Arts & Crafts, Language Arts, Literature, Nature Studies, Reading

A Beatrix Potter Treasury

Today we feature a wonderful treasure chest of books, audios, videos and lessons about the stories of Beatrix Potter. Her classic artwork and stories are utterly delightful and should be known by every child. What better stories than these to share with your littles?

CLICK HERE to read almost all Beatrix Potter’s original picture books online or download them in kindle and mobi format at Project Gutenberg.

CLICK HERE to listen to almost all Beatrix Potter’s books online or to download them in mp3 format or to iTunes. There are three massive collections on this Librivox page, and you’ll just have to pick and choose which narrators you enjoy best. You can follow along the readings using the picture books from the Project Gutenberg link above.

CLICK HERE to go to a youtube page which offers up a couple dozen Beatrix Potter stories and related videos, including all the episodes of “The World of Peter Rabbit and His Friends”. (As always with youtube, parental oversight is recommended.)

Resources from PeterRabbit.com:  CLICK HERE to go to the download page — and don’t miss the 39 page PDF of Beatrix Potter Teaching Resources!

Grammar, Language Arts

Grammar Planet

GrammarPlanet is a comprehensive and completely online grammar, punctuation, and usage curriculum. And now it is totally free.

GrammarPlanet is the brainchild of Erin Karl and Jerry Bailey. Erin is the owner of Analytical Grammar, Inc. and Jerry is the President and a partner in Dynamic Literacy, LLC. Erin’s skills at teaching grammar as evidenced by Analytical Grammar, and Jerry’s skills and experience in developing an online version of WordBuild: A Better Way to Teach Vocabulary, complement one another perfectly.

GrammarPlanet will help you or your students master the mechanics of English and create a more confident writer. The curriculum is aimed at students from 10 to 99 who want to improve their English. It can be used by students in school, students at home, or adults individually or as a group. The system is responsive, meaning that students who take a little longer to “get it” will get more practice before the test. There is no time limit and students can take as much time as needed to master the material.

CLICK HERE to go to the website!

Language Arts

Helping with Verbs

HelpingWithVerbs.com is designed to help students improve their writing through the correct use of verbs in sentences.

There are six main lessons on the site, each with a series of printable worksheets that can be worked through by students. These provide lots of examples and opportunities for practice through extensive and varied exercises. The lessons teach students how to use verbs in their everyday writing.

Each worksheet is packed with information on historical events, the natural world and/or legendary people — so students not only develop their written communication skills, but they also learn about the world around them. This takes the focus away from the grueling grammatical exercises and puts the focus on the information.

CLICK HERE to go to the site!

Language Arts

“The Good and the Beautiful” Language Arts Course

The Good and the Beautiful website offers a great Language Arts curriculum, and Levels 1 thru 5 are currently available as free PDF downloads from their website.

Here’s what they say on the site about this course on their site:

Connects learning to the good and the beautiful: family, God, high moral character, wholesome literature, and the wonders and beauty of nature and human life

Requires no daily prep time—just open the book and follow the instructions, learning and exploring along with your child.

Combines multiple subjects, connecting learning, adding meaning, shortening school time, making learning more enjoyable, and eliminating the need for 6 to 7 different courses. Reading, writing, literature, spelling, grammar & punctuation, vocabulary, geography, and art are all in one course.

Emphasizes literature of the highest literary and moral merit. 

Full phonics reading program creates excellent readers. Phonics instruction is included through Level 3.

Strong writing program creates excellent writers!

Thorough and advanced courses leave no gaps! There is no need to supplement.

There are lots of resources on the site (both downloadable and printed) that are available for purchase, but again, Levels 1 – 5 of the Language Arts course are free downloads in PDF format. You will need to go through their checkout to get them.

CLICK HERE to go to the website!

Language Arts

Listen, Write and Read

Listen, Write and Read is a multi-sensory series of five workbooks incorporating dictation, writing and reading of simple sight word sentences. Its primary goal is to help students both young and old to read and write.

Here’s what Paul J. Wickham, creator of the series, says about its origin:

For nine years, I taught reading and writing to children and adults in Los Angeles. At the end of each school term, all my students could write clear, coherent sentences and paragraphs that developed a central idea.

The dramatic improvement in their reading and writing skills over a single school term was attributable to the use of dictation exercises I developed to introduce and review the use of high-frequency sight words. Training in the whole-word recognition of sight words is clearly superior to phonics instruction for these words. Learning to recognize these words instantly by sight is essential to developing reading fluency and comprehension.

LISTEN, WRITE AND READ Sentences for Sight Word Dictation is a collection of the specific sentences I used for this instruction, arranged by grade level. A series of five activity books provide students with an illustration of each sentence. The illustrations were designed to have universal appeal to students of all ages.

All five activity books are available free on the website.

CLICK HERE to go to the site!

Language Arts, Math

“Mini Offices” from Practical Pages

A Mini Office is essentially a reference file or folder with all a child’s personal important information right at hand.  This could be reference charts, handwriting charts, number lines, multiplication tables, vocabulary lists, handy facts and any other useful information. It is a handy way of encouraging children to work independently and to provide the necessary assistance without having to put up visual displays.

Nadene at Practical Pages has put together collections of these reference pages for both younger and older students. They are filled with useful, helpful stuff, and you’re gonna want to download ’em both.

The JUNIOR MINI OFFICE includes:

  1. Number Line & Number Chart
  2. Ordinal numbers & Fractions
  3. Tally or scores, finger counting signs, Shapes, Colours, Directions
  4. Number words & Roman Clock and Roman numbers
  5. Multiplication Tables
  6. Seasons & Months & Days of the Week
  7. Days of the week & time of the day
  8. Address & Where am I?
  9. Weather symbols and Rainbow
  10. Sight Word Walls
  11. Phonic Alphabet
  12. Phonic Blends
  13. Family Words
  14. Print Handwriting Chart
  15. Cursive Handwriting Chart

THE SENIOR MINI OFFICE is a 20-page PDF download that covers a lot of Mathematics, and includes:

  1. Number Chart
  2. Number words
  3. Multiplication Table
  4. Keeping score / Tally, Finger counting, Shapes & Colours
  5. Maths Symbols & their meanings & Compass
  6. Ordinal numbers & Roman Clock & Roman numerals
  7. Telling Time , Clock face, Analogue & Digital Clocks
  8. Angles & Fractions
  9. Different types of fractions & Converting fractions
  10. Converting Units & Number Systems
  11. Percentages – Decimals – Fractions
  12. Circles – Definition & Formula
  13. 2D Shapes – Description Circumference & Area formula
  14. 3D Shapes – Description Volume & Outer Area formula
  15. Triangles – Definition & Formula
  16. Weather symbols & Wind direction & speed symbol & Celsius/Fahrenheit
  17. Cursive Handwriting Chart

CLICK HERE to go to the site!

Language Arts

Freebies from Lit Mama

Lit Mama Homeschool.com has a delightful collection of dozens of homeschool resources, worksheets, mini unit studies, planning pages, and more that may be freely downloaded.

Here’s just a few of them, reflecting Lit Mama’s them of “educating with a fire for literature”:

Poetry Walk Poems /Poetry Tea Time Poem Book for Kids
Treasure Island Pirate Pack
Explore your Neighborhood Pack
Mini Units on Bridge to Terabithia, Tom Sawyer, Watership Down, The Secret Garden, Alice 8n Wonderland,
Blank Maps of the World
Teaching Story Types & Elements of Plot
Book Journaling prompts
Curriculum & project planners…
And lots more.

CLICK HERE to go to the site and browse the collection!

Arts & Crafts, Electives, Language Arts, Math, Uncategorized

Previously…

Here are a few recent freebies we posted in July just before the lights went out:

GREENLEAF GUIDE TO OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY

This “History for the thoughtful child” by Rob & Cyndy Shearer outlines a reading program which will take you through the history of Israel by reading through the historical books from Genesis to Nehemiah chronologically. Old Testament history is divided into 196 Bible readings (approximately 1 chapter each) along with some suggestions of how to cover the material and keep it interesting. For each reading there is a series of questions to help you focus on the significant details. There are also a number of background notes and some suggestions for further study. This book won’t answer all your questions, but it will give you a well thought out program of reading and studying the ancient history of Israel. This is intended as a first history course for the early elementary grades (though many parents are using it with high school students).

The complete ebook is available at this link on Lulu. You’ll need to go through checkout to download it, but it is totally free.

CLICK HERE!

THE BIRDSLEUTH EXPLORER’S GUIDEBOOK!

Here’s a wonderful freebie for your nature studies.  The Cornell Institute of Ornithology offers its 12 page BirdSleuth Explorer’s Guidebook absolutely free to download and print.
The full color 14 page booklet includes lots of great stuff for identifying birds, including some fun activities and worksheets to fill out. This is a great printable to help get kids interested in birds and will teach them lots of the basics of bird watching and bird identification.
Pages include:
• Wake up your ears
• What’s a habitat?
• Habitat scavenger hunt
• Bird search
• Identification clues
• Bird count
• I wonder

CLICK HERE to go to the download page at MagicalChildhood.com. You can find it at the very bottom of the page.

WORLD WAR 2 TWEETS in Real Time

Here’s a unique “living history” twitter account, which livetweets the events of the Second World War as it happened in “real time” on this day in 1940 & for 5 years to come. Events unfold as they happened during the war, with frequent updates throughout each day. It’s filled with amazing period photos and brief commentary — great for students studying WW2.

CLICK HERE to go to this Twitter account!

Emergency “Get-Started Right NOW” HIGH SCHOOL COURSES

Do you know someone who has had to begin homeschooling a high-school age student at the last minute?  Who doesn’t? Well, this resource will be of tremendous help in that situation.

HomeschoolCollegeUSA.com put together this “emergency” page for parents looking for courses they can begin immediately with a student pulled from a public school system, with little or no time to research and prepare for homeschooling, It was put together as one a student can start at any time without a lot of prep work. The courses listed (with the exception of their recommended math courses) are all free and only require internet access, plus paper and pens/pencils for note-taking when needed.

HomeschoolCollegeUSA also offers a four year curriculum for high school students, plus resources that help students to earn college credit via CLEP while still in high school. Check out the whole site… loads of great resources for homeschooling any high school students.

CLICK HERE to go to the site!