A Ballerina Valentine and Homeschool Party Suggestions!

Who says homeschoolers miss out on party days?

Not I.

We have THREE valentine parties this week - count them one...two...three!  Can you believe we could have actually attended FOUR - but I had to draw the line somewhere, ya know?

Well, actually we now only have two remaining as Miss A celebrated one today with her ballet class.  

For said special occasion, I created these for her to hand out to her fellow ballerinas.  

Pssst.  You want to know a little secret?  The tutus on the card are....SCRUNCHIES!  

How perfect is that?  A little ballet bun bling, anyone (with alliteration on the side.  Can you tell I homeschool...)?

I picked these ones up at the Dollar Tree (3 for $1).  Miss A colored the leotards on each card to match.  

Don't we make a great team?  :)

The template can be found here!

I plan to make another card in the same format that could be used for ballerina party favors as well.  I'm hoping to get that out next week sometime, so pin this link now if you are interested!  

For those new to homeschooling who are worried their children might be missing out when it comes to school parties, here are some valentine party suggestions:

1.  Have a party with your family!  Plan to exchange homemade valentine cards and let kids decorate a mailbox or paper sack for each person in the family.

2.  If you are part of a homeschooling group, check within the group to see if others might be interested in having a valentine event. There's a good chance other moms would love to meet up for coffee while their kids enjoy an afternoon together passing out cards and sharing a fun snack.  

3.  Have a small party with just a few of your children's friends.

4.  Do you live in a remote area?  Do you have internet access (you probably do if you are reading this)?  Try scheduling a time when family or friends can hop online and chat, skype, etc.  Let your kids make a valentine card or valentine story to read or show them.

5.  Minister to someone this Valentine's Day!  Hand out carnations or roses or cookies to elderly residents at a nursing home.  Surprise a widow with a love package - flowers or cookies or a gift card to order out that night, or an invitation to your home for the evening!  :)

And most importantly, have a happy, grace-filled homeschooling week!  :)

Michelle

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Lesson Theme: Hot Chocolate!

The last few weeks of winter seemed to stretch out further than I wanted to plan.  Cold, cheerless...well, maybe I am being a bit overdramatic.  But cold, definitely cold.  A vision of hot chocolate kept coming to mind - wouldn't a cup of that be nice right now... I couldn't seem to shake the unbidden thought.  So I decided to meet it head on by incorporating the idea into a unit about said steaming mug of chocolatey goodness.   Could something so delicious be educational as well?  Yes, dear readers - it could...

Right about now you are probably thinking,  are those dice marshmallows?

Y-e-p.

I used food safe markers to write the numbers on the sides and tops of two miniature marshmallows (I think larger marshmallows might have been better but we didn't have any larger ones on hand).

If you have large marshmallows, consider drawing pictures or writing words on them to use for story dice.  :)

We used the dice for our "Roll the Ultimate Mug of Hot Chocolate" activity.  Once Miss A acquired all the pieces, she helped to glue them down and wrote number sentences for what she rolled.

If you homeschool or have permission to bring in the ingredients for making hot chocolate in your classroom, something extra fun would be to roll a REAL mug of hot chocolate.  I wanted to do this but didn't get it together in time - plus, we had more than enough hot chocolate this week on other days.  :)  One more cup might have been over the top...or brim...;)

We made two kinds of hot chocolate (one from scratch and one from a mix) and taste tested both.  Miss A wrote comparisons and contrasts and documented which one she liked the best.

She also helped me make the hot chocolate from scratch, so using the "First, Next, Last" model, I had her write down directions for how one makes the perfect mug of hot chocolate.

We also played an activity I came up with called "The Hot Choc Spot".  Just like chocolate and milk combine to make a great cup of hot chocolate, different parts of speech combine to make a great sentence, right?  :)  Here's what we did...

Miss A trained to become a Master Hot Chocolate Maker.  The training consisted of sorting hot chocolate related words into mugs for different parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives).


Once she did that successfully, I gave her a certificate documenting her ascension to the rank of Master Hot Chocolate Maker.



She then took a job at "The Hot Choc Spot" where she helped complete orders for parts of speech mixes (an order might be "1 verb, 2 nouns", and she would have to find a verb and two nouns from the hot chocolate words to fill the order).


As her "supervisor" who wanted to make sure she knew what she was doing, I had her write a sentence using the words from one of the orders.  She chose to make it a silly sentence which was fine - just as long as I could see she knew how to apply the words appropriately in a sentence.

Have you ever wanted to be a marshmallow bag checker in a factory?  Well Miss A had the opportunity this week to be one at The Marshmallow Factory.

Again, as her supervisor, I would write a number at the top of her work station (paper) for the day.  She would then have to check the marshmallow bags (I put the "marshmallows" on beforehand) on the paper to see if they equaled that number.

If they did not, she was responsible for adding or subtracting enough marshmallows to/from each bag so that the correct number for the day was achieved.  She also had to document her work by writing corresponding number sentences showing what she had done.

When she completed balancing all three bags successfully for the day, I would "pay" her wage for the day into a small bag to give her at the end of the week on PAY DAY.  Her wage for the day = one pink heart marshmallow.

By the end of the week, she had enough heart marshmallows collected to top off one very yummy mug of hot chocolate for our dessert night (see bottom of post)!

Speaking of marshmallows....

Miss A graphed some of the mini-colored ones and then used the answers to finish up some math sentences.

These little guys also came in handy for spelling and sight word practice!  :)

During the week, we also practiced some of our math facts by matching some "stir stick" (popsicle stick) math sentences to the answers on the mugs.

Each stick had two math sentences - one in black on one side and one written in blue on the other side.  We would do the black math sentences one day and switch to the blue ones on another day.

We also had some fun measuring two different types of stir sticks (peppermint and cinnamon) and making observations about what would happen to each one once placed in some hot chocolate!

We discovered what kind of hot chocolate toppings some people in our family prefer by using this Venn Diagram.  Download it for FREE here.

We used a mug picture I made to create a bar graph showing what kind of hot chocolate people in our home prefer (mix or homemade).  I guess you can tell what our family's preference was - no contest there!

Not only that, but we could again see what people's favorite toppings were on this graph based on how they decked out the top of their hot chocolate (added cotton for whipped cream OR white pom poms for marshmallows OR both).  :)

I LOVE how this picture turned out!  I had seen a cute art idea (link is here), and wanted to do something similar.  This unit seemed to fit right in so Miss A went to work painting, and I glued some mittens (found on clearance) to her painting for a multi dimensional effect.

For the final day of our hot chocolate unit, I surprised Miss A with a hot chocolate bar for dessert night!  I used the bar graph to determine what kind of hot chocolate to make for the family!

So, you see?  Educational AND delicious!

Many of the games and items I used for this theme are available in my TPT store under the Hot Chocolate Mini Activity Pack.

Speaking of hot chocolate...guess who paid us a visit!  We found a little green mug topped with green marshmallows on the counter (and a bit of a mess too).  Now I wonder who that could belong too?  Guess we must have surprised someone in mid slurp because it doesn't look like he finished much of his hot chocolate!

Time to put on our leprechaun-catching thinking caps before the mischief gets out of hand!  To help keep track of the clues our little green-loving troublemaker leaves behind, I created a Leprechaun Detective Journal.   If you have any leprechauns about that need catching, you might want to print this for your kiddos as well!  Download for FREE here.

BTW - Don't forget to snap up your FREE Educents (educational materials) gift certificate before they are no longer available prior to their launch in April!  Click here to go to my post with the link to the site.

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Lesson Theme: Valentine's Day!

(Pretend this is February 14th) Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  ;)
Here are some snippets from our holiday theme...

We've been practicing fact families for subtraction so I made some fact families on heart doilies, cut them apart, and had Miss A figure out which ones went together.

This was a probability freebie from The First Grade Parade.  LOVE her site!  Very creative.  :)

We practiced symmetry by painting hearts on one side, folding them, and opening them up again.  As you can see, there was at least one heart where Miss A was getting a little carried away with painting and forgot about just doing one side.  :)

They turned out so pretty that I decided to string them up for some Valentine's Day decoration!

A while ago, I saw (wish I had pinned it!) an activity that was done using empty chocolate boxes.  Genius!  :)

While I cannot remember what the activity was or where I saw it - the idea stayed with me.  I loved the concept of using the empty boxes so much that I decided I would just have to come up with something on my own this year.  I cut out some brown paper circles, squares and rectangles for pretend chocolates.  On one side of each, I wrote things I wanted my kiddos to practice (math facts, spelling words, letters, etc.)  Using a blank heart with circles that I found here (with a different fun activity), I wrote the match of each chocolate on a circle.

Miss A and Mr. J enjoyed seeing what was on the back of their "chocolates" when turned over.  They would match the word or problem (the answer to the problem) to a circle on the heart paper which they then colored in.

Valentine picks to the rescue!  We used these as pointers!  :)

Of course, what would Valentine's Day be without a special love note or two?  It's the perfect time to practice letter writing skills!  :)

I set up a love letter writing center complete with heart stationary, envelopes (these had some pretend glittery heart stamps I drew in the stamp area), a bunch of different Valentine-ish pens/pencils in a fancy vase, and a mailbox.  I also included a cute printable I found that shows the parts of a letter so Miss A would have something to refer to when writing her letters - and write she did!!!  She LOVED it and encouraged others to use the center too.  :)

When the letters had been written and sealed, we dropped them in the pretend mailbox and Miss A helped me sort and deliver them into the appropriate individual household mailboxes the night before Valentine's Day.

Here's a picture of a couple of the cutest mailboxes we found at Target in the dollar section this year.  Perfect for stuffing with love letters!  :)

I also decided it would be neat to make a little fold-out heart book with Miss A.  I just love reading what she comes up with for activities where some of the writing is left up to her.

I had the book "Guess How Much I Love You" (see link below) in the back of my mind so this kind of goes along with that idea.  The heart book cover starts out with "I Love You" and then folds out with other pages continuing the thought (Miss A's responses in italics) "as long as ___(the world), as high as ___(the sky), as deep as___(the sea), as big as ___(a bear), as far as___(heven), as ___(nice) as ___(a flowr).

Here's how I made the book:  I cut out some hearts, wrote the text on one side of each (and added a border), glued them to a couple sentence strip pieces, folded it up, and tied it with a pink ribbon.

And now for my Valentine's gift to YOU!  :)  I finally bought a license and can now offer freebies I make!  Yippeee!  :)  I am pretty excited about that, and I hope you are too!

I have been working on a Hot Chocolate Mini Activity Pack (should be available in my TPT store soon) and decided to make one of the activity pages into a freebie that people could incorporate into a Christmas, Valentine's Day, or Winter theme.  Hope you LOVE it!  :)  Download it FREE here.

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Lesson Theme: Winter and Snowmen!

I had planned to post this a while ago, but we had a critical family emergency almost two weeks ago and it is still an ongoing situation.  Some family members flew in and are staying with us - at this point, we just have to wait and pray.  

Needless to say, my attention has been focused elsewhere a majority of the time, but today I have a few moments to spare and thought I would hop on here and post this.  Keep in mind a good chunk of this was written much earlier in the month...

We've spent quite a few days on our winter activities in school.  Hope you are "snow" (cheesy, but I couldn't resist) excited to see what we've been up to...

With winter things on the mind, a visit to the Snow Fairy Shop was in order.  Miss A could pretend to be a snow fairy buying snowflakes to scatter across a winter scene.  Great practice for money and double digit number addition!  

The snowflakes she purchased, she later added to a winter coloring page we found online and printed (she could pretend to be a snow fairy causing it to snow on her picture).

Another great winter activity - building snow forts!  The forts will hopefully grow as we come up with more word snow bricks to add to the appropriate forts.  

I saw this here and thought it was such a cute idea that I decided to make one for Mr. J to play with after reading the story "Katy and the Big Snow".   (The buildings are just empty boxes - cereal, crackers, etc. - with a piece of paper on the front.  Very cheap to make, and your city can grow all week long depending on what you have finished up for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.)

And what is winter without the occasional snowball fight?  For practicing our number facts, Miss A would choose a number sentence paper, figure out the answer, crumple it up and then throw it at the appropriate face (the answers below each head match the number sentence snowballs).  

To make this, I slipped each of the faces into a sheet protector and put a bunch of double stick tape on the front in hopes that the snowballs would stick when they hit the faces.  Sadly, they didn't, so we went to Plan B...

Plan B:  If Miss A hit the appropriate face, she could then pick up the paper and press it onto the face.  Doing this often worked out better for having the snowballs stick to the faces at least for a few minutes.  If we do this activity again next year, I think we should try using tissue paper snowballs instead which I think would stick a lot better to the tape.  Anyways, it was fun just to toss the snowballs at the correct faces.

Snowflake fact matching was another way of practicing our math facts.  Just connect the number sentences to the correct answer to make a snowflake.

We also practiced a bit of symmetry using snowflakes.  I would give Miss A half of a snowflake and some q-tips and she would have to finish it by creating the other half on the other side.

I gave Miss A a few seconds to hunt for words in the "snow" and gather as many as she could.  She then used the words she collected to write a story in her journal.  She did such a good job using them all!

Catching snowflakes on your tongue is overrated - why not catch them with your mitts instead?  I wrote words on some foam snowflakes we had, and we first sorted the snowflakes by NOUNS, VERBS, and ADJECTIVES.   We then gathered them together, and I threw them in the air a couple of times.  The ones which Miss A caught, she used to come up with some sentences and write them into her journal.  

I saw this cute snow globe activity, and just knew I wanted to try to make our own!  After Miss A finished her snow globe scene, we pretended she lived in a snow globe and had to answer the questions about her life inside.  It was cute to see what she came up with...

Using small plastic cups, we tried to see how high we could stack them (no glue) to make a snowman - we then used my son's new measuring tape to practice measuring the height.  I believe the record to beat was 27.5 inches.  :)

We are supposed to be practicing fact families on a daily or almost daily basis.  Because of our winter theme, I decided to sneak a snowman into the process.  I made him with scrap paper and slipped him inside a clear plastic sleeve - that way I can continue to write the facts on the snowman and erase the whole thing after Miss A is done writing her math sentences for the day.  The next day, I can just write a new fact family on the snowman (I try to write the smallest number on the top and go in descending order with the biggest number on the biggest snowball at the bottom).  

Side note:  I can see using this to practice making three letter words as well!

We also came up with a simple dessert to go along with our chilly theme - see more about our Snow Bars here.

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