Monthly Archive: March 2011

Geography: Europe board game 10

Geography: Europe board game

We’ve done a lot with geography of Europe this semester. That’s in part because three of our unit studies have focused on Europe — our world music class, the Middle Ages unit and our fairy tale unit.  I ordered this game back in February, but with the flu and pneumonia descending upon us we never got to it.  We’ve had a blast with it the past week or so. Here’s...

Spelling: ou, ow word sort 0

Spelling: ou, ow word sort

I got this cute word sort mat from Finally in First.  Thank you, Jenn! There are other cards that address this ou/ow spelling/pronunciation pattern here and  here. Worksheets (like fill in the blank, etc.) that use the oi/ow diphthongs — here. Online spelling game with ou/ow.

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Fairy Tale Unit: Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel, Three Little Pigs Activities

These are the two fairy tale collections we’ve been reading from.  I highly recommend the one on the left, Treasury of Classic Children’s Stories. (affiliate link) (Update in 2015: All three of my kids loved, loved, loved the fairy tales in Classic Children’s Stories. At first I read them aloud, later they read them to themselves. In fact,  ED now reads the stories to herself and the book is on our kitchen...

2

Gardening with the Kids

We have been outside working in the gardens almost every afternoon (for 2-3 hours). This is such a huge part of our life right now, I just had to write a bit about that again.  I thought the girls looked particularly cute yesterday.  Yes, I let my girls garden in velvet dresses!!  They are looking intently for grubs because I mentioned that that they aren’t good for the garden.  When...

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Fairy Tale Unit: The Emperor’s New Clothes

Emperor’s New Clothes Craft: Shopping for the Emperor’s New Clothes This activity was a big hit!  I cut out a felt emperor, shirts, pants, shoes, a robe, and a crown.  Each had a set price (see the sheet below). Then I gave the kids $5.00 or $8.00 to go shopping for the emperor.  A great review of money and DD in particular has learned a lot and done this activity...

So Many Toads! 2

So Many Toads!

The other evening I came home during a thunderstorm.  The toads were covering the road leading to our house. Not one or two, but so many that I couldn’t drive the car around them. I went back a little later and there weren’t nearly as many, but still saw at least 50 toads! And saw that even though I was driving about 5mph and swerving wildly from side to side,...

Fairy Tale Unit: Jack and the Beanstalk 6

Fairy Tale Unit: Jack and the Beanstalk

Our first fairy tale today was Jack and the Beanstalk.  I set up this felt board the night before and had some coloring pages for ED since she’s usually the first one up and she’s always ready to dive into the day!  She was more interested in helping me bake…and sample… and mix… and sample! We made graham crackers and cut them into castle and cottage parts that I hoped...

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Fairy Garden Setup Starts off our New Unit on Fairy Tales

The kids haven’t seen the homeschool room yet and I’m looking forward to surprising them with something a bit out of the ordinary in the morning! I know teachers transform their classrooms a lot and figured it was about time to try something like that for myself. I’m pleased with how it turned out! 🙂 We made the mushrooms last year out of paper mache (the doors have since been...

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Garden Bugs, Grubs and More

As I’ve mentioned before our house is nestled down in the woods. The former owners cut up logs and threw them into a huge pile which is now happily decomposing.  We’ve used some of this mulch in our garden areas (well away from the house). Here’s some of what we’ve observed from this decomposing pile! We found lots of these large beetles in our mulch pile.  My best guess is...

2

Leprechaun Bottle Doll: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

DD is feeling a little bit better and wanted to do a leprechaun craft too.  She wanted to do something different than the other kids.  Last evening someone shared a new art website that had lots of elementary art lessons.  I took a quick look and the bottle dolls caught my attention.  When DD asked to do a craft she agreed that the bottle doll might be fun.  She and...

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Sunflower Lapbook

DD made a sunflower lapbook. I finally have a few minutes to share her work here. She colored the front page and decided she didn’t want a title on the front cover so I added it into the photo digitally. I purchased this Sunflower Unit Study/Lapbook on currclick.  It was $1.00 (USdol) — and was totally worth it since both DD and I learned a lot of new information.  You...

Word Family Activity 10

Shamrock- Spelling, Word Family Sort

Confession Time: One thing that I have not done well these past couple of years is to include activities that show word family patterns.  Both LD and DD learned to read easily and early.  Once they were off and reading, I guess I never saw much “point” in going over these kinds of things. But then… then I saw LD struggle as a writer. He has worked hard on the...

Shamrock Fishing Games (multiplication, addition or letter sort) 2

Shamrock Fishing Games (multiplication, addition or letter sort)

Today we did some shamrock fishing.  I made three different activities to be age appropriate for my 7, 5 and 3 year olds. LD is working on his multiplication tables from 2s through 6s.  His shamrocks had various problems whose answers fell between 20 and 29 (such as 4×5, 5×5 and 3×7) and other problems whose answers fell between 30 and 39 (3×11, 6×6, etc.) DD’s shamrock fishing was addition-related....