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Address and Phone Number

We're working on Marshall memorizing our address and phone number. Today we were practicing in the boys room as Coen played. Marshall got restless and frustrated and leaned over to turn the white noise machine to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. As it played in the background, I started singing our number in tune to the song. Here's what I came up with...

Our area code is 555 - 555 3979
555 3979
555 3979
Our phone number is 555 - 555 3979

Download N Go Review: Terrific Tigers

Disclaimer: As a member of the Download N Go review team I am provided with a PDF copy of the unit study to use, review, and post about on this blog. No other compensation is provided. Thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
We are halfway through our Terrific Tigers Unit from
Download N Go. Being sick knocked us out for a few days, so we're a little behind.

So far we've learned about 3 different tigers, gone to the zoo, and had a lot of fun!

Marshall has been pretending he's a tiger and we're grateful for the break from being a robot and a dinosaur. Our toddler, Coen, even has his own little growl down. It's so cute!

Speaking of growls, I think one of the most interesting things I've learned in this unit is the different names for tiger's growls! A growl is a growl, right? Wrong! People who work with tigers actually have a few different names for different types of growls.

Marshall's favorite part was the jokes. He saw them in with the lapbook pieces and just had to practice a few before we could get started. He had a fun time retelling them to Dad when he got home from work.

Aside from jokes and growls, we have also done 2 tiger puzzles, one on-line, and one that was in the unit to be cut out.

Download N Go is quickly becoming a favorite of mine for 3 main reasons:
1. For the ease of use. Everything you need comes in the download for a low, low price! Just download and go, like the name implies!
2. Because the units cover a wide range of subjects like geography and map skills, to fun things like puzzles and craft suggestions. I love integrated curriculum!
3. These units are extremely well organized. They have a 5 main points on which they build the day's studies (see below). Each day has a subset of topics as well. This helps tremendously so Marshall and I don't feel like we're just wandering about aimlessly. There is direction and order.

Day 1: What Is a Tiger?
Day 2: Getting to Know Tigers
Day 3: Where Are the Tigers?
Day 4: The Science of Tigers
Day 5: Cool Things About Tigers

Here is the inside of our lapbook. We just have to finish up a couple pieces.

The frame of the cut out puzzle. I'm teaching Marshall to find the corners, then the edges before filling in the middle.

Coen and Marshall at Kansas City Zoo! We lucked out - residents are free in October and November!!

The zoo's very own Sumatran Tiger!! When I told Marshall what kind it was he said, "Hey, that's the first kind we learned about!" I was happily surprised he remembered such a fact. But my proud mommy moment came when our friend asked her mom "What do tigers eat?" And Marshall was the one who replied, "They eat deer and other animals because they're carnivores."

To see what other reviewers had to say check out the Terrific Tigers Blog Tour! This post will be linked up there as well.

Download N Go is a product of The Old Schoolhouse.

Let me end with a joke. See if your kid/s found the hilarity in it that Marshall did.

What did the tiger say to his friends before they went hunting for dinner?
Let us prey.

Download N Go Review: Rocking Robots

Disclaimer: As a member of the Download N Go review team I am provided with a PDF copy of the unit study to use, review, and post about on this blog. No other compensation is provided. Thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
I have exciting news! I was chosen to be part of Download N Go's review team!! Our first review was for a unit I had been eying - Rocking Robots. Marshall often pretends to be a robot, walking around like one and using a mechanical voice to talk. Ironically my last post was about winding him up to do his work. So this was a very fun, appropriate unit for him.


The Old Schoolhouse offers DNG unit studies at only $7.95 each. They come loaded with 110 (in this case) pages of fun. There is something for every learner. Each Download N Go unit has links to the web to read, watch, and learn about the topic at hand, that you can link to right from the PDF. After visiting a link or two, there are questions or activities to do to help recall and remember what you just learned. Also included are lapbook pieces showcasing your weeks' work. They also give a list of recommended books to read during the week. While the books are fun and helpful to delve more into the topic of robots, everything you absolutely need for the unit is right in the Download N Go PDF. So if you're in a bind and need a unit study STAT, DNG is way easy to do on the fly!I used Rocking Robots with Marshall, my 5 year old. The recommended grade level is kindergarten - fourth grade. There is a lot of information covered, including history, science, math, language (vocabulary words), and hands on fun with drawing and crafts as well.

This week we learned:
Day 1: What Is a Robot?
Day 2: The History of Robots
Day 3: People and Places of Robots
Day 4: Science Secrets of Robots
Day 5: Goodies and Gadgets of Robots

Between the time I was chosen for the review team and the time I had to have this posted by, only gave us a week to do the unit. While the Download N Go studies are designed to be completed in only a week, for a younger child (like my 5yo) I would recommend spreading it across 2 weeks OR simply go through the unit first and find what will be most age appropriate attention span-wise for your child/ren. A couple of the days had us online looking at robot clips and reading web pages here and there for about 2 hours. Marshall got bored and wiggly. The great thing about Download N Go though, is that you can take it and make it your own and tailor it to your son or daughter's interests! The activities and hands-on suggestions were fun, educational, and also provided a nice break from the computer work.

We learned about robots in space.

A fun dot-to-dot, always a hit!

As a science experiment, we made a water clock. To find out what that is, you'll just have to visit Download N Go and get a Rocking Robots unit of your own!

I am linking this post up to the Rocking Robots Blog Tour. Check out what some other reviewers had to say about Rocking Robots!

Robots at School

Marshall went into his fantasy world today during Math because he didn't want to do it. Today's fantasy world consisted of being a robot and shutting down after each task. Instead of battling him over it, I rolled with it because he's my only student. He's not in a class with 29 other kids and a teacher who can't take time out for him to come to grips. So I was his programmer and every time he shut down I had to tickle his "on" switch on his back to reboot him. I gave him his instructions in my mechanical robot voice, too. And you know what? It worked! And this is why we homeschool.

A Day in the Life

I've been wanting to participate in the NOT Back-to-School Blog Hop on Heart of the Matter. I didn't get my act together in time to link up to the first 3 weeks, but better late than never, right? So here goes...

We are just getting going in our homeschool. I have a bad history of creating unrealistic schedules for myself. So right now we're just trying to be flexible but still maintain a routine.

I have early risers and I, myself, am so NOT a morning person! Luckily my sweet, sweet husband gets up with the kids most mornings. They are up at 6:30 and do breakfast together.

When he leaves I get up and fill in the nutritional cracks. {Basically a morning snack, or breakfast #2}. Then I have Marshall get dressed and brush his teeth by himself while I get our toddler, Coen ready for the day. If the house needs a disaster clean-up, I do it now so that our "school room" {aka living room} is free of distractions. If I needed to focus in college, I needed the house clean first!

Between 9:00 and 10:00 we are ready to start our day. We begin with family prayer and scripture reading. This will grow to include the memorization of our Primary's {children's organization} theme and scripture for the month. We also work on 2 of the children's hymns from our church's children's songbook.

Right after our morning "devotional" time, if you will, we have math. My son loves math and with a toddler around I need to keep it moving or Marshall will get distracted. Math is an easy next step to our day.

After math we have lunch, and sometimes I let Marshall watch a tv show while I get it ready. If it has been a rough morning, I'll use a tv show at this time as a bribe {I know, I know}.

The boys usually run around playing after lunch. It wears Coen out for naptime and keeps them both entertained while I clean up. Coen will go down about 12:30-1:00 most days.

Next up for me and Marshall is the dreaded reading and phonics. This is the hardest part of our day by far. He wiggles and squirms, complaining the whole time which just draws out the instruction time. Ugh! Even with the fun unit study coming next, he just fights me on this.

Like I said, next comes our unit study. We begin by reading several books then we do some lapbook pieces, worksheets I have printed off, and usually and art & craft project. Usually Coen wakes up at some point during this and is able to get his hands on some paint or other project, too. This is an easy thing to incorporate him into.

After Marshall is done we clean up, I get dinner ready, and Daddy comes home to see what we've done! Our read-a-loud time is done in bed at night.

So far, that's what we have found works for us. As we go I hope to include more into our day, but for now it's a good starting framework to build around.

The dinosaurs are becoming extinct around here

Every good unit study probably starts out with a trip to the library, right?! I was sick the week before we started this, so I sent my hubby to the library. He was convinced I had left an empty shelf somewhere with all the dinosaur books I put on hold. But by getting a variety of fiction and non-fiction books, I was able to teach Marshall about the 2 genres. Whenever we read one of these books, I have him tell me if it's fiction or non-fiction. It's great for him to be able to distinguish between real fact books and made-up stories.

{I know of at least 3 more in the bedroom that I don't dare go get for fear of waking somebody up.}

Marshall asked for more dino stuff to do every single day. Until today that is. I think we're all dinoed out. Which is good, it means he learned all there was to learn and now it's boring so we'll move on to the next thing...just as soon as I figure out exactly what that is. I have ideas a-plenty, so we'll see what we land on.

But first, I wanted to give dino-credit where dino-credit is due:

The bulk of our lapbook pieces came from Homeschool Share which has awesome lapbooks for FREE!! I chose to not use the creationist pieces for this lapbook and supplemented the space in the lapbook with other fun things I found online. Unless otherwise noted, all pieces came from Homeschool Share.

Marshall's artwork adorns the cover. The directions to draw the T-Rex (which turned into an "Everything Dinosaur") came from Rob Court's book "How to Draw Dinosaurs" that I found at our local library. While the 6-step directions included more like 12 steps, I liked the format of this book and Marshall didn't seem to mind it. I would say it's more for 8 and up though.

As you open up the lapbook, we have the sequence card set on the flap. He put them in order but got a little confused on the numbering. The cards came from Making Learning Fun. In the middle is the dinosaur height graph and the dinosaur shape count (Making Learning Fun). I printed 3 of these and stapled them onto a colored background. On the next flap we have the Paleontologist and Dinosaur matchbooks in which Marshall defined each word for me and I wrote his definition down.

Turn the page and we have 2 more matchbooks, Extinction and Favorite Fact. On the next full page there are 3 dinosaur adjective pieces (template at Homeschool Share). We read "Thesaurus Rex" then talked about adjectives, synonyms, and what a thesaurus is. Then I asked him to give me 3 adjectives that describe dinosaurs and I wrote these on the templates. Then next project was to find the continents certain types of dinosaur skeletons have been found on. In an effort make more educational for Marshall, not just "glue this here and that there," I decided to show him how to do research using table of contents in "DK Great Dinosaur Atlas" and "The Usborne World Atlas of Dinosaurs" to get the answers. As it turns out several of the continent/dinosaur match-ups that the lapbook creator had together were not correct. Being the perfectionist I am, I decided to just rearrange the pieces for our mini-book. The final flap includes game cards for Memory that Marshall colored and enjoyed playing with. We did a variation of Go Fish he insisted be called Go Dinosaur as well as standard memory. We also have our reptile book that compares dinosaurs to today's reptiles.


The crafts we have done so far include:
Paleontologist toilet paper tube puppet

Ptronodon toilet paper tube puppet
Brachiosaurus rainbow shape
Stegosaurus rainbow shape

(all from Making Learning Fun)

Ptronodon toilet paper tube puppet
{in his favorite color - pink}

The "rainbow shape" Dinosaurs

The clothespin cards from Making Learning Fun were also a huge hit, although a bit too easy for him:

And on the back, another Marshall-drawn dinosaur.

Along with lapbook pieces from Homeschool Share, and fun activities from Making Learning Fun, we also used worksheets from Learning Page, though you'll have to become a member (it's free). I may put in a third file folder and use over-sized brads to attach the worksheets so I can keep everything from the unit together.

To wrap it all up, we're taking Marshall to a Dinosaur Exhibit at a local science museum. It's only around for another month or so and I figured this would be perfect timing to go check it out!! I can't wait to surprise him Saturday morning :D