Tiny gifts that keep on giving.

After a few years of homeschooling, it becomes more than a weekday activity and turns into a way of life.  It’s like Christmas in June every year when the curriculum comes in the mail; opening packages from art supply places, new packages of sketch books, and little stacks of books all waiting to be read.  Beyond the art supplies are art kits, where you can build anything from a catapult to a tiny brick building to creating beautiful friendship bracelets for your friends!   I like to get the most bang for my buck, so I often pack the best of these away for birthday and Christmas gifts!  New drawing pencils end up in the stocking, new sketchbooks end up under the tree tied with ribbons and perhaps a chapter book tucked in on top.  Education is a 24/7 thing around here!

Here is a list of educational gifts that I think would make wonderful Stocking Stuffers for some always learning kiddos. 

FOR THE YOUNGEST - ages 2 - 6

My children like to use playdough or clay when I am reading chapter books.  I have found that it helps with their dictations later if they are listening intently while working creatively.  Homemade playdough is cheap, easy and modifiable in SO many ways.  Add a little essential oils to your playdough and you have a whole other sensory experience for your little one!  Lavender for relaxation, orange for uplifting and alert… so many possibilities! 

Here’s a few that we love:

Gingerbread Playdough recipe - Smells awesome!  It may inspire more than a playdough baking session.  Just a warning!

Candycane playdough recipe - I haven’t done this one, but I have made peppermint!  That is uplifting and always makes me feel clean afterwards.  Even when the playdough is still under my nails.

Pumpkin Spice Playdough recipe - Smells like pumpkin pie.  Are you hungry yet?  Seriously, this stuff is awesome! 

If you are not up for making your own, my personal favorite for my kids is Mama K’s Play Clay!  The aromatic smells that Mama K uses in her clay are amazing! 

Enjoy some fun pattern recognition games with the Pluck Carrot Play Set!   Who wouldn’t want to see this tucked in a stocking with a sweet little bunny puppet or two.

 

And speaking of puppets!   What a great learning tool!  They create a space that is a bit removed from being human, so even the quietest of children will start talking when handed a puppet.  Besides, there isn’t anything cuter than a stuffed face sticking out of the top of the stocking on Christmas morning.  Why not make it one they can learn with?

FOR THE MIDDLES - Ages 5 - 11

If I had to pick ONE toy for children this age it would be playsilks!   They can be a covering for a fort under the table or a silken robe for a Greek warrior.  They have so many incredible uses that each  time your child picks them up they can create a whole new world!   The best variety for the expense has got to be Esty.com.  There are tons of different vendors that make some of the most beautiful playsilk creations!  (Another great thing about playsilks is they fold up into TINY parcels that can be stuffed into a small toybox, or *gasp* a stocking.   

Taking the silks one step further is dress up.  They can create whole worlds for themselves with a simple dress up frock and a wooden sword. Nova Naturals has a great selection of earth friendly gifts that can complete any dress up wardrobe for a little knight or fairy that you may know. 

Gift your kids even more imagination play with wooden and felt food!  Have your little girl make you up a tea party, or your son cook you up a pizza!   This felt pizza from Mellissa and Doug looks like tons of fun!

 

FOR THE OLDEST - Ages 11 - 18

As the kids get older, educational gifts get harder to find that are not electronic.  And if it needs a cord or batteries, it’s probably expensive!  Here are a few gifts that you can tuck into those stockings with out breaking the bank for the oldest kids in your clan. 

Start off the new year right with some creative Writing Prompt Cubes!   These fun story starters would be great to have a sit-in with my teen and tween and just listen to what comes after “One day I want to visit…”

Learning a handcraft is a great TV free pastime for older children!   This felt ball set from Nova Naturals would be a great gift to keep any tweens hands busy and felt balls are wonderful for the youngers.  Perhaps they could make them for their younger siblings?  (There are many more in the ‘crafts’ section at Nova Naturals that would make a great gift for any kiddo with busy hands.)

Magazine subscriptions - online or in paper - are a great stocking stuffer for older kids and teens. 

New Moon is a writing magazine for teen girls written by and even edited by other girls around the globe!

Zoobooks - All my kids love reading the fun facts that are in the Zoobooks magazines each month.  Grandparents in our family have paired Zoobooks with a NorthWest Trek membership for the past few years and I have watched the kids pour over each magazine multiple times. 

I hope this post got your wheels turning about what you can give to those little learners in your family.  If you have any other great learning gift ideas, please pass them along in the comments! 

Blessings for a wonderful holiday!

God’s Eyes and Apple Eating

This morning’s handwork was making Eye of God and/or a woven spider web.  The kids enjoyed it so much they continued to make them for most of the afternoon, especially Cyan.  She has made 4 so far.  All more beautiful than the last!

This is Alex’s:

Isn’t it lovely!?! I just love how he used the blue in the midst of all these drab colors.

This afternoon was dedicated to using up the last of two laundry baskets of apples we had gotten from a dear friend.  I made batch after batch of applesauce.  And after I was done and tired of it, Cyan took over and made yet another batch.  We now have 18 quarts in the garage and more in the kitchen and still had enough left over for some for dinner tonight!

In Logan’s last workbox today was ‘make fresh apple pie with mommy’ and he just loved helping me prepare a pie for the family.  We made the whole thing from scratch and fresh apples.  No store bought dough or pie filling in this baby… Logan really honed his rolling pin skills!

With the left over dough he got to make his own little ‘pielette’. He just LOVED that!

As I put the kids to bed this evening I realized that even my ‘treat’ to myself tonight was apple:

Tis the season!

Happy FALL!!!

First day of school ~ Interviews

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Interview with Logan ~ First day of Kindergarten

“I HAVE A LOOSE TOOTH!!!!”

Favorites:

Color - Golden

Season - Winter with the snow, but wait!  Halloween!  Those are both my favorites!

Food - Pizza!  Corn chowder and mac & cheese, and tomato soup.

Animal - It’s a River Monster - an Alligator Gar - but I haven’t watched all their seasons yet so I don’t know.  Something could be cooler.

What do you want to learn about this year?

I want to learn two things - piano and ninja moves.  I already know one.  I know how to build stuff pretty well.  I didn’t say I want to learn it…  just that I know how.

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Interview with Cyan ~ First day of 6th Grade

Favorites:

Color - Peach (Like a sunset)

Season - Depends on the sun or snow.  Seriously, it depends on how much sun or snow there is.  Cuz if there’s lots of sun yu can go swimming and if there’s lots of snow you can go snowmobiling and that’s tons of fun!

Food - Potatoes

Animal - Horse

What would you like to learn this year?

More history with my friends.  I think the books “Love that Dog” and “Hate that Cat” were really good so I want to learn more about poetry and stuff like that.  I want to do singing lessons because I want to be a singer and I want to be a babysitter for dogs and children.  Like taking care of dogs.  Kinda want to learn how to make crepes because Alex doesn’t always want to do it… and pancakes!  I want to learn more about how to be in movies.  I think that would be cool. 

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Interview with Alex ~ First day of 10th Grade

Favorites:

Color - Ocean Blue

Season - Spring - I love all the colors.

Animal - felis domesticus - Cat

Food - Sliced apples and pickles

What do you want to learn this year?

I want to learn how to socialize and how to blow things up with chemicals.  I want to learn how to play the piano and how to actually draw stuff.  I want to learn basic gymnastics cuz I feel like I’d be good at it but I’d be terrified to do a flip cuz I feel like I’d break my neck!  I also want to learn to write fancy (calligraphy) and how to sing.  OH!  Walk a tightrope.  And photography.  That’s all.  Oops, I forgot, I want to learn to dance, too.

Let the school year begin!!!

Spelling and Charlotte Mason

Spelling has always been an uphill battle in this family.  First with me, who didn’t learn to spell until college, and then with Alex and Cyan, neither of whom spell well even today.  The English language just doesn’t make sense!  So that means that instead of using logic (which we are all very logical people) we have had to just rote memorize a lot of words and even I find that MUCH harder than knowing the rules and using logic. 

This last week I decided to use the Charlotte Mason form of spelling lesson.  I took words that Cyan misspelled from her own work and placed them up on a chalk board at the front of our classroom for the day.  No correction was made to her just then, so she didn’t even know why those particular words were up there.  Then, at the end of the week, I told her that we were going to learn to spell these words.  I chatted with her lightly about where she missed them and how to break down some of these words into parts so that they were easier to remember.  Then in spelling bee format, I had her recite the words while they were still at the front of the room.   “direction.  d-i-r-e-c-t-i-o-n, direction.”  This way she could look over to get confirmation of the word she was working on any time she needed it.  She never had to guess or try to figure out the words using logic (which some do not have…  Whoever decided that ‘tion’ is ‘shun’ was just plain crazy!)

This was on Friday.  She missed one word when we finally got down to ‘testing’ at the end of the day and I had her look at it and write it a few times.  Then on Tuesday I tested her again.  She got all of the 6 words correct. 

Charlotte Mason also says that using Prepared Dictation is a wonderful way to learn spelling.  For example, using a poem or a phrase from a book you have read and choosing a few of the words from that passage to study for spelling.  For us, it works better for my children to have made their own list of spelling words via things they have done like dictation, nature study observations, letters they have written, or lessons they have worked.  So I create a comprehensive list from their own studies.  Both ways work and will give the child that next level of involvement with the words they are learning… and having one more level of learning is what it is all about!

7 lies about homeschoolers - debunked!

A moment with the weightless…

I just love this picture.  Of course, it’s horrible quality, and it’s on the wrong setting for the light source… but the looks on Logan’s face is completely “Logan”…  and Cyan is SO proud!  It’s just an adorable capture of a sweet moment with my two middle kiddos. 

ASL for the oldest

Alex has been wanting to learn ASL for about two years now.  I have been getting him all kinds of materials and working with him (I have limited knowledge of the language) as much as I can, but he was still hungry for more.  This year I set him up with a co-op class that does ASL on Friday mornings. 

He has just poured his energy into this and to add to it I set up a ‘final exam’ for him to do a complete interpretation of The Napping House by Christmas.  Yesterday was his first day working on the project and I don’t think it will take him more than a few weeks to do the whole book.  He was AMAZING!  I have never seen him pick up anything so fast!  It is as if physical language comes naturally to him. 

And it was pretty amazing to watch his first attempts yesterday during school. 

I love seeing that type of success for my children.  I don’t mind that it doesn’t happen often because the feeling is so sweet when it does!  He was positively vibrating with excitement that he could do this so quickly and so well.  I’ll have to record the final draft with the camera so you all can see it as well.  It’s pretty great!  :)

It’s great being a homeschooler!

Last day of the Letter Dd

Box #1 was Nature Bingo that we played as a whole family.  It was crazy fun!  :)

Box #2 was the Waldorf Alphabet Book with the Lakeshore Learning Letter Tub

Box #3 was the Dd pages from LOTW.

Box #4 was a sorting game with shoe laces and colored beads.

Box #5 was the wipe-off tracing handwriting book.  Idea from here.

Box #6 was a coin sorting activity.  American Currency this time.

Box #7 was the Dd is for Dumptruck puzzle which Logan put together all on his own and was SO proud!

Box #8 was Harvest by Kris Waldherr and In the Garden flash cards with easy words on the back.

After this book we did a bit of “Harvest” of our own in the garden.  :)

Box #9 was a new hand-me-down gift from my friend Heather. 

It’s called Logico and it has different pegs that you move like multiple choice answers that are self correcting (because each color is only used once). It’s a great addition to my preschool fun boxes!

Box #10 was, once again the Leap Frog letter factory Fridge Letters.

While we were in the garden, we got a little brush up on pollination from our little friend here. 

We followed him to the oregano, then to this big sunflower, and then he left our yard.  We talked about where he must have gone to make honey for his bee family and then we brought in our haul and made our yummy corn for lunch!

It was a yummy homeschooling day!

I want to learn…

My friend has this yearly tradition of asking the kids what they want to learn at the beginning of each school year.  I skipped last year, but I have picked it up this year again and am happy to say my kids came up with some wonderful things to learn!

This was Logan’s first year being involved in this conversation.  His goals (in his own words) were quite cute.

Logan:

I am interested in learning about the letter Bb.  I want to swim! And learn how to baking a cake.  I want to learn about metal - the inside.  And about big metal dinosaur robots!

Cyan was enjoying telling me about how she ‘loves what we are doing right now and doesn’t want to do ANYTHING else’ but with some prompting I got this:

Cyan:

I want to learn about the woods.  Violin and singing and maybe the thingy you did, cello.  I am interested in fairies and swimming.  I want to still do more horse back riding but if we can’t then that’s ok.   And cooking!  I want to learn how to draw and learn about drawing.  Gardens, planting, canning peaches and about babysitting; and maybe how to mow the yard.

This was a phone conversation for Alex.

Alex:

Math, sign language (ASL) &some sort of cooking (I don’t really care what it is).  Wood working.  Like tree stump wood working making faces in trees and stuff and thick blocks like 3D pictures out of wood.  Driving - haha - stick figure art, like comic books, or flip book arts.  And mechanics - like fixing things that are hard to fix.

Lucas’ first 6 weeks

My new favorite book

This book is adorable!  I am tempted to tell you all about it but it is almost better if I tell you nothing and let you get it for yourself (I hope your library has it!).  Very simple and very subtle.  Pro homebirth.  Love it!

Bliss...

Oh yes, this is what bliss looks like...

PS for more pictures and info on everything else, see my other blog... and we'll be back to more regular homeschooling stuff next week... or sometime soon after that. ;)