Getting Ideas for Homeschool Fun

I've collected a few of these books over the past two years. They are the "Teacher's Friend" idea books. This week Daniel bought me several more of them. Now I'm only missing April and December. I use these constantly. They are such a great source of ideas. They are reproducible, so if you like to use your copy machine (like me) you'll use these endlessly. You can find some of them on Amazon for less than $3!

We've made indians and pilgrims to hang up at Thanksgiving, and then used them again this week since we are studying Native American tribes. Each of the girls got to color and cut out an Indian head with a head band on top. Then they get to add a feather for each book we read to the head dress to make their chief complete. We write the title on the feather.

We got the apples I mentioned in an earlier post from one of these books. This week we photo copied little fish on gold paper and white paper. We stapled them together (like the apples) and they get to lift one a day to find out what fun activity they get to do after their school work is finished. Today they are fishing off of Danya's bed with paper clips on a string. Each fish has multiplication problems on it. If they get it right than they flip it over to find out how many M&M's they get. If they get it wrong they throw the fish back and try again on their next turn.

We also recently used these books for a section on dinosaurs. They wrote dinosaur stories based on a drawing in the book of a dino eating a house. The stories were "If we had a pet dinosaur". Then I photo copied a big drawing of a cute dino and drew circles all over it. Each of the girls got one. They wrote math problems in the circles and gave it to their sister to answer. We come up with so many uses for these reproducible images. We use them over and over for all different things. Here's what we plan to do with one image of a fish this week:

1. Paint it with pencil erasers dipped in paint to make polka dots.
2. Play "fishing for math" with them on paper clips.
3. Write "fish stories" inside them.
4. Draw an aquarium scene, put fish cut outs on top, then cover it with plastic wrap.

Some other ideas we could do the next time we want to use fish:

1. Use them like the feet (also from one of these books, that I mentioned in a previous post) to put facts to memorize on them.
2. Use the image of a boy fishing (also in the book) and hang the fish from strings, writing the title of books we've read on each fish.
3. Play matching games with facts.
4. Make a mobile.

The only problem with these books is that I think of so many ideas and I can't possibly use them all at once!