FREE Printable Charades for The Magician's Nephew

Our family LOVES playing games together.  A few weeks ago, our power was out for a few hours, and we decided to play charades.  We had a ton of fun, and we started using Charades as a fun way to review some of the things we've been learning. 

We just finished reading The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis last week, so I thought it would be fun to make a printable for reviewing the book.  You can get your copy here. 

As we read through the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia, I hope to post some more fun review games.

Hope your family has as much fun with these as we have! Enjoy!

Our Curriculum Picks 2015-2016

It's that time of year again! 

For many of us, it's just about that time when we're finishing our curriculum purchases for the year, putting together our lesson plans, and making sure everything is in order for another school year.

While we school year round, we have started our new school year usually towards the end of July.  Since I had to have surgery , we started right after the 4th of July this year to accommodate for the time I needed off.  Yet another reason I LOVE homeschooling! 

I actually had most of our school stuff planned and bought by April this year.  Last year we used My Father's World:  Learning God's Story for first grade.  We really enjoyed the gentle approach, and next year we'll be using the curriculum again for Miss Bear. 

This year, I needed something that was a little more budget friendly as I also needed to replace our printer, so I ended up sort of piecing together our curriculum. 

Here's the skeleton of our curriculum.

BIBLE:

We'll be using The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Rhyme Bible again this year, as well as a NIV and KJV bible.  We also will be reading through Following Aslan: Devotions for Children by Keri McIntosh.  We're going to start the Chronicles of Narnia, so we thought this would be perfect to show how the two are related.

We'll continue with our scripture memorization, starting with Ephesians 6:10-18 over the course of the first several weeks.  After that, we'll memorize a verse that ties in to our character studies/habits building lessons.

LANGUAGE ARTS:
We'll be using First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Levels 1-2 by Jessie Wise this year.  I'm not exactly sure how far into the second we'll get yet, but so far we do anywhere between 1-3 lessons per day. 

I do love that the lessons are short and sweet.  There is a lot of repetition, but in a good way.

First Language Lessons Vol. 1  is actually meant for first graders, but My Father's World didn't have grammar included in their first grade plans last year, so we are starting there. 

READ-ALOUDS:

Many of our read alouds are living books that relate back to another subject we're covering.  We're also going to be reading through The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis this year as well. 

MATH:
We're going to go through the Life of Fred Elementary Series by Stanley F. Schmidt starting this year.  So far, we've been going through about a chapter a day, with games and worksheets to practice.

HISTORY:I purchased Story of the World Volume 2:  The Middle Ages by Susan Wise Bauer on my Kindle.  I am simply adding my own copywork, projects, reference books, and living books to go along with the Lessons.  

GEOGRAPHY:
We'll be using The Geography Book:  Activities for Exploring, Mapping, and Enjoying Your World by Caroline Arnold.  The lessons are short and simple, and we'll be adding in some worksheets and activities to put the skills to use.

I also purchased the Medieval maps set from Knowledge Quest, which we'll be using to map out our studies.

SCIENCE:
This year we'll be studying Astronomy.  We'll be using the Usborn Science Encyclopedia, Usborne What's Science All About? and the Usborne Geography Encyclopedia as our main texts.  I have quite a few other books and sources that I'll include throughout the lessons.   

 

Every couple weeks, we'll also be including either an animal research paper or a health topic.

THE ARTS:

Arts & Crafts-
Much of our art will tie in to our History and Science lessons this year.

The kids will also have drawing lessons with Dad and complete various holiday crafts.

Art Appreciation-
We will be using the Art Cards from MFW 1st Grade since we only made it through a few last year.  We'll also be discussing art throughout our history lessons.

Music-
So far, I've only planned on studying a few hymns.


PHYSICAL EDUCATION:

The kiddos are really into dancing right now, so we've been learning various dances on YouTube.  They'll also have plenty of outdoors time to run, skip, ride their bikes, and play at the park. 




Have you made any changes this year?  What's your favorite new resource you've discovered?

 

 

Week 5 of MFW Learning God's Story

Another great week using MFW Learning God's Story!  We did a few art projects, made some yummy chipotle ranch, and read about several types of trees.  Warning:  This post contains affiliate links.  That means if you use the link to buy something, we will be paid.  This money goes to support my family.

Memory Verse:

Proverbs 21:23-

"He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity."

This verse was a great one for our whole family to focus on this week.  We've had a lot happen recently, and it was a good reminder to watch what we say.  Squirrely Girl and Miss Bear have continued to do well with the memorization, and are relating day to day life back to our memory verses and bible stories.  It makes my heart happy whenever I hear them pray for God's help in these areas!

We've also started doing a little something with our memory verses this week.  I love the CM Scripture memory system, and we made our own simple version.  You can read about it here. 






Language Arts:

Squirrely Girl reading her previous phonics lessons.

Squirrely Girl has continued with the MFW phonics.  I thought it was odd that they included -ing, -ang, and -ung together, because I thought it would be confusing.  She didn't seem to have any problems, though!    Her handwriting has already improved dramatically the past 5 weeks.   


Miss Bear is working on her ABC handwriting sheets as well as number words sheets.  I used a highlighter to make her a copywork sheet for this weeks memory verse, and I've already seen improvement in her handwriting as well.

Math:

This is week 2 of working numbers and counting.  This was needed more for Miss Bear, but Squirrely Girl had a good review with larger numbers.  She also used some leaves, rocks, and seeds we found on our nature walk to work on addition, which was great practice. 

Science:

 After reading the recommended reading for trees, we did several art projects, a failed science experiment, and read in our Fun with Nature about several species of trees.



We've also continued to examine our beans that are sprouting. (We didn't soak them until Monday!  We had a lot going on last week!)  I'm not adding that stuff until we finish it, but Bubba has loved looking at the beans.  Kids were all amazed to see the tiny plant starting to grow! 

 

Art:
One of our art activities was these tree ring paintings.  I put several shades of paint onto a plate, and the girls used their foam sponge brushes to get some paint.  They then pressed the sponge onto their paper and twirled it around, giving the great tree ring effect.  We all had a lot of fun with these!

We also made these My Years in Tree Rings pages. 

 We had talked about how trees grow a ring each year.  We then made these pictures with a ring for each year they'd been alive, and things they thought were important for each year.


Lastly, the kids made these tree crafts.  All three of them love when I tape contact paper onto the sliding glass doors.  This is something that even Bubba can mostly do himself.

Handicrafts:

Squirrely Girl started working on her first needlepoint project this week.  You can find these projects at most craft stores, and I'm sure Amazon has them as well.

 

How was your week?  How do you like to incorporate art into the weeks lessons?

{Easy} Memory Verse Book on the Cheap!

One of the things I absolutely LOVE about My Father's World is that it is Gospel-centric.  We're doing MFW Learning God's Story right now with Squirrely Girl (6) and Miss Bear (4).  And I have nothing but good things to say about it!

Something that starts in Week 3 is the memory verses from the book of Proverbs.  I had already written all of the verses out on index cards for the year, and I had initially planned on putting them into a storage box to follow the Charlotte Mason Scripture memory system. 

Instead, I decided to implement something I'd seen others using for other cards and such:  a photo album.


You can find photo albums pretty cheap at dollar stores.  We happened to have a couple empty ones on hand, so this ended up being a free project for us!



I let the kids pick one out, and we just added a monkey name tag to the front. 








I'd already printed our memory verse for the school year out and laminated it, so I added some Velcro onto the back and stuck it on the inside cover.  That way, we can change it out next year.  There are enough pages in this photo album to last us for at least a few  years, if we're only including one verse per school week.  If we need to add more, I still think we can manage 2 years worth of verses in this one book.

For now, I'm writing the dates for the week the verse goes with on the memo lines.  I'll also add ways that it's applicable and such later on. 

This takes up a little less space than a memory box would, and I think its also a little easier for us to do.  We can read our verses that we are reviewing from the album, and I can pull the weeks verse card out to hang on the fridge.  I'm loving this so far. 

How do you store your memory verses?  Does a scripture box work for you?  I'd love to hear how you make your cards more accessible in the comments!

Week 4 of MFW Learning God's Story

We had a blast this past week with MFW!

One day, we decided to have a Jammie Day.  The kids really enjoy the days that we all stay in our pajamas all day.  We hadn't had one in awhile, so Squirrely Girl asked if we could have one. 

Our memory verse of the week came was Proverbs 9:10"If you really want to become wise, you must begin by having respect for the Lord.
To know the Holy One is to gain understanding."

 

Again, I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which my two girls were able to memorize the verse.  Squirrely Girl and Miss Bear both brought up the verse throughout the week, and connected how when we read our bible stories and devotions that they are getting to know God better.  It really touched my heart to see them strive this week to be more intentional. 

 

 

 We also spent some time a couple of the days at the neighborhood park.  Kenzie also spent some time drawing in the sand.

This week, we also made some homemade yogurt in the crockpot... and it was a huge success!  We've been eating it for breakfast some mornings with some fresh fruit and yogurt, and for snack we've been making smoothies with it some days!  The girls were amazed how the milk turned into yogurt so easily.  We'll definitely be making yogurt regularly around here.



The Hubby also plays guitar, and all the kids like to use their guitars to try and play as well.  None of them have really learned how to play as of yet, but we're thinking that this is something we will be adding to our week this year!

 Bubba was too funny.  He refused to smile.  I guess he's just working on his rockstar look!
















We took a trip to the zoo as well.  We walked around and looked at the animals and plants, and talked about how butterflies, bees, and other animals help with pollination.  My mother also helped the take apart a flower and look at the pistil and stamens.  She was impressed with their knowledge, and Squirrely Girls use of the terms photosynthesis and pollination. 











All in all, this was a great week!  How was your homeschool week?  What did you do outdoors?

Small Space Homeschooling Part 3: Homeschool Room

Ok, I have a confession to make:  We don't actually have a homeschool room!  Eek!








We're living in an apartment for awhile, and thus have a lot less space.  Since we no longer have an extra room to use as our homeschool room, I've had to get a little crafty with how to store all of our homeschooling goodies.  I've addressed how we do workboxes as well as the way we are storing our curriculum and related materials.

We actually just homeschool at our dining room table.  In a corner of our dining area, I have our calendar, Hebrew calendar from MFW, a spelling list, and a pocket chart.  On the side of one of the bookshelves the girls also have a clock they made from one of their workbooks.

    
On the other wall leading into the kitchen I used a little bit of the self-adhesive dry erase laminate that I bought from Hobby Lobby.  I had this on hand, so I figured I'd use this for now, and replace when needed with an actual board.

The border is just some cheap ribbon that we had in the kids craft bins.  I believe I found it for $1 at Dollar Tree.

 
 

 

I also made this little magnetic sign for our front door, that their friends in the neighborhood know when they're not allowed to play.

Small Space Homeschooling Part 2: Books and Manipulatives.

Living in a small space means getting a little creative with how we organize our homeschool materials.  We're currently living in an apartment and no longer have an extra room to use as our school room.  That means revamping my organization for all our homeschool goodies.

   In Small Space Homeschooling Part 1 I shared our portable workbox with you.  That's where I place all of our materials needed for the coming school week.  It has helped make our days so much more enjoyable. 

Books:

Most of our books are on these bookshelves in my son's room.  For the most part, Bubba keeps from messing it up too bad. 

Up on the top we have a basket of arts and crafts kits.  This includes their art kits, weaving sets, and embroidery stuff.  I believe we also may have a couple of fashion design workbooks in there that belong to Squirrely Girl.

The top shelf houses books that specifically deal with our school year.  It includes current workbooks, textbooks, and many of the science and living history books we'll be using for the year along with My Father's World Learning God's Story  Our Unifix cubes and pattern blocks are up there as well, as well as Squirrely Girls  leveled readers.

The next two shelves house a good part of our other books that we use during reading time.

The second to bottom shelf is where we keep a bunch of our manipulatives.  They're numbered because we used to used these as our busy boxes and I just haven't relabled them yet.

• Box 1:  Holds some of our Language Arts work.  I have laminated various work heets that I sometimes add to the girls Daily folders.  We have some rhyme strips, punctuation strips, and antonym/synonym strips in here.
• Box 2:  Holds our geometry stuff.  We have some flashcards, drawing sheets, matching cards, and another set of pattern blocks.
• Box 3: Holds some of our Math stuff.  We have beans, marbles, number cards, ordering cards, craft sticks, shape buttons, a calculator, a set of 10 ten frames, number magnets, addition and subtraction flashcards, number bond bracelets, and more. 
• Box 4:  Holds pipe cleaners, string, and beads along with some pom poms.
• Box 5: Holds some of our alphabet work.  We have magnetic letters, alphabet puzzle cards, alphabet puzzle, upper and lower case matching cards, and some flashcards. 

The bottom shelf has some personal dry erase boards and a basket of coloring books, which I rotate out from our collection that we've accumulated.

 

Other Stuff:

This is our game closet.  I cleared off two of the shelves to accommodate all of our homeschooling stuff.



Here's the binder where I keep worksheets divided by week.
This makes pulling out our stuff for the week so much faster.

This is where we keep the kids nature journals, their reference binders, and a couple of my binders with reference sheets and weekly work in them.


The Clear 3 drawer Sterilite organizer holds their crayons, scissors, pencils, and markers as well as some drawing paper.  One drawer also has some laminated handwriting worksheets, as well as some activities that I'd like to eventually get to.

Do you have any tips on how to organize your school stuff in a small space?  Let me know how in the comments!

Small Space Homeschooling Pt. 1: Workbox system

I keep seeing all of these pictures of other families beautiful homeschool rooms, and I begin to daydream about all that I would do if I had an extra room to put all of our homeshooling stuff in.
 
We recently moved to a new state and are temporarily living in an apartment for at least the next year.  Since we have a lot less space in our new place, I've had to adjust how and where I'm storing stuff. 
 
First of all, I have our portable workbox system.  I'd love to have a cart to use for workboxes, but it just isn't possible with the limited space we're working with right now.  Instead, I use this Sterilite container with latchable lid.

Our Workbox contains:

• My Teachers Manual
• Student workbook
• A Spiral
• Daily folders for Squirrely Girl and Miss Bear (10 total)
• Our current lapbook
• 2 Clipboards
• Games for the week
• Manipulatives for the week

Daily Folders and Clip Boards:

We use daily folder in lieu of the workboxes due to space issues.  Each of my girls has a daily folder plus a clipboard that they use every day. 

 Here is an example of what I put in Bear's daily folder.  In one side she has her math sheet's for the day.  On the other side she has her handwriting work and a stack of flashcards what she'll be using to play a game that day. 

Usually math goes in the left pocket, and science stuff goes in the right hand one


 

Here's an example of Squirrely Girls Monday folder.  Since we do our science reading on Mondays, we usually don't have any work in the folder for that.  On the right is her four square card as well as her math worksheet.

The Expanded Form cards are in the right hand pocket.



 




I place any handwriting and Language Arts worksheets onto their clipboard the night before, and set it along with their daily folder onto the table so that it's ready for the next day.





 I usually reload the workbox and daily folders Friday evenings so that its ready for Monday morning.  This helps streamline our day.  Pretty much everything we need for our week is in one convenient place, so I'm not running around gathering things like a chicken with it's head cut off.

How do you organize your homeschool day?  I'd love to hear about how you make your day easier down in the comments!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 3 of MFW Learning God's Story

http://www.kidsofintegrity.com/

This week has been a rough one!  We've had a lot going on with our extended family recently, and stressed mama = stressed babies!  Squirrely Girl has also taken to lying, which is something we obviously are wanting to nip in the bud.  In our search for something to address this issue, I ended up stumbling upon Kids of Integrity.  It's from Focus on the Family, and is a site with lots of parental resources with some important topics.  We're planning on using the site as needed for character development, along with a few other resources. 

Learning God's Story

School work for the past week has gone well.  Much of the initial stuff is still review for Squirrely Girl, but she hasn't complained of boredom, so it's all good!  Can't hurt to cement the phonics rules in her mind in any case.

Bible:

Our verse for the week is Proverbs 9:10:

"If you really want to become wise, you must begin by having respect for the Lord."

We've all been working to memorize the verse and apply it to our lives.  We were also able to tie in our talk about obeying our parents and being honest with how we show honor and respect for God.  It was great! 

Both of the girls have been doing really well with memorization!  In all honesty, I wasn't quite sure how well they would do with this, but I can see that sometimes we really are just dumbing things down for them when it doesn't need to be!  They're little sponges, just waiting to soak everything up!




Language Arts:

Squirrely Girl and Bear have been working with short vowel sounds.  I went ahead and laminated the foursquare cards and added some Velcro for the sentences.  This way, they're more durable and can be used again and again!

Bear has been continuing to practice her ABC handwriting as well.  I'm still using highlighters to write out much of what she's writing, but her work is already much neater than it was a few weeks ago.  She also has gotten a lot better at matching upper and lower case letters together.

Squirrely Girl has also continued with her leveled readers, and has taken it upon herself to read books to Bear and Bubba in the afternoons as well!










Math:

This weeks topic was sorting and classifying.  We went ahead and went with the lesson plans, and Squirrely Girl ended up completing all of the worksheets from CBM for the week.  She really likes the expanded form cards.  A lot.  She has asked to use them several times after we've already finished school for the day, and has sat there using them. 

Bear did the hands on work for this week as well as some worksheets with comparing quantity.  We also got quite a few free printables from 3 Dinosaurs a while back that I had laminated, so she's been using those to practice counting and addition.

Bubba has been playing with lots of our manipulatives this week as well.  One of his favorite activities right now is to play with the magnetic letters on our front door!  

Science:

This weeks science topic was Flowers.  In addition to the reading and activity in the TM, we read quite a bit about flowers.   The kids really enjoyed reaching The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds.   

We also used this simple little game to remember the parts of a flower and talked about what each part does.  It's just a worksheet that we colored and laminated.  I wrote numbers on the back and the kids rolled dice to get a piece of the plant.

Art:

For Science/Art, we ended up making these great Season's collages instead of making a seasons booklet.  I went ahead and laminated them because I'm planning on cutting them apart and using them, along with plants and animal cards, for sorting.  I figure it will be a great way to include harvest times as well as hibernation.

How was your week? What fun things did your kiddos do this week?  I'd love to hear about your activities in the comments!