SPANISH is definitely a program worth checking out if you’re looking for a solid Spanish curriculum. It’s different, effective, and unlike other programs on the market.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Click on the graphic below to read other reviews from the Homeschool Review Crew.

My kids love building things – I mean, it’s one of their very favorite things. Always has been. Even when they were tiny, they would take apart board games and play sets and just build things with all of the pieces.

They can’t be the only kids out there who love old-fashioned building, but blocks aren’t easy to find these days. That’s why I was super excited for the opportunity to review Brain Blox Wooden Building Planks from Brain Blox.

These blocks were exciting from the moment they arrived. They were shipped in a compact box with this great quote from Dr. Seuss on the inside flap:

I love that quote – and also the encouragement for kids to use their gifts and talents as best they can. They don’t need to become cookie cutters of someone else’s ideal kid – they were designed to be their own unique, creative selves, and these blocks are a perfect way to encourage that from the very beginning!

This definitely manifested itself in the way that my kids each chose to use the blocks during their free build times – but more about that later.

As for the shipping? The box wasn’t the only great thing about it – there’s a bag, too! There really is! We received a set of 200 planks, and the set comes with a sturdy, red drawstring bag for storing the blocks later. (I’m glad, because even though my kids are big now, they’d never want to stack them in the original box each time they use them). The bag makes the planks easy to clean up and easy to store, too, which means that we’ll use them more often.

Brain Blox comes with a pamphlet full of ideas for builds that you can do. These are more complicated designs, and they look really cool when they’re finished. You can see it in the background of this picture.

My Big Helper loved trying out all of the official Brain Blox designs. She was determined to set up the blocks to be level and even and to make the most complicated designs possible. She loved playing with them and eventually looked at the patterns within their designs and started making her own that rivaled theirs in difficulty.

On the other hand, while My Little Man was capable of following those directions, he preferred not to. He had his own ideas in mind, and he set goals and challenges for himself. He liked to see how high he could stack the blogs, how top heavy he could make his design, or how non-linear he could make something be and still use all of the planks. He imagined many of these designs to be big, complicated buildings, and he would tell stories of which space was which room and who might live there. It was fun to see him be so excited!

No matter how you’d like to use the planks, however, Brain Blox has some great ideas. They have lots of freebies on their website with ideas, challenges, and puzzles for ways to extend the play. There’s even a YouTube channel where you can go to learn more techniques. My kids love being able to take charge of their own learning, and I love that there are so many things that can be done with these. I hate to call these toys, because they’re really more than a single thing; instead, they have multiple uses, which is limited only by your imagination.

We have big plans for our Brain Blox, too. They have so many possibilities! We’re reading and studying The Hobbit right now, so the kids are each using the planks to design their own Hobbit hole. We’re studying civics this year, and we’re going to build the major US monuments and buildings that housed the origins of our country. Breaking out the Brain Blox is a great activity for our read-aloud times, too, as the kids can keep their hands busy and design but still listen to our current story.

We all love our Brain Blox! They’re going to be loads of fun for a very long time. Don’t take our word for it, though – you can read lots of other reviews from Homeschool Review Crew bloggers by clicking on the graphic below.

Do you have Brain Blox? Share what you would do with them in the comments!