The Blog — school

The animals that my son chose for these word families were a pig and a bee.  He really likes choosing the animals and while I see no logic in his choices, I'm sure they totally work in his cute little 5 year old brain. You can get these printables for free by right clicking on the images below and selecting save or print from the pop up menu. I suggest printing these on white cardstock, they just work so much better than regular (thin) paper.  You can use these in your classroom or at home, but please don't share the...

I've decided to back off of word families for a bit with my son's learning.  Which is the beauty of homeschool - if you're feeling overwhelmed then change what you're doing!  We're still learning LOTS and will throw in a word family or two when we're having a particular ambitious week. Here are some free printables so you can practice the AN and ET word families too!  Just right click on the images below and click save or print. I hope these help your little learners as much as they help mine!  You can use these free printable as much as...

For CVC practice last week in our little kindergarten homeschool we covered the short U sound.  I've found that repetition is key when it comes this whole "teaching a little person how to read" thing.  Who knew?  (Like every teacher ever?!)  So we watch a lot of videos, do a lot of writing practice, and play a lot of games.  Plus we read.  And read.  And read.  And then when he's finally like, "Can I just do science already?!!"  I figure we've done enough repetitious practice. If you'd like to practice with your kid (or class) here's a free worksheet...

Last week we talked about the OG and EN word families and my son picked a dog and a cat to practice with.  These are really fun and help cement the concept of word families in my son's brain.   If you'd like to use these too, you can right click on the images below to save them to your computer.     These are best printed on white cardstock, and if you're using them repeatedly you can also laminate them or cover them in clear contact paper. You can use this free printable as much as you want at home,...

We are covering two word families each week for our kindergarten homeschool.  There are lots of options out there for things like this, but I thought my son would be more interested if he got to pick the animals we use each week. Last week we learned about AT and UN word families and we made a monkey and rhino - not because those animals have anything to do with the the word families, just because they happened to be in my son's head when I asked.  (Except he couldn't remember what a rhino was called and asked for "the animal...