Welcome to the March 9, 2009 edition of Homeschool Showcase, where we spotlight all the the encouraging, inspiring, hands-on, and just plain fun ways that homeschooling families live, learn and enjoy life together. Our featured post this week is from alecat. I absolutely love the three-dimensional origami boxes that she and her kids made! I can't wait to make these with my kids. For a photo tutorial and links, be sure to read alecat's post, Origami for maths, posted at Serenades and Solace. Although she admits that, "...my uni tutor really takes full credit for teaching it to me MANY years ago," we'll give alecat full credit for sharing it with us.
The origami boxes fit right in with the suggestions of Ty Skinner. Ty presents Cooking and Math posted at Virtuous Children, in which he encourages parents to look for opporunties to incorporate math into everyday situations. Ty says "Much has been said in the professional education arena about how our children are lagging in math and science compared to other developing countries." As homeschooling parents, we have the blessing and opporunity to allow for these learning opporunities throughout the day.
For more "real life" math ideas, may I also strongly recommend Living Math. Although we don't follow the suggestions found there as much as we could - or probably should - this website completely changed my thinking about math.
There are many fun ways to incorportate math study into daily living, but what about grammar? Mad Libs make a fun and easy way to help a child learn parts of speech. Samantha of To Be Busy at Home offers some great tips on making a visual aid to help kids make the most of learning Grammar with Mad Libs.
Next is a fantastic idea to help beginning readers learn the skills necessary to suceed. I plan to add to my bag of tricks Eryn's Phonemic Family Craft/Activity for Budding Readers. This would be perfect for my niece, who is homeschooling with my family this year. You can read all about Eryn's hands-on word families craft on her blog, The HomeSchooled Year.
Heather Dunham shares an adorable Video: My 2-year-old Can Crack Eggs - Montessori, Practical Life, and Cooking Skills highlighting her daughter's confident inpendence fostered by a tuned-in mom and a Montessori-inspired learning philosophy. Stop by motherbynature.ca and take a look.
Another great tip that I'll be incorporating into my niece's preschool day is Cheryl's tip for Practicing the Alphabet posted at Talking to Myself - Homeschool Blogger. And, if I can't get the paper letters made this weekend, we could still have a lot of fun with this using sidewalk chalk next week. Thank goodness for spring-like weather.
jenafer of Cage Free Monkeys has my complete and utter admiration because I hate camping - and by "camping," I totally mean the "in a camper with electric hook-ups and a bathroom" kind. Hate it. With a passion. However, Jenafer, with her contagious enthusiam, has me almost convinced that it might be fun with her post, Camping. I don't know. Maybe if she makes the future adventures that she and her crew have planned sounds like as much fun as the first trip, I might re-think my stand on camping. And, hey, while you're visiting Jenafer's blog, be sure to check out her tagline. I love it!
Next up are some great craft ideas. And, just in time for St. Patrick's Day, Vera Lang presents this great Leprechaun mariontte craft: Free St Patricks Day Crafts Templates: Prancing Leprechauns, which you can find posted at Fine Craft Guild .com.
My mom still has the egg carton flowers that my oldest made for my step-dad when he was in the hospital for the last time during his battle with cancer. I can only imagine how special the paper flowers presented by Rose might be to someone. She says, "This is a super simple tissue paper flowers craft project that looks oh so professional when done. Each flower takes only minutes to produce and looks stunning! Excellent illustration tutorial, where the pictures really motivate you to make some of your own. Suitable for age 5 and up, and up, ..." Making Fabulous Paper Flowers with Tissue Paper can be found at Fine Craft Guild .com.
Cindy West has done it again, coming up with a fabulous idea for rainy day - or any day - fun. I love this idea! Add this to the list of things I'll be doing with my own kids. Soon. For Cindy's tutorial on how her kids made this great artwork, read Rainy Day Art - Complete the Painting posted at Our Journey Westward.
Robert Bravery presents his "collection of funnies revolving around home school and the misconception thereof," in his post You know you are a homeschooler when … posted at The Brave Christian. I'll add to the list my thirteen that I posted awhile back.
GrrlScientist shares her accomplishments (what an honor!) and her enthusiam for OpenLabs, saying, "OpenLabs are anthologies of the finest and most educational science, nature and medical writing published on the blogosphere in the previous year. This year's edition, OpenLab2008, is now available for you to enjoy. These books make a fine and affordable gift for kids and adults who are fascinated by science (and I recommend them to libraries too)." Find her post OpenLab2008: It's Now Available! on her blog, Living the Scientific Life.
Sarah Scrafford presents 100 Awesome Open Courses and Lectures for Digital Artists posted at Online Universities.com.
One Language presents Differences Between British and American English posted at Learn English Articles.
That concludes this week's edition of Homeschool Showcase. Thanks to everyone who shared their ideas and accomplishments with us this week. I hope you'll consider submitting your blog article for the next edition of, scheduled for March 23. You can do so using our
carnival submission form. The guidelines for submission can be found on our guidelines page and past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
3 comments:
What a fantastic week! Look at all the great ideas, I have some reading to do :)
Thanks for including me Kris. This was a nice edition, I found some wonderful ideas!
Blessings,
Cheryl
Wow so many great ideas and crafts. Thanks for this. Bookmarking this for future reference.
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