Homeschool Talk: The Princess and the Pea

Wow, its been awhile since I did a homeschool post! Guess I've just been to busy with homeschooling! Now that we are back into the swing of things, hopefully I'll have the time to post a "Homeschool Talk" post at least once a week.

Claire's literature selection for January was the Princess and the Pea. We started by reading the traditional Hans Christian Anderson tale. Then, each week we read a different version. I came across two really good ones...

The Cowboy and the Black Eyed Pea by Johnston & Ludwig
This is a Texas tale about a cowgirl selecting a real cowboy to marry. It was really cute and very different from any other version you will find out there.

"Mattresses" found in the book Tales of the Brothers Grimm and Sisters Weird.
This one was more of the traditional prince looking for a real princess story, but he ends up not marrying her because she is too much trouble!

If you're looking for a fun book to read with your child that's not the same old thing, try one of these!

Homeschool Talk: 12 Days of Christmas Game

Here is an idea for a fun, unique christmas game...

Last year I made a 12 days of christmas game for our homeschool christmas party. I laminated 2 half poster boards with the numbers 1-12 on them. then, I added velcro dots. I printed off and laminated the items in the song (turtle doves, lords-a-leaping, etc.) Then, we had the kids form 2 lines and see who could complete the song first. They drew the slips of paper out of a basket and ran to the game on the wall. They had to place it next to the right number. There was someone there telling them yes or no. They had to go until they got it right. It was lots of fun! We have several new families in our group so I think we're going to play it again this year!

Homeschool Talk: Little Red Riding Hood

My daughter's literature selection for this month was little red riding hood. Each of the books we read were a little different take on the story. One of the big differences in all of the books was what Red was taking to her grandmother. In one book it was muffins, in one cake and wine, in one bread, etc. Our activity for the book was to make the item and then act out the book. Claire played Red, I was the mother and grandmother, Nathan was the wolf, and Chris was the huntsman.

Nathan as the wolf (Claire made the mask for him!)

Claire as Red...

She had so much fun with this! She looked forward to every Wednesday. (That's the day we do literature.)

She also made a lapbook about wolves. I downloaded it free from www.homeschoolshare.com

Next month her literature selection will be The Frog Prince. I scheduled it for December so we could go see the new Disney movie as one of our activities! She will also be doing a frog lapbook from homeschool share.

Homeschool Talk: The butterfly project

Here is a good project for homeschoolers or homeschool groups:

In an effort to remember the children killed in the holocaust, Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. The butterflies will eventually comprise an exhibition, currently scheduled for Spring 2012.

I printed out a simple butterfly pattern and the kids in our homeschool group colored them anyway they wanted. Kids of all ages took part. These are the ones we did...

You can make whatever butterflies you want. I know they are asking for 2 dimentional ones and they can't be too big. All of those details along with the address to mail them to is on their website. Check it out! My kids really enjoyed doing this!
http://www.hmh.org/minisites/minisite/butterfly/index.html

Homeschool Talk: All Saints Day

Our Homeschool group has an All Saints Party every year. One of the things is a Holy Lantern Carving Contest. These are my kids' entries for this year...

Nathan's is a rosary and Claire's is a church. Claire came up with hers all by herself so she is very proud!

This is Nathan's entry from last year. He won first place with it. Claire didn't do one last year.

Here are the kids in their costumes last year. Claire is St. Clare and Nathan is St. Ignatious Loyola. My mom made Claire's costume and when I sent her the picture she said, "you forgot to wrap the white part around her face!" So, being the perfectionist that I am, I've been bothered by that for a whole year now!

This year we modified Claire's costume and she is going as St. Therese. (We took the white part off all together so hopefully I won't forget anything this year!) Nathan is going to be St. Luke. We put his costume together last minute. I bought a navy graduation gown at a thrift store for 3.50 and I had a curtain tie back rope that we've used before that we are using as a belt. A friend of mine gave us a pirate costume for my husband and we used the belt from it as a sash over the robe. It looks good and only cost 3.50!

If anyone else out there has any other costume or pumpkin carving ideas I'd love to hear them!

Homeschool Talk: Simple Science Book

My daughter had a science activity the other day...find pictures of living and non living things. Instead of just looking for the pictures I decided to make it a little more fun. I had her cut them out of magazines and we used an old file folder to make a book. She really enjoyed it and it turned out cute! You could do this with so many other topics too....healthy/non healthy food, safe/not safe behavior, basically anything that there is 2 categories of! I will definately be using this idea again!

Homeschool Talk: Columbus Day

My kids are rather disappointed that we are not taking Columbus Day off from school! We asked my son on the way to lunch today when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. His response? 1942! So, not only are we not taking the day off, we are doing an extra lesson on Columbus!

So, if you are like us and want to do some extra lessons Monday, here are some links that have Columbus lessons and printables for a variety of ages.

http://www.theholidayzone.com/columbus/printable.html

http://www.abcteach.com/directory/seasonalholidays/columbus_day/

http://www.ushistorysite.com/columbus.php

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=126

Homeschool Talk: Fairy Tales

I've mentioned before that Claire is studying fairy tales this year. Yes, studying! :) We are reading different versions and comparing them.

This month is Cinderella. There are LOTS of versions of Cinderella out there. Here are a few we are using:

Cinderella by Michele Marineau (a modern Cinderella)

Cinderella by Ruth Sanderson

Bigfoot Cinderrrrella by Tony Johnston and James Warhola (This one is really funny!)

Adelita by Tomie de Paola (A Mexican Cinderella Story)

and of course Walt Disney's Cinderella! (I have a modern Disney book as well as one from when I was a kids so we can compare the differences in the characters and the way they drew them.)

I have some Cinderella resources in the margin of my blog. These are free lessons and printables.

For each fairy tale I make a chart and Claire records the differences in the books. Here is the Cinderella one along with the Jack & the Beanstalk and Little Red Hen...

Now that we've started doing lapbooks we are also going to do a lapbook for each fairy tale. We are doing an Autumn on for Cinderella. (just because that's the one I started in the class I took) We will be doing one on wolves with Little Red Riding Hood and one on frogs for the Princess and the Frog.

Claire loves her "literature class" this year. These stories have been a great way to make learning fun!

Homeschool Talk: Lapbooks

I had heard many homeschoolers talk about lapbooks, but I had never done one. They seemed neat, but I wasn't quite sure how to put them together. Well, I just attended a class on how to do them. Thanks to my friend Lynda
(The Adventures of A Princess and The Bear) for setting it up! My daughter did the child's class and I did the adult one. Now I'm hooked! She is a very visual learner and likes the coloring, cutting, and gluing involved. Lapbooks fit with her learning style perfectly!

In the child's class she made a Johnny Appleseed lapbook. It is a 2 folder one, most of them are 3 folder. She told me when we got home that she wanted to take another class! She had a lot of fun with it so we will definately be incorporating these into her curriculum.

Claire's Johnny Appleseed Lapbook

In the adult class I made an Autumn one. It is not complete. Claire will complete it this month. Her literature unit for this month is Cinderella so the autumn/pumpkin theme of the lapbook will fit in well.

Here is the site of the company that did the workshop for us:

A Journey Through Learning

I really recommend their lapbooks. They are very well laid out and easy to understand.

(Their link is also in the Homeschooling Corner in my blog margin.)

Here is a great site with free lapbook templates:
http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks.htm

If you know of any other sites with free lapbook templates I'd love to hear about them. Feel free to share them in the comment section of this post.

Homeschool Talk: our newest reader

Reading always came easy for me. It also came very easy for my son who learned to read at age 4. However, it has not come easy for my daughter. My 2 kids have proven to be polar opposites when it comes to learning! This has presented some major challenges to me as a homeschooler. My son has the same learning style I have so teaching him always came easy. My daughter does not learn the same way we do so I am having to figure out her style.

She has struggled and struggled with reading. In kinder we started the Sing, Spell, Read and Write curriculum. We got to lesson 16 and could not get any further. We even had her tested for dyslexia. (We saw several red flags and it runs in the family.) They told us she's not dyslexic, but she is at risk. Not sure what that means exactly, so I try my best to keep on top of her learning. Its reasons like this that make me so happy to homeschool. I can give her the individual attention she needs so that she won't fall behind.

This summer she participated in the library's summer reading club. We got lots of very basic beginner books for her to read. She read them, but thought they were boring. However, I think they got her over that wall we seemed to hit last year in school. This year we started back up with the Sing Spell Read and Write curriculum where we left off last year. She is doing so much better with it. And she has even started reading for pleasure! This makes me so happy!! She has found a series of books at the library that are beginner readers, but they have characters and stories she likes. (Word Bird books by Moncure) They are simple but what excites me the most is that she reads them on her own because she WANTS to.

So the point of my post today is to hang in there. If you have a child that is just not getting something, hang in there. They will get it. Children can be very different and what works for one might not work for another. Just keep trying different things until you find the one that works. I'm also reading Discover your Child's Learning Style by Mariaemma Willis and Victoria Kindle Hodson. I really recommend this book if you are trying to teach a child with a different learning style than yours.

Homeschool Talk: Creative Machines

This week my son was studying simple machines in Science. One of the labs was to build simple machines out of random stuff around the house and then build a complex machine too. Well, my daughter was very interested in this as well so I gave them a box of random things and went to take a nap. (I was sick. Normally, I'd join them.) Well, they both had a blast!



I thought what a great rainy day activity. So, if your kids are bored one day try this! Our box had random wooden ends and pieces, beads, yarn, thick cardboard squares that were left over from another project, craft sticks, bottle caps, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, and a few other things I don't remember now. Wooden spools were suggested by the text book, but I didn't have any. You can use anything really.

My son made a ramp, and a balance out of bottle caps and craft sticks. My daughter needed a little help getting everything to stay together. I helped her tape some items together and she ended up making a little wagon.

It was fun and educational! Afterward, I let them play with a set of gears that I picked up for a couple of bucks at a thrift store. They really liked those as well and spent quite a while assembling them into different configurations.

Homeschool Talk: Books are a Treasure!

Today's homeschool talk is about one of the great classics...Treasure Island!

My son is reading this book for his homeschool book club this month so I thought I'd share some resources and ideas. This semester he is actually reading several books by Robert Louis Stevenson. Click the following link to go to the Robert Louis Stevenson Website. http://dinamico2.unibg.it/rls/rls.htm

My son is 11 so he's not really into doing crafts that go along with the books, but if your child is here is a good website: http://www.easyfunschool.com/article2275.html

When we meet for book club this month we will be meeting at a park. I'm going to send the kids on a treasure hunt. I'm going to stick clues all around the park and when they collect all of the clues and put them together the back of them will reveal a treasure map. This map will lead them to a hidden treasure chest full of goodies. Now, I must admit, this is going to be as much fun for me as it will be for the kids! Since books are treasures themselves I think I'll include a book for each child in the chest as well as some treats to snack on during our book discussion.

Before the treasure hunt all of the kids will have to have a pirate name. I'm going to have them draw from 2 different cans of names and use their first name as the middle name. For example, if my son, Nathan draws Salty and Fourfingers then his name would be Salty Nathan Fourfingers!

I've always thought pirates were interesting and pirate parties really fun. (We did one a few years ago for my son.) I've listed some pirate links in the "homeschool corner" section of my margin. Check them out...they are a lot of fun!

At every book club we discuss the book. These kids are 10-12 yrs. old and they get really into it. I've always been surprised at just how much they get out of reading. We also will watch the movie if one exists. EVERY movie we've ever watched has resulted in me hearing the same thing from the kids...THE BOOK WAS BETTER! That phrase just makes me feel so good!

One last link: http://www.teachervision.fen.com/tv/printables/penguin/treasureisland_penguin.pdf

This is a complete guide to Treasure Island by Penguin Books. Its the one I'm using for my son and you can download it free!

Homeschool Talk: Easy Fun Art Projects

A couple of weeks ago the whole family went to the Free Family Festival at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. These are really neat! They have docents at different areas with different art activities for the kids to do. The theme was art from A to Z. So they had activities to go with artists with last names from A to Z. Now, there wasn't 26 activities, but it started with A and ended with Z.

I'm posting my kids' works of art with a little description because these activities were so much fun and could easily be done at home for a nice little art lesson.

One was a painting of a dentist office (I can't remember the artist.) The activity was to draw something dental related with white pencil on black paper. My son drew toothpaste on a toothbrush and my daughter drew someone flossing.

They also had self portrait lessons. The docent helped the kids draw the right shape face and told them how to get the eyes in the right spot, etc. They also had mirrors for them to use.

Since the theme was A to Z they had a really fun activity with letters. The child had to make pictures out of different letters of the alphabet. This one was really fun! And it would be so easy to do at home. Here is one of my daughter's. She made a lollipop out of a C and a drum out of an N. Sorry the picture is not horizontal. I have no idea why it turned out vertical once I uploaded it! Just turn your head a little and it will all make sense! :)

They also made Japanese style scrolls that were really nice, but I have no idea where we put those so I don't have any pictures of them. They drew a nature scene on a vertical strip of paper and then glued it to a more decorative and larger vertical strip of paper. (The decorative one could be some nice scrapbooking paper or thick wrapping paper.)

One particularly popular activity was a Piet Mondrain style picture. They had black lines cut to the size of the paper as well as red, yellow, and blue squares and rectangles. I thought this was a great idea. My kids vary a bit in age, but both of them really liked this activity.

Homeschool Talk: School Lunches

My homeschool topic this week is not about curriculum or science experiments. Its about food! On school days I spend the morning teaching school. Then when Claire is finished, its time for me to make lunch. My problem is this: I need more ideas for quick and easy lunches that are also somewhat healthy.
This year my kids have art, PE, and gymnastics all on Tuesdays so I am going to be faced with needing a really quick lunch for those days. I don't want to fall into the habit of picking something up at Sonic every Tuesday!

My kids are picky. They don't like lunchmeat so a quick sandwich is out. Nathan loves PB&J, but Claire is allergic to peanuts so that's not really a quick option for me because I have to prepare everything seperately, away from Claire's food.

So, for this post I wanted to share some of the things I've come up with as well as ask for ideas for others.

Here is a list of my old stand-bys:

1. Mini Pizzas
Made on English muffins or hamburger buns

2. Cheese Quesedillas
sometimes done in the microwave, sometimes on the mini George Foreman

3. Pasta
I sometimes make an extra amount for dinner so we can have it left over.
The kids love pasta!

If you have a quick and easy lunch idea for school days please leave a comment and tell me what it is!

Homeschool Talk: Literature Units

I love literature. I have a degree in English and I just love teaching it to my kids. My son is an avid reader so when he was in 3rd grade I started doing literature units with him. Then, I started a book club for him. Basically, we take a break from our English/Grammar workbook and read a book and do lessons on that book for 1-3 weeks. Sometimes I find lesson plans online, sometimes I make my own.

This year Claire is in the 1st grade so I decided literature units would be fun for her too. So, each month we are going to concentrate on a different fairy tale. I do literature once a week with her. So each Wednesday I'm reading her a different version of the same fairy tale and we will do an activity that goes along with it.

I'm sharing what we are doing on my blog because these units are so much fun! They are very easy to add to your curriculum or use if your child is already reading that book. I hope others will find my information helpful. I'd also like to hear your ideas for activities too.

In the "Homeschooling Corner" in my margin I have listed the literature selections for both kids for the month along with links to lesson plans and activities. I'll update this section each month.

This month Claire and I are reading The Little Red Hen. Below is our schedule for the month.

Week 1. The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton
Activity: Bake Bread


Week 2. The Little Red Hen by Jerry Pinkney
Activity: Make your own Little Red Hen Story Book


Week 3. Little Red Hen Gets Help by Kenneth Spengler
Activity: Stick puppets


Week 4. You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You:
The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat
Activity: Field Trip to the Mrs. Baird's Bakery!
(We have a factory in Fort Worth)



I preread all of these books during the summer. I found most of them at the library. We have the You Read to Me, I'll Read to You book. (If you've never seen this its really cute. They have the text in two different colors. One color the child reads, one color the adult reads.) I tried to find different versions. For example, the animals that say "not I" are all different in each of these books. I made a chart for Claire so we can compare that. The patterns for the stick puppets and story book are in a Little Red Hen Unit book that I have. A link to it can be found in my "homeschool corner" section of my blog.



The activity for the first week was to bake bread. My husband has never baked bread from scratch so I told him we'd wait until the weekend to do it so he could be home to join in. So, that is what we are doing this afternoon. On Wednesday, I let Claire bake bread using frozen bread dough. I cut it into 3 strips and let her braid it. Here is how it turned out. It was a big hit at dinner!

At the end of the month I'll try to do another post that shows all of the finished activities that went along with this unit.

Homeschool Talk: School Rooms

Since we are starting school on Monday this weekend's topic is school rooms. I thought it would be fun to take a tour of some school rooms of other homeschoolers.

So, if you'd like to be part of the tour, this is all you have to do:
Join in below using MckLinky.
Post about your school room or area on your blog and link back to mine.
Then click on the participants in the MckLinky list and visit everyone's school room.

This is our schoolroom.

It is actually the 5th bedroom in the house. We are starting to outgrow it.

I hope we can move next year into a house with a bigger schoolroom.

This is Nathan's desk. The dry erase board is new for this school year. We had a small one, but realized we needed a bigger one...I'm excited about it!

This is Claire's desk. I got it at a sale from a private school that was closing. I just love it. It is the perfect size for her. When she gets older we'll get her one like Nathan's so her computer will not have to have a separate cart.


This is my desk. Unfortunately it isn't usually this neat!

Here is one of the many bookshelves we have in our house! We just love books!

The kids really like the calendar too...its one where they put the date on each day. Also, another bulleting board. I really think the bulletin boards give a "school feel" to the room.

Ok, this is my favorite part of my school room.
Since its a bedroom it has a walk in closet.

As you can see, we've taken advantage of every inch of it!

We have scrapbooks, photo albums, board games, school books, school supplies, you name it...its in here! And notice the nice labels on everything. I just got a label maker and I went to town with it in this closet!

Ok, that's our school room, now let's see yours!