The Prez was not at all hip on four of our children receiving Ipods for Christmas gifts. The grandparents were ready and willing to go in together and purchase these gifts for four of our children, who had put them on their wish lists. I was ready to make the leap, because I knew unlike so many hand-held electronic devices we could put the Ipod to work for many learning opportunities. Continue reading
… with an idea that I would make gifts for all of our children. *And no, they won’t be reading this post!*
Two are done so far. Well one of these is part of a larger repurposed L -E-G-O table …
… that is not done yet. The table is actually my Mom and Dad’s VERY OLD bedside table. I think it is older than me, maybe? Anyway, my Mom, my sister and I are known for exchanging furniture, and we rarely get rid of things that are solid wood. Hard to find that these days, right? So, I told my Mom I needed a table and/or small cabinet. She said she couldn’t think of anything the right size she had hidden away, but she called me the same day and said, “I happened to talk to your sister, and she has something I think will work.” Sure enough, it will be perfect I think!
Oops, my Mom had a plant on it at one time that leaked. Oh well. I’m painting it (or rather the Prez is painting it) black like two other L.E.G.O. tables we already have. I’ll also be screwing one of these onto the top! I can’t wait to get this done and will be getting started on it this weekend. 🙂
The drawers will give Li’l Bro lots of space ALL HIS OWN for his little creations in progress, and the knobs will be getting a facelift. The Prez happened to find 6 knobs from a previous project we did–perfectly simple, round, nickel-colored knobs. So, this project will cost me a grand total of $15.99–the cost of the extra large baseplate. LOVE!
The book though … which will be wrapped up and hid inside it! … is done.
And I am fairly certain a certain little dude is going to have a BIG smile when he thumbs through it. Continue reading
I am so excited about this set! I have two firsties who are so excited about understanding fractions more and more. We have been working with pizzas, pies, and even cookies. Even little sister is having fun with her “pizza.”
Now they can practice what they know by matching up cards to one another and/or identifying the fraction when they see it or read it.
I have been working on this set for a long while. I just couldn’t quit adding in fractions and the mini posters just sort of happened! Continue reading
One of our math goals this year for our 1st graders is learning to count to 100 as well as more awareness of number relationships such as counting by twos, by fives and by tens.
I was playing around on my computer one day working on a 1–100 chart. I had found plenty on-line, but none of them looked the way I wanted. I had a vision that the chart I had for our 1st graders would visually convey that all of the 7s numbers such as 7, 17, 27 and so on all end in 7. And the same for 4s and 9s and … well you get the idea. But I could not find one like that.
I read it all. I rarely say a word. But this morning, my heart is SICK that a man in our state was re-elected ONLY because of the political party beside his name. He is a doctor, who allegedly* had multiple affairs and finally his wife had enough. They are now divorced. This all happened while he had young children as well. He reportedly asked one of his mistresses to have an ABORTION and yet people in our state re-elected him ONLY because he claims affiliation with a particular party. (*Divorce proceedings will confirm it all officially, but he admitted and multiple women share similar stories.)
This is the type of hypocrisy that I am so WEARY of. What in the world are people thinking?
I liked the post about our History/Geography 1st Term accomplishments so much for record-keeping purposes and motivational purposes to keep on keeping on that I decided to do something similar for math concepts I have taught the children in Term 1 (first 12 weeks of school).
The graphic above is one page of my 5-A-Day map as I call it. This is where I list the concepts from Math on the Level that I will use on each student’s 5-A-Day pages each day. The concepts in bold have already been taught, but either are not mastered or are ones I feel they need to continue practicing on a regular basis (could be daily, weekly or even bi-weekly).
I hope to do more of these posts for other subjects. I know I’m probably the only one reading them, but part of the reason I blog is to document what we do for our family journal.
Li’l Bit loves to do “calendar time” with her big brother and sister. While she doesn’t have an actual Page Protector Calendar yet, I did create a special set for her using pieces from the Page Protector Bundle 2, which I created to use with 10-pocket business-sized page protectors.
She loves to point to the colors as I name them and point to the shapes as I say them. She already can point to the circle, heart, star and triangle.
I am really hoping to print our blog soon into a book. I would like to continue blogging about some of our homeschool happenings.
I really love our history curriculum we are using this year. We are in Module 5 this year. We used Module 4 last year.
I can’t imagine teaching history and geography any other way than family style. I am so proud of all of the reading our children have done for history already just in Term 1, so I wanted to highlight that here.
While some of them have read more books, others are reading more difficult selections. I selected based on maturity and reading level. Continue reading
