Friday Freebie-Plural Nouns

We started this school year with some review and we need a refresher lesson on making nouns plural. I found some great printable rules but I wanted a worksheet for my youngest to do that combined the rules with her putting in some of the information because she is a fast reader and I wanted to make sure that she actually processed the information. So I created this freebie to share:

You can grab it here and if you like this, please leave a comment here or a rating in my shop!

Friday Freebie-Cut and Paste Soft and Hard G

This week's freebie is a cut and paste worksheet for reinforcing soft and hard g words. This worksheet is ideal for practicing the skill once it has been learned or just paired with a quick lesson. You can grab the freebie here and if you like it, please let me know on my blog or on the Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Friday Freebie-Cut and Paste Soft and Hard C

This week's freebie is a cut and paste worksheet for reinforcing soft and hard c words. This worksheet is ideal for practicing the skill once it has been learned or just paired with a quick lesson. You can grab the freebie here and if you like it, please let me know on my blog or on the Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Cursive Writing Freebie Recommendation

My search for cursive writing resources started when I told me daughter that she couldn't randomly put capital letters in the middle of words. It wasn't that she didn't know the rules, but she thought that sometimes an uppercase letter looked prettier in a certain place than the lowercase counterpart. I had to stifle a giggle because as an adult, my handwriting is often a mix of upper and lowercase letters within words based on the surrounding letters. Since she wanted to have her words look pretty and I wasn't willing to bend on the proper capitalization issue, she asked if she could learn cursive. I told her yes and looked for a program that was free because I wasn't going to purchase something because she had a sudden urge to give it a try. I found a great packet on K12reader.com that had a page for each letter and then also had words and sentences on the page. I liked that they learned the connections as they learned the letter because that's the trickiest part of moving from print to cursive. At first I thought it would be overwhelming, but both kids actually picked up cursive in a month using this along with me helping them practice their letters. These sheets can also be adapted for younger kids by putting them in sheet protectors to trace the words with dry erase markers. This packet is great for either starting to learn cursive or for transitioning from writing single letters to connecting the letters into words. I was hesitant to share this link because I used it before the common core initiative got started and this site does show what standards all their worksheets address. However, since none of their worksheets were changed to meet the standards and because this really was an easy way to introduce cursive (and because a really good friend urged me to share), here is the link.

Friday Freebie-Guide Words

This week's freebie is a mini packet great for introducing or reinforcing dictionary guide words. There is an option to cut and paste the words in the correct box or a page for writing the words in their appropriate space. This is a preview of a packet that will be available in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop that will include more practice pages in one file. You can grab the freebie here and if you like it, please let me know on my blog or on the Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Friday Freebie-Animal Alphabet Matching

I found some great new borders and clip art so I made a quick alphabet matching activity for this week's freebie. You can grab the freebie here and if you like it, please let me know on my blog or on the Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Friday Freebie-Book Review

I love the format of a book review because it is a great transition into traditional reports. If I asked my son to write a paragraph format report on a book, I would get handed a page of choppy and weak sentences. I could practically hear him calculating the least amount of words possible to complete the assignments. With book reviews, the questions serve as prompts and since I was asking him to share his opinion, he focused more on content and less on how to evade long sentences. I created this early stage review with emphasis on identifying main characters and included spaces for writing sentences that are opinion based rather than a detailed discussion of plot elements. Once he mastered this one, I was able to transition him to more detailed report templates and then eventually to paragraph format reports. You can grab the freebie here and if you like it, please let me know on my blog or on the Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Math-Aids

Math-Aids is my go-to math site these days. We use Teaching Textbooks for our core math, so I use it mainly for practicing skills or review. If I decided to step away from TT, I could do a full year worth of math with this site alone, and it's free, not aligned to the common core standards, easy to use, and super customizable. You can select what type of worksheet to print and adjust the problems for skill level. For example, if I wanted to do multiplication drills, I can choose from standard worksheets or fill in times tables. I can select the range of numbers used or what percentage of the times table should be left blank. Fraction sheets can be visual or without pictures, color or black and white. There's even a spot to put a message on the bottom of the page, and I'd sometimes sneak little messages to the kids there. Overall, you could rely on this site for a comprehensive elementary level math curriculum.

EZ School

EZSchool.com is an amazing site that is filled with free materials for Kindergarten through 12th grade. The site does contain ads as a way to keep the materials free but I did not notice any of them as I was first exploring the site. It did take a bit to catch onto the maneuvering of the site. When you click on a grade or subject, you must click on a big category (think of a paragraph sized link) and then the next page that opens will have the more detailed links. Clear as mud, right? The best way to figure out the site really is just to take a few minutes to explore the different links from the main page. You can select by category (worksheets, games, etc) or by grade level. One main benefit to the worksheets that are generated is that they have a space for name and date and then right below that is a line with a description of the lesson already filled in for you.

The site does have the option to access part of it without logging in, but you also have the option of creating a free account. So far, I've just been browsing as a guest but I will most likely create an account to see what else is available. Bonus--This site is independent of the common core standards.

Worksheet Works

I love worksheet generators. Absolutely love them. It's so nice when you find a site you like that has worksheets that match what you need and it's a thousand times better when you can get unlimited new worksheets from this one site. We are finishing up a refresher lesson on alphabetizing and I wanted to find some worksheets that would be good for reinforcement of this skill and also for review purposes later.

Did i mention that I also love Google? That's a side note, but the amazing powers of Google is what led me to this website, so I figured I should show my Google love for a brief minute. What I love most about Google is its almost freaky ability to read my mind and find what I want when I type weird things in the search bar. This time I wrote "alphabetizing worksheets" and my first result was to Worksheet Works Alphabetizing Skills Once I created a couple of worksheets, I started peeking around the rest of the site and was amazed by all of the resources. This site is still under development so there are a lot of features still to come, but I am enjoying exploring the many sections that they already have up and running.

If you are a homeschooling parent and want to save money on curriculum, this site is very user friendly and a great way to supplement your learning. I love using the basic workbooks from Barnes and Noble as a rough skeleton for the year(the Flash series is currently our preference) and then add on to each lesson with free worksheets. And the bonus of a generator is that you can print just a couple for the skills that your child masters easily or you can go back and print more if your child needs extra practice.

Worksheet Works definitely gets a huge thumbs up from me! And since I'm really not liking how lame that recommendation sounds, it seems like it might be time for me to come up with some cheesy yet memorable rating system for the sites and resources that I come across. 5 pencils out of 5, perhaps?

Simple Machines are done!

Well, summer hit us and we got busy. So we took a break before tackling levers and I finally finished the levers worksheet today. Then i also had a great brainstorm about combining pdfs to make a multipage download instead of having to download each part individually :) So here is the link to the 6 worksheets all in one file and here is the link to the corresponding answer sheets.

The books that I used for this lesson came from my library and they were a great series written by Kay Manolis. They are a colorful and easy to understand set of books (which is helpful since I knew next to nothing on simple machines) and I really recommend this series for early readers. The books are easy to find if you google BlastOff Readers: Simple Machines by Kay Manolis.

Simple Machines...finally plugging along

Our most recent science unit began with my son wanting to figure out how zip lines worked, so I figured that it would be a good way to tackle simple machines. So we started with pulleys and got through it pretty quickly. Then mommy took a nice spring break before starting to learn the other machines.

And yes, mommy did have to read up and relearn all sorts of great stuff. In fact, that's a hidden bonus to homeschooling--relearning stuff that you forget a long time ago. Did you know that there are 6 simple machines? Or that a zip line is a movable pulley? I didn't until a couple of weeks ago. That information was long filed away in the no longer pertinent file. Now the trick is to see how long we can both retain this stuff :p

K...editing this post to say that i got smart and figured out how to combine the printouts into two files and I found a better way to share files. The first file has the worksheets and the other one has all the answer keys and you can get the links in this post

Homemade Base 10 Cubes

It was time to learn place values and I wanted a hands-on manipulative to use. I could have bought them for around $15 dollars but since we are homeschooling on a tight budget, I decided to make my own set. I used photoshop to make the basic squares and I also saved it as a pdf so that I could share it with others. Once I printed the different squares, I laminated them and attached small squares cut from my magnet roll to the top and bottom of each piece. Now we can use them on our magnet dry erase board. And since I used materials that I already had on hand, I didn't need to puchase additional items. If you don't have a laminator, you can use contact paper to preserve your cut pieces. I've uploaded the files of the master copies for your personal use. Here is the link for the first one, and here is this link for the second sheet.

Reusable Worksheets

A great way to save on printing and paper and is to make your own reusable worksheets. These worksheets can be a great way to occupy littler ones while you are doing school and helps them develop their fine motor and pre-writing skills. They can also be a great way to introduce mazes and connect the dots and will really stretch one workbook or activity book into hours of extra fun.

All you need is a 3 ring binder, some sheet protectors, and dry erase markers. Select the worksheets or printed pages that you would like to use, slip them in the sheet protectors, and then set your little one loose with a dry erase marker (but make sure they are wearing play clothes or a smock, since dry erase marker usually will stain clothing). The Dollar Tree is a great place to find workbooks that you can take apart and put into the sheet protectors, and they even have some workbooks that have the dry erase board built in. I got a great Disney Princess alphabet book there that teaches how to write the letters and my 3 year old girl loves it (even though she can't really write the letters well yet). I also printed out dotted outlines of shapes for her to trace to help her with her pre-writing skills and some worksheets where you circle which picture doesn't belong in each group.

I love the reusable worksheets because the pages that I've already printed for my older son are now being used for my daughter and I didn't have to go searching for sheets again and reprint everything. As the kids grow, you can switch out the worksheets in the sheet protectors. So the initial cost of the sheet protectors is well worth it for how long they last and for the many different uses that they serve.