May 3 in 30 Challenge

May is going to be my first month taking part in a challenge called 3 in 30. The idea behind the challenge is to break down your goals and pick 3 to tackle each month  (roughly 30 days). Then with the help of 3 in 30 friends providing you encouragement and accountability you work towards reaching those goals. Here are my May goals, each week I will let you know how I am doing.

1. Start getting my homeschool curriculum put together and organized. I have loads of resources that I have been gathering but it needs to start being organized so when the fall comes and its time to start schooling I will be ready and prepared.
2. Stop using fowl language around my kids. *ashamed of this one* My kids are going to help me with this by utilizing a swear jar. Every time I swear I will put money in a jar for them. I know with money involved they will stay on top of me.
3.Play a game with my kids at least once a week. They are always begging me to play a game with them. My daughters favorite games are guess who and pretty princess. And my sons favorite games are dominoes, memory and *sigh* pretty princess. But between dropping off and picking up my daughter from public pre-k, working part time outside the home, dance once a week, dinner, grocery shopping, household chores, etc. I always get too busy and blow them off and say tomorrow. But then tomorrow comes and its the same story no time tonight guys.

What are your goals for May?

Factor Tree Review

I am a BzzAgent and was recently invited to try out a new program called Factor Tree for FREE for 1 month! With the help of my 5 yr old daughter we gave the program a try and here is our review. This was a great program for us to review since we will be starting Homeschooling in the Fall. She is currently in a public PreK program and has been learning basic math concepts since last Fall. She loves to workbook style learning and being on the computer and Factor Tree definitely offers both!

She enjoyed the placement test and several of the worksheets. But needed my assistance to help her choose her answers. I do not think we will continue to pay ($20 per month) for the service since there are not many worksheets for the Kindergarten level and she has already completed most of them. Personally I feel that $20 a month is a little steep for this program since it has limited worksheets at this time.There are other programs out in the webosphere that are less expensive or free that teach the same material.

I felt more math concepts such as money, patterns, measurments, graphs, basic word problems, basic subtraction and addition should be added to the Kindergarten level worksheets. I understand that we could skip to the next grade but after looking at the 1st grade material I felt it was just too advanced for her.
If Factor Tree was cheaper and added more materials for the Kindergarten level I would definilty consider purchasing it for homeschool purposes. I liked the overall layout of the system and parent section to view the childs progress.

You can try Factor Tree FREE for two weeks by entering the code BZA!