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Today I'm starting something new as I try to get this blog going again and life back into some sort of order. Usually on the weekends I visit some of my favorite blogs for homeschooling ideas or find new ones and I look for advice from veteran homeschoolers who share their knowledge with those of us on the learning path with our kids. Since there are so many blogs and websites out there its almost impossible to have the time to find all the incredible ideas. Pinterest has helped in this area because its a lot easier to quickly scan through pictures than to read entire blog posts.
I'm however going to start a "Spotlight on..." series - of blogs or websites I've looked at during the week and think there's something there to share with others.
So, here are the first ones.....I hope you find them helpful or inspiring in some way....
1) Topic Jar - From Laughing With Aspergers
Fantastic idea for child led learning (or any learning) having your child or children choose the topics they would like to cover for the year and have them randomly pick them from a jar. It covers that "remember when I wanted to learn...?" and naturally you have forgotten it amongst the five-hundred other things thrown out into the air that you were supposed to catch and make a note of and you didn't and of course its the one thing he comes back to four months later and he can't quite get why you don't remember him mentioning it - nevermind that it was probably in the middle of you cooking dinner or doing the laundry and you were supposed to jot it down and well, frankly you just didn't have a pen and paper handy in the laundry room. (Not that my child would do anything like that)
2) Fall Seeds - From Blue Bells and Cockle Shells
This nature walk looking for fall seeds comes at just the right time as I'm about to take orange Halloween Pumpkins and harvest them for seeds for a backyard pumpkin patch for next year and storing and baking the pumpkin meat into pumpkin pies and pumpkin bread for the holiday's.
In this time of high food prices and lean finances, I find myself trying to make things stretch...therefore pumpkins were Halloween decorations and now a food source for us at home and for our holiday baking for friends.
Come back later this week for how to use orange pumpkins in your baking...Yes, you can bake with them no matter what everyone else tells you...
Meanwhile...here's my Pumpkin Bread Recipe. I'll be posting my Pumpkin Pie Recipe later this week as well once I check out a new recipe for making my own crust. The crust was the one thing that wasn't homemade in my pies and I'm working on finding just the right recipe.
3) Wondering what to do with ALL of that candy.....use it for lessons.
* Fractions using M&Ms - free downloadable worksheet from TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers)
* Candy corn counting and math - cute fall tree cut out, easy number dots, with links for additional candy learning.
* Autumn mix candy sequencing - with templates - love the group idea on here too!
* Calendar project for halloween candy - great idea for calendar work with a reward for snack time!
* Halloween candy graph - a pin from Pinterest.
* 5 cool ways to use halloween candy - seriously cool ideas!
Trust me this is only a sampling of countless ideas on using that candy.
