Make learning fun for kids!

We absolutely Love Melissa and Doug toys. These are geometric pattern blocks. My children (especially the 3 yr old) love to play with them. There are about 5 wooden boards here and there is an image on each side. Sometimes we do a timed version and we see who can finish first. My 6 yr. old loves a good challenge. 

We took a little trip to Barnes and Noble and bought them each a fun work book for their handwriting skills. I bought some fun chapter books like "great expectations" and "The adventures of Geronimo the mouse." We also bought the game "Feed the Woozle". This has been a fun one for Jocelyn.

We found a turtle near our house and it was making it's way to the road. We decided to adopt it. We named him Cutsie and put him in a plastic container and made it like a terarrium. The sad news is he got out and ran away 2 weeks later. Im hoping he found his way back to the lake. The kids miss him. 

I've been making a lot of Kombucha Juice and Kefir. I figure it's kind of a science experiment for the kids to see fermentation and how a Scoby grows on top of the Kombucha.

We took a good month and learned about the Civil War. All the books we got to read were so fascinating. Dax retained quite a bit as I still frequently ask him "What's the mason dixon line" What is the "Confederacy". What's an "Abolitionist". He is able to tell me these things and that's not bad for a 6 year old if you ask me.

And of course we experimented making some delicious homemade popsicles. These ones were  our "Coconut Key Lime" popsicle. It was basically coconut milk, lime zest and juice and raw honey. 

Some fun things

Pretend play is so important! I can remember myself as a little girl just loving to play house and grocery store. My imagination would take me to so many places. I wanted my kids to experience the same thing. For Christmas I bought them some play food and a play house tent. I've also saved food containers like a cool milk jug, egg case, pringles cans, cocoa container and other things that they find fun to put into their store. I was the cashier, checking out their groceries and making a "beep" sound with my paper cutter. They thought that was fun. 

 My oldest child got a monopoly nintendo game for Christmas and has literally played with it every single day since. He is learning so much about counting and how money works and how to take turns and how to be a good loser too! All these things are so  important to a child's development and interactions with the world. He still gets upset every time I buy a property he wants, but we're working on it every single day.

Sorry, this photo is upside down. This was an activity I had my youngest doing. It's Alphabet strips. I put the letters on plastic spoons and she matches it up with the letters on the strips. Great fun!

  She was learning some dexterity here as she had to squeeze the clothes pins onto the alphabet circle. I got this printout from confessionsofahomeschooler.com

We do something called "Something Fun Friday" every single Friday. We usually make an extra cool breakfast, or a treat or just go somewhere extra fun. This morning, we made tie-dyed waffles. They were easy and the kids keep requesting them over and over.