ON YOUR MARK, GET SET…….That’s about where we’re at with our 2008-2009 Homeschool Year….”ON YOUR MARK”….we haven’t really made it to the …”GET SET” part yet…., we’re still back there looking for the mysterious “Mark” we’re supposed to stand on, you know giving self-pep-talks while we look for the starting line, and shaking out the muscles so they don’t tense up on us….wondering why we aren’t ready for the next two words? In fact, I don’t think we’re anywhere near “GET SET”….but that’s okay, it’s still July, well the end of July really, and I’ve still got a solid month before I want to “officially” start school, so it’s no big deal anyway…..right?

I mean, SO WHAT if I haven’t visited any Homeschool Faires, or decided on a curriculum yet, I mean…it’s Kindergarten…how hard can it be? And really, just because I haven’t picked out a Science book, or found interesting ways to learn about Art, doesn’t mean that I should be stressing out about it.

And who really needs Math anyway, right? We’re just going to count M&M’s all year anyway….and then eat them for snack time…there, double purpose curriculum. But, what about Social Studies you ask? Well, break out the lawn chairs baby, because we’re just going to sit on the front lawn and watch the neighbors go by…… seriously, …. I figure with the garbage man, the mailman, the school bus driver, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses we’ll keep busy till Winter…..

So, see, I’ve already got Math and Social Studies covered baby!…..And that’s not even counting the various characters that pass by our open windows, they’re sure to offer a new and exciting repertoire of vocabulary that we can add to our Pocket Chart, so that covers Language Arts right?

(And Yes, I am aware of all your silent laughter and mockery at my procrastination.)

(And No, I am not making fun of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Seriously, I’m not. There’s just an unwritten rule that states when you (or anyone else for that matter) come a knockin’ during “School” you just might be asked to stay and help. You might even be asked to help with Math homework, which if I can’t find a math program, it will probably involve graphing cookies. Which is good for you because you might be asked to taste some cookies and report your favorite. And once you have a cookie, you might want some milk………..)

Okay, Okay, ya got me… I’m just kidding (well, maybe not about the M&M’s), but I do have a History Curriculum already, and I didn’t even have to PREP it or anything! Wanna know what I’ll be using? No, not Grandma…but nice guess anyway!….In our house, history lessons are read straight from THE BIBLE! Yup, that’s right, it’s historically accurate, and most importantly TRUE! This is the History that I want my children to learn, to understand, and to share.

So even though I don’t have all the bells and whistles figured out just quite yet, and I haven’t hit the Used Curriculum sales with my homeschool budget, I do at least have a nice foundation for next year the rest of my life…..God’s Word. So all of you who have managed to stay with my ramblings thus far, here is my prayer for our upcoming school year!

I pray that I won’t loose sight of His will for my role as a Mother and a Teacher to my children….that I keep Him in the forefront of our studies, and that WHAT we learn and HOW we learn it glorifies his name.

Lord, help us stay “ON your MARK” and share your word with others this year. May you equip us with the wisdom and timing to share the History and Future you have created for us.

And the people said…..AMEM

Oh Wait Lord, I forgot one thing. Please help me remember that my children are my students in LIFE as well, and as their Mother I am a “Life-Teacher”, and Lord I want to be a good “Life-Teacher” but I’m soooo bad at Life in general, so I need your wisdom if they’re going to make it past 5th grade. AMEN

STAY TUNED For more Homeschool Ramblings
“GET SET” is coming soon!, to eventually be followed by “GO” And if you’re one of those people in the above picture (you know the one, sticking his tongue out at me while I scramble around to get something together) do me a favor and let me know what you’re using this year, especially if it’s a Science or Language resource, I need help people!

In celebration of finishing up our first set of “Mission” lapbooks….our Princess Mission, and Prince Mission Correspondence Lapbooks, I’ve decided to giveaway some fun activity books that you can use alongside them. We purchased both of these books a while back at Borders, and we were happily surprised at all the fun little pop-up’s and activities within them. Both are full of fun activities and facts about becoming “Authentic” representations of Knights and Princesses.

The Princess version is a little girls dream….the cover has an old fashioned quality with a little fancy glitter that is raised for texture. From the first page where an envelope is waiting to be opened, you realize that this is a fun journey to complete with your child….first stop Etiquette and Manners! Throughout the book there are tips and tricks on Wardrobe, Health and Beauty, Accessories, Banquets and Balls, and even Prince Charming. If you’ve been looking for a fun way to talk and learn about these topics with your daughter, this book is a fantastic place to start, and although the book isn’t written directly to Christians, there are many opportunities to explain what it means to be a Princess of God, and how to have true beauty. Click here to learn more about this book and read reviews!

And the Knight version of the book is just as fantastic…only it’s for your little boys! Through out this book are fine lessons in Knighthood starting with the code of Chivalry: Be honest and tell the truth, Alway help those in need, Show Bravery at all times, Do not mind discomfort, Be loyal and obey your leader, Never brag or boast. Ladies this book is amazing! There is a full pop up of a Knights Helmet, and even a Pop-up Castle which can raise it’s gate! There are fun topics like Building your Castle, Jousting, Coat of Arms, Training and Heraldry. This book will become a cherished keepsake for your little squires, and a much favorite to read at bedtime! You can learn more about this book, and read reviews here!.

Okay, sounds great huh! Wanna win one for your little knight or princess? Here’s the scoop! I’m giving away two sets of these books! Yup, that’s right….two winners will each receive the Knight Guide and the Princess Guide, a $32 value…FREE!

How to Enter: This contest is open to all subscribers of my blog! Not a subscriber yet?…Join here. Already a subscriber? Then you’re already entered! That’s good news for you isn’t it!

Fine Print: Contest open to U.S. and Canada only. I’ll draw the winners on July 31st by random from the list of Verified Subscribers to my blog…so make sure you’ve responded to the verification email you receive after signing up!

There you go! Good Luck, and spread the word!

Blessings,

Valerie

Tot School is hosted by 1+1+1=1, to see more of our Tot School Days, click here. To see other participants click here!

This week we did a little of this, and a little of that, and a little in between. These cards were tons of fun, we call them “Slider Cards” We have a set with ABC’s and a set with Animals….can you guess which set Bubba likes most? (here’s to you Mama Bear)

After playing with these cards for over an hour we decided to make a little progress on our lapbooks. Right now were working on our Termite Lapbook, and our Winnie the Pooh lapbooks. So here are some photos of how that is coming along….

Bubba had a good time coloring his termite orange. He kept saying “Solider Termite” …”Big Head”….”You can’t come in” it was really funny to listen to his learning process.

Here is Sissy working on her Termite Lapbook. We were able to find some great books with some wonderful pictures of the inside of a termite mound. You can also see here Termite Bible Verse which for this week we chose Jonh 3:3, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

Here is Bubba working on his Preschool Insect Worksheets, this one asks you to count the bugs then circle the correct number. He did pretty good at this, of course he needed guidance, but I was really surprised at how well he picked up on it after a few tries (he’s growing up way, way to fast if you ask me!)

After we got our fill of termites (which happened rather quickly for me) we moved on to our Winnie the Pooh Lapbook. You should have seen my children’s eyes when I pulled this out for them, “Are we going to make one for POOH?” followed by instantaneous giggles and excitement by all. So we started out by painting the famous tree scene of pooh climbing up for the honey. Here is Sissy’s painting (I helped with the sky)

Here is Bubba’s painting (again, I helped with the sky…..and some of the leaves….it’s way more fun painting together in our house….something Sissy likes to call “TeamWork Painting”)

Later in the week we got out our pocket chart for some fun learning. (btw, I love this table top pocket chart because we can take the classroom to the floor…which is where most of our learning is done anyway!)

Anyway, I set up a little game for the kids. Sissy’s sight word cards are on the left, Bubba’s cards are on the right. Sissy’s rules: Read the word, then turn the card over and read the sentence. If you can do both you get to keep the card and put a sticker on it. Here is an example of the sentences.

Bubba used his Alphabet Flash Cards, (which are really neat because for each letter there is an UpperCase, Lower Case, and a sight word…so these cards will last him quite a while!) His game went like this: Pick a card, say the letter, then turn it over and say the name of the animal that starts with that letter. He did really good with A, O, and W. L was a tough one, he kept calling it F…..so the alphabet is something we’ll be working on in the near future.

And, if that wasn’t enough fun for one week…….we got out the Silly Putty! Yup, can there ever be a Summer day without Silly putty? My children absolutely adore this stuff, like it’s gold or something, and this week I showed them how you can copy pictures with the stuff. I drew little bumblebees on a paper and let the children take turns smashing the putty over the picture and rolling it back to reveal the copied picture. Yes, the world would never be the same without Silly Putty…..hey there’s an idea a Silly Putty Lapbook! It could be filled with all sorts of stuff for the kids to copy…textures, drawings and such….and have them learn about how and why it was created in the first place……or for that matter you could do a lapbook on Mistakes that Worked“>things that were discovered by accident…..Silly Putty, Potato Chips, Corn Flakes, Play Dough…ect.. That would be really fun…we could call it the “Accidental Lapbook” or something…….Hmmm….

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. I hope I’m not posting this too late. I had every intention of joining in the fun (on time) but I forgot to mark my calendar and I almost forgot! Good thing Carisa was on the ball or I might never have remembered!

Brenda from The Family Revised, has put up a little post requesting photos and descriptions of your homeschool storage solutions, so if you’d like to join in on the fun be sure and check out her blog, there are lots of other ladies posting their solutions too!

So this post is about my homeschool classroom/living room, and how I keep things organized. Staying true to Brenda’s Request I didn’t clean or tidy up before taking the photos. So there’s your warning. If you can’t take the mess, Get Off the BLOG!

For those of you that would like to continue, we’re now entering the jungle…….cue relaxing rainforest music….

We’ll start at my computer, because this is where my homeschool day begins. My desk is looking pretty clean at the moment actually, because we just redecorated a bit…..but believe me the drawers are crampacked with all sorts of jungly stuff. You know like Rubberbands mixed with paper clips, and staplers without any staples…….even post it notes without any sticky left. (Shocking isn’t it)

Anyway, on top of my desk, I have this really neat set of plastic drawers I picked up from Walmart (in their Paper supplies eisle). There are three drawers, one for colored paper, one for regular white paper, and one for cardstock. This makes my daily printing sooooo much easier, because I can grab the right paper super easy without any stress. (Remember the days when you’d hit PRINT, only to realize that the wrong kind of paper was in the printer……..Oh no! then you scramble around a little, maybe bang your shin on your desk, perhaps opening the drawer a little too violently you spill staples and un-sticky post-it’s all over the floor, then you might frantically grab for a stack of paper (just the right size of course, it’s very important…. too little and you might not have enough…..too much and you might jam your printer), then you give the stack of paper a little jostling (you know so they don’t end up sticking together) and of course you probably get a paper cut in the process….and finally you jam the paper into the printer, praying that you made it in time………only to realize that with this document you have to hit PRINT twice before it will even print, and there was no real reason to rush to begin with.

No, that’s not happening to this sister anymore. No Sir-ee.

But I’ll tell you what is happening! Hostile Forces have been slowing taking over the hallway closet.

At first it started with a stray book. You know, the one you just don’t want to walk across the room to put away…..so you’ll put it here for a minute….it fits nicely among the other books, and blends right in…….

Then it progresses to a set of knitting needles, which you don’t want to put in their proper location because…..um….you don’t want to carry sharp objects around the house……..duh! …..so they find a nice little home in the lid of a box, pointy side down of course (bonus points for safety)

……..and then there’s the bag of glue, not just one or two bottles either….a bag full of glue that just barely made it in the house to begin with…., an Ant Farm…waiting….patiently waiting for someone to mail that darn coupon so we can play with some ants

…..and of course to top it all off…a swimming bag packed full of swimsuits and towels and all other things swim related …including this “Crazy Badger Sunscreen” which is so thick and pasty it leaves my kids looking like sunken pirate ghosts or something…seriously, we look creepy at the pool…….and before you judge me for the wet towels please let me mention that our latest Homeschool topic is “Local Aquatic Sociology” (read: Pool Parties), and this was really an educational oppurtunity to see the effects of bacterial mold on machine dyed Lycra, and…and, …..are you buying that excuse? Me either, don’t worry, they’re not really wet

Moving on, to the living room, some of you may recognize our “Craft Table” which is what we use for all things Homeschool. (sometimes we even snack on it….I know gross huh!) I posted about this table a while back, Big Mac and I made it from a twin bed frame that we bought when my son was born ( I used it in the nursery for those late night feedings) Anyway, this table is amazing because it’s soooo large, we can have two or three projects out at once and not be all cluttered together. We recently added a little lamp to the side of it, it slides into the actual table and I can reposition the lamp to the direction needed. This table really works for me…..the carpet beneath it however….doesn’t. Hence the multiple paint, play dough, glitter and glue stains beneath it. Don’t worry though, the carpet people are coming next week to do their thing, and we’ll be as good as new in no time. (for now, just pretend you don’t see the stains, so that I can keep my dignity)

I have found it very helpful to keep a basket on this Craft table where I can keep some of my regular visitors (Sir Stapler, Miss. Tape, Mr. Hole…..Punch, and Princess Tacky….Glue) You can also see our Pocket Chart, Globe, and current lapbooks (Alphabugs and Winnie the Pooh).

Sometimes random things accumulate on top of the Craft table. Here we have a wrapped present (for a friends upcoming birthday), a bottle of glue, a father’s day card, an airplane, 3-d glasses, Summer reading charts, a value-pack note card set, silly putty, a target (for Sissy’s bow and arrow) and the New Testament.

Okay and finally….here is our bookshelf, which has obviously seen better days. I try and try to teach the kids to stack them upright, so that we can see the colored spines, and read the titles of the books, and have it all nice and pretty……but they just don’t get it like I do, they don’t understand the need for a perfect house…..lol. I’ve pretty much resigned to keep the books this way, or I’d spend all day repositioning them, and I’ve got other things to do frankly, so if they’re all on the shelf and not on the floor, Mama’s happy.

Oh, Yeah…..almost forgot this mess. I guess this technically counts because somewhere in that pile of stuff there are the childrens Crayons and Coloring books, card games and crafts.

You just can’t see them beyond all the T.V. related junk. This is a whole nuther’ story, and it’s late, but I’m going to get this all back to it’s proper location…….soon!

Be sure and check out all the other fun homeschool organization tips on Brenda’s Blog!

Blessings,

Valerie

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For those of you that printed up some fun Angel Coloring pages, here is a set of Angel Cards you can use for a matching game with your children. Play concentration (memory) or Go fish, by printing two copies of each page (so you have a set of each angel card).

So we just picked up our first official Math manipulatives for Sissy, and we opted for the Cuisenaire Rods that are plastic and can be stuck and unstuck together. (I believe their called “Stackable”) The rods are all different sizes depending on their color, and those that are larger then one cm, have lines on one side to show just how many centimeters they are.

Connecting Cuisenaire Rods Intro Set By Learning Resources Inc Teach Addition, Multiplication, Fractions, Subtraction, Division, and Decimals with this introductory set of 74 Connecting Cuisinaire Rods, Storage Tray and Guide. Rods connect for easy use. Unit lines on one side of rods help introduce concepts.

Now, I know that when I pull these out Sissy will want to just play with them and build things, and Bubba will want to join right alongside her. So I’ve been looking for some unobtrusive ways to facilitate learning key math concepts without it being blatantly obvious that we’re learning as we go.

I found this great book called “Cuisenaire Rod Alphabet Book” and it seems like it’s right up my alley for what I want the kids to do, and it’s not that expensive either, less then $10, so this is on our list of things to check out for next years curriculum purchases.

Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book, Problem Solving A to Z, Grades K-4 By Homeschool / Learning Resources Inc Use Cuisenaire &#174 Rods to create letters and solve problems in this 64-page book. Featured activities provide experiences with counting, one-to-one correspondence, spatial relationships, symmetry, addition sentences, multiplication facts, area and problem solving. Answers and teacher suggestions included. Grades K-4.

We’re all about the freebies too, so I’ve been busy looking for some more cost effective activities and printables for using Cuisenaire Rods. Here’s what I’ve found so far…..

Cuisenaire Rod Activity Ideas

Free Cuisenaire Book with Games & Shapes

Cuisenaire Flashcards Color BW

Lily Pad Times Table Game

Make your own Magnetic Cuisenaire Rods

Here are some other Cusenaire Rod items that seem like they’d be useful too!

Connecting Cuisenaire Rods Addition/Subtraction Cards, Set of 48, Grades 1+ By Learning Resources Inc 48 double-sided activity cards for use with a set of 155 Cuisenaire &#174 Rods, (CBD stock #7357482).

The ETA Cuisenaire website also has a page of free samples, and you can find lots of Cuisenaire worksheets there as well.

Here is a free online Cuisenaire game, where children can practice learning fractions with the integer bars

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I also wanted to add a little bit of Bible fun, so I made up these Bible Cards you can use with your Cuisenaire Activities. Each card has a Bible Verse, as story to read and an activity to complete (using the rods) I hope to make more of these and get them uploaded on the main site but for now, here are a couple pages. There is Noah’s Ark, Psalm 23, Tower of Babel, and Jacobs Ladder. If you have any ideas for ones, leave me a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Also if you know of any other good Cuisenaire links for freebies, leave a link below so we can check it out!