Teachinging Children to pray

Teaching our kids to pray is a very vital part of our parenting. Home schooling and prayer go hand in hand, don't they?
There are many free resources to use when teaching about prayer. It has been a blessing for our family to grow in this area, and hopefully these are a few resources that can help all of us in this process.

Teach Us To Pray has some really cute activities to help reinforce prayer. Here is a tutorial on how to make a Prayer Jar. Make your own Prayer Jigsaw Puzzle, or Scripture Flipper. Here is a huge collection of prayer coloring sheets.

Have you heard of Prepare and Pray? This is a curriculum geared toward teaching real life skills while acknowledging God as the true source of our well being. Here is a sample chapter of the Prepare and Pray Curriculum. They also have a sample chapter available for their Blessed Assurance Curriculum.

Thank you to the Old School House Magazine for providing this info. :)

Valentine's Day ideas

(Click the sweet girl below to download the hearts of loving kindness tradition detailed below, the love muffin recipe, 10 things I love about you, and directions to make your very own love journal. These will print out ready to give as a sweet little gift, so using cardstock works well.)

Hearts of Loving Kindness – Use pretty hearts during the month of February to teach the value of loving kindness to the loved ones in your life. Find a small box or jar and decorate it (invite your children to help) any way you want: with stickers, artwork, photos or a big red ribbon. Place all of the hearts inside and tell your family members what it’s all about.

Every time you see someone doing something kind for someone else, write their name and what they did on a heart. String it up on a ribbon and hang it in the kitchen or family room for all to see. You can put four to six hearts on a ribbon by cutting a slit at the top and bottom of the heart and slipping each heart up the ribbon and then tie a knot at the top of the heart to hold it in place. The more hearts your family sees dangling, the more they will want to add to the festive display.

You will have plenty of opportunities during the month to talk about how and why we do things for others simply out of the "kindness of our hearts." Make it a family tradition to focus on the value of loving kindness every February and be sure to preserve those precious memories in a Valentine’s Day Book with a photo of family members holding their Hearts of Loving Kindness.

SEE Balancing Beauty and Bedlam for more tradition ideas

Best ever Spelling Site

This is one of the best spelling sites that I have come across, and it's FREE!!

SPELLING CITY offers you the capability of typing in all of your spelling lists.
It teaches, tests, and has games galore to trick your kids into thinking they are having fun. :)

I use it for my 5 year old with her sight words, and have even insisted that my teen refreshes his spelling with some advanced vocabulary words.

Enjoy - I have made it a regular part of our school day for those times when I just need a little distraction.

*make sure you set up a user account so that you can save all of our spelling lists. Great for weekly review.

Free Art ideas for the kids

If you have a budding artist in your family, then you will love this week's freebies!

Kinder Art is the place to go when looking for ways to teach art to your kids.
You can choose from Art History and Appreciation, painting lessons, artistic snacks, and many others! All of these free lessons have step by step instructions for the youngest child in your home to the oldest.

Thank you Homeschool Magazine for pointing me to this resource.

Largest full moon of 2009 this weekend

NASA Science News for January 8, 2009

The biggest full Moon of 2009 is coming this weekend. It's a 'perigee Moon' as much as 30% brighter than lesser Moons we'll see in the months ahead. Get ready for moonlight!
FULL STORY CLICK HERE

Check out our RSS feed at http://science. nasa.gov/ rss.xml!

The Atoms Family - activites/song

Many of you asked for the words to the song that I sang on Atoms ("family").
This site has some great print offs and activities that go along with our Physical Science subject matter.

The Atoms Family activities

Atoms Family
I used this worksheet (created by Kathleen Crawford, 1994)
to introduce atoms to my students. It really makes it easier for the students to remember the charges of protons, neutrons & electrons and where they are located in the atom. The kids also have fun singing "The Atoms Family." :)

I can't wait to see which precious parent will delight us with this wonderful snack creation!

Atoms Family Atomic Math Challenge
Atoms Family Challenge
This worksheet (created by Kathleen Crawford, 1994) builds on the atoms family album. This has the students determine the number of protons, neutrons, and electrons in various elements. It's fairly simple but the kids really get the hang of it!

EDIBLE ATOM snack idea:
Printable Version for your convenience!

Supplies:
Lots of candy...
Large sugar cookies, M&M's, skittles, marshmallows, peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, sprinkles, frosting, popcorn, raisins, jelly beans, plates, napkins, milk (optional)etc.

Set the candy in bowls at different stations in your room or on each lab table. The object of this lab is for students to choose an element from the periodic table and design the atom complete with protons, neutrons, electrons and if you get really crazy you can have them add mesons, quarks and gluons. I found that if you limit them to any element with an atomic number of 8 or less it makes the lab work much smoother.

Before the student atom creation can be eaten, the student must make a labeled drawing of their atom and give all information of the element on a 3x5 index card. (Atomic Number, Atomic Mass, Symbol, Element Name, 1 use for the element, metal, non-metal, or metalloid) After you check that all info is correct... then it's eat 'em up time.

My kids loved this lesson. They never had so much fun learning about atoms and elements. You could also do this type of lesson with molecules.

Start the New Year Right!