La La Logic Review

We received a lifetime membership to La La Logic to review. La La Logic is an online homeschooling resource, which covers 100 weeks worth of lessons for preschoolers. La La Logic is prefect for children ages 3-6. When you purchase an account, it can be used by the whole household or up to five children. While the curriculum does last 100 weeks, it does not expire. Your subscription lasts a lifetime, which means you can use it for future children, too. The lessons are grouped by weeks, but you can use the curriculum at your own pace. So if it takes you two weeks to complete one lesson, that's fine, while another week you may complete two weeks worth of lessons in a couple days. Work at the pace that's best for your child. Online lessons can be completed in 5-10 minutes or longer. Offline activities can take 10-30 minutes. Usually we spend 30 minutes a day using La La Logic's curriculum, including online and offline activities. Both children have a tablet, so they don't have to take turns and can work on the lessons at the same time. 

There are so many different types of activities! Preschoolers will not be bored with this curriculum! There are 20 sets divided into 5 lessons each, for a total of 500 Brain Challenges. Each lesson also comes with worksheets and enrichment activities, which may require child-safe scissors, glue and crayons (or other writing/drawing utensils). Other enrichment lessons may need items that you have around the house. My kids usually use our felt storyboard while I read the story. Otherwise we might create a small world or sensory bin based on the story. I typically read the story while they listen and play (I find that they concentrate better when their hands are busy). I'll ask them questions about the reading afterwards. The next day I'll ask them about the story and write down what they remember. Bean enjoys retelling the stories. However, Munchkin usually completely changes the story. Inspired by these activities, we have begun playing telephone, which is a good way to work on listening skills. 

Examples of printable worksheets.

The kids definitely preferred using La La Logic on their iPad's. It's easier to drag images using their fingers. Neither of them like using the computer because they are hindered by the mouse. Munchkin sometimes uses the laptop with me, and he just points at the screen and I drag the images using the touch pad. I love that we can use La La Logic on all of our devices, but I would really love to see them come out with an app as well. Even if it was just for the Extra Practice activities.

There are many different types of early learning lessons available. Some focus on literacy.


Others focus on math and reasoning skills.


Problem solving and critical thinking activities are especially fun to solve when they feature adorable robots! Munchkin could spend hours on this one activity!

Munchkin wanted to work on his pencil grip, so instead of cutting the pictures out and grouping them (which Bean did), he drew circles around the matching pictures and connected them by lines. I watched him and spoke to him about the connections. The three groups were: food, instruments, and pets. We worked on correct pencil grip, which doesn't always happen, but I still encourage it. 

For this activity, Munchkin made the matches using different colored crayons. 

Observations and tips: - I overlooked the check box that marks your child's progress. So for several weeks I was wondering why the progress still showed 0/100.  - Print off the lessons at the beginning of the week, or even print off the whole month in advance. I created a folder for each of my children. There isn't a printable for every day (Monday-Friday), but there is a check list that helps you stay organized.  - The extra practice section has many activities that help students who may be struggling. I prefer to use the extra practice games while we are out and about. It let's them continue working on the skills they are learning while we're running errands.  - Older children may prefer to work independently, while younger children will probably do best with their parents helping. Munchkin typically worked on my lap. Bean worked on her own and asked for help when she needed it.  - The best part of La La Logic is how affordable it is! Only $29 for the whole household, or for up to five children. And it's a lifetime subscription! There's a 30 day money-back guarantee and you can even try it out for free! Needless to say, we really loved La La Logic! We use it mainly for quiet time activities. Munchkin prefers it more than Bean. She quickly masters all of her lessons so she can move on, but Munchkin enjoys taking his time. He will work through problems several times before moving on to the next lesson. I highly suggest this curriculum for any parents with preschoolers, even non-homeschoolers! 

Be Social!

Facebook

Growing Apple Seeds

Back in December, we picked up a package of organic apples. On a whim, we saved some of the seeds. We wanted to experiment and see if we could get them to germinate over the winter. We cleaned the seeds and let them dry overnight, then we took a couple napkins and let them soak in water. We put the seeds in between two layers of napkins and them put them inside a ziploc and sealed it. Then we put it in the fridge and forgot about it. Three days ago we pulled them out and the kids were amazed to see that the seeds had sprouted! 

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links for your convenience.

I carefully peeled the napkins away from the seeds. Usually you would take them out of the fridge as soon as they started to sprout, but it's fine that they were in there an extra month.. or two. I read somewhere that only 30% of seeds germinate. I think we got lucky, because all but three of the seeds germinated! (You can see them on the left near the bottom.)

Originally I was going to use a longer container, but then I realized it might be too shallow for some of the roots. So instead I used this deeper container and regular organic potting soil (no fertilizer needed). Once they begin to outgrow this container we will put them in individual pots. It's just to hold them over for a couple months until they are strong enough to survive outside. At which point, we will probably plant them in our kiddie pool garden, which survived the winter, but needs some new life!

Bean loved planting the sprouts and was so careful with them! She also compared them to her Safari Ltd Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant figures, which look similar enough. I think it would be really cool if Safari Ltd expanded their Life Cycle series and made a tree and flower set. Tomorrow we will be drawing the sprouts in our nature journal and begin working on our Forest for the Trees workbook (look out for our TOS Crew review in a few weeks). We are very excited to learn about how trees grow!

Our sprouts are so cute and we really hope we are able to watch them all grow up! We will be bringing them outside with us on really sunny days, but otherwise they will sit in our sunniest window, where they can be easily observed.

We still have a lot to learn about raising apple trees, but we are excited about this living project and can't wait to share our experiences with you!