Product Reviews October 2005

This month's products are:

Good Year Books
Delta of USA
Creative Teaching Press
Flippers
Magazines
Putumayo Kids

Good Year Books are back!
Those much-loved handbooks for teachers are now being published by a new publisher from Tucson, AZ, and you're really going to be thankful. The whole line is being evaluated, revised, updated…and expanded.

Among the first efforts to arrive in our offices were Inclusive Classroom (for grades three to nine). It's subtitled A Practical Guide for Educators and it certainly is all of that. Nine helpful chapters cover getting started, managing behaviors, teamwork with parents, teacher teamwork, making modifications work and suggestions for initiating differentiated instruction.

This book has the advantage of being new and includes terrific hands-on information that was not always included in the first crush of books that were published when "inclusion" became a hot topic. This one is $17.95 (plus s/h).

Our best advice is for you to go to Good Year's website (see below) and have a ball. This publisher is doing a very nice job. Books are also available at your local school supply dealer.
Good Year Books
www.goodyearbooks.com

---

For art and fun
We saw the neatest sand at the spring NSSEA show. It's called Deltasand Lightweight and it never dries out. There's a special binding agent that mixes with sand and produces this marvel. The mixture works as a combination of wet sand and clay – but there's no need to add water – allowing kids to build models and to carve them. The models built will not crack or shrink.

This product can be used just as it comes for soft uses, but when put into an oven, it's transformed into a synthetic-like stone and can be carved. Even the material that is carved away can be reused as it never dries out.

A Swedish company is the manufacturer of this material and we really suggest you look at the various products they offer. Prices vary for quantities and products.
Delta of USA
www.deltasand.com

---

Reading for Fluency
Do you have a lot of "word callers" in your K-2 classrooms? Well, Creative Teaching Press has produced a terrific antidote: it's their Reading for Fluency kit and it helps kids read text accurately and quickly.

The kit includes a 24-book student reader series (12 in each set, six of each title for a total of 144 books). Also included are 24 posters, one of each of the stories. This works well for group practice in reading with inflection, and the kids feel safer participating this way. There are also two cds for Read-Alongs and 24 divider tabs with title and guided reading level noted. This is one very neat package.

The stories are charming, funny and will appeal to the K-2 crowd. The topics are important to them: birthdays, space trips, bears, piggy banks, making friends and so on. The stories are structured to develop reading speed, pacing, expression and comprehension.

The Resource Guide (64 pages) provides 24 complete lesson plans that coordinate specifically with the student reader series. Each lesson includes a reproducible version of the text from a student reader in either a Partner Reading or Reader's Theater format. There's also direct instruction on how to model fluency and assess children's progress. A vital part of each lesson is the Refrain box, which lists the text that is repeated in the corresponding student reader. This repetition is basic to reading for fluency. This kit is a bargain at any price, but the complete kit price is $449 plus s/h. It's best to contact the company, as the guide, etc. are sold separately.
Creative Teaching Press
www.creativeteachingpress.com

---

Flippers
No, we're not talking about dolphins, but about some very clever learning devices. We saw ABC's Flipper, Numbers Flipper, Colors Flipper and English Grammar Flipper. This super aid can be used from primary through adult, depending on content. Very neat.

We saw these manipulatives at the National School Supply and Equipment show in spring and thought they looked interesting. When the samples arrived and we had a chance to go through them, we were sold. In the ABC's Flipper, the letter card shows formation of upper and lower case
letters and gives several examples (words and pictures) of other words starting with a specific letter. There's a clever sentence at the bottom of the card to encourage kids to open the Flipper to a specific card. The cards are 3 3/4" x 6 1/2" and there's a cutout at the top of the backing for little hands to carry the Flipper.

The English Grammar Flipper has 49 cards which contain over 500 rules, definitions and examples. The cards start with nouns (proper and common), and go on to verbs (often troublesome for kids), kinds of sentences, subject-verb agreement, compound subject and predicate and on and on. We hated to pick a Lucky Subscriber for this one as we'd like to keep it here in the office for quick reference. This item is three-hole punched so kids can keep it handy in their binders. Everyone from grade four through adult will love this.

We also saw the Pre-Algebra Flipper. These products just get better and better. The student just runs his or her finger down the stack and flips up the card containing the desired information. Presto!

Flippers are a favorite of homeschoolers. There are many topics available in this format and our best suggestion is to visit www.theflippers.biz Retail price is $7.95 for most of the items.
Christopher Lee Publications
www.theflippers.biz

---

Magazines
Three new-ish magazines arrived that we thought you'd like to know about.

The first is bimonthly Guideposts Sweet 16, a general-interest magazine for girls 11 - 17. It offers true, first-person stories about real teens and tweens. The watchwords of the editorial staff are "wholesome," "current," "fun" and "inspiring."

It has all the usual content of beauty tips, advice columns, etc., but the ongoing focus is relationships and real-life teen issues. A nice addition to your middle-school library. $19.95 per year.
Guideposts Sweet 16
www.sweet16mag.com

The second magazine we'd llike to tell you about is Moo-Cow Fan Club. The magazine comes with club membership and is designed for eight to 12 year olds. Each issue is devoted to one topic. We saw the "Sports" edition. The goal of this issue was to get kids involded in some type of
sports.

The Letter from the Editor sets the tone for the issue and tells kids what to expect.

We learned lots of things from this neat 48-page magazine. There was a article on paper football which looked like a lot of fun and we read the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball
League. There was also a nice article on stretching. This two-color magazine is not only accessible, but a good read for older students experiencing reading problems, too.

We really think Moo-Cow Fan Club is worth looking into for classroom as well as library use. The magazine is published four times a year and subscriptions are $19 per year.
Moo-Cow Fan Club
editor@moocowfanclub.com

The last entry in this magazine roundup is Library Sparks.We weren't familiar with this
one; it's just starting its third year and is published by Highsmith Inc., the company that makes that wonderful library furniture. Now that we knew about!

The magazine is for school and public librarians, and carries the tagline "Activities to Encourage Lifelong Readers."

The 48 pages of the two issues (May and August/September) we saw included patterns for bulletin board decorations, a "Meet the Author" feature, and curriculum connections to various books. There's also a calendar, lots of activity ideas and a bibliography. $59.95 for nine issues.
Highsmith Inc.
www.librarysparks.com

---

Putumayo Kids
This company is a division of Putumayo World Music! and produces multicultural world music that's ideal for the classroom.

There are several CD s available. Sing Along with Putumayo, (includes Old MacDonald, Red, Red Robin, Bushel and a Peck, You are my Sunshine, etc.) Caribbean Playground includes songs from various islands; Haiti, Martinique, Jamaica, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe (Jamaica Farewell, Coconut Woman, Trinidad, Little Anancy, Reggae Dancin') and World Playground has songs that range from Mardi Gras Mambo (USA) to La Mariposa (Bolivia), Home By Barna (Canada), Tik, Tik, Tak (Greece) and so on for a total of 12 songs. CDs are about $15.98 each.

There are also two activity kits available from this company. One is Latin Playground,
which features a CD, activity guide and a passport journal. The other activity kit is the World Playground activity kit. Each activity kit sells for about $19.98.

Try your school supply dealer for this material and visit the Putumayo Kids website for lots more information.
Putumayo Kids
www.putumayokids.com