Summer Vacation for Kids Love Learning

I have decided to take the summer off from blogging. Summer is such a short season here in the Northeast. I don't want to be spending any more time then I have to inside on the computer. Have a great summer and see you in the Fall!

Favorite Websites

I just added a list of my favorite websites on the right hand side bar. Just scroll down and you can check them out.

Our Homeschooling Curriculum: First Grade

I have been meaning to write a post summarizing our year's curriculum for some time. I know I am always interested in what others are doing. In this post I will summarize what we have used for Jacob who is in first grade.

Reading and Phonics

Alphaphonics
Explode the Code (Books 1,2,3, and 4)
Now I'm Reading! (Levels 1,2, and 3) by Nora Gaydos
Bob Books
Sight Word Flash Cards (homemade)

We also read many of the books by Arnold Lobel mentioned in my Teaching Your Child to Read post. Isaiah has almost finished Alphaphonics and this last month we started reading from The Beginner's Bible which has been a great next step.


Reading Comprehension

We use the Charlotte Mason method of oral narration to assess Jacob's reading comprehension. You can read more about this method here and find lots of narration ideas at Simply Charlotte Mason. I have Jacob orally narrate back to me what he remembers from our history, science, Bible, and other books we read. We have read and listened to a number of great books this year. I will add our favorite fiction books that we have read or listened to this year below. I am so thankful for audio books because I only have time to read so many books out loud.

Fiction Read Alouds/Audio books
The Boxcar Children (books 1 & 2)
Freddy Goes to Florida
The Indian in the Cupboard
Poppy
The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk
The Adventures of Paddy Beaver
Black Beauty
The Wizard of Oz
The Saturdays
The Four Story Mistake
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Read Aloud Treasury
Raggedy Andy Stories
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other stories by Beatrix Potter

Handwriting/Writing

Handwriting Without Tears: My Printing Book
History & Bible Copywork

In addition to copywork, Jacob has dictated his own stories to me which I write out on three lined primary paper for him to copy. He has written a couple of stories himself by sounding out words phonetically. I correct the spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes on Jacob's favorite stories and then he rewrites and illustrates them. Jacob has also written letters and thank you notes to family.

Spelling

We have used words from Alphaphonics, Explode the Code books, and misspelled words from Jacob's writing for spelling. I have him write out his words on the chalkboard or dry erase board. He also spells his words to me orally and we have used the free Spelling City website to practice and play games with his spelling words. The best thing I have found this year related to spelling is a wonderful resource called The ABC's and All Their Tricks: The Complete Reference Book of Phonics and Spelling. This book has taught me so much and I have been able to explain why most words are spelled the way they are when Jacob asks. One rule that I can't believe I was never taught is that K is used before e, i, or y. Jacob kept asking me if a word started with c or k and after learning this rule he was able to figure it out on his own.

Grammar

We keep grammar pretty simple. We discuss punctuation when I go over Jacob's writing work and we also read stories about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I have listed some of these stories below. Just recently, I gave Jacob a Mad Libs Junior book and he had great fun filling in the nouns, verbs, and adjectives to complete the silly stories. Mad Libs Junior books provide a list of nouns, verbs, and adjectives which can be used in the stories. This allows younger children to enjoy them. Some of the words provided are words we do not use in our house like stupid or a certain bodily function noise so I have Jacob cross those out. He has certainly heard those words from other children before but it is something to take into consideration if you plan on buying Mad Libs Junior.

Grammar Stories

Kites Sail High: A Book About Verbs
Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives
Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns
A is for Angry: An Animal and Adjective Alphabet
The King Who Rained
Eight Ate: A Feast of Homonym Riddles
Pitch and Throw, Grasp and Know: What is a Synonym?
Stop and Go, Yes and No: What is an Antonym
Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What is an Adjective?
To Root, to Toot, to Parachute: What is a Verb?
A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What is a Noun?

More Language Arts

We have put on our own little plays and puppet shows. The kids have both enjoyed acting out their own version of "The Three Bears", "Cinderella", and a story which Jacob wrote himself. We have memorized a couple short Bible verses but we could have done more in this department. Jacob also enjoyed putting word cards in alphabetical order by the first letter. I wrote out individual words on index cards and he laid them out on the floor in the correct order. In addition, I showed Jacob how to look up words in the dictionary.

Math

We used Miquon Math (orange and red books) for Jacob this year and it has been a good fit for him. We did have a little trouble with fractions and had to come back to them later in the year. Jacob is very good at math and Miquon Math is great for kids who are kinesthetic learners. It is more parent intensive then some programs on the market and it would not be a good program for parents who are uncomfortable teaching math. If you decide to go with Miquon Math, you will definitely need the Lab Sheet Annotations teacher's book. You will also need a set of Cuisenaire Rods. We also found a set of Unifix Cubes to be very helpful and I would recommend Unifix Cubes to go along with any math program. Miquon Math only goes to 3rd grade so we will have to find a different math curriculum after that. Miquon Math is giving Jacob a very strong foundation in math and we will definitely be using it all three years for him. I am looking into other programs for Rosa because I feel Miquon Math would be too challenging for her. You can read more reviews of Miquon Math at HomeSchoolReviews.com.

In addition to Miquon Math, Jacob has done lots of dot-to-dots which he really enjoys. I have made up oral word problems for him to solve, we have read some enjoyable math related picture books, and we have played with our balance scale, geoboard, magnetic pattern blocks, tangrams, and time and money flash cards. We really liked the tangram books, Tangram Magician and Three Pigs, One Wolf, and Seven Magic Shapes. You can print your own tangram puzzles here. We also printed and used our own custom calendars from DLTK, played Bingo, Addition in the Amazon, and Skip Bo. You can check out our favorite math story books and more under the Kids Love Learning Favorites: Math section.

History

I created my own World History Unit Study which covered Creation to the Fall of the Roman Empire. I really like the book, A Child's History of the World by Hillyer, which is available to buy through Sonlight. I did not have the money to buy the complete Core Package from Sonlight and I wanted more hands on activities which was why I created my own unit study which included Bible history. We also used the The Usborne Book of World History and lots of other books which you can check out under the Kids Love Learning Favorites: World History section.

In addition to books, we used a time line book from Sonlight called Book of Time. I also bought Sonlight's time line figures which worked well. You can make your own timeline book and I wrote about that under my Ancient Egypt Unit blog post. This year I am making my own time line stickers using the wonderful clip art site Clipart ETC.

We used Blackline Maps of World History for map work and I highly recommend these maps if you are studying World History. Each map has instructions which make them easy to use. We included crafts and activities in our study of World History as well. I wrote about some of these in my Ancient Egypt Unit blog post.


Science

I made up my own science units with books from the library and other interesting things I found. This year we learned about animals, the human body, space, magnets, volcanoes, growing a garden, and more. You can check out some of our favorite science books under the Kids Love Learning Favorites: Science section and Nature & Animals section. The "Lets Read and Find Out Science" books are great for early elementary students. I also found some simple and fun experiments to go along with our units in Janice VanCleave's Earth Science for Every Kid and The Human Body for Every Kid books. We probably had the most fun using The Body Book to make models of the skeletal system, the digestive system, and the respiratory system. You can see one of the models we made in my post here. If you decide to study volcanoes, don't miss the free Volcanoes Lapbook on Homeschool Share.

This spring we have focused on nature study and starting seeds inside. Jacob began his own nature journal which I wrote about a few weeks ago and you can read about below. We have greatly enjoyed listening to The Burgess Animal Book for Children which you can listen to for free on LibriVox. The Burgess Bird Book for Children is another wonderful free audio book on LibriVox.

Bible & Character Study
We have read through one of our many children's Bibles this year to go along with our World History unit study. In addition, we have found some other great character building books which the kids have enjoyed. They are listed below.

Five Minute Devotions for Children: Celebrating God's World as a Family
A Child's Book of Character Building
Hero Tales: A Family Treasury of True Stories from the Lives of Christian Heroes (volume 1)

Art

We did a number of fun projects related to our world history study including making a cave painting, making clay coil pots, designing a Greek vase, weaving a very small blanket, and creating a mosaic. We read a number of art related picture books from the library. You can check out our favorite art books under the Kids Love Learning Favorites: Art section. Jacob greatly improved his drawing skills by using the Usborne I Can Draw Animals book, the Usborne I Can Draw People book, and Draw Really Cool Stuff. You can read more about how the Usborne books inspired Jacob in my blog post here. You can also read about the rest of our random art projects this year under Art.

Music

Jacob began learning how to play the keyboard this year and my husband has been teaching him. The Pretime Piano books were a big hit. These are books of very simple well known piano songs for beginners. Playtime Piano books are the next step and a bit more advanced. We listened to lots of great classical music, learned about the Orchestra which you can read about here, and borrowed our favorite children's music CDs and books from the library. You can check out our favorite music CDs and books under the Kids Love Learning Favorites: Music section.

In addition to the above activites, we had family sing-a-longs with the guitar which my husband plays. We enjoyed attending music concerts in the community including a concert of Peter and the Wolf done by our local orchestra, children's concerts covering the instrument families also done by our local orchestra, and music performances at a near by college. Both my kids had fun playing their rhythym instruments and lap harp.

Field Trips
Our State Museum
Wildlife Animal Park
Historic Fort
Blue Angels Air Show
Fire Station Tour
Pumpkin Farm
Nutcracker Ballet (children's performance)
Cinderella Ballet (children's performance)
Ski Trip
Planetarium Show
Arctic Museum
Art Museum
Children's Museums
Orchestra Concert
Niagara Falls (planned for this summer)
Lake Placid Olympic Center (planned for this summer)

We have had a great year and I am having fun planning for next year. A book which I find very helpful when planning out my school year is Home Learning Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp. This books gives me a general idea of areas to cover for each grade level and lists many excellent homeschooling books and curriculum for each grade. As you can see, we are very eclectic in our approach and I try to find things that make learning fun for our kids. Both Jacob and Rosa are doing well academically and are at or above where they should be in most areas. A good education should not be dull in my opinion. I have learned as much or more then my children have in all the subjects we have studied. A major benefit of homeschooling for me is getting to learn right along with my children. We all get excited about learning.

Now I have to admit that not everything we did was fun. I find spelling to be tedious and it was never my favorite subject. We very recently started a new spelling curriculum which has been very enjoyable so far. If it works for us next year, you will be sure to see it on this blog. As I mentioned above, we did get bogged down in fractions for a little while and had to take a break and come back to this subject later. Jacob also had a period of time where he did not enjoy reading out loud. It was hard work for him sounding out all those words and hard work is not always fun for children. I found some books that he enjoyed more and that helped quite a bit along with keeping his reading practice to 15 minutes a day. Now that Jacob is getting more proficient at reading, he is volunteering to read easy books to his sister and tonight he was a reading a new library book out loud to himself with no prompting from us. His hard work is paying off and this has been a good lesson in perseverence for him.

Well, that is most of what we did this year. There is so much great curriculum, games, books, and activities to choose from now days. I try to narrow the choices down based on my children's learning styles and interests, what I have available to our family free through the library, and what gets consistent great reviews from other homeschoolers. This strategy has worked well and I have had good success with most of the curriculum I have purchased. I have not listed the few things which didn't work for us. That may be good material for another post.

Free Math Instruction Videos

I just discovered this wonderful site with 100's of free math tutorial videos on YouTube. It is called Khan Academy and it covers everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance.

According to the Khan Academy site, "Salman Khan founded the Khan Academy with the hope of using technology to foster new learning models. Sal received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He also holds a Masters in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and a BS in mathematics." He is obviously a bright guy and he has an engaging way of presenting concepts in his videos.

Jacob enjoyed watching a couple of the videos tonight. I added this site to my favorites so the next time Jacob gets stuck on a subject like fractions, I can see if there is a video to help me explain the concept. The video below covers equivalent fractions.

Learn About Maine Marine Life

If you would like to learn more about Maine marine life, there are some wonderful free resources on the web. The Maine Department of Marine Resources has a very nice Teacher's Guide to Marine Life of the Gulf of Maine which has information about clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, crabs, shrimp, lobster, sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, and more. Another great resource is the Gulf of Maine Marine Coloring Book. If you want to learn more about lobsters, you can print the free Lobster's Life Coloring Book for younger children and a Lobster Booklet for older children and adults.


Don't forget to read some great stories from Maine such as:
Blueberries for Sal
One Morning in Maine
Time of Wonder
Andre the Famous Harbor Seal
Miss Rumphius

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach

A couple of months ago, I decided to buy a copy of The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach by Robin Sampson. I just have to say this is one of the best homeschooling books I have ever read and I have read a lot of homeschooling books thanks to the wonderful inter-library loan system through my town library. This book had been on my Amazon.com wish list for some time and I finally ordered it. I am so thankful I did! I have a very eclectic style of homeschooling. I love using Charlotte Mason methods, a four year chronological history approach incorporating the Bible, timelines, hands on projects, lapbooks, and unit studies. Robin Mason has managed to combine all my favorite educational methods in one book while teaching me a whole lot about the Bible at the same time. I felt like Robin had gotten inside my brain and written a book just for me.

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach incorporates the following teaching methods.
1. Bible First
2. A Return to Biblical Hebraic Education
3. A Four-Step Cycle (Excite, Examine, Expand, Excel)
4. Delight-Directed Learning
5. Charlotte Mason's Philosophy and Methods
6. Unit Studies
7. Lifestyle of Learning
8. Writing to Learn
9. Notebooking

The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach has inspired me to put Bible first in our day and this has been a blessing for our family. In a future post, I will share some of the great Bible resources and character building books we have discovered through a number of sources. At the end of The Heart of Wisdom Teaching Approach, you will find a wonderful extensive list of books covering history (from creation to the present times), science (general, creation, physical science, meteorology, oceanography, botany, earth science, astronomy, marine biology, and more), wisdom, missionary biographies, classics by grade level, and more.

This has been a great year of homeschooling for our family but I still felt as if something was missing. I usually pray daily for wisdom concerning how to best teach our children. God directly answered my prayer by pointing me in the direction of a book with the answer in the title and more importantly in the content of the book. This book wrapped up the loose ends of the teaching approaches I was already using. If you would like to download a free 70 page excerpt from the book, then head over to the Heart of Wisdom website. You can download excerpts from other Heart of Wisdom Publications and print free Old Testament Bible Worksheets and New Testament Bible Worksheets there as well.

Starting a Nature Journal

I have been waiting for spring to start a nature journal with Jacob. I know we could have started one in the winter but I am not a huge fan of being outside in the cold and thought it would be much easier in the spring. I got the book, Keeping a Nature Journal, out of the library and that has been a great help in inspiring me to begin and giving me ideas on directions we could go in. We are keeping it simple right now and Jacob has been drawing pictures of flowers, birds, worms, bugs, etc. that we have seen in our yard. I have Jacob write the name of the plant or animal and the date he drew the picture. We have looked up more information about some of the things we have found in our yard on-line and also in our copy of The Handbook of Nature Study. You can go here to download a free copy of the book to view on your computer. It is a wonderful book and Jacob has enjoyed having me read sections from it.

Jacob has been more enthusiastic then I thought he would be regarding keeping a nature journal. We have been going on nature hikes since he was little and sharing our love of nature with him which he seems to have caught. He has also developed an interest in drawing this last year since I started him with the Usborne I Can Draw Animals book. We then moved on to Draw Really Cool Stuff which has helped him learn how to draw bugs, birds, and animals. I think this year was a really good year to start a nature journal because Jacob is now able to draw things quite well without getting frustrated. I give him simple drawing technique suggestions every once in a while but I mostly just provide him with drawing books, paper, and drawing pencils and let him do his own thing. I have included a couple examples from Jacob's nature journal and some other helpful websites below.













I highly recommend visiting The Handbook of Nature Study Blog for inspiration and ideas. If you want to learn more about starting a nature journal then head over to Home-Made School.

Resurrection Eggs and Easter Lapbooks

We are busy getting ready for Easter this week. I volunteered to have family over for dinner and this has given me a good reason to get a little spring cleaning done. The kids and I are taking a couple of mornings this week to work on cleaning the house together. My kids actually enjoy helping with cleaning which is a huge blessing.

We have started doing Resurrection Eggs in the evenings which is a yearly Easter tradition for our family. The kids love hunting for an egg, seeing what object is in the egg, and then reading a short portion of the Easter story from the Bible every night. You can buy Resurrection Eggs at Christian Book Distributors or you can make your own. We made the eggs in my MOPS group a number of years ago and you can find instructions for making the eggs here. Resurrection Eggs are a great way to introduce your child to the Easter Story.

Jacob was asking for some Easter activities today, so I started searching around the internet and found a really cool Resurrection Eggs lapbook at Just Call Me Jamin. There are links to all the free printables you will need to complete the lapbook. Homeschool Share also has a free lapbook based on "The Legend of the Easter Egg" book. We used a few of the free printable there to make a simple Easter book.

One other project I hope to tackle this week is making tie-dyed Easter eggs using old silk ties. You can see some beautiful examples of these eggs at Our Best Bites along with instructions on how to make the eggs. My husband has some old ties I am sure he would be willing to sacrifice for a good cause.

Wishing all of you a blessed Easter!

Creative Hands on Learning

I attended public school from Kindergarten through part of 9th grade. During those years, I had some good teachers, some bad teachers, and two fabulous teachers. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Andrews, was amazing and I have wonderful memories of all the fun things we did in her class. Each week we focused on a different letter of the alphabet and one of my favorite memories from her class was on letter D week. Mrs. Andrews came into class dressed up as a baker with doughnuts in sandwich bags pinned all over her apron. We also got to go on a field trip to a bakery to see how doughnuts and other goodies were made. Some other memories I have of Kindergarten are making stone soup, show and tell, our class guinea pigs, craft projects, making ants on a log and milkshakes in the cooking corner, and the end of the year class picnic at Mrs. Andrew's house. She was a memorable teacher.

My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Hoffman, was my other favorite teacher. She was beautiful, kind, and very creative. While studying Native Americans, we built hogans out of popsicle sticks and wove mini blankets. Mrs. Hoffman also had us make up our own Native American names and then we wrote stories on pretend bark describing what our Native American names stood for. I gave myself the name of Sun Dancer because I loved tap and ballet. While learning about the legal system, our class put on a "Jack and the Beanstalk" play where the Giant was suing Jack for trespassing and stealing. We got to perform our play at the town court house. I played the judge and my two best friends were the lawyers representing Jack and the Giant.

When I think about what kind of teacher I want to be to my children at home, I often draw inspiration from Mrs. Andrews and Mrs. Hoffman. I like to include plenty of creative hands on learning projects because I know these are the things my kids will remember years down the road. I have posted photos of our latest projects throughout this post. I like to keep the projects simple and use materials we already have around the house. We recently finished up our World History section on the Greeks. We made mini coil pots out of fimo clay which both my kids loved doing. The pots only took 10 minutes to bake in the oven and the kids have had fun using them for play cooking and as a place to store little treasures. Right now we are learning about Ancient China so we used our play dough to make Terracotta Warriors from the Ch'in Dynasty and also a replica of the Great Wall. Jacob was especially fascinated by the story of the Terracotta Warriors and we found a great book for kids called The Emperor's Silent Army.

Today we learned about Scythian and Mongol nomads. The Usborne Book of World History had instructions for an applique craft and we decided to give it a try this afternoon. We simply cut out red felt hearts and stitched them onto a larger square piece of white felt. The kids wanted to add a button to their mini quilts which was fine with me even though it was not historically accurate. Everyone needs to learn how to sew buttons on in this day and age! Jacob is getting much better at sewing and did most of the project himself. Rosa needed more help but she is catching on to the concept of sewing and never lost interest throughout the whole project. I want both my kids to know how to sew at least in a basic manner so they can repair their own clothes and such. I spent too much time in college helping my male friends mend their clothes and backpacks and I don't want my own children to be lacking this skill.

Last but not least, Jacob has been loving the K'nex Super Structures 50 Model Building Set he got for Christmas. He has built all the models in the book that came with the set and has branched off to build his own impressive creations. The train was Jacob's own idea and built with no help from us. Jacob definitely has a talent for designing things and he is already way ahead of his parents in this department. I highly recommend this K'nex set if you have a child who loves to build. Jacob built his own Parthenon out of K'nex while we were studying about Ancient Greece and he often builds things related to what we are studying with no prompting from me. This is the kind of enthusiasm and creative learning which I love to see happening in our home. I want Jacob to look back at his time homeschooling as an exciting time of creative learning and discovery just as I look back with fond memories on my time with Mrs. Andrews and Mrs. Hoffman.

Thumballs: Interactive Fun & Learning

Every homeschooling mother is going to have areas they are weak in and my weakest area is definitely physical education in the winter. In the spring, summer, and fall it is easy to find physical education activities to do like hiking, riding bikes, swimming at the beach, or playing baseball or soccer in the back yard. I really struggle with physical education in the winter because we live in the North and I dislike the cold. We go sliding, skating, and cross country skiing every once in a while, but not enough to qualify as weekly PE. I was very happy to discover the "Move Your Body" Thumball. As you can see in the example to the left, the Thumball has many panels, each with a different movement activity. The game is simple in that you throw someone the Thumball and after they catch it, they look under their thumb and act out what is written on that panel. My kids loved playing with the Thumball and we acted out the movements together. There was lots of laughter and I even worked up a sweat. The movement activities are a great way to help develop a child's gross motor skills and a fun way to get some exercise inside the house.

There are lots of other Thumballs that would be great for a kinesthetic learner or just a good way to reinforce a variety of concepts for all learners. The Thumballs I was most interested in were "Numbers", "My ABC's", "Parts of a Story", and "Tell The Tale". I think homeschooling or church groups would have fun using the "Ice Breaker" and "Who Are You" Thumballs which provide a fun and active ways for children to get to know each other. You can learn more about Thumballs here.

Free Amelia Earhart Lapbook

CurrClick is offering a free Amelia Earhart lapbook from Hands of a Child this week. It is a very nice lapbook so be sure to pop over to CurrClick and download your lapbook before the week is over.

Fine Motor Update

I had to share an update on how far Rosa has come with her fine motor skills. Yesterday we attended her Chinese School class. I am a parent coordinator for Rosa's preschool class at Chinese School which runs for seven Saturdays in the fall and spring. The class includes traditional Chinese dance for children, basic Mandarin, and Chinese crafts and culture. Rosa loves Chinese School and I am so glad we have this wonderful opportunity in our area.

Anyway, yesterday at craft time the children were making tiger hats which involved cutting out a circle from construction paper to start with. Rosa loves to cut now and was the very first child to finish cutting out her circle while staying right on the line. She was also able to cut out the smaller pieces of the tiger face which many of the other children were not able to do on their own.

Last year when we attended Chinese School after being home from China for only 6 months, Rosa was far behind the other children in fine motor skills. You may remember me writing in a prior post how Rosa did not know how to hold a crayon or pencil and had very delayed fine motor skills when we first adopted her a year and a half ago. It absolutely amazes me how far she has come. You can go back and read about the fine motor activities I have used to help Rosa catch up by going here.

Learn About the Orchestra

I recently discovered a wonderful free on-line game for kids which teaches them all about the instruments of the orchestra so I thought I would share the website along with some of our other favorite resources for learning about the orchestra. You can go straight to the website called The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra to check out the game. I recommend having your child log in which saves your child's spot in the game so they can come back and continue it later. The game is quite long so you may not get through the whole thing in one sitting. If you have more then one child, I would recommend registering so that each child can save their spot in the game.

Our favorite books for learning about the orchestra are Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin for younger children and The Story of the Orchestra with accompanying CD for children who are a bit older. We also love listening to the classic CD, Peter and the Wolf. Two other great websites about the orchestra are the San Francisco Symphony and the New York Philharmonic websites for kids. You can find free coloring pages with instruments of the orchestra at The Coloring Spot. You can also print out free instrument cards at Montessori Materials and find instrument minibooks to make at Homeschool Share (scroll down to instruments). The Portland Symphony Orchestra has free teacher's material for the different instrument families.

Don't forget to go on-line and check out your local orchestra and what activities and performances they might have for children in your area. You can also watch a performance of "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" on YouTube below. My kids enjoyed hearing and naming the instruments in the video.

The Usborne Art Treasury

This cool art book features 22 works of art from around the world. Each work of art includes a brief description of the art work and the artist who created it. The artists included in this book include Van Gogh, Hokusai, Kandinsky, Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Degas, O'Keeffe, and others. Each work of art is followed by a related art project for kids. The art projects were the best part. Most of them are relatively simple and use common art supplies. The finished art projects are quite impressive. Jacob really enjoyed doing the pastel and water color fish painting below which was inspired by a painting called "The Golden Fish" by Paul Klee. The Usborne Art Treasury was recommended by a friend and fellow blogger. You can check out her daughter's very cool swirly landscape painting here which is inspired by Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

Jacob's fish painting was very easy to complete. I showed Jacob how to draw some simple fish, waves, and underwater plants. He practiced on scrap paper and then drew them lightly in pencil on a sheet of watercolor paper. Next he traced over his drawing with oil pastels. The book said you could use wax crayons as well. Then he simply painted water on his picture and added blue and green water colors (the cheap kind) to cover the entire piece of paper. We were both so pleased with the results!

The Usborne Art Treasury is a very inviting book with beautiful bright pictures throughout. We are excited to try some more projects out of this book in the near future.

What the World Eats and Owns: Eye Opening Books

I have just finished reading two fascinating books by Peter Menzel. The first one called What the World Eats has large photos of individual families around the world posing with a weeks worth of groceries laid out around them. The book tells a little about each family and includes information about the cost and quantity of food they eat each week. It was so interesting to see the differences and similarities in what different families around the world eat compared to our own family. I like to cook a number of international dishes so our diet was a mix of many of the families profiled and not so much like the average American family.

The second book called Material World: A Global Family Portrait has large photos of families from around the world surrounded by all of their possessions. According to the Amazon book review "Photographers spent one week living with a "statistically average" family in each country, learning about their work, their attitudes toward their possessions, and their hopes for the future. Then a "big picture" shot of the family was taken outside the dwelling, surrounded by all their (many or few) material goods." Reading these two books was the next best thing to taking a trip around the world. Jacob and Rosa really enjoyed looking at the photos in each of these books and it was very eye opening to see the difference in possessions and diet among the families profiled. I highly recommend these two books for both parents and children!

Teaching Your Child to Read: Our Favorite Curriculum

Jacob is seven years old and in first grade so we are right in the middle of teaching him how to read. The process started on its own when Jacob began to recognize his letters as a toddler. Once Jacob recognized most of his letters, he moved on to learning the letter sounds. After Jacob learned his letter sounds, I taught him how to sound out three letter words with short vowels. I made up some games on my own and also found fun game ideas in the book, Games for Reading. Once Jacob understood the concept of sounding out simple words, we started using Alphaphonics and reading from a variety of beginner readers. In this post, I will share our favorite beginner readers and other resources we have used to teach Jacob how to read.

Before I share our favorite learn to read curriculum and more, I wanted to mention a few things. Jacob is the first child I have taught how to read, although I have helped other children with reading in the past. I did a lot of research on how to teach a child to read and have read many books on the subject. Two important points I read over and over is that children are not all ready to learn how to read at the same age and what works for one child may or may not work for another child. I have also found that some reading materials that did not initially work for Jacob were great for him a year or so later. There are huge debates on whether you should teach your child to read using phonics, whole language, or a combination of both. We have chosen to focus on building a strong foundation in phonics and have added in whole language when necessary to help with learning the tricky sight words.

The base for our reading program has been Alphaphonics. I have found this to be an excellent book for me as a parent. It is a very clear and systematic way to teach phonics and is easy to teach from. The downside is that Alphaphonics is not the most exciting way for kids to learn to read by itself. We remedied this issue by going through the Alphaphonics book slowly over a year and a half period and adding in fun beginner readers, activities, and games. The Alphaphonics book has 128 lessons and we averaged 2 lessons a week. We were able to get the beginner readers through our library which made our reading program very inexpensive. I highly recommend Alphaphonics as a base for your reading program!

We have a number of favorite beginner readers which I will list below.

Favorite Beginner Readers
Now I'm Reading: Playful Pals (Level 1) by Nora Gaydos
Now I'm Reading: Amazing Animals (Level 2) by Nora Gaydos
Now I'm Reading: On the Go (Level 3) by Nora Gaydos
Now I'm Reading: Let's Play (Level 4) by Nora Gaydos
Bob Books (Sets 1-4) by Bobby Lynn Maslen
Mouse Soup by Arnold Lobel
Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel
Frog and Toad (series) by Arnold Lobel
Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel
Small Pig by Arnold Lobel
Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss
Starfall Learn to Read Phonics Book Set


The last books I mentioned from Starfall can be printed off in black and white for free on their website here. Starfall is a fabulous website and they have lots more free printables here. Jacob and Rosa have enjoyed playing on this site as well. Another great website is The School Bell which has a Dolch Kit of printable flashcards and games using the Dolch list of 220 high frequency sight words. We have also made our own sight word Bingo cards from the Print-Bingo website using the sight words from Alphaphonics.

Jacob has fluctuated in his enthusiasm over learning to read. He really likes the games we have played and he also enjoys using sight word flashcards for some reason. He has progressed steadily over the last year and a half but learning to read has definitely involved work for him. I have also had to work on my level of patience and tone of voice when we are practicing reading aloud. Listening to a child sound out words can get very tedious and it is easy to get an edge to your voice when you are correcting mistakes. When I keep my voice cheerful and relaxed, Jacob enjoys reading a lot more. Sometimes I need to take some deep breaths or take a break from reading practice if my patience starts to deteriorate. We have also used the technique I previously wrote about here in "Learn to Read with Raggedy Ann".

Recently we have added in Explode the Code workbooks. I do these with Jacob out loud so we can reuse the books with Rosa. It also helps me catch his mistakes by having him do the workbooks out loud. They have some really funny sentences and Jacob enjoys these books. We had tried them a year ago and he wasn't into them at the time. I am really glad we tried them again because they are great for reinforcing phonics. We use the words from Explode the Code for spelling as well.

There is lots of different phonics and reading instruction curriculum on the market and I have read good reviews on a number of different programs. I chose what I did because it was the most reasonably priced of all the well reviewed curriculum. You can read reviews of other curriculum at Home School Reviews.

My Quote for the Year

This last weekend, we went on a ski trip to the mountains with my husband's company. We had a great time but I came home sick with a bad cough. I am starting to feel better now and want to catch up on blogging. There are so many things I would like to share on this blog when things quiet down here including my favorite books and ideas for teaching a child to read, my thoughts on inspiring beginner writers, our favorite gluten free foods that have gotten us through the transition of going gluten free, and lots more.

I recently read this quote and thought it was very inspiring and something great to share. “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and proclaiming, ‘Wow, what a ride!’” I can definitely relate to this quote. I seem to have a very hard time living a dull life which is both a curse and a blessing. I want to embrace my adventure loving side along with the part of me that needs to take the time to relax and recharge. Since I was fourteen years old, I have been dealing with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety runs on both sides of my family and it is not something I enjoy dealing with but it does help me to maintain a balance of activity and rest. If I don't maintain the right balance, my body tells me right away.

My Dad recently installed a wood pellet stove in our basement family room which has served as our bedroom since Rosa arrived. This pellet stove has been a wonderful addition to our house this winter and I have spent many hours reading on my bed in front of it. My bedroom is now cozy warm all the time and a place where I can truly relax after a long day with my children. It is also the cats favorite spot as you can see in the picture above. I never really put a priority on having a warm comfortable place of my own to recharge, but now that I have one I can see what a difference it makes in my attitude. My overall anxiety level is much lower now too. Well those are some of my personal ramblings for this month. I highly recommend planning some adventures for this next year. We have some of our own planned already! I would also recommend buying a wood pellet stove if you live in the north and can afford one.

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Free Lapbook and Fun Spelling Website

I wanted to share that CurrClick has a wonderful free Inventors Lapbook available for download this week. Every week they have a new free download so I recommend checking their site often. This weeks free lapbook has some really good instructions for making a lapbook if you are new to lapbooking like I am. Another fun site I recently discovered is Spelling City. On this site you can type in your child's spelling words for the week and it will give your child a spelling test on-line. You just click a button to hear the spelling word and there is another button to click if you want the spelling word in a sentence. Once your child has completed the test, the program will show which words were spelled incorrectly and give your child a chance to try them again. They even provide a print friendly copy of the test which you can save and print for your records. There are a number of games included on the website which use the spelling words you entered.

I never liked spelling much when I was in school so I have tried to find ways to make spelling fun for my son. I bought a set of colorful dry erase markers for him to use only for spelling on our dry erase board. Jacob thinks spelling is fun because he gets to use these markers. When he is done with his spelling, I allow him to draw a picture with the markers. I am excited to have discovered the Spelling City website so we have more than one fun option for spelling now.

Homemade Stage and Puppet Theater

I was recently reading the book The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections. This book had a wonderful idea on how to make an inexpensive theater stage using a tension rod and long curtains or bed sheets. I realized we had an extra shower curtain rod and some long curtains in the house which would make a perfect theater stage. The shower rod was long enough to fit between our kitchen and living room. The couch in the living room became a comfortable place to sit and watch the plays put on by Jacob and Rosa. Jacob made up a cute play about a king and a fairy who had to defend their kingdom from a terrible dragon. Jacob also came up with the idea to make a back drop from a large sheet of paper which he clipped to the theater curtain.

Later that day, Jacob dictated his play to me and I wrote it out for him on primary handwriting paper. He then copied his play and added illustrations for his writing/handwriting lesson over the next several days. We printed off paper with primary handwriting lines and a place for illustrations from Los Banos Homeschoolers. This is great paper to use when your younger child wants to write their own story with illustrations.

Our stage was easily converted into a puppet theater with the addition of a blanket draped over our two kitchen stools. The total cost of our stage and puppet theater was $0 and it was easy to take down and put away when the kids lost interest in it. The Creative Family book, where I got this idea, has lots of other great ideas for nurturing creativity in your children and it is a book I would definitely recommend.

Celebrating Chinese New Year

We started celebrating Chinese New Year the year before we traveled to adopt Rosa from China. It is now a family tradition and something the kids really look forward to. Jacob and Rosa especially enjoy eating Chinese food and getting hung bao which are red "lucky money" envelopes. Below I have listed our favorite books about Chinese New Year and some other related books, crafts, activities, and websites. Chinese New Year begins this year on January 26th and 2009 is the year of the Ox.

Reading List for Chinese New Year
Happy New Year!/Kung-Hsi Fa-Ts'ai! by Demi
Celebrating Chinese New Year by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year by Kate Waters
Celebrating Chinese New Year: An Activity Book by Hingman Chan













Books for Preschoolers
Dragon Dance: A Chinese New Year Lift-the-Flap Book by Joan Holub and Benrei Huang
Lanterns and Firecrackers: A Chinese New Year Story by Jonny Zucker and Jan Barger Cohen














Learn Some Mandarin On-Line for Free
Learn Chinese is a great website where you can learn how to pronounce words in Mandarin through the use of the websites audio files. This is how we learned the Mandarin we know!

Crafts
Activity Village has some great Chinese New Year crafts.
Kaboose has more fun Chinese New Year crafts.

Websites with Activities, Unit Studies, and More
Enchanted Learning
Activity Village
Squidoo has a Chinese New Year unit study
Squidoo also has an Ancient China unit study
Knowledge Quest Maps has a China unit study as well
abcteach has lots of free China related printables

Other Great Kid's Books About China
One Year in Beijing by Xiaohong Wang
Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Imperial China by Joanna Cole
The Children of China: An Artist's Journey by Song Nan Zhang