Something Big is Coming and a $56,000 Homeschool Sweepstakes! | Home Educating Association

Something Big is Coming and a $56,000 Homeschool Sweepstakes! | Home Educating Association

Teaching Place Value - Place Value Lane

Place Value was a challenging subject for one of my children.  They just did not comprehend that the number 35 had 3 sets of 10's and 5 ones.  So one day I sat down and drew a street with houses (see pic above).  There is an units/ones house on the right, tens house, hundreds house and thousands house (and on and on).  These houses get bigger and bigger but all only have 9 rooms. 

I then pulled out our cuisinare rods and some index cards.  I wrote a number on the index card and told my kids to put the units and tens in their houses for the night.  At first they looked at me strange and then they thought about it.  Slowly they put the correct amount of units in the unit house and tens in the ten house.  

Why we are called the School of Monkeys - Wordless Wednesday

On dresser!

Paint Chip Phonics Learning Game

How do you teach phonics to kids without it being boring?  This was my question when I was teaching my oldest daughter.  She had a hard time learning to read and I got really frustrated.  Then I read a blog that had this game posted.  

 

What you need:

• 13 Long cards with 4 colors on it
• 34 short cards with a hole cut out (or 12 if they have 3 colors)
• Hole punch 
• Laminator
• Laminating Pouches
• Metal Binder Rings
• Phonogram Page

I got my paint chips from when we painted three rooms in our house.  They are in the paint section of any hardware or big box store.  I was short some of the cards with the hole in them so I asked the manager if I could buy them.  He told me to just take them.

Once I got home with my colorful paint chips I printed out the Phonogram Page and got to work.  On the 12 long cards I wrote the following letters going down.  Try to center the letters on all boxes in order to make word making easier.

Consonants:

• b
• c
• d
• f
• g
• h
• j
• k
• l
• m
• n
• p
• q
• r
• s
• t
• v
• w
• x
• y
• z

Blends:

• bl
• cl
• fl
• gl
• pl
• sl
• br
• cr
• dr
• fr
• gr
• pr
• tr
• sc
• sk
• sp
• st
• sm
• sn
• sw
• spl
• spr
• str
• squ

Diagraphs:

• ch
• wh
• th
• sh
• ph
• thr
• shr

On the 34 cards with the hole cut out I put the word family letter combinations.  If you cannot find the cards with the square cut out you can make them yourself.  Get the cards and use an x acto knife to cut each square.

• ag
• ab
  
• ail
• ain
• ack
• ake
• am
• an
• ank
• ap
• all
• at
• ay
• eed
• ell
• est
• ew
• ick
• ight
• ill
• ine
• ing
• ink
• ip
• ob
• og
• ore
• ot
• out
• ow
• uck
• um
• unk
• y

 

  You can skip any of these steps if you would like and just put them all in a baggie. I have three kids and I knew these cards would get lost and ripped unless I made them more durable.  If you would like to make them more durable then laminate them, hole punch the corner and put a ring on it.  I put all the long cards together and all the short cards together. 

Now that your game is done it is time to play!  To play have your child sit down and try to create words with the cards.  They will place the card with the hole on it over the long card.  My children sometimes play and go in a circle creating words.  They get a point for correctly identifying a real word or fake word.  Other times they play on their own and write down real words and fake words on a chart.  My son (below) LOVES this game and asks to play daily.  

Monkey Preschool

Abigail is 3 and LOVES to do "school work" like big brother and sister.  She has lots of workbooks, color books, sticker books and water color books to help keep her occupied.  However her favorite thing to do is hands on work that I give her. 

Here she is above working with little bugs and tongs (ours are all from old bed bug game).  She is working on her hand/eye coordination, sorting skills and colors.

Next she works with pom poms of different sizes and bowls.  She made us go and get more color bowls so that she could sort properly.  

See her with all of her bowls! 

She even cleans up her mess when she is done.

Above is a video of Abigail working with her tongs.


 

Next Abigail works on a file folder game that is a first grade level.  It is a puzzle with letter/number combination on each piece.  She looks at each card and finds the letter and then number.  I took a video of her working on this with me.  She impressed me with her skills at 3 years old.
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The above video is a little shaky since I was trying to video her and help her.  Sorry!  She is adorable when she tells me ,"This one silly!"

Writing Skills

 

Last Abigail worked on her "writing" skills.  As you see above I made these pattern cards myself.  I had a Scholastic PDF book that I got a few weeks ago.  It had patterns to use with cutting, clay or other activities.  I printed them off and laminated them.  After I laminated them I put a ring on them to hold it all together.  

Things you need to make these yourself are:

• Pictures/letter cards/number cards.  You can buy a book with this in it or google for them online.  
• Laminator (or go somewhere to print them)
• Laminating pockets
• Metal binding rings
• Hole punch

Laminate pictures (one on front and one on back) and cut it out.  Then hole punch each card.  Put the metal ring on it and PLAY!

My daughter used play-doh today to make her shapes.  You can use a crayon, dry erase marker, wikki stix, pipe cleaners or any other thing that is bendable to move around and make the shape.    This teaches that letters, numbers and shapes all have lines that are curvy or straight. 

Making a 3 with yellow doh.

Making 3 blue dots and putting them on the paper. 

CHEESE!  Isn't she sweet? 

Working on adding the dots to her five.  

Entertaining the younger kids at home can be easy if you plan ahead of time.  As you can see above most of these projects cost little money and are things we already have at home.  I have a bin of file folder/hands on games for all the kids.  I also have a list of preschool activities.  When my little Angel decides she wants to be a Demon and get in our way ... I pull out an activity and let her go to town. 

2011-2012 School Year is here!

We had our first week back at school and everything is going great!

We made some changes from last year and I plan on highlighting them each day over the next week. So far all of our choices are working out great.

Check out my 2011-2012 Curriculum page to see what choices I have made.  I will update as I tweak or change things. 

This week we accomplished so much!

Matthew-

 Play Paint Chip Phonics

The rules to this game are simple.  To create you use free paint color samples that you get from your local big box store or paint supply store.  We had painted three rooms in our house last year so I had a lot laying around.  For the extra I needed I went and asked if I could buy the samples. The manager just told me to take what I needed.  I got the idea of this game from The Snails Trail a few years ago.  If you go to her site she has all the letters you need to put on the cards and the full instructions.  Shelby used to love this game and I was excited to put it in our center bin for Matthew.  He played three days this week.  Basically he creates words with the phonic blends.  He writes down the real words on one sheet and the silly words on another.  He had a lot of fun playing this game and did not even realize he was both reading and learning.  To him this was a fun puzzle. 

-Reading and Phonics evaluation- He scored above grade level
-Wordly Wise lesson 1 Week 1
-Explode the Code 3 pg 1-10
-Handwriting without Tears pg 31-34 plus writing name each day
-Bob Jones Reading 1- day 1-5
-A Reason for Spelling A- day 1-3
-Horizons 1 Math: Lesson 1-5
-Algebra Readiness Grade 1: 3 lessons
-Critical Thinking Skills: 2 lessons
-2 Maze exercises

SHELBY

 Shelby learned how to create sentences this week.  She learned that it must have a subject and an action.  I had subject and action cards that she put together each day.  Some of them were telling sentences, some where commands and others were exclamations.  As an example one white card said. "The car" and then the yellow car said, "roared down the street."

-Reading Evaluation- scored above grade level
-Read "Keep the Lights Burning Abbie" and answered comprehension questions
-Bob Jones Press Reading Grade 2 and English Grade 2: Lessons 1-5
-Daily Language Review Grade 2 - Week 1
-Wordly Wise 2: Lesson 1- Exercise 1 &2
-SWO Spelling: List A 100% test
-Horizons 2 Cursive: Lesson 1-5
-Memory Work: Psalm 24:1
-Horizons Math 2: Lesson 1-5
-Algebra Readiness grade 2: 3 Lessons
-Critical Thinking Skills: 2 lessons

Both-

Listen to 2 chapters in "Ginger Pye" and answer comprehension questions
Daily Geography Skills Grade 1- Week 1-3 (map skills)
Story of the World Ancients Chapter 3- Early Writing
Apologia Astronomy Chapter 1- What is Astronomy?  What is in our Solar System?
United States Flag and Alabama for US Map work
Bob Jones Heritage Studies Grade 1 - Chapter 1 Oceans and Continents
Spanish Vocab (numbers 1-6), Book "Bigger/Mas Grande", Animal vocab
Art- create solar system with chalk pastels, create items out of circles, draw an animal (dinosaurs)

Music - Quarter Note, 4/4 time



 I plan on posting individually about these in the next few days. We created a solar system through art and sculpture this week.  We also wrote our name in cuneiform on cookie dough.  The kids LOVED this project.  In math we reviewed our Place Value Lane.  I took lots of photo's and will be updating this blog daily with fun non writing activities.

Caterpillar to Butterfly

We are learning about the Leap class family. We got caterpillars about 10 days ago in the mail. We did not find them as fascinating to watch as the ants but the kids did get grossed out at all the poop in the cup. After about 7 days the caterpillars crawled to the top of the cup and molted into a chrysalis. Shelby LOVED watching this process. She quickly grabbed her Encyclopedia to learn all about the Pupa stage of the Butterfly. She was excited to learn that moths spin into a cacoon and that butterfly's actually molt to get to the pupa stage. Once the chrysalis hardened I moved the paper they were on into our habitat. We can't wait to see them become butterfly's.