My family had the privilege of trying three AV2 books from Weigl Publishers for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.
Weigl Publishers started in 2010 with 53 AV2 titles. Now they have close to 500 titles in their ever growing catalog. The AV2 books have titles that cover science, social studies, language arts, visual arts, sports, etc. These media enhanced audio visual digital books have audio clips, video clips, embedded web-links for further research and interactive activities, 'Try This!' learning activities, key words activity interactive word matching to teach vocabulary, quizzes for self assessment, and slide show. This pairs books with online interactive content that brings the books to life and makes learning more fun. Each book has a digital code that unlocks the multimedia content. You will need internet access to get to the multimedia content. You have access to this content indefinitely, it is not a subscription. This is great for homeschooling for self directed learning.
The AV2 Books We Received:
- Glaciers from the series "Earth's Water" published under their imprint Lightbox and intended for a grades 3-6 interest range.
- A Lion's World belonging to their “EyeDiscover" series, intended for a K-2 interest range.
- There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant, a fiction title, intended for a K-2 interest range.
How We Used This and Our Thoughts:
We received a PDF for each eBook. Once downloaded this gave us access to the multimedia content associated with each one with instructions inside the eBook to go to a website and enter a code. These looked like so much fun with all of their interactive components. I checked out each of these books and their extra features with my daughters who aged are 7 and 10.
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| Lightbox Glaciers eBook cover. |
The first book we checked out was Glaciers from the series "Earth's Water" published under Weigl Publisher's imprint Lightbox. This is intended for a grades 3-6 interest range. It is a 23 page eBook represented on 15 PDF pages. After going to the link it says in the book you can type in the digital code it gives you. The digital code has to be typed in without spaces. After answering a security question it goes on to the media enhanced book online. This showed us a Lightbox Glaciers Menu that has the same pages as the PDF eBook, but with more interactive content. You can flip through this like you would an online book using the arrows.
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| Lightbox Glaciers Menu online. |
The icons are easy to follow. Each page has a diamond shaped button to go back to the menu and an audio icon that when clicked will have a computer voice read you the book at the top left of the book. You have the option of doing this or reading the book on your own. The voice is robotic sounding so it wasn't our favorite. Some pages have other icons as well at the top left of the book, for example: the triangle icon plays a movie, the earth icon goes to an external link, the pen icon is an activity PDF you can download, the stack of papers icon starts an interactive graphic/transparency, the icon that looks like rectangles lined up opens a slide show, the g icon shows where stuff is on google maps. At the bottom left there are icons for going to the home page and accessing the Lightbox supplementary resources. At the top right there is an icon that shrinks and grows an area of the page if needed to zoom in or out or magnify it. Throughout the book there are underlined bold vocabulary words you can click on and it will popup a definition. Close to the end there is an interactive quiz you can have your student so online or alternatively you can download it in PDF format for printing. At the end there is a key icon that gives you access to a online keyword quiz with multiple choice you can bubble in or you can download a PDF version. There is also a science experiment at the end that you can do. This book is fantastic and very interactive with the reader. My daughter Teela especially loved the interactive transparencies and this book was perfect for her since it was right at her 4th grade level. It is also packed with great content about Glaciers and we learned a lot. This would be a great book paired with a unit study of the same or similar subject.
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| EyeDiscover A Lion's World eBook cover. |
The next book we checked out was A Lion's World belonging to their “EyeDiscover" series. This is intended for a K-2 interest range. It is a 24 page eBook represented on 15 PDF pages. After going to the link it says in the book you can type in the digital code it gives you. The digital code has to be typed in without spaces. After answering a security question it goes on to the media enhanced book online. The first page it brings you to tells the student what they are going to be learning in a pleasant woman's voice, then you can start reading by clicking an arrow. It also has a lion image that moves and roars silently. The woman's voice proceeds to read the book for you if you do not click the audio icon to mute. If you click on the book icon you can see thumbnails of the PDF pages of the eBook. In each page in this media enhanced book you have to mute the lady's voice in order to read the book on your own. You can also make the page full screen by clicking the square with arrow icon. Each page you come to of the online version of this book has high-definition moving pictures. They bring the book to life. The last pages in the PDF show us facts about lions by numbers and keywords by sight words and content words. This wasn't as interactive as the Glaciers book, but it is written for a younger age group so I thought that was fine. We did wish after we muted the voice on the first page it stayed mute when we turned the page, but it didn't. My daughter Zari loves the moving pictures on the pages of the lions and the text was just at her speed since she is in first grade. It had some great facts about lions that my daughter didn't know and it was easy for her to read or read along if she wanted. This would also be a great book paired with a unit study of the same or similar subject.
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| A Lion's World eBook shows features to the EyeDiscover AV2 book. |
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| AV2 Fiction Readalong There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant eBook cover. |
The final book we checked out was a fiction reader called There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant. This is intended for a K-2 interest range. It is a 32 page eBook represented on 19 PDF pages. After going to the link it says in the book you can type in the digital code it gives you. The digital code has to be typed in without spaces. After answering a security question it goes on to the media enhanced book online. The first page it comes to has a big start button to click and that will open the AV2 book full screen.
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| AV2 Readalong Navigation. |
You will have two options to choose from in this book: Read to Me and Read by Myself. The Read to Me version is a lot of fun. My daughter Zari loved this version. It had wonderful narration and fun sound effects. It also highlighted whole sentences/paragraphs as it reads. You can also pause it if needed. The Read by Myself version lets you read the words on the page to yourself or if you mouse over them it will read them as they would be in the other version. My daughters loved the cowboy's voice and even though the pictures weren't animated the sound effects made it more fun. This book was definitely farfetched, but very entertaining and is an spinoff of The Little Old Lady That Swallowed a Fly story. We enjoyed it very much.
Weigl Publishers AV2 books are interactive and fun. We are very glad we got to review these and hope to be able to review for Weigl Publishers again. We highly recommend these books for homeschooling or just to purchase for reading.
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