My Mom is Awesome

I love that I have a mother who homeschooled too.  Not only do I get a person to go to for advice, but I get to mooch off of her awesome materials! :)

My mom and dad gave my girls some great Christmas presents this year.

 First, Snack Recipes.  My mom made some little recipe books for different snacks that the girls can make all by themselves.  My little brother used to love them, but now that he's older, my girls get to have them and I'm so excited!

I have set aside a shelf in the refrigerator with food supplies for the snacks.  I leave the snack recipes and equipment out on their kitchen shelves and every afternoon the girls get to make their own snack.  They take turns choosing and making it.  Sometimes they need a bit of help, and sometimes we don't have the ingredients for some snacks  (and so I just put away that recipe book ).  But overall, they love this!  Turtle is very competent and independent with this work and Rosebud is trying hard to master it too.  And it's lovely to have a snack served to me in the afternoon! :)

The snack-prepping equipment -- cutting board, apple slicer, colander, serving trays.  Also, in the drawers are spreaders, knives, spoons, etc.

Another awesome Christmas present from my parents were these Animals of the Seven Continents cards.  To go with the cards, my mom is is lending us her Continent Puzzle Map.  So, the girls and I are learning the Continents, and the animals that live in each one.

We sing a continent song, talk about the oceans of the world, and then match the animals to the continents.  Then we read a Dorling Kindersley My World book that talks very briefly about different people, customs, animals and notable landmarks in each continent.  Rosebud loves this work -- she did everything in the above picture by herself!

Another work that I am borrowing from my mom is her Mailman Game.  She made this game years and years ago when my sisters were learning their letters sounds.  I have good memories of playing this game, way past when it was actually challenging to us!

Behind each lettered tab in the shoebox on the right are 4-6 envelopes with pictures of objects starting with that letter.  The child chooses the two letters they want to practice, places a control index card in a plastic sleeve on top of one of the two small shoeboxes (aka mailboxes).  The envelopes corresponding to the two letters are mixed up, then the "Mailman"  (Mail Carrier I guess we should say? :) delivers the envelopes to their correct boxes.  For example, for "J" the envelopes are: Jelly, Jesus, Jellybeans, Jerky, Jack-in-the-Box.  For "M" the envelopes picture Milk, Monstrance, Mailbox, Money and Moose.  

When the child is finished delivering the mail, they can check their work by opening each envelope and seeing that it contains a colored piece of paper that matches the color on the control card on top of the mailbox. 

It took my Mom a while to put this together.  It's hard to find things starting with V, Z, X, O, and several other letters! Also, you can't have things like "Cereal" for C or "Giraffe" for G -- the sounds don't match up correctly.   The vowels are also a little difficult, since they are at least two sounds for each vowel.  I tried to add a few more envelopes to each letter category, but there are still some letters that are lacking.  Overall, this game is really fun and educational, of course!

As for the girls, Turtle is really good at this work and Rosebud loves the idea of this work.  :)  She still doesn't know what the point of it really is.  But she tries. And she loves the pictures.

So, isn't my mom awesome? :)