WAHOO!! Free LA Workbooks!!!!

One of my other HS mom's showed me a FANTASTIC site. Reading and Writing Workbooks by Scott Foresman.

Consonant Blends & Phonics

We are working on consonant blends with my youngest, Xman. There are a few free lapbooks available online -

Homeschool Helper - Phonics Lapbook 1
Scribd - My Consonants Lapbook
Lapbook Lessons - Phonics Lapbooks

Games

I recently was asked about educational games. For the child who doesn't enjoy books or worksheets how can you get them to learn in fun ways? There are 2 web sites I highly recommend:

• Time4Learning.com, it's fantastic for the younger croud - all the lessons are set up like cartoon interactive games on the computer, and it's only like $20/month.
• There is also LearningPlanet.com which is similar to time4learning and it costs $39.95/year.

 

Otherwise some of the great free websites I've used are as follows:

 

 The Kids Page

 Funschool at Kaboose

 Gamequarium

 Prongo

 

Parade Fun

My kids have never walked in a parade before. Last year our Earth Scouts group didn't get it together in time, and the boys do informal Park & Rec sports instead of formal teams. But today the kids walked in the Memorial Day Parade with the Relay For Life (American Cancer Society) float.....ok the kids road the float and us Adults walked, but still. We absolutely roasted in the sun! When we began I told everyone we needed a song or chant for the children to sing and finally we came up with the relay slogan "Celebrate. Remember. And Fight Back!" Everyone clapped like crazy as we walked by, with my booming drill Sargent voice leading the charge!

Latin Lesson 1: Counting, Greetings & Intro Grammer

I haven't found a Latin program I like for the boys (or one I was willing to pay a whole lot of money for) so I've begun putting together my own curriculum on the subject. (I know, you're bracing yourself for the shock! LOL) I've decided I'll share these lessons with you all. Each week we cover a lesson, we say them out loud each day and DJ writes them out 3x/week, one of those times he creates sentences with the vocab, and another he creates vocab cards (index cards with the Latin on one side and the English on the other), and finally I call out the words in English and he writes them out in Latin like a test.

Counting:

1 = Unus          6 = Sex
2 = Duo           7 = Septem
3 = Tres           8 = Octo
4 = Quattor      9 = Novem
5 = Quinque    10= Decem

**You'll notice something right off....4 of our months were rooted in Latin: September, October, November & December....a word in English that is rooted in Latin is termed: Derivative. You'll also notice the similarities between the 'romantic languages' and their basis in Latin....1 in French = Un, in Spanish = Uno...

Greetings:

Word / Phrase.............Singular............... Plural
"Hello"................,,,,,,...Salve!....................Salvete!
"How are you?"...........Quid agis?
   -- "very well"...........Satis bene!
   -- "excellent"...........Optime!
   -- "very bad"...........Pessime.
"Who are you?"...........Quis es?...............Quis estis?
   -- "I am"....................sum
   -- "You are"................es........................estis
   -- "We are"...............sumus
   -- "everyone".............omnes
"What"........................Quid
**Family**
Mother........................mater
Father..........................pater
Daughter......................filia
Son.............................filius
Brother......................frater
Sister.........................soror
Friend.......................amicus
Teacher...................(m) magister  (f) magistra

Grammer:

Latin Consonants
Consonant........Pronunciation................example
'c'...................soft before e,i,ae,oe..............like 'ch' in charity
'c'...................hard before other letters........like 'c' in cut
'g'...................soft before e,i,ae,oe..............like 'g' in germ
'g'..................hard before all other letters.....like 'g' in go
'gn'...........................................................like 'gn' in lasagne
'j'..............................................................like 'y' in yet
's'..................never like a z......................like 's' in sing
'sc'..........................................................like 'sh' in shoot
't'..............when followed by 'i' and a vowel....sounds like 'tsee'

**letter missing from the lating alphabet? "W"**

Latin Vowels
Vowel..........Long Sound...................example
'a'...............'ah'..............................like in father
'e'...............'eh' (ay)........................like in they
'i'................'ee'...............................like in machine
'o'..............'oh'..............................like in no
'u'..............'oo'..............................like in tool
'ae'............'ay'...............................like in they
'oe'...........'ay'...............................like in they
'au'...........'ow'.............................like in cow
                             

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

With the tragic events leading up to the large oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I felt it was important to teach my children what is so terrible about the situation.
Oil experiments really get the point across easily to younger children. Pour a cup of oil in a small bowl and add a few drops of food coloring. Then pour colored oil into a big bowl of water. The children can place a few toys (or if you really want to proove a point use a small stuffed animal) in and see how difficult it is to get the oil off. You can also experiment with different means of getting the oil out of the water!

Here are some of the resources I've used:

Big list of resources - Earth Scouts
Oil & Pain Contamination Activity
Effects of Oil Spills on Birds
Oil, Oil Everywhere - a book on the Exxon Valdeze with worksheets and lesson plans
Fossil Fuels, Facing the Issues
Impact of Oil Spills on Our Oceans

Local Boy w/ Cancer is Turned Into A Super Hero

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