I first wrote my booklet about early Native American homes because I couldn’t find a simple resource for introducing my son to the different ways Native American peoples lived before Europeans arrived in North America. I wanted him to understand that there were many different cultures across the continent, each with its own traditions and
If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’ll know I love incorporating learning moments into familiar parts of our lives, especially reading favorite picture books. Here are some of our favorite preschool picture book lessons. Some of these book-inspired preschool lessons I’ve blogged about. To see the picture book preschool activities
I am so excited about this year’s plan because we are starting out with STEAM the center of our minds! At our co-op, I’m teaching an upper elementary-level STEAM Challenge class. Besides that, I’m super excited about the ideas in the book STEAM Kids, a fantastic book full of gorgeous and creative ways to implement science,
My preschool daughter loves Princess Sofia and her animal friends, so I try to tie in her stories to our learning moments whenever we get a chance. We watched an episode in which Sofia and a friend must design and build their own dream castle, and we read Chris van Dusen’s amusing book If I Built a
Learning about snowflakes is a perfect lesson for learning about symmetry. When we read Zoo Flakes ABC by Will C. Howell, we got a unique alphabet of zoo animals as well as instructions for making our own symmetrical STEAM snowflake craft. About the Picture Book: Zoo Flakes ABCZoo Flakes ABC by Will Howell is a fun
I always associate gingerbread with the holidays. When I was young, my family would make gingerbread houses every holiday season. Usually, we would cover it with our favorite candies. We’d stack it on the mantle in the dining room. Then, after a month, on New Year’s Eve, we’d smash it to pieces with a rolling
What do you do for your students for Valentine’s Day? 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
When I read Memoirs of a Parrot by Devin Scillian, I loved the memorable parrot, Brock/Echo, who loves his crackers. After we read the book, I gave the kids in my co-op STEM Challenge class a new challenge: Make a new bird cage for Echo’s friend, Tik Tok, so they can adopt him from the
My daughter still talks about the time the “leprechauns” came to her preschool classroom and left their footprints everywhere, and that was years ago! There’s no doubt it’s fun to imagine leprechauns at this time of year, so it was tons of fun to read How to Trap a Leprechaun to learn that we can
I am guilty of not always enjoying science in my homeschool. But I readily acknowledge that children’s attitudes to subjects are formed through their parents’ attitudes to it. If education rather than entertainment is made a priority, then the activities you plan together as a family will be based around that. Parents can help give
If there is one subject that we return to in our homeschool again and again, it is that of the coral reef. My kids love Nemo, Dory, and their friends, so of course learning about their habitat in the oceans of the world is a subject we love to learn about. What could be better
We’ve learned how to find the volume of a cubical object (such as my son’s bedroom). But how does one find the volume of something as odd-shaped as a rock? Using Archimedes’ story as an example, we made our own kitchen Archimedes water displacement science experiment to understand the concepts and reach our own “Eureka”
