If you’re thinking about homeschooling, this is a great site to start browsing around on, Beginning Homeschooling.

Looking for affordable activities, unit studies, etc.? Your kids will get excited over the variety of subject matter found on CurrClick’s website.

Looking for a great homeschool blog? You’ll find a ton of blogs, written by homeschool families, over at Homeschool Blogger.

Most homeschool families know this organization well, but just in case you might be a newbie, check out HSLDA to find out more about the homeschool laws in your state. Stay informed!

This is one of my favorite sites, especially for support and encouragement, The Homeschool Lounge.

If you’ve read The Well Trained Mind, you’ll probably know this forum well, The Well Trained Mind Forum.

Check out The Homeschool Mom.

Finally, one of my favorite places to browse and find resources is The Old Schoolhouse Store.

Now link up your giveaways, and have a wonderful Tuesday!

I actually had the opportunity to review three different educational toys from CSN Stores, so I’ll tell you just a bit about each one.  I have been looking for the Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards for quite a while now.  They’re one of the harder Melissa & Doug toys to find in our local craft store/book stores.  I found one in a local book store, but it was so expensive that I decided to just wait and see if I could find it somewhere else.  Thankfully, CSN Stores carries it for less than half of the price in the book store!  This set comes with 130 different pieces of all shapes, colors, and sizes.  Jaden can actually pick a pattern board, and then he uses the shapes to form that same pattern on his board.  It really helps him to learn the different shapes, as well as colors.  It gives him tactile practice, as well.  It’s definitely a great project to pull out when I need to work with Jacob on a more difficult subject, as it keeps Jaden occupied.  It’s also a challenge for him.  You can purchase the Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards for $13.55 from Toys and Games Online; it’s meant for ages 3+.  I definitely recommend this product.

Next is the Plan Toys Preschool Fun Abacus, another product I’ve been waiting to find for Jaden.  He’s getting to the point where he understands how to count now, so this just adds to our daily learning.  It’s a great tool to pull out to help him with counting and even color recognition, as it has very brightly primary colored beads.  Jacob can actually use the abacus to supplement his addition/subtraction studies.  It gives him tactile practice with his math problems.  This abacus is meant to help with hand-eye coordination, as well as fine motor skills.  It has 100 beads, 10 on each wire.  One thing I love about the abacus is that it has two little legs that can fold out to stand more steadily when in use; however, when not in use, the legs can fold back in, so that the abacus lays flat for storage.  You can purchase the Plan Toys Preschool Fun Abacus for $22.50 from Toys and Games Online.  Plan Toys uses non-toxic, natural materials in their toys, so this makes for a “greener” choice, as well.

The last product we received to review was the Patch Products On the Go Peel and Stick Jr. This kit includes more than 160 foam squares that can be used as mosaic tiles on the 3 different scene boards. The scene boards include a choo-choo, a police car, and a dump truck, 3 of Jaden’s favorite things.  He can actually take the foam adhesive pieces and put them on the scene board, creating his own little masterpiece.  The set includes 6 sheets of foam pieces and a magnet strip, so he can display his works of art when done with them.  I like that this is a creative project for Jaden; it gives him a tactile project to work on that stretches his creative abilities and helps him to create something of his very own.  He feels so proud when he’s completed an art project, so this just helps to boost that confidence and level of creativity a bit more….keeping him interested.  As a mom, I like that there’s no glue involved….so virtually no cleanup.:)  You can purchase the Patch Products On the Go Peel and Stick Jr. for $10.00 from Toys and Games Online.  There are different varieties of this product, with different scene boards.  The only thing I would want to change about this product would be to make it reusable….that would add even more appeal for financially strapped families, as it would provide an ongoing activity for kids, something they could use over and over.

I definitely recommend Toys and Game Online with CSN Stores.  Take a look around, as you never know what you’ll find.  They have such a great selection and affordable prices, as well.  Be sure to Like CSN Stores on Facebook, and follow @CSNStores on Twitter.  You can also subscribe to the CSN Stores Blog.

(Disclosure: I received the aforementioned products, free of charge, from CSN Stores, for the purposes of this review.  All opinions/views are my own.)

Anyway, just wanted to share some of the stuff we’ve been doing.  Jacob is just thriving with our new curriculum, and Jaden’s absolutely loving his “school.”  We read lots of library books, and then I base most of Jaden’s lessons off that same subject matter; we also have been focusing on different letters via the books and projects; for example, one week we focused on apples, the next we did bugs.  I get a lot of ideas for Jaden from Homeschool Creations and No time for Flashcards.  I love, love, love those sites; the ladies who run them are truly gifted and creative and absolute dolls for sharing with all of us “not so creative” educators.  We use lots of other things too like BrainQuest, cut and paste activities, games, tracing activities, ideas from magazines, etc.  Here are some of our recent projects.

We had the opportunity to review this awesome Create your Own Pop-Up Books Kit from Growing Tree Toys (review coming soon on MamaBuzz).We’ve had lots of playdough time; this is a great thing to give Jaden while Jacob and I work on something that he needs more of my attention with. He finds all kinds of creative things to do with his playdough, including using it as a phone.:) We use these playdough mats every week.Another activity that I just recently introduced Jaden to is Dot Paints, which are wonderful!  They’re easy cleanup, and he loves it when this box comes out.  We found these bandage lightning bugs, and they were so much fun to do.We sailed the bathtub blue with the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, as we were learning about Christopher Columbus one week in history.Jaden enjoyed making this Cut and Paste Train, and then chugging it around the house for the rest of the morning, and of course, when Daddy came home.Jacob is in the midst of learning about early America and the Indians, so he designed and made a tepee yesterday, sticks and all.  His wigwam from the day before didn’t turn out so good.  We were doing something wrong, not sure, but now his tepee happily sits with his cowboy/Indian sets.Today Jaden got to make this Cat in the Hat hat. I think I need to fix it, as our plate was way too big, but he’s had a time wearing it around the house.  Just for the record, this is one of his favorite movies.Finally, Handy Manny has made a deep impression here.:)So, what are you guys doing in your homeschool adventures?  Anything new and exciting to share?

Lobster Network is a social networking site, on which you can share, sell, buy, or keep track of certain items.  The items can include anything, from books to movies to household items.  The best part is, it’s free to sign up and use.

For me personally, Lobster Network is a great tool to help me keep track of items that we own.  For insurance purposes especially, this could be quite useful.  If you just want to keep a private inventory of your items (for example, the homeschooling items/books that you have acquired), you can, and noone else can see your inventory.  However, if you’d like to sell your stuff or share your stuff, you can do that too.  Lobster Network has its own messaging system for this purpose.  With the click of a button, you can borrow a movie from a friend.  If you’re simply looking for something that you’ve been wanting, you can list that desire on your board.  You can include picures, as well, on any listing.  This is a great homeschooling tool, especially if you’re like me and homeschooling on a budget, trying to find the best deals on the things you need for next year.With this network you can invite friends onboard with you.  You and your friends can have your own “community” within Lobster Network.  All you have to do to try it is to sign up for a free account; it’s that easy.

To read more reviews, visit the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

For those of us who homeschool, finding things to keep our toddlers busy while we do so, is quite the challenge on a daily basis. With our situation right now, if I don’t keep my toddler, Jaden, busy, then he’s going to keep me extra busy by doing things he shouldn’t do….for example, he decided to take a red stamper to my living room the other day….oh yeah, that was fun! I believe he stamped the fireplace and pictures on it, the tv, etc. I’ve found that when I keep him busy with small learning activities, we both have a much more peaceful day.

Ideal Curriculum is a company that is geared towards younger children. They aim to help preschoolers learn oral language, math concepts, and even reading. Their products are made for the purpose of helping individual students have better opportunities for learning, meaning that you, as the parent, can slow things down if need be….or if your child is learning and a little bored, you can speed things up or jump ahead.

We received Month 1 of the Transportation Theme, which is a month-long packet of curriculum for preschoolers. With this packet, there are activities with math concepts, reading concepts, art projects, and even science and history topics.  Your child will listen to music, as well as do plenty of hands-on projects.  The following are the skills taught with this packet:

• Letters and Sounds -Letter Names
• Phonological Awareness -Listening Skills
• Concepts About Print -Print is all Around
• Sight Words -Name Recognition
• Math -Rote Counting

I’ll be honest here and say that I wasn’t able to download this packet and actually use it, so I’m by no means an expert on Ideal Curriculum.  However, you can purchase this downloadable packet for $30 or the already printed packet for $55.  From May  1st – May 31st, you can use this 10% discount code: welovekids on your first order of any of their products.  To me, the price seems a little steep, as you are supposed to keep purchasing the packets, in order, up through 9 months…..so this would add up quickly.  For my preschooler, I tend to lean towards finding free, printable, educational activities online, plus finding bargains at yard sales, such as manipulatives, wooden puzzles, etc.  If you want an easier path, though, with everything laid out for you already, this might be the way to go.  It would definitely jumpstart your preschooler’s education, in my opinion. You can sign up for the Ideal Curriculum Newsletter to stay aware of all they are doing.

To read more reviews, check out the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

(Disclosure: I received a downloadable version of this packet, free of charge, from Ideal Curriculum….but wasn’t able to download it.  It was for the purposes of this review.)

Lesson Planet is truly an awesome resource, in my opinion.  They are an online database of approximately 150,000 lesson plans for teachers to use for any subject, at any time.  For me it was way easier to use Lesson Planet’s searchable database than to sift through hundreds of results on a regular search engine….mainly because everything is categorized and simplified within Lesson Planet.  They offer a Homeschooling Web Guide for Teachers, as well as a Lesson Plan Curriculum Calendar, in which you can find ideas by the date.  In fact, there are several different ways that you can search, to help you cut down on the number of results that you have to sift through.  Here’s a short video to show you what I mean:

Lesson Planet doesn’t just have lesson plans, though; they also have printable worksheets.  I actually sifted through multiplication worksheets, since that’s something we’re really working on right now.  They have a variety of different types, including Problem Solving, Word Problem, Coloring, Drawing, Word Scramble, Printing Practice, Word Puzzle, Graphic Organizer, Essay, etc.  If your child needs specific help with a certain subject, it’s easy to find something to fit his needs.  Not only that, but you can look up the standards for each state on Lesson Planet.  These standards tell you what your child should be able to do within each age group.

Since I sometimes have a hard time finding art projects for us to do, I decided to look up lesson plans for arts and crafts.  I was able to narrow it down to Preschool arts and crafts.  I came up with 796 results, which I could further break down by rating or topic (main type of craft).  There were some very cool crafts within the database.

As a member of Lesson Planet, you can also share/create your own lesson plans.  You can actually try Lesson Planet free for 10 days.  After that it is $39.95 per year.  You can become a fan of Lesson Planet on Facebook.

For more reviews, you can check out the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

(Disclosure: I received a free trial from Lesson Planet, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)

When Jacob was about 2-3 years old, he suffered from constant ear infections.  We always knew that if he had a fever, it was coming.  As a consequence, he ended up having a slight hearing loss due to the infections and having to have tubes put in, as well as speech therapy for a while.  Now with Jaden, we’ve dealt with the same issue, only he is borderline on his hearing, and his ear infections seem to be slowly growing less and less.  I still am concerned about his speech, though, and I’m really grateful to have a resource that I can use with him, as he gets a little older.  It’s called Super Star Speech and is written by Deborah Lott, a speech-language-pathologist.

Super Star Speech was developed to help parents provide their children with forms of simple speech therapy at home….they have one focus. The focus of these books is the correction of articulation (speech sound) errors.  I’m going to be honest and state that I haven’t used this with Jaden yet, but I plan to start using it with him this fall.  Although the books are designed for ages 3 and up, he is only 2….I feel, as his mama, that he just needs a bit more time to learn certain words.  He’s really starting to grasp how to say certain things, and I want to give him time to develop his speech a bit more; that way, I can hone in on the areas where he might need a little bit of help.

Let me tell you a little bit about the book, though.  I received the Super Star Speech: Speech Therapy Made Simple book.  Consisting of 74 pages, it starts with an articulation test for you to do with your child in the very beginning.  This is an assessment tool for you, as the parent, to see where your child is at.  There are charts for you to mark down certain errors/responses you get from your child.  From there, you can formulate a plan of action with your child’s speech therapy.  You can even create lesson plans, although lesson plans aren’t written in stone in the book because of the different starting points for each child.  The book contains clear-cut directions, simple activities, and things you can do with your child to help him learn to articulate his sounds more clearly.  Here are the specific sounds it focuses on:

• P and B
• T and D
• N
• K and G
• NG
• F and V
• L
• SH
• CH and J
• TH
• S and Z
• R

There are wordlists and activities for each new sound.  With most of the sounds, you are showing your child how to articulate that particular sound with the use of a mirror.  There are extra games and activities included towards the back of the ebook, as well as worksheets and picture word cards.  The picture word cards are black and white, but a fun activity could be to have your children help you color the pictures and cut them out….I will probably laminate them, as well, to keep them in good condition for multiple uses.  You can purchase this book, already printed and spiral bound for $18.95 or ring bound for $22.95.  If you’d rather just download as an ebook and print out what you need, saving both resources and money, you can purchase it from CurrClick for $12.95.  It’s a wonderful resource for any homeschooling family.  It would also make an excellent supplement to any Pre-K, kindergarten phonics curriculum, in my opinion.

We also had the opportunity to review 3 of the Super Star Games: Silly Snail Parts of Speech Game, Planets, Moon and Stars! Quiz Game, and Covering the Continents.

Jacob and I actually play the Silly Snail Parts of Speech Game as a supplement to his language book now.  It is a lot of fun for both of us and gives us a welcome break.  He’s been gradually learning the different parts of speech this year, and this game just reinforces what he’s learning.  We cut out the different sentence cards, and placed them upside down by the game board.  The game board is just a big snail with a start to finish with the names of different parts of speech in the boxes.  The player picks up the card and has to guess which part of speech the bolded word in that sentence is.  If he gets it right, he gets to move his token (we use one of our flat colored counters for math) along the game path, stopping at the correct part of speech.  Whoever gets to the Finish first, wins.  It covers common nouns, proper nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  If we ever make it all the way through the game cards, it’d even be easy to make up our own as extras.  This game can easily be stored in a folder for everyday use.  You can purchase this game for an awesome price of $3.50 from CurrClick.

The Planets, Moon, and Stars! Quiz Game is meant for 3rd grade and up; at first, I thought this would be great for Jacob, as we’re studying astronomy right now, but we need to cover a bit more material, and we’ll be able to play it for sure.  A lot of the questions are basic questions, though, so give or take a couple more weeks, and we’ll be supplementing this with our science curriculum.  With colorful game cards and multiple choice type questions, it’s an excellent learning activity that gets away from the textbook/workbook for a while.  He will love this game, as he has to answer as many questions as he can correctly, thereby collecting all of the planets that he can to add to his stash.  The player who eventually collects all of the planets wins the game.  You can also purchase this game for $3.50 from CurrClick.

The last game we reviewed was Covering the Continents.  This is a great geography supplement that will add a lot of fun to our homeschooling day.  Players have to try to answer as many questions correctly as they can; if they answer 3 questions correctly about a certain continent before the other players, they have “settled” that continent.  By the end of the game, the player who has “settled” the most continents wins the game.  The great thing about these games (all 3 of them), is that you don’t need anything else to play the games; everything is included, minus game tokens in the first game.  You just print, cut, and play.  Covering the Continents can also be purchased for $3.50 from CurrClick.

I would definitely recommend these resources, not only because they are affordable, but because they are wonderful resources to have on your shelf for your children to use and learn from over and over again; they are great for reinforcement.  Learning can be fun!  To read more reviews, you can check out the TOS Crew Homeschool blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided these products, free of charge, by Super Star Speech and Super Star Games, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)

Home Grown Hearts has a cute, sentimental craft for your kids to do, Handprint & Footprint Flower Craft.

Homeschool Creations is hosting a Curriculum Clean-Out.  What better way to help support each other than by giving away our curriculum we’re finished with or not using?  She’s also got some really great giveaways going on right now: a Preschool Mailbox Superbook, a Preschool Circle Time Pack, and a Time to Learn Preschool Pack.  She’s also got a post on Using Page Protectors to Reuse Workbooks.

Want to make your own Homeschool Calendar & Morning Board?  Homeschool Creations also brings us this idea; I’m currently working on one of my own.

Want to read some great posts by actual homeschooled kids themselves?  Check out the Homeschooled Kids Blog Carnival.

ABC and 123 has a great post for your toddlers, Play to Learn Fine Motor Fun: Part 1.

Confessions of a Homeschooler has another great PreK post, PreK Letter E.

Ok, now it’s your turn to list your giveaways.  Have a wonderful day!

Time 4 Learning is an online educational program for ages from preschool up through 8th grade.  Their programs can be used as core curriculum, or they can be used as supplements.  They cover all of the major subjects, including math, language arts (which includes phonics and reading comprehension), science, and social studies. They include not only online programs but lesson plans to go along with the activities, so that it’s planned out for the parent, helping the parent to save time and energy for other activities.

I actually signed Jaden up for the program, as they have a Pre-K program.  We honestly did not use the program very much, as he is only 2 1/2, and it was just a little beyond his skills.  We could do some parts of the program together, as long as I was right there with him.  If he was just a little older, though, this would have made an excellent supplement to his TotSchool activities that we are doing.  There are 2 levels in the preschool program.  Here are some of the things that a child can learn in the Pre-K program with Time 4 Learning:

1. Shapes
2. Colors
3. Alphabet
4. Rhyme Time
5. Numbers
6. Weather
7. On the Farm
8. Food
9. At the Zoo
10. Feelings
11. Tools
12. The Human Body
13. Sports
14. In the Garden
15. At the Library
16. Seasons
17. Out to Sea
18. Staying Fit
19. Time
20. Making Music

….and so much more.  The activities include matching games, pattern recognition and ordering of things, puzzles, stories, vocabulary exercises, etc.  There is also a playground section with games for your child to play; this could be used as an award center.  All of this is just the child’s side of the site, though.

There is also a parent’s side for admin and keeping track of what your child needs to do and looking through the lesson plans.  You can update your child’s educational level, if you feel your child needs to advance or even back up a little.  You can also download worksheets.  There is also a parent’s forum, in which you can talk with other parents and support each other.

You can purchase Time 4 Learning for $19.95/month for the first child and $14.95/month for each additional child.  Personally, unless you were using this as a core curriculum and only had 1-2 children, this would be a bit steep for me.  I also feel that children need more hands-on activities, especially at preschool age, so I probably would not buy this program for my preschooler.  I can find plenty of free, online activities for him to do, just to help supplement our hands-on activities that we do every day….especially seeing as we’d only spend 10-20 minutes on the computer at a time.  He is not one to sit and look at a computer screen for too long, as he is usually ready to move on to the next thing.  For some, though, this program might be just the answer to giving your children a bit more freedom and independence in their studies.  The activities are very colorful, and instructions are given to where most children could work independently after their first time using the program.  You can try lesson demos here.  You can read more reviews over on the TOS Homeschool Crew blog.

(Disclosure: I was provided a free trial of this program by Time 4 Learning, in association with the TOS Homeschool Crew.)

So, in setting up the workboxes, there was quite a bit of work, but don’t let that stop you because it is worth it.  I printed, cut out, and laminated schedule strips, workbox numbers, Help cards, and activity cards, which I then attached velcro to.  I still have yet to find a pocket chart to help organize all my little cards, and I still want to make a few more cards to adapt to our needs.  I also laminated post-it notes for instructions that go with the activities in the boxes….this saves both money and post-its.:)Here is a peek at our system.  Dan made this beautiful shelf; I’m so thankful for him!  He was able to make this for right around $14!  Also, the boxes I bought at Walmart for $.94, which is even cheaper than the dollar store.  Laminating sheets, I bought on Amazon, as they were much cheaper than the store.I have 10 boxes for Jacob right now and 8 for Jaden.  We originally started with 5 for Jaden, but I quickly figured out we needed just a few more to keep him occupied, so we have a few stragglers for now.He loved it!  I fill Jaden’s boxes with all kinds of ideas that I’ve researched on other blogs, like TotSchool, or with other activities or things that he loves.  They are educational activities.  Most of the stuff I use, I already had, or I was able to get at the dollar store.  Dollar Tree is a wonderful homeschooling resource, let me tell you!:)  Seriously, though, his boxes have things like foam puzzles, wooden puzzles, beans with a pitcher and container/funnel, coloring pages, craft activities, number games, magnetic alphabet letters, stickers, toys, etc.  We work together for the most part, with more independent activities done while I’m helping Jacob.  There are a ton of ideas out there; all you have to do is google workboxes.:) The nice thing about this system is that you put every single thing you’ll need for that day in the boxes, including all the little things, like glue, scissors, etc. That way, you’re not searching, and it really does save time.

Jacob’s boxes are filled with his text/workbook activities, as well as extra fun stuff like games, puzzles, computer time cards, craft activities, manipulatives, etc.  I don’t fill every single box every day because we don’t do every single subject every day, plus he has more than one activity in certain boxes.  I actually heard him say yesterday, “I can’t wait to do school again tomorrow!”  I about fell over….I think using the workboxes has really brought a refreshing, more independent tone to our homeschool for him….it’s different, and he’s more in control.  Now, we also use the Help tags, and he has 4 help tags he can use every day.  This challenges him quite a bit and makes him think more before asking for help.  He’s not quite used to that yet.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a short video here of how our system works, for those who don’t want to read my novel.  The video is a little shaky; my excuse is that it was way early, and I was still waking up.:) Here’s to successful workboxing!:)

Here are just a few sites where I found great resources….in the blur of things, I may miss somebody, but this is a general idea of where I’ve found most of my help/resources:

• Carissa at TotSchool has wonderful posts on both Tot Trays and Workboxes.  I’m taking the Tot Trays idea and adapting it into workboxes for Jaden….he loved it yesterday, which was our first day.
• Homeschool Creations has a very informative post, with printables for your workboxes.
• There are tons of other links and printables for your workboxes on this post, A Comprehensive Review of Sue Patrick’s Workbox System.
• The Heart of Wisdom Blog has a wealth of information and printables to share, as well as a Workbox Directory, with 50+ links to other blogs where mamas are using workboxes and sharing about them.  Also, Heart of Wisdom has shared a couple of videos here; the second one really was a help to understanding how they’re used.
• What’s in the Box? is a blog totally dedicated to workboxes.
• This article on Squidoo is wonderful, Working the Workboxes.
• Last but not least, you can find a ton of reviews on workboxes from the TOS Crew.