Keeping It Simple

For our notebook, we used the FIAR Fold-and-Learn pretty much as is. It was just the perfect amount of work for James and it fit well with the lessons presented in the FIAR manual . Cover page: Things you might need in a Salamander Room: Life Cycle of a Salamander: Scavenger Hunt Check List, Vocabulary Words and Picture of a Tiger Salamander: Picture drawn by James (6yo) and Lilly Pads Seen on Scavenger Hunt: Pictures from Scavenger Hunt that big sister, Michelle, took James and his brothers on: View of Open Notebook (you can spy the blank animal report page in back- still working on that:)) We had a great time with this book. We had a few fun read- alongs (see previous post), watched Bill Nye's video show on Amphibians, and had fun frog hunting (rather, amphibian hunting) in our back yard. I found that we were much more efficient at completing our notebook because of the workboxes . I just placed the notebook, the printout for the day, s...

Pip's Magic by Ellen Stoll Walsh Newt (I Can Read) by Matt Novak A Salamander's Life (Nature Upclose) by John Himmelman Fun Facts About Salamanders! (I Like Reptiles and Amphibians!) by Carmen Bredeson Salamanders by Emery Bernhard The Salamander Room (Dragonfly Books) by Anne Mazer

Here is an explanation of the Dolch word list from the Dolch Sight Words website: "The Dolch Word List is a list of commonly used English words that was originally compiled by Edward William Dolch, PhD and published in his 1948 book, "Problems in Reading". Edward Dolch compiled this list based on children's books of the period, and selected 220 "service words" which children need to recognize in order to achieve reading fluency. Dolch excluded nouns from his main list, but did compile a separate 95-word list of nouns." I am sure the rest of the world knows this, but, for the longest time, I did not know what these "Dolch" words were and felt too silly to ask!! Having a 11yo struggling reader and an enthusiastic 6yo up and coming reader has motivated me to step up our reading program. One of the ways we have done this is by using the Dolch Kit from The School Bell (one of the LA resources I have listed). All of these Dolch resources are free...

Yes, I am a homeschool mom. ;) Kids aren't the only ones who like new supplies for school. After spying these in the Lakeshore catalog, I talked to dh about spending yet more money on organization stuff. It is possible that I have gotten carried away, but they have motivated me to get organized! I have not labeled the boxes yet because I want to sure that they are going to work as they are-- I am sure I will tweak the system a bit as I go. For now, each box has is dedicated to a subject (math, LA, Spanish, science, art, social studies...). They hold mostly general resources that we use as a family. For example, the math box holds the file with game cards, file folder games, idea books... and so on. While I was purchasing the above blue boxes, I spotted these bright colored crates. I actually came in under budget on what I thought the boxes would cost, so I splurged on these. They are perfect for file folder games and "Take it to Your Seat Centers". Really, I have a bit of...

This is the first in series of posts I want to write to feature how we have used the resources that I have listed down the right column of this blog-- they really are places that I have found useful and inspiring, and I did not choose them lightly! Sometimes it takes a bit of exploring to get started, so I thought I'd offer an introduction. :) Okay, so Let's Play Math is the coolest blog ever ( well , certainly the coolest math blog ever!). I have to admit to having a healthy fear of math, but reading this blog can actually make you believe that math is fun! One of the many ideas from this blog is "math concentration". You take a card deck- remove the face cards- and play concentration. Instead of matching numbers like you would in traditional concentration, you find two cards that equal 10. Pretty simple. Even though I set up to play with James (going in to 1st), his big brothers were happy to play too. There was more than enough competition to keep them interested ...