Monthly Archive: October 2013
Find Activities for your Tots or Preschoolers, Search for Different Unit Studies: Categories and Archives Features
We have a wonderful tech team here at Parents. You might have noticed that the categories feature of my blog is now back! Hooray! Ever since I started this blog I have been categorizing things into different units. If you’re doing a study of Ancient Egypt or natural disasters, the human body or the ocean, or just want to look through the dozens and dozens of posts I did when...
Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #2 (Creating a Space)
Getting the Writing Workshop Area Ready One of the things that jumped out for me from all the reading I was doing about writing workshops is that it is important to have a space, routine and materials completely ready to go. We had always fit in writing pell-mell whenever it fit in to our homeschool day. I wanted there to be a designated space (both physically and mentally) for our...
Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1
For the past six months, I’ve been alluding to the fact that we have really changed the way we approach writing. Part of me has been wanting to write a post for ages, but I just wasn’t quite sure where to start. Time to jump in! First, a little background. LD has always been a reluctant writer. When he was K-1, we worked a lot on handwriting and copywork. We...
Halloween Party Games!
Each year, I organize a huge Halloween Party in our community. We have lots and lots of Halloween Party Games for the kids. The kids all have lots of fun!! I wanted to share some of the games that we play at our party. I made a document of all these games and shared them as a free download. You’ll find that at the end. We made a lot of...
Dragon Themed Multiplication, Division and Addition Worksheet Packs
Before my surgery I had made some dragon themed math pages for the kids to work on while I was out last week. I drew the red and blue dragons myself. For some reason the kids are VERY into dragons and hippogriffs at the moment! My drawings turned out reasonably cute (I’ll paste them in below to show you), but for some reason when I printed them, the pictures look...
A Rough Week–When None of the Trivial Stuff Matters …and Only the Trivial Stuff Matters
This past week was really rough. Last Wednesday, I had some ear surgery that was to reconstruct my ear canal and the inner bones in my ear. The surgery was supposed to be relatively straight-forward, but wound up being much more challenging for the doctor (the surgery took a lot longer) and for me (I came out of the surgery very ill and in pain). There was more damage and...
Human Body Activities – Digestive System
We had an amazing time studying the Digestive System. We did a whole range of hands-on activities from making our own epiglottis to seeing how the digestive tract works (how nutrients pass through). We made “fake”vomit, measured out the length of the digestive system and more! I also made notebook for the kids as we went through this unit. Our Digestive System Packet is now 150+ pages. Our Digestive System...
Monster-Themed Addition Packet
Can you believe how soon Halloween will be here? I’ve been trying to come up with some fun, interactive math activities for ED. I loved the idea I saw out on Pinterest back in the summer where someone used googly eyes as manipulatives for addition practice. I drew our own little monster and made ED a packet with some flashcards and addition pages. She is learning very simple addition. ...
Various Free Montessori 3-Part Cards
This post includes links to some of the Montessori 3-part cards I’ve made over the years. Most of them are free! Montessori Sorting Activity: Living Nonliving Cards Montessori-Style Animal Cards: Sorting Vertebrates-Invertebrates and Animals of the 5 Kingdoms U.S. Landmarks and Symbols – 3 part cards FREE — We placed these cards on a huge US map we have as we learned where these famous landmarks are locate. Montessori 3-Part...
Human Body System – Heart and Circulatory System Activities
I created a hands-on activity for the kids for learning about the circulatory system and the exchange of oxygen. Below you’ll find out more about our circulatory system activities: Our study of the heart and circulatory system started with a listen to our own heartbeats. We measured our heart rates when resting and after walking, running and skipping. Then using a graph put out by Texas heart institute (4th grade curriculum,...
Hands On Activities — Earthquakes, Plate Movements, Mountain Making, Volcanoes and other Earth Science Topics
Are you looking for hands-on Earth Science activities? This is a collection of some our favorite activities from our unit. Layers of the Earth Activities: I first saw this activity last year at The Learning Ark. It fit in perfectly with our Earth Science unit. There is also a similar activity using a hard-boiled egg in the book we are using for this unit, How the Earth Works by Michelle O’Brien-Palmer. One of...
Comma Rules, Apostrophes, Underlining and Other Free Grammar Sheets
This post has a collection of free grammar worksheets I’ve made for the kids over the past couple of years. You’ll find practice sheets on the major comma rules, apostrophes, underlining and more: This first set, covers the basic comma rules. We read over the rules together, then my son had to figure out which rule applied to each sentence and had to add in the appropriate comma/s. By the...
Free Rocks and Minerals Packet
Are you studying Rocks and Minerals?! Be sure to check out this post again which covers how rocks have been used, famous rock landmarks, how we use minerals in our environment, mining, recycling and the months and birthstones. Be sure to check out the links to our hands-on activities about the three types of rocks: sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic which you’ll find below. This week, I’m out of commission. I’m...
