Monthly Archive: September 2015

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Music Curriculum: Week 3 in Pictures – Music Note Identification Game and More

We’ve still been moving slowly, but steadily through our music curriculum. My older two are definitely understand all the material we’ve gone over, but it definitely takes ED longer to remember all the notes… which is why all the games we’ve been playing have been so wonderful! She needs a lot of repetition and it is not yet translating to what she does on the piano (she just memorizes what...

Language Arts Homeschool-Curriculum 0

Language Arts Update: Literature, Spelling, Vocabulary and Grammar

This is just a quick post about our language arts so far this fall.  The first few weeks of school were off to a good start! 🙂 Our writing workshop is going well, and the kids really like the literature books we’ve add in (for the first part of writing workshop). The kids are really happy with these books. We set the timer for 20 minutes, but usually they take...

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Free Multiplication by 6s Math Worksheets and Skip Counting Mazes: Fall Theme

ED is working on her multiplication facts this year.  She has been skip counting by 6s for the past year in large part because of the hand-clapping game I made up for the girls last year. I’ll post that video in below.  This year she’s moving on to learning the multiplication facts.  She is doing really well with the 3s now… and while most people would go on to the...

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Our Own Mrs. Frisby Mouse Story

Have you read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (affiliate link)? It’s a book we read aloud a couple of years ago (and we highly recommend it!!). It is the touching story of a field mouse who lives in a farmer’s vegetable garden. She needs help moving her young mouse family because her baby, Timothy, is very sickly. Her home is warm and cozy, but is in danger both...

German weather seasons 0

German Conversation Practice Set: Weather, Days of the Week, Months, Seasons

Today I’m going to share our German worksheets about the weather and seasons, winter words and sickness/illness. These and a dozen other pdfs are icluded in German BUNDLE 1. I have found it difficult to find good German materials and curriculum for kids.  Early on we used a lot of free German worksheets and materials, but then at a certain point the kids were ready for more.  Last spring I...

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Thoughts on Teaching: A Story of the Wise Teacher and the Student

Not long ago, I heard a story that has really been bouncing around in my head.  It left me thinking a lot about my role as a homeschooling Mom/teacher… and about my kids’ roles as students.  I am going to do my very best to re-tell that story in this post today. I’m not sure of its origin.  In my version of this story, the wise teacher is a female,...

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Podcast or Video Posts? I’d love to hear your opinion

I’ve been toying with trying something a bit different and I would love to hear your opinions.  I’ve been thinking of either putting together a few podcast episodes or video episodes highlighting different hands-on activities and/or thoughts about homeschooling.  I happen to listen to a TON of podcasts, but then video seems better to be able to incorporate visuals.  Anyway, I’m just bouncing this around in my head and am...

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Pope’s Arrival in the US: Free Packet about the Catholic Pope

Today, the Pope is making his first visit to the United States.  The kids and I watched his arrival on TV just a little while ago. We aren’t Catholic, but the kids’ Grandma is.  (My Mom died about 15 years ago and my Dad remarried just before LD was born.). Anyway, we took the opportunity today to talk about a bit about Catholicism today and about why the Pope is...

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Free Fall-Themed Packets for Ages 3-6 (PreK-Gr. 1)

Are you looking for free fall printables for PreK-K? Here’s a huge list of fabulous FREE fall-themed packets that have been shared by generous parents and teachers.  Get your 3-6 year old into the fall spirit with some of these fall-themed activities and printables. You will find everything from puzzles, counting and letter recognition activities to writing, do-a-dot pages, dot-to-dots and more! Fall Pack from 3 Dinosaurs: Leaves Unit by...

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Chalk Circle Game: Outdoor Math Game (For anything from Addition thru PreAlgebra!!)

The weather is gorgeous, so once again it was time to take advantage of the lovely temperatures, get active, and practice some math! For this game we drew a giant circle out of chalk and put numbers into each space all around the circle. Which numbers? We wrote down the numbers as we skip counted by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s. (2 thru 20, 3 thru 30, 4 thru 40 and...

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PreAlgebra: Order of Operations Cards

Later today, I will be sharing an active, outdoor math game that the kids played last week.  I needed a set of Pre-Algebra type problems that had certain answers so that LD could play an active math fact game with the girls.  More about the game in a few hours (and I’ll link to it), but in this particular post I wanted to share the Order of Operations cards printable. ...

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Thoughts on Teaching: Getting Organized

So in my last post, I talked about how I really wanted to start off my mornings strong.  I realized I needed a Power Morning Routine to make sure that *I* was energized, refreshed, focused, and prepared.  You can read more about all that in this post: Thoughts on Teaching: Creating a Power Morning. But, along with that I really needed to make sure I was completely organized. I think...

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Music Theory Curriculum: Week Two, Rhythm Pizza, Rhythm Game and more

Music continues to go really well for us. I’m glad I’ve got the general plan and all the printables organized and ready to go at a moment’s notice.  It means that music really is getting done about 3 days a week. Hooray! So this is Week Two following the rough Beginners Music Curriculum that I put together this summer. My write-up here really is geared more for my youngest (ED...

Long i words ie y i-e igh Spelling Activities 0

Long I Word Sort – Words with y, i_e or ie

Are your kids studying words that have the Long I sound? They might enjoy the activities in this packet.  It contains a word sort, board game and bingo cards for reviewing the long /i/ spelling patterns: ie, y, i-e, igh, ind and i. I made this long /i/ word sort file folder game for ED.  She went over many of these words (and rules) last year, but she will definitely...