2015-16 Curriculum Archives

How to Make a Unit Study with Magazines for Kids

November 9, 2015 by Selena Robinson 1 Comment

We’ve been using unit studies in our homeschool since the very beginning. I love the idea of “settling in” to a specific topic and tying our school subjects into the topic, instead of the other way around.

Over the years, I’ve started creating our own homeschool unit studies. Often, I use a book or a video as the basis for the unit. But, recently, I’ve also found that I can create a unit using kids’ magazines! Here’s how to make a unit study with magazines for kids!

Disclosure: I received this product in exchange for this post and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.

Choosing a Good Set of Kids’ Magazines

First, you’ll have to find a great set of magazines for kids. Most recently, we used Fun for Kidz magazine as a starting point for some of our units.

If it’s been awhile since you’ve perused a children’s magazine, I can tell you that times have seriously changed since I read them as a kid. Many kids’ magazines nowadays have a LOT of advertisements, and they may be for products or entertainment that you’d rather not show to your children.

Fun for Kidz is different. There are NO advertisements at all. So I can hand the magazine to my children and let them read without having to tear out questionable content in advance.

Fun for Kidz is available in three versions:

Fun for Kidz – the original magazine, which features stories, comics, games, activities, and non-fiction articles

Boys’ Quest – geared toward boys aged 6 to 14 and featuring exploration and discovery

and Hopscotch for Girls – geared toward elementary and middle school-aged girls and featuring articles, stories, craft activities, and puzzles.

As you can see, there is something in Fun for Kidz for everyone. In fact, the content was so good that my kids ended up swapping magazines after they were done! So girls can read Boys’ Quest and boys can read Hopscotch for Girls without feeling weird. 🙂

How to Make a Unit Study with Kids’ Magazines

Okay. So you have your magazines. Now, how do you make them into a unit study? Simple. You find an article that features a broad topic and you build your unit around it.

For example, this edition of Fun for Kidz has an article on China. That’s a super broad topic for a unit study. You can use the information in the article to research additional topics and find matching activities, movies, and books. Since the article mentions Beijing, learning to write and speak Chinese, and Chinese currency, those are excellent areas to focus on in the unit.

Maybe you could read a few books about Beijing (reading), watch a video about what the city looks like and how it was built (geography/history), learn how to calculate the currency exchange rate (math), try to cook an authentic Chinese dish (cooking), and brush up on how to write and pronounce a few words in Chinese (foreign language). That sounds like a pretty good unit to me!

This was a short article about Pi. Why not use it as a starting point for a Pi Day unit?

Piglet loved this poem about exploring outer space. Naturally, this would be a good fit for an outer space unit.

Anne of Green Gables is on our homeschool reading list for fifth grade this year. Tigger started reading this article about Lucy Maud Montgomery, which I think will end up being part of our Anne of Green Gables unit.

We’re talking about forest animals right now in our homeschool, so this article on raccoons would be a great intro to a raccoon unit!

Of course, when the kids are reading the magazine, sound effects are encouraged. 🙂

When Pooh saw the articles on firefighters, though, he was hooked. He’s wanted to be a firefighter for the last several months. So – that was our most recent unit study: a Firefighter Unit Study. And we used the Fun for Kidz articles as our inspiration!

After we read the articles, we watched a video about firefighters and then we were off on our latest learning journey! Get a look at our Firefighters Unit Study to see what we learned!

We loved exploring Fun for Kidz, Hopscotch for Girls, and Boys’ Quest! And with so many great educational articles, we can use these kids’ magazines as the basis for several unit studies in the future!

If you’d like to try Fun for Kidz for yourself, you can get an awesome deal on your subscription through December 15, 2015! Order two subscriptions and get 50 percent off your order, including back issues, with the promo code HOMESCHOOL.

Terms:

This deal is only valid through December 15, 2015.
Postage for shipping magazines outside the U.S. is not included in the offer.

To learn more about Fun for Kidz, visit the company’s Facebook page and “Like” it to receive updates!

3 Ways to Make Math Fun for Active Learners

October 22, 2015 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

Do your kids move and wiggle and jump around during school lessons? Mine too! Naturally, that’s par for the course when you’re raising kids with ADHD.

But there are lots of kids who don’t have ADHD and are still active learners. Here’s the problem: Teaching math generally requires concentration and wiggly kids tend to have a short attention span, which can make math class the most grueling part of the day.

In our family, we try to keep math lessons fun, interactive, and hands-on, so today I’m sharing some of our secrets. Check out 3 ways to make math fun for active learners using some wonderful homeschooling resources from Rainbowresource.com!

Disclosure: I received the products shown in this post for free and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.

Image: c/o pressmaster via Deposit Photos

Why Use Ways to Make Math Fun?

Math has been the bane of childhood for centuries. There are some kids who take to it right away and master it quickly. Then there are others (mine included) who just don’t seem to “get it”. I understand. After all, I was a humanities major and math was not my favorite subject either.

If you remember your math classes in public school, you likely recall sitting at a desk trying to complete a worksheet full of arithmetic problems or trying to take notes as your teacher wrote equations (at lightning speed!) on the chalkboard. That’s not going to work if you’re homeschooling an active learner. In our house, my kids are out of their seats before I finish demonstrating one problem.

The fascinating thing about ADHD is that kids who have it are actually capable of paying attention for extended periods of time if they are interested in the material. Catch their interest and you can get them to stay involved in the lesson. That’s why it’s worth our effort as parents to make math fun.

3 Ways to Make Math Fun for Active Learners

1. Use Math Games

Math games are a wonderful way to make math into an interesting activity for kids. We got to try a Wooden Domino set from Rainbowresource.com. (Confession: I had never played dominoes before, so I had to do a little studying on my own.)

Learning to play dominoes is actually a great way to practice counting, number recognition, and doubles.

After I explained the basic rules of the game to the kids, we started playing!

They quickly matched the correct number of dots to the existing dominoes on the board.

Then they isolated the doubles by turning them vertically against the other dominoes. For Roo, that was his first introduction to the concept of doubles. Something that would have taken a handful of worksheets otherwise was learned in 20 minutes of play. 🙂

Word problems are one of the math concepts that give kids the most trouble, especially in early grades. So I was excited to use Rainbowresource.com’s Under the Sea Shells Word Problem Activity Set with my boys.

Inside the box are word problem cards, seashells, and stars and crabs for counting.

Kids read the problem, choose the correct color and number of manipulatives, and solve the problem.

Since there are “easy” problems and “advanced” problems, both of my boys could work on problem-solving at their specific grade level.

For Pooh, seeing the items in action made a HUGE difference. He was finally able to understand what we’re doing when we solve a word problem. We’re simply using numbers to represent what actually happened. Lightbulb moment! And since we were “just” playing, he learned it without the pressure of feeling like he had to meet a certain standard.

The boys loved playing dominoes and using the seashell game, but I was super excited about playing Equate: the Equation Thinking Game.

Do you love Scrabble? This is basically Scrabble with equations. So it’s a really cool way for kids to learn to form equations and to find ways to build on them.

Players start by forming an equation on the board.

Then they build on the existing equation by using pieces of it to make other equations.

See? What I loved most about Equate is that, since you can remove certain operations from play, all three of my kids could play the game together, even though they’re at different grade levels. To make the game accessible for my younger boys, I removed the multiplication, division, and fraction operations. But I’m saving those for a private game with Tigger later. 🙂

What really made this awesome is that Pooh, who is math-averse, actually asked to play this game the next day! That’s the power of using math games!

2. Use Visual Math

Another great way to make math fun is to make it into a visual activity. When kids can “see” what they’re actually doing by solving a math problem, they can understand the concept a lot better.

To help with our ability to visualize math, we got to try two products from Rainbowresource.com: the book Hands-On! Math Projects and the Fraction Tower Cube Equivalency Set.

In the book Hands-On! Math Projects, kids can build structures, draw pictures, and play games that are all designed to reinforce math concepts. We started with the Value Your Digits! activity – a way to examine place value.

According to the instructions, kids are to draw out a grid of squares that represent the number values in certain digits. For example, with the number 31, they would draw a grid that had 30 squares in it and then draw a “3” inside the grid. Then they would outline a single square in which they would write a “1”.

The idea is to actually see the value of each place – that, in the number 31, “3” actually means 30 and the “1” means simply 1.

Tigger tried it with a three-digit number: 136. And that was the first time the boys really understood why the “1” is in the hundreds place!

Then we wanted to work with fractions a bit, so we built a “fraction wall” – another of the activities in Hands-On! Math Projects. Time to use our Fraction Cube Equivalency Set!

As you can see, the set includes fractions made into cubes in varying amounts. There’s a tower of 1/10 fractions, a tower of 1/6 fractions, 1/3 fractions, and so on.

To build our fraction wall, we started with the “1” tower, which is a solid rectangle representing 1 whole. Then we started building our wall by adding enough of each fraction set to equal 1.

As the kids learned, fractions are merely pieces of a whole. The actual fraction you use simply describes how much of the whole you’re talking about. So they all mean the same amount if you use the right number of pieces.

10/10 is equal to 6/6, which is equal to 3/3, which is equal to 1. Everyone understood that afterward and I was a happy homeschooling mama.

Ta-da! All finished! The kids learned equivalent fractions without a single worksheet! Plus, they actually learned the concept behind making equivalent fractions on paper, because they could see what they were creating.

3. Use Your Child’s Existing Interests

Really, the simplest way to make math fun for your active learner is to tie it in with something he or she is already interested in. For Tigger, that something is reading.

She, like her mom, is an avid bookworm. And that’s exactly the kind of person that the Life of Fred book series was written for. Since we’re covering both fractions and decimals in fifth grade this year, we were excited to try Life of Fred: Fractions and Life of Fred: Decimals from Rainbowresource.com!

In Life of Fred, kids follow the daily life of five-year-old Fred, a math professor (yes, you read that right) at Kittens University. In the Decimals book, Fred wants to build a robot, but he needs to weigh all of the parts together.

The spring weighs 0.007g, the gear weighs 0.09, and the motor weighs 13.3029 g. As the book so wonderfully (and nonchalantly) mentions, the key to mastering decimals is lining up the decimal points.

After Tigger read the section, she wrote down her problem and solved it correctly on the first try – all because she was actually interested in the story! She really wanted to know if Fred would be able to build his robot or not. Solving the math problem was just a step to finding that out.

Later we went on to fractions and we discussed Fred’s statement that you can reduce fractions by simply dividing the same number of objects into fewer groups.

In the book are practice problems to help kids see this in action. Tigger was asked to divide six pencils among two people, which works out to three per person. As she could see, three out of six (3/6) is the same as half (1/2) of the pencils.

Then the problem asked her to divide the same six pencils among three people. Working that out showed her that 2/6 is the same as 1/3 of the pencils.

Now that she had a grasp on the concept behind reducing fractions, I had her try a traditional math problem: reducing 7/21 by using the greatest common factor (GCF).

Success! That’s one math concept we can check off for this school year! And she understood the traditional problem because she had already gained an understanding by reading the story! She’s been asking to finish the books ever since. 🙂

As you can see, we loved every single product we reviewed from Rainbowresource.com! They were wonderful for helping our kids to love math class without having to force them to be still – something that would have made us all miserable.

To learn more about Rainbowresource.com‘s enormous product catalog, including even more products for families with active learners, keep up with the company using the social media links below!

Do you have any ways to make math for active learners? Share your tips in the comments!

STEM for Homeschoolers: Learning about Atoms Activities

October 1, 2015 by Selena Robinson 2 Comments

Tigger is a huge science fan. HUGE. For me, though, science is so abstract that it can be difficult for me to get into teaching it in our homeschool.

Thanks to a great kids’ book that I got the chance to review, though, I was able to teach my kids (even my toddler) about electrons and atoms! After we read the book, we did a few learning about atoms activities to help the kids retain what they learned. And so far, it’s working!

Check out some of the hands-on ways we learned about atoms recently!

Disclosure: I received this book in exchange for this review and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.

STEM Learning about Atoms

To begin our study of atoms, we read the book Eddie the Electron by Melissa Rooney from Amberjack Publishing.

As you can see, the book is well illustrated and funny, so it’s perfect for kids! Especially kids who want to be entertained all the time (like mine). 🙂

Eddie “speaks” directly to readers about where he lives (on a helium atom), what he does (rotates around the nucleus), and how his atom behaves (it’s a noble gas). There are so many advanced scientific concepts that are casually introduced in the book that it’s full of information for kids in several grade levels!

After we read the book together, the kids studied the pictures to get a visual idea of how electrons orbit around atoms.

What I loved about Eddie the Electron was how engaging the story was. The kids were so interested in the story, especially Eddie’s frustration with Erwin, his fellow electron, that they didn’t even realize we were discussing a fairly advanced topic.

Science is probably my least favorite subject to teach, because it’s hard for me to get a good grasp on some of the concepts, especially those that cannot be observed with the naked eye (such as the atom). But reading Eddie the Electron helped me a lot, because it made the atomic theory relatable enough for me to understand and teach to my kids!

For Melissa Rooney, the author of the book, making science relatable was the goal. Several years after earning her Ph.D. in Chemistry, Melissa Rooney decided she did not want to be a career chemist. As she has always loved and collected children’s books, Melissa decided to utilize her Ph.D. and write her own children’s book, which transformed into Eddie the Electron.

Melissa has said, “I am confident that, by presenting these scientific concepts to children at an early age, Eddie would increase the likelihood that they would be comfortable and interested in such ‘complicated’ ideas.”

To learn more about Melissa, visit her website: http://www.melissarooneywriting.com/ or read more about her collegiate career here.

After we read the book, we pulled out an anchor chart about the atom, which described more about atoms work, including other parts such as neutrons, protons, and quarks.

For Tigger, I added a bit of reading in her science book about atoms, including the history of scientists who were interested in researching atomic theory.

STEM Learning about Atoms Activities

Then it was time to get hands-on! The kids started by drawing diagrams of atoms and electrons in motion.

Here’s Pooh’s. Positive protons in the center and negative electrons orbiting around the nucleus.

Once we got a grasp on how atoms and electrons worked, we decided to form our own atoms out of modeling clay. We used similar colors to those in Eddie the Electron, so it’d be easy for the kids to identify each part as they formed it.

And here’s Eddie and Erwin orbiting around the nucleus of their helium atom!

Piglet even got in on the fun by making her atom and electrons out of pom-poms and toothpicks. 🙂

If you’re looking for a fun and easy way to introduce kids to STEM concepts such as atoms, Eddie the Electron is a great resource for children! Pick up a copy of the book to make science fun and hands-on!

Through October 31, 2015, get 10 percent off all the books from Amberjack Publishing, including Eddie the Electron, with the promo code homeschool10. (Purchases must be made from Amberjack Publishing’s website in order to qualify for the discount.)

To see more of the great educational resources available from Amberjack Publishing, keep up with the company on social media!

Teaching Analogies to Elementary Students

September 21, 2015 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

We’re adding more logic to our homeschooling lessons this year and one of the concepts we’re working on is analogies.

When I was in school, I started learning about analogies in about third grade (I think). It was usually presented as part of language class, but they’re really a study in logic. Go figure!

I recently got the chance to try two great resources from Prufrock Press that were a huge help in teaching analogies to elementary students! See how we implemented them below!

*Note: I received these resources in exchange for this review. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.*

Since I wanted to cover analogies with two different grades (fifth and second), I used two different books:

I thought that I’d have to spend some time talking about what analogies were and how to solve them, but all of the instructions were right in the book! Easy-peasy!

Pooh, who’s in second grade, started with the first few exercises in Analogies for Beginners. He blew through the first couple, but then he started missing some of the similar attributes in the others.

I had him slow down and describe each shape. Generally, once he did so, he could easily spot the matching figure. “The big circle with the medium circle inside is like the big circle with the tiny circle inside as the big rectangle with the medium rectangle inside is like the….big circle with the tiny rectangle inside!” 🙂

Tigger, who’s in fifth grade, took a crack at Thinking Through Analogies. I had her read the introduction on her own to see if she’d understand how to do the exercises herself.

As you can see, these analogies are structured in a more advanced way (as they should be). They also work with words, rather than shapes. Since Tigger is a language lover, she liked them a lot.

What I really liked about this book is that in the beginning, the lessons introduce students to the particular concept they will be examining. That’s a huge help, because kids don’t have to sit there and figure out how the word pairs are related.

Once they understand the types of relationships that analogies use, they’ll be able to spot them on their own later in the book.

But what I loved about the exercises is that the vocabulary words were challenging enough to force Tigger to get out the dictionary. 🙂 It was logic, critical thinking, language arts, and research skills all in one!

I found both of these books to be a huge help in teaching analogies to elementary students! If you’d like to see more of the resources available from Prufrock Press, visit the company’s website to learn more!

Fifth Grade Creative Writing: Brave Writer Review

September 7, 2015 by Selena Robinson 2 Comments

Creative writing is one of the most difficult subjects I’ve ever had to teach in our homeschool. I was an English major in college and I love the writing process, but letting go of what English “should” sound and look like has been a real issue for me personally, so it’s hard for me to teach my kids to write freely.

So I was thrilled to get a chance to post a Brave Writer review after trying the program’s Faltering Ownership for fifth grade creative writing! In fact, I loved Brave Writer so much that it’s going to be our creative writing program for this homeschool year!

Check out our review to see how we used Brave Writer to make creative writing accessible and fun!

*Disclosure: I received access to this resource in exchange for this post. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.*

The Faltering Ownership Philosophy

For fifth grade, we used “Faltering Ownership”, the Brave Writer program that’s geared toward 11-12 year olds. I was a little puzzled by the title until I read the introduction to the program, but it turns out that the title fits the program perfectly!

As Julie explains in the intro, middle school is the time when children begin to “take the wheel” of the writing process. It’s kind of like giving your child the keys to the car for the first time and riding in the passenger seat as they drive.

They make turns you’re not expecting and the loss of control can be unnerving for parents, but the experience is essential for kids so that they can take ownership, even if it’s faltering, over their own direction. And Julie applies that analogy to writing.

In middle grades, kids need to develop more confidence in their writing ability. As parents, we shift from teachers to consultants, giving our children direction but also instilling them with confidence to write what they feel. And that means letting them learn to look at language differently.

Once I read the introduction to the program, I had a new outlook on what it means to teach creative writing, even though I’ve already finished a degree in English! So Brave Writer taught me quite a lot as well. 🙂

Fifth Grade Creative Writing: Brave Writer Review

We jumped right in with the activities in month 1 – Word Collecting and Building.

One of the first monthly exercises in “Faltering Ownership” is to collect words and learn to use them as building blocks for writing prompts and expressions. Tigger started off by listening to television shows and conversations, as well as by reading signs, snippets of books that were lying nearby, and product labels in stores.

Once she filled several pages of paper with various words, she copied them onto trimmed pieces of index cards.

As you can see, we ended up with quite a lot. She really liked collecting those words.

When we had all of our index cards completed, it was time to group the words into piles. In Faltering Ownership, the instructions are quite liberal, so Tigger could group the words however she wanted: alphabetically, adjective/noun pairs, similar topics, or any other way she could think of.

We aimed for about six or seven words per pile.

Then she started matching them up to create two-word phrases. Faltering Ownership suggested pasting the words on household objects, so we started with our homeschooling space: the dining room.

Fifth Grade Creative Writing: Brave Writer Review - Look! We're Learning!

From the random word pairings, we got some great phrases, including “fuzzy television”,

“teetering library”,

…and “beautiful friendship”. Awww… 🙂

After creating another phrase “cheeky station”, Tigger wrote a short story:

A Land Where Objects Talk

“You should go to Weirdoland. Objects talk, flowers and trees dance, and MUCH MORE. For instance, one day the sun said, “I will shine.” The clouds said, “We will glide.” A grumpy train pulled in. “You’re the grumpiest object I’ve ever seen!”, laughed a cheeky station. “STOP!” snapped the grumpy train. (Psst…they’ve never gotten along.)”

Faltering Ownership recommended asking students how their perspective on language has changed after completing the word building activity. When I asked Tigger, she wrote down her answer:

“Before when I learned language, especially in school, I used to think that language was easy. Now I’m learning that sometimes you have to think about some things. And guess what? IT’S NOT BORING!”

She’s absolutely right. Creative writing is not boring, especially when you can learn to look at words differently and free your mind to use them in new ways.

How to Use Faltering Ownership

Faltering Ownership is designed to be used along with The Writer’s Jungle, the focal point of the Brave Writer curriculum. The Writer’s Jungle is a homeschooling creative writing course that is geared toward parents.

It’s a complete overview of language arts in general – from narration and freewriting to editing and publishing. If you’re unsure where to begin when you’re teaching creative writing, The Writer’s Jungle is basically a guided journey through teaching language arts to your kids.

Since Faltering Ownership is a year-long curriculum, there are exercises for an entire year of creative writing. Naturally, we began with Month 1: Wild Words, but the program continues for 9 months more, covering topics such as historical writing and composing reports. There are also two bonus activities, in case you teach year-round or just want to round out your program with more activities.

Faltering Ownership is based on three core segments: language arts, oral language, and writing projects. One of the things I’m truly enjoying about the program is its emphasis on appreciating language in general before beginning to write. So children can learn to use copywork, narration, and dictation (core components of the Charlotte Mason approach) as keys to examining literature. These are great stepping stones to building their own creativity for what they’ll write later.

Plus, the ebook is beautifully laid out, complete with pictures, diagrams, and prompts. All of the instructions are included for each activity, so you don’t have to be an expert on teaching English before you begin. I can’t tell you how much of a help that was, especially when you’re teaching kids with ADHD and you need to get a lesson done before their attention span goes out the window. 🙂

We can’t wait to use Brave Writer for our fifth grade creative writing program to see how much further we can stretch our writing muscles! If you’re interested in trying Faltering Ownership or another one of the Brave Writer programs, you can save 10 percent on your purchase with the code iHomeschoolDiscount. This code is valid through September 21, 2015 only.

To learn more about Brave Writer, visit the program’s website or keep up with Brave Writer on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram!

10 Simple Science Printables for Kids

August 1, 2015 by Selena Robinson 15 Comments

We’re going to be focusing more on science during the upcoming school year than we have in the past. Science is NOT one of my favorite subjects to teach. I was a humanities major. 😉

But, thanks to some of the great resources available from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, I’m finding it easier than ever to plan my science lessons this year! Here are 10 of the simple science printables for kids you can find at Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, including a complete weather science curriculum!

10 Simple Science Printables for Kids

1. Dinosaur Science Writing Prompts – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

2. Printable Cloud Wheel – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

3. Shark Coloring Pack – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

4. All About Butterflies Pack – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

5. Penguin Friends Pack – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

6. Dolphin Anatomy Lesson Game – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

7. Plant Journal – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

8. Duck Mini-Unit – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

9. Scientific Words Journal – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

10. Weather Detective Science Curriculum – Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

And these are just a few of the printable resources available from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom! If you’d like to get access to all of these printables, plus tons more, you can join the EHM Members Only site for a one-time fee of just $15! Click the image below to learn more!

On a personal note: I want to say that Jill was the first professional blogger to take me under her wing. She gave me tips, support, and encouragement when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. 🙂 It’s a privilege to be able to support her this time around.

This post is part of the Blog Hop for Enchanted Homeschooling Mom – a project to support Jill of EHM during her difficult time! Be sure to stop by to see my fellow bloggers and their roundups of fabulous resources from Enchanted Homeschooling Mom!

Not Back-to-School Picnic Ideas – Stir the Wonder

10 Fun Gross Motor Ideas – 3 Dinosaurs

Sensory Bins – Brain Power Boy

Space Activities – Preschool Powol Packets

Storybook Activities – Growing Book by Book

Spring Crafts for Preschool – Kidz Activities

Around the USA – Trillium Montessori

Disney Themed Crafts – Life with Moore Babies

10 Free Coloring Packs – Sunny Day Family

Disney Printables – In The Playroom

10 Simple Science Printables for Kids – Look! We’re Learning!

Pray Species – Fall Crafts and Activities

Superhero Activity Sheets – Crafts on Sea

Kids Activities to Prepare for a Disney World Trip – Mess for Less

Enchanted Preschool Printables – Itsy Bitsy Fun

Living Montessori Now – Living Montessori Now

Sensory Bins Based on Children’s Books – Mom Inspired Life

Science Ideas to Start the School Year – Capri + 3

Simple STEM Challenges with Hands-On Engineering!

July 29, 2015 by Selena Robinson Leave a Comment

I’ve set a few homeschooling goals this upcoming school year and one is to include more STEM learning with the kids. My biggest problem is that my passions include literature, writing, and dance – basically everything that is the opposite of STEM….lol.

So I was excited to try the book “Hands-On Engineering” from Prufrock Press! If you’re unsure how you can set up STEM learning at home, this is a great resource for simple STEM challenges!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for this post. All opinions are my own and I was not required to post a positive review.

Simple STEM Challenges with Hands-On Engineering

In “Hands-On Engineering“, you get complete teacher instructions, project descriptions, internet resource links, and student activity sheets. It’s almost a no-prep solution to planning STEM activities. 🙂

The resource is described as appropriate for grades 4-7 and I can see why. Some of the projects are fairly detailed and require a good amount of critical thinking from kids. But I decided to use it with all three of our school-age kids – just to see.

The teacher resources are fabulous. There are diagrams, explanations, Internet links, and summaries that give you a good background of each activity.

We settled on the Build a Catapult challenge from the book, and that involved getting an understanding of how a lever works. I drew the same diagram from the Instructor Key on the board and we talked about the essential parts of a lever.

Then the kids sketched their own diagrams. Afterward, we used some of the internet links listed in the Teacher’s activity sheet for the catapult activity.

We watched a video showing how ancient catapults (or “onagers”) were assembled and we talked about some of the advantages and challenges they posed for armies in battle. Then it was time for the kids to build their own catapult!

Explore Science, Technology, Engineering, Math!

Simple STEM Challenges - Look! We're Learning!

One thing I really like about “Hands-On Engineering” is that there are no detailed instructions on how to build the item in question. As a result, the kids were forced to try various methods, brainstorm ideas, and cooperate. Among the list of available supplies were rubber bands, clothespins, popsicle sticks, and plastic spoons.

What really impressed me was that, of all three children, Pooh (our almost seven-year-old) was the first to build a working catapult!

We rounded up all of the pennies in the house and, before I knew it, it was raining pennies from heaven…lol.

Look at that face. That is the face of a boy who is extremely pleased with himself.

Once Pooh figured out the basic design of a catapult, the other kids made their own. But then they started hitting the chandelier in my dining room with their pennies, so they were banished to the living room. After all, engineers have to learn to work in all kinds of environments. 😉

I loved Hands-On Engineering and I’m looking forward to making more of the projects with the kids this school year! If you’d like to try to build a catapult or any of the other simple STEM challenges in “Hands-On Engineering“, check out the book for yourself!

2015-16 Homeschool Student Photos

July 27, 2015 by Selena Robinson 8 Comments

We’re not actually starting school until September, but we wanted to go ahead and take our school pictures for this year now. 🙂

This upcoming year, we’ll be teaching 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and tot school, so I’m lesson planning like a mad woman….lol. In the meantime, we wanted to get some pics of our kids to compare to last year’s school photos.

If you like the back to school signs the kids are holding, stop over at 3 Dinosaurs and download them for free!

Everyone is psyched about moving up a grade, even little Piglet. 🙂

Tigger is going into fifth grade this year. Her favorite subject is science. Her least favorite subject is math. I keep telling her that you need math to learn science. She remains unconvinced.

Pooh is going into second grade. His favorite subject is history. His least favorite subject is also math. Needless to say, I’ve been pinning lots of teaching ideas to make math fun this year.

Homeschool Student Photos - Look! We're Learning!

Roo is going into first grade. He is excited about anything having to do with building, so he’s probably going to be my child who’s most excited about STEM learning this year.

Piglet is only two, so she’s continuing with tot school this fall. After she turns 3 in December, though, we’ll be beginning light preschool. She’s good on ABCs, colors, and counting to 10, but I want to encourage her to keep learning now instead of waiting until she’s actually 4 to start.

My “big school” kids. 🙂

Now I know these pictures can make it look like everything in our family is just hunky-dory. It actually took me about 30 minutes to get enough decent shots for this post. By the time we finished, two children had burst into tears.

So – here are a few of the “outtakes” it took to get a nice set of pictures.

Pooh was bitten by a mosquito. As you can see, it was on par with a mortal injury.

Piglet refused to hold her sign right side up and required assistance from Roo. Tigger was visibly getting tired of holding her “Mom is taking a picture” smile.

Good enough, right? 🙂

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade, 2nd Grade, 1st Grade, and Tot

July 12, 2015 by Selena Robinson 6 Comments

Hi everyone! Today is a wonderful day, because it’s the start of my favorite time of year – homeschool planning season!

After briefly experimenting with public school last year, I’m thrilled to be resuming our homeschool life this fall and I’ve had a great time choosing our curriculum for the 2015-16 school year!

Today I’m sharing our homeschool curriculum for 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and Totschool!

Image: Africa Studio / Dollar Photo Club

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade

I honestly cannot believe that Tigger is entering fifth grade. It seems like it was only yesterday that I planned her preschool curriculum. Amazing how fast time flies.

The book What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know will serve as our curriculum spine for this year. I always appreciate the Core Knowledge books, because they give me a framework to use for designing my lesson plans.

I’m not a classical homeschooler, but I love the classical approach to history. So we follow the history method outlined in The Well-Trained Mind – a chronological approach with a four-year rotation of the same time periods.

This year, the bulk of our history lessons will come from The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.

One thing I actually liked about public school was that it introduced Tigger to the rigors of Common Core Math. I am actually a fan of the Common Core curriculum, though not necessarily the instructional method. (I’ll share more about why I use Common Core Math in our homeschool in an upcoming post.)

This year, we’ll be using enVision Math Common Core Grade 5 by Scott-Foresman Addison-Wesley.

To supplement our math lessons and to accommodate Tigger’s ADHD, we’ll be using a few other math resources, including the Math Mini Office Lapbook from A Journey Through Learning. (See our review here.)

Our science curriculum will be based on Harcourt School Science for Grade 5. I’ve been able to find this book (and other school books like it) for just a couple of dollars on Amazon. Win!

We’ve been using the Homeschool Fitness Package from Family Time Fitness for years and we’re sticking with it this year too! It’s an easy and fun way to get everyone moving, which is absolutely critical for kids with ADHD.

Family Time Fitness - Fitness 4 Homeschool

We have a Lifetime Membership to Notebooking Pages and we’ll be putting it to good use this year! There are pages for all kinds of topics, including history, nature study, geography, and more!

For geography, this year we’ll be learning about the continent of Europe. And we’ll be using the wonderful notebooking pack Discover Europe to explore each country!

Both Tigger and Pooh will be using the program Keyboard Classroom to practice their typing skills. I think Pooh, in particular, will love it because he hates to write things by hand.

Our art program this year will be the Art for All Ages from Southern Hodgepodge. We got to use the Shark Chalk Pastel ebook last year and my kids loved it so much that we’ll be sticking with chalk pastels this year as well.

For music this year, we’ll be using SQUILT Volume 1: Baroque Composers by Homegrown Learners. This will be our first time studying classical music as a family, so I’m excited to get started! (If you’re interested in SQUILT, you can save 25 percent on any volume through July 17th!)

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 2nd Grade

For second grade, we’ll be using the book What Your Second Grader Needs to Know as our curriculum spine.

Our math curriculum for second grade will consist of Khan Academy, which Pooh loves, and a continuing study using the Life of Fred: Apples and Life of Fred: Butterflies.

This year, we’ll be using several resources from the EHM Members Only Website for Pooh. Some of our picks include:

The 2nd Grade Daily Math Activities Book
It Just Makes Cents Money Book
Geoboard Activity Pack
Foam Dart Physics
Landforms Around the World
and the US State Study Packs

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 1st Grade

Roo and Pooh have a lot of their lessons together, but I still like to make sure that he masters his concepts. His first grade curriculum will be centered on the book What Your First Grader Needs to Know.

Like Pooh, he’ll also be using Khan Academy and Life of Fred for math. And he’ll be using some of the resources from the EHM Members Only site as well, such as:

All About My Community Pack
Days of the Week Activity Pack
My Plant Journal
and the Children of the World Pack

Since he also has ADHD, we’ll have to break out the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks to help him burn off a little activity in between lessons.

The Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks eBook

Our Homeschool Curriculum for Totschool

For Totschool, I’m keeping things simple with little Piglet this year. We’re going to be using the oldie-but-goodie Teach Me Mommy by Jill Dunford.

I’ve had this book since Tigger was a toddler and I love it so much. It’s a wonderful introduction to preschool themes but it has all of the book suggestions, activities, and crafts laid out for you each week.

Since Piglet will be three in December, we’ll begin using this then and probably continue with it until she reaches PreK. And I guess this is the last child I’ll use it with! *sniff*

We use a lot of unit studies with our kids, so I’ll also be including some of the themed Tot Packs from 3 Dinosaurs and 1+1+1=1. That way, Piglet can get in on learning about the same things as her older siblings!

Before we begin officially Totschooling this winter, we’ll be using the book Learn with Play from the Kid Blogger Network to help her get involved in making things and having sensory fun while learning. I suspect the older kids will want to get in on the fun too. 😉

Those are our choices for homeschool curriculum for 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and Totschool! I’d love to hear what you’re using this year, so tell us your choices in the comments!

This post is part of the 2015 Not Back to School Curriculum Week Hop from iHomeschool Network! Click over to read even more great posts from our fellow bloggers!