As a homeschooling mom, I was really excited to try IBW Books a new system to help my two oldest with learning. I'm not sure what I expected when I agreed to do this review, but when I received the material in the mail, to be honest they weren't what I expected. The books themselves were simple booklets. The books are printed in black and white and there are no pictures in the books. For my oldest, I appreciated the fact that there was no pictures. Often, I find that pictures sometime distracts her reading time. However, as we started reading the book, she really struggled with wanting to read it. My husband and I were thinking she might have been intimiated by the longer page with all words. She struggled through reading it, but ultimately did make it through. I found the English/Spanish version printed side by side very distracting to me. So, we often read with the book flipped back. I did like that the family words were printed on the back. We reviewed those before starting and that did help with reading. When we did the webscene it seemed a little young for my six year old. We went over the words and then she was pretty much done with it and ready to move on.

My 3 year old is working on identification of letters by sight. Before using the book which focused on the letters G and H, I checked out the online aspect, as well as read thru the booklet. I did not care for the webscene and was not sure that my daughter would like it either. When we did get to that part of the lesson, she enjoyed looking at it and going over the scene more then what I expected. However, when we did the book part (we did that first before doing the webscene) she did not seem to like the poem and the activity that went along with it. I think because there were no pictures in the book, she lost interest from the beginning and it was hard to get her focus on the poem. Both of my girls enjoyed playing around with the ABC-TRACE. Even though my oldest can write letters just find, she enjoyed playing around with that part of the site just as much as my 3 year old.

Overall, I think the Interactive Books are a good idea. I personally could not see doing the whole series with each of my girls. With my oldest, I think it took to much to get her to focus on the story due to the lack of pictures. The same goes for my 3 year old. Although I love that its laid out for you with a story/poem and an activity, it just seems to be missing that small little thing to keep her intersted in it from start to finish. The materials for this review were provided

Written by Kim on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
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