As March came to an end, I wondered why I felt so tired. Then I looked at this list!
Really, though, it was an incredible month for my family. We learned so many new things, went to so many new places and just enjoyed spending time together.
I’m hoping some of the resources or activities we’ve done will help spark some ideas for you as well. The links here are for your convenience in checking out the resources. They are not affiliate links.
Books
The Little House on the Prairie – I loved reading this at night with the kids! Even Steve looked forwards to sitting in the bedroom and reading it with us. Can’t wait to start watching the TV series!
Life as a Ninja: An Interactive History Adventure –Do you remember the old Choose Your Own Adventure series? Well, I found this wonderful series of books (we have at least 35 in our interlibrary loan system). We love them! It lets kids be a character in a historical fiction story. It’s exciting, full of adventure and there are great history lessons in there, too! They have books that range from German immigrants to America & The Wild West to Life as a Viking and Ancient Greece.
Castle of Darkness: A Choose your adventure book
Island of Doom : A Choose your adventure book
Your Grandparents are Zombies: A Choose Your Adventure Book
Return to the Haunted House: A Choose Your Adventure Book
Season of the Sandstorms: A Magic Treehouse Adventure
Night of the New Magicians: A Magic Treehouse Adventure
E is for Eiffel Tower: A France Alphabet
The Value of Creativity: The Story of Thomas Edison (A ValueTale book) The ValueTale books are an incredible series! I found the entire series at a thrift store for $5. On e-bay they go for about $120. If you can get copies of these books, please check them out!
The Value of Self-Discipline: The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (A ValueTale book)
The Very Windy Day
Spring
The Blues Go Birding Across America
The Blues Go Birding at Wild American Shores
Louis Pasteur and Pasteurization
Everything Birds: What Kids Really Want to Know About Birds
Fancy Nancy, Explorer Extraordinaire!
Bonjour, Butterfly! (A Fancy Nancy Book)
I’m going to list all the Eric Carle books we re-read before attending a play based on Eric Carle’s stories: Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too? , The Grouchy Ladybug, The Very Hungry Caterpillar , Little Cloud, The Greedy Python, The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, Mister Seahorse, My Apron: A Story From My Childhood, Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?, & The Very Quiet Cricket
TV/DVDS
The Legend of White Fang (A 10 episode animated series – very cute!)
White Fang 2: Myth of the White Wolf
Caillou (I downloaded several seasons from Netflix)
Numbers Around the World
Flight of the Navigator – This was one of my favorite movies when it came out (1986). I was so excited to share it with my kids!
How It’s Made: We watched episodes (there’s 4 items per episode) on aluminum foil, cheese, CDs, bread, pantyhose, contact lenses
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman – This was the only DVD like this. We were so disappointed!
Episodes of Jackie Chan Adventures
Wild Kratts: Creature Adventures Both this series and Be the Creature are amazing! Any animal lover needs to watch them. I don’t even like watching animal shows that much and I was fascinated by them.
Be the Creature: The Complete First Season (the episode on the lions is really graphic- I’d avoid watching that one)
Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga’Hoole
Thomas Edison and the Electric Light
American Idol
Little House of the Prairie – The Pilot Movie So exciting to finally watch this with the kids!
CDs
Song Birds – This is a collection of different bird songs.
Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine’s Turn the Beat Around, The Rhythm is Gonna Get You & Conga – MP3 files downloaded to the Kindle. Jared just had to have these songs downloaded after watching Jessica Sanchez perform on American Idol.
Magazines
Highlights Hidden Pictures Playground– Both kids are very into finding hidden pictures, so this is the perfect magazine for them since that’s what the entire magazine is about!
At Home Fun
Building forts in the living room, Legos, Setting up the Mouse Trap Game and playing with it, Lots of pretend games, baking cookies and cake, mazes, coloring, having a silly string fight,
Jared decided to write a little book. He sat in my lap and I typed out his story….which turned out to be five typed pages….in one sitting. I was pretty tired afterward! It was filled with lots of inappropriate references to bodily functions, but he was very proud of himself when he was finished.
Salt Clay Sculptures
Made a Counting Ball – We got this idea from the book The Secret Life of Math.
Outside Fun (because it was so gorgeous the last half of the month!) hide-and-seek, chase, flips on the swing set, sandbox play, swimming in the little pool,
Out of the House Activities
Maple Sugaring Days at the Fullersburg Woods – I was so excited to see this! I’ve always wanted to see the process of extracting sap from the trees and watching how it’s turned into maple syrup.
On the first day we walked out carrying a bucket and were an assigned to check three trees. Then we dipped some little cups into the sap and drank it directly from the tree. The day before we saw this we had finished reading the two chapters in Little House in the Big Woods about how Grandpa and Grandma make their own maple sugar.
The second day we went with Steve and watched them cook the sap outside over a kettle in a fireplace, and we also tasted some finished syrup.
Library visits & Swimming Lessons
Monday Homeschool Co-op Days (played the board game Number Ninjas, which Jared really liked, learned about Binocular Vision, someone from a nature museum visited and brought in a Great Horned Owl.
3 Birthday Parties (including one at a children’s museum)
Watched a Theater Performance of Eric Carle’s Stories at the College of DuPage McAninch Arts Center
Watched a Theater Performance of Fancy Nancy & Other Stories at the College of DuPage McAninch Arts Center
Bike Rides
Park Days – One with Grammy and one by ourselves.
A Zoo Day with new friends.
A Day Out with Grammy –
Visited with Grandma and Granddad who came back from a two week trip to Israel. We looked at all their pictures while they talked about what they had seen and done. We also looked at Israeli money.
At the Conference
We went to a homeschool conference the third weekend in March for two full days. Steve went with the kids to their eight workshops while I attended my own workshops. We met for all meals and also had time to explore the exhibitor hall where we bought new books.
Here’s a list of the workshops the kids attended:
1. Messy Fun – shaving cream, face paint, drawing
2. Play-Well Lego Engineering Workshop
3. Light and Sound
4. The Captivating Chemistry Show
5. Musical Theater: Fairy Tales
6. Buildings and Structures
7. Mystery and Intrigue with Sherlock Holmes – This was a storytelling session with the wonderful Jim Weiss.
8. Reptiles: The Four Modern Families – This was the kids’ favorite workshop. They got to pet a baby alligator, and hold a python and corn snake in their laps for 5 minutes!
On the Computer, Kindle or I-Phone
Kindle: Angry Birds, of course. Jared and Steve work together to win different levels and earn eggs and stars.
Computer: www.pbskids.org, www.nationalgeographic.com, www.wikipedia.org, (Alexa has a big coffee table style book that she got for her 5th birthday called Extreme Birds. She likes to look up a bird in the book and then read about it on Wikipedia.), Animal Planet (Alexa was on this for an hour one day telling me about dozens of breeds of dogs), Moneyville,
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge – I can’t tell you how much fun we had playing this game together. I learned so much more about geography, and it was so much fun! We’d sit together for two hours at a time playing this game.
Zoo Tychoon 2. I admit to getting a little addicted to this game, too! Alexa saved up her allowance and bought this herself. Jared saved up his money and bought a new Star Wars Lego set. It was over 300 pieces and he put it together mostly by himself in about an hour and a half.
Photo Credit: gordsam
What had been your family’s favorite resource or activity this past month?