Creative Homeschooling

One of the main goals I set early on in our homeschool was to give my children a love of learning.  Creative homeschooling is the mode I’ve used to successfully do that.  Don’t think that you can never put your child in front of a textbook or computer screen to homeschool creatively!  Instead, think of it as offering your children curriculum and styles to meet their needs.  Sometimes that will be a textbook or computer class.  Other times, it may be a unit study, living literature, field trips, games, project-based learning, co-op classes, or interest-based studies.  These articles show you how.  Be inspired!

Popcorn Math Activity

  (This post contains affiliate links and links to my business website, Shining Dawn Books.) Target Age Range:  3rd-8th Skills Covered:  estimation, capacity measurements, multiplication, calculator, collecting data, making comparisons, cooking Food motivates my children and I suspect it might motivate your children, too!  It just happens to be a bonus that this food inspired…

Fun with Patterns

  Target Age Range: PK-6th Skills Covered: finishing patterns, growing patterns, symmetry, naming patterns, area, perimeter, charting, relationships between patterns, number patterns, problem solving PK-2 Activities Top Photo: Begin a simple pattern (using any manipulative you like) and ask your child to continue the pattern. To help young children begin to understand what a pattern…

Living Math Series

Beginning next week… October 15-26… a series full of practical ideas for incorporating more living math into your school days! Join me here daily!  Better yet, add my feed to your feed reader so you’re sure not to miss a post!

KY Field Trip Frenzy

We have an unwritten tradition of starting our school year off with a field trip or two.  Sometimes the field trips are more like vacations – like when we went to Virginia.  Other times, it’s an overnight stay somewhere or a few simple day trips.  This year, we had so much fun kicking off the…

Patriotic Fun

Looking for a simple way to engage your children in some fun learning this summer? Why not try a few learning centers! What is a learning center? Quite simply, a few goodies based on a certain theme that you put together for your children to explore. Yep, that’s it. Easy and intriguing. Here’s the latest…

M&M image for a blog post about M&M Math

M&M Math

(This post contains affiliate links.) Talk about a fun week of learning with M&M Math! Below you’ll find all sorts of activities we have done for M&M Math.  Most of the ideas could easily be used with other types of candy pieces, too. Estimation: Fill a jar with M&M’s and ask your children to estimate…

Notebooking Success Review

Check out what Jimmie of Jimmie’s Collage and Notebooking Fairy has written!  What a gem it is! This post contains affiliate links.  Read my entire disclosure policy here. Clear.  Concise.  Full of practical ideas.  Easy to implement.  Very motivating!  Those are phrases that perfectly describe Notebooking Success by my blogging friend, Jimmie. I’m not new…

Pumpkin Math

Every autumn, we enjoy a little pumpkin math! All our children participate according to their abilities – from the 4yo to the 14yo.  This year, the 11yo and 14yo were expected to measure with complete accuracy, while the 4yo dabbled in learning how to measure.  He used standard (rulers) and non-standard (blocks) measuring tools. I…