Homeschooling and lifelong education . . . one day at a time
I’ve fallen in love with word links (also called word ladders, word golf, or doublets): games that change just one letter at a time to get to a completely different word. The game of word links were created by Lewis Carroll in 1877. My son, although a very strong reader, did struggle with vocabulary as a […]
My son and I enjoy playing Scrabble and other word-building games. But while we are playing, I needed to find a way to keep my 2-year-old happy, without her grabbing our tiles! To keep her busy, I created some word templates for her to enjoy building words too. ABC Letters Tiles are fun for all letter […]
When I think of summer, I think of reading. I love to encourage free reading all summer long, and finding reading programs with book-ish rewards only adds to the fun.
When each of my kids has been two and three years old, they have gone through a stage of truly loving Pete the Cat’s I Love My White Shoes! Since it is so fun to sing the song and toddlers are just starting to recognize colors, it’s a perfect stage for beginning color recognition and […]
I’ve been creating units for kindergarten using picture books to introduce the poetic concepts of rhythm, rhyme, and metaphor. Today I thought I’d write about another picture book that would help in teaching older children about metaphors in poetry: Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski.
It’s so hard to get back in to the groove after a vacation. The last thing we wanted to do was head back to homeschool. But this week, we turned to old routines and found ways to learn from our “extras”, and it turned out to be a fantastic, learning-packed week!
My fifth grader and I are working on basic conversation in Spanish, while my kindergartner and I are at the other end of the learning spectrum: we’re focusing on basics like learning the alphabet, the days of the week, and other calendar words. Our alphabet wall cards and the calendar tracking page (and cards) help […]
Valentine’s Day is a little ways away still, but here is a fun way to give a STEM Valentine’s Day card to your students or children — crack a code! My STEM Challenge class loved trying to figure the codes out. My preschooler enjoyed matching the symbols to the letters (although she could not read […]
It is about time that I provided a blank note card alternative to my Thank You Cards product for my son’s personal use. ‘Tis the Season for….writing Christmas cards! I admit, I am really bad at this one. I put it off every year. A few years I have not sent anything. My son, on […]
On September 11, 2001, I got up early because that was the only time my apartment of six was quiet. I read the entire New York Times and headed up to my early Economics class. When I got there, I learned of the attacks in New York. How do I teach of this historic happening […]
