The Joyful Homemaker

*please excuse the photo quality, I am using my phone for images temporarily*

Welcome back to the blog, friends! Our homeschool year is in full swing and I thought I would share a very easy math center I put together for my five-year old son. He’s working on counting and adding and one of the easiest ways to reinforce the concept of amounts and counting is through hands-on activities.

For this center I used a simple plastic heart-shaped manipulative. We also have animals, teddy bears, blocks, sea shells, polished stones, and more. Really, any scoopable item is great for this center.

To visually reinforce differing amounts, I simply gathered six different containers, five were clear containers and the sixth was an egg carton.

For tactile reinforcement we used a chunky pair of children’s sensory tweezers. One could also use a spoon to scoop or simply have their child use their hands.

For the worksheet I simply created a quick template in word and used a border template from a binder of templates I have (I found these at Goodwill – what a find!).

I had him count the hearts as he was dropping them into the container. After he filled each container, he simply wrote down the number of hearts on the sheet next to the number container we were on. The largest of the containers held seventy-one hearts!

My two-year old daughter also enjoyed this activity. It’s an easy and fun way to teach counting. Kids love to gather, group, scoop, and manipulate objects. I hope you enjoy replicating this center. Feel free to share some of your own fun math centers!

Happy homeschooling, friends!

The Joyful Homemaker

Image – painting by George Goodwin Kilburne

Today was a productive and fun day at Morgan Academy. Izzy and Jack received a history lesson, geography lesson, writing practice, and crafting all in one. They got a boat load of information and had fun working on their Connecticut Lapbooking project. Jack’s favorite thing about CT are the singing robins and Izzy loves pink sunset clouds. 🙂

They learned all about:

• Where we are in Connecticut
• Where Connecticut is
• The capital of Connecticut
• State facts about Connecticut
• When Connecticut was founded
• The thirteen colonies
• The thirteen colonies flag and today’s flag

Lapbooking is my favorite method of instruction. It entails a bit of extra planning and supplies but overall, it’s so much fun. Also, I didn’t realize Nathan Hale was the official hero of CT. I learn something new everyday here at Morgan Academy.

Many Blessings and Happy Homeschooling,

The Joyful Homemaker

(art: Kate Greenaway was a Victorian illustrator and poet who found inspiration in the Regency period.)

Morgan Academy has been hard at work for the past four and half months. Currently, we are studying swimming creatures of the fifth day using Apologia’s Junior Explorer Series. Since Jack is only five, I have tailored it to fit a kinder level. It is a great series and it works well for various ages. Overall, the content is easy to break down for younger students, it just needs a bit of tweaking for non-readers.

I thought it would be fun to put together a lapbook of under sea creatures while focusing on God’s word. Jack enjoyed this project, especially the puppets and making his own drawings of sea creatures.

Below is a quick look at this fun and simple project. You can easily tailor this project to your own home studies and various topics. Here are the materials we used:

1. Two file folders
2. Clear tape
3. Glue stick or glue
4. Print outs. coloring pages, etc. of your topic (we used these http://www.firstpalette.com/tool_box/printables/seaanimals.html)
5. Lined paper for copy work (if using)
6. Scrapbook or cardstock paper
7. Popsicle sticks (we used pieces of heavy, recycled paper)

First, we took the two file folders and taped them together to make a four sectioned, flat “book.”

We started working on our cover next – we used the left flap on the outside as our main cover.

Jack completed his copy work and we assembled the right side of the outside cover.

Our fourth step was working on the inside. I let him color, cut, draw, glue, and arrange things the way he wanted.

We decided it would be fun to add puppets to the front cover – so our fifth step was coloring, cutting, and assembling puppets.

We made an orange attachment to add to the front cover and tucked our puppets into the top. You could easily add whatever you wish to the front. We thought it would be a fun place to store our puppets.

We glued scripture and a few more creatures to the orange piece.

Here is our finished project!

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I hope you enjoyed our project! I would love to see some of your lapbooking projects. Do share! 🙂

Happy Homeschooling,

The Joyful Homemaker