Mama break

The honeymoon is over. Yes, homeschool is more real now. I still think it's fun and I'm still glad we're doing it, but this has been the week when I felt first hand that it's not always joy and sunshine. So, I took a break. We still did school, but I spent a lot of time doing stuff for myself this week too. First, I started learning about gardening. I'm looking forward to all this snow melting and getting out in the dirt! The studies of gardening counts as teacher workdays because the kids will be helping with the garden and composting too.

Today, after a bit of school, I went to my sewing room. Well, "room" is a bit of a stretch. I went to the unfinished basement where all my creative goodies have been banished to make room for the school room. Still worth it, but I'm allowed to have a moment of longing for a pretty craft room, right? {sigh} Okay, on with the post.

This past Sunday at church, I got to care for the third baby of one of my friends while I served in the nursery. While Mom and I were chatting, she casually mentioned in passing that this baby had nothing made for him as we were recalling a beautiful pink blanket that had been made for her daughter. A little further in the conversation, we were talking about attachment items for babies and she said this baby didn't have one yet. She commented that his favorite way to fall asleep appears to be pulling a burp cloth over his face and snuggling in with it. Mom naturally didn't want to see her sweet baby boy attach himself to a ugly burp cloth!

With that conversation, I made him two burp cloth sized attachment blankets.
On the front, it's cotton with blue, green and light brown stripes. I embroidered his name and stitched a dark brown ribbon and a light blue ribbon. On the back is blue fleece with a tan satin ribbon.

Close up of the front and back. You know how some babies like to rub their fingers on something satin while falling asleep? That's why I added the satin ribbon on the back.

And here they are all folded up and ready for presentation. Ahhh. I feel much better now. If you are a homeschooling mom, don't feel bad to sometimes put school on hold to make yourself happy. You'll be a better mother and teacher if you take care of yourself too.

Don't get me wrong, we still did school this week. We just didn't do as much as we usually seem to do. I'll write about the stuff we did in another post.

Happy Homeschooling!

Handwriting and Monkey Academy

I had a stroke of genius this week. First let me say that my daughter's handwritting was far from a delight to look at. It didn't seem to me that it was a problem to any teacher she's had before me. Her sloppy handwriting only seemed to bother me. Yeah, I get that she's 8 but we're talking bad, sloppy, not-straight, uneven sized letters. So, I decided we are going to correct that before we move on to learning cursive.
Since I'd bought a gagillion (yep, it's a techinical math term) page protectors for her time line notebook (see below), I decided I'd put some to good use. When we pulled her from public school, we took her handwriting notebook home with us. But you could find any handwriting sample and do this too. I copied the sample page from the workbook that includes lower and upper case printed alphabet along with lower and upper case cursive alphabet. Everyday, she traces the entire 4 sets of letters with dry erase markers. Despite the look on her face in the picture, she actually loves this. It serves two purposes for me - a) she is imprinting writing her letters correctly and evenly and b) she is being introduced to cursive writing in a non threatening way.

I made notebooks for my boys too. They both attended a local preschool last year. The five year old class used the A Beka preschool curriculum. At the end of the year, we got to keep the workbooks to use any pages that weren't used in class (which was a LOT). I ripped off the sheet that had the entire alphabet sampled and slipped it into a page protector. Followed by individual pages for each letter of the alphabet. Voila! A handwriting, letter recognition notebook for my Kindergartener. He also does a page or two a day with the dry erase markers.

At the end of the school year, the three year old teachers gave our kids little notebooks for them to practice tracing the letters through the summer. I'd never used it so I slipped them into page protectors and Poof! my four year old has his notebook of handwriting and letter recognition for himself. The difference here is that his notebook contains letters that are bigger in size to match his cognitive abilities, the 6 year old's letters are still large, but are significantly smaller than the 4 year olds and the 8 year old's fit 4 sets of letters all on one page.

And that sums up my virtually free handwriting curriculum!

This week also saw the start of Monkey Academy for us.

Two other moms and I rotate weeks teaching preschool to our four boys in our homes. Due to snow, this was the first week it actually happened. Boy were my kids excited! Ashlee is my teachers assistant and she just loves that. The boys all earn tokens for good behavior during the two hours we have them and then they get to visit a treasure chest at the end to redeem the tokens for prizes (candy, bubbles, books, erasers, etc.). Each prize has a token value assigned to it.

My theme for the week was the letter V, the number 11, the color pink, the shape of a heart and the emotion love. We made little mice out of hearts we colored pink and cut out (scissor practice!!), we put 11 apple stickers on an apple tree and counted as we went. We used my ice cream scoops to count to eleven with the eleventh scoop being pink, we filled in an upper case V with heart stickers and glued pink fuzz balls and pink googly eyes to the lower case V, we read the Velveteen Rabbit (a story about love AND one that the Core Knowledge series says every Kindergartener should hear), we learned a little about Virginia and we had a snack of veggies. Each child got a token for *trying* one veggie dipped in vinegar too. One of the boys actually found he really liked it and dipped all his veggies! We had so much fun - even though the boys were all a little rowdy. After all, they'd all been cooped up for two weeks indoors AND it was their first time with a new group of friends and a new teacher (for two of them). I expect it to go even smoother in the future.

Want to see pictures of anything referenced here? Let me know and I'll photograph it for you.

Happy Homeschooling!

Presidents Day

If you haven't visited the Freebie of the Day, you really need to!
http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/

Today's freebies are all about President's Day. We aren't at the point in our history curriculum for discussing Washington and Lincoln so I'm making a note of these cool links here on my blog so I'll know where to find them when the time is right.

First, George Washington: A National Treasure
http://www.georgewashington.si.edu/
From the Smithsonian.

Next, an online archive of the papers of George Washington.
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/
From UVA.

A virtual field trip to Mount Vernon
http://www.mountvernon.org/
(although, I'll likely take my kids to the real deal since we live so close.)

Abraham Lincoln online
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln.html

Highlights Magazine tribute to Lincoln page
http://www.highlightskids.com/Lincoln/lincolnsBirthdayKids1.asp?ccid=EMC-1000-1001993

Abraham Lincoln as a poet, reader, writer and subject
http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/lincolnpoetry/
From the Library of Congress

Happy President's Day!

Timeline Notebook

One thing that really attracted me to the Classical Conversations curriculum is the use of the Veritas Press time line flash cards. I love the idea of teaching my children history via a chronological method that begins with the beginning of time and moves to modern day.

Naturally, you can add this to any curriculum you happen to be using and you don't have to use the Veritas Press cards. One thing we are doing at my house to aid in our understanding of chronological events is making a timeline notebook. I have one page in a page protector that is titled with the titles of the Veritas timeline cards. On each page (as we get to it) we are making some picture, clip art, mini-book, crafty project that corresponds with the event. This is all on a very high level since Ashlee is 8. Eventually, when we've made it through all the time line cards, we can study any event in a little more depth and add more information to that page. At that point we can also study anything else in history and know where in the timeline to plug it in.

I like this method of study because it's makes history chronological for my daughter while also appealing to her arts and crafts nature.

I just read a great article that I found while looking for an element for our current page. It can be found here - http://www.ehow.com/how_5058537_make-timeline-notebook-child.html

Be sure to take note at the bottom of the article the section called resources. There is a link to portraits of historical figures - http://www.lib.utexas.edu/exhibits/portraits/index.php - that looks awesome!

I'm going to bookmark each of those resources on my sidebar too to make sure I have them for the rest of our notebook.

Happy Homeschooling!

Ice Cream Counting & Monkey Academy

We are learning all about counting from 1 - 20 at my house. The six year old is beginning to learn how to spell the words for the numbers.

The four year old is learning how to count past 13.

So, I made this little pile of ice cream scoops on top of an ice cream cone to help them learn. Each scoop has a numeral, dots equaling it's amount and the written word for that number.

We've been having fun creating our ice cream cones this week! I found the idea for this project here - http://www.first-school.ws/activities/crafts/colors/icecreamcone2.htm

Since I needed it to go to twenty, I just printed each of the colored pages twice. Then I used my scrapbook number stickers to label the scoops with the number I wanted along with the amount of dots. Finally, I got out my p-touch label maker and put the word for each letter on the scoop before running each sheet through the laminator and cutting them out. We played with them on the floor and table initially before I taped them to the door jam between my schoolroom and my dining room today.

You may (or may not) be wondering why I put the colors in the order I did. Aren't you lucky? I'm going to tell you why. A mommy friend of mine invited me to join a makeshift preschool co-op for the remainder of the school year for our preschool boys. They've dubbed it Monkey Academy. My first day teaching the co-op will be next week when I'm assigned the letter V, the number 11, the color pink, the shape of a heart and the themes love, relationships and communication. Whew! That's a lot to cover in 2 hours but we're going to do it.

At tlsbooks.com I found a little apples number book that you are expected to print off where each page contains a picture of a tree and a bear holding a numbered apple. The child is supposed to put/color apples on the tree to correspond with the number the bear is holding. Well, I think an entire book of that is a bit redundant so I just printed off the page for 11 and I'm giving each boy 11 apple stickers (again from my scrapbooking stash) to put on the tree after they've colored it. You can find that here - http://www.tlsbooks.com/appletreebook.pdf

Next I found a map of the state of Virginia (where we live) and the boys and I will color it and glue on the state bird, the state flag and the flower/tree. I found the map here - http://www.kidzone.ws/geography/usa/index.htm

The number 11 in my ice cream cone is pink so that the boys can build up to the color and number of our day.

And I found this darling little heart/mouse craft at http://www.first-school.ws/activities/shapes/animals/mouse_hearts.htm

They will be able to color the hearts pink and practice their scissors skills - something every preschool teacher I've ever known has emphasized.

For snack we'll have Veggies and I'll invite them to dip at least one in vinegar. And I'll offer vanilla wafers too.

Finally, I plan to read the Velveteen Rabbit to them. According to the Treasury of Virtue - it's a story about Love. According to "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" - it's a story they should hear around this age.

Let's hope that fills two hours!

Melted Snow

One thing the East Coast has an abundance of right now is snow. It seemed like a great time to conduct an experiment regarding volume!

Always the ham, my eldest son needed to clown around in the shot for the initial photo. He makes me giggle sometimes.

Measurements of the glass full of snow.

Guesses placed about how much water there will be when the snow melts.

Checking the glass halfway through the melting...

And our finally analysis. Snow, Guesses and Water charts ready to be put in a science notebook. Want to do it in your homeschool? Here's the link.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/Snow%20Melting%20Experiment.pdf

I hope you're enjoying the winter wonderland where you are!

Great finds!

Today included some web surfing for my homeschool. I found a few really geat finds to share.

First and most exciting to me is Home Share. It's google but for homeschoolers! We type in what we're looking for and it provides us with googled links that are suitable for homeschool! I am completely excited about that.

Next I found Worksheet Works. The thing I love about this is it allows you to go in and set some parameters for what you want in your child's worksheet in a particular theme and it creates a worksheet for you! How awesome is that? For example - Ashlee is learning her multiplication table right now. We are up to the three's. So - I plugged in my parameters of 3x12 as the maximum and she now has a worksheet with variables of 1x, 2x and 3x any numbers up to 12. Fantastic!

And finally, I happen to own the book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" because it was recommended to me. Case seems to like it but we'd set it aside recently. While on my tour of the web, I found that donnayoung.org has worksheets that coordinate with each of the 100 lessons in the book! Free! I've printed out the worksheets for the first 10 lessons and all of the traceable cards and slipped them into page protectors. My plan is to use the book for Case and then again for Mason. Each boy will get to practice the letters they are learning with dry erase markers. If you are looking for this resource, visit her at http://donnayoung.org/penmanship/manuscript-lessons.htm

The other two links have been added to my sidebar. Happy surfing!