Acts of Kindness

Let's face facts, we are raising our children in a unkind world. A world where being rude is the new normal and folks have forgotten about random acts of kindness that can brighten up a person's day. I got my girls to write down 10 acts of kindness that they could do throughout the month to make someones day brighter. So far we have given a card to a stranger. Help a neighbor carry her groceries into her home, and held the door open for an elderly couple. 

Arts and Crafts Projects for homeschooling fun

I was just about to throw out some magazines when I saw this picture on tumblr. what a great way to recycle and make a great piece of artwork. Create an outline of whatever you want to make. Then cut your magazine pages into thin strips and glue inside the boundaries.

Don't throw away those left over drink containers. Use them as a neat and drip free way to paint and then throw them away 

Teaching your child to cut and turn at the same time is sometimes a tricky skill. Using stickers can help. Place stickers on circular sharpe and instruct your child to cut through each sticker when cutting. This will teach them to turn and cut. 

I found this worksheet online and we used it as a art project after we read the Hungry Caterpillar. 

Homeschool fun while building English Language skills

Beginning Spelling: use your bananagrams or Scrabble tiles to let your kids practice building words 

Learning To Read: These highlight sticks helps your child stay on track with the words they are reading. These are also excellent tools for those who struggle with dyslexia. Very easy to assemble using only a popsicle stick and a file folder tab. 

Story Blocks with Legos: Creating stories out of sight words and spelling words that your kids can already read or sound out is a great foundational writing skill. Using legos and some simple white stickers is a very cheap and effective way to achieve this. Consider putting opposites on the same blocks (i.e. like love and hate or big and small) and for others put complimentary words (i.e. his and her) so that sentences can be made easily by switching around a block. use longer blocks for introducing new and more challenging words.

Spelling with Legos: A great to practice spelling and a great help for those who are visual learners

Letter recognition: this can also be a great on going art project idea. Draw a letter on a piece of paper or cardboard and place a stack of old magazines , sale papers or newspapers and have your child look for that particular letter . cut it out and glue it on the letter until it is completely covered.

Still have those plastic eggs laying around your house from Easter? Use them to practice with word families. 

Making Math fun while homeschooling

Most kids shy away from math but there are ways to make math fun while homeschooling.

Styrofoam cups can be a great math manipulative and are very inexpensive. They can be used to understand place value, practice counting forward and backward, learn the names of large numbers, greater than vs lesser than and decomposed numbers to expanded form. 

Most parents who homeschool don't like for their kids to using their fingers to count. As for me , I don't mind if they do. and here is a simple trick that I found online to use your fingers when doing the 9x tables, I wished I knew about this when I was a child 

Human Anatomy Projects that made homeschooling fun

Edible DNA, made from twizzlers, colorful marshmallows and toothpicks. this is a fun project that can also be a snack time treat in teaching about DNA . The kiddos enjoyed building DNA MODELS and at the end they had a tasty treat 

Fat Test: This experiment got a lot of reaction from the kiddos. we got a stack of brown lunch sacks and a collection of snack foods. We drew a circle using a saucer on each bag. We started by placing a measured portion of food on the circle of the brown paper bag. The kiddos then made predictions about what they think will happen when the food is left on the bag overnight. The next morning we figured out how much fat was in each snack food based on the grease stain left on the paper bag. 

Watch Your Pluse: insert a toothpick into a marshmallow and watch your heartbeat 

Make a cell model: Great idea for tactile and visual leaners. Very easy to do with things already found in your home. 

       

My Toddler Is A Picky Eater

My toddler use to have a wonderful appetite, he would eat foods with no problem but lately he has become the world's biggest picky eater. I tried everything from letting him feed himself finger foods to even feeding him off my plate to ensure that he would eat. But it was like he was on a food strike. No matter what I need I couldn't get this child of mines to eat when we sat down to eat. I am also not a fan of throwing away food but that is what I had been doing lately with him. He would sit at the table but would just play around with the food. So I did some research online and found out that other parents had the same problem I was having and their was a common solution to this: A simple snack tray to where they can graze on it through  the day.  So that was the answer to my problem. I must say it works. I just left the tray on the coffee table filled with healthy snacks and he would play and do his thing and when he got hungry he would jus go to his snack tray and eat. I still sat him down to eat breakfast lunch and dinner with us throughout the day but I didn't have a panic attack if he just played with the food, cause I knew he had been grazing from his snack tray all day. 

Lunch Box Fun

Most folks think that because my children are homeschool, that I don't really fuss about lunch boxes and packing lunches. Well that is true to an extent. My children are homeschool, and on occasions, I do have to pack a lunch or a snack. I pack a light lunch or snack when we go to the park, children's museum, zoo, ballet classes, summer camp or vacation bible school. As a single parent I try my best to save money and bringing our lunches or a snack with us to the zoo , children's museum or the park is a wonderful option for us. We will sit in the little picnic area and eat our lunch and enjoy each other company.  These lunch boxes are perfect for my children and I can assure that they have a healthy well balance lunch or snack while we are out and about without being tempted to stop and get some fast food.

Now I like to get creative with our food and make things fun. I want my children to remember eating fruit cut into shapes and having their sandwiches not cut in triangles but in planes and trains. How do i accomplish this??? I use large size cookie cutters. I was buying sandwich cutters but I found those to be a waste of money and the large stainless steel cutters work better. So I suggest investing in plenty of those. Also remember it is easier to cut your bread, then your meat, etc ; separately, That is a lot easier and you get cleaner cuts versus trying to cut a already build sandwich. 

I also brought what is called fondant cutters , they are just simply really small cookie cutter type things that bakers used to cut shapes into fondant. I use them to cut shapes into fruit, I have even used them on cheese slices sometimes instead of the regular cookie cutters. 

I don't know about you but I enjoy seeing the looks on my kids faces when they see how creative I got with their lunches. I just don't do this when I have to pack a lunch or a snack , but I do it when we are at the house as well. Somedays I don't have the time do extra special lunches so , on days when I take the time to cut up everything in cute little shapes, the looks on their faces is priceless. 

How much food I put inside depend on the activity , and rather I was packing a lunch or a snack. During the summer my kids went to a summer camp that required me to pack them a lunch for the 4 hours they were there, so I packed a well balance healthy lunch for them with the occasional treat. When they went to vacation bible school which was 2 hours long; it was required that they have a snack sent with them, so I filled their lunch boxes with healthy snack options.