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Showing posts from June, 2021

Tips & Tricks: Two Kid Schedule

How do you handle life with now that you have two kids? Many people get asked this question once they have a new addition to the family. Well at first it was very hard for me. I had postpartum depression for a few weeks. It was very rough for me. Once I was better it was pretty easy for me to to add our second baby into our regular schedule.  Much like our toddler schedule  I let the girls wake up whenever they do. I try to get up around 7:30 am and get in a workout. The at 8 am I start breakfast for the girls and have a cup of tea. At 8:30 am I do pilates and stretching with our oldest. 9 am starts reading time and by 9:30 am I’m prepping for the school day. At 10 am we start school and little sis goes down for a nap. We have lunch at 12-1 pm. I start on chores and the girls play. We take a walk and play with Ice and the neighbors.  I like to start dinner by 5-5:30 pm. Bedtime routine starts for little sis at 6 pm. Big sis gets to play until her bedtime routine at 8 pm. We also have d

Review: OLSAT Test Prep Level A

 When we finished out our kindergarten year I was trying to find a test prep for our daughter to take to that I knew she had retained the information given for the year. I could not find a single booklet to test for the end of the kindergarten year. This test prep book doesn’t focus on any specific subject but rather it assess cognitive abilities. Now if you are like me you have no idea what OLSAT (Otis-Lennon School Ability Test) means. We’ll have no fear the book gives great instructions on what and how to administer these test. You can use this workbook to help your student ages 3-6 years. The OLSAT is often times used to see if a child is gifted and talented.  Before you start with the test prep the book gives you very detailed instructions on what to do for your child’s age and how to get them ready for this large test. Since our daughter is 5 I am supposed to only read the question one time aloud and the rest is up to her to figure out. I always suspected our daughter was very b

Review: The Story of the World Volume 1 & Test

 There couldn’t be an easier way to teach history than with Story of the World . The textbook doesn’t have very long chapters which I absolutely love because being dyslexic makes reading a challenge for me. If you prefer you can get the audio book. Now, I have never used it personally but other homeschoolers have said they use the audio book while driving with the kiddos. I have found that this history curriculum is a bit much at times. I honestly don’t remember learning most of the things in this book when I was in school. However, it is nice that it goes over a lot of things. It tells about people from different places and what they believed. There are some religious things but it is more along the lines of showing that people believe in dig things.  Hands down my favorite part of this curriculum is the activity book. It starts off with the teacher portion. It has specific questions and answers for you to ask your child. This makes it easy for me to know what are the more important p

Review: Step-by-Step Drawing Book

 Great book for young children and budding artists! Step-by-Step  is exactly what it says. Each 2 page spread shows how to draw a different item. What is so nice about this book is that the drawings are very simple to follow. Something complicated would easily make a young student frustrated if their drawing doesn’t resemble the picture in the book.  The book starts off very simple and another plus to this book is that some of the pictures even show how you can make different designs to help make your drawings more detailed. Our daughter loves this book because she loves to draw and all things art. There is a lot of extra space so that you can practice multiple times to prefect your drawing skills.  Some of the things you can draw even have other pictures that go along with them. For example, there is a castle, Princess and dragon so your little artist ab draw a scene with them. That combined with the different ways you can draw the same picture can help your student make some elaborat

Review: Test Prep Grade 1

 Since we do test in our homeschool I am always looking for a way to do end of the year test assessment to make sure that our daughter has a good grasp on the information taught during the year. This Test Prep  book has 13 units of material you can use to assess your child’s knowledge. Having all these subjects in one book is a huge plus.  We started with the word study which focuses on rhyming, matching beginning sound of one object with the beginning sound of another object and choosing the word that goes with the picture. After they complete that it moves onto reading a story and being able to answer questions based on comprehending the story.  As I love all things math I’m so glad it’s in this test prep book. You read the problem and answer the questions. It goes a bit more in-depth than I thought it would. For example, it will ask what the question is, the facts about the problem, how to set up the problem and the final answer. It also contains questions like place value, adding a

Review: Skill Sharpeners Geography - Grade 1

 If your are looking to supplement your geography lessons then this book is a great idea.  Skill Sharpeners  goes over a few of the main things that your child needs to learn in geography. What I like about this book is that it starts off with a reading section to ease the student into the lesson then they get to do some work on the topic and end with a hands-on activity to really drive the concept home.  There are 5 main topics to this geography book. Each topic is expanded onto help the student really learn the core concept. Our daughter really likes how colorful this booklet is. A lot of times the ones that are just black and white can get a bit stagnant. The lessons are relatively short so doing one lesson in a day is completely doable. Since we do school year round and I like to have each item span over the year we only do a couple pages a week.  The reading sections are very straight forward and right to the point. This is great because most students at this age are not going to

Tips & Tricks: Frustration!

 It may appear like we have a perfect school day everyday but that is far from the truth. Some days it’s a really struggle. Getting distracted, frustrated, annoyed? Yep we have those days, too. I’ve learned some way around this though. Our daughter gets distracted sometimes when the TV is on, little sis is doing something funny or when daddy comes into the room. Distraction is the easiest for us to overcome. I turn off the TV, wait till little sis is taking a nap before we start school or ask daddy to leave the room. Frustration is a bit harder to overcome. When our daughter is frustrated I have her stand up, take a step back and ask her to jump in place, bend down and stand up, point in different directions, hop on one leg, etc. she finds the different actions randomly chosen to be hilarious. Once she’s full of laughter we go back to school. When I get frustrated I let her go off and play for a bit while I compose myself.  Sometimes, it’s incredibly annoying when she refuses to do her