{Free} Bug & Farm Animal Printable Notebooking Pages

Today, I got to start my day by getting my hair done. Sure was nice. I never have had my hair done by someone else first thing in the morning.

My Ladybug gave me 3 different hairstyles throughout the course of the day. 🙂 I did, in fact, wear the final hairstyle when I brought her to gymnastics in the evening. I just wanted to share with you guys this awesomeness. 😉

You guys remember a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about how I spent so much time putting a fun and pretty and practical homeschool space together only to have our days slowly gravitate to the kitchen table? I mean, it really can’t just be me that this is happening to. Anyway! I was noticing that all of our art supplies, magazines for cutting, Little Man’s art supplies, our basket with our current unit study papers and books, were all piling up on a chair in the corner of my dining room. Not to mention the permanent stack of books, notebooks, and and binders at the end of our dinner table.

Morning Circle Time

 

Yesterday I talked about what is in our morning basket. I am definitely looking forward to starting this and I know the girls are too (they saw the Mad Libs and Aesop’s Fables sitting in it). This is only half of our morning routine, though.

Ready for circle time.

The other half of our new morning routine caters more to my toddler to help him feel like he is more of a part of our school. Especially since he is a sponge and completely soaks up everything that goes on around him. He is already able to recognize and recall a handful of things (such as his name, the letter B, count to 5, and colors). I want to take advantage of his curiosity [he can seriously ask ‘why’ for 20 minutes before he is willing to accept your answer] and help him build on it. While he is still young and too much “schooling” can have negative effects, I plan on introducing him to new things through our new circle time with songs and do it gradually. And when his attention wanes, we’ll move on.

What’s in Our Morning Basket?

 

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I have high hopes for the next 6 weeks. I want to be more intentional with the way we start our days and our morning time. The last six weeks have been a struggle. Our good days usually started out with time with Jesus Calling for Kids. Our other days, well, didn’t. They ended up being a little more chaotic.

After taking a hard look at our daily habits, the answer was clear: We are going to go back to starting our day with more structure and spending time with God.

I want to use our time together to touch on other subjects that tend to get pushed out for other *more important* things (while I agree these other things are important, I don’t think they are more important). Things that I’ve wanted to include are poetry, art, read alouds, etc. How to do this in a more cohesive way?

Roald Dahl Day

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As kids, we’ve all read Roald Dahl books. We all had our favorites. [Not to mention that some of my favorite movies growing up were the ones based on Dahl’s books.] As a kid, my favorite was Matilda.

As a parent, I’ve loved reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my girls and also to Rosie’s class when she was in public school. We always read Roald Dahl’s books aloud (let’s face it, his books are way more fun read out loud) and have also enjoyed James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox, and the Magic Finger.

Our first year of homeschooling, my girls were absolutely delighted to find out that there is a day in September just for celebrating Roald Dahl! September 13 is the celebration of Roald Dahl’s birthday.

Planning for Another School Year: Combined Subjects

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On Monday I shared how I plan for the new year.  I outlined how I determined which subjects and topics I plan to teach for the upcoming year. I also shared some of the tools I use to get that done. Then I shared all of curriculum choices I made for the core subjects.

Today, I want to take some time to share what I’m planning for the subjects that my girls will be studying together. (This is a different outline than last year’s since we did a lot of unit studies like this one. This year, I wanted a little more structure since Rosie is headed into her middle school years. ) I find that these combined subjects tend to be more fun because we do lots of hands-on activities and learning seems to be more natural in a group setting.

To recap a little from Monday, I put this table together to outline my plans for the combined subjects. I wanted to cover all of these subjects over the year, but initially couldn’t figure out how without us sitting at the table all day everyday. (That really isn’t what we want…and there’s just no way my kids want to sit still for that long.) After deciding on a schedule of 6 weeks in school followed by 1 week off, I assigned each 6-week “session” a subject that we would learn about together.

With this outline in mind- and on paper, I’m old-fashioned, remember? 😉 – I headed to a homeschool bookstore about 40 minutes from where I live. (It’s seriously worth the drive…and we moved to the middle of nowhere so everything is a drive but this drive is worth it.) This bookstore sells both new and used books and you could easily spend an afternoon in this place. There is just so much stuff! Thankfully they have the books I was looking for divided on the shelves by topic versus by grade like some subjects.

So we started with Science.

I lucked out and found a used science textbook for studying ocean animals: Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. I like that it uses a biblical worldview, has hands-on “try this!” activities throughout the lessons and ends each lesson with a project.

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If you can afford it, they sell a kit that contains everything you will need to complete the activities in the lessons. They also sell a student’s notebook that goes along with the text. (I only bought the used copy of the textbook; I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything too extravagant needed to complete the activities.) I didn’t buy any other books to supplement because we already have some at home and we’ve found numerous cool books at the library for this topic.

While still browsing the Science shelves, we looked for Astronomy.

I wasn’t looking for any kind of textbook for this topic. I have a few hands-on activities already in mind for this and we already have a handful of books at home about stars and the universe. My aim here was to find something that gave a good overview of Astronomy and would be a good companion for our studies. I found The Astronomy Book by Dr Jonathan Henry; it’s part of the series of books Wonders of Creation.

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Still in Science, I needed something for my last topic.

For our last session, I know I want to do something with simple machines, forces and energy. I had wanted to do this last year and had bought a book last year on simple machines. This time, I needed something for the forces and energy. I found a textbook with lots of activities and pictures that I think will engage my kids called Motion, Forces, and Energy: Science Explorer by Prentice Hall.//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=macncheesecof-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0131150995&asins=0131150995&linkId=779fe44e28b561ca592efaf42df83011&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true

Moving on to History.

We’ve already started covering North Carolina history so I already have a few history books that also cover United States history. Also, since I haven’t had time to go through those books and come up with an outline for that session, I’m not sure which books, if any, I’ll need yet. So I focused on Ancient Greece. Wow, were there a lot of choices! I picked the 2 that I liked best to go along with an ancient civilizations textbook I already had at home (because last year we studied Ancient Egypt). My first choice was an Usborne book titled A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient World. This book definitely has kid-appeal with the fun style of writing and the illustrations, as well approaching the topic as if you are going to visit today. My second choice was a book specific to Ancient Greece since my other books covered a few ancient civilizations. I found that Ancient Greece: Cultural Atlas for Young People by Anton Powell is written at a little higher level and may be more appropriate for Rosie, but Ladybug will still be able to benefit from it. After getting home I took to Amazon with a specific book of hands-on activities in mind for Ancient Greece. (I’ve ordered a book for Geology from this series and it was pretty neat.) I ordered Ancient Greece! 40 Hands-On Activities to Experience this Wondrous Age by Williamson Books.
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Last up, World Geography.

This topic was a little trickier…which is probably why I saved it for the end. While teaching world geography, I know I want my focus to be Christmas traditions around the world (because I know that this will be our subject of study in our last session before our Christmas break). But there weren’t any books specifically for this. I flipped through a lot of books. Honestly, I started to get discouraged that I wasn’t going to be able to find any books to go along with our studies. As I was about to throw in the towel (because at this point we had been in the store for going on 2 hours and I did have all three kids with me…), we found what seems to be the perfect book. The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World Geography with Complete World Atlas is going to work well for my plan. I love how it breaks down the countries and continents around the world into 6 regions and tells a little bit about each. With 6 regions and 6 weeks to teach it, I can do one region a week and complete a crash course in world geography. I’m really excited about this session! It’s going to be a lot of fun!

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Actually, there is one more thing.

I wanted to start exposing the girls to famous artists. I’m not expecting them to become experts, but I want to at least introduce them to various artists and see what sticks. To do this, without overwhelming our schedules, I made the first Friday (which is our non-planned day) of each month an Artist Study. I lucked out and found a book at the homeschool bookstore that was perfect for getting this monthly artist study started: Short Lessons in Art History by Phyllis Clausen Barker. I like this book because it breaks down the artists by when they were alive or where they were from or by their style. The book has 28 artists, some of which I’ve already introduced the girls to. I really like that the lesson on each artist gives a short but concise summary about him or her and then I can follow it up with pictures of their work and a project.

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In addition to our language arts curriculum and handwriting curriculum, I’m having the girls pick a few out-of-state family members to start writing to on a regular basis. I’m also looking into the penpal correspondence program with Peace Corps volunteers.

To round things out though, both girls do have piano lessons, Ladybug takes gymnastics, and Rosie does drama. For the fall, once every one else starts up school again as well, both girls will be taking a foreign language. I’m hoping our local group will put a French class together again, and if so, both girls will join that class. (If not, I’m not sure what Ladybug will do.) Rosie, regardless of how French pans out, will be taking an American Sign Language class. (I learned that ASL counts as a foreign language in high school! So cool!) Also in the fall, both girls will be in a Girls Scouts troop. Lastly, but not least, we are going to start up a Chess Club again in the fall with our local homeschool group.

So that’s it!  That’s what I’ve got planned so far for this new school year with a 3rd grader and a 6th grader here at home!

In case you missed it, I initially talked about the Top 10 Things My Homeschool Can’t Survive Without. Seriously, all of things are a must-have for us.

In the last post, I talked about the core subjects that differ based on the levels/grades my girls are at individually.

What do you have planned for this year? I’d love to hear about it!

Need some help thinking up some first day activities? I’m sharing some of our favorite first day activities!

Planning for Another School Year: The Core Subjects

*This post does contain affiliate links. To read my disclaimer policy, head here.*

 

I did it! I’ve planned out my upcoming school year for 3rd grade and for 6th grade!

Just as a heads-up, though this covers only core subjects, this post is packed with advice. I promise, it’s worth it to make it all the way through! 😉

This is actually a big deal for me. We are entering our second full year of homeschooling. (Rosie has been at it since March of 2016, while Ladybug joined us in July of that same year.) For this past year, I had a rough idea of which subjects we wanted to tackle. I had spent time making a folder for each subject with an out-line of activities, books, and videos. [For an idea of the type of unit studies we did, head over to my Ocean Studies post.] We made it three-fourths of the way through the year and then we moved. And the wheels fell off of the school train. We did get through another topic or two after we got settled into the new house, but all momentum was gone. Mid-way through May we called it done. A few weeks later, I was ready to look ahead to the new year.

I’m old-fashioned in that I love planners. I love paper and pencils and all different colored pens. I love office supplies of all kinds. Seriously, I think it borders on addiction… Anyway, I digress. I knew to come up with a plan that I would stick to, I needed a super cool, super fun planner. But not just any planner. It had to be a homeschool planner that I didn’t have to wait a month for. (No joke! I went on Etsy and found some cool ones but I’d have to wait almost a month to get them! Gah!) I’m impatient and needed my planner tomorrow. Hey, I had a plan and couldn’t delay! To solve this quandary, I went to a homeschool store in a nearby big city (seriously, we moved to the middle of nowhere!) and found a super cute, super fun planner. (I’ve actually included an affiliate link for the same one through Amazon. You don’t have to go anywhere to get yours!)

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I love that this planner starts out with the year spread out over 2 pages; and I’ll tell you why in a minute. I love the big monthly

Big monthly calendar pages.

calendar pages that are followed by weekly pages that I can get more detail in. The best part about the weekly grid pages are that you can use them any way that works best for you. I’m trying out with the days of the week across the top row and my kids’ names down the side column.

The weeks are spread out in a grid over 2 pages.

So I had my planner. What’s next?

Timing-How long do you go at a time?

I sat down with the determination of having a more thorough school year planned out for the next year. Our first year was pretty relaxed.  I wanted this year to have more structure; especially since Rosie is going into 6th grade. (It may be a way off, but I’ve got my sights on high school and getting her ready for it.)

The first thing I did was to decide how our year was going to be divided. We all need breaks within the year, and after trying to go 7 or 8 weeks before breaks, I learned that the uneven timing doesn’t work and the on-off schedule needs to be regular.  After looking around for advice, I settled on school for 6 weeks, then off for 1 week.

Here in North Carolina, we aren’t required to have a certain number of days of school; it is suggested that we go for 180 days.  So, at six

weeks at a time, I needed six “sessions”. That divided itself up pretty easily with 3 “sessions” before Christmas, 3 “sessions” after Christmas, and the whole month of December off.  Using my fancy new planner and working backwards from Christmas, I landed on July 17th for our start date.  [Since planning this, we learned we have an upcoming family trip and have thus moved our start date up a week–much to the excitement of my kids. Seriously. They are really excited to get started!]

Subjects-How to decide?!

I’ve got my timing laid out. Now, which subjects are we were going to focus on this year? I did know that there were some subjects that we needed to focus on, regardless of how my kids felt about them. Our core was going to be made up of math, language arts, spelling, handwriting, and Bible verse memory. Math and Language Arts were my husband’s non-negotiables, with good reason. I chose to have separate spelling and handwriting curriculum because my kids sometimes need extra practice. [Hey, no judgement here, seriously. I still ask my husband, an English major, how to spell stuff. Frequently.] Finally, I had started working on getting my girls to start memorizing Bible verses and they were doing well. I wanted to keep going with that and introduce some activities to help solidify their memory.

We had done some science and history this past year and I honestly couldn’t leave one of the subjects out but I struggled with how to get it all in the year. Since my year is already broken up into 6 sessions, I decided to have each session cover a different subject: Session 1 Science, Session 2 History, Session 3 World Geography, Session 4 Science, Session 5 History, Session 6 Science. To help get Rosie and Ladybug to be a party of the planning so that they could also be eagerly anticipating the upcoming year, I asked my girls for their input as to which topics they wanted to learn about for science and history.  I definitely took that into consideration. Here is what I came up with:

I had my outline of extra subjects and topics. Add that to the core subjects I was planning on teaching, and I felt like I was headed in the right direction. But now it was time for curriculum. I don’t know about you, but that part overwhelms me. So I turned to my homeschool Facebook groups for advice.

Curriculum- Help! There are so many choices!!

I turned to other moms for help. I got an overwhelming amount of responses to my pleas for help from a local group. I needed a way to sort through it all and keep track of what I was researching. I grabbed three 5 subject spiral notebooks: 1 green for Rosie, 1 blue for Ladybug, and 1 purple for subjects they are doing together.

I sorted through all of the responses and listed all the language arts choices in one section, all the math in another, spelling in another, and reading lists/ideas in yet another. After gathering all of the helpful suggestions, I began researching each one and settled on my favorites. It took some time because except for math, we had never used a structured curriculum for anything. Also, since having tested my girls in the spring, I needed to adjust grade levels for different subjects. Of course, and I’m sure you can relate, we aren’t exactly able to go buy brand-new everything plus all the kits to go with them. (Thankfully there is a store about 40 minutes away that sells new and used homeschool curriculum. It’s a life-saver! And a penny-saver too. 😉 )

Spelling – I found a spelling curriculum that both girls can use, despite being at different levels.

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That was one of my favorite things about Spelling Power: both girls can use 1 curriculum (it does accommodate a range in grades). I was able to buy my main book used (for only $30) and then I had to buy 2 of the student books. I did only need 1 box of the task cards though. So by having both girls use this, I didn’t need to buy 2 of everything.

Language Arts – I went back and forth on this one. With this subject I was going to have to buy a curriculum set for each girl because they are at different grade levels. So having to buy everything new and online limited my choices (because of course the more expensive ones had to be my top choices). Fortunately, I was able to find Learning Language Arts through Literature (which happened to be one of the more expensive books online) at the used book store – used! It was wonderful find. What I liked about this particular series was that it covers grammar, reading skills, vocabulary, spelling, creative writing, library skills, and research all in one book. LLAtL has 4 book studies that go along with the lessons so it all seems to go together and seems like a more authentic way to learn the necessary skills.

For Rosie, I picked:

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For Ladybug, I picked:

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*I realize these are affiliate links, and I do make a small commission if you choose to buy through these links, but I had to say that the prices for the language arts books beat my used prices at the bookstore.*

Math – This one was tricky. My husband came with me to the bookstore to compare some of our options. I’m pretty sure we spent a couple of hours there that day. (No, our kids were not happy campers.) Our girls have different learning styles and I think they approach math differently. I wanted to pick one for each of them that would work best. [We had tried Saxon last year for both girls. Rosie and I would go head-to-head and there were tears. Ladybug would fly through pages and lightning speed. It just didn’t fit our family.] For Rosie I chose Math Lessons for a Living Education. I liked this one for her because it puts math into everyday circumstances and seems to flow easily. I think if she can see how to apply it in everyday situations, it’ll stick better. Ladybug is going to try out Singapore Math, the standard edition. She seems to have a mind that gravitates towards numbers and sees things more black-and-white. This curriculum should be able to challenge her more.

For Rosie: //ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=macncheesecof-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0890519269&asins=0890519269&linkId=2f01ca87504e59762266d2a994f18372&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true

For Ladybug: //ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=macncheesecof-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0761469834&asins=0761469834&linkId=530098942bc29beb1797b2c74e56d334&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true //ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=macncheesecof-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0761469966&asins=0761469966&linkId=50211424ff30dbcfb37459c1054af5e2&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true

Handwriting – Both of my girls want to learn cursive. This works for me because I wanted to make sure that they still focus on their handwriting skills. I had picked out a cursive workbook from My Father’s World for both girls, but while at the bookstore, Ladybug found Handwriting Without Tears Can-Do Cursive. It looked appealing to her and she wanted to give it a try. Rosie is going to give My Father’s World Handwriting 3 Cursive a try.

For Ladybug: //ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=macncheesecof-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=1891627740&asins=1891627740&linkId=800fedffc385a399aa1a124c893a14aa&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true

 

*Whew* That was a lot! Thank you if you stuck with me through all of that! I wanted to share as much as possible about these core subjects since we are entering middle school with Rosie and I know I’m not the only one. In my next post I’ll dive into the subjects that my girls will be doing together; the ones we’ve divided up by our in-school sessions.

In case you missed it, last time I talked about the Top 10 Things My Homeschool Can’t Survive Without. Seriously, all of things are a must-have for us.

Next time, I’m going to go over the subjects that my girls will be studying together.

Was this helpful in directing you which curriculum choices to look at? Do you use a different one that you’d like to share? I’d love to hear from you!