Fun with Learning!

Happy Thursday! Any big weekend plans out there? Not too much going on for us, just picking up stuff to finish some yard work and the like. Today's post is fairly simple, I spent yesterday making up worksheets for my youngest child. Making your own worksheets allows you to cater the learning of your child to exactly what he or she needs help with and you can also make the type of sheets that your child enjoys. Roman loves to color, so I knew coloring sheets were right up his alley. 

For his addition sheets, I put in the numbers he struggles with along with easy ones, so his confidence is never completely zapped. If he still gets some right, he still feels good about his abilities. 

 On his Sight Word sheet, it's all about what he can read as soon as he sees it, then he colors the ones that he needs to sound out and then together we work on the ones that he struggles with. From there, I know what to use on the next sheet.

Sight Word worksheets are so simple to make, because there are always words to be learned. You could make them with spelling words, phonics sounds, letters, anything at all just make the sheets according to your child's ability. 

The subtraction sheet is a little more complex for my youngest but it turned out to be his favorite. It doesn't matter how much you put into the sheet, just give it a try or feel free to print these out!

Enjoy every moment my friends!

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Classroom Tour Part 2

Spring cleaning is on the brain my friends. The weather is warming up and we have doors and windows open as we air out the house and get moving on re-organizing the classroom. After 2 months of homeschooling, I am learning what works and what does not work for us. This is just what I have been working on this week, hopefully I can give a full out tour soon enough.  

I have a very long shelf that runs very close to the classroom ceiling and on this shelf I have all of our educational games and puzzles. This keeps them apart from the normal board games and such that are in the playroom and also allows me to keep a better eye on them. Keeping these all in the classroom let's the kids know that they can play with them at any time they would like, but they need to stay in the classroom. I try to keep them grouped by types of games but usually by the end of the day, I have to get back up there and rearrange them. 

Our Nature Table is another corner of our classroom I would like to share with you! We picked up this spice rack at the Container Store and it is absolutely perfect for specimen jars! The kids can collect to their hearts content. I plan on putting in a shelf above it for them to keep an even larger collection. I keep Tweezers and a Magnifying Glass accessible and several different collection containers and trays in the drawer below. You can also see a soil sample that we took after the storm today, to examine under a microscope. A Nature Table allows your children to bring the outdoors in and always gives you a place to keep these "Treasured" items. Even something like a large glass jar would work if you are tight on space!

 This shelf is using bin storage for books as opposed to just the standard shelving. This of course takes up more space but allows the kids to see even more of what is present!

The Top is full of assorted Letter & Word Tiles.
#2 is full of Science Readers, Reference Books & Science Magazines ( Ranger rick magazine, National Geographic Magazine, National Geographic Kids, National Geographic World, All Animals)
#3 Has Puzzle Magazines by Highlights for Children (Puzzlemania & Mathmania), Flash Cards, Which Way USA Activity Books(By Highlights)
#4 Penguin Books, Pop Up Books, The Everything Kids____Books, Phonics Readers and cards
#5 Flashcards, Religion Books, Readers that are sorted by Reading Level.

Here is a closer look at how I organize the Readers on shelf #5. You can see that I just used Sentence Strips to divide up each level and they sit in one shoe box type bin perfectly! Keeping these books divided properly allows children from different reading levels to grab what would work best for them and also shows them that the better they can read, the more that opens up to them! 

A corner of our room holds pocket charts that we change out games when necessary and our wall of Presidents. I have a deck of Brain Quest Presidents cards but I am waiting on a flashcard set and once I have those, I will put them on a cup hook below the chart for more interaction. This is a hidden corner of the room where whoever is working here can sit comfortably and work while not being bothered. 

Geography Corner! If you keep related items together, they will get used more often. I try to keep things on display, to make them more inviting. This corner shows a poster from Brain Quest that has very eye attracting colors, along with a ring of State Flashcards and Writing Prompts that are Travel Themed all on the wall. On the surface space, you will find a basket filled with card games and reference materials along with a dry erase board that has different pages to test your skills on states, capitals,countries, continents and the like! (Picked that up at OfficeMax). Round it out with a Globe and Continents Puzzle and this place sees a lot of action throughout the day! 

With 3 kids and their friends constantly in and out of the house, our classroom tends to be more of a library than anything else and I knew it was time to get organized. Step one was to figure out how to keep the books organized. I am keeping each section visible to the kids by using Paint Stir Sticks. I got mine from Lowes. I asked the person in the paint department for as many as they could give me and the man was much obliged. It didn't hurt that we are remodeling our new home and have bought gallons and and gallons and gallons of paint. My next step is to type up the title and author of each book I own in it's sub section and keep a master list. This will prevent me from purchasing doubles of books and also allow me to keep track of what is being loaned out or missing! 

Enjoy every minute my friends! 

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Bones, Bones, Bones...

Happy Tuesday! I am still in disbelief that April is here! Can you believe that we have now been homeschooling for 2 months? When they say time flies, it's so very true. I am with my children 24-7 now and I still miss them when they go for an overnight with Nana and Grandpa! How is that possible? When we are in the classroom we are so busy having fun that I often wonder if that can be called learning. 

This week, our Science Books have led us to a unit study on the Human Body. We are starting with studying the human skeleton, what better way to begin a new learning adventure, than with a hands on project! I purchased THIS Bones Book & Human Skeleton Model. WOW, was this more successful than I expected. It took us about 2 hours AFTER school and the kids never even yawned, complained or asked if it was almost over!! As we put the model together, we discussed what EACH bone was and passed it around to feel it, then we attempted to touch that bone on our own bodies. It was a lot of fun and such a learning experience for us all. 

I highly recommend hands on studies when your children are learning something. It doesn't even have to cost you too much money. Print out bone worksheets and put together a skeleton using a stapler or even glue, anything you have on hand, then label the pieces together. There are so many resources that a simple google search will help you fulfill your needs. Look at their faces! They are so proud of their hard work and they wanted to keep going! We read several books on the human body and all in all had a very awesome school day, not too bad for a Monday! 

In all of our unit studies, you will find that I always like to find coordinating books, workbooks and the like to have around for the kids to use and enjoy at all times. While we purchase many books new, it's always good to get AWESOME deals on books that can otherwise get pricey! Check out this FANTASTIC web site that lists Book Sales all across the Country!!! Most are at libraries and the links give you all the information you would ever need on tracking down sales close to your local area. You can often go on the last days of these sales and pack a bag for 5.00!!

 
This is a fabulous worksheet from CRAYOLA that will make it's way to our worktable later on this week as well. As with all worksheets, you can easily adapt it to the type of learners you have at home and their ages. My eldest will take this worksheet as a test and I will remove the vocab box as well as the answer key. My 1st grader will just have the answer key removed and fill in the blanks using the vocab box. My youngest will color that page and then point to the bone as I say the word aloud. There are so many ways to get creative and have fun with anything.

Enjoy every minute!

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Healthy Snacking

I hope you all are enjoying your weekend! We are spending the weekend at home working around the house and just enjoying our time together. This past week, we have been discussing the importance of snacking healthy and I love using visuals like this, so that the kids can SEE what is good for them.

 

Keep that fruit from going moldy and keep your family snacking healthy!! I always have small bowls of fruit on tables in the living room, dining room and kitchen. Whenever the urge to snack hits, there is always something fresh and ready. I have to refill the one in the upstairs living room sometimes twice a day. I plan on adding one in the kids living room in the basement soon!

When we are out of fruit, I move to veggies too! This was 2 full bags of  baby carrots and the 1 bowl of celery were all gone within 3 hours. It's amazing to see how much children eat when it's just put right in front of them, go ahead, try healthy grazing!

I printed this image out and then slipped it in a page protector, so that it could become their new placemat. This is a simple way for them to see what they are eating for dinner and to make sure they are eating properly. It's a great visual for mom and dad too!

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Summer Time!

Summer is so close that I can taste it!! Don't forget to link up your Summer Bucket Lists or your Summer Pinterest  Boards in the original post HERE! Just make sure you PIN the PHOTO in the original link that looks like the one above to your board so that people can keep on checking out the great lists and ideas!!! 

Enjoy every minute!!

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Learning the Fun Way

I focus a lot of our curriculum on writing as I find it truly important in communication. Writing can portray an image of yourself that you do not even realize is being set out there. Today we are working on contractions in the classroom. Do you have a set focus in your daily studies? Writing and Math are huge over here and I also try to stress reading as much as possible but that is something that we work on outside of the classroom throughout the day as well. 

I got this wonderful list of contractions from Enchanted Learning and it was a great help in launching our lesson today. The color coded lists and the way they break them down is so helpful and also keeps the brain stimulated. It is so easy to find everything you need to supplement an education on the internet. How on earth did people homeschool before this day and age of electronics? Don't get me wrong, my favorite way of learning is still the good old library, but sometimes there are days when you just don't want to pack up the gang and go.

I am a huge fan of hands on learning and incorporate it daily into our lessons but there are still many things that need to be attacked with worksheets and books. When this time comes, I still try and make it as fun as possible so that the children have a good connotation with school. Don't go thinking that our days are all full of sunshine and rainbows but it's pretty darn close. HA.Ha.Ha. No, honestly I lose my temper and sometimes the kids get riled up and want to just play play play. This week has been difficult with the neighbors on Spring Break and outdoors at 7 a.m. The one thing that keeps us all sane in the end is knowing that we all are trying out best and of course that we are always done before noon. I don't get discouraged but sometimes it's easy to get down on myself, when those times come, I just step back, breathe and move onto something different.

This rainbow reference sheet is something I made just for today. It's National Rainbow Day and I figured I would tie it in somehow to our lessons. What I am loving most about this, is that it's so basic, even the youngest can color it and learn. I printed out 4 copies and we all sat with it, saying the words as we colored them. So simple but also fun.

EXACTLY! Enjoy the Day!

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Learning, Living and Loving!

Where have I been??? I apologize for just leaving you all hanging. It has been a crazy past week with the Holiday and then throwing ourselves into a new week. We have friends on Spring Break and are still trying to balance school. It's difficult but we are making it work. I hope you all had a Happy Easter and are getting into the new week just fine. 

We love making volcanoes for fun but when we can combine them into a Science Unit, it's even BETTER! I used our old standby Volcano Recipe and Plan but this time as we created it, we discussed all the levels of the volcano and how they are formed. Before we even got around to exploding it, we were already 1 hour in. Another AWESOME activity where the kids don't even know they are working! 

A quick Google search led me to several Volcano worksheets perfect for testing. I found one that would work best for us and printed it out. Homeschooling is made so much easier with the internet so handy! I love what I do and the best part is, is that the kids do too! Find this worksheet HERE!

Sight Words is the name of the games on a daily basis for us. Let me tell you that I try a different game each day and we always have so much fun that even I forget that I am supposed to be teaching. I love inviting the big kids to play, because even though they know how to read they encourage their little brother so much!

If there is one addiction I have, it's to books. I love to read, devour and soak in books. I cannot help it but it truly is my life. I hope to pass this love onto my children and that is what keeps me always buying books. These are the latest to join our collection, courtesy of Easter! In total they got over 10 books for Easter and it really seems as though all of our friends and family know us well!

Easter had us spending time with family and friends. Even though it did not go as planned, it was still a lot of fun. We had an absolute blast at Brunch and then a couple egg hunts and so much more. I think I have more fun on the Holidays when the stress level is low, than my children do. How about you?

My Easter Purse was full of so many goodies that I fell in love with the Easter Bunny! Shh, don't tell my husband! My floral bag was full of a gorgeous set of wood wind chimes for our screen porch, books, a gift card to Starbucks and this awesome reusable Starbucks mug! Add in some Godiva chocolates and a bottle of my favorite wine and well....I will be in heaven for a long long time!

GIVE IT ALL!!

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Fun in the Classroom

Hello friends! Sorry about the posting delay today, it has been a busy one as we prepare for our Easter Holiday. I just wanted to share some fun things that we have going on in class this past week. I hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy the time you have with your family and friends.

Use a small craft stick to make a spacer for beginning writers. It helps them with keeping their writing neat and clean. These little sticks allow my youngest to slow down while he is writing and notice his spacing but also his writing is cleaner when he stops every word. 

Use your hole punches and colorful paper for the pattern play center of your classroom. These are colorful and fun for making patterns and just general crafting too. The kids love to create their own punches and some even make it to confetti! 

With all the remodeling of the house that we have going on, there were a lot of paint strips leftover! These are perfect for making bookmarks for the Book Exchange Party! We are making some for boys and girls. 

More paint chips helped us make a fun Sight Word Memory Game! I have 80 cards with 40 words on them and 5 black BOOM cards. The idea is to flip a card and say the word, spell the word  and then try again. If you get the match you keep it. If you flip a BOOM card, you lose all your matches. This game has been a lot of fun to play for all the kids, even my big readers! 

In an effort to make all my daily stapling a bit easier on the eyes, I took a permanent marker to my staples. It's amazing how cute it looks and it really does brighten up the page. A silly little update but one that was fun anyway. 

Reluctant writers need to be encouraged in a variety of ways. I change up the writing center often and that always helps attract them back. Change up the types, colors and shapes of paper along with the writing instrument and you will notice that even the most shy of writers will head in to check it out!!

Enjoy every minute!

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