Sheana
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Encouraging Literacy Through Seek and Find Books
One of the best things about seek and find books is their ability to promote conversation between the parent and child as they read together. Let’s explore how seek and find books along with your guidance can enhance your child’s literacy development! FTC Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Vocabulary Growth A strong
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Calling All Ninjas! Nine Ninja Books and Fun Math (and Motor) Activity
Do you have a child that loves ninjas or martial arts? This is the place for you. I have nine awesome books to delight your little one and a fun way to incorporate math into martial arts. Get ready to turn your child into a math ninja! *Note: This post contains affiliate links.
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Non-Fiction Books For Baseball Lovers
This book collection is designed for a baseball loving kid! These non-fiction books will give your child the chance to learn more about the sport, the players, and the science behind the game. *Note: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. You can click on the book covers to purchase these on Amazon. The
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The Book To Help You Mindfully Parent A Child With ADHD
I came across the book Mindful Parenting for ADHD by Mark Bertin, M.D. at my local library. As I began reading it, I knew I had to share it with you! While I do not have a child with an ADHD diagnosis, as an educator I like to read as much as I can to understand the
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Five Ways To “Green” Your Child’s School Lunch
The choices we make every day affect our planet. Daily habits that we often don’t even think twice about can either help or harm the Earth. That is why is it important as a parent to teach our children good habits that are mindful of our impact. If we establish good habits now, we
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Five Minute Math
I am very pleased to be a part of the Gifted Homeschoolers Forum’s blog hop, Educating Gifted Children: The Many Ways We Approach Their Learning. My kids have experienced both homeschool and public school. In this post, I will share one way we supplemented our children’s public school education at home. As parents of
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Learning About Magnets
Exploring magnetism was a hit in our home school last year. There are many simple, high-interest activities that you can do at home with your children to help them learn about magnetism. The book Everyday Physical Science Experiments With Magnetism by Amy French Merrill is a very easy to read book that explains how to do
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Teaching Multiplication (free printable chart included)
To introduce multiplication, I usually start with our math bears. You can use any type of small object that is easy for your child to manipulate. Once the child seems to understand the concept, I will use the multiplication chart using beans. Since the spaces on the chart are uniformly spaced, the child can see
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Real World Classroom: Science and Social Studies in Santa Barbara
The world truly is a classroom. Last year I home schooled my oldest son for his fourth grade year. I only bought one textbook and it was rarely used. As much as possible, we used our natural environment, hands on activities, and library books. We took opportunities as they came to us. One of those
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Five Books to Build Your Child’s Character
Stories are a wonderful to way to transmit ideas to our children. With thoughtful selection, a good story can help parents build their child’s character in a positive way. Also, inspiring quotes and poems that make kids think about their own emotions and actions help children contemplate how their behavior makes others and themselves feel.
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Squbed Game: Learning Squares and Cubes
When my son was in first grade he said to me that he wanted to learn “everything there is to know about math.” He is now ten and his love of mathematics has not waned. Mental math is of particular interest to him as he constantly challenges himself to solve math problems in his head.
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I Can Read 100 Words (with free printable chart and word cards)
I recently came across this article from the Guardian stating that there are 100 crucial words for kids to know when they are learning to read. Learning to read requires a knowledge of phonics not just sight word recognition, but this article focused on the optimal number of words that kids should learn to read by
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Hands-on Math: Make Ten (with free printable materials)
Ten is a special number. Because we use a base ten math system, it is important for kids to have a good understanding of ‘ten’. What does ten look like? What are its parts? For parents, I have included links at the bottom of this post to three articles about the importance of ten. I
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The Three Books That Taught My Kids To Read
There are three books that I have to credit with helping my children learn to read. They are all part of the Beginner Books Series from Random House. While we have an enormous amount of books in our house, these three stick out to me. Through simple language, rhyming, repetition, and fun illustrations, my children
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Playing With Colored Ice
One of our favorite activities is playing with colored ice! It’s so easy to make and I love that it inspires open ended play that allows my kids to be creative. All we do is fill an ice cube tray (or two) with water and add liquid food coloring drops to each individual cube to
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15 Really Easy To Read Books For The Beginning Reader
It’s exciting when your little one begins recognizing words and wants to learn how to read! You want to encourage his or her new found skill, but don’t want your child to get discouraged reading books with too many words that s/he doesn’t know. Feeling like a good reader is so important! I compiled a
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Book Review: Learning To Read Is A Ball by Kimberly Scanlon
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for purposes of review. I was not financially compensated in any way. All the opinions expressed are my own. Kimberly Scanlon authored a new book called Learning to Read is a Ball designed to help parents of pre-readers develop their young ones’ literacy skills. With
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Definition Detective: Poetry
When it comes to reading comprehension, it’s important for children to be able to decipher the meaning of unknown words based on context clues. This will greatly help his or her fluency and understanding of a story. Imagine if you had to look up every unknown word in a story. It would interrupt your flow
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Teaching Grammar With Linking Cubes
Grammar is one of the hardest subjects to teach. It’s not because it’s that difficult to understand, it can be so dry in how it’s presented. My oldest hates anything that has to do with writing and loudly protests or avoids activities that require him to write. Of course, he still has to do some
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eeboo Tell Me A Story Cards- Give Away
This contest is now closed. The winner has been contacted and the prize was mailed. As a thank you for being such a wonderful part of the Empowering Parents to Teach community, I’m giving away one package of these adorable story telling cards made by eeboo to one lucky winner. The illustrations
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Mardi Gras Race
After reading the book, A Catfish Tale: A Bayou Story of the Fisherman and His Wife by Whitney Stewart, I realized that Mardi Gras was right around the corner and my kids knew nothing about this holiday! I decided that this year, they will learn all about Mardi Gras. I began by designing a fun
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One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Number Activity
Inspired by the book One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Suess, this fun activity helps your child practice counting and one to one correspondence, all while strengthening his or her fingers opening and closing clothespins. You can also adapt this activity for different learning levels or use the free printable
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Divisibility Rules Activity
As your child progresses in math, divisibility rules come in very handy. This activity focuses on the divisibility rules for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, and 10. There are rules for more numbers, such as 8, 9, and 11 etc., however, I will focus on the ones previously listed. With these first seven rules
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Do you remember making factor trees when you were younger? You started with a number and began breaking it into factors until you reached all prime numbers. The factor tree was a way of finding the prime factorization of a number. It looked like this: I decided to make this idea a little
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Greek & Latin Roots and Affixes
With over sixty percent of English words stemming from Greek or Latin, one can see why familiarity with these roots and affixes can be valuable to students. Many prefixes, roots, and suffixes come from Greek and Latin. These roots and affixes can be directly taught and studied or learned as the words are found
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Learning The Sound “CH” With Lunch
Helping your young reader learn what sound the letters “ch” make when they are together in a word can be as simple as serving lunch or chinner. You are about to serve a very special lunch or dinner, but first, start with a book. We found the book Chilly Charlie by Dana Meachen Rau
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Special Delivery: Valentine’s Day Word Family Hearts
Once your child has mastered the individual letter sounds, word families can be the next step in your child’s phonological awareness. Word family is a term that refers to words that have the same ending letter pattern and corresponding sound. For example, cat, bat, rat, all end with -at, therefore, they are all in the
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Sight Word Hide And Seek
With enough exposure, sight words become easily recognized to a new reader. This game gives a fun opportunity to increase a child’s experience with these words! Kids have to pay close attention to the words on their lists as they search to find hidden sight words. Materials: Sight word cards to hide (print out
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Holiday Art: Day Of The Deer
Day of the Dead meets Christmas in this art activity My son and I were feeling artsy. I came up with the idea to make a Day of the Dead style reindeer. I love the artwork on the Day of the Dead skulls and I was wondering what it would like on a reindeer
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Hidden Presents: Christmas Sensory Play
First of all, you may be wondering, what is sensory play and why is it so important? If you are, read on. If you already know, scroll down to see the sensory play activity. Sensory play is play that engages your child’s senses. There may be interesting textures to feel, new smells or
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Dinners For Tired (or Busy) Moms
We’ve all been there. You’re tired, utterly exhausted, but you still have kids to feed. Especially when you have a new baby at home, getting dinner on the table sound like a monumental task. Running on empty with lack of sleep, the witching hour comes at dinner time. You are trying to prepare
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Easy Sensory Play: Play-doh and Water
There are many easy ways you can use things you already have around your house to engage your child’s senses. One simple sensory activity is to take some play-doh and add water! As my kids played with play-doh one day, my son asked for a cup of water to pour over the dough.
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Liquid Measurement Conversion Activity
Is your child learning how to convert liquid measurements? Keep math a hands-on experience with this activity! It’s so easy for your child to discover the conversions for themselves instead of simply memorizing them. They will have a much deeper understanding and will most likely remember it because of this concrete experience. This activity focuses
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Pythagorean Theorem
What began as reviewing the area of a triangle with my son, somehow led to a discussion about pythagorean theorem. He seemed to understand it very well so I designed an activity to strengthen his knowledge and allow him to think about the application of what he learned. My son happens to love math so
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Exploring Acids and Bases
From our science mom, Staci: I spend a lot of time thinking about science experiments to do with my kids. Sometimes I take the lead from my kids and we explore something they are interested in. Sometimes I introduce new concepts that blow their minds. And sometimes we do things just because I
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13 Halloween Books
We love Halloween books at our house! There are so many wonderful books to choose from. My intent is to give you a list of books that I did not find on other lists so you can add more books to your Halloween fun! This post contains affiliate links Picture Books No Zombies Allowed
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Sight Word Tree in Fall Colors
One way to help your little one learn sight words is to have the words visible in your house to give your child more exposure to the words s/he is learning. By making a sight word tree, you’ll have a fun colorful display for sight words! Note: This post contains affiliate links Here’s
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Celebrating Fall
With the first day of Fall around the corner, I have been busy planning a Fall themed day to celebrate! On the first day of Fall, I plan to read three fabulous books to my boys. Mouse’s First Fall by Lauren Thompson is geared to younger kids. Mouse excitedly runs and jumps in the
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Ladybugs- Science, Math, and Art
One of our random library picks, Insect Invaders by Anne Capeci inspired us to create or very own ladybugs! By creating these bugs, the kids engaged in hands on practice with math, science, and art. I’ll show you how this seemingly unassuming craft is really a learning activity and possible math assessment! This
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Ecosystems- How Living Things Connect
How much of an impact can one species make on its ecosystem? What would happen if that species became extinct or left the ecosystem? These four books illustrate for your child just how important a species is to the other living things in its environment. They can help answer those questions and possibly have your
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My Secret Weapon to Teach Early Math Skills
If you are teaching your young one early math skills, maybe you should head to the toy store! My secret weapon for teaching kids skills such as one to one correspondence, counting, subitizing, doubling, and adding is Parcheesi! Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.If you make a purchase from Amazon, I receive a very
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DIY Printables For Coloring
There are many playful ways to strengthen a child’s fingers for writing– opening clothespins, mashing play-doh, squeezing a glue bottle, cutting with scissors, and building with Legos to name just a few. Even with all of this, sometimes kids still struggle with taking command of a writing utensil and forming their letters when the time
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Our Homeschool Room 2014-2015
This is our very first year for home school! My oldest is nine and entering fourth grade. My youngest is four and attends preschool three mornings a week. That means I have a couple of hours every other day, where it’s just me and the big man. Little man will be with us most of
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Teaching Odd and Even With Manipulatives
Looking for a hands-on way to teach your child the concept of odd and even? You’re in the right place! First, choose your manipulative. Think about what your child would prefer, older children tend to like the linking cubes and younger ones enjoy the math bears. You can use either one for this activity.
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Exploring Your Five Senses
It all started with this book: We read this book before bed one night and my kids really liked it. It had a couple of “try this” activities in it which the boys enjoyed. While my nine year old knew the information, my four year old learned a lot about his five senses. A
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Visiting Gettysburg
Are you thinking of visiting Gettysburg National Military Park for a family trip or part of your home school curriculum? We learned so much by being there, I’m glad we made the trip. Traveling from the Philadelphia area, Gettysburg was about a 2.5- 3 hour drive for us. Since we only made it a day
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Books about the Battle Of Gettysburg
I love when my children can learn something first hand. There is no substitute for seeing something and experiencing it for yourself! This summer I was very excited to take my son to Gettysburg, PA to see the battle fields and historical landmarks of the Battle of Gettysburg. Before we visited, we read quite
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Hands-on Math: Teaching Prime and Composite
If you’ve read my math posts before you know that I strongly encourage parents to make math hands-on as much as possible. Everything we learn is rooted in concrete experiences. Therefore, the more hands-on experience we give our children, the stronger their mathematical foundation will be! Even older kids can benefit from hands-on math experiences.
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Notebooks and the Scientific Method
A Note about Notebooks and the Scientific Method I started doing Science Saturdays with my son the spring before his fifth birthday. We tried to think of something fun and interesting to do every weekend. From the very beginning it was important to me that we followed the scientific method and kept a
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Use Color Swatches to Teach Descriptive Writing
Today, our guest author Kelly shares with us one of her strategies for making her writing more descriptive and colorful! It’s a strategy we could easily do with our little ones to help them edit their own writing. From our guest author, Kelly: “The green car was speeding down the road” or “The
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