I love puzzles and I was always one of those people who loved having a puzzle on the table to work on little by little. Somehow over the years, we’ve gotten out of the habit of puzzle solving. We don’t even really do many puzzles with the kids, which makes me sad. I think there…
What do you do when you want to get your young kids excited about math? You find a theme that resonates with them and find a way to incorporate math into that theme! Last week we did dinosaurs, which was wildly popular at my house. Transportation themes come in a close second. And I just…
We are color coding our LEGO bricks. Not even kidding! We have about a million sharp and pointy LEGO bricks all over the place. Even the cats hate stepping on the…but they are getting organized and it is so awesome. As a kid, we had a small box of LEGO bricks. Each kid got to…
Getting kids excited about reading by themselves can be tricky. We spend years and years reading to them and they don’t want that to stop (and rightfully so) but sometimes that also means they resist reading by themselves. My kids are not really motivated readers. They take some prodding. But with easy reader books that…
Multiplication is the first big fish in the math pond, or that’s how my kids see it at least. When learning concepts like addition and subtraction, they kind of don’t even know that’s what they’re learning. It’s presented from preschool age and then suddenly we tell them “Oh by the way, that’s called addition”. But…
Everyone has concerns when they start homeschooling or think about starting homeschooling. Some concerns are covering all the material, keeping them engaging, socialization, etc. My biggest concern is independence and responsibility. I grew up in public schools and my parents education philosophy was fairly hands off. Don’t get me wrong – they cared immensely about…
I have the harder time finding fun work for my older kids (especially Baloo, at 10). Sometimes he just wants something fun like his brothers! But if I make something just for him, I have two younger kids begging to join in. So when I can put something together that they can all use, it’s…
It’s time for a new theme and one of my favorites – transportation! All week long we will have a great assortment of transportation printables! Don’t miss any by either signing up for the newsletter: Or by keeping an eye on the 31 Days of Printables page! This is another printable I made just…
Did you know studies show that clutter actually had an affect on our brain chemistry? That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yet, when people adopt a minimalist attitude, they have overwhelmingly positive reports. More time with family, less stress, more money, etc. We’ve been working on minimizing for a few months and oh my gosh, it…
People all learn in different ways, right? I was the kid in school who pretty much always learned new concepts quickly. I am the person the public school system is designed for. My kids are not. They’re not slow learners they just don’t learn that way. Earlier this year I found Times Tales, which is…
What do you do for kids that are having trouble memorizing their math facts? All of my boys are working on memorizing some facts and without motivation, it just seems like slow going. We play games, watch math shows, and even do bedtime math. Sometimes though, I need something that I can just hand over…
I’ve never been very good at Scrabble even though my mom is a whiz. I’m happy to get a 3 letter word down and she isn’t happy if she doesn’t get at least one BINGO in a game. We’re just on different Scrabble levels. So activities like making a word out of a bigger word…