A Passel of Past Posts #4
Welcome to the 4th post in this summer series. I am highlighting a “passel” of posts in this series. This is just a random assortment of activities, printables and posts that you may have missed in the six years I’ve been writing this blog!! Hope you find something useful today.
Vertebrate – Invertebrate Cards – These sorting cards are free!! They are useful as kids start learning about classifying animals — vertebrates – invertebrates and then sorting the vertebrates into the five groups (fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, mammals)
What are Lapbooks? A Cool Way to Learn
Learning How to Use a Compass and Learning about Latitude-Longitude
Fun Dry Ice Experiments we did around Halloween
–er Printable… Spelling words that sound like /er/ but are spelled with -ur -ir -er, etc.
A Visit with Pocahontas’ 12 x Great Granddaughter – We had an amazing opportunity to touch, feel, hold, wear, and learn about the Native American culture of Pocahontas’ relative. It was AWESOME!!
This was part of our Native American Unit. We have free printables on Native Americans of the Northeast, Native Americans of the Southeast (activities and free printables)
Dinosaur Skeletal Structure with Marshmallows!
Dinosaur Packet (A 60 page packet of activities for ages 3-7 including a dinosaur lapbook, Montessori cards and much more.) $4.00
Nile River Project – Ancient Egypt
Homemade Candy Corn (We’ve done this around Halloween for years!!)
Holding a Family Meeting – Our family loves the “something nice” activity that we do sometimes at dinner time… find out more at that post!
Apple Grid Game (PreK Game) – a free printable
Two *amazing* free resources to help kids learn their multiplication facts:
Jumping WAY ahead in math… I have some worksheets and lapbook pieces on exponents (PreAlgebra).
We have lots of free grammar pages. Here is a free worksheet on plurals, endings, past tense verbs.
Some of our Preschool Posts:
- Homeschool Preschool Year in Review which was a recap of many of our preschool activities this past year.
- Preschool Geography: Activities for learning about where we live in the world, Montessori world map work and more
- Preschool Geography: Maps and More
- The Seven Continents and World Landmarks
- Various Free Montessori 3-Part Cards
Homeschool Posts:
- What are Some of the Benefits and Challenges of Homeschooling?
- Creating Daily Homeschool Procedures and Routines
More in this series that highlights up to 20 of our past posts:
That’s about it for today!! I hope you are having a wonderful summer. Have a great day!! See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page. ~Liesl
Liesl, Thank you so much for sharing your awesome work. I am a grandmother who doesn’t use social media so I have turned to your site for years. My granddaughter does not live near us, so when she does come I have had fun educational games and things to do. Doing preschool with and for her was easy and fun but she started kindergarten yesterday and know I don’t know what to do. Do I still do file folder games and grid games? If so where do I find them. She really liked doing the ones I had from you. Again I want to thank you for providing years of information and resources for me.
Hi Deborah,
One thing my kids have really enjoyed (and don’t realize they are learning) are critical thinking activities and games. We have collected many (many, many) games over the years that sneak in really great learning! For example, we just love the geography games… 10 Days Across Europe (or the Africa or Asia versions). There are lots more game ideas here — http://homeschoolden.com/category/games-for-thinking-and-learning/
There are a couple of really fun math books where kids have to think outside the box like this one — http://homeschoolden.com/2015/01/12/critical-thinking-activities-math-circles/ I like these types of math activities because they really make kids *think* and use critical thinking skills. These types of activities are hard to do in a traditional classroom, but doing things with you, she won’t even realize she’s learning! 🙂 UPDATE: Actually, as I was thinking about it, your daughter might be a tad bit young for Math Circles… a better fit might be the really fun games from MATH GAMES by Peggy Kaye. We *love* the ideas in that book!
You’ll find tons of file folder games that are on her level (check out FileFolderFun.com) and you can play them if she’s interested, but stretching her in ways that the traditional classroom can’t fit in might be even better. Perhaps you could help her start learning an instrument? (In a few weeks, I have an entire free Beginner’s Music Curriculum for helping kids learn notes and rhythms. Adding that in with teaching her the basics on a keyboard or recorder would be awesome.) And, of course keep reading with her lots and lots. My youngest really loves the Fairy Rebel at the moment (if your granddaughter likes fairies).
Anyway, those were a few things that popped into my head. Hope that helps a bit! ~Liesl