Posted in Preschool, personal on Sep 17th, 2008 3 Comments »
So I have this little article on my web site that I wrote up years ago about what a 4 year old should know. I wrote it when I was feeling a bit grumpy about how competitive we parents we all getting with each other and how pushy schools and parents were getting towards little […]
Posted in Preschool, cool sites on Sep 10th, 2008 No Comments »
The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has great little printable theme booklets in PDF format on a variety of themes from teeth to mommies to chickens. I browsed the ones on zoos and Halloween. They were full of finger plays, action songs, activities and a few crafts. I think even my older kiddos […]
Posted in Preschool, Kindergarten, crafts, lesson plans, nature, science on Aug 28th, 2008 1 Comment »
This week’s theme at Unplug Your Kids is Insect. We’re getting ready to start a craft I made up and I needed some basic information for the kids to go along with it. I found these great sites and thought others might like them.
This 4 page PDF file from the Denver Museum of Nature and […]
Posted in Preschool, Lapbooks, Jack, reading on Jul 9th, 2008 No Comments »
Jack chose the letter A to do a lapbook on this week. I have to say it was much easier than usual — no web searches for images or handouts, no intricate cutting and arranging.
We made some letter A’s together, found some stickers of things that started with A, found and drew some other images […]
Posted in Preschool, Jack, pictures, reading on Jun 8th, 2008 No Comments »
Anna and I made up a set of cards for Jack to play reading games with the other day.
We drew simple pictures on half the cards and I wrote the words for the images on the other half. Then we gave them to Jack to spread out.
He spread them in a big heart shape on […]
Posted in Preschool, pictures, crafts, Fun on May 28th, 2008 No Comments »
Here’s an easy way to make puppets for the kids and use up some of the millions of cheap stuffed animals that may have accumulated at your house.
Take a small, unwanted stuffed animal and cut a slit across the back. Pull out most of the stuffing (you may want to leave the head and a […]
Posted in Preschool, Jack, pictures, reading on May 24th, 2008 No Comments »
Jack and I played this reading game this morning. It was quick and easy and he enjoyed it.
All I did was rip some scrap paper in half and write labels on each for common objects: ball, spoon, book, paper, block, frog, hippo, feather, glue, pen and so on.
We laid them out in […]
Posted in Preschool, Jack, pictures on May 15th, 2008 No Comments »
All our kids have gone through our local Head Start program. We are rural and it is home-based, so the “teacher” (Jack considers Jan his friend!) comes once a week to our house with boxes of goodies, books, games and art supplies and plays for an hour and a half, basically.
We also sit […]
Posted in lesson plans, Preschool, nature, social studies, math, science, writing on May 5th, 2008 No Comments »
A mom on one of my homeschool lists asked for help designing a curriculum for her four year old and it got me thinking about what “curriculum” we do here. I thought I’d post it in case it’s helpful for anybody else out there.
The most important thing to remember is that you should not try […]
I'm a frazzled AP mom to 4 fabulous kids in rural Minnesota. Homeschooling here tends to be child-led and focused on fun. We do lots of crafts, reading and exploring. I'm madly in love with my brilliant, goofy lug of a husband and I don't get nearly enough sleep.