Kinder Letter Practice- Star Wars Style

My boys are really into Star Wars. So when I found that there were workbooks to help kids learn different school skills I jumped on it. I first used these for summer school with my kids but when I started homeschooling I needed a fun way to do Writing with my K/1st grader. I have not had to fight him ones when it comes to handwriting. It has Letter tracing pages with upper and lower case of that letter and then an activity page using that letter.

My son just finished the Kindergarten workbook (examples are above). We are starting the 1st grade one soon and he is super excited and absolutely loves them. In fact my older son is jealous because they only make this up to a 2nd grade level. If you have star wars lovers in your home and need a fun way to do handwriting I high recommend these writing workbooks.

How I became a Homeschool Momma

First I want to start this post by saying I am in full support of public education. I was a public school teacher after all. But I also recognize that there are times when traditional school doesn't fit everyone. I have always had that little part of me that thought, most kids who homeschooled weren't getting the education that they needed. I know that is not true with all cases and Most of this attitude came from watching my neighbor "homeschool". She is a sweet lady but her children ran around all day (half of them with no clothes on), having fun but not learning/schooling. Most of the time when my kids were chatting about school or activities at school they would say, "Oh we didn't do school." or "today we colored for school". It was especially difficult to watch as one of there children desired to read but was not taught. For 2 years whenever I saw him he was looking at books and would ask someone to read it to him. And now at age 6 he still couldn't read, he didn't know his letters or sounds and didn't even know how to write his own name. It made me sad. However on the other hand I have a friend from church who is an amazing lady who homeschooled her 3 boys with fun hands on experiences and life learning lessons. Her children were all being well educated and they grew as a family. So obviously it all depends on the "homeschool teacher" and every situation is different. Everyone has their own reason or story for starting homeschooling, and here is mine.

I started schooling each of my children from a very young age. By the time they were two they knew their colors, could count to 10 or higher and we were working on ABC's (not just singing the song but recognizing the letters). I would teach them how to read and do simple math until they turned 5. Ones they hit school age I sent them off to public school. But then something happened that changed my family's entire life and view of schooling.

We started school like every other year buying school supplies, meeting the teacher, packing lunches the night before, taking pictures and then dropping them off that first morning. But after the first few days I noticed a change in one of my children. He was more moody and unhappy each day when dropping him off or picking him up. He fought to do school work, homework or projects. It didn't take long until our entire family was feeling the same kind of mood. Attitudes are contagious after all. After 2 weeks we met with the teacher to try to figure out how to help my child. The teacher was aggressive and up front told us that our child was to blame for it. She explained that he was the "lowest child in her entire class". Which shocked us since he was above grade level in math and reading the 2 years before that. And being a former teacher my children completed writing and math workbooks as well as reading each day of the summer so they wouldn't fall behind. We agreed to help anyway we could and left being told by the teacher that my child needed to change. Shocked but determined to help my child we went home and tried to set up a reward system at home to help my child at school. Things didn't seem to change the next day and it wasn't until that night that I got a better understanding of why my child had such a bad attitude about school. The assignments from the first part of the school started coming home. I noticed marks all over with comments of "we did this together...you should know this". But when the last paper came home with purple marker all over it with discouraging words. "We went over and over and over this...How could you not get it." and so on. I could not believe my eyes and soon understand why my son had been so grumpy and put up such a fight each morning when I tried to get him to go to school. My child was being put down and feeling degraded each day through the teachers words and attitude. Later we heard of other parents complaining of the teachers attitude towards their own children. Seeing how much this was already effecting our family we decided we needed a dramatic change. After knowing that our son had suffered silently through the last 3 weeks, My husband (who by the way never wanted our children homeschooled) told me we were pulling them out and I was going to homeschool. It was a crazy and unplanned change that ended up changing our family's relationship for the best it has ever been. I have definitely changed my tune when it comes to homeschooling, that is as long as you are actually schooling. But I have learned for myself the amazing and challenging parts of homeschooling. I am going to share my experiences, ideas and "AWWW" moments on this blog.

Ball tube course

This fun activity teaches cause and effect and critical thinking. The kids really had to think about where they thought the ball was going to end up. We made this like a marble run but we used a bouncy ball, TP rolls, colored duck tape, magnets and the fridge of course. it was a lot of fun and it would be a great rainy day activity. Instructions are really simple;
1st save different size cardboard tubes,
2nd get different color duck tape and cover the tubes,
3rd place round magnets with sticky backs on the tubes. Make sure you use the round one instead of the long strips( the round ones hold to the fridge better). Also put at least 4 magnets on the paper towel sized tubes and 2 on the TP ones.
Another tip, make sure you have a ball per kid or they tend to fight over it.
This was part if our Letter T lesson.

Letter G

G is for
Each lesson starts with the intro to the letter that we are learning that week. I show cardboard cut letter and then I ask, Do you know what letter this is? And what sound does it make? Then we practice and talk about the letter and sing the song by Leapfrog, The (name the letter) says (letter sound), The (name Letter) says (letter sound), every letter makes a sound the (name the letter) says (letter sound).Next we do tracing and intro to the word of the day. We practice saying, spelling and writing the word. Then we start the specail activity, which is different for each letter.
ACTIVITY:
G is for GREEN
First we practice writing the word and talking about each letter and their sounds. Then we have a GREEN hunt. I got out our magnifying glasses and a GREEN basket and then we went through the boys favorite toys and found all the GREEN things. GREEN trains, cars, balls, dinosaurs, blocks and more. The kids had a great time! I was able to get them to help clean up by bribing them with a green snack. GREEN GRAPES.

Letter S

S is for Sand Each lesson starts with the intro to the letter that we are learning that week. I show cardboard cut letter and then I ask, Do you know what letter this is? And what sound does it make? Then we practice and talk about the letter and sing the song by Leapfrog, The (name the letter) says (letter sound), The (name Letter) says (letter sound), every letter makes a sound the (name the letter) says (letter sound). Next we do tracing and intro to the word of the day. We practice saying, spelling and writing the word. Then we start the specail activity, which is different for each letter. For this letter we practice writing the letter S in the SANDBOX. Using a skewer I wrote a uppercase S and a lower case S and had my son copy underneath. Then we practiced writing the word SAND. He had a lot of fun writing in the sand and it was an added way to practice the letter. We also made cupcakes with "sand" on them. That was a big hit of course!

Letter F

F is for Frog Each lesson starts with the intro to the letter that we are learning that week. I show cardboard cut letter and then I ask, Do you know what letter this is? And what sound does it make? Then we practice and talk about the letter and sing the song by Leapfrog, The (name the letter) says (letter sound), The (name Letter) says (letter sound), every letter makes a sound the (name the letter) says (letter sound). Next we do tracing and intro to the word of the day. We practice saying, spelling and writing the word. Then we start the specail activity, which is different for each letter. Today since it was the Letter F we went on a Frog Find where we searched through the enitre house trying to find frogs. We found them in the stuffed animal basket, toy bins, on books and even on quilts. What a fun time we had Finding Frogs! Then we Flipped Frogs. After Easter I bought a frog game not really knowing what I was going to use it for. The kids spent a good 20 minutes playing and flipping the frogs. After each day we try to think of other words that start with the letter of the week. It is amazing what my boys can come up with. I will sometimes give them hints, for example; I am thinking of a "B" word that we can eat and is yellow. Answer Banana.

The little says Roll over

 

This fun idea goes along with a fun song I learned when I was little. It goes something like this. "3 in a bed and the little ones says, I'm crowded roll over, roll over." But it is really made to go with the book 10 in the bed by Penny Dale. This is a really cute way for kids to practice story order. As well as working on listening skills.