Mohr Adventures in World Schooling

While we have been playing sight words Bingo for quite some time, we recently decided to try out a few more reading inspired games.  They are perfect for early readers, but with a few adjustments I was able to play them with our younger son too. Slam Ships For this game, you need one "reader" to call out words, while the other players man little suction cup space ships.  The words are all on circles which have different colors based on reading level.  Rather than have it be a race or a competition, we take turns because both of my kids are at different reading levels.  They like to have words from all the levels out at once.  For my 6 year old, I call out a sight word and have her look for it without too many hints.  We may practice sounding words out to help identify the word.  I usually use the word in a sentence too, although I try to prevent setting out homophones.  For my son, I read the word and then list the color it is on and give hints ab...

Objective: We continue my daughter's requested tour of the ancient world, this time into the world of the Celts.  This was a fun diversion from the paths typically taken by schools, but there was a challenge finding age appropriate books to read along.  We chose to study this in March, to tie in with St. Patrick's Day.  While exploring the ancient world, we wanted to examine some myths, and learn about some of their contributions to science, math and the arts.  I create daily worksheets dealing with the days topic and a daily chore.  My daughter gets five or six questions while my son gets three or four.  If there is room, I may include some math (simple equations or word problems) or language arts questions (like rhyme, syllables, synonyms). Spelling List and Sentence of the Week for K/1st grader : Language Arts lessons include some simple questions about the spelling list, like finding the nouns, making rhymes or counting syllables.  We read and ...

Home Science Tools is one of my favorite sites to look for science projects to do with the kids.  They have a number of science curriculum available, guides to help you select the best curriculum for your needs, and kits to help provide some of the tools needed for experiments.  They have also created their own topic specific curriculum for early elementary.  Topics include scientific skills, animals, plants, seasons, space and states of matter.  Guides include adaptations for advanced/older students, younger students, special needs students, and small group settings.  We tested out space and plants. Explore Science: Space This teacher's guide creates four lesson themes.  Some supplies are provided including an inflatable globe, and activity pages are included in the back.  Topics covered include the relationship between the Earth and the sun, revolution versus rotation modeling (year and day), lunar phases, Earth's layers, and the solar system....

Inspired by a learning activity from Linda Dobson's The First Year of Homeschooling , my family likes to put together a carnival of our own this time of year.  We usually create our carnival in conjunction with Dixon's May Fair, but there are so many county fairs to celebrate. Fair Food There are a number of great fair foods you can create in your own home.  Popcorn and lemonade are a great starter, as both can be really simple.  Taste of Home has a great collection of recipes including funnel cakes, corn dogs, deep-fried oreos and more.  If your refrigerator has a crushed ice setting, you can easily make your own sno-cones with some Kool-aid, juice or soda for the syrup.  Making food together is supposed to be a great way to get your kids to try new food.  That doesn't always work for my two kids, but they love measuring, mixing and creating together.  Plus cooking is a great use of math and science skills. Games What would a fair be without so...

I love board games.  As a kid, I often set up board games to play by myself and I still do this sometimes today.  But now that I have kids, I can share games with them.  And board games are great for teaching so many different skills.  For those that I tired of Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, I highly recommend games by Peaceable Kingdom.  We have a few. Hoot Owl Hoot This game is designed for ages 4 and up and for 2-4 players.  It is a nice, short, cooperative game.  I love cooperative games in general, but its great for younger players to encourage teamwork.  The goal of the game is to move all the owls (you can choose the challenge level, but my kids love all 6) from the start into the nest before the sun rises.  Players are allowed to talk and collaborate to create strategies.  Each player will have three cards.  They can choose whichever card they would like to play, unless they drew a sun card, in which case they have to...

Objective:   My daughter requested a tour of the ancient world.  The second stop was ancient Rome, which we tied in to St. Valentine since it was also Valentine's Day this month.  While exploring the ancient world, we wanted to examine some myths, and learn about some of their contributions to science, math and the arts.  I create daily worksheets dealing with the days topic and a daily chore.  My daughter gets five or six questions while my son gets three or four.  I include questions about the activity of the day and if there is room, either math (simple equations or word problems) or language arts questions (like rhyme, syllables, synonyms). Spelling List and Sentence of the Week for K/1st grader : Language Arts lessons include some simple questions about the spelling list, like finding the nouns, making rhymes or counting syllables.  We read and write our sentence of the week every weekday. Love, Heart, Red, Pink, White, Pretty, Rome, Volcano, ...

As many parents face the prospect of finishing the school year with their kids at home, many businesses are offering ideas for lesson plans to help educate and entertain your kids.  But as we are inundated with emails and news, many of these opportunities may pass us by. Science NASA  has a variety of free lesson plans designed to cover math and science skills.  Some may require more materials than others.  The site includes a search feature, so that you are able to sort the activities by age, topics, and subject. Cincinnati Zoo  has a home safari series.  For each video available on YouTube, there is an activity on their website.  Some  activities are science based like slime, others engineering like making cat toys or using tools to negotiate a home made obstacle course like primates use tools. Arizona State University has coloring pages available for a number of topics including biology , earth science , and  anthropology . M...

For a fun little experiment with light, gather a red apple, a white piece of paper, and a flashlight.  How do our eyes see color?  The first thing we need to know is that white light is made of lots of colors.  Whenever we play with a prism or see a rainbow in water droplets, we are witnessing light being broken up into its spectrum of colors.  Issac Newton experimented with prisms and discovered the colors of the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  When we see colors, we are seeing the broken spectrum.  Newton believed the color we see is reflected off the object, while the others are absorbed.  To demonstrate this, place the red apple on the piece of white paper.  Shine the flashlight onto the apple.  If you move the light in the right way, you should see a red reflection on the white paper.  The red might be faint but should be there.