Life Lessons From Home

Money Lapbook

2010-11-29T19:22:00.000-08:00

Lukes finished his money lapbook today. I found the printables here:

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/LapbooksMoney.html

This lapbook made learning about money a lot more fun than just doing worksheets! Lukes also dictated and illustrated a story on the back about money. His story was about a twenty dollar bill he found when he was three(how does he remember that stuff?).

Here it is with all the pieces. This was an easy lapbook that we finished in two days. It could probably be done in one, but we were so busy with Thanksgiving that we just now got around to finishing it. We will definitely be using this in the future to review money!

Happy Turkey Day!

2010-11-25T13:02:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving Day! We are having Thanksgiving with my mom and dad this year and I still wanted to be able to make a turkey so the picture above is what I came up with :) Have a great day everyone!

Making Change

2010-11-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

This morning Luke wanted to practice his new making change skills with money.

So I let him make lemonade to practice selling to me.

And then I went into the garage and dug out our last years Sunkist Lemonade Stand. We got ours from here:

http://www.sunkist.com/takeastand/

He had a blast doing this!

This day and age a lot of kids don't actually see money being used. All they see are debit/credit cards!

We used play money for this lemonade stand that I bought from Melissa and Doug which you can find by clicking on my sponsor link on the right hand side bar.

Money Money Money!

2010-11-22T21:26:00.000-08:00

We started our money unit today and I am really excited about it because I've planned a lot of fun activites!

One of the activities will be a money lapbook. Above is a picture of some fun pet shop money cards I found at: http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/PetShopMoneyCountCards.htm
Luke will be adding these to his money lapbook later this week. He really enjoyed playing with these and wants me to print out some more.

He also worked on a money book that I found at: http://www.cccphilly.com/moneylapbook.html. I want to say Thank You to http://1plus1plus1equals1.com/index.html for sharing all the information and worksheets to make this lapbook.

Ahhhh Chooo! Pepper Science

2010-11-22T21:04:00.000-08:00

Today we did a very easy, quick science experiment. There are only 4 items that are needed: Bowl, Water, Pepper, and Dish soap.

First add some cool water to the bowl.

Sprinkle in some pepper.

Add a drop of dish soap to your finger.

Place your finger, with the dish soap on it, in the water in the middle of the bowl. And watch what happens...

Before you can even pull your finger out of the bowl all the pepper rushes to the sides. This is why:

"The pepper stays scattered all about the water because the water is pulling on the pepper evenly from all directions. When you drop the detergent into the water, it reduces the cohesiveness between the water and the pepper. In other words, it reduces the pulling action on the pepper and the pepper appears to run away from the detergent. But the water around the edges (untouched by the detergent) still has its full pulling strength." http://www.spartechsoftware.com/reeko/Experiments/ExpScatteringPepper.htm

GOBBLE GOBBLE

2010-11-21T20:50:00.000-08:00

GOBBLE GOBBLE!

We made these healthy turkey snacks this evening just for something fun to do. They are made with a pear sliced in half, apple slices, orange slices, raisin eyes, orange nose and craisin gobbler. I attached the face pieces with toothpicks cut in half. Very easy, fun snack for kids to help make.

Not much else going on around here this lazy Sunday. We had a light dusting of snow this morning which captured Luke's attention most of the day. He was wishing for enough to build a snowman....maybe tomorrow! We are keeping our fingers crossed.

ABC MAGNETS

2010-11-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

Today we made these really simple ABC magnets. I plan on letting Lukes use these to practice spelling and sentence making.

Here are the items that will be needed to make these:

Decorative Accents Clear Luster Gems
E6000 Multi-Purpose Adhesive
Scrapbook Paper or Stickers
White Card Stock
Newspaper
Magnets

First trace one of the gems onto the card stock. Lukes didn't like tracing the gem so he used a round scrapbook tag.

Then cut out the circles and add the stickers in the middle.

Add a drop of the adhesive on top of the sticker and place the flat side of the gem on top of the adhesive. Squish it on there really good! :)

Tip the gem upside down on newspaper and gule the magnet on. Let dry for a few hours. Make sure the magnets aren't to close together or they will stick together.

I haven't had time yet but I plan on making picture ones, like this turkey, for every letter of the alphabet. He can then practice spelling the word underneath the correct picture.

The educational uses for these are endless!

I plan on making number and math symbols in the next couple of days for him to use for math practice. I will post pictures when I have them finished.

WARNING: Please do not use with young children who may put the item in their mouth. The magnet could come off and the child could swallow it. I would reccommend age 5 and up. Parents know their child(ren) best so please use your own good judgement when allowing your child(ren) to play with magnets.

Balloon Science

2010-11-19T18:45:00.000-08:00

This is a really fun experiment we tried today. Lukes loved it so much we did it four different times! This even caught his dad's attention.

Here are the items that will be needed:

1 water bottle(empty)

1/4 to 1/2 cup of white distilled vinegar

2 Tbs. of baking soda

1 balloon

2 separate funnels

(We only had one funnel so we used a piece from my cake decorating stuff as you will see in the pictures.)

Don't forget the safety goggles!

First pour the vinegar into the empty water bottle.

Then pour the baking soda into the balloon.

Then attach the balloon to the top of the water bottle. Be careful not to rip the balloon while you stretch it over the top.

When ready tip the balloon allowing the baking soda to pour into the bottle.

And have fun watching it blow up all by itself!

Apple Turkeys

2010-11-18T22:09:00.000-08:00

To end our day we made these fun apple turkey snacks.

We used the items pictured above along with 1 green olive, 2 mini chocolate chips, craisins and a triangle of cheese for the head and neck. We also used 6 toothpicks.

We put it together like this first, but it wouldn't stand up so.......

we moved all the toothpicks around and sliced off a piece on the bottom so it wouldn't fall over. Plus, I think it looks better this way!

Lukes was very proud of what he made and he loved eating it!

Match It!

2010-11-18T17:15:00.000-08:00

Lukes loves these Match It! games. We played the spelling one this afternoon. They are great for self-correcting and basic spelling concepts. I bought ours at Ross.

Having to look for the correct pieces helps him focus on the task at hand.

And of Course, when he was finished he had to find a different way to play with it! :)

Chore Packs

2010-11-18T16:43:00.000-08:00

We started our chore packs this morning and I love them!

I got the chore packs with the book Managers of Their Chores by Steven and Teri Maxwell. I really like how these work! The book can be ordered at http://www.titus2.com/ I sat down with Lukes and let him help me pick out his chores. We then printed out the picture chore cards. He knows how to read, but said the picture cards looked like more fun(I agree).

I love that the book talks about why we should teach our children to have chores. There are lifetime benefits gained by doing chores as a kid. By handing everything to our children we take away their incentive to make something out of their lifes.

I have been reading the book Her Daughter's Dream by Francine Rivers and I love what she has to say in her book about this "Making things easier on your children is sometimes the worst thing you can do. Of course, sometimes it's easier for you. But what does it do in the long term?"

So far Lukes has been really excited about this and sped through his chores this morning. We also made an evening chore pack and we will be trying that out tonight.

Turkey Math

2010-11-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

This morning we played a fun math game I bought from scholastic a few years ago. Lukes wanted to play it because it goes along with our turkey theme we are doing this week.

We also made these cute letter T turkeys. I found the idea through google and bought the letter T's from Michael's for about a buck. You could always cut the letter T out of brown construction paper. We ended up having to tape the feathers to the back because the glue wouldn't hold them on.

Turkey Feathers

2010-11-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

Today Lukes collected feathers from our three parrots and chickens and came up with this turkey creation after examining each one.

Hand Turkey

2010-11-15T23:49:00.000-08:00

This is my second year homeschooling and I thought it might be fun to start a blog with the activities we do everyday. Today we had a short day of school because we had eye appointments, so all we accomplished today was science, art and a thanksgiving math game.

For art we made painted hand turkeys from1plus1plus1equals1.blogspot.com(pictured above)

For science we made rain in a jar and discussed how it happens. To do this all you do is add very hot(we did boiling) water to a mason jar(make sure the jar is warm first otherwise it might break) and put ice cubes in a lid on top. Then watch it rain in the jar!

And we made a turkey math game from filefolderfun.com My son loved doing this math game. It was easy for him, but great review!