Read-Alouds

I always have a chapter book that I am reading aloud to my kids. Currently, we are reading the Burgess Bird Book for Children. We love the Burgess books. He has a series of children's books about animals. We have so much fun reading about the animals, then looking them up to see what they look like. Thornton Burgess has a great way of making the animals come alive to the reader. We already read his Animal Book for Children, as well as most of the other animal stories. IF you haven't read them, I highly recommend them!

Also, here is a great resource to go along with the bird book- The Sartori Smiles blog has a whole section dedicated to it with links to bird pages to learn about each bird, watch videos, and hear their songs.

Math War!

Remember the card game, war? I loved that game as a kid. Today, I played addition war with my son. We had so much fun. Here's how you do it :

Take out all the face cards from the deck of cards. Deal the whole deck out to the two people playing. Each turn you flip up your top two cards. You add together the sum of the two cards. Whoever has the higher sum wins & keeps all four cards. If the sum is the same, you have a war & flip over 2 more cards. The highest sum the second time wins it.

You could also play it with subtraction and multiplication.

Gak

Have you ever made Gak with your kids? It is so much fun! My kids always love it. It's really simple. However, watch out for their clothes. It's tough to get out.

Here is the recipe:

In one bowl, mix:
1 1/2 c. very warm water
2 c. glue
food coloring (if desired)
In another bowl:
1 1/3 c. very warm water
2 tsp borax (this is found in the laundry aisle at the grocery store)
Combine the two bowls and mix until combined. It starts to thicken. Discard the extra liquid after it is all mixed together.

Learning the Alphabet- Alphabet Mat

When I was a kid, my Mom made an alphabet mat. I remember having lots of fun playing on it. I decided to make one for my kids. They love it! We use it for so many things.

• We use it to say the alphabet & march along it as we sing or chant it.
• We also like to use it with bean bags- we'll say a letter & try to toss the bean bags to that letter.
• We spell out the kids names and they hop from letter to letter.
• I have a pack of alphabet flash cards that my daughter uses to match the cards with the letters on the mat.
• She's also learning to match the lower case letter cards with the upper case letters on the mat.
• My older son likes to do his spelling words on it. 

If you want to make, one it's really easy. I used a flat sheet. Then I cut the letters out of multicolored fabrics with pinking shears. To divide the rows, I used grograin ribbon. (4 rows of 7) Then I sewed the letters on with a zig-zag stitch. There were 2 extra squares that I filled with shapes. 

Here are the letter templates I used for the letters.

Choose Your Adventure Stories

My son and I have been writing a choose your own adventure story.

Here is what we did:

We decided our story would be about superheroes.- but you could choose anything, really. We wrote about 10 superheroes on little slips of paper and put them into a little bag. We decided on three other categories- places, villains (of course!), and catastrophes/disasters that the heroes would solve. Each category got its own bag. Then, we chose one paper from each bag and began writing our story. We were the charatcers in the story- along with the chosen hero & villain. My son (who is only 6-years-old) illustrated the story & we both chose what would happen, while I wrote. It ended up being a lot of fun. I think we will continue it with many more heroes & villains & make it into a little book.

What fun writing ideas have you tried to mix things up and make writing more interesting?

Pattern Blocks

We love using pattern blocks (also called Tangrams) at our house. I have found several places that have free printable patterns to use with them. My kids pull them out frequently to play with. These are great for shape and color recognition as well as learning to recognize patterns. They are also useful in helping kids learn to form larger shapes from smaller ones.

The blocks come in all forms- there are plastic and wooden ones, as well as magnetic ones. We got ours through our K-12 program, but they are readily available on Amazon for various prices, many sets include the pattern mats as well.

Here are a few places where you can find free printable patterns:

PreKinders

Confessions of a Homeschooler

Kelly's Kindergarten

I also found that Math Their Way has printable pattern blocks, if you don't want to spend the money, print them on colored cardstock and laminate them.

What we are doing...

Currently, for our curriculum, we are using K-12, free through our school district. It has been a great starting point for me. I was a little overwhelmed thinking of what to teach, how to teach it, what curriculum to use or not use. So, I decided to take the easy road for my first year. Overall, I don't love it- I'll be honest. I am much more for the hands-on interactive learning, as opposed to the sit at the computer & stare at a screen method. But, it has done the job for us this year. Things I like- easy, little, to no lesson planning, FREE! things I don't love- having to check in weekly with a head teacher, taking attendance, quizzes, workbooks. The Kindergarten year was too easy for my son and we ended up skipping through so much of it. We are pretty much done already and it is only March!

Right now, we are also doing a free trial of Time4Learning. My kids love it- thinking it is all fun and games. They don't realize how much they are actually learning. But, I hate the fact that they sit and stare at a computer screen for so long. I am certain I wouldn't want to use it as our main curriculum, but as a fun supplement. (Also, just a little thing that bothers me, for some reason, the characters in the little videos call each other "dude". I think that is such an annoying term.) However, at $20/month + $15 for each additional child, I feel like it is too pricey for a fun extra.

Since this is my first year homeschooling, I feel like I am still going through the trial & error period. I need to find what fits best for out family.

Things I am looking into for next year-

Life School- this is an all-in-one curriculum that is LDS based. It is all centered around the scriptures. All the subjects work in sync focusing on the same time period. It is a 4-year rotation of time periods- ancient history-current. This curriculum is used by the Maeser Academy homeschool program. You can purchase the curriculum and do it on your own or do it through the academy & be accredited. This school has won some awards recently for academics & is pretty highly acclaimed. It is kinda expensive, though.

The Four Year Plan- curriculum guide by Ken & Teri Ebert at Kindred Learning. This is also a 4-year plan based on LDS scripture & is much more cost effective. The biggest problem I have seen is that a lot of the resources they recommend are outdated &/or out of print. So, they are harder to find. They have a month-by-month plan all mapped out & it seems pretty simple to follow. It includes history, science, & writing in the curriculum guide. I purchased the first book, Going in Circles from Amazon, and I really like the whole concept of it.

The third thing I am looking into- based on acceptance- is Harmony Education. It is a charter school that funds any curriculum choices for homeschoolers, however, you do not get to keep them, the school does. It also funds some extra curricular courses as well, I think. I am not too sure on all the details, but I am on their waiting list for next year.

A New Beginning

This year was a year for new beginnings. I started homeschooling my Kindergarten aged son. I also gave birth to my 3rd child. It has been quite exciting. Now, I mam beginning a new blog- one to record our homeschooling journey. Thanks for stopping by to witness our adventures. I hope I can help you with yours.

In the last year and a half since I started researching homeschooling, I have learned SO very much. Here I will document what I am learning as well as what I am teaching.