Ready to go Resources

100 Easy Earth Day Activities for Families just like Yours

Inside: 100 Earth day activities for families

Earth Day was established to help moms like me not implode when the clean laundry turns into a sand box.

Earth Day Freebie!

Download Your Free cheat sheet of the Earth Crafts and Activities for kids!

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Inside: A master list of simple, inexpensive, and fun ways to teach all the basic math principles your kids need to thrive. PLUS- Free Math Roadmap

Most homeschoolers overcomplicate math with fancy curriculum, worksheets, quizzes, stop-watches and tests. We choose to be different!

Stripping math back to its basic foundational core, we can set our kids up for success in life by giving them a solid foundation with allows them to add, subtract, multiply, divide, count, measure, weigh, and estimate.

Pickin’ Cute!!!

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Inside: Age Appropriate Chores {printable}

We have always believed in the philosophy that children are a welcomed addition to our family.

We love, eat, live, play and WORK together as a family unit.

We also make messes faster than the chicken can cross the road to prove to the opossum it can be done.

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10 of the BEST Homeschool Subscription Boxes for your Kids

Inside: Top picks for homeschool subscription boxes by moms like you. These subscriptions will spice up your homeschool

Travel to the future with me, and let’s give each other a virtual high five today.

Ready?

best subscription boxes for kids — HIGH FIVE

There are two boxes and an envelope on the kitchen table for your child.

YOU are so excited, you can’t contain yourself.

You close your eyes and think to yourself:

“Don’t say they’re for school!”
“Don’t say they’re educational!”
“Don’t say they’ll be fun learning lessons!”

You are squirming with excitement, because you know your child is holding the future in their hands and waiting with anticipation for the go ahead to peek inside.

They hold up one of the boxes.

“This one?”

YOU: Not, yet.

They try to hide disappointment, and hold the the other box.

“This one?”

YOU: Maybe you should open the envelope first.
((Insert wink.))

They tear open the paper and read, “You are about to get a glimpse of the future. Something that will some to you every month for the rest of next year!!!”

At this point, tell them to pause while you get another cup of tea or coffee and ask them to guess what’s inside.

YOU: What do you think it could be?

((Insert virtual high-five here))

They are so excited, they can barely contain themselves.

What is in the boxes?

💛 Excitement
💛 Curiosity
💛 Fine motor Development
💛 FUN

How is this possible?

I polled hundreds of homeschool moms and compiled their favorites list of kits into a list for you.

My own 15-year old gets the Kiwi Co Tinker Crate each month. When it arrives, he places it on the ottoman and waits for the end of the day.

That evening, he opens the box with great fanfare, making sure his DAD sees and is equally impressed. Then he gets building.

Careful reading of instructions

Fine motor development

Engineering and design

Problem solving and math skills

Those are the words we HIDE AWAY from his ears and replace them with

WOW!

FUN!

Let me see.

MAGIC.

You have time to make this happen. Most kits take a few weeks to get to you and there is one for almost every kind of child and passion.

Just be stealthy and I promise…

…I won’t spoil the surprise.

Food for thought: These make GREAT gifts for people in nursing homes too!!

Quick Links to the top Homeschool Subscription Boxes

Free Science for three months from Mel Science? Here’s how you register!

When you really want to know what’s best you ask the experts, right?Kids LOVE getting stuff in the mail! Surprise them with a special gift – A subscription box just for THEM! Perfect for birthdays, holidays and more!

But, if you’re like me you’re wondering which are the BEST Subscription Boxes for kids.

So I asked all the moms On our Facebook page:

I’m looking for subscription box and membership ideas for homeschoolers.

Most subscription boxes are chosen to meet a specific need, want, or interest. Throw in the fact that you don’t need to look for duct tape, buttons, or instructions for how to whip together something cool and BOOM. Your kids will think you’re the coolest mom on the planet.

Not sure which boxes will best fit your family? That’s exactly why I asked a few dozen of my homeschooling friends.

Check out all the AMAZING subscription boxes other Homeschool Moms love.

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How to Turn Homeschool Frustration into Joy and Learning

Dear homeschool mom,

Don’t homeschool. I’m not kidding.

Yes, kids need to read and write and solve basic math problems, but they don’t need school at home.

They need to have plenty of time to run, jump, slide, swing, lay, laugh, build, and rest.

Related: building toys

Give them time to be bored, time to think, time to day dream.

Don’t give them workbooks, worksheets, and hours of assignments.

Instead, give them LESS.

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22 Simple Manners Every Kid Should Know By High School

Has this ever happened to you?

You beam with pride with joy at how wonderful, caring, and thoughtful your kids are; and without warning, they prove your heart wrong.

Before you beat yourself up for being a terrible mom,
Before I drag my ungrateful son away from his new pile of gifts,
I need to tell us something.

They’re kids.

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Learning at Home: Everything you need in one place

A Quick Start Guid to Teaching at Home

These resources have been moved to my academy.

Life Skills for Kids of All Ages

This is where the rubber hits the road in homeschooling and raising up the future generation!

Be nice to people
How to make a bed
The proper handshake
5 ways to cook an egg
How to sew a button
How to iron a shirt
Digital manners
How to tie a tie
How to secure passwords
What to do if locked out of your house
Gross habits to STOP and avoid
Small talk
How to pass on a compliment
Small talk
and so much more!!!

These mini units are hands-on, FUN, and guaranteed to be filled with things your kids REALLy need to know to ROCK Life!

Don’t miss a lesson!

PRINT THIS FREE HOMESCHOOL MOM REMINDER.

This post comes with a free printable reminder list to help keep your heart focused on those important life lessons. I always have the hardest staying focused. This printable simplifies it!

Here is a sneak preview…

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE PRINTABLE

Download the checklist. You’ll get the printable, plus join 9,000+ homeschool moms who receive my weekly parenting tips and ideas!
Print. Any paper will do the trick, but card stock would be ideal.
Place it on your refrigerator as a helpful reminder.

WANT MORE POSTS ON HOMESCHOOLING FROM THE HEART?

120 is the number of classics you need to read

Don’t homeschool your kids

Godly women and homeschool

You don’t need to apologize

A Family Fish Unit

INSTANT Activity day! Theme: FISH

Materials needed:

Fishing pole
weight/clay
Paint
Paint brush
Small snack like golf fish crackers

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Building Trust with Your Child

My youngest son is 14.
If you want to see his gorgeous face, just look up the phrase “ball of energy” in the dictionary. That’s his picture.

This boy spent his life surrounded by his four older brothers, but this year caught him off guard.

All 3 of the other brothers at home leave the house each day to go to school at the local college.

This shocked him like a stun gun the first day as he looked around a the VERY silent house and whispered, “I’m gonna die of boredom this year.”

I saw it clearly too.

” Buddy, we have a very unique gift from the Lord this year. It’s just you and me all day. Yes, academics are important, but we’re going to do school differently this year.

We’re going to enjoy our time together and strengthen our relationship. Especially since you’re 14, and mom is weird.”

I stripped back school to the bear minimum.

We do math every day, but not very long.
He is writing a handful of gut wrenching stories/ so I give him time to write most days.
Then he alternates between: history 2 days and science 2 days.

For history, I designed a power point/slide outline with my son to be his year long project. If you’ve seen me share, he’s transformed a black and white list into a beautiful presentation. I think he’s made it from Mesopotamia to Rome.

Science. We were doing health until the day he trusted me with his heart in the rain.

I think it was in January that I really saw myself in the mirror and realize I need to lose about 30 pounds.

My body is beginning to hurt and I know if I don’t get back into shape I will fall apart.

So I declared, “rain or shine, I need to you help me walk every day. Our first goal will be 2 miles a day for a week, then 3, then 4. But I need to get to 5.”

He said, “OK.”

Yes, we’ve been soaked a few times…
I even had to challenge his “man-hood” by requiring an umbrella twice. lol.

Phew! He’s LOVED the time together.

The infamous, “I think I want to be a cardio thoracic surgeon” walk, happened after a few WEEKS of getting closer to the 4 mile mark.

We had spent hours and hours each day, walking, picking up “treasures” on our beach (gemstones, pretty rocks, shells and sand dollars and just chatting about stuff.

I began weaving in some academic discussions while we adventured.
We’d pick a road and talk about academic things for the duration of that path: grammar things, history, health.

And out of that time together… he trusted me with his dream.

We were at least 3 miles into a walk when he said, “Please don’t laugh. I think I really know what I want to be when I grow up…”

💞My heart skipped.
He was trusting me with something.
I could feel it.

This didn’t just happen.

This was the fruit of all that time in the street, in the rain, on our walks chatting that unlocked his heart.

When I show people the level of work he’s put into his DIY heart unit, their mouth drops open.
This is a labor of love project for sure.
It looks like he’s an academic genius, absolutely.

What it really is?

Evidence that he feels loved and “seen”.

It all began because I decided to create a Huckleberry Finn style year of wandering,
I saw I was over weight and we just hung out and talked without distraction.

👩‍🦰Mama, give yourself permission to push traditional academics aside.

Walk beside your kids and sing in the rain, skip stones, catch butterflies, or go fishing at the pond at the far end of your property.

Dedicate a little bit of that time to chat about some “topic for learning” and simply enjoy their company.

Who knows.
Maybe, just maybe… like my son, your kids will trust you with their dream.

Let Stephen Teach your kids to crochet!

Math with a Deck of Cards

Quick round up of all the math games I can find that you can play with a deck of cards.

Total of 10

Lay out 20 cards on the table (leave out face cards or change them to equal 0, while aces equal 1). Kids remove sets of cards that add up to 10, ultimately trying to remove all the cards from the table. It’s harder than you think! Learn more at First Grade Round up

Nifty 50

This game is great to develop logical thinking and problem solving, review two digit addition and subtraction regrouping, and is fun! The object is to come up with a math equation that has a sum or difference closest to the number 50. First player to five points is the winner! Learn more at Scholastic

21

This game is a simplified version played in casinos, with no gambling involved. Object: be the closest to 21 without going over! Learn more at Scholastic

Place Value War

Turn over 1, 2 or 3 cards. Place
them in any position to make the highest
number possible. The higher number wins all
of the cards for that turn. Learn more at Newark Schools

Once through the deck

Shuffle the deck and place it face down on the table in front of you. Flip the cards face up, one at a time.

For each card, say out loud the sum (or product) of that number plus (or times) the number you want to practice. Don’t say the whole equation, just the answer.

Go through the deck as fast as you can. Learn more at Denise Gaskins

Closest To

Starting with two digit numbers, deal out two cards per player. Each player takes the cards in their hand and rearranges the digits to create a number that is closest to 50. The players show each other their hands and the player who is closest to 50 wins the set of all of the players’ cards. Learn more at Math engaged

Math Memory

Lay all of the cards down on the table face-down in a grid. Players take turns flipping over three cards and seeing if they can make an equation with the face-up cards. Younger players can try using addition and subtraction, and older players can also try using multiplication and division. Players are challenged to remember what cards every player has flipped to help them create equations on their own turn. The player with the most amount of cards at the end of the game wins. Learn more at Math engaged

Here’s a game similar to the one described above, but this version allows students to compare fractions instead. You will need two pencils, one for each player, to serve as the fraction line. Learn more at Super Teacher Worksheets

Guess My Number

Place a student at the front of the room and give him or her two playing cards. The cards can be ordered any way the student wants. Be sure the cards cannot be seen by the class!

Take turns around the room guessing what the number is. The types of questions asked have to use math vocabulary, such as, “Is it even?” “Is it odd?” “Is it greater than 10?” “Is it a factor of 20?” and so on.

The student can only answer with a “Yes” or “No”, until the actual number is guessed at. Learn more at K5Chalkbox

More math with a deck of cards!

More math goodies

Math Picture Books Breath Life into Arithmetic!

97+ Ideas for Making Math FUN

Homeschool Math: Grab your Roadmap to Success

DIY Doll Game and Activity

This beautiful activity comes from author Gail Masinda, with Maestro Heights.

The idea is simple.

Learn to care for baby while living your normal life.

Perfect for training siblings for life with baby!

There are two sets of activities:

small manageable tasks
what baby needs.

How to play

Place each in their own jar/basket.
Begin the day with a smt. Complete the task
Then reach in and see what baby needs.
Set the timer and kids practice setting baby’s needs above their own. PLUS, you get a little bit of time too!

Back slips are included so you can customize chore/tasks and activities for baby.

Kids can use dolls or stuffed animals for “Baby”. I purposely used the word BABY and did not include his/her pronouns. HAVE Fun!

Download your free copy here

Parenting in Times of Crisis turned into MAGICAL Memories

When I was about 11-years old I had the BEST summer ever.

Family wildflower walks every evening after dinner.
Family wifle ball games.
Family soccer games. (got a basement?)

We lived on a 15 acre farm in Connecticut and my dad spent the summer carving out adventures for us with his ride-on tractor.

⚽️First he cut the soccer field.

⚾️Then he lowered the mover and cut a baseball diamond into the same field.

💐He carved a 6-foot wide path around a huge field on our property so he could take us on a walk to see “which wild flowers bloomed” that day.

🌼We played
🌱Caught dragon flies
🌱Watch clouds float by
👀Sat in the yard playing I-spy
🎼Turned off all the lights in the house and blared the music while playing “who knows the most lyrics to each song”

We fed wild birds, watched the squirrels steal their food and simply enjoyed each other’s company.

🐾What a great summer!

It wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I learned the truth.

😳Dad had been laid off that summer.

While he applied for over 150 jobs looking for work at night, during the day he created, played, and was present with all four of us kids.

Today, we have a choice.

I say, let’s make this season of quarantine the “BEST Spring vacation of our kids’ childhood.”

🌸Be present
🌷Read
🌱Cut soccer fields out with a lawn mower
⚽️Play games

And at night, when the kids are nestled in bed make our plan for the next day.

I found the EXACT 200+ year old house I lived in at the time.
Yes, I had a heart attack too. It was not fully restored when I lived in it.

It was NOT this beautiful when I lived there.

But you get a rare opportunity to see where my DREAM summer was lived out.
Page 27. That yellow room is where I heard my sisters snore like tigers.
Page 28 was a closet PACKED with boxes and clothing and didn’t have a window.
Page 31 was the scary attic in our garage where my parents hid Christmas presents
Page 34 is the window I witnesses the greatest ice storm I’ve ever seen. I sat on the sofa and peeked out.
Page 38 shows you why I remember spending a HUGE portion of time doing yard work with my dad.

But the magical field?
Page 32. Walk to the right of the garage and hang a right after that clump of trees… I spent hours and hours and hours there with my family, led by my father…

When I lived here, all the walls were white. There wasn’t any fancy decor. We had 13 cats, no heat in my room (you could see your breath)

What’s your favorite memory from your childhood?

If you know people who can use an easy to follow plan for school for the next few weeks/months… Share this FREE, no gimmick plan with them.