CurrClick is giving away 5 wonderful freebies for Mothers day! They are also hosting a contest for Mom’s and kids. Mom’s can enter to win an Ipod Nano and children can win an iPod Shuffle!
The freebies from CurrClick are
Get Ready to Garden lapbook
Girlfriends Guide to Homeschool Conferences
Mammoth Math Place Value 2
Mother’s Day Holiday Unit Study, Crafts & More.
Printable Coloring Pages Bundle
I was reading over at The Homeschool Post and found that I was nominated in the vlogger (video blogger) category! Thank you to everyone who has voted!
The voting is open until Nov. 18th at midnight if you haven’t checked it out. There are so many wonderful blogs listed in each category. Over a thousand all together! I’ve been having a great time reading new blogs tonight as well.
Nominations for the 7th annual Homeschool Blogger Awards are open!
Categories are:
If you have blogs you love to read that are published by homeschoolers head on over to The Homeschool Post to nominate your favorites! Click on the banner below.
It’s important to have plans and goals, they give you a target to aim for and help keep you on track. Each year before I start planning out our lessons I stop and think about what goals each child needs. I also talk to each child and find out what goals they have for themselves. I will try to help them meet these as much as I’m able.
A few of the goals we will be working on are…
Dd8 will be working on memorizing her multiplication facts, neater hand writing and learning cursive. She also would like to learn to sew.
Dd6 will be working on phonics and reading fluency. She also would like to practice knitting more.
Dd4 (5 this fall) is learning to read.
Dd3 & ds1 are to play and have lots of learning fun. 
I try to keep our goals in mind as I pick out curriculum and put our lesson plans together. I will be doing a detailed post soon on how I keep our records and lesson plans. I’d hoped to have it written up by now but a summer flu bug has hit our house.
Basically I have a planning binder that I’ve put together. Here I keep a paper copy of all my lesson plans, reading logs etc. I also use Homeschool Tracker + to keep records and grades from the work we have completed.
One problem I’ve always had is how to organize all the work sheets, activities etc that we do. Last year I finally found a system that works great for us. I stumbled upon a blogger that used a milk crate filing system. The folders were organized by date and in each folder that weeks lessons were placed.
There is a little more to it then that, but I will explain how I do it very soon. I’m hoping to start setting up this years file system this week.
Normally we school year round. This year I decided to take a summer break. We needed the extra time to work on the gardens, renovations and just enjoy the summer. Last year was an unusually cold summer, so there wasn’t nearly as much work in the gardens to do.
I’ve been looking over our curriculum and thinking about making some changes. Most of what we have been using works very well for us. We love unit studies and hands on learning. One area that has been tricky is spelling. We’ve tried spelling workbooks such as spelling workout and CLP spelling books. We just aren’t fans of workbooks and I don’t find the children learn much from them. I’ve also tried the Natural Speller. Its a great book but just doesn’t suit our needs right now.
I recently stumbled on to All About Spelling. I think this will be a much better fit for our family! Its hands on, using letter tiles to build words. We use Math U See and the hands on method had worked very well for us. All About Spelling teaches the phonograms in a logical order using site, sound and touch.
I’m also going to try using this as a reading curriculum. They have made some lovely readers that match up with the phonics lessons.
I’ve enjoyed reading all their samples online and browsing through the videos in their forum. I ordered the first few levels and reader. They should be in this week and I can’t wait to see them. I’ll do an updated post on what we think of the materials once it arrives.
This weeks CurrClick freebie is a nature writing notebook. Each page has a nice area to draw a picture, a story starter and area to finish the story. After you’ve worked through the package your child will have a fun storybook all about summer!
Grab your copy this week as CurrClick changes the freebie each week.
Handwriting For Reading: Nature
I found some nice Mothers day lapbooks and activities.
Mothers’ Day Lapbook & Notebooking Pages
Now is a great time to try some of NotebookingPages.com’s products during their 4th Birthday Sale-a-Bration! The sale starts May 5th and ends May 31st. Get there early for the BEST deals!
Check it out here:
St. Patrick Day is approaching, what fun activities do you have planned? CurrClick has some great freebies up right now.
Notebooking is a big part of our lessons. It really brings facts alive for children. Little ones just love putting together a journal of what they’ve learned. Check out these free notebooking pages! St. Patrick’s Day Notebooking Pages
Shamrocks and Shillelaghs is a free ebook by Teachers Book Bag. It gives the history of many Irish and St. Patrick’s day symbols. Also included are some poems, calendar cards and activities.
St. Patrick: The World’s Greatest Missionary is a great little book. It’s full of stories about St. Patrick, picture studies, map and copywork. And a recipe for Irish Soda bread to!
If these aren’t quite what your looking for CurrClick also has these books on sale at a great price.
St. Patrick’s Day Lapbook with Study Guide
Celebrating St Patrick & St Patrick’s Day [BUNDLE]
Connect The Thoughts – Saint Patrick’s Day Creative Writing/History Unit
Recorded Class! – St. Patrick’s Day
Rod and Staff is a great curriculum and I use some of their courses in our school. I was very excited to see they are having a spring sale! Save 10% off on curriculum until April 15th.
