The Connett Connection

I use page protectors everyday as I home school my kids.  Page protectors help with messes, storage and helps make many pages reusable for less paper consumption. INK AND PAPER SAVER One of the most common uses for page protectors is using them to make games and worksheets reusable.  In the picture above, we were playing a place value game .  We placed the recording sheet inside a page protector, so we could play as many times as we wanted without having to print a new page each time! LESS MESS WITH PLAYDOUGH Another use for page protectors that has saved us a lot of time cleaning is using them for playdough mats.  My oldest uses sight word mats to practice her sight words and my four year old uses the alphabet mats to practice letter formation.  The playdough does not stick at all to the page protectors, and it makes for such an easy clean up! STORAGE AND PLANNING I also use page protectors to help me plan out my year and then use the pages ...

So everyone has them.  They lurk in your bathrooms... the empty toilet paper rolls.  Most of the time these little gems end up in the garbage, but did you know they make great used in the classroom or home school with crafts and other activities?  In this post I will outline the ways we have used these paper tubes in our home school. Make centerpieces stand up with toilet paper rolls, like we did with this Thanksgiving turkey.  We used THIS TEMPLATE to decorate and make our turkey centerpiece. We used toilet paper rolls to make this Christmas tree topper.  We used THIS TEMPLATE to create these cute angel to top our Christmas tree! We took our toilet paper tolls and turned them into hearts to make heart stamping paintings for Valentine's Day. We used toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls to make trees for our rain forest habitat box we made when learning about the rain forest.  This project was on of my daughter's favorite activities! ...

We have been very sporadic with our lessons the last 2 weeks due to family being in town and sickness running though our home, so this post will cover what we have done since our last post! My daughter has been enjoying learning how to count money!  These activities, which focus on introducing and counting pennies were some we used the first day.  The piggy bank page is a free download from Tweet Resources and the booklet is a free download from Klassy Kinders! We also explored our pennies and had fun looking for Abraham Lincoln on the back of the penny! Someone has a birthday soon!  She, on her own, decided to make a countdown chart where she will cut off one number each day until she gets to the end, then it will be her birthday! We have bee learning about Mexico the last few weeks and we did this yarn art after looking at pictures of traditional yarn paintings of the Huichol people of Mexico! My 3 year old son is also finally beginning his sch...

We have had some relaxed weeks the last two weeks and this upcoming week will be less as well.  It is spring break week for the public schools and we are planning a trip to the aquarium for the kids big birthday present.  My next weeks post will focus on that trip! This flower is just one in a part of a series of craftivities we have been working through.  This one is for the am family. My daughter still loves these puzzles, so I have begun making more to go along with the next word families we are working with. Continuing our transportation theme, we did this land, sea and air sort. In math, we have been working on making shapes with pattern blocks.  This has been a nice change to the addition and subtraction lessons we had been doing.  It is also the last lesson from our math curriculum.  I still have more math planned, but it is all extra! MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Store Boom Store Facebook Page Hands on Activiti...

We had a very productive week last week, despite a 3 day sickness with the youngest and several doctor's visits. We continued our week with more transportation activities.  She drew this picture of a mom driving a car with her kid in the back seat.  They were going to spend the night at a friends's house... hence the suit case in the back.  She had a whole story to tell for her picture! We also continued our word family activities with our AG word family puzzles . We also did a transportation themed science activity called Sink the Boat ! We used a plastic container and tried to fill it with various objects to sink it! We used this recording sheet to predict how many of each item we thought we would need and then we tested our predictions. We found we needed 10 rocks to sink the boat, which was more than we predicted.  My daughter under predicted every category! We made this rainbow craft this week by finding colored pages from magazin...

We had a pretty light week this week.  My daughter decided to try out the magnet blocks her brother got for Christmas.  They both had fun making shapes, cars, pizzas and trains.  I let them play half the morning with them. My daughter showed me this creation and said, "This is a shape mommy, but I don't know what it is called." We talked about the letter D a little with my 2 year old and made this "D for Dot" craft.   They both loved dotting the q-tip on their letter D paper ! This new activity was by far the highlight of our evening on Wednesday.  I printed a few of these road mat sight words for my daughter drive her little cars on.  She said each letter as she drove the car then said the word as she finished driving on each word. My daughter asked my as I was typing up the " One Hundred Activities for the 100th Day of School " post when she was going to get to celebrate... well we do a number worksheet every morning to practice...

So I did not make a weekly post like week, simply because we went through the whole week and did not take one single picture of anything we did!  I just did not even think to grab my camera! We started off this week with a celebration.  My youngest turned 1!   He would NOT touch his cake.  He wanted to know what kind of torture we were putting him under... My daughter started learning subtraction.  She had a little more difficulty picking it up, but once she remembered the subtraction sign could mean take away, the concept clicked in her head. My daughter does things like this with her sight word papers ALL THE TIME.  She is very artistic and at first it drove me nuts that it wasn't completely done correctly, but I now accept her creativity and as long as I know she knows the word/concept we are practicing, I let the artistic flare slide. We have been working a while on CVC words, especially isolating the beginning, middle and ending so...

We have been practicing our reading skills quite a bit lately.  We are focusing mostly on CVC words and sight words.  This is the latest center activity we have been doing. These cards are easy to make and store!  Simply print on card stock, cut out and fold!  You can laminate them if desired. They make a great center for any student learning to read!  My daughter loves that she can check her own reading. This has helped her become more confident in herself.  Before introducing these cards, she was always asking me if she read a word correctly.  Now she can simply open the card to see! These CVC Reading and Blending Cards are available in my TPT store! MORE WAYS TO CONNECT Teachers Pay Teachers Store Boom Store Facebook Page Hands on Activities and Crafts for Kids Facebook Group Instagram Pinterest Youtube Subscribe below to our email list for the latest blog posts, products, sales and freebies! 

So the last two weeks have been very unconventional in our home school journey.  For week 14, we were out of town at my grandmother's house.  I told my daughter I would only take a few days of school since we were already 8 days behind, but that I would not make her have school lessons everyday since we were technically on vacation. I love the way my daughter will sometimes do her writing in artistic ways.  She loves to be cutesy and loves art, so I do not correct her when she does things like the above writing.  She did what I asked in a way that was fun for her.  The fact that she thought to make her letters this way was impressive to me as I've never modeled letters looking like this nor have I ever seen her make them this way before.  Everyday we do school work, I have her write the date as the first thing we do.  We talk about the days of the week, month of the year and the number of the day during this time as well! We did another guid...

Another week has ended!  A new one is about to begin!  We had a lot of fun this week, especially with our big project and a new writing plan! We are finishing up a study on the grasslands !  Just a few more days left and then it is one to studying the forest! We had fun using these clip cards to figure out what type of grassland each of these animals lived in. Part of testing her knowledge of the grasslands was doing this writing paper .  I ask her to draw a grassland and then two animals that live in the grassland. Our big project this week was making this grasslands box .  We did a small portion of the project each day this week and on Friday we added our animals and the kids got to play with it.  My 2 year old was so excited to add animals to the box.  He came running over with his favorite animal, his shark.  He got a lesson on why sharks do not belong in the grasslands! Someone posted this idea for writing rubrics on Fac...