Finding A New Hobby

I love helping my children find new hobbies and talents and helping them develop them. One morning my daughter, Pinky, came to me and asked if I could teach her how to knit. I was ecstatic to say the least. I jumped at the opportunity and taught her how to knit a dishcloth. She did an excellent job. She went on to create her own pattern for fingerless gloves and a matching headband. She then came to me again and asked if I could teach her how to crochet. I was again thrilled at the opportunity and grabbed my hooks and yarn. We again started with a basic dishcloth. She then crocheted a head band and then her first hat. 

Because we have been studying the Revolutionary War and the reasons we celebrate Independence Day, I thought I would go to ravelry.com and look for a free patriotic project that Pinky and I could do together. I found one but thought that it might be a bit too difficult for miss Pinky. She decided to take on the challenge and we are both learning together. Our project pattern can be found here. It will take a lot of time and patience but, so far, it has been fun. 

Here is Pinky counting her stitches. She really wants it to turn out right. There have been times when both of us have had to undo several stitches to correct mistakes. I am sure we will be thankful for our extra efforts when we are finished. 

Here is a little bit of the progress we have made. 

Our children are capable of so much. If I have learned anything, in my journey as a parent and a homeschooling mom, it has been to take the opportunities to teach them when they are willing and ready to learn. It would have been easy for me to put it off for another day and time when I was less busy. But would she have been as interested then? I have enjoyed all of my extra one on one time with her and sharing the joy of her achievements. She has learned so much just from having to undo parts of her projects, sometimes having to start over and not giving up when it gets hard. She has learned to complete what she has started and to set goals and accomplish them in a reasonable time. She has also gained confidence in her own abilities and the talents she has been blessed with. Hobbies are an important part of learning and development and a great bonding opportunity for families. 

Finger Painting Fun!

Finger painting is always fun until the little one eats it and we have to call poison control to find out if she's going to die. To be sure this doesn't happen, you can either look for non-toxic paint and hope that the paint doesn't get recalled later or you can make your own edible finger paint. I have used several different recipes and I have two that I like the most. One of them is so easy, it can hardly be called a recipe. The only thing I don't like about it, is it tends to be a bit runny. Just use a small can of evaporated milk and divide it up into as many containers as colors you need. (Did that make sense?) If you want 6 colors then you will need to divide the evaporated milk into 6 containers. Then you just have to add the food coloring and stir. Voila! Finger paint that tastes pretty yummy. 

I wanted a finger paint that was a little bit thicker and found this great recipe on this blog. It turned out perfect! 

With Independence Day coming up, we thought it would be fun to paint fireworks. First we had to make the paint. This took a little bit of cooking. The recipe didn't tell us what heat setting to use but we found that a higher setting works a lot better and a bit faster. Just don't forget to keep stirring. Blue didn't mind taking on the job. 

We decided to use muffin tins instead of plastic cups or containers to hold our paint. The colors in the picture don't look as brilliant as they would if they were in plastic cups.

After only a few minutes of preparation. Painting finally ensued. My little kids were having so much fun a couple of my older kids decided to join them. 

Even Gremlin got involved. She ended up eating some of the paint and wasn't disappointed. She quite enjoyed it and had a pretty green tongue afterwards. 

Luke had a hard time deciding what color to use. When asked he would say, "Ummm....blue!"  He really, really likes blue and wouldn't use any other color. He still insisted on washing his hands after every finger dip. 

Leia wasn't so willing to get her hands dirty, in the beginning. She was insisting on using a cotton swab. It wasn't until I agreed to have a bowl of water and hand towel, "washing station", next to her that she finally agreed to use her hands. From then on, there was no stopping her colorful creativity. 

My camera battery needed to be charged before I could get pictures of their magnificent creations. When we first started, I did get a snap shot of a couple. 

Finger paint is such a useful tool in many educational activities. If you have little ones, try having them write their letters, draw shapes or even paints pictures of the same color when learning their colors.   In my experience, fun learning is the kind that stays with you and the kind you don't forget. 

The Giver Lapbook

The Giver isn't a very big book, but an interesting read. I have an older daughter, Peaches, who really wanted a fun and quick read before she moved onto a much harder book. I thought that was a great idea. But, I also thought she needed to get a little bit creative with this book so she decided to make a lapbook. 

Peaches and I searched and searched for a pre-made lapbook template for The Giver and came up empty handed. Other than a little help with her wheel book, file folder and book templates from homeschoolshare.com, she had to create everything on her own. I think she did a pretty good job especially since this was her first lapbook. 

Peaches chose regular file folders for this lapbook and not even the colored ones. The first part of the lapbook even looks a little drab with black and white as it's theme. If you have read The Giver, you will understand the reason she chose to do it this way. The pictures she used are a combination of pictures she took herself and pictures we had in our photo albums and clipart from Microsoft Word.  

Now that was depressing!.....The second section has color and, again, for those of you who have read the book, you will understand why.  If you haven't, maybe you should. ;) I would tell you all about it but I don't want to ruin it for those planning on reading it in the future. 

This next picture is basically just to show you that the wheel book works :) It was a fun part of the lapbook. 

Just in case you can't read my darling Peaches' exquisite handwriting =/,  I will tell you what the wheel says. "Color evokes emotion." Maybe this will help you gain some enlightenment on the color choices (or lack thereof) in this lapbook. This was not a direct quote from the book. It was just something she gained from reading it. Happy lapbooking and happy homeschooling! 

Patriotic fun!

In preparation for the celebration of the birth of our country, we have been studying the American Revolution. We found quite a few resources online and most of them were free! I love it when I can find fun and educational materials at no cost. We are filling this entire week and part of next week with patriotic videos, lapbooks, reading, crafts and topping it all off with a parade, BBQ and fireworks. 

The videos we are watching can be found on Netflix, Hulu Plus and Youtube. George Washington: American Revolutionary and Paul Revere: The Midnight Rider can be found on Netflix. Where America Began can be found on Hulu Plus. Liberty Kids is an animated series that used to air on PBS. It is no longer on the air in my state so we watch it on Youtube. There is also a fun website that goes with the series Libertykids.com. Even though it is animated, Liberty Kids appeals to kids of all ages. I have children ages 15 yrs-16 mos old and they all enjoy this show. 

Along with the videos, we have found some reading online and with the information we have found, one of my children made an Independence Day lapbook. The lapbook template and printables can be found here and the cover can be found here.  I don't have any links to where she found her information since she did most of the research on her own and took some of the information from her notes. 

We chose to make this lapbook out of two colored file folders and colored card stock. There are many different ways to make a lapbook and you can learn how on Youtube and at homeschoolshare.com. We based this lapbook off of this tutorial on Youtube. We just didn't use the same type of file folders she did. We used regular colored file folders and just cut off the tabs to make the ends straight. They weren't perfect but they worked.

This is the first section of the lapbook when you open it. The blue center flips up as seen in the picture below this one. I like this idea because it creates more space without using another file folder and it gives the lapbook a little more depth. As you can see, we also like to use both sides of this extension. 

This is the second section. The red center is another extension that flips up to reveal more information on the other side as seen in the photo below this one. 

Lapbooks have a lot of unique ways of displaying information. Many have different types of "books." This one had a few different types of books but most of them had the same idea, just different shape. 

If you aren't familiar with lapbooks, I hope this helps and sparks your interest. We use lapbooks in place of reports, tests and reviews. Sometimes it is nice to take a break from the traditional book work and do something creative. 

Fun Deals!

Deals, deals, deals! I love a good deal. My SIL and I were looking for little tables and chairs for our preschool/kindergarten age kids and found that the tables and chairs that were going to hold up to the kind of abuse they would get from our kids, were quite expensive. So I decided I would look on Craigslist and voila! I found  a preschool was selling tables and chairs that would be perfect for what we wanted. They were originally asking $25.00 to $30.00 for the tables and $2.00 for the chairs. We thought that was a great deal since they can run $80.00 to $120.00 new. It was about a 25 minute drive from where we live, so we thought it had better be well worth the drive. It was! By the time we got there, they just wanted to get rid of them. We got the tables for free! I LOVE FREE!!! But, the chairs that were left were not in good enough shape to work for us. That night I found another post on Craigslist that had exactly three small chairs. They were durable plastic and cute colors. PERFECT. They were only $10.00 for the set. They look like new. I saw the same chairs going for $30.00 each on other sites.  

Then we were looking for file folders and ended up at K-Mart and low and behold we found these for $1.99. I had to grab one of each. My kids love to read while eating and we can use them for more than just eating. 

These are just a couple of the recent deals I have found. I have many more, less recent deals that I may or may not post on here. I really like to homeschool without breaking the bank. If I find anything worth sharing, you will find it on this blog so you might want to stay tuned. 

Writing Mini Office

I love the writing mini office but I love anything that has to do with reading and writing. I had so many resources for this one, I hope I can remember where I got them all. Most of my cards and stuff that don't have a separate link came from here. You have to search this website. It's worth signing up for a free membership. There are some items that cost money but there's plenty of free stuff. The material I used for this mini office was all free. The parts of speech posters were found there and I just printed four to a page to make them into cards. I got my good writer posters from here, just click on the link on the left that says posters. He had a lot of great stuff on his blog. He's pretty amazing. I also printed four to a page and just created a bigger pocket. I got my pocket templates from here and I can't find the template that I used for the extra large pocket but you can get one from here. The rest of it I found here.  I found random clip art from Google and my Word program. If you have any questions as to how to put it together, you can look at the links on my Geography Mini Office post. I used better quality file folders for this one. I believe they were Staples brand and I have to say they worked out much better and I can definitely see the difference.

Here is the cover of the writing mini office. I like that it says "I'm An Awesome Writer!" on the front. I say that to my children with the most cheesy and schmaltz like voice I can muster. Drives them crazy, but I think they love it deep down....maybe really, really deep down.......mmmm....maybe not, but I know they love me...or at least they say they do. ;)

Opening the office from left to right, like a book...

This is now folding it back up on the other side. 

Here it is ready to use as an office. This is the front side and the second picture is the back side. Sometimes my girls will sit on opposite sides and one will use one side while the other uses the opposite side. That is called cooperation, just in case you were wondering. ;)

These are some of the "Parts of Speech" cards and "Parts of a Story" cards. The "Good Reading and Writing" cards had so many and they were so big I didn't think a picture was necessary. If you want to see what they look like, follow the link above. I printed them on colored card stock because they are in black, white and gray and my kids like color. Pinky was kind enough to color my "Parts of a Story" cards because they too are in black and white.

I didn't mention this in the Geography mini office post but I highly suggest having another able bodied person help with the contact lamination, it can get pretty sticky and cause a bit of stress if not done with someone who knows what they are doing. I have trained my older children on how to laminate using both contact paper and my laminating machine so they have been helping me since they were about 8 years old. However, my wonderful SIL was making her mini offices at the same time so we did ours together and it went a lot smoother. 

If you have any mini offices you have done that you would like to share, please tell me about them. 

For the Fun of Learning!

I love games! LOVE THEM! I especially love word games, so you can only imagine my super excitement when my sister gave my sweet hubby a really great word game that can be played with the kids and can be incorporated into homeschooling. Let's just say I was super, cheesy excited and my kids couldn't wait to play, or maybe it was just my imagination and I was the one that couldn't wait to play. So here is the game. 

I decided to incorporate spelling and vocabulary words into this fun game. The idea of the game is not to get any points by getting rid of all of your dice before the end of each serving. While talking to one of my favorite homeschooling moms who also happens to be one of my best friends, she thought of the idea of giving the person negative points for every spelling or vocabulary word they use in the game as motivation to use them. I think -2 points would work. I know that doesn't sound like much but the player that ends up with points at the end of each serving usually doesn't get more than 5 or 6 points at the most and that is if they are having a pretty bad round. At least, that has been my experience with my kids. You might have to come up with your own system for your children if you try to play it the same way. 

Don't they look like they're having fun? Can you see the joy in their faces as they concentrate on the words at hand? Ok...neither can I, but I do know that Pinky (the one on the left) and the Brain (the one on the right) do enjoy games and Pinky was actually caught laughing while playing this game with me and the Brain loves anything that has to do with words. By the way, Pinky is referring to the fact that she loves pink not that she is the Brain's less than smart side kick. My Pinky is quite a smarty pants. She just happens to be with the one we call the Brain in our house because she (The Brain) was reading at a very young age and said words like paraphernalia and preposterous at the age of 2.  

While homeschooling we run into a few kinks now and then. With seven children ages 15, 14, 12, 10, 4 (2 of them) and 16 mos, it can get pretty crazy. My 4 year olds (we'll call them Luke and Leia only because that is what their father wanted to name them when he found out that we were have boy/girl twins), will need a little more attention with schooling than my older children and yet my older children still need to get their schoolwork completed. This can get complicated since we have Gremlin running around (she sounds and acts like a Gremlin most of the time). I have had to get creative in finding activities to keep her busy since she figures things out quickly and can often get bored of the same activity unless someone is doing it with her. There is something, however, that she loves and that is anything that's fluffy. I have a lot of poms that we use for art projects and as manipulatives for math. I also have empty whipped topping containers that were just waiting for a purpose. Throw in an exacto-knife and a not very skilled adult to cut not very good shapes into the lid and presto! You have a new activity that should hold the attention of any toddler for at least 5-10 minutes while you help another child get set up with an assignment or project or two. 

Here is Gremlin with her new, fun toy! She played for at least 20 minutes, which is a record for her. I will have to find more fun things like this to occupy her time. 

She even let Pinky play with her. Sharing? Nah...she got a bit possessive and kicked Pinky off the couch and away from her poms. :(  I guess we will be working on sharing when she can actually grasp the concept, 16 mos is a bit early for that to be a reality. 

Geography Mini Office

I love mini offices. In classrooms, teachers have bulletin boards covered with helpful references and information. I like to use mini offices in a similar way. When my children are working on a subject like geography, they can go to our school closet and get our world geography mini office and find many helpful references. These mini offices are used to help with learning and recalling information. They can also be a helpful resource when exploring different topics. My children like them because it is a creative way to help them help themselves and it gives them a way of creating a little bit of private space while working at the table or desk. 

 I made some mini offices several years ago but as I have become more experienced with homeschooling and my kids have grown older, I felt the need to revise them. Not to mention, we moved from one state to another so our geography mini office really needed an update. I will try to keep up with links on where I got my printables. I found the idea for this mini office here. I found my maps by using Google and I searched our state website and used Google for the "Things of Idaho" cards and maps of Idaho. I am not really happy with the quality of the folders used in this mini office. I bought generic file folders at Walmart and didn't realize that they were going to be quite thin. You will see, in the pictures, that they look a little bumpy and wavy because of the glue that holds them together. I would suggest making sure that the file folders you purchase are a good weight like Mead file folders or Staples brand. I used clear contact paper to laminate the mini office but then used my laminating machine to laminate the cards and maps that are in the pockets. I like the items that are going to be handled by little ones to be a little more durable. You can get pretty creative with these mini offices. I pretty much stayed with the format in the video. I liked what she did so I didn't really change anything. 

This is the cover of the World Geography mini office. 

This is the inside unfolding from left to right. 

Each of the large maps is also a pocket. We will be using the pockets to store anything interesting we have learned about the countries on each continent. We will also be making up a list of countries and their capitals to be stored in that pocket. 

This is now folding it up on the other side. 

These are the maps that I put in the Idaho map pocket. 

These cards go in the "Things of Idaho" pocket. 

These are the flags that go in the flag pocket. 

This is what it looks like when it is all set up for an office. It can be used on either side. One side is North America, the United States and the state of Idaho. The other side is the rest of the world. 

Happy homeschooling. :)