Garden Update: Here we go again!

It's that time of year again! Gardening is something I couldn't easily live without. There is nothing like eating fruits and veggies as you pick them. It's almost May, which means the days of harvest are not quite in sight, but the days of prepping are here. This past weekend I cleaned up and/or turned over all of the gardening beds. Pea seeds, summer squash seeds, and beet seeds are in. The sage, rhubarb, and lovage have all woken up. The blueberry shrubs have buds. The strawberry plants are
looking spry. My handy husband and helpful kids built me a new box for some tomatoes! Here they are about halfway done:

We dug a trench for potatoes! This year I am taking a break from pumpkins and winter squash and instead growing potatoes. I got tired of those pesky squash vine borers and we get plenty of winter squash from our CSA as well. I put in the seed potatoes just a few days ago and am hoping they fare well.

Here's the rhubarb waking up! This is one we have transplanted from the HippySticks' homestead in Maine. We split it off last year into two and that one is doing well. I may split this one again since it is always so healthy!

What we will be growing this year:
Tons of herbs, including basil, oregano, lemon balm, mint, dill, sage, thyme, borage, and lovage
Tomatoes

Tomatillos and ground cherries (if they self-seed; I didn't save any seeds.)
Peppers
Snow peas
Beets
Rhubarb
Blueberries (I hope! We've had a few horrible years. If they don't produce this year, I'm pulling them and putting something else in!)
Summer squash (possibly under row cover to avoid those SVBs!): Scallop and other bush varieties
Yellow and red strawberries
I'm not sure what else off the top of my head. I'm open to suggestion, and will often let volunteer plants that grow from the compost just keep on growing.

Though I've grown greens, parsnips, and carrots in the past, I think this year I will take a break from those as well. We get so many from our CSA I often found myself composting greens that wilted before we got a chance to eat them!

Perhaps as the garden starts growing I will give a virtual garden tour! =)

Wacky Zoo - Reuse Old Magazine to Create Fun New Animals

Create a Unique Zoo with Old Magazines

Nerd joke: What do you get when you cross a monkey and an elephant? Monkey Elephant sin θ. (More on the cross product of vectors here). This is a fun and easy project even your little ones will love! Combine animals in your imagination and then bring them to life to exhibit a wacky zoo.

How to Make your Wacky Zoo

Cut out portions of animals, glue them onto a colorful background, and draw the rest of the animal. Here are some of the animals we created.

How do you like to reuse old magazines?

Share this idea on Pinterest:

TpT Tips Tuesday!

I just wanted to give a shout out to Gina over at Perfetto Writing Room and thank her for including some of my tips on her TpT Tips post today! She has also featured advice from Melissa Shutler and Work Smarter, Not Harder.

If you have thought about becoming a seller on Teachers pay Teachers, or you already are but are looking for some tips on how to improve your sales, please check out these posts! Many top sellers have shared their thoughts on what they think has made a difference for their store. Of course, what works for one may not work for someone else, but it is all valuable information if you are a seller. Here are this Tuesday's tips (click on image to be redirected to the tips):

Want the first week of tips? Find them here.

I feel so grateful I found Teachers pay Teachers; it has made me a better homeschool parent in so many ways. I have found and used numerous paid and free resources from other sellers on the site, and I have created more resources for our own use and others. This allows me to purchase even more resources for our homeschool classroom, take field trips, and sign my children up for other classes such as music and chess.

I haven't been able to work as much recently on creating new resources recently and I miss it, but I look forward to creating again when time allows. Sometimes life has other plans and the flexibility of TpT works really well with our family.

week in review: spring is here!

From top left, and clockwise: Finishing a 1000 piece puzzle, the start of soccer season, nature walk (4), playground fun, seedlings growing!

Three other exciting things started this week:

1) Chess class! All 3 of my boys (husband and two kids) are participating. They have learned the fried liver attack.
2) Tennis club! The local homeschoolers will meet weekly to learn how to play tennis. I volunteered to lead the 6-9 year olds and our first class was a blast.
3) Baseball! My 6yo is playing baseball as well as soccer. Almost 8yo has tried both soccer and baseball but decided they aren't for him, so I'm hoping he likes tennis. It's nice to have a sport you love.

We are quite busy, but the weather is warmer and the daylight hours are longer, which makes it a bit more manageable.

New forever FREEBIE!

Are you teaching Pre-K or K? My AlphaFlips mini-books have undergone a makeover and I am really happy with how they turned out! I have added two pages for each vowel to include short and long beginning sounds. We will be using these as end of year review at home with my K kid! Folded up it looks like this:

1. Finding the booklet letter and counting! Tally or write the numeral.

2. Open the top flap and trace the letter and the words. Optional ruled reverse side is shown.

3. Opened all the way, the images are glued inside the flap and you can use the back side of the flap as well!

My favorite part about this redesign? There is no waste! Here is what the original page looks like:

What does that mean for you? No paper scraps all over your room to clean up! I love interactive resources but I loathe the mess they sometimes make! You also only need three dabs of glue, or four if you are gluing these booklets into an interactive journal. I love the idea of having an "Alphabet Fair" where each student gets a letter and adds their own personal touch. This is the optional back side that can be added to the back of any of the letter sheets for more handwriting practice. For 1st grade review, have your students write words ending in the letters as well as words beginning with the letters!

I have decided to make the short alphabet sounds a FOREVER FREEBIE!

Enjoy!

Week in review: March 29, 2014

This week marked the real transition to spring! The temperatures warmed, we had some rain, the birds were singing, and the smell of spring was definitely in the air. We wrote spring haikus to celebrate:

This is the last week my baby is 5! He will be turning 6 on Monday. I can't believe he's been my sweet boy for 6 years already. It's gone by way too quickly and I so wish I could freeze time and enjoy the ages my boys are at currently. They continue to build elaborate structures and act out stories with their toys, which has definitely improved their storytelling and conflict resolution skills. It's so neat to listen to the situations the toys find themselves in.

We went to homeschooling game day yesterday, which is always fun. I got to catch up with other homeschooling moms and the kids got to play Stratego, Sorry, Set, and Battleship with other homeschooling kids.

Tonight is the end-of-session performance at music school, where both boys participate in a homeschooling music program. It meets for 1.5 hours each week and they absolutely adore it. I am hoping F likes the ukelele we got him for his 6th birthday since they will be starting ukelele lessons next session at music.

Spring cleaning: Geometry & a FREEBIE!

I have been doing some spring cleaning in my Teachers pay Teachers store and wanted to share a few updates to my Geometry for 1st Grade unit. First, I added a craftivity: SHAPE BUGS!

My kids enjoyed doing this activity and making their bugs! Obviously you don't need my geometry unit to make these - you can either create your own template and copy onto colored paper, or have your students create their own shapes with rulers and tracing circular objects like cups, rolls of masking tape, and lids. I thought bugs were a fun way to tie in spring to this unit. I have a few garden nemeses that I'm sure I'll be seeing before I know it!

I also added two graphing pages, since they always seem to be a big hit. Here is the answer key for one of them. The other graphing page is numbers to 20. I have color-coded the answer key the way I always have my kids do these pages. If you pick a new color for each shape, you can count them as you go, and it's easier to double check your work later. The shapes are in different sizes and orientations, which makes this slightly more challenging than if they were all exactly the same.

I'm pretty excited about the updated posters, as well. I have added a plain version as well the shape friends version (2D & 3D included):

Anyway, I am so excited about this! I thought you might like to try out two of the activity pages. One is a shape search page, and the other is a flip-flap sorting book. I have been loving flip-flap sorting lately! A new template I designed is low mess and one-page self-contained, which makes my life a lot easier! I used the same design in another recent project of mine; here's how it works:

This is what it looks like folded up.

Unfold the top flap and you see the sorting criteria.

Open the sorting flaps for the sorted objects

One of the reasons I really like this layout is that there is extra space to write, and you can either glue it into an interactive journal or you can have a series of mini-books, which display nicely.

Click the image below to download the free pages:

This was a really fun unit for me to put together, and is now on its third major revision. There is also a new two-page assessment, which I may offer separately when I get a chance. What's your favorite spring-cleaning activity? I do admit I love it when I can open the windows and have a nice spring breeze, before the humidity of summer sets in. I hope you enjoy the download!