Daily Grammar fix-its

Grammar is one of those things that plagues the best of us, so I was so excited to see these "Daily Grammar Fix Its" from Amanda Nickerson on the Teachers pay Teachers site. This is a perfect idea to complement my competency bags!

She designed these wonderful pages and I only made one adjustment- simply to shrink them to 4 to a page so they fit into my bags. I love the idea of these. Each card starts with an improperly written sentence that the student needs to correct. Then there is a space for the correct sentence, and then a box to illustrate it. I laminated mine so that these can be used again and again, and I printed on both sides of the page to save space in the bag. Throw in a dry-erase marker and a wipe off cloth and it's finished!

Fun Fractions!

The idea of fractions is generally not something I think of in the same sentence as the word "fun", but that doesn't mean that it can't be there. I set out to make a fractions bag that was fun while learning, and I think this one fits the bill.

So the fractions on the cards are in two parts. There are some that have the fraction on the left and a blank list of lines on the right. They are laminated so that these can be used as a dry erase set.  These can be colored to match the fraction. I have another series I cut apart and had my little girl color in advance (She was helping and had no idea that she was also learning fractions at the same time- so cool!). That set will be used as a matching game.

The other component I added to my competency bag was this fraction flip book I found at Dollar Tree. I'm beginning to think there is nothing you can't find at that store!
Anyway, it's a fun flip book that matches the fraction, the picture and even the decimal! Still working on some games to play with this one, but otherwise the bag is complete!

I have...Who Has?

Apparently this game, "I have...Who has?" has been around in classrooms a while, but I was fairly clueless about it until recently. I'm not typically up on the latest classroom endeavors, especially since we have been homeschooling for 7 years now. Anyway, I came across this game and I LOVE how well it works into the competency bag concept. In this pursuit, I came across a web site that EVERY teacher should know about and use- www.teacherspayteachers.com. WOW! What a wealth of resources!! If you type in "I have...Who has?" in the search engine, you will come up with literally HUNDREDS of options of how to make this game work into your curriculum.

So how does it work?

In a classroom setting, each student is given a card. On the card it shows a part of the puzzle, starting with "I have". The student reads what they have, then ask the question at the bottom of their card that starts with "Who has?". Whoever has that on their "I am" part jumps in and starts the process again. Sounds complicated but it's really very simple. The types of information on these is everything from matching alphabet letters to matching information about the presidents or mathematical equations. AMAZING! I even found some on DNA and genetics!

So here's how I converted this idea to the competency bags. I printed the cards and included a series of plastic links. I bought these a while back, but I have seen these at Walmart and at School Box, so they shouldn't be too hard to find.

The possibilities here are simply endless. For my second grader, I have found these in versions of multiplication, plural words, elapsed time, seasonal studies and so much more. This activity might turn into several bags!

Competency Bags

     Like most homeschooling moms, spring is the season where I begin to think about what we want for our kids for the next school year. I'm a non-traditionalist when it comes to curriculum selection, and I really hate buying complete packages of curriculum only to find that at the end of the year we really haven't used many of the components. Seems like a waste of money and still leaves me wondering how we could have done it better. I tend to try new things each year because even after 7 years of homeschooling among several different personalities, I have yet to find too many things that work for everyone for every grade level. So in the midst of planning a graduation for our son Brandon this year, I am busy hunting and planning out what next year will look like for the rest of our crew.

     There will always be textbooks and workbooks and writing and reading, but what I look for most in this curriculum search are those things that stand out as fun, educational, and something my kids might actually enjoy. We spend a HUGE amount of our homeschooling time outside of the home doing book-fairs and other events, so school needs to be portable but still educational. I hate doing busy work, and I imagine that my kids would hate it too, so we really don't do that. When they are working on a school assignment, I want them fully connected to the material they are working on and I want them to learn through every process. Completing another worksheet as a "review" isn't a good use of their time unless of course, they really need the extra practice.

     So with that said, I have found TONS of amazing resources called "Busy Bags". The concept of these is fabulous. You simply fill different bags with different materials and each one is a self-contained exploration for little ones. My toddler will be completely set when I get all of his finished. The problem with these is that everything I am finding is focused on toddlers and preschoolers, and pretty much end with Kindergarten. So it got me thinking. What if I could create these bags based on more than these basic Pre-K concepts and create bags based on COMPETENCY? There's a bunch of talk these days of the Common Core Standards, and that's generally where I begin my curriculum search, so this idea is to create multi-level grade projects that each center around a competency. So for my upcoming second grader, I began with the core standards for second grade. I browsed through looking for specific competencies- those things that at minimum she should have mastered by the end of next year. My list had about 40 different ideas on it, but this will give you some ideas of some of those items:

greater than/Less than
two digit addition/subtraction
contractions
compound words
identifying nouns, verbs and adjectives
counting coins
telling time to the minute
inventions
and so many more!

So I set out to find fun ways to teach each, and found some fun ideas.

So my next few blogs will be dedicated to some tutorials around creating wonderful COMPETENCY BAGS and some ideas for planning these out for all grade levels. These bags are terrific for homeschoolers, and could work great as centers in classrooms as well. Enjoy!