Apple Theme Mini-Unit

I was planning on making apple pie this week with the kids, but hadn't gotten around to it yet.  When I saw how many apples we had lying around, I thought that I'd bring them out for a little counting/addition/subtraction practice for the twins.  We ended up doing a little mini-unit on the theme of apples.  It took zero preparation, which was nice for me, and the girls enjoyed doing a couple different activities with the apples.  Here's what we did..

Homeschool Preschool - Week 8

L and E are 38 months old.  Homeschool Preschool this week went fairly smoothly.  It seems that we were able to fit in a good number of learning activities every day.  I set up a routine for myself where I wake up early in the morning and get 2 hours of computer time in for myself before the kids get up, and then get another 2 hours during 'quiet time' in the afternoon.  The rest of the time, I made an effort to close my laptop and focus on working with the kids (or playing alongside them), which was fun for all of us.  Here's a summary of some of the things we did this week..

CVC Word Flip Books: 10 Games for Beginning to Advanced Readers

These early reading word books that I made for the twins (3 years old) have been a big hit in our house.  The concept is simple, and I think I've seen something similar used for learning word families, but making all three letters 'moveable' really adds to fun.  I came up with a number of games that can be played with these CVC Flip Pads for a variety of reading levels (even kids who are already proficient readers can benefit from games that let them play with words.  My kids are too little to play a lot of the more advanced games I came up with, but I wanted to include them in this blog so I have something to refer to later as my kids' reading skills improve...

Magic Number Cups: Six Math Games With Paper Cups

I think I've mentioned before on this blog that I love math manipulatives.  Our homeschool closet is piled high with a gazillion things (plastic bears, blocks, coins, beads, pom-poms, you name it) that can be counted, sorted, and used for learning mathematical concepts.  It seems, however, that my kids are just as enthralled when I take out the homemade manipulatives as the store-bought ones, and that they can be as simple as a bunch of paper cups labeled with numbers.  Now of course I didn't introduce these as "look at what your Mom made for you in less than a minute out of cheap stuff that was lying around the house", but rather as Magic Number Cups.  I quickly came up with a variety of activities to do with them...

What's in the Castle? - Sound Identification Game

"What's in the Castle?" is a Montessori-inspired sound-matching game which my 3-year-olds absolutely LOVE!  It challenges them to isolate their sense of hearing to identify sounds of various animals, objects, and musical instruments...