If you have young boys in your home like I do, then chances are that at least a few LEGOs are strewn somewhere. And if your kids also like Skylanders, then you probably have an idea of what my house looks like. LEGOs, action figures, Skylanders… all creeping out from under the beds and waiting like ninja knives for me to step on them in the middle of the night.
This time around, instead of me sharing my own ideas about ways to engage kids with creative learning, my LEGO loving son is taking a turn and he is sharing his own directions for making a LEGO Chompy character from Skylanders.
After all, if we’re going to lose our toes in the middle of the night because of these razor-like toys, we might as well make sure the kids are at least learning from and enjoying them during the daylight hours!
So, from Ethan’s inspiration – share with your own LEGO and Skylander fans the legochompy (he even took pictures to help).
Years ago – in the blink of an eye and with a gentle whisper to myself – I started homeschooling. I collected curriculum resources like some women collect shoes. I also started my own personal collection of files and PDFs, creating my own miniature lessons (especially for reading and writing). In an effort to purge my files and track my paper trail of personal resources, I developed A Powerful Pen. Consider it my tiny corner of the homeschool world where I share the resources I developed for my own kids. Some of them you may have already seen here at Happy Medium Homeschooling – scattered in the blog posts. A Powerful Pen takes them and devotes some space just for printables.
So – you’re invited. I’ve just started uploading the files, adding in notes about how to use the printables when necessary. Print what you need. Take what you will. Grab what might help your child learn to love words and language and everything amazing about communication. And if you want me to share your resources, send me a note with the link.
Children who learn how to absorb words, communicate their thoughts, and use language to its fullest are steps ahead in life. I believe in the power of the pen.
You know you’ve made a lasting impression when the furnace guy who makes the yearly maintenance checks wants to know what science experiment we have planned for the day. Turns out he vividly remembers the first time he showed up right in the middle of a volcanic eruption in the garage.
Explosions, messes, and gooey-gadgets are mainstays in homeschool science lessons (at least they are if we’re having fun). Below is a list of some of our favorite resources for science of all types.
Online Science Resources
There are some fabulous YouTube channels that provide great short videos for free about a wide variety of topics. Just search on YouTube for these names:
MakeMeGenius
Adventures in Learning
The Spangler Effect
Minute Physics
Free Printable Science Worksheets
I’ve also put together Steps to Good Science for kids – a free PDF you can print and use – as they conduct their science experiments, based on the scientific basics of:
Observations
Questions
Hypothesis
Testing and experiments
Drawing conclusions.
Books
There are tons at the library but these are three we’ve kept on our shelves over the years.
I’ve been there – watching the horror as green goo rose up and walked all over my kitchen counter with a life of its own. And while these kinds of moments call for extra paper towels, they also give amazing memories and lessons well-learned.
A Goblin Good Time – Fun and Free Halloween Printable Activities and Games
Goblins, ghouls, and sticky candy – what else could your little ones want? It’s hard to believe that we’ve been carving pumpkins and bobbing for apples with the kids around here for more than 15 years! We usually start our Halloween adventures with some games, printable activities, and anything else to have some fall fun. (And shhh, don’t tell the kids, but they are learning along the way, too!) If you’re planning a Halloween party, or you just want to have some extra fun with your kids this year, try some of these spooktacular Halloween party game ideas and printable pages that I’ve developed to use with my own monsters over the years.
Games and Printable Activities
Start by printing these Pumpkin Points – instead of handing out individual prizes for games played, your kids can earn Pumpkin Points to go towards “purchasing” their prize at the end. I like to have non-candy prizes, such as headlamps or glow-sticks for them to wear trick-or-treating, Halloween tattoos or stickers, mini-flashlights, or fun Halloween books. Why not make a full week of fun and have them earn points for a fun movie night or adventure?
Goblin Good Games
Halloween Word Bingo
This version of Bingo is great for early readers (but anyone can play). Take a look at the instruction sheet for how to use this at your Halloween party, then print cards for each player.
Print one template for every player. Take turns blindfolding one child at a time (it is fun for the others to watch each turn) and place the pumpkin template in front of the child and hand him or her a crayon or marker. Have the player design the jack-o-lantern face blindfolded – and then you can use these creative pictures for placemats. Run them through a laminator for extra durability.
Who Am I?
This game is great for all ages. You can print these easy Halloween themed words or come up with your own for older kids and adults. Each player should have one name card taped to his or her back (but they shouldn’t see which one they get). Then set the timer for 2-5 minutes and let everyone go around asking Yes/No questions. At the end, see if anyone could figure out who their Halloween character is.
Happy Halloween Word Creation
Print either one page for each player, or split the group into teams and have one page for each team. The goal is to come up with as many new words with the letters in Happy Halloween – you can give bonus points for Halloween related words. Set the timer for 3 minutes or so – depending on the age of your group.
There are some frightening statistics about the abilities of students when it comes to writing. Even though writing is one of my passions, I know that it is not for everyone. In fact, I’ve had to come to terms with the almost unbearable (insert note of chagrin) fact that some of my kids don’t love writing. However, it is also a needed skill in life – one that our kids can learn. As a mom, homeschool parent, and writer, I don’t make exceptions to whether or not my kids want to write. It is like cleaning the toilet, washing behind your ears, or sending the 23rd arm-aching Thank You note – it just needs to happen. So let’s not get bent out of shape. Let’s find ways to make sure that you can do it. And along the way you will hopefully find a way to embrace the importance of writing, even if you don’t embrace it as your passion.
80% of high school seniors in the United States are not considered to be proficient writers.
20% of high school seniors in the United States are not considered to be basic writers.
Girls tend to outscore boys on assessments of writing skills.
It is estimated that American firms spend more than $3 billion each year as a result of writing deficiencies among employees.
So – with all of the research pointing to the fact that too many children, especially boys, are not acquiring sufficient writing skills, what can we do about it?
How Can We Help Our Kids Write Well?
We have to start earlier. We can’t wait until they are seniors in high school and then realize that they are not prepared for college courses or the expectations of their employers. As the mother of 4 children, 3 of them boys, I have seen firsthand how it can be more challenging to teach writing skills to some children. Writing is not a naturally occurring milestone – it needs to be woven into the activities in which children participate and it needs to become less of a chore and more of an extension of communication. Our children need to learn that writing (and not just LOL, IDK, or BRB) allows them to express themselves, helps them reach their goals, and is a tool they will need in their future.
Part of the challenge of teaching writing to children is that writing, unlike reading, can seem infinite. There are as many ways to write a paragraph about a monkey as there are words in your child’s vocabulary. This can overwhelm children and shut them down to the writing process before they ever even get started. If you have kids with learning or other challenges like I do – writing is sometimes actually almost painful. Let’s take away the pain and get back to finding ways to make writing – communicating – fun and effective.
Printable Activities for Writing
Give tangible goals to your kids for writing. I use these tickets as a way to remind my children on what areas they need to focus. Each ticket has a short, limited amount of goals, appropriate to where they are with their writing skills.
Don’t ask for it all in one. If you’re a homeschool parent like me, you can do this more easily. If your student attends public or private school, consider talking with his or her teacher about the writing strategies used in class. Find out what methods are utilized, and gently suggest some of these ideas.
Limit writing to writing – especially for struggling writers. When you start to add grades for penmanship, spelling, and an accompanying picture to the mix it just gets to be too much.
Brainstorm with your child. Show him how to write down words that he associates with the topic. These words can then be “jumping off” points for sentences, and they help kids focus their ideas.
Meet your kids halfway. So for one of my kids the fine muscles needed for holding a pencil just don’t coordinate. But that doesn’t stop him from being able to knock out some pretty creative poetry and stories with the use of a word processor. Ask yourself what goal you are really trying to reach – and see if there is a way to meet your child part way to that goal.
Try to help your kids create visual maps of their writing. For boys especially the writing process is not concrete enough to let them feel secure. When my boys were younger I used imagery like these worksheets to help them Build Great Paragraphs.
Thanksgiving Activities that Bring Gratitude to the Table
Printable Activities to Put the “Thanks” in Thanksgiving
Great food, amazing family, and fun & games – three keys to a Happy Thanksgiving for our family. Each year I anticipate Thanksgiving through the eyes of my children, and try to draw them in to the spirit of the holiday with an attitude of gratitude and an abundance of fun. For we know that once Thanksgiving is over, we are in a tumble, rumble, roll towards Christmas with our children. So put the brakes on for a bit and plan some fun and meaningful activities for you and your entire family this Thanksgiving season!
Printable Activities for Attitudes of Gratitude
Thanksgiving is the kick-off to a wonderful holiday season, but it can be so easy for our families to get wrapped up in the chaos and commercialism of the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Help keep your kids grounded and form a little perspective this Thanksgiving (and Christmas) season with a few fun and easy printable activities you can do right at your Thanksgiving table.
I Am Thankful! – Print this form for an acrostic poem (you can do one for the family, work in groups, or print one for each person). It just takes a few minutes to complete, and it helps bring everyone together to share in some gratitude.
Blessings in a Box – Make these table decorations that also serve as reminders to have attitudes of gratitude and thankfulness. The instructions are on the printable sheets, and you can print as many tags as you need.
Our Thanksgiving Feast – This is a holiday twist on traditional mad libs that gets your kids using their grammar skills (shh – don’t tell them while they’re on school break). Play it the traditional way, having one person as the “caller” who asks the others around your Thanksgiving table for the various parts of speech to fill in the blanks (without revealing the story). When the caller has written in all of the blanks, he or she reads the story aloud. Even though it brings a bit of silliness to the table, it can remind your kids to think about why they are thankful.
Extending the Gratitude
Before we know it the pies will be eaten and the day of thanks will come to a close. If you are heading out for Black Friday shopping and jumping right into the next phase of this season, keep a sense of gratitude with you. (I’m as eager as the next person for a great bargain, but it is also my time to hang out with my daughter and make great memories.)
Make the first item you buy for someone in need.
Take your kids to the craft stores to buy supplies to make homemade gifts.
Make the last stop of the day to do a good deed for someone else – grab the kids and take dinner to an elderly neighbor, encourage the kids to do a chore for a family member or friend (walk the dog, help clean the garage, etc.).
Keep the spirit of thankfulness in your hearts – and keep looking for ways to bring it more to life each day with your kids. I am thankful for the family and friends who surround me, the faith that guides me, and the opportunity to look forward to each day doing things I love to do.
The printable PDFs I created are yours to share and use this holiday season, but not to be sold or redistributed for commercial purposes. Thanks!
[I originally shared some of these ideas at BetterParenting.com :)]
Lapbooks, project packs, and file folder books – they are all referring to the same basic idea of creating a miniature book to reinforce a learning adventure. Becoming popular in the homeschooling world over the past 10 years or so, these options are also being used in classrooms and even daycare centers. The above fun LEGO lapbook was shared at Joy in the Journey.
What is a Lapbook?
Lapbooks are easy tools you can use to build around central themes and turn basic topics into unit studies. In some ways lapbooks are scrapbooks meet learning journals. But don’t be frightened, you don’t need to be a scrapbooking queen in order to master the art of lapbooking. In fact, you can be scrapbooking challenged like I am and still have success with lapbooks!
Most lapbooks are created using the following supplies:
manila folders
printed worksheets (on regular paper or cardstock)
There are tons of free resources – check out homeschoolshare.com, eduhelper.com, and more.
You can make your own worksheets or even use parts of worksheets from inexpensive workbooks.
glue sticks
color crayons/markers
scissors
staples/stapler
What Does a Lapbook Look Like?
The best way to really understand what a lapbook is all about is to see one, so check out these great examples that moms and dads, teachers and caregivers have used with kids of all ages, about all kinds of topics.
Tracey’s Treasury gives great examples of lapbooks that cover different topics and age groups, as well as different styles of lapbooking.
For some really detailed information about lapbooks, check out lapbooking.wordpress.com. There you will find everything from examples of how to create your own, as well as a newer trend – digital lapbooking.
How Do I Make a Lapbook?
Depending upon how much information you want to include in your child’s lapbook, you can use anywhere from 1 to 6 (any more than that and it gets to be too much) manila folders. If you are a visual learner like I am, there are some great tutorial videos that show you how you can create different styles of lapbooks.
If you’ve been looking for something that will hold your child’s attention or reinforce boring information, lapbooks can be the answer – and they are extremely inexpensive and versatile. I’ve used them to supplement books we’ve read such as the Magic Tree House series, to add extra information to a wildlife unit study, and we always incorporate them into our holiday studies.
Are you a bookworm but you are raising a book-balker? A child who balks at most of the books you suggest from the shelves and who would rather shovel the snow and clean the toilets before willingly grabbing a book to devour? Many educators and parents are now using the term reluctant readerto describe these kids – the ones we so desperately want to expose to the joys of reading – but who we sometimes turn away from reading because we are trying too hard. Try these printable reading activities and goal trackers with your reluctant or struggling readers, or even with your emerging readers you are trying to keep motivated.
Beginner Bookmarks – These printable bookmarks are divided into 10 minute chunks – when your child has finished reading 10 minutes, he can put a check in the box, place a small sticker in the box, or even use a hole punch to mark his progress. You can decide together what the reward will be when he has completed one bookmark (equivalent to 1 hour of reading). For some kids the completion of the bookmark is the reward, but others might need extra encouragement, such as a coupon to choose the movie for family night or a trip to the local park.
Reach for the Stars – This dot-to-dot printable can be used with the goal that works best for your child. The goal might be to read for 10 or 20 minutes each day, or even just to read 3 pages of a book. Decide that with your child, and then use this printable sheet to track her progress. Each time she reaches a goal she gets to connect a dot.
Recommended Reading – Empower your reader by giving him a voice in regards to the types of books he likes to read. Use this printable sheet for him to share with others the books that he would recommend. Just yesterday I watched as one of my sons handed the local librarian a new hardcover book that he received for Christmas, read once, and told her he would like to donate the book to the children’s collection because it was not one that he really enjoyed but wasn’t available yet on the shelves. The empowerment he felt because he was able to share his recommended reading with other kids was enormous – and he can always check it out again if he wants to re-read it.
Basic Book Report – If your reluctant reader (and maybe writer) hears the words book report, he might recoil in distaste. Sometimes just lightening the load and the expectations alleviates the pressure to not only read the book, but then write an amazing report about the book. Use this basic book report form to help reluctant readers focus on the basics of the book – recognizing authors and illustrators, main characters, settings, and the overall idea.
Reading can be one of the most enjoyable activities for some children, but for others it is a chore and a source of frustration. But we can keep plugging along and trying every trick in the book. As long as we keep trying to expose our kids to great stories and opportunities to listen to and read varieties of books, we keep the reading door open in their lives.
This week I had many glorious moments of a child who had a hard time listening to my instructions. Why is that glorious? Because for one of the first times in his life I can’t get his nose out of his books. In fact, I used to have to use every trick in the book just to get him to select one book from the library. This week, however, I am relishing his distraction because the reluctance to read is being replaced with a reluctance to put the book down on the table. These are wonderful problems to have!
[a portion of this was originally published at BetterParenting.com :)]
There is something magical that draws kids into science. Sometimes it is the mess, goo, and intrigue of a good experiment, and other times it is the pure joy of discovery. Whatever the reason your kids might love (or perhaps only tolerate) science lessons, try these methods for bringing science to life.
Science is all around us, and our children. Whether you are planning for the science fair and need some guidance, you are an elementary teacher, or you are a homeschooling mom like me, helping kids understand the scientific process is an important job. For younger learners the pages of this printable science lesson will help them remember terms and steps, and help them develop strong scientific ideas. This guide can be used to teach the basics of:
observations
questions
hypothesis
testing and experiments
drawing conclusions
The pages include a guide for kids to ask questions about their topic, sample Venn diagrams they can print and use, and a sample hypothesis they can use to create their own brilliant idea.
If you need other easy science activities you can do with your kids, try some of these resources for kids, parents, and teachers.
[I created the Steps to Good Science lesson plan for other families/teachers to use – please do not in any way republish or reclaim this product. Originally available at BetterParenting.com :)]
There are some frightening statistics about the abilities of students when it comes to writing. Even though writing is one of my passions, I know that it is not for everyone. However, it is also a needed skill in life – one that our kids can learn if we give them enough tools with which to try.
80% of high school seniors in the United States are not considered to be proficient writers.
20% of high school seniors in the United States are not considered to be basic writers.
Girls tend to outscore boys on assessments of writing skills.
It is estimated that American firms spend more than $3 billion each year as a result of writing deficiencies among employees.
So – with all of the research pointing to the fact that too many children, especially boys, are not acquiring sufficient writing skills, what can we do about it?
How Can We Help Our Kids Write Well?
We have to start earlier. We can’t wait until they are seniors in high school and then realize that they are not prepared for college courses or the expectations of their employers. As the mother of 4 children, 3 of them boys, I have seen firsthand how it can be more challenging to teach writing skills to some children. Writing is not a naturally occurring milestone – it needs to be woven into the activities in which children participate and it needs to become less of a chore and more of an extension of communication. Our children need to learn that writing (and not just LOL, IDK, or BRB) allows them to express themselves, helps them reach their goals, and is a tool they will need in their future.
Part of the challenge of teaching writing to children is that writing, unlike reading, can seem infinite. There are as many ways to write a paragraph about a monkey as there are words in your child’s vocabulary. This can overwhelm children and shut them down to the writing process before they ever even get started.
Printable Activities for Writing
Give tangible goals to your kids for writing. I use these tickets as a way to remind my children on what areas they need to focus. Each ticket has a short, limited amount of goals, appropriate to where they are with their writing skills. As the kids have gotten older I adjust the tickets to fit their needs, sometimes just writing down on a notecard for the older kids 4-5 writing goals.
Don’t ask for it all in one. If you’re a homeschool parent like me, you can do this more easily. If your student attends public or private school, consider talking with his or her teacher about the writing strategies used in class. Find out what methods are utilized, and gently suggest some of these ideas.
Limit writing to writing – especially for struggling writers. When you start to add grades for penmanship, spelling, and an accompanying picture to the mix it just gets to be too much.
Brainstorm with your child. Show him how to write down words that he associates with the topic. These words can then be “jumping off” points for sentences, and they help kids focus their ideas.
Try to help your kids create visual maps of their writing. For boys especially the writing process is not concrete enough to let them feel secure. When my boys were younger I used imagery like these worksheets to help them Build Great Paragraphs.
How do you help your kids learn to write?
[Printables by Chris Oldenburg, shared through BetterParenting.com – free to share for learning – not to copy, sell, or claim as your own :)]
If you have young boys in your home like I do, then chances are that at least a few LEGOs are strewn somewhere. And if your kids also like Skylanders, then you probably have an idea of what my house looks like. LEGOs, action figures, Skylanders… all creeping out from under the beds and waiting like ninja knives for me to step on them in the middle of the night.
Happy Medium Homeschooling 