K is for Kids

The April Blogging from A to Z Challenge continues!

 

k (Photo credit: chrisinplymouth)

 

 

And I’m not talking baby goats, here. My life revolves around my children.  When you homeschool, every minute of your day is spent teaching something – history, grammar, life skills, how to do the macarena.  It’s endless, really.

Good thing I love it!  My kids bring me endless joy and a sense of purpose.  After all, they are the most important students I’ll ever have.

 

Leave a comment for me, if you please.  Writing is a lonely business.

 

Also, visit some of the other few thousand bloggers participating in the A to Z challenge by clicking below:

 

 

A Journey Through Learning Review

  If you’ve visited my site for any length of time, you know I LOVE lapbooks.  (I even went on TV at Life Plus Homeschooling to talk about it!)These fun, interactive, educational (and test-free!) units incorporate all the best learning methods while providing a portfolio assessment that can be kept for years as a treasured memory of learning days.

I was pleased with the quality of the products from A Journey Through Learning.  Having written more than a few lapbook units myself, I know just what I want in a program!  The unit I received – The Earth – far exceeded my expectations.  The product description says:

Learn about the Earth, what the Earth is made of, the Earth’s crust, sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks, the Earth’s 4 spheres-lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere, how the Earth moves-the days and the seasons, parts of the Earth, landforms-continents, mountains, valleys, and plains, how mountains are formed, the atmosphere, the water cycle, ocean zones- photic, abyssal, disphotic, hadal, the ocean floor- continental margin, continental shelf, abyssal plain, ocean trenches, and volcanoes.

The unit contains 42 pages, and only requires 2 manila file folders, scissors, glue, and coloring utensils of your choice.

There are also units covering the themes of “Spring”, “Knights”, and “Early Learning”, as well as Express Books for just $1 and a monthly $5 Lapbook!

The units can be purchased as downloads, which is a real benefit for educators of multiple students, or if you’d like to reuse the unit at a later time.  They can also be purchased in print for a few dollars more.  Ideal for grades 1-4, students can typically complete a unit in just one month (working on 1 page per day on the activities).  The instructions are super-easy to follow, and activities are dedicated on their own pages, so no cutting into your reading text!

In a few short weeks, you can go from study guide to interactive personalized book!

If you aren’t familiar with lapbooks, just think of a collection of mini-books.  Each one is dedicated to a different topic or learning objective.  The student focuses on one of these per lesson, then compiles them into a “book” made from a file folder.  Presto!  All the lessons are demonstrated in a compact, colorful arrangement that students can’t wait to share with family and friends.  There are also lots of tips and tricks through the website’s video lessons, and I have a previous blog post about it HERE.

My kids both love lapbooking, and were pleased to add this one to their collection.  A Journey Through Learning takes the work out of designing these lessons, and just lets you get straight to the fun!

Just a few of the highlights of lapbook units from A Journey Through Learning:

• Thematic, integrated units of study
• Color illustrations
• Easy-to-Follow directions
• Excellent informational text to accompany each activity
• Additional suggestions for Poems, Songs, Activities, and Supplemental Reading
• Two purchasing options (Downloadable = $13.00, Printed Booklet = $21.00)

You can read more experiences right HERE, at SchoolhouseReviewCrew.com, and in the words of Reading Rainbow’s Levar Burton, “Don’t just take my word for it!”  Read these other great reviews by parent educators like me!

DISCLAIMER

Felted Soap Makes A Splash with Local Students

It’s become a tradition for my daughter and I to attend “Colonial Days” at one of the local schools.  Every November we dig out my old Silver Dollar City dresses and pack up the spinning wheels, looms, and fiber to demonstrate some Old World skills in spinning, weaving, knitting, and the like.

This year, we wanted to share a hands-on project with the children – but it had to be kid-friendly for ages 3 to 10.  Kendra came up with the idea for Felted Soap, which she enjoyed at a craft fair not too long ago.  We gathered a few supplies (100 bars of soap and a whole lot of llama roving) and got set up.

Colonial Day Costumes
(Both of these were my work dresses when I was 16 years old. Yes, my daughter can wear it )

Kendra sets up with buckets of water, soap, and wool.

The children were thrilled to get their hands some fluff and start wrapping their soap bars.  Then they put them inside a piece of nylon stocking and added some old-fashioned elbow grease.

Agitating the fibers to fuse, or felt, them together to encase the soap.

After several minutes of rub-a-dub-dub, we’re ready for the Big Reveal!  What will be inside this old hose?

Squeezing out excess water and peeling away the stocking reveals the magic.

And now we have our own exfoliating bars of soap that won’t leave a slippery mess in the shower!

Completed Felted Soap with Kool-Aid-Dyed wool

This is a terrific activity to do with your own kids at home, or your local homeschool or after school group!

If you’d like to try your hand at some felted soap, check out this video for complete instructions: