Monthly Archive: June 2013

Trash Crafts (9-foot trash-o-saurus and more) 0

Trash Crafts (9-foot trash-o-saurus and more)

A wonderful way to recycle, inspire and create is to save your clean trash. Set that out along with feathers, googly eyes, glue, pipe cleaners and other assorted things to see what you child can come up with.  Egg cartons were a huge hit with the girls last week.  While I decorated a tissue box… the girls set to work on their own cute puppets (no input from me)! Our...

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Perfect 4th of July Frozen Treat

With watermelons in season, we’ll have some with our 4th of July barbecue.  Sometimes when we get a big melon there’s more than we can eat in one sitting. The kids love when I freeze the watermelon and bring it out as a frozen treat.  We use cookie cutters and then put it on a meat skewer. You could also use clean Popsicle sticks. The picture above is before they...

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Patriotic Songs for Kids

Earlier this week, I shared the 10-page packet of summer camp songs I’ve been singing with the kids.  With the 4th of July right around the corner, I also put together a set of patriotic songs to sing with them. If you are interested, here are some of the songs we’ve been singing (and learning):  American Patriotic Song Packet   Related Posts: You might also be interested in our free...

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Patriotic Themed Math Games

We are only doing a light amount of school work at the moment, but I want to keep some of their math facts and skills fresh.  Here are some math games I made to play with the kids. I made them in a patriotic theme since next Thursday is Independence Day, the 4th of July. My youngest is practicing doubling (1+1, 2+2, etc.). My other daughter is practicing squares (3×3, 7×7,...

playing the glockenspiel 0

Glockenspiel — A Wonderful First Instrument for Kids

Yesterday I mentioned that we are trying to add in more music to our summer.  I shared a packet of some fun kids songs we’ve been singing. We’ve also been more regular about practicing instruments. DD is learning a new piece on the piano and I started sitting down with ED again to help her learn some pieces on the glockenspiel. I started all of the kids around the age...

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Kids Song Packet — Summer Camp at Home!

I went to girl scout camp every summer for years… and then worked as a girl scout counselor for several years after that.  I loved when we sang songs after our meals. Those songs have stuck with me all these years.  This past school year we didn’t do nearly as much music as we normally do.  I wanted to add in some fun songs this summer… especially for my youngest....

Most Popular Posts From this School Year 0

Most Popular Posts From this School Year

Since I am wrapping up the school year, I thought I would go through and share some of the most popular posts from this school year. Most of them had to do with some of the free materials I made, but two of them had to do with family life in general–3-The Most Stressful Number of Kids and the post I wrote just after our beloved Vovo, hubby’s grandmother, died — The...

Homeschool Students Fight to Play on Public School Teams 0

Homeschool Students Fight to Play on Public School Teams

A couple of days ago, NPR ran a story on All Things Considered about how homeschool students in some states are fighting to play on public school teams. It is an issue fraught with emotion and politics. The laws vary state to state.  Policies are changing from year to year. In fact just in the past two or three years, there has been a lot of legislation being considered by...

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Homeschool Year in Review (Grades 2 and 4)

This is such a fun post to write! This is where I get to reminisce and think about the amazing year we’ve had.  It has been a blast… tiring at times (particularly in February when LD had a lot of out-of-town gymnastics meets, I had lots of meetings and was training for a half-marathon). But looking back, we had a fulfilling, successful year. We do a lot of our activities...

America’s New Teachers… Inadequately Prepared A Study Says 0

America’s New Teachers… Inadequately Prepared A Study Says

According to a new study, America’s universities are failing to adequately train the people who become teachers each year.  The study by  National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) found that most teacher education programs are lacking. They studied more than 1,100 university education programs. The NCTQ blog said, “Our results show that most [programs] have a long way to go to get teachers classroom ready from day one.” The study points out that...

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Homeschool Preschool Year in Review

Each year at the end of the year, I put together a post that looks back at our school year.  ED has had a great year. She was 4 this year and turned 5 this spring. We homeschool together… so ED participates with my older two kids in all their activities. Some of these units (like the 5 senses) were mainly for ED, others were mainly for the older kids, but...

Would You Have Turned the Car Around and Stopped? 0

Would You Have Turned the Car Around and Stopped?

After I dropped the older kids off for their art class on Wednesday, ED and I headed home.  On the way, we were traveling on a bustling 4 lane road.  As I drove down the road I noticed an older gentleman (mid-to-late 70s) who was slowly sitting down on the curb next to his lawn mower. He reached down with one hand to help himself get down onto the grass....

The Value of Play 3

The Value of Play

Today I listened to an interview with Peter Gray, a psychologist who examines the importance of play over at the (free online) unschooling summit. Despite yesterday’s post, Summer Learning, where I talked about the academic focus of our homeschool, the truth is my children play a lot especially compared to their public school friends. After listening to his interview and cruising some of the articles he posted on his website, Freedom...

Summer Learning 2

Summer Learning

One question homeschoolers often ask each other is, “Will you do school during the summer?” For us, the answer is… some of the time.  We take vacations when it suits us even when (or maybe especially when!) public school kids are in school.  We also take vacation trips in the summer since some of our the kids’ cousins don’t homeschool and we try to catch up with them once a...