HelpTeaching.com Pro Plan Review

My family had the privilege of trying the Pro Plan of HelpTeaching.com for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

HelpTeaching.com Landing Page.

Whether you homeschool, tutor, are an elementary educator, or just want to have an educational activity for your kids to do after school this year, HelpTeaching.com has got you covered with their vast selection of printable worksheets, printable activity pages, lesson plans, online quizzes, and self-paced online lessons. This website offers hundreds of online printable pages in PDF format and other educational resources accessible through their membership database. This database covers a huge range with subjects in: Arts, Early Education, English Language Arts, Life Skills, Math, Physical Education, Science, Seasonal and Holidays, Social Studies, Study Skills/Strategies, Common Core English Language Arts (ELA), and Common Core Math. They also have Math Worksheet Generators, Printable Game Generators, and Test Maker. They offer content for Pre-K through 12th grade.

HelpTeaching.com Test Maker

HelpTeaching.com Pro Plan is a very affordable option and gives you access to many great features. The price for a Pro Plan membership for teachers and parents is only $24.95 (U.S. Dollars) per year which gives you access to all grade levels. You can create up to 500 student profiles with the Pro Plan and have unlimited access to Test Maker, to create custom tests and worksheets. You can create them with multiple choice, true or false,  fill-in-the-blank, open-ended, or short answer. You can create the tests and worksheets with up to 100 questions and have images in them as well. You can select from their vast library of 1000+ images or upload your own. You can save the custom tests and worksheets as PDFs and have the ability to print them as well. Pro Plan also includes access to the HelpTeaching.com Test Room which lets you administer online tests and lessons. You also have access to premium pre-made content in the subjects above. Their library has over 20,000 Common Core State Standards (CCSS)-aligned questions by standard that you are able to browse and search with Pro Plan. HelpTeaching.com Pro Plan has all these great features for this affordable price.

HelpTeaching.com Tests & Worksheets.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

Since TOS wanted this review of the HelpTeaching.com Pro Plan to focus on the older materials I had my boys who are in 8th and 9th grades use it 3 days a week on average since we got signed up. The middle school and high school sections of HelpTeaching.com focuses on language arts, math, and science. Besides math, ELA, and science we also found tests and worksheets for other subjects too. All printables are listed by grade and subject so they are easy to find. We found a lot of content that went well with what they were already being taught and enhanced their learning even more with media and hands on learning. We were a little disappointed that the Math and English are Common Core Based though.

HelpTeaching.com Online Self-Paced Lessons.

The middle school and high school lessons are meant for self-directed online learning and are set up similarly throughout all subjects. You can easily assign lessons to your student(s) by emailing them. All you do is choose the lesson you want your student to learn, click on the Assign tab or the Share Link tab at the top and follow the instructions. Each lesson starts out with a short introduction. Some contain embedded videos from different sources. They also contain links to other free online resources to help explain the lesson better, online practice questions, and printable worksheets and tests. You can also see which students have taken the lesson if you click the Report tab at the top (of note you do have to set up your individual students through the Online Testing tab first to see this correctly). I love the ability to be able to have my boys work online or have the option of also printing out the worksheets, quizzes, and tests as well.

Since my sons and I are very visual learners we love videos and images that amplify this. We absolutely loved that a lot of the lessons on HelpTeaching.com have embedded videos to help visualize better what is being taught. These videos come from reputable sources like: Khan Academy, Educator.com, Flocabulary.com, Grammar Bytes, and Bozeman Science. They also have original videos from HelpTeaching.com too. If the lesson has media from these sources they have icons for each that easily tells you that they do and from where they come from. Also if they don't have videos the lessons sometimes have images to help visualize too. If you do follow a link off the site just be aware that there might be 3rd party ads.

I do want to point out that HelpTeaching.com doesn't host a complete curriculum of subject matter on their website, so it should primarily be used for supplemental content only. They are, however, adding new content regularly. We hope they add a History section soon to the lessons and more science! Also, you can create your own content through the Pro Plan as well which is a big plus if you don't see what you are looking for already.

Delbin doing a Biology Lesson on Fungi.

My son, Delbin, who is in 9th grade is in Biology right now so even though these lessons are listed for 10th and 11th grade we found them perfect for supplemental learning to go along with what we are teaching him. We didn't find much listed in the 9th grade section, but 10th and 11th grade stuff was more abundant. He loved playing the BioGames and watching the videos. We had him go from the beginning for review and online science practice. We found that their curriculum for Biology is fairly complete.

Jaedan doing a Earth Science Lesson on Igneous Rock.

My son, Jaedan, who is in 8th grade is in Earth Science. He loved the lessons on Erosion, Layers of the Atmosphere, etc. He especially loved the videos and virtual labs that were included with the lessons. There were a lot of interactive things to make the lessons more fun. We also let him go onto 9th grade lessons in Earth Science too because he advanced quickly through the 8th grade lessons.

HelpTeaching.com is great for online math, ELA, and science practice or use for supplement. They have a great selection of middle school and high school lessons, tests, and assessments. We enjoyed using HelpTeaching.com and will continue to explore its growing content.

BUY IT
You can try a limited amount of features out for yourself with a free membership. This gives you complete access to their Test Maker with up to 10 questions, but you are limited to a number of tests/worksheets you can store on their site. The Pro Plan of HelpingTeaching.com is just $24.95/year and gives you up to 100 questions with many other features too. You can pay with a credit card, debit card, or PayPal. They accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. See more specifics here.

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Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/helpteaching
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Read other homeschool curriculum reviews for HelpTeaching.com...

Super Teacher Worksheets Individual Membership Review

My family had the privilege of trying the Super Teacher Worksheets Individual Membership for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

Whether you homeschool, are an elementary educator, or just want to have an educational activity for your kids to do after school this year, Super Teacher Worksheets has got you covered with their vast selection of worksheets and activity pages. This website offers hundreds of online printable pages in PDF format from their membership database. This database covers a huge range with subjects in: Math, Reading, Writing, Phonics & Early Literacy, Handwriting, Grammar, Spelling Lists & Worksheets (Gr. 1-5), Foreign Language, Music & Art, Health & Safety, Science, Social Studies, Holidays, Puzzles & Brain Teasers, Teacher Helpers, Pre-K & Kindergarten, and even Make Your Own Worksheets. The majority of these are geared towards Pre-K through 6th grade.

Super Teacher Worksheets (STW) is a very affordable option for homeschoolers, teachers, educators, parents, and caretakers of children. The price for an individual membership is only $19.95 (U.S. Dollars) per year. This individual membership lets you easily navigate the whole website and download as many printables as you would like during that time to print them out or save them into your own STW Filing Cabinet so that you may download and print them out at a later time if you choose.

Navigation of the Super Teacher Worksheets website is pretty straightforward. Once you log in to the database you will see your name at the top and when your membership is active through. This is a great reminder of when you will need to renew your membership of your account. This along with the STW banner (clickable, to get you back to the homepage), account, renew, logout and filing cabinet buttons, and a search bar are always at the top for easy access. The homepage has some of the main subjects listed as headings with links for more specific categories under them. For example; for the Math heading it would have Addition, Algebra (Basic), Area, Counting Money, Decimals, and so on as the more specific categories with links that head to those pages. If you go to one of these pages you can find even more specific narrowed down categories within these pages, some having links to more pages and others having the view PDF link under them. From beneath most worksheet name, description, and grade level you can select the view PDF button (which will open the PDF file to be able to print it and/or download it), CC icon (if there will open a pop up that tells you about the common core standards alignment; including the code that goes with it and a brief description of what is learned), lang icon (if there will open a pop up that tells you other languages the worksheet is available in; English and Spanish), magnifying glass looking icon (which will open a pop up that lets you preview a tiny version of the file before you open the actual one), and file folder icon (which lets you add the file to your STW Filing Cabinet). Once you have saved a file to your virtual filing cabinet the file folder icon on the page you found the file on will be highlighted so that you will know that you have it already saved. It really is easier to find things than I just described and you can always use the search bar located at the top of each page too.

You can also make your own worksheets with the various worksheet generators. You can make your own: math pages, games (flashcards, BINGO), puzzles (crosswords, word searches, word scrambler, missing letters), quiz generators (multiple choice, matching, fill in the blanks, short answer/essay), and teaching tools (classroom newsletter, calendars).  Members can save their generated worksheets in their virtual filing cabinet too!

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

In my homeschool my youngest two girls are the only ones still in elementary school. My daughter, Teela, is in 2nd grade and my daughter, Zari, is in Pre-K. So I used the Super Teacher Worksheets website with them. They both love homeschool and enjoy doing worksheets and activity sheets.

Zari doing the autumn Super Teacher Worksheets I printed for her.

The Super Teacher Worksheets website has some seasonal pages on their homepage. These rotate depending upon the season that it is in the year. I found some autumn/fall ones that were age/grade appropriate for my daughters and printed them out for them to work on. I am so glad they list what grade level each worksheet is supposed to be for. Zari needed practice with her fine motor skills using scissors and cutting paper so I thought that the leaf and pumpkin mini-books would be great for her because she would be learning counting, colors, and cutting skills. She kept saying she loved her little books she made. I was happy she liked building them so much. She loves working on homeschool work when her siblings are also doing theirs. Zari also did the color-by-number scarecrow. She knows her colors well, but couldn't read the words for each color yet, so I colored each word the color they were supposed to be to help her. She is also working on learning her numbers by sight. The color-by-number scarecrow that I printed for Teela was slightly more advanced and had her subtract numbers to get the number that the section was supposed to be colored. I also printed out a color-by number squirrel that had her subtract numbers to get the answers. These were too easy for her, but she had fun doing them. I also printed out an Autumn is awesome crossword puzzle and pages for reading comprehension called Nature's Rainbow.

Teela working on some of the Super Teacher Worksheets for Autumn.

Zari working on her skills cutting with scissors with Super Teacher Worksheets.

Since Zari needed to learn scissor skills I found pages just for that for her under the Pre-K and Kindergarten section. She loves cutting out things and asked for more pages to cut out. She cut shapes, curvy wavy lines, zigzag lines, and straight lines. She did very well for her first time cutting on the lines.

Make sure to print preview before printing Super Teacher Worksheets.

I printed out an Alphabet Picture Book for Zari as well so she could color, trace uppercase letters and some words that begin with the letters. As I was printing the first page I noticed that it didn't print properly (just printed boxes where other things should have been), so I stopped the printing right away. I am glad I was watching because I would have printed out 28 pages of weird boxes instead of what it was supposed to be. I looked at the print preview and sure enough it wasn't liking something in the code. I instead downloaded the PDF instead of just opening the one directly from on the site, then I printed it and everything printed fine. I am not sure why this happened, but I wanted to make sure my readers knew about this. Before printing out something from Super Teacher Worksheets make sure the print preview is looking good for all the pages you are printing.

Zari working on the Super Teacher Worksheets ABC Book.

We love Super Teacher Worksheets! It is, like I mentioned above, very affordable and they seem to have a worksheet or activity page for everything for elementary school students right in one easy to access website. I love that you don't have to dig around and search the whole internet for something that goes with what you are teaching. We had so many more worksheets and activity pages that we printed for our girls to work on. I also love that most of their worksheets have a answer sheet with them so the teacher/educator can check the student's work easily and quickly. They have so many different worksheets and activity pages to choose from. We are going to use this a lot throughout the year. This is certainly a wonderful resource right at my finger tips.

BUY IT
The price for a individual membership for Super Teacher Worksheets is only $19.95 (U.S. Dollars) per year.

Follow Them on Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/superteacherworksheets
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Read other homeschool curriculum reviews for Super Teacher Worksheets...

Invent It Board Game

I would like to introduce y'all to a unique board game called Invent It. This game is great for anyone looking to plug into their creative, imaginative, inventive, nerdy or entrepreneurial side. It is great for homeschoolers, teachers, parents, families, children, or really anyone who likes to play board games. My husband's cousin, Ross, designed this game. Please go check it out on Kickstarter. Your support in backing this project will help with the production tremendously. Thanks!

"Unleash your inner genius with this unique game! Invent, build, draw & describe your invention with healthy competition, trivia & more!"

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER:  This is a shameless plug for my husband's cousin. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any compensation for posting this. I did, however; back the project myself and would love it if you would do the same. Thank you for your support.

Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program

I have fond memories of the Pizza Hut http://www.pizzahut.com/ BOOK IT! Program http://www.bookitprogram.com/. I still have my purple button with the white open book and rainbow tucked away in my button box (a box full of fun pins, buttons and pretty brooches).

When I was little we rarely ate out at restaurants. My mom was a great cook and had the time to cook meals for us. Eating out was saved when we were spoiled rotten by our Grandmother when she came to visit us or we came to visit her. Those days were few and far in between.

I went to public school when I was growing up. When the teacher handed out the Book It! buttons and explained we could get a Personal Pan Pizza from Pizza Hut (what a tongue twister!)  for free if we read books I was thrilled! This free pizza would be  the bonus I needed in between Grandmother visits. I loved reading anyway so it was easy and worth it.

In order to get the pizza you also needed to get a total of 5 yellowish gold star stickers to add to the button. These stickers were kinda small and hard to apply to the button accurately. I remember them sticking more to the tips of my fingers and less to the button. I also remember loosing a few before I ended up putting a piece of tape over them to better secure them in place.

I read and read to get those stars and finally got my personal pan pizza. Those were the days...

Well little do most know, the Book IT! Program is still going strong AND it is not only offered to teachers in public or private schools, but also parents and caregivers like me that homeschool their kids. I know that it is a promotional gimmick for parents to buy more pizza while they are at Pizza Hut, but I still support it because it is a great incentive for my kids to read...not that they don't already like crazy.

All you have to do to sign up is this... Go to the enrollment form, pick which type of school you teach at and fill it out. It is that simple! Go ahead and help your child/student read their hearts out. Hurry to enroll though because you only have until Sept. 1st to sign up. The program will run from Oct. - March of the 2012/13 school year and is available for kids in grades Kindergarten through 6th grade. It is completely free and totally fun!

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I wrote this blog post because I thought you might be interested in knowing this information and taking part of this opportunity. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any compensation for doing this post.

Greeting and Awards Cards Free For Teachers From Tiny Prints

I went to public school as a child and I remember a fantastic teacher that stood out above the rest in elementary school. It is hard to believe that I remember that far back so vividly, but I remember my Kindergarten teacher. Her name was Mrs. Devito and she was great! I remember learning a lot in her class. In the classroom she had a loft where we had reading on the top and could play house underneath. We learned through her and a make believe astronaut named Astro how to count up to 100, our ABC's, etc. Astro would have a grab bag once we mastered a new skill to pick something special out of. I wrote to Mrs. Devito later on while I was in Jr. high and thanked her for being a great and memorable teacher. She actually wrote me back saying that she enjoyed my letter and that the loft probably was a lot smaller than I remember :)

Tiny Prints, recognized for their online premium stationery, starts off the school year with an exclusive new collection of greeting cards designed just for teachers.

To honor teachers everywhere who are preparing for their school year, Tiny Prints has designed 6 different greeting cards. Teachers can send each student a personalized welcome greeting card, connect with their student's parents with a thank you card and celebrate their students with award cards. Tiny Prints is offering these personalized greeting cards for free starting Monday, August 2nd through October 31, 2010. Teachers will just need to apply the code: Apple2010 at checkout. Go HERE.

DISCLOSURE: By posting this post I am participating in a blogging contest by Global Influence Network to automatically be entered to win one of five $50 Tiny Prints gift cards that will be awarded by random draw. The first two posts submitted will each receive a $50 Visa gift card! Go HERE to find out more.