Sight Words Bingo

My son has hit a little bump and I needed to find something fun to help him with his reading.  I found this Sight Words Bingo.  You can print out ten variations of the card and a word list. I am hoping after playing that it will do the trick. I think the Bingo reward will be an M&M or a small cookie.

St Patrick's Day Ideas

Simply put St Patrick was famous for bringing Christianity to Ireland and using the shamrock to explain the Trinity.  Have fun with shamrocks, leprechauns, rainbows, pots of gold and anything Irish associated with this holiday.

Here are some ideas:

Play set to print out from Family Fun--This is SUPER CUTE!  Here's the template.
Hunt for the Gold clues to print out for St Patrick's Day


Have some fun learning about leprechauns and then make up a story using this St Patrick's Day Writing paper."

A leprechaun is a type of fairy in Irish folklore, usually taking the form of an old man, clad in a red or green coat, who enjoys partaking in mischief...The leprechauns spend all their time busily making shoes, and store away all their coins in a hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If ever captured by a human, the leprechaun has the magical power to grant three wishes in exchange for their release." --From Wikipedia

More St Paddy's Day Ideas
Even more

Free Printable Letters from Leapfrog

Leap Frog has free printable letters to color from their popular Letter Factory DVD.  We love this DVD and the Talking Words Factory.

Using the Internet safely with Trackstar

After talking about internet safety and doing research on the internet with our homeschooled kids I was reminded of a teaching tool that I use to use when I was teaching in the classroom. It is perfect for keeping kids on target or "on track" and you can feel more at ease knowing that your kids will only be going to sites that you have already approved. The tool is a free tool for teachers called Trackstar.  You can use it for tons of things but I think it would be a perfect tool to help guide your student to appropriate websites.

In the website's words: "TrackStar is your starting point for online lessons and activities. Simply collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a Track. Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators. Search the database by subject, grade, or theme and standard for a quick and easy activity. There is a fun Track already made for each day of the year, too!"

1. To see what Trackstar has to offer do a quick search

Below is a screenshot of the landing page for Trackstar. To get yourself familiar with what you can do with Trackstar do a keyword search. Maybe you are studying George Washington. Type that in the keyword search box.

(You can click on the images below to enlarge them.)



2. Decide how you want to view the "track"

After typing in your keyword and pressing "go" you will arrive at a page similar to the one below. Once there you will need to decide how you want to view this track.  Choose "view in frames" or "view in text."  Try both to see which one you like better.

I like the "frames view" because it allows the user to see all the links contained in the track in a left-hand "frame". In addition, the user can see an annotation and the site it refers to at the same time.



Text view allows the user to see all the links and all the annotations when viewing a track, but the user will leave this page to see the actual site.

3. Create a free account to make your own "track"

Go here to create your account.

If you would rather choose from the thousands of tracks made by other users go for it! Why reinvent the wheel.