Our Week of Fun

I was able to make our school lessons fun this week by doing some hands on learning.

We worked on our Colors & Shapes Brownie scout badge here. I love incorporating scouts into our 1st grade curriculum. It breaks up the everyday of homeschooling. It really teaches many things, including social studies and science. If she's really into it, we take a longer time and study that badge more in depth. We also go to a weekly girl scout meeting with a troop, but as with public school, it is mostly just crowd control time. Shayla is so busy watching the others around her, that I don't know how much she actually takes in.

Last week we did a literature based unit study, Peter Rabbit. We haven't done one of these for awhile. It was fun to do one of these again, we used to do one each Friday. We also worked on Letter I. From insects to icicles, to Isaac and infinity. And lastly, we worked on self-esteem last week. Which is probably an underlying cause of Shayla's selective mutism. For more on these, go here and here.

What are you doing with your kids? For more ideas go to 5 Minutes for Special Needs and Proverbs 31.

A Vacation from Learning????

We're ready to get back to homeschooling today. But I wanted to share with you how we incorporate homeschooling into play.

Shayla loves plays. She loves to watch plays and put on plays. We are using this love to set up social scenarios. I went to the library and searched "shy." I left with a whole load of books. We are going to read one book a day and reinact the story using her puppets, stuffed animals, whatever she fancies that day. We will answer all of her whys and what ifs. I realize this is very important to her because she loves to reinact things that happen in real life. After several times of doing it at home, she reinacts it the way she wishes she would have responded.

I decided for Shayla's New Year's resolution to tackle her shyness issue. It must have been meant to be because I happened to flip through the Dec/Jan issue of Family Fun magazine and read an article entitled "Fear Not!" I learned that extreme shyness, or selective mutism was a form of anxiety. (Yes, she was diagnosed with that). There were several ideas mentioned in the article that we are going to try. I will post more about that as we attempt them!

If your children are having anxiety issues, here are some sites I have checked over (thanks to Family Fun).

• http://www.adaa.org/


• wwwWorryWiseKids.org


• childanxiety.net


• toolkitsforkids.com

A Way to Make Reading Fun

If you have a child just beginning to read or like to have visual/hands-on for the things you are teaching, you are probably going to love this. The Fisherville Academy has these great phonics magnets you can print onto those sheets of magnet paper that you can buy from office supply stores. The letters are single letters, capital and lower case, blends, ending sounds, etc. I had looked at purchasing a tub of these at Walmart, but hesitated, and when I went back after the school supply rush, they were not there.

If your children are accustomed to receiving homeschool supplies for Christmas, they may even make a good gift. SMILES!

Another idea on the topic of gifts. Several members of our family always ask what to get Shayla because I think she has, uh, Everything!!! This year I did something different, I pulled out several of those homeschool catalogs with the really cool, fun stuff (Nasco and Lakeshore). I made a list of all the things we would like to have for our homeschool.

*Special note to those who got those lists from me: I would really, REALLY like to have those alphabet and number rubber stampers with the dotted letter/number already drawn on them. I am doing it now by hand and let's just say it would be a time-saver!

For more homeschooling ideas, visit Stacy's blog, Proverbs 31.

Websites We Use For Homeschool

This week's theme is websites used for homeschooling. These suggestions are for the younger crowd.

There is so much free stuff out there to supplement our curriculums. If you were low on funds and had time, you could design your own curriculum with stuff from the internet. We definately use it as a tool to supplement our homeschool. We try to have a once-a-week unit study day, where all the lessons are based upon a favorite book. This week we will have two, If You Give a Pig a Pancake and The Tales of Peter Rabbit.

A to Z Unit Studies
abc teach
Best Printables
Brightly Beaming Resources (Letter of the Week) This is for preschoolers, but I like the science lessons that are under construction here. She uses the Let's Read About Science series of books that are available at the library.
Christian-Parent
DLTK This site is just awesome. There are several sister sites listed here and they are every bit as good, too.
Easy Fun School
Family Education
First School
Free Lessons From The Learning Company
Free Unit Studies
Garden of Praise Free curriculum for second grade level.
Homeschool Freebie of the Day You can download an ebook each day
Homeschool Helper unit studies To supplement your FIAR, LLTL, or other literature based curriculum
Homeschool Share - Literature Guides Same as above.
Hubbards Cupboard
Kid Zone
Kids Love Jesus
Kids R Crafty
Kinder Info
Lesson Plan Page All ages. All subjects.
Lil Fingers Preschool - early elementary. They have flags of the world printables and you can make words from block letters.
Little Fun Little Learning
Little Giraffes
Living Math
Making Learning Fun
Mary Rice Hopkins Sample Curriculum
Preschool Education
Preschool Express Great site! By the former owner of Totline magazine and Piggyback songs books.
Teaching Heart
The Family Corner
The Homeschool Mom

My daughter also loves to have lessons based on her favorite shows (like Barney, caillou and Arthur). There are plenty of printables and games at http://www.pbskids.org/ and shows like Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer at http://www.nickjr.com/. One spring and summer I made a whole preschool curriculum based on the printables and games at these sites, along with the shows and books we had on hand and at the library. Another option would be to record the shows and use the theme. For example, a Barney show may be about the farm or transportation. You get the idea.

If you have anymore good websites or homeschool ideas, please link up here.

Scout Schooling

Stacy's theme today is about careers. It is targeted for high schoolers. My second daughter is a freshman, but is not homeschooled. We do "homeschool" throughout the summer. Basically just work on her cadet girl scout program and Training Our Daughters to be Keepers at Home. It's a home economics curriculum.

My daughter Shayla and I (she's in first grade)have been talking about careers, too. So far she says she only wants to be a kid, but maybe someday she'll change her mind. LOL! (Hopefully!)

We've been doing Shayla's Junior Girl Scout badgework at home. I call it Scouts-at-Home. She loves it because I make all the activities hands-on. Here are the posts. She has earned more and I will post them as I have time.

Careers: http://love2-bhome.blogspot.com/2008/10/careers-try-it.html. We are currently still working on this and have more to post on it.

Building art/architecture: http://love2-bhome.blogspot.com/2008/09/building-art-brownie-try-it.html

Animals: http://love2-bhome.blogspot.com/2008/08/animal-brownie-try-it-scout-school.html

One of the posts has other links for "scout schooling."

For more homeschooling ideas, go here.