eBooks and Online Games for Kids

I have debated the benefits of introducing the computer to Aubrey for awhile now.  There is just something about sitting her in front of the computer to listen to books or play games that doesn't sit right with me.  I just want my daughter to go outside and play and get dirty and use her imagination!  But, she is almost 5, and it is now time to introduce some computer sites to her.  For the past few weeks, I have been researching appropriate and educational sites for her to be able to visit, and I am pretty excited to show them to her over the next few weeks!

The first site is REALLY exciting: http://storylineonline.net/  which is a program of the Screen Actors Guild.  This website is sooo easy to navigate, making it perfect for new Internet users.   It has a lot of appropriate children's books that are read by celebrities, like Betty White reading "Harry the Dirty Dog."  I was impressed with the way they brought the book to life.  None of the illustrations were changed, and some of the pictures were made to move with the tone of the story.  Also on the bottom of each book is a link to activities related to the book!  This may be my new favorite website!!!  

The next one is http://scootpad.com/.  It is full of educational games for kindergarten and elementary school children.  There is a parent section where I can customize what lessons I want her to learn or to reinforce what we have been working on.  It also has rewards for the kids.  I have it set up that once Aubrey earns 100 coins from doing activities, she will earn a mini Lala Loopsy doll set.  She is the kind of kid that works best when she has something to work towards.  

I think the biggest part of Aubrey using the computer, is the risks that go with her being online.  It is such a complex system, that it would be easy for her to get carried away quickly.  Therefore, I am establishing rules for computer use right away!

1.  Aubrey will need to earn time on the computer.  This can be done by helping with any "Mommy" task.  These are tasks that are not part of her normal chores.  Examples:  sweeping the floor, dusting, folding towels, and washing dishes.  These may seem like extreme tasks for a four/almost five year old, but Aubrey already enjoys helping me do these things.  She is so helpful, and usually asks for ways she can help me.

2.  All computer time will be monitored by an adult.  No exception.  Right now this is not that hard because the computer is in the kitchen at the desk, but I want to make sure that this is established right away.

3.  Only approved websites are to be used.  I have put a tab with Aubrey's name at the top of my browser with these websites.  

4.  Computer time is a privilege and will be taken away when necessary.  Aubrey is going through an attitude stage right now, and I think this will be a really good incentive for a change in behavior.

If anyone has any other suggestions on introducing the computer/internet to a child, I would appreciate your input!!

Homeschool Tuesday #2

Well, better late than never on Homeschool Tuesday.  

We had a cute guest this past week:  my 3 year old niece Cece!  She was a gem to have, but that also meant that we didn't get as much homeschooling done as we usually do.  Instead we did a couple art projects, play-doh, singing, reading books, dancing, playing outside with the dog, and gathering acorns and walnuts.  Of course, I realized too late, that I didn't take any pictures!  One of the best things that I had the girls do was to do a GLO-LITE bath.  I've seen them all over Pinterest, and couldn't wait to see what they thought of it!  They thought it was really cool and I'm sure we'll be doing that again soon!!!

Well, here are a few things that Aubrey will be doing tomorrow.  Lena has aquatic therapy early tomorrow and then we have a couple errands to run, but we will be home in time to do quite a few things!!!

More sight word practice:  Building our 5 sight words with letter dominoes.

Pom pom Addition:  Roll the die and put that number of blue poms in the first section.  Roll the die again and put that number of yellow poms in the second section.  Count them all and find the corresponding number and put it into the bottom half.

Measuring and Recording Pumpkin Circumference.

Weekly Book:  Color each monkey one color and write the color word on the line.  Then I will staple it together to form a book that she can read herself.

Science:  I didn't get a good picture of this one....  We continue to learn about Living Vs. Non-Living Things.  Tomorrow we are doing the grid on the left page.  We are going to go outside and observe some things outside.  If we can, we will bring some things inside.  The plan is to get:  a bug, bark, a rock, a twig, and a clump of grass.  Aubrey then will draw each thing in the first column.  Then she will be asked:  "Does it need air?" "Does it need food?" "Does it make more of itself?" "Does it grow and change?" "Is it living?".  She then will put a Y or N in each square.

Letters on the Bus Song:  This song is great for reinforcing letter sounds.  Since you can't really make out the song on the picture, I'll post it.  It is to the tune of Wheels on the Bus.

The letter on the bus goes _  _ _; _ _ _; _ _ _.

The letter on the bus goes _ _ _ and _____ is it's name-o.

More sight Words.  Tomorrow we will do one page in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Aubrey will write the sight word on the line to complete the sentence.  We will then read the sentence together with her always reading the sight words that she knows by herself.  When we have completed all the sentences, she can draw a picture related to the "story".

Today I am linking up with:

The Sasse Life
http://www.thesasselife.com/
The Hip Homeschool Hop
http://www.hiphomeschoolmoms.com/2012/10/hip-homeschool-hop-10912/
Stuff and Nonsense Linky Party
http://www.stuff-and-nonsense.net/p/stuff-i-love.html

Homeschool Tuesday

Tuesdays and Thursdays are our best days for homeschooling since they are the only days that we always get to stay home.  Therefore, I try to pack in a lot of information and fun!  The added bonus to Aubrey learning more, is that she is also better behaved!  She is the kind of kid that always needs to be busy and engaged in something.  When she isn't......well I am not even going to start!

Today I really wanted to work on reinforcing the sight words we worked on the last few weeks.  I haven't added any new ones this week since Aubrey is a little stalled on IT vs IS.  Here are today's activities that I have planned.

Sight Word Work:  Building sight words with letter magnets.  I usually add our weekly sight words each week. Right now we are up to 5:  IT, IS, A, AM, I.  She has also worked on HAVE, MY, LIKE.

 Sight Word Work:  Flip an Egg.  Aubrey will have to flip one egg over at a time and name that word.  If she is correct, that egg stays flipped.  If she misses it, I will remind her of the word.  Then she has to flip all the eggs back over.  The game ends when all the eggs are flipped sunny-side up!  

Sight Word Work:  Matching sight words.  First Aubrey will color in the bubble sight words.  Then she will cut out the words on the bottom and match them to the correct word up top.

Math:  Domino Parking Lot.  Aubrey will add up the dots on the domino's and park them in the correct spot.  I also glued the "Domino Parking Log" into her Math Journal to record the math problems.  

 Domino Parking Lot is from Mathwire.com and is available at:  http://mathwire.com/strategies/matsdom.html

Science:  This week we will focus on Living vs. Non-Living.  We will start by listing attributes of both living and non-living things in Aubrey's Science Journal.  Then we will look at pictures of different things and ask ourselves questions to see if it is living or non-living.  Our questions include:  "Does it move?" "Does it grow and change?" "Does it breathe?" "Does it make more just like itself?" "Does it need food and water to live?"

 Pictures and graph can be found at http://www.kindergartenkindergarten.com/2012/03/a-science-mini-unit-living-and-non-living.html.  Kathryn has a great blog and has a ton of useful ideas for science journals for little ones.

Phonics:  Bead Slide.  This is an activity that I bring out almost every week.  It is one of those great ones that Aubrey can do on her own.  I set the clock for 10 minutes and she knows what to do.  It is a simple and very important activity that teaches kids to segment each phoneme of a word.  With each sound, the child slides a bead over to the other side of the rope.  Then the child is able to count how many sounds (phonemes) are in that word.  Frog= F-R-O-G=4 sounds.

Also on the list of things to do today:

*Playdoh:  Making houses for plastic frogs.

*Art:  Fingerprint Fall Trees

*Cooking:  Making oatmeal chewy bars!

We are going to be soooo busy!!!!

Today I am linking with:
http://www.crayonfreckles.com/

http://www.hiphomeschoolmoms.com/2012/10/hip-homeschool-hop-10212/

http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/

http://www.holistichomemaking.org/

Two Days of Acorns

The past two days, Aubrey has been doing learning activities with acorns.  We started by going outside and collecting a bucket full of acorns.  We talked about oak trees, squirrels, and, of course, acorns.  Every time we would find just an acorn cap, Aubrey would exclaim "Silly squirrels got to this acorn first!"  

Her first activity was sorting "Cap or No Cap" in her math journal.  After she sorted the actual acorns, she counted how many of each and wrote the number on the top of that journal page.  Then she glued the appropriate number of "Cap" or "No Cap" acorn pictures into the journal.

 She then picked out 5 capped acorns and 5 no-cap acorns.  In her science journal, she made her "hypothesis" about which ones would sink and which would float.  She thought that the ones with caps would float and the ones without caps would sink.  She then dropped them in the water one by one and recorded the results in her journal.  I showed her how to make a four square graph (labeled "Cap/Sink, Cap/Float, No Cap/Sink, No Cap/Float).  She drew a circle to represent each acorn.  Only one acorn sank, it didn't have a cap.  We discussed why that one sank and she thought it was because it was a bit heavier than the rest.

 In order to save the acorns, we took some precautions, just in case there were some kind of bugs hiding inside.  We peeled and cut the caps off of all the acorns and baked them for 15 minutes in 200 degree oven. After they cooled off, Aubrey was thrilled to paint them.  Using a brush didn't work very well.  I ended up putting them in baggies with some paint, and she shook and rubbed the paint on.  We then emptied them onto some wax paper on a cookie sheet to dry.

 Acorn Subtraction:  Aubrey rolled an 8 sided die and put that number of acorns into the top left square.  She then rolled the 6 sided die and moved that number of acorns to the squirrel square.  Then moved the remaining acorns down to see how many she had left.  We then talked through the subtraction equation.

"You had ______ acorns.  The squirrel took ______.  How many do you have left?"

"So  _____-______=______"

Aubrey also made a "Fall Book."  She colored all the pictures in a book I had made and printed on the computer.  We do some kind of short book each week.  Each one repeats the same words throughout the book and have sight words that we have been working on.  She enjoys coloring the pictures and being able to read the words by her self.  This book was a modified version of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" only instead of animals, I used fall themed items, such as, a leaf, squirrel, pumpkin, and scarecrow.

I have also planned the following to do:

*Acorn Addition-in a similar format as the acorn subtraction

*Building ramps and rolling the acorns down

*Using our homemade mini-catapult to launch acorns

Meal Time!

For some reason, Aubrey LOVES eating lunch from a ice cube tray.  I got this idea awhile ago when I was searching around the web and a LOT of people were doing this with their little ones.  I thought I'd give it a try, and it was a huge success!  Everyday, I am asked to please put her lunch in a kid's tray.  I have been trying really hard to come up with different things to put into these small sections, and it has been a challenge to not repeat myself too much.  Here are some of my ideas:






Hot dogs, tater tots, corn, strawberries, ketchup, and milk

Pancakes w/ syrup, canteloupe, cheese, peas and carrots, and milk



Hot dogs with ketchup, string cheese, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, and milk


Deli Turkey, Apples, String Cheese, Carrots and Ranch, Strawberries, and Milk

What's On Our Trays This Week?

After two weeks of not posting what we've been up to, I finally have found my camera so that we can share!

Spooning white beans

Sorting Pennies, Nickels, and Dimes

Stacking Cups

Making Sets

 Making bundles of 10 coffee stirrers using the number line if neccessary.

Putting clips on a braid of yarn.  This is a great fine motor skill!!!

Aubrey enjoying spooning beans.  And yes she dressed herself this morning!

In addition to the trays this week, we will be working on:

*learning about harvest season.  We will take a walk down the road to look at the soybeans that are ready to be harvested.  We will look at books from the library about fruits, vegetables, and farms.  We will also go out to our garden and observe the changes (and maybe pull out the dead plants)!
*Aubrey's address!  I printed it out in big letters so that she can practice tracing and writing it.
*sight words "we" and "and".  So far she loves learning sight words and is so excited to be able to "read".
*counting 1-30 and recognizing 5-10.
*Letter G!!!!

What's On Our Trays This Week?

After site searching, I am really liking the montessori type of approach for homeschooling Aubrey this year.  I love the independent learning aspect and a simpler approach to learning.  So I took some time and cleared out her toy shelves in our family room.  I picked up six trays from Target and got to work on setting things up for the week.  Since I taught for so many years, I already had ideas of what I wanted to do, but I wanted new and fresh ideas as well.  Between searching the web and looking through some old teaching books, I got the creative spark!  I am really happy with our trays this week.  Aubrey has also been enjoying them! 

The set-up!  The bins and other toys on the cube shelf will stay over the weeks and be swapped out as they get boring.  The trays will be changed weekly.

File Folder Letter Games:  A and B

A and B Letter Puzzles

B Letter Search

Color Farm Animal Matching

Shape Sort and Stack

Folding Washclothes

Peeling Crayons (for crayon melting next week)

Cutting  Between the Stickers (which turned out to be cut out the stickers in circles)

Now that the family room toys have been simplified, I will try tackling her room!  My goal is to store many toys out of site.  That way when she gets bored with toys, I can swap them out!  Good Luck to me!

Linked to: 
 Living Montessori