Winter is coming! | Winter Learning Activities


Winter is around the corner! It feels like it is already here in Arizona (and from what I gather pretty much everywhere else in the US). We don't get snow in our parts but I was so surprised when I learned that areas like Flagstaff do. We're hoping to make a day trip to one of the snowy areas this year as most of my kids have never seen snow.

At any rate, I've collected some winter based resources for the four core educational subjects as well as a few things for Islamic studies.

Language








Math

Winter Math Activities  (The Tutor Coach.com)

Winter Math Activities (Math Wire.com)

Hot Chocolate Counting Mats

Preschool Math Activities

Tens and Ones Winter Place Value Activity

Science



Snow Science Experiments

20+ Winter Science Experiments for Grades K through 5

How Do Snowflakes Form?

Social Studies

Snowy Day Winter Lessons (scroll down to a few winter social studies ideas)

Islamic Studies

(And with all those Allah's Grace and Protections for their taming, We cause) the (Quraish) caravans to set forth safe in winter (to the south), and in summer (to the north without any fear)
(106:2)


The word for winter in Arabic is "Ash-shitaa"

I've got a few Arabic resources for the Arabic seasons on my Arabic vocabulary page (scroll down to "Seasons" and/or "Weather").


Points of Benefit

Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “When the heat is severe, then let it cool down for prayer. Verily, severe heat is from the raging of Hell. The Hellfire complained to its Lord saying: My Lord, my parts are eating each other. So it was given permission to make a breath in the winter and a breath in the summer. They are the strongest heat you feel and the strongest cold you feel.
Source: Sahih Bukhari 512, Sahih Muslim 617


Khutbah: Treasures of Winter to Invest in the Hereafter (audio, 19:53)
Take notes on the khutbah and make a learning poster to remind you about the benefits of winter.






A few questions I came up with based upon the reading:

  • What are three blessings of winter?
  • Can we only give sadaqah to Muslims?
  • When giving charity, we should make sure not to do what?
  • What is responsible for the strongest heat you feel of the summer and the bitter cold you feel during the winter?
  • When do we pray the night prayer?
  • What are two reasons it is easy to fast in the winter?


From the Benefits of Winter: Sayings of the Salaf

Number Sequencing: 0-10


We are working on sequencing numbers up to 10 and here are a few resources I have made and some online games for practice.

Worksheets/Activities



What Comes Before?


There are several options available here. Each pack comes with 2 different worksheets. Your child can trace the correct answer or write the correct answer in the blank space. In addition, I have provided a second set of the same worksheets, but the answers are in regular print (not dotted) so you can cut out the squares and make cards for your child to put a paper clip on the correct answer. 

I put the worksheets in page protectors so we could use them again and again, inshaa Allah.

Number Strip - just a little strip I made up to cut out so my daughter could use it if she needed to while completing activities such as the ones above.


Online Games

Caterpillar Ordering

ABC Ya Numerical Order Game

Balloon Pop Math - Pop the numbered balloons in order

How Can You Tell if a Number is Divisible by Another Number? Use Divisibility Rules!

Is 2,432 divisible by 2?
Is 944 divisible by 4?

Divisibility Rules can quickly tell us if a number is divisible by another number!

divisibility rule is a shorthand way of discovering whether a given number is divisible by a fixed divisor without performing the division, usually by examining its digits. (MathGoodies.com)

Here are a few divisibility printables I have made over the years:

Divisibility Rules Notebook Pages







Divisibility Rules



Of course it's been eons since I was in school, but I don't remember learning the divisibility rules so I loved when I first learned them (or perhaps relearned them) some years back with my older kids. Teaching math to my homeschoolers has really boosted my math skills too!


Short Division Method



A few years ago, we were doing division and my 10 year old hated writing. Long division problems required too much writing (in his view).

But, my son was also pretty good about computing in his head, alhamdulillah.

In anticipation of teaching division, I  had googled a few months ago to see if there was some sort of shortcut because I anticipated some frustration for us.

And I found a great video. No messy long lines of long division!
(The video had since become unavailable but I found this one which is very brief and concise)


This second video goes a little more indepth and starts off with smaller problems.




As the video presenter mentioned in the video we used a few years back, this method works best for students who can do math mentally in their head without getting too confused and who know their math facts well. (My son hadn't mastered his math facts but he was quick at computing, so this still worked)

So one day I introduced this method  After doing a few problems, I did one problem two ways--the first with traditional long division, and the second, with this method.  Then I asked my son which way he preferred and he chose the second, quicker way and we did 5 or so problems using this method (that's about all his attention span would allow for because we had already did some simple division problems right before). But, I'm happy to say, no frustration and I'm so glad I stumbled upon this new method. It cuts down drastically on the amount of writing necessary and at that point, that made a big difference for us.

Ways to Do Long Division

Long Division Method

Many of us were taught the long division method to divide large numbers. This process can be very confusing but there are all kinds of neat Long divison foldables to use to help kids remember the steps. You can find so much readily on division that I won't bother to list resources for that.

Tip: Have you students use graph paper for long division problems to keep the work in order (it's helpful for all the operations really). I found some Free Division Graph Paper  at eachers Pay Teachers - several different sizes to choose from in this pack.


Alternative Method
I used this with one of my daughters and although this one still takes up space (and sometimes more than traditional long division), this is a neat one because I think it helps students see what is going on better in division.




If your student has mastered the times tables or can compute quickly in their head, check out the quick, short division method. It was revolutionary for one of my kids.




It's Fall!


We are eagerly awaiting for cooler temperatures to arrive! It's still in the 100s where we are.

As I've done for a few seasons previously, I'd thought I'd share resources/ideas that we've used or are
thinking about using for the fall season.

Fall Decorations

 We started our Fall Bulletin Board for this year:


I found a great pumpkin pattern here and added white letters to spell out FALL. I found some great fabric leaves at JoAnn's Fabrics to go around our whiteboard.  On the sides we are starting to hang up our artwork/crafts.

This one below was our display area from 2016. We used real leaves for our top decoration. (I went with fabric ones this year (above) as we live in a deserty region and I wasn't sure if we'd be able to find enough fall leaves.)



Fall Learning & Fun for Kids!

Acorns and Leaves - My Cute Graphics

Fall Facts

Fall Crafts

Sweet & Simple Felt Apple Craft

Fall Paper Pumpkins

DIY Falling Leaves Garland

Leaf Suncatchers

Fall Leaf Prints

Candy Corn Footprints

Pony Bead Pumpkins

Yarn Pumpkins

Also check out my Fall Crafts tag for fall crafts we've made in the past.

Fall Family Friendly Recipes



10 Fun Treats for Fall - yum, can't wait to try many of these! They include cookies, cakes, bars with pumpkin, caramel and more!






Check out my Pumpkin Fever Post for Pumpkin recipes!

Fall Clip Art

My Cute Graphics Fall Images (color and black and white)

Fall Fonts & Dingbats

Nature Bats (leafy dingbats)





Language

Math


Science


Social Studies

" Fall is a time of harvest and celebration. Study how cultures celebrate harvests." (Idea from BusyTeacherCafe.com)

Let's Learn Contractions!


We're currently learning contractions and I thought I'd share some resources that I came across and plan to use/have used as well as how we're going about doing it.

Our Plan of Attack

Many of the resources I found had the contractions sort of jumbled together with no rhyme or reason.  I like to teach in groups or patterns or rules where there is something common with all the words rather than just throwing a bunch of contractions (or spelling words) together. So, using the great categorized list of contractions I found at Enchanted Learning, I am breaking our contraction lessons up as follows:

1. Contractions Negating with a verb (e.g. isn't, aren't, wasn't...)
2. Contractions with the verb "to be" (e.g. I'm, you're he's she's))
3. Contractions with Will
4. Contractions with Would
5. Contractions with Have/Has
6. Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda contractions (would've, should've, could've...)

See the end of this post for our embedded Quizlet flashcards/activities

Our practice activities include:
Reading practice - my daughter needs practice with reading the contractions so I am making sure to include activities to do this such as making a gameboard with contractions on the spaces to read, or playing tic tac toe with the contractions written in the tic tac toe spaces, or playing Bang!

-Given a contraction, show what two words it was made from

-Given two words, and in the same row a row of words that look similar, pick out the contraction spelled correctly

-Write sentences with contractions
(For verbs with the word "not") Given sentences, replace the verb with its negative form of a contraction(e.g. He "did come" to the party, replace with "He didn't come to the party."

-Find contractions in books and tell which words make them up

-and of course, games!

Observations/tips for from our studies:

When introducing the contractions, make sure you discuss exactly how a contraction was made (1 or 2 letters were omitted, which letters) and review this often in course of your practice to help reinforce how to form the contraction. I found that this helped my daughter (the repetition).

Make sure to give adequate student practice reading the contractions. I found that my daughter struggled more than I thought she would have.

For each of our study sessions, I try to include the following:
  • Read the contractions
  • Make contractions/un make the contractions
  • Write sentences with contractions or change sentences with contractions into ones without them (or vice versa)

(My girls love this video!)


Learning Resources for Practice

Contractions List and Lesson (list arranged by categories)

Contractions List -nice list from Enchanted Learning sorted according to how it is formed. Also has contractions worksheets. (I highlighted the html list and printed the selection and it came out in a nice format for reference).

How to Teach Contractions - includes tips for teaching and a lesson on teaching contractions, an alphabetical contraction list and contractions foldable strips.

Contraction Activities - This Reading Mama

Contractions at Spelling City - premade word lists and activities for contractions

Contractions Tic Tac Toe - will, would, has/has, had (TJ Homeschooling)


Games

Contractions Matching Game - SoftSchools

Treasure Trove - matching game at PrimaryGames

Contraction Games at Vocabulary.co.il

Our Quizlet Lists

I love quizlet. It's more than just online flashcards. There are several types of practices activities to help you learn. In the bottom right corner of each embed below, you can change the mode to study or play gamelike activities.

1. Negative Contractions



RelatedContractions in Negative Forms (worksheet from K12 Reader)

2. Contractions with the verb "to be" (e.g. I'm, you're he's she's))




3. Contractions with Will




4. Contractions with Would




5. Contractions with Have/Has




6. Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda contractions (would've, should've, could've...)




Horizontal and Vertical Line Confusion

So while doing math, I told my daughter that when an addition or subtraction problem is presented to her, she should write or rewrite it "vertically" to solve it. Well, she was getting a little confused as to which was was vertical and horizontal so I made a little visual for her and if your student is having trouble with this as well, you can download the visual below!




Homeschool Supplies


In a few weeks, the Back to School sales will be starting up (if they haven't already), so I am starting to survey what we have and what we'll need to get. Here are a few handy printables to help!

Homeschool/School Supply Master List


This one helps me see which kids which need which supplies. I hang it on the fridge and they can mark off which supplies they need. Then, when I get the supplies, this list helps me distribute the supplies.
This one is handy to pass out to the kids and during the school year, they can mark off items that need replacing.

Back to School Sales

Back to School Sales - Passion for Savings.com - Great place to see when Back to School Sales begin at major retailers and what is offered. There is also a downloadable back to school price list.

Related:





School Year Calendars


In my early days of homeschooling, I made the mistake of not planning out our school years.   I hadn't defined our beginning and end dates or any breaks. We would just keep going until we got burnt out and were forced to take a break out of desperation.

Even if you homeschool year around, like we generally do, establishing a school year is very helpful and the year I started doing that was a game changer.  It really helped knowing that we had set breaks to look forward to so that it didn't seem like one endless journey.

As I said, we homeschool year around and I've tried many different types of yearly schedules. Sometimes we start the school year traditionally, such as in August or September, sometimes we start our new year after Ramadan/Eid.  Sometimes we'll school for maybe 6 weeks and then take a 1 week break in between. Nowadays, I have older kids in public school so I generally try to plan our homeschool breaks around their breaks so the kids are all off at the same time, more or less.

But my school year planning starts with defining our school year. Below are some of the places I like to get school year calendar templates from. 

Summer, Summer, Summertime


Summer is just around the corner!  Do you have enough activities to keep the kids busy?

Homeschooling in Arizona

How do I homeschool in Arizona?


Phonics - Silent Letters


Let me tell you something that's for the birds,
a useless silent letter attached to my words.*

Long Vowels - Consonant+E, Consonant+O (We, Go...)

Consonant + E (be, he, me, she, we)

In short letter words that end with a consonant and an "e," the "e" make the long e sound (says its name)


Long E Reading Drills

Consonant + O (no, go, so)

In short letter words that end with a consonant and an "o," the"o" make the long o sound (says its name)


Consonant O Reading Drills








R Controlled Vowels - AR, ER, IR, OR, UR

AR

The Phonogram AR

AR Learning Pack - contains an AR word list, bingo, tic tac toe, picture cards, bingo


AR Word ListAR Words Bingo/Matching GameAR Read and Draw Worksheet

AR Words Tic Tac ToeAR Words Bingo/Matching Game


ER

ER Word List (with sample sentences) 
ER phonogram word list and sentences

IR

Nothing here yet!

OR

OR Matching Cards - TJ Homeschooling


OR word list

OR word list

OR Lesson (PDF) - Islamic themed
R Controlled Vowels: OR Lesson


OR Worksheet 1
Fill in the blank with the correct OR word


R Controlled Vowels: OR Worksheet


Circle the correct OR word shown in the picture

OR phonogram worksheett

Trace the "or" phonogram, then trace words containing the phonogram and draw a picture to mach.
OR phonogram worksheet

UR

Nothing here yet!

Simple Daily Phonics Routine


If you are teaching phonics on your own, consistency is going to be key.  Having a consistent routine like the one can help keep you on track (and can help make planning easier, inshaa Allah).

1. Introduce the Phonogram

  • Show the phonogram, say the phonogram name and give its sound - have student repeat the sound (several times)
  • Show student word list of words that contain the phonogram; read the words, have student read the words
  • Have student trace or write the phonogram several times; have student say the sound the phonogram makes as he/she traces or writes.

2. Sound Practice

  • Have student identify words that start with or contain the phonogram
    • Give student a worksheet or other activity where pictures are shown and they must circle/identify which words start with or have the phonogram in them. 
    • You can alternatively call out words and student must tell you (or alternatively trace/write the phonogram) when a word contains the phonogram.

3. Reading Practice - Words

  • Have student read the words several times (I like to make a gameboard or ladder and write the words in the gameboard spaces or rungs of a ladder so it doesn't feel so much like a drill to read the words).

4. Reading Practice - Sentences

  • Have student read sentences that have words that contain the phonogram.

5. Spelling (optional)

  • Have student sort the word list (for example, by the short vowel it contains, number of letters, etc to give students face time with the words.
  • Have student alphabetize the words (to give students more face time with the words)
  • Have student complete a word search or crossword puzzle (again, for more facetime)
  • Give student dictation on the words (another way is to give student the definition or clue for the word and they must write the word from their list that matches)

6. Sentence Writing

  • Have student compose sentences with the words on their word list (can break up into more than one day if the list is long). You might give student a theme to write around for motivation. Try to have student use varied sentences (statements, questions, commands, exclamations). You can have student pick out the subject and predicate of their sentences, parts of speech, etc for grammar review. If you've just worked on a particular grammar concept, have your student incorporate that into their sentences.

7. Craft (optional)

  • Make a craft that is related to a word that contains the phonograms (and incorporate words that fit the  phonogram pattern on the craft; example, if learning the phonogram "p" make a construction paper pizza craft, the words that contain the phonogram could be written on paper pepperonis.)

Tips:

Begin each session with review of previous phonograms (can be as simple as using flashcards) and end each session with review of the current phonogram (can be as simple as having student tell the sound the phonogram makes)

If student needs more than 1 day with a phonogram, use the routine over again substituting in new activities to keep it fresh.

With this routine, you are hitting many areas each time: sound recognition, sight recogntion, reading, spelling, writing, grammar, and listening.



Short Vowel (a,e,i,o,u) Resources

Short Vowels
Photo Credit: Sarah, 9 

Short Vowel A

Short Vowel A Gameboard

Word Families
I've never really taught word families (i.e. -ad, -ag, -an, etc) because I prefer to focus blending at the beginning of the word, but some years ago, someone requested word families, so I put together a few resources here and there on word families. I know many people teach by word families, so if you do, I hope you can find these few resources helpful.

Short E Word List

Short E Matching Cards
Set of 16 word/picture matching cards to practice the short vowel e

Short E Matching Cards



Short Vowel I


Short I Gameboard

Short Vowel O

(I usually just use the gameboards as a fun way to do reading drills)
Short O Gameboard

Short Vowel U

Nothing here yet!

All Short Vowels (A, E, I, O, U)

Short Vowel Reading Practice
Ok, so technically not boards, but, yet not just a word list.......

I made these up for my first grader so that she can easily practice reading short vowel words, in shaa Allah.  There are around 4 "boards" for each of the five short vowels (a, e, i, o, and u).

Instead of focusing on word endings (as in done with word families), In CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant words) I have always liked to focus on the beginning of the word (the initial consonant and first vowel). I found that when we used word families and focused on the endings, words sounded more like cuh-at, buh-at. 

In these word boards, as you can see, the first two letters are underlined because I want my daughter to focus on blending those two and adding the end sound.  Before using the boards, we did drills on having her blend just the two beginning letters, so we read ba, ba, ba, ba, ca, ca, ca, etc. (in shaa Allah, I'll post our "gameboards" that we used for that). When she was able to look at those beginnings and read fluently, then we went onto adding the ending letter/sound to read words. (I got this idea from one of the old school phonics books at DonPotter.net)

Finally, in the word boards, you'll see baseball and doughnut pictures. My daughter (as many kids) has trouble distinguishing between the b's and d's so I put the pictures above b's and d's so that she could figure out the word on her own, in shaa Allah. (There are also zippers for words like "has" and "his.") 

Four pages of alphabet cards. Cut out, fold in half and use the vowel cards with the consonants to help make CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant pattern) words. The pictures fold back so that they can be used only if the student has trouble identifying the sounds. 
CVC word builder cards