If you have been wondering what is the key to getting your reluctant learner excited about math, science, or any other academic subject, Discover Your Child's Learning Style may be what you have been looking for. Written to the parents of public, private, or homeschooled students, the authors' goals are for the parents to get on their child's "team", have the child take the learning profile (learning assessment test), and coach him to learning success. Not just a book for students from an institutionalized setting, the authors make references throughout the text to various types of school settings.

With a combined experience of 45 years, these authors are dedicated to helping children succeed in their love of learning. They believe that by tapping into the child's learning style, the child will naturally love to learn. The child's learning style includes the child's talents, interests, modality, environment, and disposition. One of the best things about this book is that the authors recognize that you, the parent, are your child's primary teacher. They hope to have a positive effect on children's attitudes toward learning through the parents' powerful influence and involvement.

The authors begin by encouraging parents to develop a proper attitude. For example, parents need to take an active role in the child's education. They should also learn to "celebrate" the child for who he is and not criticize the child for who he is not. They encourage parents to model good behavior for their children. They encourage strengthening the bonds between children and their parents in additional ways as well.

After you have your child take the learning style profile, you will learn about the five different aspects covered in the test: disposition, talents, interests, modality, and environment. The various categories for disposition include someone who performs, produces, invents, relates/inspires or thinks/creates. The areas of talent include music, math-logic, mechanical reasoning, spatial, word-language reasoning, and seven more. In assessing the child's interests, the authors note that the child's interests may differ at home than from those at school. Modality refers to the type of learner your child is. This is what we most often associate with learning style. Is the child an auditory, visual, or kinesthetic learner? These can help assess the child's learning environment for improvements. Some factors to consier include: does the child prefer quiet or noise, laying down or sitting at a desk, a bright or dim light? You can see that the authors' definition of learning style is broader and more variable than most.

Because of the lengthy and detailed descriptions of the various dispositions (perform, produce, invent, relate/inspire or think/create), the child or parent should easily be able to identify which disposition is closest to the child. Since they are presenting material associated with the child's learning style, their perspective is from an educational standpoint. They begin by describing a person who fits that disposition. For example, a performer is a person who is "bright, witty, and outspoken." As adults, they are entertainers, actors, athletes, trial lawyers, etc. They then go on to discuss the learning characteristics, the preferred setting for learning, what that child contributes to a situation, the areas of growth, the relationship conflicts between a child of one disposition and a teacher of an opposing disposition, the ideal curriculum, homework helps, and motivators. At the end of each chapter, they also offer a quick reference chart with the program emphasis, preferred activities, helpful materials with exact titles for specific subjects, and teaching techniques. As parents, we need to also keep in mind that sometimes we can adapt the materials we already own by employing different teaching techniques.

If you are beginning to be overwhelmed with all the terminology or aspects of a child's learning style, don't be. There are lots of charts and graphs that clearly explain what should work best for your child. There is an incredible amount of information in this book, including putting the plan to work, dealing with special needs children, pages of recommended resources, and much more. Whether you are having difficulty with teaching your child or not, Discover Your Child's Learning Style has much to offer and much to digest. Since one of our goals as parents is to have our children reach their full potential, this book may help you to see your child in a totally new light.

What fun! Doing Simple Math in Your Head compiles all sorts of amazing mathematical tricks into one diaper-bag-sized book, ready for those odd moments spent in waiting rooms and restaurants. Have you ever needed to figure a tip quickly, without resorting to writing on the napkin? Have you ever wondered how others can convert fractions to decimals so quickly? Have you ever worried that your receipt was not computed correctly but didn't have a calculator available to check it quickly? After working through this book, you will have an arsenal of tricks available to do these things in your head, quickly and accurately.

According to Mr. Howard, "being able to do problems in your head is basically being able to simplify. When you can do that, the rest is easy." He leads us through three chapters, elegantly and simply teaching us how to look at things differently so that they become easier. The book begins with an Introduction that describes how these methods are different from what we learned from our schoolbooks. This is followed by three chapters titled "Making Things Easier", "Problems and Solutions", and "Background: Basic Arithmetic". The book closes with an Index and a Glossary of technical "math" words that are not necessarily used in the book but which should be understood. The book is organized with subtitles at the top of each page, allowing you to skim quickly to find the topic you need or to browse until you find an interesting topic to study. Spending a few hours practicing the techniques taught in this book will make practical, everyday math much easier!

Portraits of 12 saints--from St. Philomena to St. Lucy--are portrayed in large ready-to-color illustrations alongside a brief description of the martyr. This 8 1/2" x 11" coloring book has a soft cover and staple binding making it easy to lay open for coloring. The saints are depicted with the common symbols telling about their life and death and the descriptions are simple and short enough that they can be enjoyed by a child as young as 5 or 6 years old. This coloring book would be a nice introduction to the early church and saint symbols for a young child or as a supplement to a history course for children up to age 10 or 12.

A gorgeous presentation of the Easter story! Fiona French tells the story in twelve stained glass tableaux: the entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus judged before Pilate, the scourging at the pillar, the carrying of the cross, the crucifixion, taking him from the cross and laying him in the tomb, the resurrection, meeting with doubting Thomas, the loaves and fishes by the Sea of Tiberius, the Ascension into heaven. The images are inspired by stained glass in the English cathedrals of Ely, Lincoln, York,and Canterbury and are rich in traditional details. The effect is rather more like guiding a child on a tour of a church, examining the artwork and explicating it than reading a story of Jesus' life. Which is a plus for me as I love the didactic art in old churches. I especially adore stained glass and love the way French uses its conventions. The text is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, though I think it is edited some. This isn't the full text of the Gospel, just short passages of a paragraph or two that caption the picture. I like that it doesn't water down the Biblical language with too-simple paraphrases and yet doesn't overwhelm with too much text either. My three-year old is quite captivated by this book asking for it to be read again and again and pointing to the pictures and requesting further explanations of the images.