Tracy's Treasury of Picture Books for Toddlers & Young School-Aged Children

I hope you're ready for more of our tried-and-true, family-favorite books! Today's books are our favorite stories for little ones. They fit the following criteria: 

• They're picture books with real pages. (This is a step up from our Sturdy Books for Babies & Toddlers.)
• They're quality children's books (twaddle-free, well-written & well-illustrated). I'll try not to go off on a tangent about all the sub-par kids books available today which I'd liken to a junk food diet in book form. If  it's annoying or lacks redeeming qualities, it gets the boot.
• My boys love them. These have been tested, tried and true by my boys, who have read them to pieces. They're keepers. 

Ready for some great picture books? Here we go.. 

Picture Book Read Alouds... 

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter - This is a classic picture book that both of my "big boys" love and have listened to over and over and over again. It provides good opportunities to talk about various lessons learned too, which is always a bonus. The story is also available in large collections with other Beatrix Potter stories, but the small, hardcover book is the way to go. It's how it was originally published, and is an ideal size for little hands and includes all the original illustrations. I think picking a couple of the little individual books (like The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, or The Tale of Samuel Whiskers) is preferable to a large volume of all of them that won't get read as much. 

Draw With Your Kids!

If you have kids in your life, you need to bookmark this fabulous resource! My sister-in-law shared it with me and I just love it. There's an artist who makes you tube videos with his kids as he gives them a step-by-step drawing lesson. There are some simple ones, good for younger kids (his youngest is age two), and others for more advanced drawers. Here's the stegosauruses we made on our first lesson (mine, my 3 yo and 6 yo)...

And here's a more recent pictur we made for groundhog day (mine, my 4 yo and 7 yo)...

He has instructional videos for drawing, painting, sculpting, and even origami with kids. The subjects range from animals to star wars to plants to zombies to Frozen characters. I just love it! Thank you Mandy for sharing it with me!! :)

Here is a link to his website, Art for Kids Hub. And here's a link to his you tube channel. Enjoy!!

How We Use Victory Drill to Build Reading Speed

Have you ever heard of the Victory Drill Book? I heard about it from another home school mom while we were both stuck waiting in a doctor's office waiting room. It's a basic, no-fluff book you can use in a variety of ways, over and over again for multiple children to strengthen their reading skills. The bulk of the book amounts to a series of word lists, generally grouped by a common phonics or spelling rules, and the lists progress from simple (including at, sat, mat & rat) to advanced (awkwardly, Americanism, extraordinary & Mississippi). Victory Drill may be used to build reading speed and fluency for students in any grade. It can also be used when teaching reading, spelling, or phonics rules. 

Since I taught my son to read without using a traditional phonics program (here's how), we used Victory Drill to reinforce spelling and phonics rules while building his reading speed. After using it for over a year, we've settled into a routine with it. 

Here's how we use it...

Let's Learn About Ancient Egypt!

Here are a few of our favorite books, activities, and online resources for learning about Ancient Egypt...

Online Resources

Explore Ancient Egypt! You've got to visit this site!! We took a virtual tour through the Great Pyramid, walked around the Sphinx, and visited other tombs and temples with 360 degree tours. It was excellent!! Thank you PBS!

Discover the world of Ancient Egypt playing our games! Explore the Egyptian landscape, join an exploration expedition through Egyptian tombs, dress like an Egyptian queen or craftsman, translate hieroglyphics, and run a temple store! My son loved these games from National Museums Scotland!!!

Our Favorite Books

Hands-On History: Ancient Egypt

I lead the hands-on History portion of our Co-Op, so I thought I'd share the projects we did this year. This was our first year in Ancient History, and most of our projects this year related to our study of Ancient Egypt. Here's what we did...

We talked about how ancient people wove fabrics, and then the kids got to weave with a  loom. To do this, I propped a dowel rod between two chairs and tied strings to it, weighted at the bottom by washers. Then the kids wove it as you see here...

(I found this project idea here.)

They made mummies by wrapping little duct tape people with strips of linen, and gluing them in place with "resin." (I labeled our Elmer's glue as "resin" and no one was allowed to call it glue. They had to say "please pass the resin" not "please pass the glue" when they needed it.) Inside of the wrappings they also added "amulets" (rhinestones). For the sarcophaguses, we used this free printable pattern.

Comparing Simply Charlotte Mason History with Mystery of History

I started our year with Simply Charlotte Mason (SCM) history, and mid-year switched to Mystery of History (MOH). This blog post is for anyone who may be comparing the two curriculums and trying to decide between them. If you're not then you can just skip this post and wait for the next one! :)

For reference, we did volume one of both curriculums which is Ancient History. 

This is SCM Genesis to Deuteronomy and Ancient Egypt 

And this is MOH Vol 1 Creation to the Resurrection) 

Similarities between the two curriculums:

Learning to Read: What Worked for Us

Learning to read is a messy process, and there isn't one clear-cut way to do it.  I've shared many of my favorite reading resources here, and today I'm going to share with you what exactly worked for us.

Pre-Reading:

I did NOT push formal reading lessons on my kids early-on. If you're not sure why on earth I chose to wait then please read this. Instead, we strongly encourage a LOVE of reading by reading aloud, a lot.

Gentle Introduction:

Stick Figuring Through The Bible

Today I'm sharing with you one of my favorite finds for parents of young children. It's called "Stick Figuring Through the Bible," from Grapevine Studies, and it's a great way for children to begin making a bible timeline of their own. This is not just for home schoolers! It's for any parent or bible class teacher who is reading through the bible (or a bible story book) with their kids.

It's amazingly simple and a great way for children to begin visualizing the story of the bible as a whole. Here is a peek at the first few pages of my son's timeline...

The Most Fabulous Timeline Notebook, EVER!!!

Timelines are great when learning world history! There are several ways to make one... some people have them pasted onto a huge wall... my sister-law has her kids make note cards that are put into a baseball card album... and others make note cards and file them in order. I like having a timeline notebook. We started out with Charlotte Mason's Basic Book of Centuries, which is free. But we recently upgraded to the Record of Time timeline notebook, which is absolutely lovely!! 

And my sister-in-law gave me a copy of the History Through the Ages Collection CD which is just fabulous. It's a collection of impressively-drawn black-and-white images to print and paste into your timeline notebook. You can use the image alone, or the image with text (including date and a short description). You can print them large (for use on a wall) or small (for use on index cards, flash cards, or pasted into a timeline notebook). I LOVE IT! Here's a peek inside our timeline notebook...

My Favorite Resources for Learning About Africa

We are studying Africa this year, and loving it! Here are a few of my favorite resources... 

 
Wonderful Books

A really neat book recommended from SCM (Simply Charlotte Mason) is Material World by Peter Menzel. It's a unique project from a talented photographer who traveled the world to put a face on the human condition from all around the planet. He features a statistically average family from a variety of countries all over the world, and includes large portraits of their family, home life, and all their material possessions. (See in the photo below the entirety of this family's earthly possessions.) It's eye-opening to see just how much and how little people have from different parts of the world, and interesting to get a glance into their daily life. We'll be using this book for the African families it features this year, and families from other countries in our geography studies in the years to come.

My Marvelous Map Box!!!!!

I love when something nice to look at doubles as a smart solution of some sort, like hidden storage or dual-purpose use. You know, like most everything at Ikea. Well, today I'm going to show you what I consider the most exciting addition to our home school room that I can possibly think of.

Drum roll please................

I present to you, our window cornice....

Oh but wait, you haven't seen the best part!!

This isn't an ordinary window treatment my friends..... for inside this cheery yellow chevron covered box you'll find THIS.....

Only the BEST set of pull-down maps EVER made! (Notice my enthusiastic map pointers!)

A Peek into Our Home School Room

Want to see where some of our magic takes place? This is our school room...

I found the desks on Amazon, and think they're just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. Well, except for the boys that use them. :) The legs will extend up to make them into full-size desks in the future.

Here is a closer look at our art lines...

I made them using cute red drawer knobs and picture-hanging wire from Hobby Lobby. That's also where I found the little red wall baskets.

Work it, work boxes!

If you know what these are... chances are you're a home schooler!

Our Plan for First Grade

I thought I'd share what we'll be studying this year because...

Language Arts: 

I ended up writing a program of my own with a lot of help from The Three R's by Ruth Beechick. We'll be doing much of what you can read on my Writing page.

For reading, we'll keep going at his pace with easy readers. We're also going to use the Victory Drill Book, for practicing phonics, spelling, and word-building. Just for fun, I'm getting DICEcapades Word Pirates for game days. I am a believer in practicing skills with games rather than flash cards. It's more fitting for young children and doesn't zap the life out of school.

DIY Planner

Last Spring in my before-the-baby-is-born spree of preparing all our Fall school stuff, I was re-evaluating how I keep our school records. I was using SkedTrack, which I think is a great tool, but it just wasn't a perfect fit for us since it is based on school hours and our state doesn't require us to track hours, just days. I looked at some pre-made paper planners which all had a LOT of stuff in them that I just don't need, so I ended up making my own. Surprisingly it wasn't too big of a deal. Here's what it looks like...

The first section is calendars, for my own reference to jot down appointments and things. I just printed some pre-made printable calendars online (from here).