Frugality pays...

I am not your typical unschooling mom. My children are enrolled in a charter school and we are allotted a balance to be used for each student per year. Well I am cheap. I refill my own ink cartridges at Walgreens (loved the awesome $1 deal they had). Buy my own curriculum at thrift stores and friends of the library are great!!and use the pletheria of websites to get free homeschool materials. We have been fortunate to use much of our funds for other skilled items like ballet, guitar, etc. Well, as frugal as I was I just started the program and didnt take advantage of the funds and was told you spend it now or lose it. In two days I had to come up with spending nearly $800 on stuff.. Poor planning but I am so excited. Right now we made our own Vennagram charts with sharpies and construction paper but now we have the whole shabang so those floating papers can now be recycled. Though I would've preferred more science kits we were told we coulnd't. So here is the spread we have with a few added guitar lessons. Better planning next year. Rosetta Stone for sure. Anyone else used it for their kids?

Sooo bad with dates....

Ok so I am not the perfect person when it comes to dates. I still don't know any of my in-laws birthdays. Had the MIL and Greatgranma in law over for Lunch on Sunday after church only to find out that GGIL's birthday is on Tuesday. WHatt??? With our current nonexistent financial situation what can I do to pull of a grand party in hmmmm less than 20 hours. With a few trips to the dollar store. This is what we came up with. We will have a 5 course meal and prior to the meal is the centerpiece. Every guest will have a numbered envelope and the numbered envelope will correspond with the centerpiece...I have cleverly coined the Memory Tree. GGIL is celebrating her 92nd birthday this Tues. So there will be numbers hanging from the tree and with some sleuth work and google we have a detail or headline every ten years of her life. Each person will participate in sharing the info. K here is the breakdown for the cost black table cloth ---free this is a twin bedsheet my son bought for his quilt he will be making but we havent gotten to it yet. $5.75 centerpiece- twigs and vase from a friendly neighbor (oh and the same wonderful friend's 13 year old pianist gave Great grandma a musical concert), 2--$1 pink tulips-$1 green leaves. 2 candle holders $2.50- pink sparkly tulle 1.25 Rocks on hand

Edit added. Thank you for being such a selfless loving, hard working mother, grandmother, and great grandmother.

Time intro...

Trying to incorporate a hands on activities to further enhance learning. We have worked with physical clocks but I wanted to turn this into a craft they could be proud of also. During our lesson on time we created clocks. What you need

dark plate (I used black, happened to have some from a party)

round multicolored stickers

brad pin

construction paper to draw big hand and little hands (In addition to using arrow points, I made the big hand bigger and the little hand smaller to help the children in distinguishing which one.)

hole punch

Using a separate circle cutout I told the kids to pretend this was a pizza and if we wanted to cut it up so that 4 people could have it how would we do that. B was given the cutout and began to show the lines using her fingers to make it in fourths (intro to fractions) I was then told to fold the creases. I unfolded the paper and told them lets now pretend this is a clock and had them tell me what numbers would be at the corresponding creases. i.e 12,3,6, etc (Add stickers to those areas to reinforce visually) We then talked about total minutes from 12 to 3 and introduced them to counting up by 15s. Then they were ready to begin.

I think the craft is pretty forward. To add to the learning they were given time worksheets and had to recreate it on there clock and then listened to dictated times and had to show me. What kid doesnt like a craft and even better that it helps them learn.

Dali Inspiration

As part of our art lesson, the kids were introduced to Salvador Dali. I knew the colors and the angles would grab I's attention. He was mesmorized with the artwork in my Dali book B on the other hand was overly giggly at the silhoutted bodies. Here is Is work in completion.

Scrabble anyone??

My son LOVES scrabble..hmmm I think he gets it from me. Brain food...So came the thought of interactive scrabble. I have 2 dollar tree baking pans and magnetic letters. I and B took turns spelling out words in true scrabble fashion it went smooth till young one intervened and started throwing but how much fun they had before then. Working together, leaning on each other for help forming words, etc.

Were almost there...

Am I the only homeschool mom trying to find my balance in teaching 3 different grades at once. We are at the end of the year and things are finally starting to calm down. I HAVE MADE IT!!! Working with my ODD, ADHD, and Mood disorder (mentally ill) son has now come to a calm and I can work smoothly and finally get things done. This job of mine is sooo awesome and I would not change it for any fortune 500 job (though I must admit I haven't felt that way all the time). My endless nights and time spent on the computer trying to figure out the best curriculum for my right brain learner, how to engage him at his level, etc.I have spent the last two days going over the newly added program of more starfall @ starfall.com and I am amazed at what we got. It is incredible the curriculum, the downloadables, everything, and I have 3 kids working simultaneously on it. This allowed me a great time to actually do unload/load dishes, laundry, and clean up. I LOVVEEE IT! Everybody doing their own no screaming no crying. Then the time of 9....off to begin the next activity.

Hard to start in the middle of a circle without retracing the outside

My 1st grader came into the 1st grade not knowing any geography, 5 senses, and so many more things that should have been brought up. So as review we have been introducing him to these things with my Kindergartener. Kids are resilient with maps and it is better to introduce now than later. My oldest who is now 11 was able to recite 11 states based on size, location, and name when she was only 17 months old. Since my son has sensory issues he refuses coloring, drawing, and writing. That leaves us with a pretty empty slate for learning but we took it out of the traditional mold of learning and with some leftover sugar cookie dough. The kids had a fun task before them: Continent cookies. Shape, cut, and cook to look like a continent after naming all 7 of them first of course. This was the end result...