3 Simple Activities for Kids

by Meghan // November 12, 2019 // Comments off

Ensuring that your children are happy and living a full life can feel overwhelming, especially when we compare our lives to other’s. But raising healthy, happy kids doesn’t have to be complicated, or create a “busy life” when a slower pace is what we wish for.

If kids have someone to love and relate to, and something they can do with their talents, you can build a beautiful foundation for your child. We like to focus on church, playdates, and relationships with Jesus and each other in our home. But when time allows, we like to add in “extra” activities.

Here are a few ideas if you’re looking for some productive, quality things that can fill your child’s (especially an extroverted child) days.

Pic – CCO Licence

Sports

There are many great reasons to encourage your children to get into sports- it’s opportunity to get healthy and move their bodies in hard ways. It’s also true that engaging in sports helps children understand social interactions, good sportsmanship, and respect, all things that will be used for the rest of their life. It doesn’t matter what the sport is, as long as they feel interested in trying it. Helping them get excited about the sport and understanding the basics before hand is always helpful. That could include finding indoor soccer uniforms, practice swinging different sized bats, practicing throwing the ball with them, or letting them practice shooting hoops. There is always drama, gymnastics, volley ball, and track. Karate also focuses on respect and self control. We really enjoy baseball and golf in our home.

Arts & Crafts

Allowing children to be creative will help them develop many qualities and skills that are useful throughout life-crafting requires patience, carefulness, attention to detail, and following directions carefully (think: sewing, leather working, and embroidery). It really is a joy to be creative, and if you find that your children express even a vague interest in that direction, absolutely consider trying to make the most of it by encouraging them to join some kind of arts and crafts group. These are often offered through children’s museums, a local art museum, and even the library. Check our your local crafting stores (Michaels, Hobby Lobby, etc) for crafting classes with kids.

Pic – CCO Licence

Nature

Everyone benefits from being outside- it improves our mood, provides vitamins we can’t get sitting inside, and encourages play. Children (and adults …) need movement and play outdoors! Get the kids outside for a walk daily if you can; walking in the woods, down the street, to the park, or around the corner to the grocery store are all easy ways to get in a walk.

Allow time on the walk for “piddling.” Looking at animals, bugs, leaves, flowers, and snowflakes while walking bring joy and curiosity to our days, providing a foundation for learning.

So- get those kiddos moving, creating, and outside!

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

At Home Multisensory Program for Cognitive Development and Retained Reflexes {a review}

by Meghan // October 1, 2019 // Comments off

The Sound for Life Ltd program, Soundsory, is a sound based, multisensory approach to help those with various development delays, sensory sensitivites, and retained reflexes. Anyone over the age of 3 can benefit from the headphones, equipped with Bone Conduction “to develop sensory integration and establish core foundations.”

A description of the program is the first section of the video, you can find the steps for using it starting around the 5 minute mark.

The first part of the program is listening for about 20 minutes, and then about 5 minutes of music with exercises. The exercises vary each day. It is a simple, but effective program.

Check out more reviews from the Crew here:

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Auditory Health for Children

by Meghan // September 24, 2019 // Comments off

Image Credit: Pexels

As a parent, there are many things we have to look out for when it comes to the health of our children. We feed them nutritious food, make sure they’re moving their bodies, brushing their teeth and take care of them when they’re sick. It is easy to let hearing and ear health get overlooked. If a child has a problem hearing, it isn’t visible, and often, until talking age, a hearing problem can go unnoticed.

For the sake of child’s development, it is essential to look out for any hearing issues as early as we can, because from the moment we are born, we begin to develop language- which means any hearing loss needs to be detected and treated as early as possible. If you are worried about your own hearing health, then you can click here to find out more information about what you can do about that.

If you have a young baby, there are some essential hearing milestones to look out for. Most newborn babies will startle or jump if they hear a sudden loud noise. Then by three months a baby usually recognizes their parent’s voice, and by six months a baby can often turn their eyes or head toward a sound. By twelve months, a baby can usually mimic some sounds and produce a few words.

As your baby becomes a toddler, signs of a hearing loss can include limited, weak, or no speech, being frequently inattentive, having difficulty learning, or becoming easily frustrated when there’s a lot of background noise. These can also signal sensory processing problems, so make sure you’ve done a little homework before speaking to your pediatrician. They can recommend a good occupational therapist if needed! You can use ear defenders to reduce background noise when you are in a noisy environment; we use them often in our home during homeschool. It helps my 7 year old focus on his work while I am teaching the 5 year old to read.

A child’s ability to hear can also influence social skills, the ability to both read and write, and learning to assess their environment- so the right medical and occupational therapies are important when needed.

To develop spoken language, children must be able to hear speech clearly and also to hear themselves. Although hearing loss occurs in the ears, the real affect is on the brain, as it is the auditory center of the brain that make sense of sound. The ears receive sounds and send signals to the brain, where they are processed to give meaning.

If you are worried about your child’s hearing and have noticed that they are asking you to repeat yourself more often, or you think they’re not paying attention, then perhaps it could be something more. It is important to go and get it checked out early on, by a professional, who will be able to give your child the right treatment.

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Perfect Hobbies for Kids

by Meghan // September 11, 2019 // Comments off

When young children adopt new hobbies, they discover all sorts of new skills and learn some important life lessons. Through hobbies, children can find what lights them up and excites them at a young age, as opposed to doing it later on when they feel it’s ‘too late’ to do anything about it.

My husband and I are both huge hobby lovers- crafting, journaling, sewing, embroidery, painting, woodworking, gardening, leather work, and animal husbandry … the list goes on! We have enjoy distilling a love for handicrafts and hobbies in our children, and watching them grow in their skills.

Here are just a few hobbies children of all ages could test out!

Pexels – CC0 License

Reading And Writing

Reading to children is essential for language social, emotional, and cognitive development. Reading aloud to children will improve their listening and speaking skills, and they might even become good writers themselves, as it can help them to develop their own imagination. Once children have learned to read on their own, cultivating a love for reading is one of out biggest jobs! A child that loves to read loves to learn, and from there they will grow into unstoppable, teachable, curious adults. Loving to write often comes when a child enjoys reading, because they are driven to write their own stories.

Visiting Places of Interest

Traveling to visit a historical site, a history or pop up museum, a well loved author’s home, and other sites of interest can be a brilliant hobby for a child. As well as having fun and exploring, they will learn plenty from immersing themselves in culture. It gives them a base to build plenty of other hobbies on – writing, crafts, and reading, for example. Anything you can study in science, history, art and literature can be turned into a field trip, or family road trip. There is so much to experience no matter what your child loves to learn about-get out there and explore!

Building and Engineering

Children love to build- what they can build and create with blocks, legos, and Magnatiles is endless. From model bridges and giant towers, to cars and boats, they can have an incredible amount of fun building just about anything that takes their fancy. Expand their possibilities by providing a child-friendly tool kit which allows them to build whatever they like-a small hammer, screw drivers, age appropriate nails, nuts, bolts, washers, screws, zip-ties, etc can be kept in an old tool box near some scrap wood, so kids can easily create!

Painting

Painting is an excellent way for children to learn to express themselves. Open ended art-meaning, no defined assignment, no rules- allows for the most creativity. If they paint the sky green, let them have a green sky. This again goes back to helping them develop their imaginations and having confidence in their abilities. You never know – you may have the next Picasso in your family! =)

Gardening

Gardening not only helps children develop an interest in nature and stay active, but it also strengthens their immune systems. Why not give them their small plot of garden to play with and grow things? You could let them grow things inside the house if space is at a premium. A plot of land, or a potted plant, either way we are cultivating a sense of responsibility and nurturing in our kids!

Cooking & Handicrafts

Cooking is an essential skill for anybody to learn – after all, everybody needs to eat! Let them cook with you from a young age, and maybe start letting them use cooking kits when they are old enough. Children of all ages can help in the kitchen-prepping oatmeal, mixing, stirring, browning meat, poor liquids, measuring ingredients. Get them involved and enjoy your time together!

Handicrafts are anything children can do with their hands- sewing, knitting, crocheting, whittling, calligraphy, cross stitching, dyeing yard, quilting, bead work, wood working, pottery, mosaics the list goes on and on and on. We do handicrafts while listening to audiobooks, while I read aloud, or while watching an art video.

Let your children find a hobby that they enjoy and you’ll notice a vast difference in their confidence. Starting them off while they are young gives kids the chance to know what excites them and can help them find their passion in life later! Most any hobby requires a skill, and those skills can mean enjoyable work later in life.

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Reading Skills for Kids with Reading Eggs {a review}

by Meghan // September 6, 2019 // Comments off

We have used Math Seeds by Reading Eggs with my 4 year old. Now my second grade, newly turned 7 year old has been using their 200 Essential Reading Skills for Second Grade. You can check out all their workbooks HERE.

These workbook style reading lessons are short, and will help improve reading and critical thinking skills. Lesson focus is divided by day, with days 1 and 2 for comprehension, day 3 spelling, day 4 a spelling lesson that builds from day 3, and day 5 a grammar lesson. There is also review built in to the lessons. The pages are colorful, with helpful tips and instructions that are easy to understand.

There are 72 comprehension lessons that includes both non fiction and fiction passages to give children exposure to many types of text; poetry, novels, plays, informational, persuasive and imaginative texts. 72 spelling lessons covering the most common spelling rules such as digraphs oo, ar, or, suffixes, homophones, the sound of k/ck, and the list goes on. 36 grammar lessons cover adverbs, possessive nouns, simple sentences, punctuation, capitalization, conjunctions, etc.

Parents and teachers will find an entire lesson layout covering the week, days, and the lesson focus with its objective (ex: verb endings, main idea, making inferences, endings:y, ey, irregular plurals, etc). There are 36 weeks of lessons, which you can choose to double up, or spread out. There is also a Year Planner chart page for those of us that are visual.

What We Think About it & How We Use It

Lessons took us about 15-20 minutes tops, but usually less. My son enjoyed the grammar lessons most, but found all the skills fun and the lessons easy to follow. The lessons aren’t cut and dry; they vary with games, drawing, using pictures for clues, matching, sorting, and more! Sometimes I have to help Mister with a problem on the page, but mostly he is able to work independently after reading the lesson instructions.

In the comprehension lessons students use fun strategies like circling, drawing a shape above, boxing, underlining and coloring to mark what they know, have read, etc. This helps them find the information when answering the comprehension questions. Mister really enjoyed this part, because it was like “solving a puzzle.” =)

I like that these workbooks cover the basics, cover them well, and aren’t long boring lessons. Anytime we can cut table time down in our homeschool we do so! This workbooks definitely helps in that area, if you’re a workbook style student/parent combo. And, even if you’re not, but you want something for reviewing basic skills or practicing, these are great lessons that your child can get through without painful hours of frustration and complaining.

Learn to Read in 4 Weeks for FREE with Reading Eggs online!

Reading Eggs makes learning to read easy and fun for kids aged 2–13 using fun online reading games and activities. Try it today and join more than 10 million users worldwide!

Click here to Claim Now

Connect with Reading Eggs

Click the banner below to read more reviews from the Crew-

$240 Essential Reading Skills & 200 Essential Math Skills {Reading Eggs Reviews}$

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Music Appreciation with Living Books {a review}

by Meghan // September 4, 2019 // Comments off

In our homeschool, I try to add in (loop schedule style) elements of beauty; picture study, artist study, and nature study. During this season, our family has been enjoying Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades by Zeezok Publishing.

What It Is

Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades collection includes:

a student activity book
Frederic Chopin, Early Years
Frederic Chopin, Later Years
Robert Schumann and Mascot Ziff
Adventures of Richard Wagner
Stephen Foster and His Little Dog Tray
The Young Brahms
The Story of Peter Tchaikovsky
Peter Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker Ballet
Edward MacDowell and His Cabin in the Pines

These nine biographies (seven composers), are good and beautiful! They are truly living books, written in such a way that children want to hear more! These aren’t dry textbooks, or twaddly “fact” books.

Zeezok Publishing- music appreciation with living books

Each book is written in a story like fashion, the text is large enough for young children (and mamas, haha) to read easily, and every book has lovely black and white illustrations. Some books are hardcover, while others are softcover.

Zeezok Publishing- music appreciation with living books

What We Think & How We Used It

I love that the literature books have music pieces in the back, along with Q-Codes, so we can scan and listen easily. (These are also found in the student book.) The books illustrated by Christine Price are my absolute favorites (they also have a lot of pictures)! We really enjoyed reading these aloud during our morning time.

For our homeschool, I chose to read aloud the wonderful books, and have my oldest work through starting with the composer of her choice. She chose to begin with the Adventures of Richard Wagner because it looked most interesting to her. We read aloud during morning time a few days a week starting with that book, then moved on through Stephen Foster and His Little Dog Tray and Frederic Chopin, Early Years. While I continues on reading aloud, I let the 9 year old read independently, work through the activity book pages, and scan the Q codes with my phone.

Zeezok Publishing- music appreciation with living books

The student activity book is chocked full of information, charts, and fun! Each composer’s section has colored labeled tabs for easy navigation. Pages are thick and take pencil and erasing well.

The beginning of each section has a weekly outline of topics, activities, and required reading for each week. Students first read the week’s assigned reading before starting the activity book-they will then fill in comprehension questions, take multiple choice quizzes, and do some matching.

The activity book isn’t all question and answer though! The pages are full of information and fun! I love that each composer has a character qualities section. There are page numbers where students can find an example of each character trait in the assigned reading.

You will find sections like tidbits of interest where students can find paragraphs of information to help clarify reading, elaborate on people of history from the reading, and other any background information about the composer. Other sections vary by composer but a few include: geography, family background, impact of the music on culture, popular music and book from the time, recipes, app alerts with QR Code, and so much more.

The activity book is full of color, pictures, and and journaling prompts! The journaling aspect of this program, along with the living books, makes it so unique to other curricula. We really enjoyed the journaling prompts-we keep a writing notebook and chose to use that for the prompts. There is an option for creating lapbooks instead of a journal-we love lapbooks, too!

This program has been a blessing to our family. It is simple to use, the books are lovely, and because the activity book is geared for mid grades (I’d say a fluent reader who writes easily will enjoy this) my 9 year old was able to do it independently. It made adding beauty to our homeschool routine easy and fun!

I encourage you to check out all Zeezok has to offer, because I have made a large wish list looking at their website!

Happy homeschooling!

Connect with Zeezok Publishing

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
YouTube
Instagram

Click the banner below to read other reviews from the Crew:

Music Appreciation Book 2: for the Middle Grades {Zeezok Publishing Reviews}

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Homeschool History with Timeline Book {a review}

by Meghan // August 2, 2019 // Comments off

Our family enjoys studying history, and we have *loved* using Timeline Collection: A Collection of Historical Timeline Figures from Home School in the Woods. These are so much fun to add to our timeline book, but there are lots of fun ways to use this printable collection of timeline figures!

You can learn more about teaching with timelines HERE. Using this collection for lapbooks is a great idea, as well! Learn about using lapbooks for history in your homeschool, HERE.

Blog Intro Video

by Meghan // July 3, 2019 // Comments off

So I’m trying to re-learn imovies on my Mac, so I can get some blog videos up. I’ve made so many, and never get them edited, so one of my goals for this summer is to start learning imovies and uploading to YouTube.

So, here is a little something I put together for the intro to videos. It isn’t perfected by any means, and will transition more smoothly into videos, hopefully. (I should probably shorten it, but for now this will do).

Enjoy! (and follow us on Youtube)

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Homeschool Writing with Memoria Press {a review}

by Meghan // June 12, 2019 // Comments off

Homeschool Writing with Memoria Press #hsreviews #homeschool #writing #elementarywritingskills

Memoria Press has hit a home run, again, with their Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) and Simply Classical Writing Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) with Teacher Key. We have been using these for writing practice, and I *love* them.

As with everything we’ve tried from Memoria Press, my children have been eager to use the books, and it has been very easy to implement in our homeschool.

About Simply Classical Writing

Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) is set up in an easy to use format. The beginning pages provide all the “rules” of writing the student will be using during the book (and in life, of course). The simple lessons include color coding parts of sentences (green for the first capital letter, red for ending punctuation, etc), sentencing copying, and creating sentences on their own.

What do Lessons Look Like

In Book 1, students should look over the rules about sentences in the beginning as review, of the book before lessons. Of course this could be done orally with the parent. I really like that they have broken down the Teacher’s Notes in day by day steps. There are also modification suggestions (yay!) and helpful ideas if some of the work is too easy. This makes it fun, and creates confident learners.

My soon to be first grade son has been *begging* to work in this book! He really enjoys it; I think he likes unscrambling the words to make a sentence and color coding the most.

You will begin each lesson by reading the assigned Bible story, learning the rule of that lesson (or reviewing), and then work through a creative exercise that involves applying the rules to writing sentences. Creative exercises may be a copying a decodable sentence, a read aloud sentence, illustrating the Bible story the lesson focuses on, and writing a sentence to describe that picture. Color coding parts of the sentences helps solidify the rules of writing. I really like how the lessons put emphasis on different parts of writing-like proper nouns, describing words, etc.

In Book 2, my 8 year old has been working independently. She also enjoys her lessons, and wanted to begin at the beginning of her book… my little Type A 😉

This book provides writing and grammar rules (yay for grammar), copywork, and opportunities for students to create their own good sentences every week. The Teacher’s Guide provides How to Teach step by step instructions, as well as Additional Tips. I really like how Memoria Press includes information for parents that helps them understand some developmental elements to our children’s learning- it is natural for children to make certain mistakes, and they ease parents minds with a little info here.

In Book 2’s Teacher Guide you will find a suggested schedule offering 1-day, 2-day, 3-day, and 4-day schedules. Rules About Sentences are provided in both student books and the TG.

For lessons, teacher and student will read the assigned Bible story, follow the directions for the lesson(s) based on the schedule you have chosen … or go at your own pace like we do (which is doing more than one lesson)! And then edit the work together. I like the emphasis Memoria Press places on gentle correction of any errors. Writing is actually pretty complicated for children- it requires a lot from their brains. Few people are born natural writers; most students need gentle practice, and lots of it.

The process these books take to break down writing so students can fine tune their skills really helps solidify those rules of grammar and composition. i like that further into the books I see words like similies, adverbs, and even categorizing.

Memoria Press has integrated reading, writing, and grammar seamlessly in Simply Classical Writing Book One: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition) and Simply Classical Writing Book Two: Step-by-Step Sentences (Bible Story Edition).

Connect with Memoria Press

Read More Reviews about these and other Memoria Press products by clicking the banner below:

Classical Writing & Spelling, American History & Jewish Wars {Memoria Press Reviews}

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

Homeschool Planner with The Old Schoolhouse® {a review}

by Meghan // June 6, 2019 // Comments off

The Old Schoolhouse® has issued their Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner for 2019/20 Year written by Gena Suarez! This year’s cover is absolutely beautiful. This homeschool planner is going to keep you organized, and on top of your game this year!

You may have read about how I plan before, but mostly I journal what we have done as we do it. The other thing I do is plan out developmental and educational goals for each child for the year (this includes the tot as well). These plans remind me of our goals as we go through the year, and I am able to write out how they have accomplished that goal, vs worrying about adding in a lot of worksheets/busy-work as “evidence” for our hard work. =)

The Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner has metal spiral binding, thick, high quality paper, numbered pages, and so much potential for the school year! The monthly calendar spreads begin with July 2019, and provide ample room for writing in special dates, activities, doodles, lists, and all the things! All the monthly calendar spreads with their coordinating devotional, and notes pages are found in the front of the planner.

All the week of pages are found after that; their spreads again, offer freedom to plan in a way that fits you best! If you’re taking off a week- no need to fill in the dates and information. You can use the grid however best suits your family. There are columns for 5 children, and 7 rows to fill however you wish- days of the week or by subject.

My favorite part of the planner are the goals pages-

In the back of the planner are goals pages for each child (up to 5). These pages contain goals for the year, and then provide forms for you to break those goals down by semester.

So how I use these pages, and incorporate it into the rest of my planner?

I write out the goals for each child under the yearly form. Then I break that down into semester goals, on the correlating page. I will then go to the monthly spread we are working in (August for example), and jot down the goals we want to work on that month. This keeps the goals right in my face, where I will see it and know we have a focus, an intention for all we are doing (both at the school table and in life). That makes it so easy to know what we have accomplished, what we are still working on, struggling on, and brings to light what we may need to add to our goals.

The Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner has room for everything you need to plan your school year! The space, mama devotionals, and planning forms will help keep you organized, on top of goals, and feeling confident! It has really helped me think about how we can simplify and amplify our homeschool learning!

They’ve already sold out 98% of this print run, and have no plans to print more this year. So hurry and get yours!

Connect with The Old Schoolhouse®

Click the banner below to read more reviews for the Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner, from The Crew:

Hey, Mama! Homeschool Planner for 2019/20 Year {The Old Schoolhouse® Reviews}

Disclaimer: Some links on this blog are affiliate links; when you use those links you help support my family, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!