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Textured Sponge Painting Preschool Craft

August 9, 2013 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

Art is one my favorite subjects to teach in our homeschool lessons. But when you’re starting with young children, I’ve found it best to keep the projects as simple as possible. After all, they’re not quite ready to study post-modernism. 🙂

So we tried this easy textured sponge painting preschool craft with our kids and they absolutely loved it! It was a simple way to study color and painting while giving them a bit of sensory input at the same time.

Read on to see how to do this simple art project with your kids! And if you love this craft, try our list of super easy preschool crafts you can make in 10 minutes!

Textured Sponge Painting Preschool Craft

To do this craft, you’ll need the following:

To set up this craft, we cut a large kitchen sponge into four pieces and handed them out. (This step should be done by an adult.)

Then we added a bit more texture by having the kids crumple up their paper before beginning. We found some super old fingerpaint (I mean, from when Tigger was a toddler) and added a bit of water to thin it out and then it was time to get started!

When we asked Roo if he wanted me to sketch his design for him, he said “I want to make whatever I want to make.” Got it.

Tigger wanted to paint a picture of a tree, so I sketched it for her to give her a little guide since the sponge tips are so large.

Pooh wanted to paint a train and it ended up not going as well as he would have liked. But the experience of painting was so fun that he was all smiles anyway at the end. I think that’s what art should be like for kids!

Here’s everyone’s work. Mine is at top left, Tigger’s is at top right, Pooh’s train is bottom right, and Roo’s unique individualist expression is at bottom left.

To give the pictures a bit more flair, we sprinkled glitter and colored salt on them before they dried. A simple introduction to Impressionism, perhaps?

Have you tried this textured sponge painting preschool craft with your kids? Let me know how it went in the comments!

Like this post? Try these other ideas for preschoolers!

And get more ideas for preschool learning on my Learning for Little Ones Pinterest board!

Our 2013-14 Homeschool Curriculum

August 5, 2013 by Selena Robinson 17 Comments

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – back to school season! When I was young, back to school time was the best part of the year for me. (I am an unabashed nerd, by the way.) We’re trying to create a similar atmosphere in our home so that our kids grow to love school and learning in general.

I found this year to be one of the easiest planning years so far, since we’re using more pre-planned curriculum. Typically, we’ve been the grab-and-go type of homeschoolers, meaning that I would grab several resources and just use what I like to put together our lessons.

In 2013-14, we’ll have a 3rd grader, a kindergartner, and a preschooler, though, so time is at a premium this time around. And packaged curriculum has been a wonderful planning timesaver.

So, without further ado, our curriculum for 2013-14 is as follows: *drumroll*

Third Grade Homeschool Curriculum

We’re using West Brooke Curriculum as the core foundation of our school year with Tigger. It’s a very affordable program (around $100 for the lesson plans and books) that is based on the Core Knowledge series “What Your ____ Grader Needs to Know” and the publications from JW.org. As Christians, it’s our goal to keep the Bible before our children everyday and West Brooke Curriculum does that by including a daily lesson from the Bible.

For example, Week 1 features a lesson that includes use of the Bible Character card for Joseph and Potiphar, the Picture Activity “Joseph is Sold Into Slavery”, and Teach Your Children: “Are You Ever Jealous? Joseph’s Brothers Were”.

Our 2013-14 Curriculum: Look! We're Learning!

Here are the West Brooke Curriculum books for third grade, including the Usborne Encyclopedia of Science, Modern Day Phonics, Sequential Spelling, and Draw Write Now Book 6.

With West Brooke, you can choose your own math program. I decided to go with A+ TutorSoft Math and use the 3rd grade computer program along with the downloadable curriculum and workbook I got from Currclick.

The workbooks make it easy to just print what you need as you go, but I’m the kind of person that will put that off until the last minute if I don’t do it all at once. So I printed the entire workbook and put it in a binder.

P.E. is a bit of concern for us this year as well. I’ve been resistant to structured physical education for a long time, because I felt that daily playing would be enough. But our kids, especially Tigger, need a lot of work on their balance, coordination, and stamina. We got a chance to try the program Family Time Fitness a while back and we absolutely loved it!

So that’s going to be our daily P.E. Our plan is to do it four days a week before breakfast and then go on with schoolwork. We’ll be posting about our progress and hopefully we’ll all get into better shape together!

Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum

I’m not the kind of person to worry too much about structured work in kindergarten beyond basic math, reading, and writing. We’ll be reading lots of history as a family and performing basic science experiments, but as far as daily work with Pooh goes, it’ll be the three Rs. We picked up a couple of kindergarten workbooks, including Practice, Assess, Diagnose: 180 Days of Reading for Kindergarten, and we’ll be supplementing with lots of art and storybooks.

Preschool Homeschool Curriculum

We’re even less structured with preschool, but we will try to focus on reading skills. Roo has gone over phonics and he has a basic understanding of them, but he’s not confident enough to read just yet. As a result, we’ll be trying out the program Reading the Alphabet with him to boost his confidence in his decoding skills. (Look for our review of the program in two weeks!)

*A quick note: This curriculum post does NOT include our reading list for all three grades. I’ll be sharing that in a couple of weeks.*

Have you finished planning your school year? Have you made any adjustments in our approach this year? Let us know in the comments! Keep on learning!

This post is part of the iHomeschool Network “Not Back to School” Blog Hop! Visit our fellow bloggers and link up your own posts by clicking the image below!

Our Math Program for 2013-14: A+ TutorSoft

July 31, 2013 by Selena Robinson 8 Comments

Update: Our A+ TutorSoft Math giveaway winner is Sara Marti! Congratulations, Sara!

Good morning! Today I’m very excited to be hosting our first-ever giveaway on Look! We’re Learning! But more on that in a bit.

It’s back to school planning time and we’ve decided to go with A+ TutorSoft as our math program this year. As I mentioned last week, Tigger needs more help with her math this year, especially since she has so much trouble concentrating on her work. I’m a traditional learning type, so I kept insisting on workbooks and quizzes and we’ll use those as part of our program this year. But she responds much better to bright and engaging visuals, so it was time to pick up a computer program for math.

We stopped by the A+ TutorSoft booth at the Southeast Homeschool Expo last weekend and bought the complete 3rd grade curriculum on CD.

Since the expo was running, we got the program for nearly 40 percent off the regular price, which was a welcome relief for our checkbook. I also bought the PDF version of the 3rd grade curriculum and 3rd grade workbook from Currclick, so I could print off the worksheets and refer to the written lesson whenever I needed.

Here’s what I like about A+ TutorSoft:

The program is simple enough for kids to use on their own, so I can work with Tigger through a lesson plan and then let her complete the exercises herself.
The lessons are interactive, which reduces the likelihood that she’ll get bored.
The program allows me to skip lessons, so she doesn’t have to sit through concepts she’s already mastered.

I’ll be posting about our progress going forward with the program this year. While we’ll be using the CD software and workbooks, A+ TutorSoft also offers an online monthly subscription program for homeschoolers. The online program is a good option for parents who aren’t sure if they’ll like the curriculum and prefer to try it on a month-by-month basis. If you’d like to purchase either the online subscription or the software for yourself, you can use coupon code LOOKWERE to save 20 percent off the current website sale price!

Even better, A+ TutorSoft has agreed to offer a giveaway for a three-month subscription to its online program for grades 1-4 (a $30 value)! Full details are posted below and the giveaway will be open for seven days! You can come back and enter once per day and earn additional entries through social media.

If you’d like to have even more chances to win great prizes from A+ TutorSoft, stop by their “Back to Homeschool” Facebook party on August 16 at 8 pm Eastern!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Our New Project: The Living History Series

July 30, 2013 by Selena Robinson 7 Comments

Hi everyone! We’re getting ready for a new school year here in our household and one of the areas I’m most concerned with is history. I’ve been hesitant to use traditional history books with our children so far, because many of them choose to ignore or downplay important events. I’m not interested in teaching our children fairy tales disguised as history nor am I interested in teaching them a version that conveniently glosses over unflattering truths. As a result, putting together an honest, all-inclusive history curriculum is an ongoing project of mine.

Of course, if I were to wait until I finished this before I taught history to my kids, we’d never get started. So this year, we’re going to begin a project called “The Living History Series”, because one good way to learn history is to start by examining the lives of notable figures. As we sat down to talk about this, Jay and I realized that there were individuals that we didn’t know much about either and those are the people we’re starting with.

Our Living History figure for August is Nelson Mandela.

I’m currently reading his autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” and we’re going to read the children’s version with our kids. I also grabbed several great online resources to put together a lesson plan and I’ve included the links below:

Kid World Citizen – Nelson Mandela Autobiography

BBC – Famous People: Nelson Mandela

MacMillan – Teacher’s Guide: Long Walk to Freedom

Oxfam Education – Nelson Mandela

PBS Frontline – Viewer’s and Teacher’s Guide: Nelson Mandela

Stop back by on August 29 to see what we learned about Nelson Mandela this month!

DIY Beach Play Sand Sensory Activity for Kids

July 29, 2013 by Selena Robinson 9 Comments

We usually do a family vacation in the summer, but the funds were just not there for it this year. Boo.

So we had to find a way to bring the beach to us. And that’s how we ended up making this DIY beach play sand!

Our kids are huge sensory seekers, so this soft and moldable play sand was a wonderful sensory experience for them.

I will say that it can be rather…messy, so take my advice and lay a few towels down before you get started.

After that, it’s a snap to make and they’ll play with it for hours!

If your kids love this, try our fun Coffee Filter Beach Ball Craft or read some sandy stories with our list of Beach Books for Kids!

DIY Beach Play Sand Recipe

To make this beach play sand sensory activity, you’ll need the following: (This post contains affiliate links. For details, see our Disclosure Policy.)

Whole wheat flour
Baby oil
Silicone baking molds
Large container for holding the “sand” (We just used our roasting pan.)

We started off by reading the classic book Curious George Goes to the Beach.

In the story, George explores the water, builds sandcastles, and (of course) makes a mess by being curious.

Then we looked at some pictures of professional sand castles. The things people can do with sand and spray bottles are just incredible.

C/O: Tim Jenkinson

C/O: Jeroen Kransen

Naturally, the kids wanted to play around with some sand of their own.

To make our own “sand”, we used a classic play sand recipe featuring one part baby oil to eight parts flour.

I decided to use whole wheat flour, since it looked more like authentic sand than white flour.

I had to work the baby oil in with my hands to get it to distribute evenly. It was actually quite therapeutic.

Then we dropped in some silicone baking cups and a few bento molds and the kids got to work!

I just stuck our “sand” in a roasting pan, but you could easily make this on the driveway or in a sandbox.

See how well it sticks together?

It works beautifully with baking molds, but if you have buckets or sandcastle molds, this would be fun to use with those as well.

The kids absolutely loved it! And it literally took five minutes. Beach fun without sand in your shorts!

Love this activity? Don’t miss these other fun summer ideas!

This post is part of the Summer Book and a Big Idea linkup from iHomeschool Network! Click on over to read more book-based learning ideas from my fellow bloggers!

Bee Crafty Kids #15: Clothespin Crafting

July 26, 2013 by Selena Robinson 2 Comments

Happy Friday everyone! It’s time for another Bee Crafty Kids Link Up! Every Friday, I get to co-host this roundup with Dusty from To The Moon and Back, Jolene from Monsters Ed Academy, and Melanie from Our Crafts N Things! You can find out more about all four of us here.

This week we decided to finally put our old clothespins to use. I grabbed several great clothespin crafts on Pinterest and simplified them for a quick art activity.

I handed out markers for everyone to color their clothespins. Piglet knew just what to do with that marker. That girl is smart, I tell ya!

Roo wanted to make an airplane. We used a clothespin with colored popsicle sticks. I asked him if he wanted to put googly eyes on his. He said, “No. I want it to be a real airplane.” I guess he told me!

Jay got in on the crafting by making a butterfly out of a clothespin and some chenille sticks.

What happens when you allow the kids to make crafts based on things that fly? You get a picture full of flailing arms!

All done! Tigger and I made dragonflies, Pooh and Roo made airplanes, and Jay made a colorful butterfly. I think the kids actually had more fun playing with these afterward than making them!

Link up your kid-approved craft activities below! And be sure to visit the other posts in the link up this week!

Rules are simple:
~Enter the direct link to one or more of your own posts that showcase a craft or hands on activity for children.

~A link back with the above button is appreciated, but not required

~Try to at least comment on one or two of the other blogs that took the time to share and join!

Why I’m Holding My Child Back This Year

July 25, 2013 by Selena Robinson 20 Comments

Yep, I said it. I’m holding my child back a grade this year. And I don’t feel bad in the least for doing it. The interesting thing is – I’m not required to do this. She didn’t fail a test that resulted in her having to repeat a grade. She’s not exceptionally behind on anything. In fact, she’s probably ahead on several subjects, especially reading and language. So, why am I choosing to repeat a grade with her?

It’s mostly because of me. Last year was a very trying one in our homeschool. My husband’s employer suddenly became extremely demanding, requiring him to work 12-hour swing shifts five or six days a week. For about three or four months straight, he actually worked more than 70 hours weekly. To make things more difficult, I was also working full-time from home. To complicate matters further, we found out we were pregnant with Piglet, who was a wonderful gift but also a completely unexpected one.

As a result, I wasn’t as prepared for the school year as I would liked to have been. Third grade is a pretty important year for kids. It’s a marked transition from the seatwork of early grades to the critical thinking requirements of upper elementary grades. I don’t feel that Tigger is as prepared as she could be to move on beyond that and I have no desire to thrust her into that situation simply to follow a certain timeline. On this matter, I’m speaking from personal experience.

When I was 11, my mom decided that it would probably be best for me to be homeschooled. I liked elementary school, but I was excited about the opportunity to learn at home on my own schedule so I was looking forward to it. I took the placement test for Calvert School and the teachers suggested that I skip sixth grade and possibly even seventh, because it appeared that I was advanced enough to do so. My mom agreed but decided that I should go ahead and take seventh grade.

That’s when I found out that a lot of important math and English skills are taught in sixth grade. I know this because when the curriculum asked me to complete a basic pre-algebra equation or to diagram a sentence, I had no idea what those concepts meant. I struggled through seventh grade and eventually finished it, but it took me two years, completely erasing any “gains” I had made by skipping sixth grade.

The good thing for Tigger is that we started her in school a year early. Based on her birthday, she would just now be going into third grade in public school as well, so she’s technically not going to be “behind.” The truth is, though, I wouldn’t mind if she was. My concern is making sure my child is prepared for what is expected of her, not turning her into a case study for gifted homeschoolers.

Have you ever thought about having your child repeat a grade? Do you even bother teaching by grades at all? I’ve love to hear what you think in the comments. Keep on learning!

Bee Crafty Kids Link Up #14: Tissue Paper Mosaic

July 19, 2013 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

This week, we decided to try out a tissue paper mosaic project. It’s another simple one, so it’s perfect if you’re in a time crunch! I started by drawing very simple shapes on construction paper. Pooh picked the house, Roo picked the flower, and Tigger got the goldfish. Then I handed out contrasting colored tissue paper to each child.

Then came the part they liked the most: tearing the tissue paper into little pieces!

Since Tigger didn’t get the picture she wanted (the flower), I let her choose her own color of paper. It was only right.

After we had the ideal sized paper pieces, everyone traced their picture with a glue stick and stuck the pieces on the drawings. Since the project was so easy, it was very hands off for me, which was a nice change from some of our more intensive art activities.

Ta-da! The kids really liked this activity and it only required four supplies: construction paper, glue, colored tissue paper, and black marker. Great for a fast time-filler!

To share the button for this linkup, grab the code below!

<div align="center"><a href="https://www.lookwerelearning.com" title="Look! We're Learning!"><img src="http://i1165.photobucket.com/albums/q594/dustybug83/BeeCraftyKids3_zps44074ad6.png" alt="Look! We're Learning!" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Link up your kid-approved craft activities below! And be sure to visit the other posts in the link up this week!

Rules are simple:
~Enter the direct link to one or more of your own posts that showcase a craft or hands on activity for children.

~A link back with the above button is appreciated, but not required

~Try to at least comment on one or two of the other blogs that took the time to share and join!

Review: Family Time Fitness

July 17, 2013 by Selena Robinson 6 Comments

I received a copy of this program in exchange for this review. My opinions are my own. See our Disclosure Policy here.

Happy Wednesday all! I’m very excited for today’s post, because I get to share a review for Family Time Fitness, a complete physical education curriculum for families and homeschoolers! We had the chance to try out the Core Homeschool PE Curriculum with our kids and we had a blast!

At first, I was imagining that the curriculum would consist of a few basic activities for kids a week. Wrong! This is truly a full P.E. program. I remember doing less in a day of public school P.E. than we did in one day of this curriculum.

There are indoor activities and an outdoor activity scheduled for each day, which is great because you can use the program in any weather. We decided to head out to the driveway to try some of the Week 1 jump rope activities.

One of the first activities we did was called “Jumping the River”. You lay two jump ropes on the ground side by side and have everyone jump over the space in between. As the kids go across, you gradually increase the distance to challenge their abilities.

I think Roo may have a future as a long jumper.

After everyone “jumped the river” a few times, we took one of the jump ropes away and practiced jumping side to side over one rope on one foot. Turns out the kids need some practice on their balance and coordination. Jay jumped in to give Pooh a little coaching.

He’s got it!

And the crowd goes wild!

Along with the fun activities, the program explains how to warm up, how to cool down, how many repetitions of each exercise to perform, how many sets to do, and how long to rest in between sets. There are even demonstration videos linked within the daily plans to give parents a visual of how to perform each exercise. And the program has 220 lessons, which means it can serve as a full year’s physical fitness curriculum for kids of all ages!

This month is a special one for Family Time Fitness, because the company is participating in the Ultimate Homeschool Giveaway – a free sweepstakes featuring more than 500 prizes from leading homeschooling organizations and companies! Along with an entry for the grand prize, every single entrant receives $25 worth of free gift certificates and qualifies for discounts on select purchases!

To grab your free gift certificates and get a chance to win the grand prize, click the image to enter the Ultimate Homeschool Giveaway!

Homeschooling with ADHD: Considering the Other Kids

July 8, 2013 by Selena Robinson 3 Comments

Hi everyone! Thanks for stopping by to see us again this week! Today we’re wrapping up our series “Homeschooling with ADHD” by talking about the non-ADHD children in the family.

Since children with ADHD can be extremely unpredictable, it’s easy to spend an entire day just helping them to manage their emotions, work on their impulses, and communicate their feelings. Before you know it, your children who don’t have ADHD have gone an entire day without spending any meaningful time with you.

Keep Reading…