Schoolhouse Crew Review: WAY Comes Home Kit

HomeSchool Scholastics an i4 Learning Company has been has been producing health and wellness resources since 1998.  Recently they have developed the WAY Comes Home Kit for homeschoolers. Over the last several weeks, my family has had an opportunity to review this kit which includes:
Parent Guidebook DVD 3 consumable journals-one for K-1, one for 2-3, and one for 4-5 Pack of consumable materials My Plate Booklet Supplies needed to complete the activities that are not common household items such as: stethoscope, ink pad, scale, balls, ink pad, plastic baskets, glitter, plastic eggs, plastic counters There are three different levels in the WAY Come Home program.  WAY stands for "Wellness, Academics and You." The youngest age group, grades K-1 has a Health Safari theme.  Grades 2-3 theme is called Me Mysteries, and grades 4-5 is called Innerspace Adventure.  The Parent Guide book contains all the information you need to teach each of the different levels and suggestions for activities to do if you have children in more then one level. The Parent Guide has 5 different modules:
Getting Started Where Do You Begin? Let's Get Active The Nutrition WAY Health-It's Personal
All of the lessons follow a similar format.  They start with a Parent Prep section giving some background on the lesson and explaining what the lesson is about.  There is a Lesson at a Glance section that gives a short summary of the lesson and a Get Things Ready section telling what supplies are needed for that lesson.  There is a WAY Vocab Words section that will used in the lesson.  A What to Do section that has step by step instructions for the lesson that you are able to adapt for your homeschool needs.  An Art Attack section has an artistic activity for each lesson.  Weekends With WAY has fun extensions you can choose to do.  Pray/Reflect has Bible verses and inspirational quotes.  WAY More Resources had a list of websites to get further information and WAY More Fun has fun odds and ends that apply to the lesson.
The DVD has short video clips for each of the three different age groups: WAY Health Safari, WAY Me Mysteries, and WAY Innerspace Adventure.  There is not a video clip for every age group for every module.  It also has a variety of exercise routines for each of the three age groups. 
One journal for each of the three age groups comes with the kit.  All three journals have a blank cover for your child to personalize.  The Health Safari journal has lots of coloring activities and places for students to draw.  The Me Mysteries has places for students to draw and color, but also has writing lines and charts to fill out.  The Innerspace Adventure journal has charts and lots of writing lines for the students to journal on. Each student needs their own journal.  You can purchase extra journals  here.

I have been using the WAY Comes Home Kit with my 5, 7, and 9 year olds.  We completed one module per week working two days a week. 
I really appreciated that the kit has been designed with the idea of including hard to find items in it. It is a relief as a homeschool mom to not have to worry about looking for certain items or not being able to do an activity because you forgot to buy something or couldn't find it. I really liked the journals.  The girls (5 and 7) especially enjoyed having their own journals and completing the drawing and coloring.  Christian I think would have been better using the Me Mysteries journal because he prefers drawing to writing any day.  We modified his and used most of it as drawing pages.  
There are no specific lesson plans.  The program is flexible and allows you to do as much or as little as you would like. The Parent Guide is written so that you can do the lesson plans for one particular age group like Health Safari if you only have kids in that age group.  If you have children in the other age groups you can do the include me too activities.  I had children in all three age groups, and I did not feel like choosing one age group and doing the include me too activities worked well. So I juggled all three age groups.  We watched the video clips for each age group if there was one, then they did their journal activities.  We did some of the activities in all three groups altogether. It did not flow as smoothly as I wished it would.  The children enjoyed the activities that we did such as playing with the balls, making their thumb prints, listening to their heart rate and taking their pulse. They also learned some things they didn't already know about nutrition.   

The younger girls enjoyed the DVD clips.  Christian was not impressed with his.  We do P.E. on a regular basis so the girls thought that the exercises for the two younger age groups were too easy.  They liked the ones from Innerspace Adventures the best but because children are doing the exercises and there is not any explanation I thought they were hard to follow at times.

The biggest con for me is that this program only included 5 modules.  If I am going to invest time and effort into a curriculum I want it to be a full year's worth of lessons. In the front of the Parent Guide, it states that each month new content and resources will be added online and coming soon lessons in science, math, and technology will be available.  We were not given access to any further content so I am not sure how that will work for those that are purchasing this kit.  

The WAY Comes Home Kit is currently on sale for $39.95.  You can also receive an additional $15 off by using the coupon code GC0737011.
To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog.  

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