20 Best Tips

September Calendar Numbers – Free Printable

For the last sixteen years I’ve used the same calendar pieces, both in my public school teaching and during our homeschool time. Last week, I decided it was time to change things up a bit and pulled together some new ones to use during our calendar time.

September Calendar Numbers free printable from Homeschool Creations

To work on various pattern sequences, there are THREE different sets of number pieces: green, yellow, and red. Each color has a different clip art pattern to match.

pattern example

Using the different colored number cards to try different pattern sequences: an ABC pattern, ABAB pattern, AABB pattern and more.

September Calendar Header

Additional Calendar Helps

Here are a few additional printables and helps for you all, including the pocket chart that we use, laminating tips, and additional printables you may like:

Yearly pocket chart calendar numbers from Homeschool Creations copy Pocket chart holiday and special occasion cards

 

Reader’s Favorite Posts from August

Curious to see what others have been reading this past month? Below is a list of the ten most visited posts for the month of August:

Cursive ABC Flashcards and Posters – Free Printables

Many of you requested a cursive version of the beginning sounds alphabet flash cards and alphabet wall posters to use with your children. These are some of my favorite printables because of the colors and pictures, so of course I wanted to help you all out!

Each card and poster features an image whose initial sound begins with that letter. There are two sets of cards, one featuring cartoon images and another with real pictures, so you can choose which ones you prefer.

Cursive ABC Flashcards

The cursive alphabet flashcards are a fun size for children. We have a set printed off onto cardstock and laminated. They are on a jump ring so we can hang them easily near a desk for quick reference. Each of the flash cards is 2” x 3” in size or about the size of a deck of cards.

Cursive ABC Flashcards

 

Cursive Alphabet Posters

If you are a classroom teacher, or have more space on your walls, you may want to download the Cursive ABC Posters. The wall posters show how the upper and lowercase letters are formed, giving children a great visual on letter formation.

Cursive ABC Wall Cards

These posters are 8 1/2” x 11” in size and one set features real images {they match the Beginning Sounds Poster and several of the other Preschool Alphabet printables} while the second set has clip art images ~ both are cute!

 

Additional Printables You May Enjoy… 

Alphabet Flashcards Alphabet Wall Posters

 

Prefer a standard handwriting font? You can grab a copy of the ABC Flashcards and ABC Posters here.

A few other related printables that may help you out as well…

You can find more Early Learning Printables {all for FREE} on my website. Have fun looking!!

 

Niger Geography Printables and Unit Study Links

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In support of the Raise a Village campaign, I am part of a team of homeschool educators  partnering with Samaritan’s Purse to bring you part of an educational unit study of Niger.

Today I have a few printables to share with you based on the country of Niger {not Nigeria – did you know there were two countries in Africa with such similar names?}. If you are working on a geography unit for Africa, these printables will be a fun addition to your learning. Don’t forget to check below too. There are links to several other helpful printables, art projects, and lesson plans from other homeschool moms to help you out as well.

Niger Mapping Page, Country Factsheet, and Prayer Printables

Niger Geography Pages via HomeschoolCreations

 

The Niger Geography Printables include the following worksheets:

  • a mapping sheet for the country of Niger {map rivers, countries, mountains, and other geographical information}
  • a country factsheet to write down information about Niger including when it became a country, current population, climate, type of government, and more
  • a prayer sheet to display and use when studying about Niger

You can find out specific information on the country of Niger that will help you fill out the worksheets by visiting this site and also the Raise a Village page from Samaritan’s Purse.

 

Don’t miss these FREE geography printables listed by continent…

image image image image image image

 

 

Additional Printables, Projects, and Ideas for a Niger Unit Study

Visit the following blogs for more free printables and unit study ideas to use with your family when learning about the country of Niger:

Raise a Village from Samaritan’s Purse

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You can find out how Samaritan’s Purse is partnering with Guidan Gado, a village in the country of Niger where families struggle in hopeless situations.

Raise a Village is an effort to change lives by supplying livestock, seeds, tools, and other aid that will provide the 1,400 people living in Guidan Gado with a hope-filled future. It is just one of the many ways we are working in Niger, which is one of the poorest countries on earth.

Follow the progress of Raise a Village.

 

 

I volunteered to create printables and share information about Raise a Village from Samaritan’s Purse. I was not compensated in any form and all thoughts, printables, and such are my very own.

Printable Prayer Cards – FREE Download

The ladies in our small group have been reading a book together, A Praying Life by Paul Miller. When we began the section on prayer cards, I wanted something colorful to have in my hands during the day – a visual reminder of the prayers on my heart and something that I could carry along with me. Most importantly, I want to be able to see when and how those prayers are answered.

Printable Prayer Cards copy

 

 

In A Praying Life, Miller suggests different topic areas for prayer, so these cards are color-coded based on those different areas of prayer. You can quickly find a card to add a prayer request and begin praying. Since our family sponsors children through Compassion International, I also added cards for those requests as well.

 


 

I’m using the cards to write out specific requests and Scripture reference. If i need additional cards, I can print off a new sheet. There are verse and quote cards that I’m using to divide the different sections.

Compassion Prayer Card

The image above gives you a sample idea of how I am personally using the cards for one of our Compassion children. I’d encourage you to add specific verses to each card and write down when you see answers to prayers as well.

The cards to great if they are printed on cardstock. The corner of mine are hole punched and they are on a jump ring {similar to a key ring}. Each card is 3”x5” in size when cut apart, so you can also add them to a file box if you prefer not to use a jump ring.

Printable Prayer Cards

 

 

Do you have a prayer help to keep track of your requests? I’d love to hear what works for you.

 

 

This file was created to share with you free of charge, but I ask that you do not host these files on anywhere other than on your personal computer. If you would like to share the file with others, please direct them to my this post.

Circus Theme Math and Language Printables

We’re taking a trip to the circus this week and getting a behind-the-scenes tour. To go along with our trip, I put together a few additional circus theme printables to use with parts of the Circus Printable Pack {be sure to download those as well!}.

Circus Theme Math and Language Printables

This printable mini pack includes both math and language learning activities: even and odd number sorting, greater than/less than comprehension, tally mark skills, making predictions, word family identification, and a fun circus word find.

Don’t Forget the Circus Printable Pack too!

circus collage

In case you missed it earlier, the Circus Printable Pack goes along with these new printables and is full of additional learning activities for preschool and kindergarten children including vocabulary words, counting practice, word building and more. You can find out more about the Circus Printable Pack here.

Fun Books to Go Along

Want to work on your own circus themed unit? Here are some fun books to get you started!

Our Angry Bird Unit ~ The Week of Angry Birds

Preschool CornerNo surprise that the mere mention of Angry Birds made Kaleb jump up and down in excitement. He’d only been eyeing the growing pile of games and fun for weeks, hoping that each day would be the day we started.

Well, this week was the it! We had so much more planned to do, but a certain mom forgot that we had a field trip to the planetarium in her enthusiasm to collect every fun idea on the internet related to Angry Birds {cough}.

There may be a few more Angry Bird activities that will now spill over into next week. :)

Fun with Angry Birds Printables

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For the most part we kept up with our regular subjects each day {above is our weekly grid}, unless there was something in the printable pack that could take the place of a subject {i.e. for math we worked on several of the math pages in the pack, etc…}. Something about the colorful birds made things extra fun!

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One of the math highlights of the week was the prediction page to go along with the roll and graph page in the Angry Bird Printable pack. Before rolling the Angry Bird die, Kaleb predicted which of the six animals would ‘win’. He rolled the die and filled in a square with a Do-A-Dot marker each time he rolled. When he was done, we answered a few additional questions and read the graph together {he was cheering for the black bird to win, so he was VERY excited at the end!}.

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The Do-A-Dot markers are still one of Kaleb’s favorite things, so we pulled out a few more to use in the ‘find the word’ story. He loved finding multiple copies of the word ‘the’. Can you tell he was a little dot happy? He had a pattern system worked out at the beginning, but that quickly went to the side and he just dotted away.

Other parts of the Angry Bird Printable pack we worked on: beginning sounds sheet {upper and lowercase}, 1:1 counting, word tracers, letter tracers, mazes, addition, directional words, patterns, find the A’s, word matching, find the difference, more/less/equal, letter P sound, least/greatest number, and following directions. Phew!! That was a lot more than I thought!!

More Angry Bird Fun

There was quite a bit of hands-on fun this week too. Believe it or not, we didn’t pull out the iPad or iPod ONCE to play the game!! Instead we pulled out a few fun things and played it in real life!

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Using small plastic cups and Angry Bird pencil toppers, we built fortresses, hid pigs, and tried to knock it all down. We had plans to set up some elaborate block structures, but that didn’t happen – I have a feeling that fun will continue into the weekend for us!

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Kaleb painted a bunch of paper plates and made some fun Angry Bird faces {idea found here}.

Angry Birds card game

One of our favorite games this week was a simple Angry Bird cards game. Kaleb was able to pick up the rules quickly and teach it to everyone. It became a fun game for him to play with the others when they were waiting for something {especially since the games last between 5 and 10 minutes overall}.

We also had picked up a set of the Angry Birds knex, and although they were cute, the pieces didn’t stay together well, which ended up frustrating Kaleb. A few of the parts we are using for other things though {the sling shot is great!}. Instead we are getting the Knock on Wood game {which is what I thought I had ordered – oops}. That one has easier pieces to manage.

The Rest of the Week

Angry Bird anger management

Something that ALL of the kids enjoyed {mom included} were some great tie-in anger management lessons from The Home Teacher. I really can’t do it justice in explaining it all – just know that you are going to want to download her posters and use them with your kiddos. FABULOUS!!! And something kids will remember because it ties in with a game they love!

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Our trip to the planetarium was a lot of fun!! We went with a group of friends and the ‘show’ we watched was entertaining for even the younger ones and then the peek at the night sky was very neat {even I learned a few things!}.

All About Reading program

Kaleb is about halfway through his reading program right now – just one more lesson and he gets to try the moon ice cream that came with our kit!! That has been a fun incentive for him to keep reading. There are days when he acts so frustrated and then just minutes later is reading along great – so puzzling. He ‘thinks’ he can’t read and needs a LOT of encouragement to remind him that he CAN do it.

That about sums up our week – I’d love to hear about your week!! What was the most exciting thing that happened with your kids this week? Leave a comment below and share the excitement!

Angry Bird Links


 Ready to Link Up?

Share what you are doing with your kids! Please link your exact blog post to the Mr. Linky below and link back here too! Grab a button for your post below and be sure to take a minute to visit the person who linked up before you. You can read more in the updated guidelines for Preschool Corner. By linking up, you are granting permission for me to share your wonderful ideas and pictures with others in periodic show-and-tell posts.

Be specific in your ‘link title’. Leave either your blog name or theme and provide an age range for your activities. Something a little like this:

Police Officer Theme {ages 4-5}

Preschool Corner

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