This Week's Favorites from My Google Reader

I subscribe to twenty-something blogs in my Google reader. (And no, I don't read all of them every day. :) I glean many wonderful ideas from them, and I thought it would be fun to share my favorites each week.

We're going to study frogs and toads later in the summer so these caught my eye:

No Time For Flashcards has aFive Speckled Frogs video and a cute tadpole craft to go along with it. This is an adorable song that I can't wait to teach to my littles. (O.K. and my 7-year old too.!)

Here is a fun, easy-to-make frog puppet with another cute song, also from No Time for Flashcards. (BTW, I love this blog!)

Five Green and Speckled Frogs DIY Hand Puppet (very easy) from Her Cup Overfloweth.

Now the rest of these have nothing to do with frogs or toads. They're just a collection of ideas I really like and intend to make - eventually!

Boredom Buster Art Box featured at Dollar Store Crafts courtesy of Scrumdilly-Do. This is kind of like a portable workbox, and would be great for long road trips.

Homemade Family Yahtzee - I think the idea of personalizing favorite board games with family members' pictures, names, etc. is such a fun idea. My mind is busy with all of the directions you could go with this!

Pop and Lock - a fun and unique fine-motor activity involving keys. What child doesn't enjoy playing with keys?

Alphabet and Shape Match-Up File Folder Game - This is a fun activity I'm hoping to add to the workboxes.

Recycled Crayons - These would be great for motivating a "reluctant artist" to draw and color.

Hope you enjoy these. Let me know if you make or use one of them, and I'd love to see a picture!

Announcing...

Being the unabashed and unashamed curriculum junkie that I am, I'm excited to tell you about...



Curriculum Choice is a brand new website dedicated to providing you with information and curriculum reviews written by a group of homeschool Moms.

Brenda, the creator (and mastermind!) of the site, has recruited a team of Moms to review resources in order to help you in your curriculum decisions. These Mom reviewers represent a wide variety of homeschooling philosophies, so no matter what methods you use in your homeschool, you're bound to find something that pertains to you. The site just launched this week, but it's already brimming with some wonderful articles.

I am also excited and honored to be one of the writers at Curriculum Choice, so even though I am a bit biased, I think you're really going to enjoy visiting over there. :)

So grab a glass of sweet tea (or whatever!), click on over, and let us know what you think!

Money in the Workboxes

Here's something new I'm trying in the preschool workboxes - washing money!
(If you're wondering what in the world's a workbox, then check out this post.)

Two of my children's favorite playthings are water and money, so I knew if I combined the two I'd have a fine-motor hit.

Yes, it's a tad messy but cleanup took only five minutes, and the girls were busy and happy for half a hour.

What you need for each child:

-a plastic bowl/container filled halfway with water
-dish soap (Put just a couple of drops in and swish the water to make bubbles.)
-old toothbrush or a sponge
-dishtowel (for laying the washed coins on to dry)
-plastic tablecloth or shower curtain (to put underneath the work area)
-lots of coins!

**If you really want your money to shine, you can use vinegar and salt instead of water. It's fun to clean dirty pennies with this solution because you can really see the difference when you're done. (The water and dishwashing soap do not yield as dramatic an effect, but I will only use the vinegar if I'm right there to supervise what's going on!)







Here are some more fun money activities and money-related stories for preschoolers. (I especially like the treasure chest coin sort.)

A to Z Kids Stuff also has some great money activities - and a great poem for learning coin values.

Our Gardening Books

We're finishing up our gardening unit this week, and I wanted to share some of the books we've been enjoying.














I'll place these in the sidebar, and they'll be there for a few weeks. We're headed out of town next week for a beach vacation, so we won't be starting any new units for awhile. :)

These were our favorites from the stack I checked out from the library (and from our own collection). I'm sure we'll be re-reading them throughout the summer as we continue working in our garden.

Memorial Day Resources

A few ideas for learning about this very important day and the men and women who gave so much for us...

We will probably do a simple craft, and we'll call my Grandfather, who was in the Army in WWII, to thank him for his service to our country.

Currclick is offering this free Memorial Day Holiday Helper. Among other things, it includes instructions for making red paper poppies, which looks like a fun project.

This site has some beautiful photos and information about poppies.

On this page you will find a free Memorial Day E-book compliments of Parenting Zoo and Dine Without Whine. It contains patriotic recipes and other fun activities. Also on that same page you'll find more free e-books for other occasions.

Fabulous Fireworks - These are made with a doilie and tempera paint. They look easy and really pretty too.

Memorial Day windsocks

History of Memorial Day

Enchanted Learning has several craft ideas and other activities.

Apples4theTeacher has some good informational links and activities.

Veterans in My Family - gives ideas for making a little tribute to the veterans in your family. It suggests interviewing them, which is something we've done with my Grandfather. I think it is so important for our children to hear first-hand from the older generations what it means to sacrifice for your country.

Abcteach has some puzzles, acrostics, coloring sheets and other activities.

Patriotic Plantings - This is a pretty flower arrangement that I hope to plant sometime this summer.

Patriotic Crafts from Family Fun - Family Fun is one of my go-to sites for neat holiday crafts.

Hope you find something here to include in your Memorial Day festivities!

Urgent Prayer Request

Jessica Hulcy, co-author of the KONOS homeschool curriculum, was in a major car accident on Monday. Her Ford Explorer was broadsided by a volunteer fire truck, and she was badly injured. She is listed in critical but stable condition. She is reported to have many broken bones, collapsed lungs, and brain trauma.

Please pray for Jessica and her family.

You can read the family's updates at her CaringBridge page.

Time Capsule Tuesday: Caps for Sale

The other day I had to take Sweet Pea to the doctor. On the way out the door I decided to grab a handful of books we haven't read in a while to keep her occupied during our wait. Among them was one of our Before Five in a Row books, Caps for Sale.

When we reached the doctor's office, Sweet Pea chose Caps, and as I began to read it, I realized that it was new to her. The last time we pulled it out she must have not quite been one year old. (That's what I get for keeping our Five in a Row books on a special shelf in the basement. I'm actually in the process of moving the schoolroom to the main floor to make things more accessible to everyone.)


At any rate, she fell in love with this delightful story, and I began to reminisce about all of the fun things we did with it when Superman and Giggly Girl were five and three years old. Here are a few of our memories...

My Daddy had just given us a bunch of his old caps, so we put them to good use acting out the story.

In fact, the children enjoyed acting out the story so much - and they were so cute to watch - that we rehearsed and videotaped it.

We also made these cute monkey masks from Martha Stewart. (I can't believe I found the same pattern, and the link works!)



We also made these yummy Monkey Boats...
You need:
6-8 med. bananas (or one for each person)
1 c. semi sweet chocolate chips
1 c. mini-marshmallows

-Slit each banana lengthwise through the peel, making sure not to cut all the way through to the other side.
-Stuff the inside of the banana with marshmallows and chocolate chips.
-Wrap each banana in aluminum foil and bake at 300 degrees for 5 minutes, or until chocolate is melted.
-Eat with a spoon!
(You can also cook over a fire or on the grill.)

I think we also did some Letter M activities along with this story - you know, because of the monkeys and the money themes in this story. :) A few M activities we've done...

-glue macaroni onto a large letter M cut out of construction paper

-Wash money...provide a large dishpan or pot, squirt in some dishwashing soap and swish around to make bubbles, drop in a bunch of coins and a scrubber, and let your little one shine up those coins! (Of course you'll want to put a plastic tablecloth underneath this activity.)

-Fill a glass jar about 3/4 full with water. Give your child some coins, and tell them to drop them into the jar one by one to see how many it will take to bring the water to the top and make the jar overflow. (BTW, it takes a lot of coins, so make sure you fill the jar up with water almost to the top before you let your little one start - unless they are extremely patient.)

-I've never done this one, but we'll try it this time around. Use an eye dropper to drop water (one drop at a time) onto a penny's surface. An older child can count how many drops the surface of the penny will hold before the water spills over; help a younger child by counting out loud together.

Needless to say, it's time for me to do some of these fun things with Sweet Pea now that she's discovered this classic children's story. (I imagine the other two will want to join in again too!)

Some other monkey business we might look into...

-Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed Tot Book/Activity Pak - Carissa has put so much hard work into these, and shares them with all of us Moms with Tots. We'll definitely be using some of these activities. (I think I'll print out these "Retell the Story" graphics, laminate, and attach felt to the back to use as a felt board set.)

-Preschool Printables also has templates for a Five Little Monkeys felt board story. (You could easily use these along with a free-handed felt tree, man, and caps to retell Caps for Sale.)

-DLTK's Five Little Monkeys and related activities

-Monkey Mazes, Puzzles, and Coloring Pages

-Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb unit and lapbook at Homeschool Share - This is a great monkey unit!

Homeschool Showcase

This is a wonderful carnival hosted by Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. You'll find lots of neat projects, field trips, and other fun activities that families around the homeschool blogosphere have done. (And you're in for a treat just cruising around Kris' awesome blog!)

Just click on the graphic above to enjoy the carnival. You'll probably pick up an idea or two for your own family. :)

(And if you have a post about something that has enriched your own homeschool, don't be shy about submitting it for the next showcase!)

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Now that I have finished posting my backlog of posts from our weather unit, I'm excited to share with you what we've been doing recently...getting our hands dirty with gardening!

The weather where we live is just now getting warm enough for us to plant outside, but we've done several fun indoor projects that have us itching to get the outdoor garden going.

•We began our unit with a trip to Home Depot to pick out lots of seeds. Each child chose a few. We came home with packets of seeds to grow green beans, pumpkins, cherry tomatoes, radishes, carrots, spinach, and several others that I can't remember. We started these in a tray filled with moistened peat pellets. (These are always fun to watch swell up and expand when you add water to them.)

Most of our seeds sprouted fairly quickly (green beans and pumpkins), others took several days, and a few didn't sprout at all (broccoli and spinach). This weekend we'll be transplanting these to our container vegetable garden out on the back patio. (Each child has a very large rectangular container which will be their very own vegetable garden.)

We read The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons and Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Lenski to go along with starting our veggie seedlings.

•For our next indoor project we read How a Seed Grows by Jordan and Krupinksi (Let's Read and Find out Science Stage 1), which gives great introductory info. on seeds and describes the sprouting of a bean in a ziploc bag. (I am always amazed at how even my 3-yr. old enjoys these Let's Read and Find Out Science books. The pictures are great and help to hold her interest.)

We then started our own "beans-in-baggies". You drop a couple of beans into a ziploc bag with a folded wet paper towel, and tape to a sunny window. I didn't take many pictures because shortly after we started this experiment, I came down with pneumonia, but we did enjoy seeing the beans sprout and grow stems and leaves.



•While re-organizing our homeschool closet, I came across a Root-Vue Farm Kit that I'd completely forgotten about. This is a really neat science kit that allows you to plant several seeds and then observe (through a plastic window) their roots and sprouts developing over the next few weeks. We planted carrots, radishes, and gourds. The radishes sprouted within a couple of days, the carrots took maybe 5 days, and the gourds were a bust.

The kit came with several large dirt/peat pellets that we added water to and then mixed until it was the right consistency.

Filling the growing container with the dirt mixture. Getting it behind the plastic window was a bit tricky (read messy), but hey, what gardening project isn't a little bit messy?




•This next project has probably been our favorite...making grassheads! My favorite set of directions that I found for these cute little guys came from Family Fun's site. You'll see there that you can also decorate the heads with faces and clothing, which is on our to-do list. (One thing we did differently from the directions was to add a bit of spaghnum moss to the potting soil in the pantyhose. I did this because all of the other grasshead directions I found suggested using spaghnum moss or sawdust instead of potting soil.)

We started these about ten days ago, and it took several days for the grass seed to begin sprouting, so this was a big patience builder for all of us.


These are our grassheads approximately ten days after "planting" them. Kurt says we've got some male pattern baldness going on, but hopefully we'll start seeing more grass on the tops soon. :)


The thing I love most about these gardening projects is that everyone has excitedly checked on the progress of their seeds and plants each day. We've had a couple of disappointments when certain things didn't sprout or thrive, but those disappointments have provided opportunities for problem-solving and perserverance.

I hope the weather will be nice in your area this weekend so that you can enjoy some time outdoors with your family. (And if you and your children happen to plant something together, I would enjoy hearing about it!)

Happy Friday!

Freebies for You, Mom!

In honor of all of you wonderful Moms, Currclick is offering four free downloads a day for the next couple of days.

Click on the button to see and download your freebies.

And Happy Belated Mother's Day!

Carnival Time!

Some new carnival editions are up this week for your reading pleasure...







Enjoy!

Thundercake and Tea Party

This is it...my final weather post!!

We wrapped up our unit by reading Thundercake by Patricia Polacco - we read this several times throughout the unit, as it was a favorite - and made our own Thundercake by following the recipe in the back of the book.

A little disclaimer in case you decide to do this activitiy...This was a very "from scratch" recipe, and it was labor intensive, especially with three little ones doing most of the sifting, pouring, and mixing. But...we didn't have anything else going on that day, so I didn't have to watch the clock or worry about the huge mess that would have to be cleaned up when we were done! It was worth it. The children had a blast because like most kids, they absolutely love to cook and bake.

Beating egg whites with an old-fashioned beater

The modern day beater is much easier!

Their finished product - decorated just like the cake in Ms. Polacco's story

And boy, was it yummy! Chocolate is Giggly Girl's favorite cake, so she was a happy camper. :)

We enjoyed a cup of tea with our Thundercake, just like the characters in the story.


This made for a fun finale to our weather adventures.

I hope you've enjoyed reading along with us and maybe gleaned an idea or two to use in your weather studies.

Homeschool Share Blast

 

There is a great contest going on over at Homeschool Share that I encourage you to check out.

If you're not familiar with HSS, boy are you in for a treat. It's a huge collection of free resources that homeschooling Moms from all over the blogosphere have created and chosen to share. It's run by some great ladies - Ami, Celia, and Wende - who work very hard at keeping it a top notch place to go for free unit studies, lapbooks, and other resources too. If you've never been over there, you simply must go and see all of the wonderful free goodies that are available.

Each year HSS sponsors a big contest to encourage homeschooling Moms like you and me to contribute a resource (or resources) that we have created. If you've ever thought of trying your hand at writing a unit study or creating a lapbook, this is a great time to give it a shot. There are several categories for types of resources they need, and the prizes are fabulous. (This year there is even a new category for Workbox Resources, which I'm really excited about.) I've participated in the past and am hoping to again this year. It's a great way to give back to a site that has provided so many resources for my homeschooling needs.

Click on the graphic at the top of this post to find out more about the contest.

And I'd love for you to drop me a comment if you decide to enter something. :)

Exploring Nature in Our Socks

We set out to see what nature treasures we might bring home on the bottom of our feet. (I got this idea from Cindy over at Westward a few months ago.)

A few things we saw along the way...

Four baby robins in one of our neighbor's trees. They're about ready to fly any day now...I'm really hoping we'll be outside and see them when they fledge. Brings back a cherished memory from last spring.







Some wildflowers and lots of dandelions. I love how children see dandelions as being just as beautiful as other flowers. I happen to agree!

Acorns are always a treasured find.

An interesting family of mushrooms that I have not been able to identify yet. Any ideas?

So what did we track home? A few dandelion seeds, some grass seed that Daddy planted last week, and lots of dirt. The grass was really wet from a rainshower the night before. I think we will bring home a wider variety of things if we try this when it's dry. We had so much fun traipsing around in our sockfeet...I'm sure we'll do it again soon.

Organizing Our Day with Workboxes

A few weeks ago I was over at my friend Leslie's blog, where she shared something that I am very excited about - Sue Patrick's Workboxes.

You may have heard of these already because they have been causing quite a stir in the homeschool world. I just never took the time to find out what all the excitement was about until I decided to read Leslie's workbox posts. I was hooked before I left her blog, so I headed to Sue's site to purchase her book.

In a nutshell, the workbox system organizes all of your child's curriculum and activities for the school day into twelve clear-plastic shoeboxes, which are stored on shelves. This includes any activities he does independently, with you, or in a group setting. The boxes are numbered, and as your child finishes each box, it is removed from the shelf. As each box disappears, the student can see his accomplishments and what he has left to do for the day.

Sue encourages you to intersperse the boxes with enrichment activities too - in addition to your regular curriculum. This keeps students interested and provides a great means of review and reinforcement.

Right now our workboxes are set up under our kitchen island. When I finish moving our school room to the playroom, they'll go in there. I used the clear plastic shoeboxes and 4-tier organizing rack that Sue recommends. Both can be purchased at Target. I'm only using six boxes for each of the girls, and that's plenty for now.


We're in our second week of using this system. I know that's not very long, but so far it has worked wonders in our homeschool. I am amazed at how quickly our school day goes by and how much more we get done than we used to.

My children thrive on a certain amount of structure, and by using the workboxes I can create the structure they need but still have flexibility in our day. If we have to stop school to go to piano lessons or the library, we can just jump right back in with the next box when we return home.

Since we started this system, not once has Superman asked the age-old question, "How much more school do I have today?" He can see by looking at his boxes, and for the most part he and the girls are excited about getting to the next one.

My favorite things about workboxes:

-I can use all of the fun resources that have been collecting dust in the closet. (games, manipulatives, puzzles, science kits, etc.)
-My children are learning to be more independent with their learning.
-Our routine and materials for the day are organized and right where we can see them - from beginning to end.
-I am getting to spend more one-on-one time with Giggly Girl and Sweet Pea doing preschool activities with them.
-Our day flows more smoothly than it ever has.
-We're able to accomplish so much and get to the wonderful extras that often get left out.
-My children are more excited about school than they used to be.
-I can tweak the workbox system to meet our family's needs.

And Finally...
-Workboxes keep me on my toes, thinking and planning more purposefully for each individual child. (Sounds like a lot of work maybe, but it has been completely worth it. And each night that I plan and fill the boxes, it becomes quicker and easier for me to do. If life happens and puts me in a time crunch, I can just fill fewer boxes with the Three R's and our unit study.)

If this system intrigues you, I encourage you to visit Sue Patrick's website or Currlick and purchase her book. (It comes in hard copy and e-book format.) She explains her philosophy behind the boxes, shows you how to set it all up, and provides forms and other things you'll need to get started. (You're able to access these from her website after you purchase the book.)

You'll be hearing a lot more about workboxes from me in the near future.

In the meantime I'll leave you with a picture of the girls doing something from one of their favorite boxes so far...