Our Journey Westward » Holidays

Candy Heart Valentine’s Day Math Printables

Cindy — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:00:39 +0000

A year or two ago, I created a couple of Valentine’s Day printables for you to enjoy with your children. I thought I’d remind you about them since V-Day is just around the corner. Simply click on the graphics to download.

The Measure of a Heart uses candy hearts to practice measuring perimeter and area. After finishing the worksheet, use your candy hearts to measure the perimeter and area of other things around the house.

(In case you need to know…Perimeter is the measurement around an object and area is the measurement of an object’s surface. To measure the perimeter of the hearts on the worksheet, place candy hearts around the edges of the hearts – the dark lines – and count how many it takes to go all the way around. To measure the area, see how many candy hearts will fit inside the hearts on the worksheet.)

The Candy Pattern worksheet (which didn’t transfer to a jpg well and is MUCH nicer in the PDF download) allows your child to make various patterns using candy hearts.

(In case you need to know…each of the letters on the worksheet (A, B, C) represent a different colored candy heart. So, for instance, an ABA pattern, where A represents pink and B represents green would look like: pink, green, pink, pink, green, pink, pink, green, pink. Your child gets to decide which colors represent each letter of the pattern.)

You can find several other fun math related V-Day ideas at Googol Learning.

I’ve been pinning fun ideas on my Valentine’s Pinterest board, too!

For those of you interested in learning how to add more living math into your homeschool, consider Loving Living Math.

Christmas School

Cindy — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 03:33:34 +0000

{Although a silly story (needing some tweaking), the science mystery experiment pictured above is both fun and worthwhile as you step away from the textbooks this Christmas season. Enjoy the Christmas Cookie Mystery with Teacher Directions.}

Below is an article I wrote for CHEK’s December Newsletter. I thought I’d post it here just in case some of you are overwhelmed this Christmas season.

Are you tired yet? By the time December rolls around each year, I’m ready for a break – only to find all the busy moments surrounding the Christmas season staring me in the face! Instead of throwing in the towel on homeschooling in order to manage all the other to-do’s of December, we have “Christmas school”. That’s a fancy term meaning we relax the regular schedule and make the to-do’s part of our school routine.

During these two or three weeks just before Christmas, the textbooks are often replaced with practical things such as menu planning, couponing, baking, party planning and decorating, shopping for presents on a budget, crafting homemade gifts, addressing Christmas cards, practicing for plays and musicals at church, and more. We’ll spend extra time fitting in service opportunities, too.

We also replace our daily Bible routine with one that prepares our hearts to celebrate the birth of Christ. There are so many different Bible schedules and Christmas devotions readily available, even some with learning activities! I’ll mention just a few to get you started. We love completing a Jesse Tree and have done this several different years. We have completed several themed studies relating to Advent, the Symbols of Christmas, and the Names of Jesus. We’re also suckers for good literature. Our very favorite Christmas series is written by Arnold Ytreeide and includes three books (read one book per year) with readings every day of December leading up to Christmas day. If you are new to this series, I would read them in the following order: Jotham’s Journey, Bartholomew’s Passage and Tabitha’s Travels.

Don’t let the craziness of December leave you feeling overwhelmed and spent. Enjoy your family. Enjoy your homeschool. Enjoy the to-do’s. Enjoy the extra-gushy time with our Lord and Savior.

Candy Math and Science

Cindy — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:08:25 +0000

Got candy? We do, and we’re having so much fun using it during living math lessons! This year we added a little science classification to the mix, too. Fun! Fun! Fun!

Math

My preschooler made a concrete graph with his candy.

He had to sort the candy into groups before we could graph them and he created the group names all by himself – gum, chocolate, suckers, crunchy, chewy and hard.

After completing all sorts of averages based on different groupings of the candy, Caleb (6th grade) created this graph using Excel. (This is another great computer integration activity for those of you who’ve asked me to share more about how we use the computer in our homeschool!)

Science

Not a great picture, but I wanted you to see the entire concrete classification system my 6th grader made with his candy. {A classification system is otherwise known as a taxonomy, which we compared to the classification system for plants and animals.}

Beginning with the main group of ‘candy’, Caleb decided how to break the large group into two smaller groups. He came up with ‘chocolate’ and ‘non-chocolate’ as his descriptions.

For each new category, he continued breaking the groups down into two new categories until he ended up with each specific type of candy in it’s own pile.

Finally, we walked through each candy’s “classification”. An example from our taxonomy chart -Candy; chocolate; bright wrappers; made with peanuts; made with peanut butter, crunchy, Butterfinger. Besides being a science activity, this also fits into the category of logic!

Check out some other candy math lessons we’ve posted in the past, too!

Christmas Nature Books

Cindy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:31:06 +0000

There are so many great Christmas books to read with your children! I’ve posted about some of my top favorites from years past. But, since I write nature studies, I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite Christmas picture books that relate well with nature study. Really good ones are few and far between, with so much twaddle to weed through! I’ll admit that a few of these are a stretch when you consider tying them into nature study, but think creatively! For instance, the following two don’t have explicit nature themes, but An Orange for Frankie is appropriate when you consider the topic of Fruits and Nuts; while Silver Packages fits best with Snow and Ice.

If you’ve come across other great Christmas & nature-related books that I haven’t mentioned, please leave a comment!

A Red and Green Walk

Cindy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:15:33 +0000

By far, the Nature Study Through the Holidays study has been our biggest seller. For that, we thank YOU! The short and simple activities tied into the Advent theme are just enough during this busy season in our house.

Last week, my three children and I headed to a local cemetery for a red and green scavenger hunt, as suggested in Nature Study Through the Holidays. Luckily for us, it was a mild day, so we took advantage of the fresh air opportunity as we scoped out small glimpses of red and unique greens in nature.

Here are some photos from our walk. We found more reds that we had predicted!

Berries

A stately conifer tree

Buds

Lichen

More buds

A thriving vine

A ladybug

Some research is leading me to think this is a prickly sow thistle, but I'm not quite convinced yet. Any ideas?

Easy Pinecone Decorations

Cindy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:12:58 +0000

During our Red and Green Walk from Nature Study Through the Holidays, we collected several cones for this activity. It’s mentioned for use during the 4th week of Advent (next week), but my preschooler was raring to go last week. So, last week it was! This is a glimpse at glittery pinecone ornaments as done by a three-year-old. Older children can take the process up a notch and make the ornaments something really spectacular!

Roll the cones in glue.

Then roll them in glitter - or sprinkle the glitter on.

Once dry, pile several cones prettily in a bowl or tie them with string to hang on your Christmas tree.

Death and Decay

Cindy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:52:54 +0000

Whether you’ve begun Nature Study Through the Holidays: Easter yet or not, you’ll likely be on the lookout for death and decay this week as you discuss Jesus’ death and burial. I wanted to share some photos of our fascinating finds this past week to give your some inspiration during your walk.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 1 Corinthians 15: 54-56

He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. Isaiah 25:8

No related posts.

The Easter Story Nature Club

Cindy — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:50:42 +0000

It’s been awhile since my Creation Club met for nature study together. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share the Easter story with them and do some mini-hunts based on some of the ideas suggested in Nature Study Through the Holidays: Easter.

Looking for purple flowers to represent the color of royalty in honor of our King Jesus.

Finding signs of death and decay when considering Jesus' burial.

Exploring large rocks to go along with the resurrection.

For the class, I created a simple scavenger hunt sheet. It’s not included in Nature Study Through the Holidays: Easter (yet), so I’d like to share with you for FREE! It can easily be used for a group or a single child. Simply click on the graphic below to download it.

The Easter Story in Nature

Preschool Christmas Fun

Cindy — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:38:22 +0000

There’s a delicate balance to be made between getting a preschooler geared up for Christmas and keeping him geared down at the same time! We chose to do a craft or activity everyday so we could talk about different aspects of Christmas and prepare his little heart for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. However, the activities were mixed in with “regular” school to keep the excitement factor under wraps. Why? I’ve been there and done that with two preschoolers in the past and too much excitement leads to crazy little people who can’t control themselves! lol

A construction paper count down chain

Play dough Christmas trees with jewel ornaments

Jingle bell bracelet

Christmas foam sticker graphing

Glittery pine cone ornaments

Measuring Christmas ribbons

Patterns with linking cubes

A relay with bows held by tongs

Christmas ornaments added to the tree from the roll of a die

A torn paper wreath

Water dropper ornaments - place waxed paper over a tree template and drop red colored water on the tree as ornaments

Simple construction paper gifts (that happened to turn into birthday thank you notes)

Christmas card collages

Hole-punch star decorations

Handprint, shoeprint reindeer

Pattern block pictures

The pattern block templates came from PreKinders.com.

Several Christmas printables

These printables came from 1+1+1=1.

Eli was a shepherd in a simple Christmas drama at church, too!

Valentine Fun

Cindy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:16:09 +0000

Today is bittersweet for us. As you’ll see below, the boys and I have been having lots of fun celebrating Valentine’s Day. However, today is Mahayla’s 13th birthday and she’s sick. She and I were supposed to be going to CIY Believe together later this afternoon with the Jr. High youth group, too. Oh well, there will be plenty of time for celebrating birthdays and worshiping our Lord when she’s better. I just hope I can convince her of that.

On the happier side of our day, see what the boys have been up to…

Caleb’s Activities

Candy hearts are a fun tool for finding area and perimeter.

They're also fun for creating patterns.

We worked on using Excel to create a bar graph from a handful of candy hearts, too.

You can find the area/perimeter sheet and patterning sheet on my Homeschool Launch page. Look for The Measure of a Heart and Candy Heart Patterns.

Another fun math activity was Pascal’s Heart Triangle from Mathwire.com, where you can find several great ideas! We also did a fun language arts activity called Heart Idioms.

Eli’s Activities

Have you heard of Confessions of a Homeschooler?? If you’re a mom of a preschooler, head over there right now! She has SUPER ideas and FREE reproducibles that go along with the letters of the alphabet and seasons or holidays. I can’t tell you how wonderful her ideas are!! Just about every idea below came from her Valentine’s ideas and resources.

We sorted candy hearts into color groups.

We used candy hearts to make a physical bar graph.

Eli wanted to paint his graph while his bubby made the spreadsheet graph.

These patterns to match were wonderfully challenging for Eli!

Candy hearts come in handy once again!

Add glue and glitter to anything and Eli is HAPPY!

Usually, we have a fun V-Day themed meal, but none of us have been much in the mood for eating this week. I’m hoping everyone is well by Sunday because the big kids are supposed to take part in preparing a spaghetti dinner for all the adults at church as a Valentine’s service project. I hope your Valentine’s celebrations are healthier than ours!