Brookie-Lee

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Felt Ice Cream Cone Patterns

Posted on January 26, 2013 by bleeglaser

On February 12th, 2013 I am hosting a busy bag swap at my church in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. I’m super excited. Already we have moms signed up for four groups! Each group has ten people. That’s 40 different busy bags so far! That is super exciting to me because that means that I will have activities for my two little girls to keep them stimulated and occupied while I teach their older brothers during our homeschool days.

I’m in all four groups so far. So I need to make four activities x10. So I better get started. For one of the groups I’m doing felt ice cream cones with pattern cards. I found the patterns on this website for the cone and ice scream scoops as well as the pattern cards. I minimized them to a more realistic and practical size and created this pdf if you would like to use it. So the planning part was super easy. I have tons of felt from past Christmas ornament swaps I’ve done so now it’s just cutting, cutting, and more cutting! 😀

Busy Bag Swap in KC area

Posted on January 23, 2013 by bleeglaser

I am homeschooling my two sons who are in kindergarten and 2nd grade. Quite often when we are doing our lessons my two little daughters want to join us. The girls aren’t interested in the lesson but they want to sit with us and do something entertaining. So right now I get out the counting animals, the dry erase boards, or coloring books. I’m looking for more activities to stimulate them and keep them occupied while we work.

I’ve heard of busy bags over the past several years, seen them mentioned on social media, and decided to look into them for the girls. My youngest daughter is 21 months and my older daughter is 3 1/2 years old. So we need busy bags to get them stimulated and keep them occupied while mom teaches big brothers. As I was looking online at all the different options for busy bags I realized that having some for my kindergartener would be fantastic too. He doesn’t spend the whole day in lessons like my 2nd grader and he would love the extra stimulation.

So I put my feelers out on my social media accounts and groups that I’m apart of to see if there was interest and I’m so happy to see that there is. In the effort to keep things organized I’m going to use my website to post the group(s) and items. We will be doing a maximum # of people in each group of 10. If there is enough interest we will do more than one group. The bags will be exchanged at noon on February 12th in the Lee’s Summit area(TBD).

You’re Invited!

What: Busy Bag Swap!
Where: At my church in the Lee’s Summit area off Colbern Road. (I will pm the address to those who sign up.)
When: Tuesday, February 12th at noon (Bring a sack lunch!)
Who: Join other mamas looking for activities to help stimulate and occupy their child.
How: Comment below or facebook me to sign up and let me know what activity you will be creating(check the blog to make sure there aren’t duplicates). Then create/assemble/hand make an activity that is appropriate for the age range and store it inside of a 1 gallon plastic zip loc bag. On the bag write in permanent marker: the name of the person in the group, the age range the swap is for, and your name. Inside the bag include instructions on how your activity is to be used. Bring a box, basket, or large tote with your name on it for everyone to put your new busy bags in. (Bring a sack lunch.) Pinterest has tons of ideas for busy bags. Here is a link to my Busy Bag board.

Note: If you don’t make it the day of the swap and you didn’t make arrangements for the busy bags you made to get there the day of the swap, then the bags that were made for you by others will be traded among the people in attendance at the swap. It’s too hard to distribute the bags you made to nine other people after the swap.

Note: You can make more bags than the groups you are in. Others at the swap may make more too and you can swap outside a group. 😀

Sign Up List

Busy Bag Swap Group #1
1) Brookie-Lee: Felt button bird with colored feathers
2) Jayna: Felt Fishing
3) Candice: Popsicle stick puzzle
4) Ali: color matching boxes
5) Leslie: Paint chips with clothes pins
6) Shannon: “Now I know my ABC’s” – matching upper and lower case letters
7) Julie G: Felt Build a Rainbow
8) Michelle: felt popsicle matching
9) Mary: Homemade playdough and toys
10) Angeliina: Animal Habitat Match Up

Busy Bag Swap Group #2
1) Brookie-Lee: Felt ice cream patterns
2) Jennifer: animal head/tail matching game
3) Pattie: clothes pin number match up
4) Johanna G.: potatoe head bags
5) Angela: Felt Pizza factory with recipe cards
6) Julie G: Felt mailbox
7) Kimberly: shoe lace boards
8) Megan: Watermelon Picnic (matching numbers 1-10)
9) Caroline: clothesline bag with felt outfits and clothespins and string
10) Kylia: Easy Stitch Cards

Busy Bag Swap Group #3
1) Brookie-Lee: Cookie counting with sprinkles
2) Caroline: ABC Dry Erase bag
3) Nannette: button threading felt snake
4) Belinda: discovery bottle
5) Judi: Pipe cleaners and beads
6) Angeliina: hot glue shape that you can rub a crayon over and reveal the shape
7) Johanna G.: cupcake activity
8) Julie M: race car shapes w/ a car for driving plus a dry erase marker for tracing
9) Julie G: counting caterpillars for one
10) Megan: letter activity called “Jungle Fun”

Busy Bag Swap Group #4
1) Brookie-Lee: Fine motor popcorn game
2) Belinda: large button multi use game
3) Johanna G.: shades of color, a color graphing activity
4) Julie M: a felt and pompom apple tree counting game
5) Julie G: ribbon threading with plastic canvas shapes
6) Nannette: upper and lower case spoon matching
7) Johnna A.: cardboard stackers
8) Amber: fabric pattern matching game
9) Leslie: Picture Making Felt Board with Shapes
10) Kimberly: small felt squares that you thread onto a ribbon

Busy Bag Swap Group #5
1) Brookie-Lee: 3 letter spinning words
2) Amber: Gel Writing bag (Don’t worry I will use our food saver bags so they don’t open)
3) Ruth: felt button flower gardens
4) Adrianne: stretchy bands
5) Kylia: popsicle stick building
6) Shawna: Popsicle memory game
7) Tami: pipe cleaners and magnets
8) Julie R: egg matching
9) Julie G: chalk board
10) Jessica H: Milk Cap Numbers with Animal Countin

Busy Bag Swap Group #6- DUPLICATES OK
1) Holly: I Spy Books
2) Judi: color paint palette matching
3) Angeliina: Animal Memory Game
4) Tracie: The Early Bird Gets the Worm with a clothespin and pipe cleaners
5) Rachel: felt Popsicle color -word match
6) Rachel: felt ice-cream cone with pattern cards
7) Jessica: Upper and lower case spoon matching
8) Kimberly: TBD
9) Julie R: Number Boards
10) Belinda: Coin money match

Comment below or join the facebook event to sign up and let me know what activity you will be creating!

Notes for myself:
Meet Shannon at enrichment on Feb 5th to get her 10 bags and then collect hers at the swap and take them to her at enrichment on Feb 19th.
Pick up Angeliina’s bags at Dionna’s.
Coordinate with Kylia to get her bags.
Meet Judi at Coco Keys on homeschool day.

Noah’s Ark Art Project

Posted on January 21, 2013 by bleeglaser

We are using The Bible Story series for our religion lessons right now. The readings are perfect for my kindergarten and second grader. They are short enough to keep their attention, long enough to teach the lesson, and interesting enough to hold their attention. We are all really learning our Bible stories and I’m loving it. I wanted to share some of the things we did with our Noah’s ark readings. I read the stories to the children at bedtime. I have their attention then and they seem to retain things better. Then the next day we got out watercolor pencils and paper and drew an ark. I think they did amazing. And I printed off pairs of animals that they colored with color pencils and cutout to add to their ark. They loved it and we all had a lot of fun. I wanted to share with you the animal images that I put together. Enjoy!

Noah’sArk2 (Click link or image below to open full size pdf) The pdf version has strong lines and doesn’t look as pixelated as the image below. I printed two of these and cut them in half for my four children.

Crazy Busy Mama

Posted on November 13, 2012 by bleeglaser

Oh my it’s been a busy month. We were getting our homeschool hours in, getting ready for Halloween, we passed around the flu, cleaned up the backyard, and finally built the fire pit. Yay!

With homeschooling we are loving reading from the Bible Story books. It’s just short enough to hold their attention and so far I really like the point of view. A little old school maybe, but I think it will be a great foundation. The boys love bible study time.

All our other homeschool subjects I’m really happy with and Jax just starting reading Dick and Jane. That was a huge boost for him. He finished the Biscuit books and got to “level up” to D&J. He is super excited for reading time now. That’s a pretty awesome thing to see on his face. And I’ve started him on the McGuffey primer. He feels like a big kid and I’m loving his enthusiasm. Zavien finished another of the CLE readers and we are almost to the main reader books. We could move through these little ones faster but we just read one or two sections a day. I’m having him read his math worksheets now too. Getting that reading throughout the day and not just during “reading time”. We’ve also added 30 minutes of silent reading to his day as well.

I’m working on a few things for the little girls as they are getting bored and need something to keep their attention. I’m hoping to coordinate a busy bags swap locally and have some great things for my girlies. 😀 I have a few things pinned on my pinterest but there are TONS of ideas out there for this.

P.S. The baby crashed my laptop and my wonderful husband has reconnected me to my online world this week on our desktop(that we never hooked internet up on because we didn’t really need to). So hopefully I will be back on top of posting and sharing with the wonderful online community.

Homeschool Mothers Journal: October 12, 2012

Posted on October 12, 2012 by bleeglaser

We had an awesome week this week. We completed our checklist each day and got our hours in. I was thrilled at our progress in our curriculum and the fluidity that we had in our days. What helped in that, was me letting completely go of the structure and recognizing what subjects are better for the morning and what subjects are better for the afternoon. I’ve decided that the schedule just doesn’t work in our household. It just doesn’t. Our school day starts anywhere from 9 to 9:45 am. My goal always to start before 10am. And we start our day with religion, next we do math. And the amount of time that we do each subject totally depends on the children and their capability to complete the task or their frustration level. For example Jax was so irritated about writing from 1-100 this week on his math worksheets. So I had him do it correctly on a few and said if he did well I wouldn’t make him do the other two practices pages. He was okay with that until his test where he bugged out about doing it again and dad showed him some tricks and he did his best ever.

I have been so focused on Z and getting him to a fluent reader that I haven’t spent as much time with Ty. I will be printing off more material this weekend to really help her with activities during the day. We have two of the programs from confessions of a homeschool mom that are great for her age. Jax I’ve been working with and he gets frustrated when he can’t remember his phonograms when reading the Biscuit books. It just takes practice, lots of practice. I slow down or take steps backwards when he gets frustrated. I want him to excel and not to psyche himself out. I think it will be a huge boost for him once he moves on to the Dick and Jane books. And baby Vay is a pistol. She eats all our school stuff and wants to do school too. Super cute but she’s feisty. 😀

Our normal order for the day is Religion, Math, Language Arts, History or Science, Literature, Art or Music, and Piano. But sometimes I mix it up completely depending on the mood in the house. We have a checklist that has to get completed. Other than that requirement we make things work around eating, potty training, booboos, naps, and whatever else comes up during a day with four children.

Teaching Writing at Home- Giveaway! (Closed)

Posted on September 11, 2012 by bleeglaser

Teaching your children to learn to write can be one of the most intimidating subjects of learning. Where do you start? How do you progress? What if you miss something? My oldest child is in 2nd grade and so I will only speak up to where we are now and my plans for the future.

At the age of 3 my daughter Ty proudly sings her ABC’s each day to show us how smart she is. She can recite how to spell her name and she can recognize it on paper. I have started the first four phonograms with her o, c, a, d but she has not memorized them. She merely repeats them after I say them and I haven’t pressured her. She traces over the alphabet with dry erase markers as well. We are doing the Letter of the Week program with her and exploring the alphabet. She really enjoys the activities and being a part of school.

My son Jax is in kindergarten and we have been working on phonics since last year. He has the sounds of the basic alphabet memorized and we are working through the remaining phonograms. When I introduced the sounds of each letter I taught him the correct way to write each letter. We use what is called the circle space and stations to help form the letters. He is working through I Can Write-Manuscript and we are focusing on proper positioning of pencil, paper, and posture as well. Once his penmanship is established we will move on to the writing curriculum.

My son Z is in 2nd grade this year but we got behind lessons(mom’s fault) last year so we are doubling up on our writing lessons to complete our 1st grade book as well as our 2nd grade book. We use the Writing With Ease curriculum which has prepared lessons for each day making this subject super easy at our house. It’s a quick exercise as well, so writing is not a subject where I’m pulling teeth. Basically I read different passages to him and he either copies a sentence, or dictates a sentence to me which I write down and then he copies. During our writing lessons I sit and watch him form each letter and correct any errors in formation. At some point this year we will start I Can Write-Cursive as well as him writing from dictation.

Here is a blog article that I found very informative especially if you choose not to purchase a prepared curriculum. And here is a resource website for teaching writing as well.

The Giveaway!

In honor of being back to learning my giveaway this month is writing curriculum! We love this program and it has helped my son develop a foundation as a writer!

“Young students who learn to write well need one-on-one instruction—something which your child’s classroom may not offer. In The Complete Writer series, Susan Wise Bauer turns every parent into a writing teacher. No experience is needed. Drawing on her fifteen years of experience in teaching writing, Susan lays out a carefully-designed sequence of steps that will teach every student to put words on paper with ease and grace.”

I am giving away The Complete Writer: Writing With Easy Instructor Text. These can also be purchased online from Peacehill Press for $29.95.

10/5/12 And the random winner of the Writing Curriculum is… Adrianne! Thank you to everyone who contributed by sharing with us!

Also this month’s random subscriber winner of the Amber Teething Necklace is… Couponforfive! Congrats and thank you for subscribing to my blog!

What is an Hour of Instruction in Missouri?

Posted on September 11, 2012 by bleeglaser

Families for Home Education in Missouri, aka FHE, was created to protect the inalienable right of the parents of Missouri to teach their own children without state regulation or control. FHE has an essential resource book for Missouri home educators titled, First Things First. Below is an excerpt from that book, and the emphasis is mine in regards to unit hours.

“This has probably been one of the most debated and talked about topics in the Missouri home school community since the law was passed. This issue has not been decided in a court of law. Over the years, FHE has provided documentation and opinions from educations experts and lawyers in order to provide guidelines for the home school community. However, the bottom line is that the responsibility of accurately recording the hours of instruction lies with the parents. Remember that this documentation is designed to serve as your defense, so it is to your advantage to be cautious in recording hours.

Home educators often worry about what constitutes an hour of instruction. The term isn’t defined in the law and is therefore subject to some interpretation. In a formal classroom setting, an hour of instruction is a typical classroom session, a unit of educational instruction or activity. For example, an hour in the typical classroom does not constitute 60 minutes on the clock. In most classrooms, it is between 45-50 minutes. Instruction away from home for field trips, choir practices, private lessons, etc. may certainly be added to your plan book/diary and log. Because of the nature of home education, most of our children receive far more than 1,000 hours of instruction throughout the school year. To be safe, we should document as many of these hours as we can.

It is highly unlikely that you will ever need to produce the log for anyone. The only person who has the authority to request to view your log is the prosecuting attorney in your county. This is not a routine practice, and should only occur if someone reports you to his or her office for educational neglect or truancy.”

There are many families homeschooling that interpret this to mean that when you have a curriculum to follow for one school year and your child accomplishes one unit/lesson of this curriculum, that you can count that as 1 unit hour. So if your child is advanced and can accomplish the lesson in 15 minutes that you can count that as 1 unit hour. While there was a time that this was true it is no longer the case. About 10 years ago the interpretation of the law was clarified in the homeschooling legal community. The 1,000 hours of instruction is a literal meaning and all hour requirements must be met to be complaint. So if your child does math for 15 minutes, you can only count that 15 minutes. Now if your child does math for 50-55 minutes it’s perfectly fine to round up to an hour, but only as long as you also round down. So doing math for 35 minutes would be recorded for 30 minutes. This is in regards to elementary and middle school. And don’t get overwhelmed, I’ve found getting my hours is super easy!

In high school: “a completed credit towards high school graduation shall be defined as one hundred hours or more of instruction in a course.” You need 16 statutory credits(100 hours each) to not be considered a drop out. But colleges are looking for 22-24 academic credits(completed course, ex: Algebra 1). As my children are not in high school I will not delve farther into that topic today and I would encourage you to become familiar with the state law if you do not live in Missouri.

This information is current as of the 2012-2013 school year and was provided by the legal defense attorneys of FHE and HSLDA per LSHE.

Here is a sample of a spreadsheet that can be used to track your hours. To understand more about hours visit my post on Homeschool Beginnings.

My 2012-2013 hours log was a rewards chart. So that when my child accomplishes his goal he gets something special like going miniature golfing or paint-balling, etc. If I needed to produce my hours log to an official I would give them this sheet and NOT my lesson planner.

For 2013-2014 I created my own 3 ring planner and put my log sheets in the front. Here is what it looks like for each child.

Homeschool Mother’s Journal: September 7, 2012

Posted on September 7, 2012 by bleeglaser

Picking up Jax from 1st day of Kindergarten enrichment

This week was a big milestone for us. My second child went to enrichment classes on Tuesday for the first time. It was his first time to be away from mom and dad or family. I have been working with him on “school” things and he is in Kindergarten, but there was never that pivotal moment until this week. He got a new backpack, decided if he wanted the school lunch, mom took lots of pictures, and we left him. He had a friend in his class that we’ve played with before, so that was wonderful for mom and dad to leave seeing him with his buddy. And he loved it. It was so good for him and makes the financial aspect of sending him so worth it.

Another milestone this week is that I’m tired of diapers. So I’ve decided to put the energy into potty training my baby. She was ready a long time ago and I just wasn’t ready to invest the energy to putting her on the potty 3 times an hour. She’s doing great, and in another week I think she will be to the point of feeling awkward peeing anywhere but the toilet. So that is really exciting for her and bittersweet for the cloth diapering mama that I am. But it’s okay, 6 years of cloth diapering is enough for me. I’m ready to move forward out of babyhood forever and into toddlerdom for the last time!

My oldest child is almost to the point of reading fluently. I can feel it. He’s feeling more confident. He doesn’t get frustrated reading. And he loves books. I read to my children each night at bedtime from series like the Magic Tree house, Narnia, or the Kane Chronicles and they all love it. I look forward to when he can enjoy that reading on his own and not wait for mom. Right now we are working on preparing for his upcoming 7th birthday party. He plays the Skylanders video game and that is our theme. So since there is nothing on the market for that, we are going to be crafting and creating it all. I will post more on what we do after the party so I have pictures.

And my third child is halfway through her terrible threes headed for the fearsome fours. Getting enough sleep at night, a good nap during the day, and not being hungry ever are the keys to keeping preschoolers happy. So when we have a late night, like last night, and she’s whining and crying as we are getting ready for bed, I take a deep breathe, remind myself that I could have prevented this by taking care of those basic needs, and get through it. I don’t blame her, or title her a trouble child. It’s my fault she’s up late, or didn’t get a nap, or I didn’t have a snack at 3pm. Sometimes those things happen and that’s life. But it’s not her fault and I shouldn’t be angry at her, or scold her, for her natural reaction to the imbalance. But I do look forward to when she’s five. Of course her little sister will be three at that point…..sigh. 😀

Literature Curriculum for Classical Education

Posted on September 4, 2012 by bleeglaser

My son and I LOVE our literature curriculum. I go online to my local library website and I place holds on the books on the book list for our history lessons and corresponding literature lessons. The library calls my cell when the books are in and we swing by to pick them up. Then we cuddle on the sofa for story time and get whisked away to far off places and learn the history, culture, religions, and myths of ancient times. After I read to my son he tells me his favorite part of the story in complete sentences and I write it down for him. Then he draws a wonderful picture about it and when he’s finished he tells me all about his drawing. He has this book filled with his words and his drawings and it is truly a treasure to us both.

Not only is the book list, and correlation with our history curriculum, top notch, but this program is also FREE! I downloaded it, printed it at home, and took it to Kinkos to have it bound with a cover. I’m giddy with this and it’s the favorite part of our day! Thank you Classical House of Learning(CHOL) for such a great program! You have blessed our homeschool days!

Classical Education

We classically educate our children as outlined in the book The Well Trained Mind. “Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.” The early years are categorized as the Grammar stage, the middle grades are the Logic stage, and in high school it’s the Rhetoric stage.

With classical education you do a four year cycle following the course of history. The first year is Ancient times, next the Middle Ages, followed by Early Modern, and ending in Modern times. So for my son in 1st grade I downloaded the Grammar stage for Ancient history from CHOL. And for 2nd grade I downloaded the Grammar stage for Middle Ages from CHOL. Our literature lessons from CHOL correspond with our history lessons from Story of the World. So if our history lessons are about Ancient China, then our literature lessons are as well. It really helps my son to absorb and retain the information about the different cultures and events.

Homeschool Mother’s Journal: August 31, 2012

Posted on August 31, 2012 by bleeglaser

Homeschooling was not the easy decision. Having my children home all day and being the one ultimately responsible for their education is not the easy choice. We chose to homeschool our children because we felt it was the absolute best option for them. We felt that we would be better able to customize their education to their needs and interests.

We’ve had such fluidity to our days with our children as infants that transitioning to a more structured day has been a struggle. I think it’s been hardest on mom in fact. Being at the end of our third week of school we finally hit our goal for hours! I’m so giddy over this fact. And looking back at our week it wasn’t as bad as I thought that many hours would be. We survived, got our work done, and still had play time and time for errands.

Next week we start enrichment, piano lessons, ballet, and soccer too so that will make things interesting. Little things that helped with hours this week were counting things like bedtime reading, helping cook meals, and reading time at the library. Overall it was a successful week and I feel a satisfying sense of accomplishment. I can do this.