At our house, Halloween is the most fun time for innovation and creativity.



Home education curriculum, tips, tricks and ideas. This blog chronicles my experiences homeschooling my 2 children since birth. Read on for practical advice and ideas about home education resources of every variety.
Homeschoolers are always on a quest for creative ways to offer up curriculum.
Arts, crafts, science, math. You name it! We want hands on ways to teach it.
The stories are charming and the kids love them! Each book adds a few new letter sounds and keeps familiar characters in the story. The second book in the series is called "Sam." I highly recommend this set of books for any child who has learned their consonants and short vowels. Check them out! If you want to peek inside the books, amazon has some sample pages and also customer images posted from readers. |
For example: "Nitrogen: On first impression I'm a regular sort, but I've got an explosive temperament. You might hardly notice me, but I make up almost 80 percent of air, and I'm essential to plant life on Earth. I'm normally a pretty uncreative gas, made up of two atoms of nitrogen. The triple bond between these two atoms is hard to break, and that is my hidden power. When nitrogen atoms form nitrogen gas, they release massive amounts of energy. This make the many compounds that contain me potentially explosive!" The group number and other important facts like density, date of discovery, melting point, boiling point, atomic number and weight are also included for each element. We also have the book Physics: Why Matter Matters; and we plan on getting a couple more in the series, as there are more! These books have proven engaging and entertaining. A fun way to get acquainted with sometimes dry material! | |
The first one he discovered was the Kids Draw Manga Fantasy book pictured on the left. He was excited that his finished work looked like the pictures in the book! That is always so encouraging, isn't it? Then, he wanted more books, and he specifically asked for Christopher Hart. So, we picked up a few more that were even more direct with their instructions. They included the Xtreme Art titles Draw Manga, Draw Mini Manga and Draw Manga Monsters. |
This is a great book if you're looking for simple and quick exploration activities to support engineering concepts related to radiation, acoustics, hydrology, meteorology, and more. Each activity is simple and involves things easily located or found around the house. Each begins with "What You Need to Know" that is very helpful for background knowledge and vocabulary. It is written clearly and can be readable, while not being diluted. There are a couple of exercises that test the students understanding of the material. These often involve studying diagrams that are well drawn and to the point. |
This book is a great way to teach the scientific method of inquiry by testing and observation. We made mini-lab sheets for each experiment to keep in our science notebook. And also made a glossary of new science terms. Now, don't let the dull illustrations fool you. This book is the real deal. |
We use this book as a spine to guide our home schooling. Although we use an eclectic approach it is based on the Classical format. There is a tremendous amount of information in The Well-Trained Mind. It is clearly presented and well researched. The one caveat that I have in recommending it is that if you tried to do everything they outline, you might go mad! It covers everything very extensively. It is being revised and updated for publication in 2009. This book is 800+ pages of valuable resources. Check it out! |