This post contains my referral links.  View my disclosure policy here.

This past week in spelling, my son and I studied the vowel suffix ED.  We are currently in All About Spelling Level 3, which introduces the three different sounds that the suffix ED makes when added to a base word.

One of the activities was to sort various words that ended in the ED suffix…but I lost the sheet with the listed suffixes.  I’m sure it’s somewhere in the depths of our school room shelf, but after searching for over 20 minutes, I had to change plans.

Instead of using the provided ED sorting activity, which I’m sure is as fabulous as everything else All About Learning does, I had to make my own ED sort at the last minute.

The ED Sort

My first and third children are especially fond of sorting activities.  My 8-year-old is a fan of most any activity where he isn’t required to write, and this ED sort was no exception!

The columns are divided into the three sounds that the vowel suffix ED makes: /ed/, /d/, and /t/.  In case you need a little help, you can peek at this website that explains exactly why each of those sounds are made.  I love to know the why behind spelling rules!

After your child cuts out each of the words, have him glue or tape the words in the appropriate column.

Note that there are 64 words, so obviously this activity is not meant to do in one sitting!  Work on a dozen or so words each day until the activity is completed.

The ED Sort

Author:	Lauren Hill
Platforms:	Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
License:	CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Date:	May 19, 2013

Details...

Do your children love to sort also?  You can also download the Noun-Verb Sort, The Noun Sort, and Past Tense: Regular and Irregular Verb Sort FREE from Mama’s!

This post contains my referral links.  View my disclosure policy here.

Did you know that NotebookingPages.com is having a Facebook Party in honor of my birthday on May 21st??

Kidding, kidding.

May 21st is my birthday, but the Facebook party is not in my honor,
but to promote their 7th annual SALE-a-Bration!

There will be tons of freebies and discounts galore from friends of NotebookingPages.com and Debra from NotebookingPages.com herself!

The Facebook party is hosted by iHomeschool Network and will be from 9-10pm ET on Tuesday, May 21st.  So be there!

(I’m going to try to be at the party.  I figure in my ripe old age that all of my birthday festivities will have ended by 9pm- ha!  My 22-year-old self would die at the thought of that!)

If you’re interested purchasing a LIFETIME Membership to NotebookingPages.com, here are the details:

• Save $25 on Notebooking Pages LIFETIME Membership (two-payment plan available)
  ...one time payment of $74.95 or two monthly payments ($50.00/$24.95).

• New members receive up to 2 Years FREE Access to The Notebooking Publisher™
  … purchase by Friday, May 10th to receive 2 years FREE access
  … purchase by Friday, May 17th to receive 18 months FREE access
  … purchase by Friday, May 24th to receive 15 months FREE access
  …purchase by Friday, May 31st to receive 12 months FREE access

• All LIFETIME members (new and current) will receive a $100 Bonus E-Gift Homeschool Package
  from participating NotebookingPages.com Sponsors
  …The e-gifts will be delivered to the Member Download Center by May 31st.

• All LIFETIME members (new and current) may enter a prize drawing for:
  *an iPad mini (1 winner)
  *$100 Amazon.com Gift Card (2 winners)
  *LIFETIME access to The Notebooking Publisher™ (3 winners)
  *LIFETIME membership to MomsToolBelt.com (5 winners)
  …details for the drawing will be found in their Member Download Center.

• New (& improved) features of The Notebooking Publisher™ web-app
  *Copywork feature … create your own custom copywork pages (print/cursive, regular/primary).
  *Ability to create templates -and- save your work-in-progress to the web.
  *Ability to edit selected portions of text within a text frame.
  *Separate user accounts for mom and kids … password protection coming very soon.
  …new demo videos will be added to the site each week of the sale.

Interested in how we use Notebooking in our homeschool?

While we don’t use it everyday, we do use notebooking routinely.  I love to see all of the things my children recall from our reading…things I often don’t remember myself!  Notebooking allows for such creativity.  I love it!

Often, notebooking is considered an activity for older children who can read and write well, but here’s a look at using notebooking with my Kindergartner.

And here’s a look at how we used notebooking when we we studied Roman Soldiers.  My son was at the end of 1st grade at the time, just for reference.

But learning never stops here at the Hill House.  There are paper airplanes to fold and garden boxes to set up and plants to keep watered and breakfast cookies to bake.

All of those things require an ample amount of instruction if my little people are helping me.

Why do my new Mother’s Day flowers have to be watered every day?
Why are we putting compost in the garden boxes?  How did we get the compost in the first place?
Why did this paper airplane fly farther than the last one?
Why am I measuring these ingredients in the breakfast cookies?  Why don’t I just guess how much butter is needed?

You all know how this goes.  These scenarios are probably played out in your homes every day too.

Do we take a summer break?

I am often asked if we take a summer break and how long it lasts.  Readers also want to know if my kiddos do worksheets and printable-type activities during that break.

The answer?

Yes and no.

We certainly do take a summer break.  And I’ll be honest in saying that if May 31st (our last day of school) doesn’t hurry up and get here, I might go a little crazy.  Being the teacher, I have out-of-school fever pretty bad.

We will take several weeks off and then resume in mid-July.  This schedule works great for my family and the season of life we’re in.  Will we always break this way?  I doubt it, as life has a way of changing things up on us.

Will we do school at all during our summer break?

If we’re talking ‘formal’ school with planned math lessons and things like that, the answer is a big fat no.  I’m looking forward to not having to plan weekly school for several weeks.

However, we’ll do what we call ‘life school’ every day all day, as we usually do.  Life School is the type of learning I described at the beginning.

Creating a Summer Notebook

So that leads to another question I’m often asked: How will you keep your children from losing what you’ve taught during the school year? 

I make them personalized Summer Notebooks.

These Summer Notebooks are worksheets and printables that I know they would enjoy.  I bind the worksheets with our binding machine and my kiddos think they’re the coolest things ever.  They truly love them.  Anytime I bind anything in a notebook, they’re hooked!

The key (like all of homeschooling I have found), is to make them fun.  If they think the workbooks are supposed to be schoolwork, they’re less than thrilled.  So I make sure I call them “Summer Notebooks.”

In my 8-year-old son’s packet, I put:

• word searches
• definition matching (from our history studied this past school year)
• pages with writing prompts (write a sentence and draw a picture)
• math practice (I’ll have to sneak it in.  This is really the only subject that he needs reinforcement through the summer.)
• journaling pages for their summer thoughts and activities; some have simple prompts at the top and some do not
• a few pages of Bible verses and some Bible copywork
• crossword puzzles
• mind-bender-type pages (fun critical thinking pages)

In my 6-year-old daughter’s packet, I put:

• tons of color-by-number addition pages
• color-by-number sight word pages
• math facts (she is in love with math facts right now)
• writing prompts
• several pages of blank lines – she loves to write names and practice writing letters and numbers
• coloring sheets 
• several easy reading pages
• ‘What Did You See?’ pages – for keeping a record of items found on nature walks

We’ll also do a Themed Resource Packet this summer

My kiddos are loving the resource packets.  So far, we’ve completed the Plants and Flowers Resource Packet, and we’re working on Birds right now.

The Packets are literally packed with ideas and we enjoy working through them together.  June’s Resource Packet will be on a person who invented several neat things (hint, hint!), so we’ll work through that one together very slowly on our time off.  We’ll do projects and enjoy the online learning links and You Tube videos.

Time to Play

My kiddos don’t view the things I have planned for summer as “school work.”  My kiddos do much better when there is structure to our day, so I will have an hour (maybe) of structured learning time using the things described above, but it certainly won’t be intense like our typical school days.  I’m looking forward to some relaxed, lazy summer days.

So there will be plenty of time during our summer break to play in the sprinkler, take swimming lessons, play in the sandbox, and ride bikes.  My children’s biggest jobs this summer are to just be kids.  Explore the nature around them and make up games to play with their baby dolls.

I can’t wait.

_____________________________________________________________________________

If you’re interested in making some Summer Notebooks for your own kiddos, you can purchase the 2012 Worksheet Packet  for only $9.  It includes 200+ worksheets, printables, and printable games published at Mama’s Learning Corner during the 2012 calendar year.  It’s a steal for all that is included.

For more information on Themed Resource Packets, browse through Mama’s Membership page to see if Resource Packets are a good fit for your family.  Samples are included for each published packet.

The All About Birds Resource Packet, like all of Mama’s Resource Packets, are geared towards 1st – 3rd graders.  However, if your house is anything like mine, you try to incorporate as many ages as you can when using curriculum.

While a Kindergartener can certainly benefit from the resources linked in the resource packet, the 10+ Mama Made printables are probably too old for the average younger learner.

If you have a little one that wants to keep up with her big brother or sister when using the Bird Printables supplied in the resource packet, download these Bird Writing Practice Pages.  They are perfect for handwriting practice, learning vocabulary, and phonics practice.  

Click the Image Below to Download the Writing Practice Pages

All About Birds Writing Practice

Author:	Lauren Hill
Platforms:	Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
License:	CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Date:	May 15, 2013

Details...

Interested in downloading the All About Birds Resource Packet?  It’s available in the Membership Area of Mama’s Learning Corner.  Sign up for your membership and start saving time today!

Practice the 6′s multiplication facts with this worksheet. Equations are listed down each side of the worksheet, so simply match each worksheet to its answer in the middle.

Grade Level: Second Grade

Category: Multiplication

Multiply 6's Worksheet

Author:	Lauren Hill
Platforms:	Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
License:	CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Date:	May 14, 2013

Details...

Visit Mama’s Multiplication Section for more multiplication worksheets.

This color by number worksheet focuses on addition facts, with sums up to 11.  Solve the equations, then color the section according to the table.

Grade Level: Kindergarten

Category:  Color by Number, Addition

Color By Number Airplane Addition

Author:	Lauren Hill
Platforms:	Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
License:	CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Date:	May 12, 2013

Details...

Visit Mama’s Color-By-Number Page for more color-by-number worksheets and printables.

This post contains my referral links.  View my disclosure policy here.

I haven’t written A Peek in Our Week post in almost a month!  April and May are our busiest months, and for some reason I am in total denial of that fact every single year.  Why am I so hard-headed?  Why do I continue to think we can do school, I can write blog posts (a 10-Day Series in fact…which ended up being 8), we can have 5 of our family’s birthdays, and I can cook dinner each night…as if it’s no big deal?

I literally typed in big red text on my March 2014 Google Calendar: Schedule the bare minimum.

I don’t want to get to March 2014 and set myself up for disaster as I tend to do.

That being said, here are a few things we’ve been working on during the busy Birthday Season, as I call it.

My 6-year-old is slowly but surely working her way through All About Reading Level 1.  It’s fairly mama-intensive, but what reading program isn’t?  So far, it’s been the perfect phonics fit for her.

In the picture below, she’s flipping her /th/ word eggs with the spatula.  Good times.

I’ll be honest that our Bible Study time first thing in the morning is typically filled with all kinds of chaos.  Coincidence?  I think not.

So the other morning, I let my 2-year-old “paint” her fingernails with an orange highlighter.  She was so proud of herself!  She thought they were so pretty, as shown by the delight on her face!

(I really just wanted to get through a small portion of Scripture with no squealing.)

Later that same morning, I decided to pull out a few of our File Folder Games since it had been more than a month since we worked on them.

That is the great thing about putting a toy or other favorite item away for awhile: when you pull it back out, it’s brand new all over again!  Love that.

Aside from school and birthdays, the biggest thing we have going on is what we’re eating.

We’ve always had health concerns about my 4-year-old, since she was 18 months old.  She’s a little mystery.

To make a very long story short, we decided to try gluten-free for awhile and see if that could help her.  We’re finishing up our second week of no gluten and WOW has it been tough to keep us fed.  Cooking three meals a day is no joke!  I’m fairly certain I’ve only planned school and food for 2 straight weeks.  I haven’t had time to do much else.

I can definitely feel a difference in myself.  And my 4-year-old tells me that she feels better, but is dying to have some Ritz Crackers.  I have yet to find a good substitution for those.

Wheat Belly is the book that got me started in the right direction, in case you’re interested.  Thankfully, there are a million blogs out there with gluten-free ideas and recipes.  I definitely don’t think Pinterest is like Target in this instance.  

What’s going on at your house this week?

Practice several different aspects of place value with this worksheet, from ones up to ten-thousands.  Determine the value of a number based on place value, the place value of a specific digit in a number, and if the correct place value is shown in the box.

Grade Level:  Late First Grade, Second Grade

Category:  Place Value

More Place Value Practice

Author:	Lauren Hill
Platforms:	Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
License:	CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Date:	May 8, 2013

Details...

Visit Mama’s Place Value Math Page for more place value worksheets.

This post contains my referral links.  View my disclosure policy here.

Oh it’s my favorite time of year over at NotebookingPages.com!  It’s their annual SALE-a-bration where tons of free goodies are given away.

This year, the bonuses are better than ever.

With a purchase of NotebookingPages.com Lifetime Membership, you’ll receive:

• Save $25 on Notebooking Pages LIFETIME Membership (two-payment plan available)
  ...one time payment of $74.95 or two monthly payments ($50.00/$24.95).

• New members receive up to 2 Years FREE Access to The Notebooking Publisher™
  … purchase by Friday, May 10th to receive 2 years FREE access
  … purchase by Friday, May 17th to receive 18 months FREE access
  … purchase by Friday, May 24th to receive 15 months FREE access
  …purchase by Friday, May 31st to receive 12 months FREE access

• All LIFETIME members (new and current) will receive a $100 Bonus E-Gift Homeschool Package
  from participating NotebookingPages.com Sponsors
  …The e-gifts will be delivered to the Member Download Center by May 31st.

• All LIFETIME members (new and current) may enter a prize drawing for:
  *an iPad mini (1 winner)
  *$100 Amazon.com Gift Card (2 winners)
  *LIFETIME access to The Notebooking Publisher™ (3 winners)
  *LIFETIME membership to MomsToolBelt.com (5 winners)
  …details for the drawing will be found in their Member Download Center.

• New (& improved) features of The Notebooking Publisher™ web-app
  *Copywork feature … create your own custom copywork pages (print/cursive, regular/primary).
  *Ability to create templates -and- save your work-in-progress to the web.
  *Ability to edit selected portions of text within a text frame.
  *Separate user accounts for mom and kids … password protection coming very soon.
  …new demo videos will be added to the site each week of the sale.

Interested in how we use Notebooking in our homeschool?

While we don’t use it everyday, it’s certainly a welcome change of pace!

Often, notebooking is considered an activity for older children who can read and write well, but here’s a look at using notebooking with my Kindergartner.

And here’s a look at how we used notebooking when we we studied Roman Soldiers.  My son was at the end of 1st grade at the time, just for reference.

Do you use notebooking in your homeschool?  NotebookingPages.com could be the perfect supplement to your school days!

I’ll be honest that I never envisioned myself as a homeschooling mama.  I wouldn’t trade it for any other option now, but it certainly was not what we set out to do.

I could write a book about the things I’ve learned over the past 3 years of our homeschooling life.  But the biggest surprise?

That I would learn things about myself.

In those early days and months of homeschooling, I was so focused on what I would teach that it never dawned on me that it would be me who was the one learning.

In no particular order, here are the 10 most important things I’ve learned about myself while homeschooling my littles.

1. I like curriculum…a lot.

The first big curriculum event I ever attended was the book fair at our state’s annual convention.  Oh my.  Books and books everywhere, each filled with wonderfully laid out plans and ideas.  I was in glorious curriculum overload.

Thankfully, I went with a budget in mind and was only looking to buy Kindergarten curriculum for my oldest.  I shudder to think how much I could have spent.

Over the past 3 years, I’ve looked through tons of curriculum.  I’ve written about some of my favorites, if you’re curious: Early Kindergarten with All About Reading Level Pre-1, Why All About Spelling is a Good Fit for Us, and Bible Study Guide for All Ages.

2. I learned I need lots of work on my own character.

Ouch.

On my most humble days (and there are oh so many of them), it occurs to me that homeschooling is as beneficial to refine my own character as it is to shape the character of my little ones.

I never considered myself to be a person who struggled with patience (or lack thereof) or laziness or the inability to control my tongue.  But homeschooling littles?  Oh I realized very quickly that my character needed some serious work.

Homeschooling is so interesting.  You can present yourself as a perfect godly wife and mother to the world and for the most part, no one is the wiser (other than God, of course).  But when you’re around your own children every day, they see what your first reaction is to a situation – whether you choose to scream over the spilled drink or yell over the shoes not being on the shelf again or whether you give grace when it’s needed.

Homeschooling pronounces each character flaw I have.  I’ll be honest that I hated that part about teaching my own children the first 2 years.  It’s just been in this last year of homeschooling that I can actually see that as an advantage and an opportunity to work on myself.

3. I need order in my day.

I am a planner.  I like order.  I like to know what’s coming next on my to-do list.

I tried several planners, which seemed to hurt me more than help.   I ended up creating my own and it works beautifully!  I can just copy and paste if we don’t get to something during the week.

When my school week is planned well, things run much more smoothly.  I love it that way.

4. I’m a homebody.

We go to co-op on Thursdays, but other than that, we are mostly at home.

And I’m okay with that.  In fact, I prefer it.  If we had somewhere to be everyday of the week, I would surely lose my mind.  It may not be this way as my children grow older, but it’s what makes life the most simple and content during this season.

5.  I can’t do it all.

I’m an okay housekeeper.  I like laundry and it’s  almost always caught up.  I’m even a fairly good cook.  Most days, I’m a decent teacher.  And I have this blog, which requires a tremendous amount of time.

But there’s no way in the world I can do all of those things and do them well.

It’s taken me 3 long years of fighting the need to excel at all of those things.  I’ve just figured out that I can only do a couple of those things well each day.  There will be other times in my life where I can have a clean(er) house.

6.  I need a period of peace and quiet each day.

Our house is loud and busy.  I need at least an hour (preferably 2) of down time each afternoon where no one is talking to me.

I love my children and I love to interact with them.  But the introvert side of me?  It’s screaming at me by 1:00 each afternoon.  So from 1-2:30 or so each day, we have a mandatory quiet time.

7.  I can use my nursing skills to figure out my homeschool day.

I was an RN in my past life.  I worked (mostly) the night shift for almost 10 years as a bedside nurse in our local hospital.

Nurses have to be crazy organized and able to set priorities.  I learned early on that to be a successful nurse, you needed to set your most critical tasks at the beginning of the shift…because there was almost always an unplanned crisis coming that would disrupt the typical routine.

I’m so glad I can still use the type of skill set with homeschooling.  When I walked out of my job on that last shift, I was uncertain whether I’d ever use my nursing skills again.

I laugh at that thought now, as I use those planning skills every single day!

8.  I truly love being around my children.

I know it’s not very PC these days to say how much you like to be around your children, but I genuinely love being around my little people.  They are such a joy in so many ways.

I don’t dare take it for granted that I am the one who gets to be their teacher.  I am the one who has the privilege of reading history books snuggled on the couch and playing match games every morning.

Sure, we have our days just like anyone else where I’m ready to throw in the towel.  But on the whole, homeschooling has taught me what fascinating little people I’ve been given the privilege of raising.

I know it sounds strange to most, but it really is the privilege of my life to be their mother.  I’m so glad we get to spend our days together.

9.   Sometimes I need to walk away from Pinterest.

I love Pinterest.  Isn’t it just the best thing?!

Oh but it also has a bad side for me.  I see posts from moms that successfully homeschool a whole ton of kiddos and they’re pleasant at the end of the day and the whole house is picked up when dad strolls in for dinner.

Ummm….that is not me.  I’m usually pretty cranky by 5:00pm and my tolerance for chaos is at zero by that time of day.  Not to mention the fact that our house typically looks like a tornado has blown through it.

I have found that Pinterest is occasionally like Target for me.  If I don’t go to Target, I don’t know all of the fabulousness that I’m missing out on.  So I just rarely go to Target.  It makes me discontent.

The Lord doesn’t want me to be discontent.  The devil does, sure, but the Lord definitely does not.  (See Philippians 4:11)

So I often take long breaks from Pinterest.  To stop myself from the comparison trap, I just pretend that all of those lovely blogs of mamas that do lovely things with lovely children just don’t exist.

I think it’s called denial.  Or self-preservation.  Or something like that.  But I know that when I start feeling those stirrings of discontentment arise, I need to just ‘x’ out my little Pinterest tab and move on.

10.  Lastly, I’ve learned I wasn’t meant to be a homeschool mama all on my own.

God never intended for me to try to homeschool without Him, not even for a second.  Homeschool mothers are busy in a way that others are not.  We’re immersed in school and home and meals and laundry – all day, every day.  In all of those task-driven details, it’s sometimes hard for me to remember why our family is homeschooling in the first place.  It’s easy for me to skip my quiet time or move on to the next task on my to-do list.

But that’s not what God intended for me.  He wants to guide our school days.  He wants to take me by the hand and show me what eternal items should be on my to-do list not the unimportant things that I write down.

I’m still working hard on this last one.

So what have you learned by being a homeschooling mother?  Do tell.  

On most Tuesdays for the next 10 weeks, I’m participating in iHomeschool Network’s 10 Weeks of Top 10 Lists.