Printable Play Money

This week we decided to start learning about money. My son got a wonderful teaching cash register for Christmas last year and it came with some play money.

Unfortunately most of the paper money is missing now, so I went online to find play money to print out.

There are several sites that are free.

Activity Village has a page of US dollars and Euros, plus coins to print out. The only one they don't have is the US ten dollar bill for some reason. I also found Money Instructor, which has a page of very real looking bills and coins to print, including the $10. They also have worksheets and interactive lessons available, but I think you have to sign up for an account to get those. Donna Young has play money and some great math worksheets to go with them.

Funny thing was, after I got all our bills printed out and cut up, my son asked whose picture that was on the money. I told him that it was George Washington the first president, so then he wanted to know who came next.

That led us to The White House and a whole different lesson for the day. We spent the next hour or more, looking at every presidential picture and biography in order (or course).

I hope to get back to the money lesson this week. This is one of the great benefits to homeschooling, if your lesson heads in another direction, you are free to go with it and learn!

How to Make an Easy Wind Chime

This wind chime was super easy to make! All we did was cover the back of three empty cat food cans with contact paper. Then glue on ribbon and buttons to decorate. The colors are really off in these photos, they are really quite bright and cheery.

The top is an empty ribbon spool trimmed with a scrap of ribbon. Card stock circles cover the writing on the top and bottom of spool. Everything is hung from fishing line and tied to a cafe curtain ring to hang. Oh and of course a hole is punched along the edge of each can to hang them.

The cans make a nice "clack clack" noise, sort of like a wooden chime would, not too startling. My son was able to apply the contact paper and glue on the trims himself. Great children and eco-friendly craft!

Child Led Learning

Even though it's summer here, we never really stopped homeschooling. I think with my son it would be difficult to just stop, since he is the one who initiates most lessons anyway. What has changed is that he seems to want to stick with one subject or project at a time.When I suggest we go on to something else, he gets upset.

I know other homeschoolers will work all subjects around one theme that continues for a period of days or weeks.

Right now my son gets so focused on one subject, I can't break him away. For example, he has been making up his own addition problems on the white board and then solving them. He has been working with double digits and zero's for three days now!

Last week all he wanted to do was play the story telling game. The story telling game is when we each take turns adding a paragraph to a story until one of us thinks we have come to the end and proclaims "and they all lived happily ever after". Then I have him tell the whole story back to me as I write it down to re-read later. It's great for memory and for creative thinking. Eventually I will have him write it down instead of me.

If we decide to learn about geography, we can't just focus on one country. He wants to learn about one and then another, an another. I just let him keep going because he is so excited about it.

While I'm thrilled that he has such focus and attention span, I'm beginning to wonder if this is a real learning technique for him or if he is just being obsessive. Perhaps it is both. He has always been driven and intense with anything he is interested in and I know children learn by repetition. It's the inability to switch gears or environment that bothers me. Not to mention, any attempts at lesson planning by me goes completely out the door.

I know he is ahead for his age (he's four) and that may be all it is. He seems to need to completely absorb and exhaust all sources of a subject before he wants to move on. Thank goodness for the Internet, without it I fear I would run out of material for him to review in no time flat!

Have any other homeschooling families out there done this?

Only one subject a day?

Math on Mondays, reading on Tuesdays, etc. Maybe each subject would be covered more thoroughly like this. Perhaps we are on the road to being unschoolers? I do know that he loves learning and he takes the initiative. I don't want to do anything that interferes with that!

The Milestones of Summer

As summer begins to come to a close, I realize it has been a very eventful one. A summer of many "firsts" for my son:

• 1st fish caught.
• 1st pool party.
• 1st marshmallow roast.
• 1st tadpoles.
• 1st pet loss.
• 1st butterflies.
• 1st vegetable garden.
• 1st cooking lesson.
• 1st bike riding lesson.

Now there are hurricanes brewing in the Atlantic, but with any luck we won't have a first one of those this summer! Actually it won't be his first storm if we do get one, or even his second. It will be his fourth, should it happen.

When I eight months pregnant in 2004, he went through Frances and Jeanne. Then in 2005 when he was still a baby, he went through Wilma. Of course he doesn't remember those, but I sure do!

Summer Love

I love you more with every stubborn look and every defiance.
You make me giggle with joy when you dance, sing
and stand on tables.
I want to twirl around with you but I am afraid.

Afraid of too much. Too much love, too much joy.
I could not bear for it to end.
So I hold back. Snarl a little more than I need to.
Keeping the magic reigned in and reality in the forefront.

I will most likely regret this one day.

Frogs and Tadpoles

With rain comes frogs and with frogs come tadpoles!
We have had a lot of rain here lately. Our drainage ditch around the house has been full of them. So we scooped up a few before they were eaten by birds and put them in our creature keeper.
They are hard to see, but three are fairly large and six are tiny. The water is amber colored because I mixed tap water, half and half with the rain water. I didn't want to shock their systems with city water.

We will be watching and studying them as they grow and change into frogs. I added a couple of floating water lettuce plants for them to hide in and we will be feeding them fish food.

Can't wait to see what kind of frogs or toads they turn into! As you can see, my son has been watching them all day. If you look closely, you can see his reflection in the first photo :)

His First Fish!

It was his first fishing trip and his first fish. We went over to one of the lakes near the river. At almost sundown, all the turtles and birds were out hunting for dinner, so I figured we would get some bites. After several failed attempts at casting, he decided I should cast and he would watch the bobber.
At first he was scared to reel it in and handed the pole to me. Then he changed his mind when he saw the fish and wanted to finish himself. He got so excited jumping up and down, he smacked himself in the face with the wet fish!


I tried to take a photo and this was the best one of the bunch. Do you know how hard it is to photograph a fish spinning on a line? I don't know what kind it is, we looked online to try and identify it, but couldn't. I know the photo is blurry, but if anyone knows what it is, let me know. We released the fish back into the lake and it quickly swam off.
After that the turtles kept chasing our bait and I didn't want to catch one by mistake, so we called it a night. I was also getting bit by mosquitoes (forgot the bug spray). He has been talking about his fish ever since and can't wait to go again!