I love book lists!

I don't know a lot about Kumon. I do know that The Boy loooooved Kumon's My First Book of Cutting when we were doing preschool.

And I learned today that Kumon has free downloadable reading lists. I love a good book list, people! There are some great books on these lists. For example, Level 2A includes Penguin, which is one of my favorite children's books ever.

I can't wait to check out the ones I haven't read yet.

Do you guys have any good sources for book lists? I have a billion of them bookmarked, and I know that we probably couldn't even read all of them in our lifetime--but I just love them so.

Kindergarten Art: Playdough Bugs!

[This project was inspired by these Play Dough Bug Sculptures.]

We were learning about bugs a couple weeks ago--you know, head, thorax, abdomen, that kind of thing--so I thought we ought to do something buggy for our art project at the end of the week. Thanks to Pinterest, I found something SUPER easy and open-ended.

Here are our materials:

You can use whatever you've got around the house.

And here's one of my first bugs. As we all know, I'm really good at lots of intricate details and stuff.

Not. But at least he's cute, right?

The Boy spent most of his time on this Dangerous Bug:

I would die if I ever saw a bug like this in real life.

We also made some ladybugs, a caterpillar, tons of made-up bugs...we tried a butterfly, too, but it just looked lopsided and weird. Oh, well. I guess that's why God makes bugs, and we don't.

Anyway, we didn't do anything scientific or overly realistic with this. Just fun with odds and ends. It was a good wrap-up for our buggy week.

Make Your Own Bubbles!

Easter happened to be a gorgeous day, which is pretty rare here in the Pacific Northwest. We were at my parents' house, and The Boy really wanted to blow bubbles outside. But, try as we might, we couldn't find any bubble solution in the house.

So...my sister and I made some. (We used this recipe.) I really didn't want to go to the trouble of making it, but it wasn't much work. And it's a good way to use up old corn syrup that you might have lying around. It makes pretty strong bubbles--the smaller ones landed on the grass and didn't pop.

My sister, The Boy, and I took our homemade bubble brew outside and played for a long time in the sun.

Oh, did I forget to mention the fly swatters? After we mixed up the bubble solution, we realized that we didn't have bubble wands. Luckily, we found my grandma's old fly-swatters-turned-bubble-wands in the basement. If you want to make your own, just cut shapes out of the mesh part of a fly swatter. You'll get big- and medium-sized bubbles through the cut-out parts, and leetle tiny bubbles through the mesh. (My grandma was an early-elementary school teacher. She had tons of cool ideas like that.)

Anyway, The Boy tried his hand at the bubble blowing...

...but he really preferred to chase the bubbles that my sister and I blew.

And we kept blowing bubbles long after The Boy had gotten tired and gone into the house. Why waste perfectly good sunshine and bubbles?

Children's Books about Spring

Hey, guys! Can you believe it's spring already? (I know, it's been spring for a couple of weeks. I'm a little slow sometimes.)

One of the ways that we celebrate the seasons at our house is by checking out library books that fit the season. I have a few spring-y books posted on my children's book review blog:

And we'll be checking out some new ones pretty soon. Do you have any good recommendations for books about spring?

Shamrock Art FAIL

When I saw this cute shamrock art project on Pinterest, I thought it would be super fun and easy. Bell pepper + green paint = St. Patrick's Day awesomeness.

Unfortunately, I can't cut a straight line to save my life our kitchen knives are really dull. We ended up with this:

{A couple of okay shamrocks, but mostly...not.}

The Boy was pretty disappointed. Soooo, we took a page from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. (The Boy hates it when I sing the "When Something Seems Bad" song, but I do it anyway.)


And this is what The Boy came up with as a solution:

Painting his own shamrocks! He was pretty happy with that. Crisis averted.

Kid Craft: Footprint Penguin

I got this idea from Pinterest, and it originally came from Little Family Fun. Click through there to see the tutorial.

Although, really...you can probably figure it out from the photo. In which the penguin should look black, not gray. But whatever.

The Boy finished putting his penguin together in about twenty minutes, so this is a good, quick project for a boring winter afternoon. He only needed help with tracing his foot. (Word of advice on the foot tracing: if your kiddo is ticklish, make sure you have a good grip on that foot while you're trying to trace it!)

And on a related note: what the heck is going on with construction paper these days? I got a big pack of Crayola construction paper from Amazon, and it's super flimsy and the colors are faded. I thought it'd be better quality, being Crayola and all.

So, what brand of construction paper should I get next time? Anyone have a suggestion? Because I'm not buying this stuff again.

Kid Craft: Embroidered Valentine Card

Sounds fancy, right? It's really not hard, though.

This photo's been floating around Pinterest lately:

[photo by Red Bird Crafts]

Click on the photo credit link to go through to the tutorial. When I saw it, I thought, "Hey, The Boy could do that. Probably." The only way to know is to try, so we did.

The Boy caught on pretty quickly, and it didn't take very long to finish. The card turned out just like the ones in the tutorial. (Different colors, though.) I'd definitely recommend it, as long as your kid can handle one of those blunt needles. I think it would also be cute as a Valentine's Day decoration.

Yo, I Heard You Like Reading

"Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters--the saints and sinners, real or imagined--reading shows you how to be a better human being."

-Donalyn Miller


I just started reading Donalyn Miller's book, The Book Whisperer. I'm not very far into it yet, but I really like it so far. Especially that quote up there. Reading does change lives. I love that any kid can be inspired to be a reader.

Also...The Boy thinks it's hilarious that I'm reading a book about reading.

Valentine's Day is in TWO WEEKS.

Okay, it's a little more than two weeks away. Close enough.

We don't do as many arts and crafts around here as I would like to do. The Boy enjoys them when he's doing them, but he doesn't ask to do them very often--he's usually busy building something. And I honestly forget.

(That's one reason that I recruited Melissa for this blog--she's waaaay better at kids' arts and crafts than I am.)

Anyway, I do make an effort to do art projects when a holiday is coming up. Even then, we keep things simple. This photo is from last year. It's just a printable color-by-number, which The Boy wanted to paint instead of color. (I don't remember where that color-by-number came from, but Education.com has one here.)

Now that Valentine's Day is so close--it ALWAYS sneaks up on me--I've got to get in gear! We'll probably do some of the stuff I have pinned, and I know we'll be doing more coloring sheets. 

I also like Melissa's idea in her last post, where her kids had to earn their art supplies to make Valentine's decorations. Do you readers have any good Valentine's art/craft ideas? Go ahead and share them!

Aaaand We're Back! And We're Memorizing Stuff.

Well, hey there! I'm really glad you're here. And that you've put up with our absence. I'll let Melissa explain a little about what she's been up to when she posts next. If you'd like to know more about where I've been, head on over to this post on my personal blog.

And now, the good stuff! Our homeschool routine was pared down to the basics during November and December. On most days, our routine was: read-aloud, handwriting, and a math worksheet. That's the bare minimum for us. 

I did squeeze in a couple of other things when I felt up to it, and this is one of them. I'd read part of The Core, by Leigh Bortins, and although I didn't love everything she had to say, I really liked what she said about memorization. The Boy is six years old, and he's at the perfect stage to memorize piles of stuff--planets, U.S. presidents, state capitals, that kind of thing. (Just an example. We haven't memorized any of that stuff yet.) When he's older and ready to learn at a deeper level, he'll have the basic facts memorized and ready to use.

Buuuut...I didn't know where to start, and I wasn't very motivated to put a lot of energy into anything homeschool-related. So I was racking my own memory, trying to come up with something we could start with that would be easy to memorize. Preferably something with a catchy tune. 

I finally came up with The Books in the Book of Mormon. (Click through to hear the song.) The Boy picked it up pretty quickly, so I made these cards to test whether he could put them in order on his own:

...which he did easily. So now I'm stuck on what to memorize next. Should I stick with the scriptures, and have him learn the songs for the books of the Old Testament and New Testament? Or should we move on to something completely different? Choices, choices.

(By the way, I'm not in any way saying that you must teach your grammar-stage child The Books in the Book of Mormon. I'll bet if you think about it, though, you know a catchy song that helped you memorize something when you were a kid. Start with that.)

Learning is Fun

We recently (at the beginning of the school year) joined an online charter school. It requires a lot of us. I like it because it keeps us on track. But when we slack off a little, I feel like we are just doing boring worksheets and skipping all the fun. I decided that we need to bring the fun back.
So, for the next week, I am trying my best at doing the fun projects and not just the mandatory things. I figure since we school all year long, it will work out.
I'm hoping to take pictures of some of the fun we are having. So expect short post with fun ideas/pictures!!!

Today, we went on a shape nature walk. We went out and found different shapes we are learning about in nature. We noticed that some leaves are oval shapes. We noticed that there were diamond shapes in the bark of trees. I love using our imagination and thinking outside the box..

Today we are also making buildings. We made bricks out of clay yesterday and are going to use the dried "bricks" to build a house! I'm excited and will make sure to take pictures to post!

My motto has always been "learning should be fun." Sometimes I forget and it's so hard for even me to do school. So.. Here's to fun!!

What are some of the things that you do to make everyday learning more fun?

My 10 Best Websites for FREE Homeschool Printables

[photo by tonx]

I'm going to be totally honest, okay? My husband and I have no money. We're on public assistance. Not very conducive to homeschooling, right? Especially when public school is free.

So how do we do it? (Why we do it is another topic entirely.) Well, we spent part of our tax return this year on some curriculum--mostly used, and what we couldn't get used, we bought through Rainbow Resource. We also use the library a lot. But that's only part of what I use to teach The Boy. 

The rest comes from the internet. 

Honestly, I don't know if I'd be able to homeschool if I didn't have internet access. There are so many awesome free resources out there. In fact, when we were doing preschool, all of our materials and ideas came from the internet.

I obviously can't point you to all the free homeschool stuff on the internet. But I want to show you my most-used sites. The Boy really likes worksheets, and he's currently doing schoolwork that's either kindergarten or first-grade level, so this list is biased toward those areas. But a lot of these sites have materials and activities for multiple ages and abilities, and some of them aren't even homeschool sites--they're for educators of all kinds. Awesome, right?

Here they are, full of free resources, with my most-used sites toward the top:

• Education.com--tons of stuff here. I usually go to the "Worksheets" tab or the "Activities" tab, and then do a search or just click on "kindergarten" or "first grade." 
• Lesson Pathways--used to be a paid site, but it's free now. Technically, you can use this site to design a complete curriculum. It doesn't have its own materials; just links to other sites on the web. But it has them organized into different subject "pathways," from K through 5th grade. Again, I usually just do a search for whatever topic I'm looking for.
• Classroom Freebies--SO MUCH STUFF here, from PreK through 12th grade. Put together by classroom teachers, but most of it is adaptable to whatever purpose you want.
• Kids Activities--good for classrooms, homeschool or just family activities. Ranges from PreK to middle school.
• Mr. Printables--if you're going for originality and cuteness, this is the place. They tend toward younger kids. Not a blog, but they seem to update pretty frequently.
• Watch Know Learn--videos! Says for ages 3-18, but they seem to mostly be for older kids. Do a search with the search bar, instead of using the links in the sidebar. I find more interesting stuff that way.
• Homeschool Share--exactly what it sounds like. I don't use this site as often; I tend to forget it's there. But it's full of good printables, especially if you're into lapbooks.
• Homeschool Creations--Jolanthe is pretty much a celebrity in the homeschool blogging world. Her printables are awesome. I really need to use this site more often.
• Confessions of a Homeschooler--another homeschool-blogging rock star. Erica's blog covers all kinds of homeschooling topics; her Teeny-Tiny Tot School ideas are awesome if you have toddlers running around.
• And, last but not least...Pinterest. I'm serious! Just in the last couple weeks, I've used this, this, this, and this. And I'm thinking about doing this. [Note to self: You also have a million homeschool pins that you have not used.]

So, there you have it. Don't forget to enter our Getting Started Giveaway, if you haven't yet. It still has only a few entries, so your chances of winning are very good. And art supplies make really good Christmas gifts for kiddos.  

The Story about Ping

Have you read The Story about Ping, by Marjorie Flack? It's really old. I loved it when I was a kid.

So I was really excited to find this worksheet on Homeschool Share: Color Ping's Family. (If that link doesn't work for some reason, go to homeschoolshare.com and search "ping.")

Ping has a huge family. This worksheet that I found has a little duck representing every member of Ping's family, and then instructions like, "Color Ping's uncles orange." Ping has seven uncles, so Little Boy picked seven ducks to color orange. And so on.

So there ya go. Reading, counting, and coloring in one activity.

Dinosaur Bones!

I got this idea from...the internet somewhere.

We learned about dinosaurs a couple weeks ago, and for one of the activities Little Boy and Isaac made "fossils."

We smashed some playdough onto the table to represent mud. The idea was to stick dry pasta--representing dinosaur bones--into the playdough to make a dinosaur shape.

Little Boy started out that way--you can see a head, neck, and arms...and maybe legs...in the photo there. But then he apparently decided that wasn't 3-D enough for him. Oh, well. We weren't really going for accuracy.

Latter-day Homeschooling.Com

I might've said this before, but I've been thinking about writing about the websites that I use to find preschool and homeschooling resources. Because literally (almost) everything I do with Little Boy for preschool comes from the internet.

I don't think I would be homeschooling if the internet weren't available.

Anyway, here's a site that I've been reading for awhile: Latter-day Homeschooling. Their About page says that the site:

"...was created as a gathering place for LDS homeschoolers to share their homeschooling experiences, offer tips, resources, ideas and encouragement to each other. Although we are not an official site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we strive to hold to the standards and values of it. If you are not a member of our church, please know that you are welcome to visit our site as well."

They have posts on all kinds of topics (well, they're all related to the Church and homeschooling, but you know what I mean)--different ages, different school subjects, teaching tools, and a big ol' list of LDS homeschooling blogs.

Some posts that I particularly like are this one about why LDS families should consider homeschooling, this one that my friend Megan wrote (she's one of their new writers), and this one that links back to my post about colored celery (haha, I had no idea they were reading my blog).

Anyway, check Latter-day Saint Homeschooling out. They're a great resource.

Pipecleaners + a Colander =

the best new toy ever, apparently.

Note: Do not try to use as a hat. The poky pipecleaner ends will getcha.

Preschool on the Go

I'm gonna tell you a secret about home schooling:

You don't have to actually be at home to do it.

I know, revolutionary! Ha. We do school at home 99% of the time, because...well, we're home a lot. And usually when we're on the go, we skip school for the day.

But once in awhile, if we're going to be in the car and Little Boy will be sitting for a long time, we take a little school with us.

{Note: No, he's not wearing a seatbelt in the photo. We were in a parking lot, waiting for Isaac.}

I love clipboards, by the way. Best school-away-from-home tool ever.

Sesame Street on YouTube

I'm a little bit picky about what I let Little Boy watch on TV. Educational? Good. Violence? Bad. Spongebob? The boy loves it, so I let it slide.

So he's definitely allowed to watch Sesame Street. I read [in The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell] that Sesame Street was the best program at teaching for decades...until Blue's Clues came along. [Little Boy is also allowed to watch Blue's Clues. Steve is hilarious.]

I love Sesame Street's YouTube channel. It has literally hundreds of Sesame Street clips, and a dozen or so playlists. The playlists are awesome because I can start the first clip and it'll automatically move on to the next clip when the first one is over. That means no more running back-and-forth to the computer when I'm trying to make dinner.

And my absolute fav-o-rite playlist is "Sesame Street Classic Songs." I remember most of those songs from when I was a kid.



Seriously, I dare you to watch this and not dance along.

Social Studies: Memorial Day

If there's one thing that I've learned from all of this homeschooling stuff, it's that I have to teach Little Boy at his level. (Duh, I know. But sometimes I forget.)

So that's why when we went to the local...memorial park, I think? (Is there a difference between that and a cemetery?), and Little Boy was pretty bored by the whole thing:

we ended up talking mostly about flags instead of history.

Which is good, I guess, since I have a feeling that the Fourth of July will go the same way.

Tracing...Kind Of

So, continuing with scaling back on the writing activities--this is another activity that I've seen in lots of places. I can't really give credit to just one source.

I printed out some BIG letters for Little Boy to "trace"--but since he's kind of over tracing with a pen, we've been using little manipulatives to trace the big letters. So it's also a fine-motor activity, yay!

Anyway, here Little Boy's using Craisins to "trace" an upper-case A. We've also used beads and goldfish crackers. I think we might do marshmallows or chocolate chips next--he likes being able to snack on his schoolwork. And really, who can blame him?