Nov 19, 2010

TOS Review: KB Teachers

KB Teachers, or Knowledge Bears, is an award winning teacher website founded by Christophe T. Popper. It offers membership for printable resources such as worksheets, instructions for craft projects and clip art to use on your non-commercial website or home projects. There is also a sampling of their content available to use for free if you want to see what kind of resources they offer before committing to a membership. For $29 per year, or $49 for two years, you gain access to the site's premium worksheets, printable pages, and workbooks, suitable for students K-12. The site accepts both PayPal and credit cards for payment.

Now, I love new resources. There is nothing that gets me going more than browsing through the local teacher stores and various websites. And when I began exploring KB Teachers, I was in heaven. I LOVED it! There is a LOT of great stuff here! I spent an incredible amount of time exploring and printing and preparing for homeschool ideas. It was so fun for me!

The first section I will mention is - seasonal printables and worksheets. I LOVE planning all sorts of fresh activities and special events for each month! I have folders on my computer filled with things I have saved and folders in my filing cabinet filled with seasonal ideas to keep things interesting for Princess Belle, she loves that sort of thing. If you share my enthusiasm for those things too, you're going to love this page. KB has some adorable Thanksgiving printables for all my American friends. There are turkey, pilgrim, and native american posters, stickers, and mazes, that can be used for all kinds of crafts, games,and whatever else you might think of.

Their fall section also features an assortment of autumn -themed worksheets to supplement your studies, whether the subject is math (count the falling leaves in the picture) or handwriting (trace the letters and words). As an added bonus, you have the option of printing your pages in color, or leave them black and white, which allows you to also use them as coloring pages. Princess Belle loves anything that lets her be artistic so adding coloring to her worksheets keeps her enthusiastice about them. Also, KB allows you to change up the numbers simply by clicking the "generate new numbers" icon, so I can generate a new set of problems for them to work on without spending a lot of time and effort.

You'll also find that KB features monthly web quests for various days of the month. Learn about a few famous people born during the current month, or jazz up your day by researching peanut butter fudge day, or parfait day.

If that were all this website offered, it would be impressive. But there is so, so much more! As I just mentioned, the worksheets are programmable, so you can customize each one for your specific needs. Whether you need alphabet pages for your kindergartner, or you're older child needs practice writing an outline, you'll find it all here, taking you through each step. You'll find it helpful that each subject is categorized by grade level, so you can quickly get where you need to go.

How do you teach math? Does your child learn better by counting images? Does she need practice with word problems? Are you teaching them about counting money? It's all here, no searching all over the place, no waiting for your downloads, everything is but a click away.

I should also mention that KB is always creating fresh worksheets for you, and, if initially you don't find what you're looking for, contact them and they will either find it, or create it for you! A teachers dream!

KB offers the same awesome features for other subjects as well.

The science section features virtually everything you might think of, whether you're studying astronomy, marine biology, or the weather. You could even call it your one stop shop, because KB has done most of the work for you. This would be so valuable to a busy household with a wide range of grade levels. I mean, there are complete lessons and workbooks here! Incredible!

You'll find more of the same in the social studies section - outlines, tests, essays, yeah, it's all there.

The last section featured on the Knowledge Bears website is kind of a miscellaneous group of activities. Here are coloring pages and workbooks of dinosaurs, the four seasons, and for the little ones, various basic skills pages.

As if that weren't enough, there is a nice little collection of art project ideas, suitable for every student K-12, as simple as an egg carton caterpillar or as complex as ancestral self-portraits. We had fun crafting a version of the soda pop penguins, modifying it a bit to suit our available materials. So cute.

Be sure to browse through the clip art available for your lessons, presentations, to jazz up your various projects and crafts, or add them to your blog.

I'm confident that you'll be as pleased to have access to this resource as I am. You are given the opportunity to look through their library before you join. When you do become a member, you have 30 days to change your mind and get a refund - although I doubt you'll want one.

The website is updated frequently, so there are always fresh ideas waiting for your use. Now, get yourself over there and try it out today!

KB Teachers
http://www.kbteachers.com/
Price: $29 one year subscription or $49 two year subscription
Ages: K-12

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of this product, you can visit our Crew blog.

I TRULY LOVED this resource and I am certain any other homeschooling mom out there would too.

Just to let you know: I received the product free of charge for review purposes but my opinions are my honest thoughts on the product.

1 comment:

TerriG said...

I like your very thorough review. You can tell you really loved the product! Stopping by from the crew!

Twitter