OneLuckeyWife

Recently, I have seen a lot of post on FaceBook asking what to do when you or your child is burnt out from school. Do you continue and push though the boredom, frustration or tears? I have some ideas on how to combat this burnout. I would suggest to implement these ideas when you start to see your child getting a bit bored or can tell when they are getting a little frustrated. We do not really have burnout because I regularly do the things suggested. You can choose to not do school for a couple days. Just have some free time.  We do a lot of games while at school. They are all educational games but fun for kids.  Take school somewhere else. We have done school in the bed, outside, at the beach, etc.  have your child pick what items they do. By this I do not mean that if your child does not want to do math then you don’t do it. I mean I sometimes let our daughter pick what order we do our work in. We still do every subject that was planned for that day.  Do a science ...

 What a fun and interesting way for a child to be creative.  Imagidice  is perfect for becoming a great story teller. The box has dice with different pictures and the manual will tell you what each picture means. Then you tell a story using the block you have rolled. You can take turns of have a one person tell a story at a time. With the many dice and 6 pictures on each one your story is bound to be different every time. Our daughter really likes these and I think it is because she can be super creative. She loves to make funny stories and quite enjoys listening to the stories that we make up. We normally do a few rounds once to twice during our school week. As our daughter gets older I am hooping she gets even better with story telling. So, we will be using Imagidice during our next few years of school as well. Definitely check them out and see what your child would enjoy. 

 Since I was not a marvelous writing when I was in school (mostly due to my dyslexia) I wanted to make sure that our daughter had a better understanding of how to write a proper sentence. I got just that with  Daily 6-Trait Writing Grade 1 . Before the lessons for each week there is a lesson plan for each day. At the end of every week there is a writing prompt to practice the skills from the lessons emailer in the week. There are 125 lessons in this little workbook. There is a rubric in the front so you can score your child’s work. If you have never scored an English paper there is a page before the rubric explaining how to use it properly. The back of the book has a proofreading paper. It tells you the symbols you should use when you are reading over your child’s work. These symbols will be the same that a school or college would use to proofread an essay.  The workbook can be used doing 1 lesson per day during the week. However, since our school year is from January to ...

Mobi Kids I found similar to Bananagrams but for numbers. And just like with Bananagrams, Mobi Kids can be used for more than just playing the main game. The game itself is played with 2 players or 2 teams. You split the game pieces; green for one team and blue for the second team. The white pieces are shared and have addition, subtraction and equal signs. While the green and blue pieces have numbers on them. You are meant to use all of your pieces (green or blue) by making math equations. The 1st team to correctly use all of their pieces wins the game. We have played with Mobi Kids like the manual says but also for other things. I have had our daughter practice both making numbers and reading them. The pieces are also useful for making equations. I like to make sure that our daughter understands how to find the answers to math problems as well as forming the problems herself. I can either tell her a problem to make or make up a word problem. Doing these extra ideas and playing the ga...

 For 1st grade we decided to continue with  Building Blocks of Science . It come with so many things for 1st grade. The student textbook, workbook that corresponds with the textbook, test, lab kit, lab notebook and a teacher manual for the experiments. When we did the kindergarten level last year 1 felt some things were to much for such a young child like going over molecules and how many electrons an atom can share. However, the 1st grade level I think it does not have things that are to hard for students to understand. The textbook has 22 chapters that go over the 5 building blocks of science; chemistry, biology, physics, geology and astronomy. The book starts with each subcategory’s history. It is not a lot buy enough for a 1st grader to understand.  The workbook has sections divided up just like the textbook. Some may choose to have the student fill in the blanks and answer the questions while they read the textbook. Others may use it as homework. What I have chosen t...

Here is another great critical thinking game. We got Smart Cookies with our 1st grade curriculum. Our daughter absolutely loves this game. She has said that it is her favorite game and that it is super fun. The game comes with a manual/challenge book, the game board and 9 different pieces that come in 3 different colors and shapes. The object of the game is to put all 9 different pieces on the board in the correct spots by using the clues given in the challenge book. Each challenge has the clues numbered 1-9 (except for towards the end). some of the earlier challenges you can do the clues in any order. while other challenges it is better to do the clues in the correct number order. This is another single player game but sometimes our daughter will ask us to play with her. When she wants us to play then we take turns doing the clues. We do not make it a win or lose game but rather a fun way to build team working skills. Since our daughter is pretty creative she has made up a little gam...

Every kid loves to build things and our daughter is no exception. We have had LEGOs, ThinkPlay , Plus-Plus and now we have  Fishertechnik Advance Universal 4 with Engineer . This particular kit came with our 2nd grade Timberdoodle curriculum. This Fishertechnik set has 40 different models to work those fine motor skills. The instruction manual is all done in pictures so if you or your child has done LEGOs before then it will make perfect sense. However, in Fishertechnik’s manual there are some pictures of pieces you need to have to put these pieces together before attaching them to the main build. It does not however show you which pieces you need so you have to figure that part out on your own. We were looking for pieces for a long time before I realized that it was two pieces put together and we needed to find both pieces. Quite annoying.  Another downside to this kit is that the pieces are a bit hard to put on and take off for our daughter who is 5. She did eventually...

There is a bit of nostalgia with one. Both my husband and I used to watch Wile E. Coyote when we were kids. With these 4 Wile E. Coyote Physical Science Genius books your child will learn a lot in a super fun and funny way. There are simple machines, forces and motion, flight and gravity, speed and velocity. Each book definitions about the most important aspects of the book. They are also in the back of the books in the glossary. So, it would easy to do a quiz or test on these books/words. Also, listed in the back of the books are other books you could read and a website with a code to use that will enhance what you have read.  Just like in the show Wile E. Coyote always gets hurt in the end. A super fun way to really make sure your child is getting what is in these books is to physically do the experiments. Make a project out of it. Have your child go find the objects they think will work best for each thing. While going through the experiments make sure that yo are using the def...

 We got At Night Scratch Cards  since we have liked all the other Djeco art kits we have used before. I got it with my Timberdoodle points. This kit has 4 cards, a manual and a scratching stick. Now, I thought that these cards were like the previous ones where you scratch and it reveals a picture. Sadly, that was not the case so our first go turned out pretty awful. It turns out that you need to scratch the cards in a design that you like. The manual goes through what parts you need to scratch for the design. However, I let our daughter scratch wherever and whatever to make her own designs. That way she can be as creative as she likes. I do enjoy things where she can use her own ideas and personality. It makes each art piece completely unique.  The cards do have a very pretty starter design. There is an owl, cat, fox and butterfly. Like with the other Djeco kits I wish there was more projects to do. Something that is very cool about this art kit is that the cards glo...

We did BambinoLUK Set A and B  for preschool. This year we got miniLUK Set A and Set B . What I liked about these a couple years ago is that there was a huge variety of critical thinking work. The same is true about these miniLUK sets. Each booklet has abut 24 to 26 problems to solve. What I like to do with miniLUK is organize the books based on difficulty. The books tell you at the top what level of difficulty each one is. I start with the booklets that are the lowest difficulty and end with the harder ones.  The bases of this activity is to match the pictures together. Each book starts out easy and gets progressively harder. Some of the problems are just matching the same pictures. Others are a bit more challenging like you see part and then have to find what full picture it goes, too. There are math booklets in which your child will need to know how to do basic math like counting, addition and subtraction. Your child will get to match silhouettes, mixed up pictures and more...

We have used Mathematical Reasoning a lot before. In addition to Math-U-See Alpha we use Mathematical Reasoning B . I did tear out all the pages and put it in a binder (2 inch) with Mathematical Reasoning A. Then we use a sheet protector so that we can reuse the pages as much as we like. Like with the other Mathematical Reasonings I really like that it is in color. This book starts with jumping right into addition and counting money. So if your child doesn’t know how to add then I would suggest getting Mathematical Reasoning A or Math-U-See Primer . There is skip counting early on in this workbook as well as halves and patterns. There are questions like “one and ___ equals four.” And then your child has to figure out the answer. For this particular type of question I prefer Math-U-See. It sets up the questions as an actual math and then you solve for x instead of filling in the blanks. Mathematical Reasoning does have a plus that Math-U-See does not and that is that they work on how ...

 In need of a way to let your child be as creative as they want while they learn about things? Then Critical and Creative 1  would be perfect for you. This workbook goes over many different things from animals to vehicles and much more. They will get to draw things from their imagination. It is a great way for children to express themselves. Your child will get lots of thinking skills work like logical thinking, problem solving and a bunch more. The thing I like best about this critical thinking workbook is that it ask the child “why?” First, they figure out things like how are things the same and different. Then, the book will ask “why?” This is great because then they have to really think of something. It is easy to just say “yes they are the same.” So the extra question of why gets those critical thinking skills flowing. There are some pages where the child gets clues and then they have to figure out which item fits. In the earlier pages of the workbook is seasons. There ar...

Enjoy these cuties! Decorate for a zoo, farm, safari or anything you like.  Price:      10$ + shipping  Choices: Cow Horse Pig Frog Sheep Chick Elephant  Koala  Panda Tiger Lion Monkey Fox Bunny Bear Dragon Reindeer Giraffe Duck Wolf Sloth Rhino Hippo Penguin Cat Dog Unicorn  Red Panda Raccoon Flamingo  Pattern by  RNata Shop . There are more animals that I haven’t made yet but I can send a picture of what they will look like just email me ( contact page )

 Remember your little one’s coming into the world with this cute birth announcement. You can choose either blue or pink.  Price:      30$ + shipping (does not come with frame as they break in shipping) Pattern by  StitchesLoversShop