Review: Smart Start STEM PreK

This years Timberdoodle PreK kit has Smart Start STEM. Since I’m using last years kit I went ahead and bought this separately from Timberdoodle. It is great for hands-on activities. There are 14 different STEM projects within this book. Each starts with a brief explanation followed by a short series of questions that go with the reading. After you get to build something that goes with the lesson.

What I like is that it has a spot to draw out what you plan to do and what you think will happen then a spot for how your test run went. Great way to introduce how to do science experiments. It is not a comprehensive science curriculum by any means but it is a great way to get your kids involved with hands-on science fun.

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Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi

Review: Sensory Tissue Box

We have been trying out a lot of new baby items this year and here is another one we did not have for our first daughter. It is called Sensory Tissue Box . What makes this toy so much fun? Let's be honest babies love to get into things. We have tried before to let her play with a regular box of tissues. Big mess. The tissues were everywhere and they have like 250 tissues in a box, she torn them up to so an even bigger mess. Our daughter even went as far as to rip the box itself up. This sensory tissue box though is made of very soft fabric so she can not tear it up, it has 15 tissues so less to keep track of and the tissue can not be easily torn up either. This is the biggest positive of this sensory box in my opinion. Another positive to having this sensory tissue box instead of a regular one is that the tissues are different colors and sizes as well as having different textures to them. There are 6 see-through ones, 6 see-through ones that have dots on them and 3 crinkly ones. T

Tips & Tricks: Grading

When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade. My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%

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