Imagidice from Timberdoodle Review {1st Grade Curriculum Kit}

Today we are going to take a closer look at one of the language arts components in our 1st Grade Elite Curriculum Kit from Timberdoodle, Imagidice.  I absolutely love the concept of these dice.  They are designed to inspire imaginative storytelling without the burden writing, spelling, etc. so they are great for younger children.  They are a huge hit here in our home!

Our Imagidice

 

What's included with Imagidice?  Our set contains 12 unique dice, a sturdy storage tin and a guidelines booklet for how-to-play.  Each dice has six unique images that are etched onto each face and then painted black to add to their durability.  So this gives you 72 different images.  I like the black and white contrast as it makes the pictures easy to recognize.

Each of the 12 dice corresponds to a theme:  sky (star, moon, sun, etc.), places (forest, home, mountain, etc.), food (fruits, mushroom, cake, etc.), emotions (love, surprise, sadness, etc.), actions (to walk, to think, to sleep, etc.), fantastic (dragon, ghost, fairy, etc.), human body (mouth, eye, nose, etc.), animals (spider, horse, snake, etc.), hobbies (cooking, music, art, etc.), travel (plane, train, globe, etc.), everyday life (money, ball, bed, etc.) and history (castle, volcano, magnifying glass, etc.).  There are some pictures that are open-ended in that they can trigger multiple associations.  If the kids "see" the dice differently than I do we go along with their interpretation.  I love how creative they can be!

 

F and G rolling the dice.

How to play?  This game is simple really.  Throw the dice and then along with the other players, come up with a story using the pictures on the dice.  This is not a game with winners or losers and there really aren't any hard and fast rules.  You can use as many or as few dice as you wish.  You can start with just a few dice with younger players until they get the hang of it and then add in more as you go.  This is a fun way to help kids engage their imagination and encourage vocabulary growth and verbal expression while playing.  The game ends when all the dice have been used.  Another fun variant is to use these dice to play memory.  Decide how many dice you want to use and roll them.  Everyone looks at the pictures for a desired amount of time, let's say 30 seconds.  The dice are then hidden and players see how many pictures they remember.

E rolling the dice and getting in on the fun!

Imagidice are geared for ages 4 and up and can be used with 2-12 players.  The average time per game is 20 minutes but I think this can vary greatly.  Imagidice are great for helping kids with problem-solving skills, building vocabulary, and encouraging language and storytelling skills.

This was one of their rolls and they put them in order of the story they created.  Check out the video of the three of them below telling you their story 💓.

Imagidice is part of our Timberdoodle's 1st Grade Curriculum Kit and we highly recommend it!  I'm thankful to have this as one of our homeschool resources and we will definitely continue to use them throughout this school year.  This would also make a unique and educational gift as well.

Extra ideas for playing Imagidice

 

In the First Grade Handbook (included in our kit), there are lots of ideas for additional uses for Imagidice.  I really appreciate these extra suggestions for using our Imagidice in various ways.

Disclosure:  Huge shout out to Timberdoodle for selecting me as a Timberdoodle Blogger.  I will be refunded the purchase price of our curriculum kit in exchange for my honest reviews.  All opinions are my own.

Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level B from Institute for Excellence in Writing® Review

{Disclaimer:  I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.  This post contains affiliate links.}


If you have been in the homeschool community for any amount of time, chances are good that you have at least heard of the Institute for Excellence in Writing® (or IEW® for short) and their writing curriculum.  We were so blessed to receive their Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level B (grades 6-8) to use in our own homeschool!

D and C with their binders.

C (8th grade) and D (6th grade) will be using this program throughout this school year.  A, B and D have all participated in IEW through our weekly homeschool CoOp in the past.  A and D have taken 1 year, while B has taken 2 years.  C has never taken an IEW writing course so this will be his first time using the program.

What's included in this course?  Our physical kit contained a teacher's manual, a student packet and binder, and a card with a unique code for forever digital streaming video instruction.

Our physical kit

Inside the student binder are tabs so everything in the student packet gets organized as you progress on throughout the year.

While there is an option to purchase DVDs if desired, I love that we have unlimited online access to all the videos for our entire family so I don't have to store them or worry about misplacing them.  The student packet is consumable but can be reproduced within your immediate family.  I went ahead and ordered an extra student binder and packet this go around instead of making copies to make my life easier and to give C and D each their own binder.  IEW makes this process easy!

C and D's student binders

What is IEW® and how does their writing program work?  This program uses a unique approach by providing structure for students to learn.  The goal is to help students build confidence in their writing while also moving towards more independence and creativity in their own writing.  The nine structural models used are note taking, writing paragraphs, stories, simple reports, writing from pictures, research reports, creating writing, essays, and critiques.  These models will give students the tools to organize any type of composition they may come across.  I personally love the stylistic techniques that students learn incrementally to help develop more sophisticated writing - these include strong verbs, quality adjectives, sentence openers, various clauses and more!

This course is divided into 24 weeks and is easy to use.  I say this because I feel like most people are intimidated by writing programs and teaching writing but IEW is user friendly and is organized extremely well.  They have put the work into this program and it shows!  

 

 You guys know I love a good Scope and Sequence.  Above is the first page.  It tells you which week each stylistic technique will be introduced as you can see that the -ly adverb appears in week 2 and the who/which clause appears in week 3.  I really appreciate the literature suggestions as well.

D and C with the 1st literature book suggestion, The Twenty-One Balloons

There are daily assignments for each week.  They even show you how to adapt this schedule for a one-day-a-week program, a two-or three-day-a-week program or a four-or-five-day-a-week program.  These schedules give you a lot of flexibility to use this program how it fits your needs best.  I really appreciate the lesson plans for teachers!

Above you can see the lesson overview for Unit 1, Week 1

You can see that students will watch the 1st video this week broken into two parts.  Students will write about their home and save their paper for the last week of the program (it's a before and after type experiment).  They will write a KWO, or key word outline, from a few sources with the class (on the video).  And they will tell about that source from their KWO.

The video dashboard is easy to navigate as you just select the video you need.

Andrew Pudewa is the instructional teacher on the videos.  He is funny and super easy to relate to.  Above, you can see him walking students through the process of creating their first KWO.

A KWO example with the Source Text

I also want to mention that IEW has a companion grammar program that fits extremely well alongside Structure and Style and that is their Fix It! Grammar program.  You may remember our review of their 1st book in the series, The Nose Tree.  We enjoyed it so much that we will be using their 2nd book, Robin Hood this year alongside this program.

Our Fix It! Grammar Book 2 Set

I really like that the Structure and Style daily schedule includes the Fix It! Grammar program as well.

I mentioned that I'm using this Level with C and D.  I also went ahead and purchased Level C (which is in post production) to use with A and B this year for high school as well.  I'm hoping to receive it at the end of this month.  If it's not obvious, I'm a huge IEW® fan!  If you are looking for a well rounded writing curriculum for your students, I cannot think of a program that I would recommend more.

Be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read even more reviews of IEW®'s Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level B as well as reviews for their Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level A (Grades 3-5) and stay tuned for reviews of their Structure and Style® for Students Year 1 Level C (High School).

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