My goal is that this will be an entertaining and possibly creative blog about Naters, me, & the learning acitivities we do at home. Let's see what happens...
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
working on the letters
Naters is now 33 months old! I've been working, printing & laminating away. I've gotten to H of the Letter of the Week Curriculum. it's been a lot of work but i can do it in short time stretches also so that helps. Naters really likes playing with the milk cap letters I made like Erica showed. I made up about 6 sets of the alphabet. I'm doing up letter pages for each family member with pictures so I wanted Naters to have enough letters to do the whole family at one time. I also did up some milk cap letters pages (taught myself Microsoft publisher!) for Mickey Mouse, Bolt (one of her fav movies), and the Disney Princesses. I made up additional ones for each letter of the alphabet, Once I figure out 4shared.com, I'll put them up for anyone who wants to download them. Naters and I are taking a road trip this Friday, so I made her up some smaller games & made my first I Spy or Find it! bottle game for her. It came out OK, but I'd like to make the next one much more colorful!
Have a wonderful week!
becky
Have a wonderful week!
becky
Monday, May 10, 2010
Nurse's Week & Mother's Day
Feel like all it's been is a celebrations. Got cookies & a duffel bag @ work. Naters & SteverWeaver got me gift cards (JoAnns, & Michaels) and a beautiful wind chime for our deck. Got in some coupon shopping this last week. Got Naters the Melissa & Doug chalkboard/Dry Erase Board, Leap Frog Fridge Phonics,
Learning Resources Piece-a-Pizza fractions game, a zoo game, and some other goodies. I've been printing & laminating again. Went through a brand new color cartridge for my printer in under two days. Have to admit though, i did print about 200 pages of heavily colored materials. Tonight i hope to get a lot of cutting done. then I will be done with A, B & C of Erica's Letter of the Week Curriculum. It's a work in progress for sure, but i keep plugging away. I'm surprised how quickly Naters is learning her alphabet. When we use her letters, I keep having her trace them with her index finger; i think that has really helped imprint the letters for her! I read about the technique on a Montessori blog somewhere.
She's waking up from her nap, gotta go!
becky
Learning Resources Piece-a-Pizza fractions game, a zoo game, and some other goodies. I've been printing & laminating again. Went through a brand new color cartridge for my printer in under two days. Have to admit though, i did print about 200 pages of heavily colored materials. Tonight i hope to get a lot of cutting done. then I will be done with A, B & C of Erica's Letter of the Week Curriculum. It's a work in progress for sure, but i keep plugging away. I'm surprised how quickly Naters is learning her alphabet. When we use her letters, I keep having her trace them with her index finger; i think that has really helped imprint the letters for her! I read about the technique on a Montessori blog somewhere.
She's waking up from her nap, gotta go!
becky
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
What I've been working on
In the side bar are photo updates of some of what I have been working on. I wasn't able to take photos of all the tot books & packs I've done, my back started hurting too bad. I'll take more photos tomorrow.
I have to thank the generous & ingenous works of Carisa @ 1+1+1=1, Erica @ Confessions of a homeschooler, Jolanthe @ homeschoolcreations.com, Jenn @ Mama Jenn and Mari-Ann @ Counting Coconuts. Thank you all so very much for your downloads and wonderful creativity.
Now for some pearls of wisdom for those of you just venturing into this.
1st If you are going to laminate, make sure to cut yours pages down to less than 8-1/2x11. even though the laminating pouches can take a regular size sheet of paper, if you plan on putting any of these in sheet protectors, file folders or file pockets for storage you will be thankful if you trim them down PRIOR to laminating, then after laminating trim down as needed.
2nd Search & be patient for bargains!!! I set aside 3 hours on a certain day each week specifically for shopping w/ coupons. I go to Michael's, JoAnn's, Archivers, Barnes & Noble's, Hobby Lobby, Border's. I usually know what I plan to purchase in each store, hit the ground running and I can be back home in under 3 hours (takes me 30 minutes to get to the 1st store!)
3rd For some of my smaller file folder games. I cut a file folder in half height then 5-3/4 then while still folded cut the width to 5-1/2 so when open the folder is 5-/34 by 11 which you can then lamiate easily!!!
Got the idea for my smaller file folder games from Mama Jenn using teacher's borders from the $1 store
This size will also fit in a quart size ziplock bag and are great size for your purse & traveling!!!
Thankfully only one more day of work this week~
write more soon!
becky
I have to thank the generous & ingenous works of Carisa @ 1+1+1=1, Erica @ Confessions of a homeschooler, Jolanthe @ homeschoolcreations.com, Jenn @ Mama Jenn and Mari-Ann @ Counting Coconuts. Thank you all so very much for your downloads and wonderful creativity.
Now for some pearls of wisdom for those of you just venturing into this.
1st If you are going to laminate, make sure to cut yours pages down to less than 8-1/2x11. even though the laminating pouches can take a regular size sheet of paper, if you plan on putting any of these in sheet protectors, file folders or file pockets for storage you will be thankful if you trim them down PRIOR to laminating, then after laminating trim down as needed.
2nd Search & be patient for bargains!!! I set aside 3 hours on a certain day each week specifically for shopping w/ coupons. I go to Michael's, JoAnn's, Archivers, Barnes & Noble's, Hobby Lobby, Border's. I usually know what I plan to purchase in each store, hit the ground running and I can be back home in under 3 hours (takes me 30 minutes to get to the 1st store!)
3rd For some of my smaller file folder games. I cut a file folder in half height then 5-3/4 then while still folded cut the width to 5-1/2 so when open the folder is 5-/34 by 11 which you can then lamiate easily!!!
Got the idea for my smaller file folder games from Mama Jenn using teacher's borders from the $1 store
This size will also fit in a quart size ziplock bag and are great size for your purse & traveling!!!
Thankfully only one more day of work this week~
write more soon!
becky
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