Itty-Bitty Bookworm Curriculum Giveaway!

I ran across this early learning curriculum giveaway just a moment ago and wanted to share it here. My children are too old to benefit, so I'll not be entering this one, but thought it might be of interest to a handful of my readers... so here's what I learned...

Homeschool Creations is offering a full-year Ity-Bitty Bookworm Preschool curriculum (on CD) for ages 18 months to 5 years! Pretty cool! I'm not personally familiar with this curriculum, but after reading about it's contents and curriculum focus, I'll bet any homeschooling family of children pre-school age and younger would love to have it.

The curriculum includes everything you might imagine necessary to homeschool your early learners, even including Bible Story Units. The original post at Homeschool Creations, offers full details on what the curriculum looks like, including a link to a pdf sample, and complete instructions on how to enter. Don't enter here! Be sure to follow the link to the giveaway! :o)

Deadline for entry is this coming Thursday, April 2nd at 8 pm, although I'm not sure which time zone she's in, so better enter today!

Good luck!!!

Dolphins Blowing Bubble Rings?

Yes they can! You and your kids will love this short video provided by Sea World, sharing the fairly recent discovery of dolphins blowing bubbles!




I only wish we'd witnessed this amazing talent on our recent trip to Sea World in November!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

With Spring beginning to emerge (finally!) there's no better time than the present to start planning outdoor learning activities with your children. Planning and executing a garden is a wonderful way to teach your children a variety of skills, while giving them the added satisfaction of watching their efforts bring forth magnificent results!

When you think of gardening you may think of carrots and tomatoes, but if you're not inclined to go that route, you may also find great satisfaction in starting a flower or herb garden. Children love to play in the dirt and what better way to make good use of their natural interest in digging, shoveling, and burying than to have them help you plant a few seeds or bulbs in your backyard?

Here are a handful of cool websites geared for children (and their gardening parents). If you're looking for a little help (maybe this is new for you too) or just need a few ideas on how to make lessons out of gardening, take a peak at these great sites and have some fun!!

Kid's Gardening
Gardening Projects for Kids
Ladybug Gardening
Lucy Gardens
Aggie Horticulture Just for Kids
Kids and Gardening
My First Garden
Seeds of Change Garden

Another Cool Story Book Site (with audio)!

I've posted a couple of these before, but just found a new one to add to the mix. Storynory, doesn't have live animation (with the exception of a handful of videos), but does offer printed text along with a lively narrator to read a variety of short stories to your emerging reader. The narrator has a beautiful English accent... just in case that makes a difference! lol

My kids love story time and while I totally believe it's better for mom or dad to read to them rather than an anonymous narrator, sometimes mommy's hands are busy with dinner prep or laundry... so Storynory is a welcome friend in our household! I also think this could be a fun way to occupy younger children while mom is busy with lessons for the older kids. It can be a real challenge keeping your early elementary kids occupied sometimes!

I really need to update my recommended links list in the left sidebar titled "links2learnby" and one of these days I will! I intended to long ago, but you know how that goes! When I get to it, I'll be sure to offer all the great story sites I've found so you'll not have to search so hard for them all!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful semester!

Do You Take a Spring Break?

This is the week of Spring Break in our district and since we threw in the towel (for the time being) on homeschooling, my kids have been home with me all week. My soon to be 8 year old has been doing 4 pages of math every morning, sent home by his teacher as he needs the extra practice. Surprisingly he's been very cooperative... until today! lol It is Friday after all. Today will complete 24 pages of math skills, then tomorrow through Monday (which he also has off school) we'll be picking up where we left off in January in his homeschooling math book.

I wonder how many of you take a Spring Break and if so do you completely avoid your lessons, or do you just carry a lighter load? If your children are doing well with their lessons it can be a great way to give everyone a break... including you! If your kids are struggling a bit, it might still be a good idea to give them a couple days off, just to refresh. From my own experience as a homeschooler (in years past), I will say that I needed the break as much as the kids did... possibly even more so! Now that I'm on the other side of the fence, as mom to kids who are attending a brick and mortar school, I'm enjoying just having them each brush up on the skills they are struggling with, then calling it a day. We've been having a great time together, going to parks, grabbing lunch with Grandma A, then the next day Grandma B... what a great week!

I'd love to hear your thoughts! I'm a bit of a rambler and I'm fighting the urge to let this post go a variety of directions, so I'll stop now. lol

Personalized Embroidery Makes the Perfect Gift!

I find this especially true when gifting to children, or to new moms. Who doesn't love a baby blanket with their precious little one's name embroidered for a time treasured keepsake? I still have a cloth diaper that was given to us by my husband's employer (at the time) with my daughter's name on it. Never used it of course, but it's part of her room decor. High end fabric and wrapped with a beautiful pink ribbon. Who would have thought a diaper would be such a high profile room accent? lol

With all that said, I couldn't be more excited to have found an online embroidery service where the visitor can actually choose the product and design! In fact, you can even upload your own design or logo! Wow. I'm there now, choosing a blue fleece baby blanket, for which I'd like to use the site's clip art (since I don't have my own design to upload to the site). I've selected the moon and stars and have found I have the freedom to play with the thread colors! Woo Hoo... talk about fun! Finally, I'm adding my text, in the font and color of my choice before checking out my final design and sending it to the shopping cart.

If you have a new mommy to shop for, I highly recommend this unique and personal gift giving option. After all, who doesn't adore personalized baby gifts? These treasures won't get passed down to a neighbor or left on a garage sale table. Choose the gift that will become a family keepsake! I know I will. :0)

Kids Can Build Vocabulary While Feeding the Hungry!

One of my son's homework assignments tonight was to play on FreeRice.com and practice his vocabulary skills, which doesn't really sound like a whole lot of fun to a 2nd grader and indeed he protested all the way to the computer. Once he realized that with every correct answer he was contributing food to the hungry, his attitude changed! Tonight my son contributed 1000 grains of rice through this program launched by the UN World Food Program!

If your child doesn't have an allowance and wants to help starving children, this is the perfect way to get them involved. If vocabulary isn't something they wish to practice, they can opt for math questions instead. There are also geography, chemistry and English grammar quizzes to complete for grains of rice! To be exact, it's 10 grains of rice per correct answer. If your child gets an answer wrong, the next question becomes a little less intense. If they answer correctly, they increase the level slightly to challenge their learning. Basically everyone wins!

I share a lot of links here, but this one really makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I wish I'd known about it before today!

Creating and Maintaining an Earth-Friendly Garden

I'm curious to know how many gardeners read this blog. I've never started a garden since I didn't have a clue how to keep the bugs and rabbits away, without using harmful chemicals that is. So... while I've always like the idea of planting my own tomatoes and carrots, I've never actually given it a shot. My neighbor traps rabbits and takes them out to the countryside and I've always wondered if there were a way to simply repel them, so they would willingly select a meal outside his flower garden. Turns out there is a repellent that works to keep small animals away from gardens without introducing harmful toxins to your family and without a drive to the country.

I was delighted to have discovered a website that teaches users how to create and maintain an organic, environmentally friendly garden. Roses, tomatoes, whatever you're attempting to grow can be done in such a way that you don't poison your children! They even offer organic bug control.

Safer® brand offers a variety of environmentally friendly products like fertilizers, weed control, and pest control.

On the Safer® brand website, you can also learn about the many benefits of organic gardening. Maybe it's not something you've considered before or perhaps you just didn't know where to find these types of products?

Whether you're trying to maintain a food garden, flower garden or even houseplants, you'll find the help you need here. You'll find products that are USDA compliant and OMRI listed.

If you'd like to learn more about going Green... check out this video hosted by Jodi Dombrowski of Designing Spaces.

Have You Heard of KidZui?

It's called the web browser for kids and is marketed as containing only parent and teacher approved sites. I thought it might be worth passing the website along as I know all to well the anxiety a parent feels when their kids learn to Google. Especially when they're spelling isn't all that great and their curiosity is high. Kids don't recognize the very real dangers awaiting an invitation to attack your computer's hard drive or even worse, their very impressionable young minds.

This winning idea of a web browser is promoted as 100% free to use and claims to be a great source for finding educational videos and websites. I'm using words like "promoted as" and "claims to be" since the site is new to me and I've not yet tested it out.

Here's another thing to like... you'll get free weekly emails letting you know what types of things your kids are looking up. You can also add websites to the browser that you have found and want your kids to have access to.

Our computer is in the family room and our main living space is very open, making it hard for us not to see what our kids are looking at. My big anxiety has never been that they would deliberately go looking for inappropriate material, but that the inappropriate material would find them, as they innocently searched for subjects of interest. My kids are still young, and at ages 6 and 7 I'm in no hurry whatsoever to have to explain certain things to them. So, KidZui is definitely perking my interest!

Let me know if you've had opinions of this kid safe web browser. Have you used it before? Are you excited to see it in action?