When I was doing my student teaching in college I became familiar with many of the companies teachers relied on for materials in their classroom. When I started homeschooling my first priority was curriculum. Now that we’ve been at this for a while we’ve been able to slowly add some wonderful resources we frequently use during our day. Pacon is one of those companies typically associated with the traditional classroom, but many of their resources are incredibly useful for homeschoolers. Pacon has given me the opportunity to review their Mini Pocket Chart, Super Bright Sentence Strips, and their Multi-Sensory Raised Ruled Tablet.
All three of these products are just delightful and have been a wonderful addition to the resources I already have. When I rearranged our schoolroom I took a long time to try and find a spot for my new pocket chart. I hung it with clips on our easel for a while, but it felt rather awkward. Then one day I was staring the room down for a new spot and it hit me…the window! We have to leave the blinds shut anyway because of how hot the sun gets in this room. It has become the perfect spot! The girls can all see it from around the room and it isn’t taking up any extra room. The rest of the pictures are from when we had it on the easel. 
Grace is at the point where she knows how to write most of her letters correctly, but needs work with neatness. She loves to write, but get frustrated at times with how her letters look. These tools have been a great asset to our handwriting lessons. I really like being able to put what I want her to copy onto the sentence strips and then into the pocket chart. It is good for her have larger letters to see at this point. The strips are much brighter than they appear in the picture online. I like using a black permanent marker to write on them so they show up well.
The pocket chart itself is very durable and of high quality. I’ve used some cheaper, smaller versions of the pocket chart and there is an incredible difference between those and this one. The plastic pockets are tight enough to hold the strips in place so they don’t flop forward, but short enough it isn’t difficult to slid the strips in. Pocket charts are a great way for young learners to play matching games as well. This one is perfect for this and could easily hold thicker cards for word games. 
I love the handwriting paper. With my older girls getting them to stop at the bottom red line when they were first starting out was always a challenge. It had been a challenge for Grace as well until this new paper!
You can see that almost all of Grace’s letters start right at the top and stop right at the bottom. The reason is because these two lines are raised just slightly. She can actually feel a little ridge at the top and bottom to help her start and stop. This is seriously the most brilliant idea or handwriting I’ve ever seen! She was already forming her letters fairly well before we started, but she pretty much refused to try and stay in the correct form on writing paper. She said she really liked this paper because it felt bumpy and that made it fun!
Grace is four, so to see her writing this neatly is very exciting for me. You can buy various amounts of this paper and if your student is just starting out with handwriting or you have a child struggling to stay within the lines given, this tactile tool will be incredibly helpful.
Pacon has many other wonderful and useful resources available. I’ve also been using their GoWrite! Dry Erase Music Staff Roll with my piano students. Wow! That is a really cool product! Click here to see my review of this awesome music resource!
Disclosure: I received these products from the Pacon in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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