Free Kindle Books on Amazon

Homeschooling in Your Garden is a free Kindle download right now!

And here is a free book I found that my oldest will love. How to Draw This Hot Rod in Six Easy Steps.


Go get them before the price goes back up!

~April

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday afternoon game day

The boys decided they wanted to play Monopoly. We have the regular version and the Pirates of the Caribbean version. Today they were pirates.
I like that they get to work on counting/money and Landon can try reading the cards.

Pinning is Addictive!

Just a few of the pins from my "General School Stuff" board.
-Free Homeschool Gradebook & Record-Keeping Spreadsheet from fivejs.com

Source: fivejs.com via Look! What We Did! on Pinterest

-LOTS of fun, free hands-on unit studies! This has a Yearly schedule (3 years) as well as Science, History, & Geography Units. It even lists how many weeks each section of the units lasts.
(Example: History has 7 different unit studies that last 28 weeks total. Each individual study is 4,5,or 6 weeks long.)

Source: squidoo.com via Look! What We Did! on Pinterest

-Place Value with Paint Cjips!

Source: tattlingtotheteacher.blogspot.com via April on Pinterest

-The -ight Family

Source: fern-smith.blogspot.com via April on Pinterest

-Planet Cutouts

Source: sproutonline.com via April on Pinterest

-Word Work

Source: mrsreynoldsfirstgradeadventures.blogspot.com via April on Pinterest

~April

Sprouting Potatoes

This morning we decided to sprout some potatoes. I had a few that already had eyes, so we used those.
Not a great photo, but you get the idea.

Easter Sunday

Clearance at Lifeway Christian Book Store

We made a trip to Lifeway yesterday. In the clearance section I came across 4 books that caught my eye. They were called English Lessons from the Bible: Book of Mark. There are two books, book 1 and book 2. There are also student and teacher editions. We picked up the student and teacher editions for book 1. The total for both was around $7.50. Now, I wish we had gotten both book 2 editions as well. I may have to send my hubby back to get them because the ones I saw were the only ones they had.
I think this will be very good when we start grammar with Landon. I'm not sure he is ready for it now, but I will go over a lesson and see how he responds.
Have any of you used this before? If so, how did it work for you?
~April

XtraMath

I joined XtraMath for Landon earlier and as we were going through the first quizzes, it kept having problems and having to reload the page. Every.single.time we clicked the "next" button. Ugh! Wondering if anyone else is or has had this problem. I'm thinking of trying it in another Internet browser. Maybe that will help.
Update:
I just tried logging in on my iPad. It seems the site can be used from an iPad, including viewing the videos and entering the answers to the questions. This may be how we use this site until I can make it work on the laptop.


~April
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Starfall!

I've finally got Landon onto Starfall. I showed it to him earlier this morning and he has been playing it ever since.
Level 1 is the ABCs, which he already knows. So, I started him at Level 2: Learn to Read. He has been going through the lessons quickly as they are easy for him to understand. Landon seems to be liking it pretty well. I even had to inform him that it is "school stuff". He looked at me like I was crazy. Lol.
He loves video games and I think things like this will keep his attention a lot better than just looking at pieces of paper. I believe this is a great site that will go along well with our book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".
And best of all, Starfall is a free site. They do sell items in their store and have a download center.
Starfall does have a paid iPad app. However, it is only Level 1: ABCs. I really wish they had the other levels available as well. I guess I can get it for Eli to,learn his ABCs.


~April
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Orange Cast has arrived...

Yesterday, "Rowdy" got a hard cast on his arm. He did well and we will go back in two weeks.


~April

First Broken Bones

This past Thursday, our oldest was running through the house, after being repeatedly told not to, and fell and broke both bones (radius/ulna) in his left forearm. Cue crazy screaming and me coming around the corner expecting see the red stuff. Nope. What I saw was an "s" shaped forearm right in my face.
I scooped him up and sat him on the couch, telling him not to touch or move his arm. FF to the hospital. Poor guy just wouldn't go to sleep with the meds, so they could straighten then bones back out. Took about 30-45 minutes and they finally had to double the dose and add morphine. He was finally sleeping. About 5 minutes later, his arm was all wrapped up in a temporary splint/soft cast. We ended up going home not much later but, not before he got his sucker and practically demanded to see his X-rays ("bone pictures" as he called them).
It was a stressful day but ended well. It could have been worse. He has been doing well so far. He has an appointment with the Bone Doc on Tuesday to get his hard cast. He immediately knew he wanted orange, of course!
Before this happened, I had never had or seen a broken bone before. Definitely an experience!
Here is everyone piled on our bed watching a show on dinosaurs.


~April

Math Games/Websites

The following is a list of online Math games (and a few others) I recently found online. If I remember correctly, they should all be FREE sites. Just thought I would share them with everyone.
I will be going through each one and marking any that are not free.


https://www.xtramath.org/
http://www.kidsnumbers.com/
http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/math
http://www.bigbrainz.com/
http://hoodamath.com/
http://www.funbrain.com/
http://funschool.kaboose.com/
http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html
http://www.prongo.com/
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/
http://mathplayground.com/
http://schooltimegames.com/Logic.html
http://www.learningplanet.com/stu/index.asp?tab=1
http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/
http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/gooey.html
http://www.playkidsgames.com/
http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/basic-addition.html
http://www.homeschoolmath.net/
http://livingmath.net/Home/tabid/250/language/en-US/Default.aspx
http://www.mathsisfun.com/worksheets/kindergarten.php


~April

Giveaway at 1+1+1=1

I love this blog! They are having two giveaways right now. You can earn extra entries on each. So, go enter and check out everything around the blog. There is so much to see it will take a while!

All About Reading Level 1 Giveaway- ends Jan. 29th

Table Talkers and A Year of Sugar Scrubs Giveaway-ends Jan. 21st

~April

Homeschool.com has a section entitled "Free Curriculum". It includes online websites that are for all different ages and subjects.
~April

What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know

I purchased "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" before we started our school year. We regularly read from it and find activities to do as well. It is not very in depth or detailed. Things like history/geography seem to touch on the basics. Math includes lots of activities. It also includes lots of poems, fairy tales, and short stories. We like it. L has learned his continents and knows some major things in them. Such as The Great Wall of China (which continent and why it was built), the Dead Sea (continent), etc. I am hoping to get the whole set of books eventually. It probably isn't a "curriculum" in and of it self but, it gives lots of ideas to expand on. Having said that, here is a website that does use these books. They plan out a school year's worth of daily activities from the book.
Baltimore Curriculum Project Lesson Plans: here is for all grades, and here is for Kindergarten.
~April

Months of the Year

Here L was working on the mini book for the months January and February. Sorry, I can't find/remember the site it came from.





~April

Scholastic Teacher Express

Scholastic Teacher Express is having a $1.00 sale! Lots of great items. I plan on purchasing a few! ~April

Teach Your Child to Read...

We use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I highly recommend this book. We started out doing the work directly from the book. However, it seemed kind of boring to our 5yo. So after Christmas, I started writing the lessons on our white board. I have 3 sections: letters/sounds (he sounds out each one at the beginning), sounding out/reading the words, and reading the sentences. He doesn't require the lines and dots under the words anymore so this works well for us. So well that some days we do 4 lessons! :-)



How have you adapted TYCtR to fit your children? ~April

Hello!

Welcome to my new homeschooling blog!!!