sutton010

Creating a Homeschool Circle Time Board (with links to free or inexpensive resources) We begin our homeschooling day with circle time. To be honest, initially I planned a circle time just because it seemed "everyone does it". I thought it would be a light way to come together and transition from informal being at home to the structured schooling part of our day. I have completely upgraded my opinion of circle time. We cover a LOT of territory during circle time and I log the time as half math and half language arts. We spend 20-30 minutes in our circle. Our circle time area is in a corner of our school room right next to a window. We sit on a small, soft, purple rug I grabbed at Wal-mart a while back. We got a 4'x3' magnetic dry erase board for a steal at a local office depot. I honestly think it was a price mistake, since it was over half off the price I'd seen for similar boards everywhere else, but they insisted it was priced correctly. My husband h...

I'm beginning, bit by bit, to get the schoolroom decorated. As I mentioned , we're working on handwriting and after researching I chose the Steck-Vaughn style for our print style. I loved the free printable 5x7 alphabet flashcards available on the Confessions of a Homeschooler website that can be printed and used as an alphabet border on a classroom wall. I wanted my own version for several reasons. First, I wanted the handwriting font to match. Second, I wanted the pictures on the cards to represent all of the phonemes that are represented by each letter in English because that is how the letters are being taught in our reading program. (So, for example, "a" needed an axe, acorn, and avocado.) Finally, I wanted the letter rules to have a blue skyline, and a highlighted bottom section because my littles need a little help with visually discriminating the different portion of the rules in order to properly form their letters. So, in my usual way, I made my own. ...

If you like this free card set, you might want to check out the premium speech therapy kits now available in the Testy Shop . Kits include expanded speech sound card sets, illustrated minimal pairs, homework sheets and more in a single download. Sorting by Category Card Set To download click on the image to open it full size. Then right click on the image, choose "save as" and save the page to your computer. I recommend you print on cardstock or laminate for durability. Description This speech therapy picture card set includes 30 picture cards. There are five cards in each of six categories: animals, transportation, toys, food, body parts, and clothing. Permissions I give permission to copy, print, or distribute this card set provided that: Each copy makes clear that I am the document's author. No copies are altered without my express consent. No one makes a profit from these copies. Electronic copies contain a live link back to my original and print copies not for...

If you like this free card set, you might want to check out the premium speech therapy kits now available in the Testy Shop . Kits include expanded card sets, illustrated minimal pairs, homework sheets and more in a single download. Verbs Card Set To download click on the image to open it full size. Then right click on the image, choose "save as" and save the page to your computer. I recommend you print on cardstock or laminate for durability. Description This speech therapy picture card set includes 30 verbs paired with picture stimuli. Permissions I give permission to copy, print, or distribute this card set provided that: Each copy makes clear that I am the document's author. No copies are altered without my express consent. No one makes a profit from these copies. Electronic copies contain a live link back to my original and print copies not for merely personal use contain the URL of my original. Looking for Feedback I would love to hear back from anyone who uses ...

Gymnastics Camp is done. It was a lovely week of three hours to myself every morning. On the other hand, our homeschooling time was reduced by 80% so it's all trade offs I suppose. It will be nice to get back to doing all of our wonderful homeschooling activities this week. I've enjoyed getting back to blogging somewhat and will try to post at least once or twice a week somehow. I have a couple of things I worked on last week queued up that I haven't had a chance to post yet. I'll try to get a set of verb picture cards I made put up tomorrow. I'm also almost done with a set of sorting/categories cards as well and I'll try to get that up later this week or next week. I hope you all have a great week too!

Ok. If you follow here regularly you might have noticed that I'm somewhat... detail oriented. (That sounds much better than "Type A Obsessive" right?) I knew that I wanted to include formal handwriting instruction and writing in our homeschooling curriculum. I searched online for something I could just print and use, but didn't find anything just right for our needs, so I designed something myself. First, I found Educational Fontware . For $49.95 you get the licence to use 33 handwriting font families and some specialty and decorative fonts. You can print most of the fonts with dots, outlines, arrows, rules and so on. It was a great investment. I compared all the print fonts and chose the one I liked best for teaching the children. I made a chart so I could clearly see the differences between the different fonts. I ended up choosing Steck Vaughn. That was simply the one I liked best for a variety of reasons. Then I dove in to actually creating the pages fo...