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! 

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First Start Reading Review

First Start Reading from Memoria Press is one of our favorite homeschool curriculums that we've had the pleasure of reviewing. Memoria Press provides homeschoolers with a classical Christian education. One thing I like about First Start Reading is that secular homeschoolers (like us) can use it too! This reading and writing curriculum focuses solely on phonics lessons, with built in writing, drawing and coloring activities. Teachers will put an emphasis on correct pencil grip and letter sounds during instructions.

My daughter has been doing so well with First Start Reading! She loves that she can easily access the books and use them independently, even without a teacher (me). She is still on Book A, but she's already finished several lessons from it. Each lesson is only one page in the student book, not including the coloring page that faces it. She loves that the writing lessons are paired with a coloring page. The coloring pages and drawing prompts are themed to match the letter or word for the lesson. I would suggest keeping a couple pencils and either crayons or colored pencils available to use with the student workbooks.

Typically she traces the letters, and then uses a white board to practice writing them on her own.

For this lesson, it asked to answer her name and to draw a self-portrait. I provided a mirror for her to look into while working on this page. She wrote her name on her own and proceeded to draw a jellyfish, since at the time, she had been pretending to be a jellyfish.

Here's how I taught lessons using First Start Reading: I started by reading the lesson plan in the teacher's book, then modified it to our teaching methods. I used a white board and sat next to my daughter (who used the student workbook), so she could see how I wrote letters and words (since she's a visual learner). My son sat on my other side and practiced writing letters in his salt tray (since he's a kinesthetic learner). Even though he did not follow this curriculum with us using a workbook, he still enjoyed participating in some of the lessons.

Because First Start Reading focused on phonics, the step-by-step instructions were great for teaching how to understand and recognize letter sounds. This product also blends phonics reading lessons with writing lessons, and we find that dual lessons like this work best for our family. We work on phonics by reading the letters and words out loud, sounding them out, and quizzing each other on sounds.

First Start Reading is different from other phonics curriculums because it uses the more traditional vowel-consonant approach and combines it with word families. We typically learn word families by using homemade sight word cards (which we also use for phonics). I find coloring and drawing exercises to be really relaxing when combined with worksheets, so I was happy to see some offered in these books. There are also games and activity suggestions in the teacher guide to help with lessons.

First Start Reading teaches:
- consonant, short vowels, and long vowels
- 45 common words (we created flash cards for them)
- manuscript printing
- coloring and drawing activities

If you have the complete set, your child or student will work through four student workbooks, which covers thirty-one phonetic stories. We've been reading a lot of phonics books lately, so my daughter immediately recognized what the stories were teaching her. I find that rhymes, phonetic books and word building flash cards help with our lessons. I will always suggest reading Dr. Seuss books before or after literacy lessons (or at least at some point during the day), because they are not only fun to read, but you'll learn a lot from listening to them.



The First Start Reading set is available from Memoria Press for $42.95 or you can purchase the student set for $28.00. The student workbooks and the teacher's guide can also be purchased individually. I personally really like the whole set and would see it as a good investment.

You may be interested in these articles: Why First Start Reading and What is the Classical Approach to Phonics? by Cheryl Lowe. Both of these articles are informative and helped me to learn more about this curriculum choice!

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