Creative Writing

Today my son was whining about practicig his spelling words.  I remebered this fun thing I saw on Pinterest (Have you explored this site yet?  My favorite!!)  that had printable cards for writing ideas.  I printed them out, laminated them & put them on a little ring to make them easier to flip through. Then I let him choose which way he wanted to write his spelling words today.  He chose to squirt them with water.  He loved it & had fun spelling his words (for a change)!  I was glad to not hear any more whining!  We just used a squirtable water bottle & kept the hose handy to refill.  It was a blast!  

Enjoy those remaining warm fall days & get outside! 

 

Sticker Math

Here is a fun way to work on counting and number recognition with your little ones.  Fold a sheet of paper in half until you have 8 squares.  Divide the squares and wirte numbers on them.  Give your child a sheet of stickers and let them put the correct number of stickers in the squares.  My daughter liked this one SO much that she has asked to do it 2 more times since.  So easy to please! 

Curriculum Clean Out- Another Giveaway!

Today I have one more item to share for the Curriculum Clean-Out.  The book I am giving away today is The Science Book of Water.  It is a book of experiments to do with water.  It is a book I got from a library book sale, so it is used & is a library version of the book, but it is in good condition, still.  It has some fun ideas in it. 

I will send this book free of cost to anyone in the U.S.  Have a great day & Good Luck!  :)

Rules for the giveaway: 

Same as before...  Ends 9/30.  Leave a comment for your first entry. 

For additional entries: (Leave me a comment for each)
1. Subscribe to my blog

2. Like my blog on Facebook

Curriculum Clean-Out

Homeschool Creations is hosting a Curriculum Clean-Out. I LOVE this idea. We all have things that we aren't using that could really benefit other families. I decided to participate since I had a few things I had already set aside that I wasn't planning on using.

Today I am giving away The Riggs Institute Phonogram cards.  These are a great resource if you like the phonics method.  They also have handwriting instructions on them.

They are brand new. We've never used them before. I just looked them up and they are priced @ $22.50.  Hope one of you will find these useful!

I will ship this to you free of cost (within the U.S.) Winner will be chosen by random.org. 

This giveaway runs through next Friday the 30th of September. 

To enter- Just leave me a comment. . 

Additional entries:  (Leave a comment for each)

1. Become a follower of my blog

2. Follow me on Facebook.

Camouflage

This year we are studying Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day.  My son pretty much begs to do that first in school every day.  He has always been passionate about learning about animals.  They have some great activities to go along with the chapters.  One that we did recently, was an activity learning about camouflage. 

Here is what we did:

Use a laundry basket or box.  Crumple up strips of different colored paper- red, orange, yellow, green, purple- and fill up the box with them. 

We got a bag of skittles- just a small one- and dumped out the contents.  Sort by color and count each color.  Record how many you have of each.  Then keep the same number of each color.  For example if there were only 12 purple ones, keep 12 of each of the other colors.  Eat the remaining extras. 

Sprinkle the skittles into the box full of colored paper.  Give your child a time limit- I did 1 minute.  Let them find as many as they can in that amount of time.  Then count how many they got of each color.  Make it into a math activity by figuring out how many were missing. 

 

Talk about how the colored paper hid the skittles making it harder to find them in the box.  If the paper were all white, maybe they could find more.  Try it that way, too if you want.  Why do animals need camouflage?  Are there different kinds?  (Tigers stripes, vs. Jaguars spots)

The kids loved the activity.  It was a fun hands-on way to see how camouflage works for animals in the wild. 

Turning Their Hearts to the Fathers

 

Come see my latest post over at Latter-Day Homeschooling this week. I talked about how I teach my children about their family history.  There were some wonderful ideas in the comments as well.   

Painted Letters

We did this project yesterday.  I started it with my preschooler- the 1st grader wasn't interested in making boring letters...  Well, we got going on it, and that silly 1st grader came over and asked if he could help, too.  I had fun with it as well.  We were all painting away.  I forgot how much I love painting!
Here is what you do to make these letters:

Use masking tape and create your letters on a sheet of paper.  The curved ones are a little tricky!  Don't judge.  Use water colors, or any other art medium that you would like- markers, pencils, pastels...  Paint all around the whole paper & then let it dry.  Carefully peel of the tape- it comes off without ripping if you do it slowly. 

Enjoy your beautiful letters!  Have the kids create their names to hang up- they will love it!

The Decision

I am excited to share this new review with you.  I have been asked to review a darling little video to teach children about the dangers of pornography. It was produced by the Sun Swing Media Company.   They are working to produce a new series of animated cartoons from the Friend magazine, a children’s publication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The first video, “The Decision,” has already been completed. Two more stories are also ready for production. The hope is to eventually produce a series of 30 short movies.

I watched this video with my children.  It is just a few minutes long.  I absolutely loved the message.  My kids enjoyed it, too.  They asked to watch it again.  It brought on a great discussion about pornography- what it is and why it is dangerous. I am so glad that people are taking the time to produce media with a good message when there is so much these days that can be harmful to children (and to adults).    I love having opportunities to teach my children values- and having good resources to use when teaching them.  I am excited to see the movies that they come out with- I will definitely continue to check them out. 

The best part- to buy this video- they are selling it for only $.99- awesome price!   Go here to check it out.  You can even watch a short clip of it before you buy.  To make it even better- they have a Family Home Evening Lesson to go along with it & to teach your kids more about the danger of pornography. 

More related resources:

Article in BYU's Daily Universe

FHE Lesson from Sugar Doodle using this video

Article in Animation World Network

Enjoy!

Cave Painting

Last week, in a continuation of our ancient history studies we learned about cave paintings.  The kids LOVED creating their own.  I think they did a really amazing job! 

To go along with it we read The Magic Tree House book #7 Sunset of the Sabertooth, by Mary Pope Osborne.  If you haven't discovered these books yet- they are great!  They are fun stories, but each one teaches something.  My son is constantly teaching me things that he learned from reading them.  He has already read them each a few times.  In fact, as I was teaching him about cave paintings, he ran and got this book to show me the pictures in it.  It's so great to have good books in your home that your kids love reading!

Fingerprint Animals

Have you heard of the drawing books by Ed Emberley?  We checked out a really fun one!  The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book . We had a lot of fun with it!   I Love Ed Emberley books, and this one was great!  My son was so excited when he saw it.  He jumped right in and started creating little animals.  He even made up a few of his own. 

It's a creative & different way to do art.  Check it out- or try making up your own fun fingerprint drawing!

Can you tell what the animals are?  There is a caterpillar, a ladybug, an elephant, a tiger, a pig, an owl, and a monster.

 

 

A few other books of his that we have enjoyed:

 

What is History?

Last week we began our ancient history studies.  We are using the Story of the World and Life School for our history studies.  It was such a blast.  My kids really loved the activities and stories that we used.  Chapter one of Story of the world is an introduction to what history is.  Life School’s history unit is similar so they went together perfectly.  We learned about how we fit into history and why we study the past.  My son really like the term “His Story” in explaining what history is.  We also studied our own family history.  I will post more about that later. 

A really fun activity that we did this week was a plaster fossil.  I had some plaster of paris.  In a shoebox, we layered plaster, and sand, then put some small plastic toys, pebbles, and leaves into the plaster.  We let it dry for about 2 days.  Then the kids dug into it.  They had so much fun excavating their treasures.  I was sure to show them the imprints that the plaster made and compare it to fossils.  They LOVED this.  Their little toy tools didn’t quite get the job done, so we had to dig in with our real hammer.

 

Stories and books that went along with our studies:

Fossils Tell of Long ago, by Aliki
 


The Magic School Bus- Shows and Tells, a Book about Archaeology


If You Are a Hunter of Fossils, by Byrd Taylor & Peter Parnall



Timelines- Food- Feasts, Cooks & Kitchens

The Children’s Atlas of Civilizations by Antony Mason

Digging Up Dinosaurs, by Aliki
 


Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History
  

A Little History of the World (Ch. 1), by E.H. Gombrich


We are excited to keep learning and using all of these great books I have been collecting.  It was really nice to hear my kids say- school is so fun! We’ll see how long that lasts…