From the time I used the Five in a Row curriculum with my little bitties up until now, I’ve loved unit studies. Whether they are literature, science, or history-based, unit studies weave our learning together in meaningful and often exciting ways. You can learn how to plan a unit study in four simple steps! But,…
(This post contains affiliate links and links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) Target Age Range: 3rd-7th Skills Covered: volume, length, width, height, formulas, 2-dimesional shapes, 3-dimensional shapes Snap cubes are great for teaching perimeter, area, and volume in a hands-on way. This lesson focused on volume and understanding the formula for finding…
If you live in Central Kentucky, you are blessed when it comes to homeschool field trips right outside your door! Besides the oodles of places you can visit right around the corner, there are several fabulous opportunities within a reasonable driving distance, too. Some of our best homeschooling moments have happened on field trips. In…
My {Shortened} Story About the Beginning of Our Homeschooling Journey I bet you didn’t know we never set out in the beginning to be a homeschooling family. The wonderful twists and turns of life led us in this direction and I’m so incredibly thankful! I was a public school teacher before having children, and the…
In October, we were blessed to take a *free* pontoon tour of the KY River in Frankfort with my parents. The city offers this tour weekly late spring through early fall as a unique historical guided tour of Kentucky’s capital city. Boats, dams, bridges, flood walls, historical sties, historical stories and more made for fascinating…
Welcome to the Charlotte Mason Carnival! This edition focuses on Ms. Mason’s Principle 18: The Way of Reason. 18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to ‘lean (too confidently) to their own understanding’; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration (a) of mathematical truth, (b) of an initial…
Target Age Range: 4th-8th Skills Covered: reading, addition/multiplication, calculator skills, problem solving, charting data (This post contains affiliate links and links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) The King’s Chessboard by David Birch is a fantastic book – both for math and character training. In it, the king foolishly agrees to doubling a gift…
(This post contains affiliate links and links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) Target Age Range: 3rd-8th Skills Covered: economics, productive resources, natural resources, capital resources, human resources, sorting Last January, I took a professional development class on incorporating economics into your classroom. Yes, apparently homeschool parents can take professional development classes…they knew I…
Target Age Range: PK-1st Skills Covered: shape names, cutting, fine motor, baking, creativity This living math lesson for little people is simple and motivating. Who doesn’t want a cookie break in the middle of the school day?? 1. Make your favorite sugar cookie dough recipe first and refrigerate it. For a real living math…
Learning math with play dough geometry is so much fun! Middle and high school students like to play, too, and this series of lessons gives them a great, hands-on overview of beginning geometry. Concrete learning (actually touching, building, and manipulating things) is so important to solidify a real understanding of otherwise abstract concepts. Play dough…
Target Age Range: PK-2 Skills Covered: sorting, classification, attributes Classification is both a math and science skill. The ability to classify objects also develops organizational skills which are helpful for writing and general “life” organization. This activity is super simple to pull together. Simply gather a variety of beads (or buttons, cereal, rocks, beans…)…
Target Age Range: 4th-12th grades Skills Covered: gathering data, graphing, technology, keyboarding When I used to teach in a classroom, it was easy for my students to gather large amounts of data for graphing…there were 24+ people in the room at all times. As a homeschooler, it takes a little more creativity to gather…