Counting Pinecones: HomeSchool Scholastics (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

In the course of homeschooling, there are often subjects that leave parents wondering exactly how to approach it. Reading, writing and arithmetic are pretty straight forward and there is so many various curriculum for different teaching styles available for those subjects but when it comes to subjects like health and physical education, the options are much smaller.

Members of the crew were given the opportunity to review the WAY Comes Home Kit from HomeSchool Scholastics, an i4 Learning Company. The Wellness, Academics & You (WAY) curriculum kit brings a well rounded wellness program designed for grades K through 4th directly to you, including all sorts of goodies to make the learning process fun and interactive. Included are three themes designed for various levels of learning - Health Safari for grades K-1, Me Mysteries for grades 2-3 and Interspace Adventures for grades 3-4.

What We Received

It was Christmas in summer when the mailman delivered a huge box chocked full of all the components for the WAY Comes Home kit. The kids interest was peaked as we unpacked items like an eye chart, stethescope, a plastic scale, plastic counters, plastic eggs, foam balls, a fingerprinting ink pad, plastic baskets, a tape measure, various cards and worksheets, three workbooks, the teachers guide and a DVD.

There's really so much included with this kit.

The Teachers Guide is a 145 page, full color paperback book that walks parents through the entire WAY Comes Home program. The program is broken into five modules that include activities for each of the three academic grade levels. These modules walk parents through teaching students about being active, eating properly and taking responsibility for their own personal health.

The three student workbooks are to be used with the three different academic levels of the kit. There's one for the Heath Safari unit, one to be used with the Me Mystery Unit and the last to be used with the Innerspace Adventure unit. Depending on the level selected, activities range from coloring pages (for younger grades) and research and collecting information from experiments (older grades).

The other various components that are included with the kit are to be used along with the lessons throughout the learning journey. From learning about vision from actually having a eye chart just like what is used in the doctors office, to learning about the human fingerprints but printing themselves and seeing their prints first hand, the hands on activities really help to drive the information in a fun, hands on way.

How We Used It

Testing Our Vision Using the Included Eyechart

From the moment the package was delivered, my house was filled with miniature doctors. The stethoscope was probably the biggest hit and the kids went around the house listening to their own heartbeat, the dogs heartbeat, and any other pet that would stay still long enough for them to get it on them. (Which, I might add, as a healthcare worker, I can attest that the stethoscope works very well). This even allowed us to discuss other topics such as lung sounds, heart rates (which is an activity included in the WAY program), and how illness and actions such as smoking affect both. It was really fun for the kids to get to pretend they were Mom walking into a patients room and doing a patient assessment.

The kids also really enjoyed the activities included about Germs and how they spread disease. This particular module included activities such as learning proper hand washing, covering their mouths when they sneeze or cough, and keeping things clean and free of things that can harbor germs. We did activities from all three academic levels. One activity had the kids drawing a picture of their clean hands versus dirty hands covered in germs. Another asked them to draw a self portrait and to show themselves covering their mouth when they sneeze/cough.

We did modify the Innerspace Adventure activity a bit. That particular activity asked to leave a piece of potato and leave it out for a few days and observe what type of growth occurred. I don't typically keep potatoes in the house. Instead, we kept a dish rag in bowl of dirty water. After two days, we made a slide from the water and took a look under the microscope. The kids were able to see the various "bugs" swimming around in the wet slide. Later down the road, we may indeed grow some moldy potatoes and take a look as well.

Another fun activity that the kids did was to keep track of their weight over the last few weeks, using our bathroom scale. They kept a weekly journal in their workbook of how much their weight changed over the course of a month. They also had fun using the included scale weighing the mass of various objects, including our pet rats. Needless to say, Yuki weighs more than Nicodemus.

Yuki needs to go on a diet, it appears

The fact that the teachers guide and the student workbooks are very light weight, we were able to bring them with us on our camping trip and do some activities while we were out having fun. The kids were able to figure out how to take a resting heart rate and then compare that to what it was after a hike around our campground, as well as keep a log of the nutritional components of our meals and determine whether or not it was a balanced meal (which surprisingly, it was).

We have been having lots of fun using the WAY Comes Home program and it can easily be used as a platform for taking that learning even further. I look forward to using it, as well as the various components, with other learning activities that come up in the future. The only thing we didn't use out of the kit was the glitter, which is used to demonstrate how quickly germs can spread - as I didn't want glitter germs all over my house.