Sparky’s Fire Safety

April 7, 2013 by

sparky3

“Get out fast when you hear an Alarm because Big fires start small. Once you’re out, Call the fire department,” says Sparky the fire dog.

Can you fill in the rest to x, y, z?  I thought this was a catchy way for kids to learn about fire safety. We recently went on a homeschool field trip to Historic Belmont Firehouse and it reminded me the importance of teaching my children on the dangers of fire. This also gave us an opportunity to talk about our home fire-exit plan. Here are some fun and helpful resources for you and your family as you teach your kids about this subject.

Sparky’s ABCs of Fire Safety

Sparky’s ABC Fire Safety Flashcards

Scholastic Fire Safety (Lessons, printables, and more by grade level)

Sparky Says: Join My Fire Safety Club Video (below)

 

 

 

Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: , ,

Halloween Candy: Creative Ways to Use Them

November 1, 2012 by

Now that Halloween is over, what are you going to do with all those candies. Between the candies my kiddos got from a harvest party and the ones we bought for trick-or-treaters, we have three beach buckets left. I could save all the candies and let them eat it, or, being a homeschool mom, I wanted to use it as a teaching tool.  This subject is not on math, science, or health, but on the act of service.  I wanted to get the kids started into this holiday season with the mind set of serving others rather than receiving.   There is a program called Halloween Candy Buyback where local dentists can register and buy back Halloween candy from neighborhood kids.  The dentists then send them to the troops overseas. I just thought that this is just a great way for me to teach the kids about serving others and about the men and women in our armed forces, our American Heroes.

Here’s what you need to do.  Go to Halloween Candy Buyback. Once you’re at the site, type in your zip code to find a local dentist in your neighborhood. Give the dentists a call for their specific times that they’ve set aside for this event. Then have your kids pack up the candies and visit the dentist with them.

Wait…before dropping off those candies, here are some fun learning activities you might want to consider especially if you have young kids.

Buddy used those candies for his patterning lesson in math.

Both Buddy and Chico lined up those candies to make a candy graph. Since Buddy is older, I gave him harder questions as he compared the candies on his graph. With Chico, we talked about the ideas of more and less.

I asked Mei to sort the candies. I demonstrated to her by putting one of each kind of candy in each container and asked her to put the same candies in those containers. She did a great job in her sorting lesson.

There’s also counting by ones, twos, tens, even hundreds if you have that many. For language arts lessons, you might use names of the candies to reinforce letter sounds, beginning sounds or even reading all the names of the candies depending on your child’s levels. How about nutrition lesson? Learning what’s in candy might help your child understand why too much candy is not good for our bodies.

This is what our local dentist from the program gave the kids. New toothbrush and a new toy for each child and $1.00 per pound of candy (we got $8.00 back!)

Hopefully this will give you some great ideas on what to do with your Halloween candies. I’d love to hear what you do with your candies. Please share in the comment section.

Filed Under: Fall, Homeschool, Indoors Activities Tagged With:

Lemon Cucumber Invasion, a Math Lesson Part 2

September 4, 2012 by

 

You must think we are nuts about lemon cucumbers. That’s probably true to a certain extend. They are usually gone soon after I pick them. Besides that, I, being a Home Educator Mom, try to turn everything into a learning experience. That’s the perk in homeschooling! So to continue with the theme of lemon cucumbers, my husband, Bubba, created a worksheet for Chico. First Mei and Chico counted the cucumbers together; then he colored in the appropriate number of squares on his worksheet like the picture below.

This exercise gives him a visual presentation of what he’s counting and allows me to ask him to compare between the days. Chico is only reading three-letter (one syllable) words so we went over the questions together. Click here to view or print a list of the questions.

Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: ,

Lemon Cucumber Invasion, a Math Lesson

August 22, 2012 by

Summer is the time of year to enjoy these delicious lemon cucumbers. Not only are they cute looking, shaped just like a lemon, they are crunchy and healthy little snacks that fit perfectly in little hands. My three kids absolutely love them. In fact, Mei, my little two-year-old girl, no longer waits for me to wash them.  She does it herself and starts munching on them while I finish picking them.

I have been harvesting these cute little “lemons” since early August and they are still coming. I got so many that I, being a home educator mom, decided to create a lesson; The Lemon Cucumber Invasion Math.  We would use the tally mark system to keep track of them. First, Mei and Chico counted them, and Buddy drew the tally marks for how many we would pick each day. Then, together we would count them by one’s and five’s together.  This was Buddy’s first intro to tallying so he had fun drawing those lines and making sure all the cukes are counted for!

Once the job of tallying and counting was done, we did some comparisons. This part was first done orally with all three kids. Afterwards, Buddy was given a worksheet of questions to be completed on his own. We called this homework.

To view or print the list of questions click here.

 

Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: , ,