SmitCo LLC Cheap Christmas Gifts

Quality, affordable gifts for girls ages 2 to 12. SmitCo LLC has several different locked diary sets for girls in Emoji, Diva and Mermaid themes, as well as scrapbook, nail and play dress up sets and party favors that can be used as stocking stuffers to provide hours of fun.

SmitCo products also include rose gold, gold or rhodium plated jewelry and sets, as well as very popular stretch sets for little girls - all packed in cute gift boxes. 

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We trust you will find some or all gifts here for the princesses on your list!

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Reading Eggs Review

Vendor: Reading Eggs
Product: Free 4 week trial (Offer expires November 30, 2017)

Ages: 2-13 or up to 6th grade

About: Reading Eggs has a few different levels to start at depending on your childs skill level.  This is an online program that uses games, songs, and rewards to help your child read. The levels are; Reading Eggs Junior, Reading eggs, Reading Eggspress, and MathSeeds. The reward system is golden eggs that are used in games. 

Sometimes the hardest part of teaching your children is teaching them to read.  There are so many ways to teach a child and you needs lots of reinforcement and repetition to make it through sometimes.  Reading Eggs helps you do this.  

Reading Eggs teaches your child to learn letters, the letter sounds, reading skills, spelling, language arts, and comprehension skills.  There is some early Math skills through MathSeeds in there too. 

There is a placement test to take when you start using the program.  This gets you started right where your child needs to be.  The test is really short and doesn't take long to finish.  Your child then gets placed on a level, each level has about 10 lessons to complete to  move on to a different level.  Each of the levels is teaching a new sound or word and vocabulary words.  Reading Eggs has 120 lessons total in it.

We used reading eggs for my children that have learning disabilities and have a harder time learning and retaining the things they learn.  Reading eggs did really well helping reinforce repetition to learning the letter sounds for my son. He almost has all his letters learned now because this made it fun for him to want to keep practicing even outside the program.  My kids are gamer's so the use of games to help teach was a huge hit with them both.  My daughter enjoys trying to read the digital books and do the quizzes to earn rewards for her games. I think this program along with MathSeeds is great for those kids that do not do as well with other curricula.  The kids are self paced learning and can go at their own pace and go further once they have really learned the lesson.

Reading Eggs also has printable worksheets.  These are good if you need something for your portfolios.  There is also lesson plans if you want to use it for a full stand alone program.  A perk is it is mobile friendly so it is great for on the go learning or if you travel a lot like we do. Plus my kids think anything they can do from the tablet is more fun than pen and paper learning. Also it is affordable at 6 months for $49.95 or you can get Reading Eggs and MathSeeds for a full 12 months for $59.00.

We also looked into Reading Express. My dyslexic daughter knows her letters and sounds but still isn't great at reading the words. So we tried this program too.  It is geared for 7 to 13 year olds. This has more reading and language art skills which is a little bit of a difference pace to work with. It also has worksheets you can print as well too.

Be sure to check out what my other crew members had to say.

Silver Dollar City Festivals

SILVER DOLLAR CITY FESTIVALS TO COME:
FALL: NATIONAL CRAFTS & COWBOY FESTIVAL (September 13 - October 28)
For fall, Silver Dollar City presents the National Crafts & Cowboy Festival, featuring some of the nation's finest craftsmen and authentic cowboys. The festival presents a Wild West Show with trick riders, ropers and a world-champion Native American Hoop dancer; Western music; a barn dance, and 125 visiting craftsmen. Best of Missouri Hands juried artists demonstrate their art and fall harvest foods are served up September 13 - October 28 at the Branson, Missouri theme park.  

NATIONAL CRAFTS & COWBOY FESTIVAL BULLETS:
The Home of American Craftsmanship presents the nation's largest festival of demonstrating craftsmen, with entertainment and activities saluting the Great American Cowboy:

Over 125 visiting craftsmen from around the country demonstrate their art, including Best of Missouri Hands juried artists, all joining Silver Dollar City's 100 demonstrating craftsmen.

Silver Dollar City's Wild West Show features trick riders, Native American dance with 8-time World Champion Native American Hoop Dancer Nakotah LaRance, comedy canines, and trick roper and bullwhip artist A.J. Silver.

Legendary Western actor and watercolor artist Buck Taylor hosts "Buck Taylor's Cowboy Emporium," featuring a variety of Western crafts.

Plus Chuck Wagon & Food Network Chef Kent Rollins and Extreme Mustangs are featured in the Red Gold courtyard.

A Western Barn Dance presents kick-up-your-heels fun, with a live band.

Western music with groups including The Malpass Brothers, The Home Rangers, Belinda Gail and Kristyn Harris, 2016 Western Music Association Entertainer of the Year.

NEW: The nation's pioneer culinary heritage comes to life with campfire cooking and cowboy cuisine, including Cowboy Beef Stew and Dutch Oven Desserts.

This event draws approximately 300,000 visitors each year.
Images at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a9lsvzqpg4bua8m/AAB0rh4aEfOMjLWFjK1VLC5Na?dl=0
Website: www.silverdollarcity.com.
Online press room: http://press.sdcphotos.com


Festival history: Silver Dollar City began the fall crafts festival tradition in 1963, bringing in visiting craftsmen in addition to the park's growing resident crafts colony, with the goal of showcasing the makers along with the finished artwork. More than half a century later, a unique feature still is that all visiting crafters, as with the park's own, demonstrate their work so guests see the process, the skill and the creativity of true craftsmanship. This became the nation's largest festival of demonstrating craftsmen. The focus on authentic craftsmanship was one of the reasons the U.S. Congress in 2010 proclaimed Silver Dollar City the "Home of American Craftsmanship." In addition to craftsmen, Silver Dollar City added features with another American icon several years ago, the cowboy, to carry on the festival as The National Crafts & Cowboy Festival.


AN OLD TIME CHRISTMAS (November 4 - December 30)
Our An Old Time Christmas festival, this year adding a huge new area: Christmas in Midtown, with towering light displays 9 stories high, animated figures in lights, and 1.5 million additional lights, bringing the park total to over 6.5 million lights! Christmas in Midtown is our largest single lighting expansion in the past 20 years of this festival. Details below:

BULLETS:
One of the nation's most acclaimed Christmas festivals, profiled by USA Today, CNN Travel, The Travel Channel and Good Morning America, is even bigger and brighter this year with an all-new area:

NEW: Christmas in Midtown, a 70,000 sq. ft. area filled with new light displays 9 stories high, including 30 angels, animated reindeer pulling a sleigh, 3 light tunnels, two 40-foot long moving trains, dozens of stars and snowflakes, and a 50-foot tree, all created at Silver Dollar City. Christmas in Midtown, the largest single lighting expansion to date in the past 2 decades of the festival, adds 1.5 million new lights, bringing the park's total to 6.5 million lights!

Rudolph's Holly Jolly Christmas Light Parade, led by the most famous reindeer of all, features musical lighted floats with 200,000 lights accompanied by 33 costumed characters.

Rudolph's Christmas Town, where kids can meet Rudolph, Clarice and Bumble, also includes activities from Reindeer Games to cookie decorating.

Two original musical productions present Broadway-style experiences, with elaborate sets and talented casts: It's a Wonderful Life, adapted from the Frank Capra classic, and the acclaimed production A Dickens' Christmas Carol.

The Christmas on Main Street light & sound show features the 5-Story Special Effects Christmas Tree with over 350,000 colorful LED lights.

Tinker Junior's Toy Shop is an interactive show for kids featuring a 12-foot talking and singing Christmas tree.

Kids can meet Santa in Santa Claus Lane, illuminated in colorful lights.

Plus, the festival presents holiday shows, a musical Living Nativity, shows, rides, shopping and new Silver Dollar City dining specialties. 

During An Old Time Christmas, Silver Dollar City is open Thursdays - Sundays, plus Wednesdays Nov. 22 and December 20, and open after Christmas Dec. 26-30. Hours and schedules are at http://www.silverdollarcity.com/theme-park/Festivals/An-Old-Time-Christmas

Christmas images & B-roll: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0es9g0jqpobe3yb/AADDArChF5VdFJ9n42dVY_IIa?dl=0

CTCMath Review

Vendor: CTCMath

Product: CTCMath's Family Membership

Age: K-12


About: I was thrilled to receive CTCMath's Family Membership with my kids, and homeschoolers can get 60% off + 6 bonus months.  You can also try out their free trial. CTCMath is an all online math curriculum that is for children from kindergarten through 12th grade, which is through Calculus.  We were using this for my 7th and 3rd grade students. Each lesson starts with a video, each video is fairly short but do get a bit longer for harder subjects and higher grade levels. After the video there is a quiz to test if you got it. Then there is a worksheet they do online. You get instant scoring so that they can see how well they did and if they need to work on that area more. From the parent portal I can assign whatever topics and grade level things to each child or they can just progress through on their own. I am also able to see their progress and scores. Each week I get an email that gives me a PDF of their weekly progress, which is good if you have a state that requires some information like that.

We really enjoyed this program. I liked the video lessons to start. I think it helped my kids understand better than just a written out explanation of the problems. I did find some areas were still confusing and the video lessons were a bit to short to fully explain so we did have to look up some further explanations on some areas. Overall it met our needs and I think with any program sometimes you will have to look at other ways to solve problems as well. I do suggest have a few hours to be able to navigate the parent portal to find everything and to figure out how to set everyone up and assign things. It took me a bit but I’m kind of slow at figuring all that stuff out. There is also the option to print some of the worksheets out so your child can do them by hand. Which is nice if the child needs some extra help in areas or prefers to work problems out that way.

Overall  I think this is a wonderful product. I think it is very helpful for homeschoolers to be able to have their child to work more independently.  I also think this would be a great curriculum for children that just need extra help in certain areas. You can log onto the parent portal and be able to assign specific areas so you could assign the problem areas to your child to be able to work on those. You can also go back and re-assigned areas that your child needs extra work on if they are doing this as a full curriculum as well. I do think that this would be a great full curriculum to start your child on and go all the way through high school with.








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Six Flags Read to Succeed is Back!

The registration for the Six Flags Read to Succeed is almost back up.  If you want free tickets for you (teacher) and each student you have then be sure to check it out and apply.  We have done this for 2 years now an it is very simple to do.

https://feedback.sixflags.com/rts/default.aspx