School Time: Paint Chip Learning Tools

A FREE project! I'm all about inexpensive homeschooling tools. This one is really versatile.

You'll need: Paint chips/cards, hole punch, and thin ribbon.

Choose a side. Punch a hole (or two).

You can write numbers, colors, letters, etc. Tie the ribbon through

the hole, or you can use a jump ring.

We made a book of colors (above), and an addition book (below).

And a vocabulary book (will be adding definitions, too!).

Store them in a cute little shoe box! :)

Teach It - Lapbooking

Our absolute favorite thing to do when it comes to homeschooling (besides field trips) is lapbooking! Some of the best lapbooking sites are listed below so be sure to check them out. In the past, we did a post on a Chinese Lapbook, and we have done lots of videos on lapbooking.

Today, we worked on a basic lapbook for each girl.

Jenelle is 9 years old, and in 3rd grade. Her lapbook covers the 50 states (and their capitals), single digit multiplication, a page of cursive copywork, an empty page so she can write in the titles of books she reads, simple fractions, and a gallon man. They all decorated the front and back of their lapbooks/mini offices. Hers says "I got an A+ in School".. get it? haha

Gallon man - Print one here.

Gracelynn is 6 years old, and in kindergarten. Her lapbook covers money, fire/tornado/earthquakes, address & phone number, time, seasons, and simple addition. Her cover is a drawing of our family. :)

Sapphire is 4. Her lapbook covers shapes, numbers, letters, left/right/up/down, money, days of the week, and colors. Her cover is a picture of her standing with the homeless guy that always stands outside of the restaurant her and her Mammie go to. Aww.

If you don't have a printer, or don't want to use all of your ink, you can surf websites and then just write everything on the lapbooks. That is usually what we do. Making 3 lapbooks at a time while printing would use lots of ink. Sometimes you need to print things, but for the most part writing is fine. Especially for the younger kids. :) I write everything and they trace it, and then we cover it with tape so it lasts longer.

This is a great website for printables. Word endings, a money chart, and more.

Spring themed pages can be found here, and tons of mini office/lapbooking resources can be found here and here.

My favorite website for homeschooling resources is Enchanted Learning. They don't really cover lapbooks specifically, but if you are doing a lapbook on an animal or a certain concept (K-3), chances are they have it.

Running out of ideas for titles!

We are doing another photo shoot tomorrow, with our new pillow case dresses and our fairy tutu sets. Can't wait to post pictures. Keep an eye out on nelliebugs.com for the new items. I've also added lots of new stuff on the website so feel free to look around. :)

Yesterday, we BBQ'd. Weather was supposed to be clear all day, but it started storming. I caught Grace in the corner, on her knees, praying to God for the storm to go away so she could play on her slip n slide. LOL. Then about 5 minutes later, the storm just disappeared. She's now convinced it was a miracle. She's 5.

I bought the Last Chance Workout DVD. The SHRED was too hard on my knees, and honestly was pretty boring. I was sweating with this DVD.. it's brutal, but low-impact. Exactly what I needed. I'm still losing weight. I have 20lbs to lose before I get pregnant again. I am hoping to be able to be a surrogate for a woman from California. We are also planning on moving to California some time within the next year. I have some legalities with custody and visitation to work out before it all goes through, so we will see. Hopes are up, though.

Jenelle (8) is going to learn the Presidents, states and capitals, and multiplication this summer. We bought school books but she got bored. So we are just going to focus on those three things as well as reading chapter books, using the dictionary, and 3 and 4 digit subtraction.

Grace and Sapphire really need some more structure, but I've been lazy. Starting a new schedule up soon.

My first 5k is this weekend. Wish me luck.

Monday!!!

Friday is Jenelle's last day of school, so I have all week to get a homeschooling schedule together for her. I was considering the possibility of HSing her next year, but have decided against it for many reasons.

1. Jenelle wants to "protect" Gracelynn while she is at school. In reality, they probably won't see each other except for on the bus, but it will make them both feel more secure.

2. We want to move to California within the next 1.5 - 2 years. If that's the case, Sapphire will go to school when she is 5 not when she is almost 6, like here in Missouri. If I HS Jenelle, and then send Sapphire and Grace, I will have a kid at home still and then can't go back to school and/or work, which is a goal of mine.

3. Rachel is very against homeschooling, she didn't like it when we did it last year, and though she has "agreed" to join me with HSing, she isn't too happy about it.

4. I will have more free time to work, go to school, and/or work on the business(es) if the kids are in school. I can still supplement after school or on the weekends, or in the summer like we are doing now.

Gracelynn has been teaching Sapphire a lot. During the time they are supposed to be playing in their room, Gracelynn is "quizzing" Sapphire almost constantly. She asks her about body parts, colors, numbers, shapes, etc. It's absolutely adorable! :) Also, they LOVE puzzles and are awesome at them. So they have been doing a lot of those this past week. They're still learning, just not in the traditional way like we usually do.

On a side note, I wanted to share some good news with my readers/friends. Now it's not a for SURE thing so I'm trying not to get too excited, but it's already too late for that! :) I started talking to a woman from California. Her name is Erin, she's single, and looking for a surrogate. I was *NOT* planning on doing another surrogacy for a single IP, but I truly think she's "the one". I'm beyond excited.. like, I really can't contain it! I have talked to Rachel about it, and she understands I might have to fly to CA once (or twice, including the birth) by myself... hopefully, though, we can find a sitter for the girls so she can come with me. I am, of course, getting ahead of myself.. we aren't even "matched" for sure, but I really think Erin and I are on the same page. It's weird how strong of a connection you can feel through emails, ya know? It's just crazy.

She is going to look into insurance this week, and then we will be working on a contract and lawyers and stuff. So please keep us in your thoughts, prayers, or whatever else you do (I know some dance naked in the forest.. go for it!:) ), because I really want this to work out if it's meant to be. Thanks. :)

Homeschool Monday

So, I think we skipped this post last week. I do apologize! Just been crazy super busy. :)

Jenelle's last day of public school is the 21st. We will start full force when she is done. She just created a Dinosaur Project and posted about it on her blog (click the link, leave her some love!). We are going to take a break until then because she really is NOT in school mode this week. She has LOTS of work to do at school, so I'm not going to have her overloaded by doing more at home.

As for me, I'm learning Spanish. My dream, for as long as I can remember, has been to move to California. If I want to get a decent job, I need to know Spanish. Even if we don't make it to Cali, knowing Spanish is always a good thing. We might make it to Oregon instead. Who knows. But we will be packing up and moving across country some time in the future! :) We are SO done with Missouri.

The two younger girls are working on colors, shapes, and writing practice. We will start our schedule when Nell is out of school. Right now they are playing with oval shapes (left over animal Easter eggs), pretending they are an army. :) Later, we will go for a walk. I've been slacking on my SHRED so I have to get moving. The 5K walk is in 33 days! EEK! I did walk a mile the other day. Thought I was gonna die. Haha, no, it wasn't that bad.

The girls also like pretending they are doctors. They dress their bears and stuff up. It's cute. I never understood the "unschooling" approach, so I've never tried it. But I'm beginning to see that if they want to learn... they will do it all on their own. :) The girls are teaching themselves (and each other) more than I could with any book. :)

We will probably take the first week and do crafts.. the kids will not shut up about doing more projects. They're obsessed lol. Wonder why.

Day 3

I completed Day 3 of the SHRED.

The girls came in the living room (they were in the kitchen doing homework and watching me) and wanted to join me. So we worked out together. By the end of it, they disliked Jillian as much as I did.

I was sore when I woke up today. But it seems like it's not lasting quite as long. It seems like 40 minutes instead of like 2 hours like it did. Also it's nice because I kind of know what to expect next, so I get ready for it.

Also, turning up the music and muting Ms. Jillian helps a LOT.

:)

In other news, Sapphire is learning shapes. We tried to do the letter of the week thing but we are all so ADD that it just didn't work. We kept getting off on tangents (letter of the week was "A" but the shape was "square" and then the vocab was "calf" and we were to learn about "cows" too.. we were going in too many directions). So we decided just to focus on shapes and letters, kind of all together. So as I type, Sapphire is tracing some rectangles with tea cup crayons, and Jenelle is helping Grace find the missing numbers on one of her worksheets.

Later, when the younger two go to bed,Jenelle and I will do real homework. Well, not "real", in the sense that it's for school. But real homework like I bought some books off ebay and am trying to get her ready for 3rd grade ASAP.

Monday Madness!

I've decided what I'm going to do with Mondays. I'm going to talk about homeschooling! :) We are starting pre-k with Sapphire, k with Gracelynn, and when school is out I will be reviewing 2nd with Jenelle and then starting on 3rd as soon as possible.

Today we are starting with the Letter of the Week Preparatory Curriculum with Sapphire. She's 3.

This week, the animal is cow. The letter is A. The shape is square. We are going to the library today to see which books we can find from the book list.

Monday - Put on music, dance and moo like a cow.
Tuesday - Draw square on whiteboard, collect 3-5 objects that are square, walk around the house looking for squares, and cut squares out of playdough.
Wednesday - Draw the letter A on the whiteboard, have Saff color the letter A printout.
Thursday - Write the number 1 on the whiteboard, and count 1 of many objects.
Friday - Build a cow with black and white construction paper squares.

We are also members of Enchanted Learning, so I will be supplementing with pages like these. I don't usually print the pages, rather draw up my own that are similar. Rach is a great artist so this seems to be the best way for us so far.

Nursery Rhyme: Hey Diddle Diddle
Vocabulary word: calf

For Gracelynn, who just turned 5, we are starting with the "Big Kindergarten Workbook". We bought it at Wal-Mart for $9.97. I realize I could just print worksheets off but our printer is on the fritz, I don't plan on taking the time to fix it any time super soon, and it costs 20 cents each time I want to print one sheet at the library. This is a similar book for $7.00.

Grace already knows all of her letters, but we will continue to review them as well as the sounds they make. I usually make things but I bought some flash cards from WM as well. I bought an alphabet set(Saff), numbers set (Grace&Saff), sight words set (Grace), and multiplication set (Jenelle, 8). She needs practice writing capital and lowercase letters, because she doesn't quite know the difference for all of them.

We are also going to start back up on Sign Language. I think it's a valuable tool for all kids to have.

Homeschooling for kindergarten, too? Check out this site.

Multiple age groups? Check out this one.

Third grader? How about this.

Chinese Lapbook (LOTTTTTS OF PICTURES!)

Our Chinese Lapbooks are done! Well, with the exception of Jenelle's. Hers is a little more detailed, and will take more time because she has homework of her own from school to complete when she gets home. She will post her finished lapbook on her BLOG.

Excited to get started on the lapbooks



Reading "The Pet Dragon" (their favorite out of all the books)



Working hard






RESOURCES

Books:

Magic Trixie and the Dragon: Jill Thompson

Chinese New Year Crafts: Karen E. Bledsoe

Chinese Myths: Rob Shone

Chinese Mythology: Irene Dea Collier

How to Have Fun with Letters: Stewart Cowley

The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient China: Leonard Fisher

World Book, Chinese Myths & Legends: Philip Ardagh

Hippocrene Children's Illustrated Chinese (Mandarin) Dictionary

The Dragon Lover: Yong-Shen Xuan

The Pet Dragon: Christoph Niemann

The Sons of the Dragon King, a Chinese Legend: Ed Young

Links:

Lapbook Planner PDF

Lots of great Lapbooking folds

enchantedlearning.com -- It's worth the $20/year membership for us, but there are free printables as well.

Coloring pages, Chinese New Year, etc

China Theme Unit @ ABC Teach

Chinese Zodiac Printable

GREAT resource for any COUNTRY lapbook

Chinese Lantern Printable Coloring Page

Printable "Write the # in Chinese" page

Great Wall of China Fan Fold Printable

Printable Chinese Animals PDF

Make a Chinese Book

Great Wall Printables - Book #30, printable 8 page book as well as 3 worksheets and a Fact Sheet. Must be a member but it's free to sign up.

These two are also great lapbook resources, though I didn't find anything on China.

I also printed this for them:

女孩 -- girl

男孩 -- boy

母 -- mother

女兒 -- daughter

友 -- friend

Jane corrected us on our Chinese. :)

Mother is 母亲
Daughter is 女儿 (What you got was the traditional Chinese style and I'm assuming your girls wanna learn the simplified style becos it's easier and used by majority of Chinese)
Friend is 朋友

Finished product (I tried to hide their nakedness! They lasted about 15 minutes before they took their clothes off, they're total nudists.. ugh)





















Edit: We printed the money from HERE, there is also a little video that shows you how to count to 10 on one hand. It was fun to try!