What's In The Box?

We have started back with workboxes for both Jem and Olive, shown here in our homeschool room. I like the fact that I heard Olive say, "good, I only have one more box left to do".  

 

For Jem it was more the sound in her voice like, "ahhh, and wow"! The lowercase letter "a," activities and apple lacing came from here.

                                             Cutting and pasting Fall items came from here.

                            This fun Noah's arc animal sorting file folder game came from here.

                                           Matching money is always a hit with Jem.

Olive enjoyed these trap door readers from Evanspor designs who generously sent us the PDF to download a few months ago. These trap door readers help children decode words one letter at time. Olive liked sliding the piece of paper across the letters and knowing she said the right word by the picture it revealed. They are easy to put together, just print, cut, and paste. The words can be printed in cursive, print, and lowercase.

Here is a photo from her Etsy site showing how nice they look when you use a bone folder. I wish I would have found these first before I went to the troubled of making my word sliders.
Happy Learning!

Simply Healthy- Homemade Fabric Softener

                                                                  Simply Healthy
Homemade Fabric Softener
Things you'll need:
large container
baking soda
distilled white vinegar
water
essential oil

-I use a large pot to mix the ingredients together.

-Add 1 cup of baking soda to the pot and then 1 cup of water to the baking soda.

-Add 6 cups of distilled white vinegar to the mix. The mixture will start to fizz, which will help to dissolve the baking soda.

-Add 6 more cups of water to the mix and the fizzing should stop.

-Stir to dissolve.

-Don't worry you won't smell like a pickle. Add about 15 drops of pure essential oil. Remember you can always add more if you want a stronger scent.

-I use my leftover fabric softener bottles to store my homemade softener.

When it's time to do the laundry, add 1 cup of your homemade fabric softener to your final rinse. I use this fabric softener ball when I do my laundry.  Just add the same amount to it.

I find that my clothes turn out just as nice with this recipe. It's a simply healthy alternative to store bought brands.
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Simply Healthy- Veggie Wash

Our Homeschool Room

Well after two weeks of school I totally reorganized the room. It flows much better now!

 I should show you now because it probably will never be this clean again! 

This is our book nook with a CD player for books on tape and music. 

    I hang a thick ribbon to the wall and use clothes pins to hold our letter-of-the-week and art projects. 

This is our morning board: Calendar,  Clock,  Make the date,  Days in School,  Months and Seasons,  Prayer,  Color of the week,  the middle (left open) will be for our poem of the month.  I will be adding Weather, and Phases of the Moon to our daily activities.

             I just revamped our workbox system using these 5 drawer bins.

I keep our curriculum, printer, and my school supplies on this shelf. I found many useful morning board printables at Homeschool Creations, Confessions of a Homeschooler, and Mama Jenn- Thanks for your kindness.  Happy Homeschooling!

Homemade Doll Sling Tutorial

Every child needs a cute doll sling for their special baby and they are simple to make.

Instructions:

Step 1:  Cut one yard of fabric in half lengthwise.  Fold the half lengthwise with like sides together (meaning the colorful fabric sides should be touching). I was able to make 2 slings with 1 yard of fabric.

Step 2:  Sew the open (long) side together, you'll be making a tub. Both ends of the tube should remain open.

Step 3: Slip the fabric around your child and take note on what length the sling should be. Slip one open end into the other open end. You may wish to trim excess fabric at one end. Sew across with a zig-zag stitch and close the sling.

Step 4: Slip the doll sling over your child, pull the fabric apart, and place your child's doll inside.

View from the back.

Olive said she was able to get her baby to sleep a lot faster with her new sling. I hope your child enjoys this cute project as much as my girls.

This post is linked to:  Handmade Holiday

stART-Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
Author: Judi Barrett
Illustrator: Ron Barrett
It never rained just rain, instead it rained things like soup, juice, and meatballs. This fun book helped us to discuss community helpers, weather, and the food pyramid. We also made this spaghetti and meatballs craft to go along with the story.

Nature Scavenger Hunt

We started our day by searching for these nature treasures on our scavenger hunt.

 This free printable has been in my stack of things to do for months, but I can not remember what lovely blog it came from.  Please let me know if this scavenger hunt page came from your site.

The girls started racing to see who could find each item first, but as they got harder to find, they started to work together.  Olive decided to search for the perfect sticks, while Jem searched for two circle rocks. This was a good activity to do and started our day off right.

Simply Healthy-Homemade Veggie Wash

 September is here, which mean cooler temps, flannel sheets, shorts and long sleeves, brightly colored trees, pumpkins, crock pots, and yummy scuppernong grapes. Each Wednesday I will focus my blog posts on something that's simply healthy.

A few years ago we use to use FIT to wash our vegetables and fruit, but now we just make our own and it works great.

Homemade Veggie Wash Recipe:
1 cup water
1 cup vinegar
2 TBS baking soda
2 TBS lemon juice
Directions:
-Mix ingredients then pour in clean spray bottle. Spray vegetables and fruit generously. Sit for 5 minutes then rinse off well.
-Make sure to first mix ingredients in deep container since there will be some fizzing from the baking soda and vinegar.

Science Experiment-What makes healthy soil?

                                                                      Project 1:
                               We used shredded carrot, lettuce, plastic bag scraps, and soil

 

Cover the items in soil and put the lid on the plastic container.

Questions: 

What do you think will happen?

  Which items will decompose and which items will remain?

What happens when items decompose?

 

(This photo is taken after a week).

Explain that compost is made when the nutrients from the lettuce and carrot combine with the soil, this is healthy for the earth, but the plastic bag will remain for years.

Have your children make predictions on what will happen after a week. Olive was happy that her predictions turned out to be correct.

We are linked up with ABC & 123!

Curriculum Swap Winner

Drum Roll Please............................ The winning number was pulled out of a hat by Olive. Thank you to all who participated and a special thanks to Jolanthe for hosting to fantastic clean-out!
On a side note, if you were not the lucky person today, I'll be hosting 2 giveaways in the month of September so I am wishing you much luck!

The winner is: The Unsell Family
She writes:  Thanks for the great give-a-way. My favorite part of my day is curling up with a great book and reading to my kids.
~Jen Unsell

I really enjoyed reading about the favorite part of your day. I cherish my early mornings before the kids get up and getting the first cuddle of the day.

Insects- Ants

We started our Science lesson on insects from Living Learning Books and made this fun ant craft to go along with it.

To make this craft you will need three sections of an egg carton, markers to color, eyes, glue, pipe cleaners for the legs and antennae.

All insects have six legs and three body parts- a head, thorax, and abdomen.