• Leaf Kit - Science activity
    Blogging,  Homeschooling,  Kid Fun

    Kick-Off: Let Fall School Projects Begin

    Love this time of year!  Who doesn’t, really?  I think I write about it every year, unlike the other seasons.  Just something about the Fall.  It officially starts today, yay!  Thought we would kick off the many, many Fall activities we will be doing this season, so excited!  We started by doing a leaf study.  I purchased this really cool kit from the Used Curriculum sale at my local Homeschool Convention. The kit includes many samples of leafs, each in their own plastic sleeve and label.  The Tree Finder book has every kind of tree you can find in North America, comes with illustrations and descriptions.  The workbook, guides you…

  • Math Manipulatives
    Blogging,  Homeschooling,  Inspiration,  Kid Fun

    Summer Centers

    We love centers!  I used them throughout the past school year for all 3 boys.  Some structured some as free-play.  The boys are always happy to pull them out and play with them it is a guaranteed 30 minutes of constructive play. For the Summer I reorganized them, rearranged and grouped different things together to get the boys geared up for summer indoor activities. I put everything in one cabinet thanks to my sister who gave me a nice white cabinet.  Thanks Tia! Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards Styrofoam shapes – Good for Math, Sorting and Building 10 Base T  set – great for Math and Building Random Tools (thanks…

  • Homeschooling,  Kid Fun

    Remember These?

    I have such fond memories of watching my teacher use a felt board to tell a story.  LOVED it so much.  Gathering around her and finding a comfy spot to watch the story unfold. Always wanted to get some to play with as a kid but never did, seemed like a teacher “exclusive” item. I looked at my local Education store and they are so expensive I could not justify the cost. However, now that I started to homeschool I went to my favorite consignment sale to find educational materials.  Imagine how excited I was to find a Storyboard Felt set. Nothing fancy, in fact it looks like it could be from…

  • Homeschooling,  Inspiration,  Kid Fun

    Easy Tie Dye Shirts

    I have always loved tie-dyed shirts, loved them.  Bright bursts of color splashed on a sparkling white tee.  Pretty!  I have wanted to make one for ever but just felt like it would be hard.  Until recently. I came across a spray bottled tie dye kit, it looked easy enough so I had to try it. We bought 3 white tee’s for only $3 a piece!  The kit was 7.99. We twisted and rubber-banded the shirts then sprayed the tie dye all over, set to dry… we let dry 24 hours… When we took the bands off there was still alot of white so we re-banded it and sprayed some more tie dye on, dried some more……

  • Charlotte's Web Lapbook
    Homeschooling,  Kid Fun

    Charlotte’s Web Lapbook

    This year we are using Sonlight Core 1 for my first grader, I absolutely love the emphasis on literature and reading. We are currently reading Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, what a pleasure it is! Preston is really enjoying the story as am I. I wanted to try and come up with a Charlotte’s Web lesson, I also wanted to try lapbooking so I created this and thought it would be the perfect lapbook to make first. It’s designed to be interactive and a helpful learning tool, not just the book and characters but includes other animal facts and stuff like that too. Charlotte’s Web Lapbook Download I thought this…

  • Homeschooling,  Inspiration

    More Homeschool… Manipulatives, Centers, Calendar

    After looking at this site and her ideas for a Calendar board I was completely inspired. Thank you Homeschool Creations for the wonderful ideas!  Here is our Calendar board: We have: Todays Date, with different ways to write the date, make the date in money, color of the day, weather for temp. (1st grader will fill in daily), weather for the 4 year old to use picture cards.  We also have letter of the day and verse of the day.  I will also be adding the skip counting pages. For calendar I plan on having all 3 boys participate in one way or another.  I have also been looking around for…

  • Homeschooling,  Kid Fun

    Toddler and Preschool Centers

    Figuring out to do with my preschooler and toddler while I work with my 1st grader will be a challenge, however with these fun centers – I know it will be easier.  I had them all put away for about a week then decided to let them see everything and get their hands on it.  I told them they were our school centers, they loved them!  This morning when I went to pull them out they were so excited, I love it! A huge shout out to Carisa at 1+1+1=1.  I got all of my ideas on these centers from her blog post titled “Toddler Trays”. Lots of items from…