Mission of the Month September 2011 {and Aug Accomplishments}

Welcome to Mama’s Mission of the Month! My hope is that this will help me {and you} follow through on some of the goals that we have set for the month! So, if you are a mama and you want to join in, check out the intro post! (If you have already read the rules, you can easily grab the buttons from the Buttons Tab on the top of the sidebar.)

August Mission Update: My August mission was to finish my daughter’s lesson plans, come up with something for the little guys, and to work on some African American history units for the kids.  Well…life happened and I didn’t get it all done. I DID finish up my daughter’s lesson plans, which have made school and planning SOOOO much easier these first few weeks of school. {And, yes, I am still loving my Weekly Homeschool Planner!} However, I have not compiled anything for my little guys. I have had family in town, so they have “entertained” them while I have school with the older kids. And, while I have brainstormed some potential historical figures, I have yet to pull together the African American history units. So…

 

My Mission for September 2011: Well, since my relatives will not be here forever, I have GOT to get a plan together for my little guys! And, since the African American history units have been in the works {…in my head} for over two years now, I have GOT to get started on this as well! So, that is what I am going to be working on this month!

What is your September mission of the month?

If you participated last month, how did you do?

Feel free to link up and share! It is a great way to hold yourself accountable! For more information on how to join in, please read the intro post. The linky will be open until midnight, September 5th.

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Apple Grid Games

It has been awhile since I made some grid games! With fall right around the corner, I wanted to get these Apple Grid Games complete! So, this is what I came up with!

We usually play our Grid Games along with our Education Cubes and the coordinating insert cards. Using standard dice is possible with some of the games. However, we think it is much more fun with the Education Cubes! To play the first game, roll the cube and count the number of objects on the cube. Using counters of some sort, cover the same number of objects on the grid until it is full. To play the second game, roll the cube with the different colored apple insert cards. Find and cover a matching apple. Continue until the grid is full. (Click here for information on the Apple insert cards.)

Helpful Hints: I prefer to slide the game into a page protector and use it on top of a magnetic cookie sheet. We use our puff ball magnets as counters to cover the grid. As an option, you could use dry erase markers and simply mark off the objects on the grid rather than using counters. Click here to see one of our grid games in action!

Download the Apple Grid Games (and many others) Here!

Check out our apple unit for loads more fun apple activities!

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The Great Paper {Airplane} Caper

A number of months back we read the book The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers. It is a fun book about a mystery in the forest. The branches on the trees have begun to disappear. A full-scale investigation is launched and it is later discovered that Bear has secretly been cutting down tree branches. He has been feeding the branches into his paper making machine so that he can make the perfect paper airplane to enter into the 112th Paper Airplane Competition. This is a cute little book that even has instructions for making your own paper airplanes. My daughter loved following the instructions to make her own paper airplane.

The book also spurred on my sons’ idea to make and sell paper airplanes, much like their creative books. They made quite a collection! I had to remind them about all of the trees they used up making their airplanes! :-)

 

Gotta love their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. Even now, months after this adventure, they are still trying to come up with their own little business and ways to make money! It reminds me of myself when I was a little girl! I used DMC floss to make bracelets and I went around the neighborhood with my handmade order form trying to sell them! I guess it is in the blood!  ;-)

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Feel & Find World Icons {Review & Giveaway Link}

To be completely honest, when we first received the Guidecraft 3D Feel and Find World Icons, I was a bit skeptical about how my kids would like them. Well, I was completely wrong! My kids really enjoyed their new sensory toy and I have been completely surprised by how much they have played with the set!

3D Feel and Find World Icons are colorful wooden shapes with coordinating circular tiles. The chunky, wooden shapes are easily recognizable icons found in cultures throughout the world. The twenty shapes include a car, sun, moon, fish, rabbit, boy, girl, bird, leaf, etc. My favorite part is that the set comes with a canvas drawstring bag to store all the pieces! LOVE IT!!

When I first pulled out the World Icons, my little guys had fun exploring them and matching up the pieces.

We sorted the pieces by color.

We stacked and made patterns.

We played a color matching game of memory with the tiles.

My favorite part was when we created stories based on the shapes. The kids took turns reaching into the bag to randomly choose three shapes. Then they created a story based on the three shapes. We continued to add onto the story by randomly selecting more shapes! It was fun to hear the creativity of my kids!

Win it! Would you like to win a set of 3D Feel and Find World Icons? Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier is hosting a giveaway for a set of World Icons! The giveaway will end on September 7th at 11:59pm CST. Head on over and enter to win!!!

Buy It! If you can’t wait to win, you can purchase a set of Feel and Find World Icons directly from the Guidecraft website or you can purchase it via Amazon!

As a Guidecraft Mom blogger, this product was given to me for review purposes. I do not have to return the product to the vendor and I was not paid for this post. All opinions expressed in this post are my own.

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John 3:16 {printables & copywork pages}

Here are some John 3:16 printables I wanted to share. I couldn’t decide which I liked best…so I made three different versions to choose from!

After I created the Matthew printables to go along with our My Father’s World Exploring Countries & Cultures, I realized that I had not made printables or copywork pages for John 3:16. So, I whipped them up and wanted to share them with you!

Download the John 3:16 printables and copywork pages from my MFW ECC Supplemental Printables page!

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Mamasource {Deals for Mamas}

This is my latest discovery! I found out about Mamasource after a friend forwarded me an email about an amazing deal on National Geographic Little Kids (which happens to end VERY soon…if you want to cash in on it, you should head over ASAP!).

So, I looked into Mamasource a little more and discovered that they offer lots of money-saving deals that are custom-crafted for moms and their families. Not only are the deals tailored to moms and their families, but the deals are also region specific so that you can get discounts from businesses that are local to you. They also have national deals that are available to moms all over the US. The best part (aside from all of the great deals) is that you can sign up for free! Is anyone else already using Mamasource?

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Red Light, Green Light

As part of the Once Upon a Book feature on Totally Tots, we had fun with a transportation theme. Although our transportation unit was awhile back, I still wanted to share our transportation fun! Throughout the week, we read the book, Red Light, Green Light by Anastasia Suen! This is a fun, rhyming book about a little boy and his adventure playing with cars, buses, fire engines and more as they obey the traffic signals…red light stop, green light go!

Here is a sneak peek at a few of our activities to go along with the book!

Math: We used the Number Highway printables from Making Learning Fun. The boys drove the appropriate number of cars on each number highways. Of course, five green cars had to drive on highway #5 on the green tray!

Colors: We pulled out our “collection” of cars and the boys worked together to sort them all by color. Each car drove up onto the colored paper to park!

Games: The Racing Racecars game is ALWAYS a hit with all of my boys. We used our number insert cards for our Education Cubes to play the game!

More Fun: We also had fun with our rollin’ racecar, which is a super fun car made from recycled materials that can really zoom across the floor!

To see ALL of our transportation activities, head on over to check out my complete Red Light, Green Light post on Totally Tots!

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Read it. Stamp it. Write it. {Printables}

The Read it. Stamp it. Write it. pages are some fun, multi-sensory printables that I made for my kids to use to practice their spelling words. Here is what a completed page looks like: 

I created these pages to go along with our Spell to Write and Read curriculum and have included stamping pages for Lists A-I.

Directions:

1. Read the word in the left column.
2. Move to the middle column and stamp the phonograms into the boxes. Single letter phonograms are stamped in a box by themselves. Multi-letter phonograms are stamped together in a single, larger box. This helps provide a visual for the phonograms found within each word. (We like to use our Educational Insights Transparent See and Stamp stamps, but other stamps can be used as well.)
3. Finally, write the word on the lines in the right column.
4. Continue this pattern until all of the words have been read, stamped, and written.

A special thanks to Carisa from 1+1+1=1. Her Name Stamping printable page inspired me to create my Read it. Stamp it. Write it. pages.

Download the Read it. Stamp it. Write it. printables from my Spelling Printables webpage.

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Hero Tales {Character Quality Copywork}

One of the books included in the My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum is Hero Tales by Dave & Neta Jackson. It is a treasury of true stories from the lives of Christian heroes! Some of the heroes included in this volume are Amy Carmichael, George Muller, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther, Dwight L. Moody, Samuel Morris, and John Wesley. I am VERY excited to use this book with my daughter this year!

One of the suggestions in the MFW ECC curriculum is to use the character qualities printed at the end of each story as copywork. So, I decided to whip up some printables to use just for that! Since my daughter loves drawing, I also added additional space for her to illustrate the character quality or some other aspect from the story. Once we dive into Hero Tales, I will be sure to post some of her work!

Even if you don’t have the Hero Tales book or are not using MFW ECC, these could still be used as a great way to work on penmanship while reinforcing some positive character qualities at the same time!

You can download the Hero Tales printables from my MFW ECC Supplemental Printables page.

PLEASE NOTE: These printables were designed for use by 2nd and 3rd graders using the My Father’s World Exploring Countries & Cultures curriculum.

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MamaJenn.com

Some of you may have already noticed that I have set up a Mama Jenn website! I have been working on it behind the scenes for many months now. I created it to go along with my blog as a way to house my printables (in lieu of using 4shared). So, if you haven’t been over to check it out, here is a bit of what you will find.

First off, you can find the site at www.MamaJenn.com. If you want to be notified when new “stuff” is added to the site, be sure to stay connected. If you aren’t already, you can subscribe via email and/or RSS feed AND you can follow via FB and/or Twitter directly from the homepage.

You can easily check out the recent blog posts directly from the homepage. If you are looking for something in particular, you can use the search box to search the website and the blog. Or, you can click through the categories shown below:

The alphabetical categories (shown above) will serve as an index of what you can find on the site.

Finally, at the bottom of the page, you can access all of my other sites.

Back to the categories…if you click on a link within the categories…

…you will be taken to that particular page. From those linked pages, you can easily “Return Home” to go back to the MamaJenn.com homepage OR you can click “Visit the Blog” to head over to my main blog.

Hopefully having the website will make it easier to download my printables. Since I am still in the process of transferring my files from 4shared over onto my website (and changing the 4shared links within the blog), I will be making general blog posts announcing what things have been transferred.  So, be sure to stay connected for the updates! And, while you’re at it, be sure to head over and take a peek at MamaJenn.com!

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Matthew Printables & Copywork Pages {MFW ECC}

As with all of our MFW curriculum up to this point, I have created printables and copywork pages to go along with the Bible verses. This year my daughter will be learning verses from the book of Matthew. So, of course I have been hard at work making these:

The verses coordinate with those included in the My Father’s World Exploring Counties & Cultures curriculum. To download the Matthew Bible printables and copywork pages (for free), head over to my MFW ECC Supplemental Printables webpage.

PLEASE NOTE: These printables were designed for use by 2nd and 3rd graders using the My Father’s World Exploring Countries & Cultures curriculum.

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2011-2012 Curriculum Plans

Well, it is that time of year again! The summer is almost over and a new school year is right around the corner! Where oh where did the summer go?!?! I can hardly believe that I will have a 3rd grader, two 1st graders, and two preschoolers! Man oh man! With that said, here are our 2011-2012 curriculum plans…

Bible: Grapevine Studies AND My Father’s World Exploring Countries & Cultures

Spelling: Spell to Write and Read AND SpellQuizzer

Grammar: Primary Language Lessons (with the Teacher Guide & the PLL Workbook) AND My Wise Grammar (goes along with SWR)

Reading: McCall-Crabbs: Standard Test Lessons in Reading

Math: Singapore Math 3A (will finish up 2B first)

Science: My Father’s World ECC

History/Geography: My Father’s World ECC AND Expedition Earth

Arts & Crafts: My Father’s World ECC

Music: My Father’s World ECC

Typing: Typing Instructor

Life Skills: Keepers at Home

Spanish: Undecided…

PE: Undecided…

Bible: Grapevine Studies AND My Father’s World 1st Grade

Spelling: Spell to Write and Read AND SpellQuizzer

Grammar: My Wise Grammar (goes along with SWR)

Reading: McCall-Harby: Test Lessons in Primary Reading AND McCall-Crabbs: Standard Test Lessons in Reading (after McCall-Harby)

Writing: Cursive First

Math: Singapore Math 1A & 1B

Science: My Father’s World 1st Grade

Arts & Crafts: My Father’s World 1st Grade

Music: My Father’s World 1st Grade

Life Skills: Little Contenders for the Faith (will be done with the preschoolers as well)

Spanish: Undecided…

PE: Undecided…

I really feel like I have not made “teaching” the little guys as much of a priority as I should have. Rather than providing intentional learning opportunities, I just found activities to “occupy” them so that I could work with the older kids. However, that is all about to change…once I decide what I am going to use with them! That is part of my Mission of the Month…so that it WILL get done!

Final Thoughts: I am excited about this year. I have been working hard…very hard…at planning out our ENTIRE school year! I am hoping to avoid the Sunday night panic, when I realize that I am not ready for the upcoming school week. So, having most of the lesson plans already done has already provided me a HUGE sense of relief and accomplishment! I am sure that I will have to make adjustments as we go along, but the base of it is all planned out! I used my new editable pdf planner for my daughter’s lesson plans! I am so thrilled b/c I will be able to use those very same lesson plans for the rest of my kids when they reach 3rd grade! Plus, I will only have to edit it to create lesson plans for all subsequent school years! Yay!!!

FYI…I have created and will create printables and activities to go along with many of our subjects. As I have them ready, I will be sharing them with you all!

With that said, those are our 2011-2012 Curriculum Plans. I am sure I have forgotten something, but this IS already enough…right?!?!?!  Is it REALLY that time of the year?

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Mission of the Month August 2011 {and July Accomplishments}

Welcome to Mama’s Mission of the Month! My hope is that this will help me {and you} follow through on some of the goals that we have set for the month! So, if you are a mama and you want to join in, check out the intro post! (If you have already read the rules, you can easily grab the buttons from the Buttons Tab on the top of the sidebar.)

July Mission Update: I had a very lofty goal for July. I wanted to get our entire 2001-2012 school year completely planned out for all five kids. Well, even though I must get this…

…I am SOOO PROUD of myself! I may not have completely completed my mission, but I have N.E.V.E.R been had this much planned out BEFORE the school year has even started!

3rd Grade: So far I have all of my daughter’s 3rd grade lessons planned out for the WHOLE year except for math and Spanish. My excuse? Well, we just got our math books in the mail and I still don’t know what we are going to use for Spanish. Regardless, I am SOO thrilled!

This year I used my new Weekly Homeschool Planner from Homeschool Creations and loved it! Since it is an editable pdf, I will be able to use the same planner for years and years to come. Just think, when my boys reach 3rd grade, I will already have most of their lessons already planned and saved! Yeah!

1st Grade: Now, lest you forget, I also have 4 other kids (two grade levels) to plan lessons for…Well, I have COMPLETED my twins 1st grade lesson plans! Yes, it is all done!!! I can hardly believe it! I had every intention of using my editable planner for their lessons, but the kids were not too happy with all the time I spent on the computer doing my daughter’s lesson plans. {For some reason, they don’t like me doing lesson plans on the computer…BUT, it is okay if I am doing them…NOT on the computer. Go figure…} Sooooo…I used my printable lesson plan pages for the boys. Either way, the lessons are planned and we are all set and I am thrilled!

Preschool: As for the little guys, I am still in limbo. So, no plans yet. But, that is where my August mission comes into play…

My Mission for August 2011: Well, since (I think) we will be starting school this month, my mission is to finish my daughter’s lesson plans and to come up with something for the little guys so that I will not be a Tot School drop-out two years in a row!  I am also working on some African American history units and I hope to have a few of them complete before the month is over. So, that sounds fairly manageable, right?!?!? 

What is your August mission of the month?

If you participated last month, how did you do?

Feel free to link up and share! It is a great way to hold yourself accountable! For more information on how to join in, please read the intro post. The linky will be open until midnight, August 5th.

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