Yesterday afternoon I had the kiddos help me dig out the Christmas decorations and the tree. I’m so thankful that we’ve used color-coded totes (dark green for Christmas) for our seasonal decor as this makes it much easier to find the necessary items.
The kids were a little upset that we didn’t put the tree up last night but they were super excited to find some early gifts on the table this morning.
Continue reading “St. Nicholas Day 2022”
We have been using these books as part of our Art/Music studies. They make lessons so quick and easy and the kids love coloring the pictures while they listen to the various music selections.
We will often add an educational video from YouTube if they seem to be more interested in a particular composer/song.
The one thing that I haven’t found was tests to go along with the lessons which aren’t absolutely necessary but sometimes I like to have them just to see if they are really paying attention to what we are learning about or not.
Here are the ones I’ve completed:
COLOR THE CLASSICS – GODLY COMPOSERS (September – October – November)
GODLY COMPOSERS – CHRISTMAS CAROLS (November – December)
Continue reading “Color the Classics Tests”
I don’t know if you have gotten in on the Kefir craze or not but we’ve been drinking it for a bit now and we love it! The slight tang reminds me a bit of buttermilk and we weren’t really crazy at first but now we can’t seem to get enough of it.
The kids are especially fond of their water kefir but we make and use a lot of milk kefir as well. We were doing a lot of different smoothies but the kids got a bit bored with my lack of creativity until recently.
Continue reading “Orange Kefir Smoothie”
I know I’ve posted these pics before but I thought I’d share some of the progress pics when I was making these… I forgot to take pics while making the second cake and the cupcake but they were super simple! These were inspired by Pinterest!
I made these for little miss’s birthday but these would be super cute for Easter as well!
I also forgot to take an up close picture of the picture of the little caterpillar but it was just some green fondant balls with a couple of candy eyes and antennas (flower stamens) added. I probably should’ve use red but Isabella picked out these pink ones.
Continue reading “Adorable Chicken Cakes”
I can’t believe that I haven’t found this site before but I just had to share it with everyone else because this is so awesome! I mean this can and will save me a ton of time and it makes some parts of homeschooling so much easier and my kiddos actually enjoy reading this series.
Magic Treehouse books are geared towards 1-4 grades (6-10 years old) but I’m actually going to be using them with my 3rd grader and my 5th grader because it’s just easier to combine things when I can. The older kiddos (and little miss) will be listening in as we will be in the same room so they will all be learning as we go.
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We usually school year-round so this week is a planning week for me… actually, it’s a ‘catch-up’ on everything around the house week before the place gets condemned (jk) kinda week but I have been getting some planning and printing done, and have the next three weeks of learning ready to go. I still felt like I needed a little more reading for the boys and I’d found a couple of Novel-ties study units but you know me… if we were going to do a few books out of the series why not do them all? BTW, I haven’t forgotten about the Little House on the Prairie Unit Studies and I will get back to them just as soon as I have a chance to catch my breath around here. I also have some plans to create a ‘ready-made’ unit study guide that can be used with just about any book…. when I find some spare time that isn’t already set aside for something else or being used to chase around the almost 2-year-old who is getting to be very mobile despite her prenatal diagnosis of ‘being nothing more than a vegetable’… she sure fooled them!
Where has the time gone? I can’t believe it’s been two years this week since little miss made her debut and I still remember how scary that was but she has been such a blessing to us and we are so very grateful to all of our prayer warriors for helping us get through those traumatic events… words could never express how grateful we are and how blessed we have been to be surrounded by so many loving and caring people!
Anyways, getting back to my reason for writing this post… I couldn’t find any ready-made unit studies for all of the books so I figured I’d just make my own, but who am I kidding? I don’t really have time for that right now so the next best thing was to ask my dear old friend, Google, and she hooked me up with some links to check out. Among them was a link to this wonderful blog post HERE, which is where I learned that the Magic Treehouse has a website and FREE Lesson Plans to go along with their books… WHATTTT????? Why has no one told me this before????
They also have a ‘special education’ lesson plan to use with grades 3-5 and this will work put great with our kiddos. My kids are already using the Living Education for Language Arts and Math so I’m not set on them needing any extra work but there are some great activities that we can definitely incorporate into our daily lesson plans. The site also has several different games and online activities for the kiddos but I haven’t had a chance to really check them out yet. Be sure to check the ‘Parents’ tab and the ‘Teachers’ tab for the different activities.
I just purchased a few of the ‘Fact Checker’ books as well to go along with these and I will buy a few at a time as we read through the series… there are more books than I had previously thought but you can never have too many books, right?
These would also be great to use for summer reading to keep the kiddos from getting bored!
Happy Homeschooling!
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