The best free ABC Packs ever......

 

I have been looking for a fun ABC learning curriculum for my 5 year old. She knows most of her alphabet but still needs a little practice before I start her in Kindergarten in the fall. I have been following this site for a while but had forgotten about it. The other day, I came across it again and decided to look around a little more than before. I am glad I did. This is the best FREE ABC curriculum I have found. I am really glad I did.

This is something I will be using with my littles for a while. Just wanted to share this awesome site with you!

 

 

Go to: http://www.3dinosaurs.com/printables/abc/abcpacks.php

for these awesome downloads! Enjoy!

 

I plan on sharing our journey with you using these wonderful worksheets!

GOD BLESS!

Circle Time Review!!!

As a Schoolhouse Review Crew member, I had the opportunity to review Circle Time: Plan the Best Part of Your Homeschool Day, from Preschoolers and Peace.

This ebook I received is 33 pages and has so much insight, tips and ideas from other moms that have used it. Kendra, the author, discusses strageties for accomplishing things you want to get done during this time.

Introduction

Planning a Circle Time That Works for You

How to Get Your Kids on Board

Questions From Moms Like You

Words of Wisdom from other Moms who do Circle Time

Resources, Activities and Ideas

Printable Planner Sheets

This is a great book! Once I finished reading it, I was truly excited. It helped me with more ideas and how I could really improve our upcoming school year in a couple of weeks. We are almost ready to start our new year, so I was happy to have time to try this out. Well, I think it is something we will really enjoy and I am really excited to see how this will work for us. So far so good. I have to say I think since we started with this, it has become everyone's favorite part of the day.

One of the topics was having the older children teach and help out with certain topics. That gave me an idea. Since I will be giving birth to our sixth bug in about four weeks, I thought this would be perfect for the older two bugs. I am still trying to decide what I want them to be in charge of . I am sure with the help of this book, we can come up with something.

I really enjoyed this sweet, short read. This is a great resource for anyone with littles or just needs a little help.

This ebook sells for $4.99.

If you would like to see what other families are saying about Circle Time, head on over to the TOS Crew.

Flowering Baby Review

My first product to review for the crew this year is Flowering Baby, LLC, a whole child developmental approach for birth to five.

We chose to review two volumes, "Three to Four" (Volume 4)  and "Four to Five" (Volume 5).

Each level consists of two parts, a monthly curriculum guide and a theme curriculum guide.

The monthly section covers skills like learning the upper and lower case letters, counting and writing numbers 0 to 10 and several science projects among others.

The theme section is theme oriented. You are encouraged to choose two themes per month. For example, we chose Bugs and Birds.

I received the downloadable product of Flowering Baby, LLc. Some of the members received a CD copy. I really enjoy being able to pick and choose what I want to print and what I don't.

This curriculum is so much fun! The layout of this curriculum is wonderful. It gives you a list of suggested books to use each month.  Some we already had, some we got at our local library and some we replaced with ones in our own library. It is really flexible when it comes to the books. In this curriculum, "Read a book" appears over and over. I realized it is designed for a certain purpose. It develops a solid foundation of language, reading, gross and fine motor skills among other helpful skills. My 3 and 5 year old bugs love it. The books that are suggested with each volume are amazing. All they wanted to do was sit and read, read, read these wonderful books! We are having so much fun with this!

Here is what one of our days looked like:

     *ABC's: Sing the ABC song.
     *Math: Count out loud from 1 to 5. Repeat
     *Read Book: We read Blueberries for Sal
     *Triangles: Using masking tape make a large triangle
       on the floor. Discuss the shape and name things that are shaped
       like a triangle (a slice of pizza, a Christmas tree, etc.)

This day we focused on our book Blueberries for Sal.

 We read our book numerous times, made a stamp out of a potato in the shape of a blueberry and made some yummy blueberry smoothies.

Above you can see our little homemade stamp we made out of a potato and the picture they did using it!

Ready to make and drink some blueberry smoothies!



As you can see the  two little bugs are enjoying Flowering Baby!

This program is very easy to use. Make some fun memories with your children while you can!

The cost is $30 - $38 (download). Purchase the entire 5 volume set for $132. Use this code "BLOG10" and get 10% off!

See what other crew members had to say about Flowering Baby.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary download in exchange for my honest opinion and review. All comments are entirely my own.



Activity Bags!!!!

Let me start by saying how Awesome these Activity Bags are. I heard about this company a couple of years ago and wanted to try them but over time had forgotten about them. When they came up for review, I was so excited. I jumped at the chance to review some of these bags.

For this review, I was able to choose two bags from this company. After hours and hours of thinking and trying to decide which two would be a good match for our homeschool, I decided on Science Activities in a Bag - Books 1, 2, & 3 and Preschool Activities in a Bag Books 1 & 2.

We love science in our homeschool but if you are like me, I find it hard to do all that is required of science experiments. I have good intentions when it comes to hands-on experiments but after hunting down all the supplies and hoping we have everything we need to have a successful science experiment, let's face it.......I'm exhausted!!!

Science Activities in a Bag can solve all of these problems for you. They are exciting and easy to do. The ebooks contain instructions, supply lists and detailed instructions on how to assemble each activity bag if you are wanting to organize a "swap" with friends or other homeschooling families. This would be great for coops and homeschooling groups.

Science Activities in a Bag - Book 1 - Biology, General Science & Nature is $15.

This book has examples of 25 experiments to enjoy with your children. In this book, you can: Learn how to determine the temperature using a cricket's chirp, how yeast and sugar can inflate a balloon, how to force a spider to spin a web right in front of your eyes, and more. The first experiment we wanted to try out of this book is entitled "Fungus Amungus". Here you can see the supplies needed for this experiment.

Two sandwich bags, one slice of bread,  glass of water, a straw and a slice of citrus.

The best part other than actually doing these experiments with my bugs.......

is that many of the items needed for these experiments were already lying around our home.

Science Activities in a Bag - Book 2 - Chemistry, Human Body & General Science is $15.

This book also has 25 experiments. In this book, you can learn how salt makes it harder for water to freeze, how you can hold a flame directly under a balloon and not pop it and how to collect and match fingerprints.

And the one we chose is entitled "Eye Parts". We learned all about the parts of our eyes and their purposes. This came in really handy since my Dad just had cataract surgery.

Science Activities in a Bag - Book 3 - Chemistry is also $15.

This book also has 25 experiments in it. There are so many to choose from but we decided on "Salt Crystals". We are learning how to grow crystals out of salt. Here are the supplies needed for this one:

One metal paper clip, one 8-inch piece of string, one pencil, plastic spoon, 8-10 oz glass of water and salt

We are working on it daily and recording any changes on the experiment log that you print out for each experiment. It is so much fun doing these experiments now that activity bags has made it so easy to do.

You can also get these three science activities in a bag for a special combo price of $39 or buy them as a bundle for $27.

                   



Preschool Activities in a Bag - Book 1 and Preschool Activities in a Bag - Book 2 are an answered prayer! I have a 3 and 5 year old that, sometimes can be quite a handful during school time. The three older bugs would totally agree! It is hard to hold their attention for a long period of time, so these activity bags do just that for me.

Each night, I will pick one or two activities out and prepare it for the next day. It is so easy to have everything laid out for you, ready to go. Each book comes with a Preschool Activity Supply List. It lists general supplies needed for each activity.

Some of our favorites from Book 1 are ABC Puzzles, Alpha Spoons, Chalkboard fun (which we enjoy tremendously since I painted one of my dining room walls in chalkboard paint!!!) and Hand Puzzle just to name a few.

Out of Book 2, Alphabet Match, Fruits of the Spirit, Fruity Puzzles and the list goes on an on.

All of these books are downloadable in PDF format. I really like this because each book contains a good number of pages so I am able to pick and choose what I want or need to print.

In my opinion, these little ebooks are well worth the price for the amount of activities that are included in each book.

I am looking forward to using these books again and again. They also have Math Games and Travel Activity books. I am planning on purchasing those in the near future!

The Preschool Bags are great for ages 3-6 years of age. The Science Bags are for K-8 grade but I have to say that my 9th grader is loving it just as much as the other bugs!

To see what other crew members thought about activity bags, click here.

Disclaimer: I received Activity Bags, free of charge, in exchange for my honest opinion and review.