Using Free Printables in Our Homeschool

I, once again, just planned a few, easy things for the boys to do for school today.  I found so many wonderful winter themed printables around the internet and best of all they were all free!  I figured the boys would enjoy these new and different sheets and games and boys was I right.

Some of our favorite places to find free printables are:

1. Teachers Pay Teachers (I search for free ones)
2. Homeschool.com
3. Rock Your Homeschool
4. Pinterest
5. 123 Homeschool 4 Me
6. Year Round Homeschooling
7. Embark on the Journey
8. Living Montessori Now
9. Homegrown Learners-- check under freebies and Lego
10. Confessions of a Homeschooler

Ian and Alec had a coloring worksheet on nouns, verbs, and adjectives.  It was a fun way to review parts of speech.  They also had a problem solving with Frosty packet for math where they had to figure out all the combinations they could make if Frosty had three hats, three scarves, and two mittens.  Once they found all the possible combinations I explained (showed them) that they could have multiplied the numbers to find the same answer faster.  This was just an introduction to this kind of math, but I have several of them planned over the next few weeks. 

Evan and I played a mitten match memory game with addition facts.  He loved this and I was really impressed with his knowledge and math skills.  There were times he'd pick up the answer mitten and tell me "hmm... 3 that means I need a 1 and a 2" or else I'd hear "6... that could be a 5 and a 1."  Other times he wasn't sure of the answer when he picked an equation mitten so I'd talk him through it.  When he chose 3 plus 4 I asked him which number was bigger.  He told me the 4 was bigger and so I then laid three counters down on the table and he counted on from there.  He's just starting to count on instead of laying out all the counters and counting them and he's also learning the commutative property of addition without even realizing it.  By the end of the game he could tell me that "7 and 2 is nine since 1 more would be 8 and one more than that is 9!"  We had so much fun and we'll definitely play again.

Once we were done our math game, Evan and I read this quick We Want to Make a Snowman story. I read it to him the first time through and then had him read it back to me and he'll read it again before bed tonight.

Once all the boys were all done their schoolwork I read the book My Granny Went to Market; A Round the world Counting Rhyme as a start to our world geography study.

 

I decided that, for now, we're doing just enough schoolwork to keep us occupied and learning and yet still leaving plenty of time for free play.  I'm sure over the next few weeks we'll start adding some science and art projects too but for right now it's great to just ease back into learning.