Homeschool Check IN

What we are loving lately for homeschool:

Penguin Random House has published books we have loved for years! Now our kids enjoy many books from Penguin Random House such as Kick it Mo, Magic Tree House chapter book series and their newest reader box set, The Reading House. The Reading House series is a new release for Penguin and they currently have 5 different sets ranging from alphabet, letter recognition to short vowel clusters and sight words. The books are colourful and engaging for children as you can see with Kinsley below. We just saw these sets at our local Costco for under $10! The earlier sets 1-3 are great for pre-readers and Sets 3-5 would be helpful for beginner readers. We have looked through sets 4 and 5 and we love that there is a combo of cvc or phonetic words and sight words.

Choosing my math curriculum felt daunting as I had no clue where to begin. I enlisted the help of my friend, who is a math genius (and an incredible math tutor if you ever need one) and she suggested Singapore Math. We selected the Dimensions Math from Singapore and we have loved it! It teaches a few different strategies for basic concepts like addition and subtraction which will help build a strong foundation for the future. We have used the Student Textbooks, Workbooks and the Teacher’s Guide and they all work really well together. The textbook teaches the concepts and the workbook is more to practice the concepts. Most of the books are colourful, very well laid out, easy to understand and engaging for kids. We’ve had experience with the A and B books of K-2 and we would recommend them to any family.

Our family has joined a nature learning group one day a week and we have loved being able to learn and explore in the great outdoors. Firefly Books publishes a series featuring the Gumboot Kids. This series follows the adventures of Scout and Daisy, two mice, who explore nature and learn about the world around them. Gumboot Kids is based on the tv series Scout and the Gumboot Kids on CBC. Each book is a mystery and the mice work together to look for clues in nature. The books are beautiful and engaging for kids, inviting children into a world of discovery and appreciation for nature. Gumboot Kids has a website that also provides free curriculum ideas to go along with some of the concepts in the books. These books have been awesome and we love reading them as a family.

Every day we try to do a little bit of writing, reading and math and then I like to do a fun activity sometimes related to the theme we are studying. Right now, we are learning a lot about nature and birds so this Paint By Sticker Birds book by Workman Publishing is perfect. For some reason my kids love anything to do with stickers and we love to draw and incorporate stickers into our drawings. All Good Things Are Wild and Free and the Eyelike Bugs book both have so many unique nature related stickers like mushrooms, bugs, flowers etc. which make great embellishments to our drawings.

To coincide with our Gather Round unit we are doing on North American Birds, The Little Book of Backyard Bird and The Little Book of Woodland Birds have been perfect. Each page shares a bit of information about each bird, some stats about what it likes to eat and live and an interesting fact. My kids have enjoyed listening to each sound and find some delight in recognizing the same sound when we are exploring outside. There is also a Safari Animal and Dinosaur book in the same series by Firefly Books.

Our favourite way to fill our rainy afternoons is with playing hockey in the basement OR doing a puzzle by the fire. If you don’t own Julia Rothman’s Anatomy book series you should because it is beautiful and full of awesome information for kids. Workman Publishing now offers puzzles by Julia Rothman: Nature Anatomy and Ocean Anatomy. They are stunning and a perfect way to engage kids at the start of a new unit.

This basically sums up our homeschool curriculum that we have been using for the past month and I am passionate about sharing products and ideas of what our kids love!