Saturday, April 18, 2009

Can I? Short Vowel Word Game






I decided it would be fun to review reading words with all of the short vowel sounds. I had the idea to have the sentence "Can I _____ the ______?" and then have two piles of words, one pile has verbs (only simple short vowel words) to put in the first blank and the second pile has nouns (only simple short vowel words) to put int he second blank. She will get some silly phrases like, "Can I rip the sock?" and then more normal phrases like, "Can I hug the Mom?" We do a couple of these a day and she enjoys it. If you are going to print these, you have to save the first picture (above) as a .jpg. The rest should just print fine by clicking "more" and then "print." You might just want to print one sheet of verbs and one sheet of nouns to see if your kids like it :) The first four sheets are the nouns, the last two sheets are the verbs. My mom is going to use this with the grandchildren she is visiting right now and wanted me to post this. Hope someone else can use this too!



Click on "more" above the documents and then press "print"

Friday, April 17, 2009

Fantastic Resource


There is this wonderful resource that I have been using and checking out. There is a free homeschool resource everyday. On Monday they send out a list of all the resources available for the week. You can check them out and come back to download the ones you want.

This weekend in honor of the 234th anniversary of Paul Revere's Ride they are giving away four
wonderful resources all related to Revere and the history surrounding his midnight ride. Here's the complete rundown:

Listen My Children (MP3 audio) -
This a great half hour audio story about Revere's long life and influence, including the events of
that fateful night, as originally dramatized on the radio program "Cavalcade of America", in December, 1952.

"Listen My Children" Listening Guide (PDF ebooklet) -
This PDF discussion guide with background info and questions to accompany the above audio program.

Paul Revere's Ride (MP3 audio) -
A wonderful dramatic performance of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poem,
"Paul Revere's Ride" as performed by Frederic March.

An art study lesson focusing on paintings & sculptures depicting Paul Revere (as well as
the Minutemen), courtesy of Yes You Can! Publications. This is lots of fun and a great way to combine history with art appreciation & hands-on activities to boot.

Check it out at http://www.homeschoolfreebieoftheday.com

Monday, April 6, 2009

Teaching Ch, Th, and SH

My two year old knows all of her letter sounds, so I have been introducing some digraphs (two letters that together make a new sound). My mom likes to introduce these while the kids are learning normal letters because they learn them just like they are another letter. We use the letter sound cards you can find here.

Now I take two sounds like Ch and Sh. I have her put both of the cards down. Then I give her a picture (sometimes I tell her a little story as I explain each one). She has to put the picture in the right column on the floor (under the ch or the sh). We do a lot of repetition, reviewing the sounds and names of all the things aloud after we have put down a couple of pictures and then when we are done after about four pictures under each digraph.

My mom told me today another game she likes to do is like slap jack. The way you
play is have a bunch of cards with just ch, sh and th on them. You make a big deck, as you flip each one, you tell her to only slap the one of them, only the ch for example. I can't wait to try this tomorrow.

Just click here to see the sheets of pictures of words starting ch, sh and th my mom created. The last document I created could be printed and cut out to make a slap jack game.

*To print, click on more above each picture and click print. I'm trying a new way to upload word documents. Tell me if it doesn't work :)







Friday, April 3, 2009




Johanna makes a book or worksheet for her daughter every morning. They are so cute and I thought someone else might want to print some up for their beginning readers. So here is a cute one. This one is more of a worksheet for cut and paste activities.