January 23 is International Handwriting Day

The purpose of National Handwriting Day is to alert the public to the importance of handwriting and gives everyone a chance to re-explore the purity and power of handwriting. This lens will focus on handwriting exercises for little people, and where they can download specially created ebooks for free to practice their handwriting and have a lot of fun at the same time.

As well as beautiful free journals you can access handwriting ebooks, early readers and more…  Celebrate Your Child’s Creativity…   With our compliments…

via Christmas Trivia Challenge, Printable Game.

How well do you ACTUALLY know Christmas around the world; in song, dance, and language?

This game provides a wide selection of Christmas trivia questions from general trivia to movies and music, traditions and languages. Test your knowledge of Christmas music with questions in the Music and Song Category, or see how well your dad REALLY remembers the movie or famous novel, “A Christmas Carol”. What Christmas song contains the words “And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time…”? Who is Rudolph’s dad? What will probably not find under the Christmas tree? What kind of Christmas is Elvis Presley going to have?

Get friends and family to join in to while away a lazy holiday afternoon, or use the game as a warm-up to a fabulous and fun Christmas gathering. Play the Game! And find the answers to these questions and a whole lot more!

via Christmas Activities Mega-Packet.

From St Aiden’s Homeschool $6.99 $3.99 PDF

This ebook is divided in various categories covering a wide range of subject areas including phonics, math, motor skills and critical thinking skills – all in all over 320 pages of fun and educational activities! An eclectic mix of stunningly illustrated activities, from basic Christmas Picture and Christmas Animal Dictionaries; The Christmas Alphabet, Christmas Phonics, Snowman Activities, Christmas Numbers and Counting, Santa-themed activities, Flash Cards, Spot the difference! and an assortment of gift tags and label crafts. Also included are handwriting and tracing exercises, along with picture/word association puzzles, Word Order! and Word Unscramble! This unit is easily adaptable to a wider range of ages from very little people upwards.

via Vintage Christmas Playing Cards.

If you’re hosting a Children’s Christmas Party you might want to consider a few board or card games. This full deck of full color cards includes Jokers, and blank cards (if you’re feeling inspired). The cards are created using beautiful assorted vintage Christmas images from the public domain. Enjoy with our compliments!

Playing card games is a great way for children to learn a variety of basic skills, including counting, taking turns, basic strategy, and being a good sport. Here are some ideas for the best traditional card games for children. All of these games can be played with a standard 52-card deck. While these games are mostly aimed at the younger generations, people of all ages can join in.

Simply print all pages onto cardstock, laminate for protection and durability and cut out cards.  Fold on the dotted line and paste the front and back of each card together.  (Bonus here is that if you need more than one deck, just print two sets of the cards)

Full instructions for each game as well as variations are at the end of the book.

GoFish

Spoons

Old Maid

Snap

Hearts

Concentration/Memory

via Christmas Bingo.

Bingo is an easy game to play and also easy to teach.  A popular choice when teaching phonics and numbers, Bingo is also often used for picture/word association in early learning.

While away a chilly Sunday afternoon, or use this game as a party activity building up to the excitement that fulfills our homes at Christmas.

This Packet contains 2 versions of Bingo; one version is a “picture match” version using picture calling cards, while the other uses word calling cards while the Bingo Mats are pictures.

With a total of 28 different Bingo Mats, 6 sheets of printable counters and 2 sets of calling cards this game is sure to keep little ones (and their adults) occupied for hours.  $2.99

via Christmas Scrabble Word Game.

Children Learn by Play, and what better time than at Christmas when everything is madly exciting!  This game gives a whole new twist on the traditional board game of Scrabble.

Teaching your child phonics and phonemic awareness needn’t be dull and uninteresting. From a very early age your child will begin to recognise the shape and sound of letters, and be able to sound and associate the correct words to pictures shown. Once your child has learnt the alphabet a whole new world of fun learning experiences opens up to him or her.

I devised this Letter Tile game which worked wonderfully for my children when they were younger, and who, after successfully “spelling” out simple Dolch words with the letter tiles, pushed their own envelopes and sounded letters and words to pictures, thereby gaining awareness of more complex words and far advancing their initial knowledge. And the kids didn’t even know they were learning!

I have included 215 picture cards, all with a Christmas Theme,  blank cards with instructions on how to make your own, a storage envelope and 2 sheets of letter tiles, both upper and lower case, as well as educator notes on the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness.

Have fun!

Wishing you and yours a very safe and blessed Christmas and holiday season.

From St Aiden’s Homeschool
$5.99 $2.99

via Everything Christmas.

Songs & Games & Puzzles ‘n things… Something for everyone in the family… Spend fun-filled hours these holidays printing out as many copies of each activity as may be required; or have a sing-a-long to some really well-known and well-loved Christmas songs.

One of a host of beautifully illustrated, exciting and educational freebies

via Christmas Pictionary Game.

Pictionary is a fun family-oriented game with rules that are easy to follow, and are also easily adaptable. Of course if you are able to draw or sketch you’ll be zooming ahead to the finish before anyone else, but if, like me, you really aren’t very good there’ll be a lot of laughter and giggling at the attempts.

The game is almost based on a type of Charades Game, a classic game of drawing and guessing pictures. The game is ideal for groups of people, and a perfect addition to a Christmas gathering of family and friends.

Our Christmas Pictionary categories are:

• Song (or sub-categories Poem, Carol, Traditional, Modern, Funny etc)

• Book (or Story)

• Film (or sub-categories TV, Movies)

• Gift (or sub-categories Mum, Dad, Granny, Boy, Girl, Baby etc)

• Object (or sub-category Accessories, Decorations, Things)

But we have included blank cards for you to make your own categories and write your own words and titles if you choose to.

This unit contains 434 individual Cards in 7 different categories, color-coded for each category, and can easily be sorted for children aged around 4 and upwards. Adults will also be drawn into the game trying to figure out names of old-time movies, characters, songs and stories.

From St Aiden’s Homeschool
$8.99 $5.99

A large number of updates have taken place at the all-new St Aiden’s Homeschool website.  The new look is not universal as yet but we’re working on getting it finished as soon as possible.  This will make for quicker loading pages, easier access to downloads and more user friendly navigational areas.

I’ll highlight but a few of the most recent updates where you can download free printables, worksheets, eBooks, activity books and resources.

St Aidens Homeschool ~ Grammar & Vocabulary Index.

This section is ideally suited to elementary and slightly older learners and encompasses inter alia vocabulary and
grammar exercises such as parts of speech, tenses, antonyms, homonyms, homophones and synonyms.

The activities and worksheets available through this website are by no means exhaustive, and many far more complex
words can be included in the activities for older learners who have a higher level of vocabulary/comprehension.
Exercises are ideal for student/educator interaction and perfect for homeschooling fun.

Affixes ►This is a letter or a series of letters which is added to the beginning or end of a word to change the meaning e.
g. -ful added to “mouth” creates “mouthful” which means the mouth is full.

Antonyms ► An Antonym is a word that has a meaning opposite to that of another word.  Example: Old is an antonym
of new or young.  Origin: From Greek, “anti” – against.

Adjectives ► “describing” words e.g. happy, annoying, and lazy and can be used to modify or intensify a noun or verb.

Adverbs ► words which are used in a sentence to give extra information about the verb, adjective or another adverb.

Articles ► There are three articles in the English language –  a / an and the.  They are often used in sentences before
nouns that are common and countable.

Compounds ►

Contractions ► a shortened form of a word or words

Homonyms ► Words that have the same spelling & pronunciation but different meanings, e.g. can, can – orange &
orange

Homophones ► 2 or more words having the same pronunciation, but different meanings & spellings – e.g. no, know –
red & read – hair &hare

Homographs ► Words which have the same spellings but different meanings and (sometimes) pronunciation.

Idioms ► Spoken or written sentences where the meaning is not obvious from the individual words used e.g. “Your
account is in the red”.

Nouns ►  Nouns are words used to name something that has a physical form, i.e. something that one can touch or feel
e.g. food, animals, clothing etc.

Proper Nouns ► “naming” nouns e.g. Boston is a proper noun.  It is the name of a city.  Jane is a proper Noun.  It is the
name of a person.

Plurals ► More than one of anything  (On Affixes Page)

Synonyms ► Words having the same meaning but are different word/s or phrase/s – “shut up” & “Be quiet”

Tenses ► Past, present, future tenses e.g. swam, swimming, swim

Verbs ► “action” or “doing” words e.g. fishing ◄ “I am going fishing.”

Our little more-than-two-legged friends have had a major overhaul and a comprehensive index on insects will direct you to where you want to download your free printables, worksheets and ebooks.

Halloween is upon us, as is Thanskgiving and fall, and once again I offer you literally thousands of pages of free resources, lesson plans, ideas and printables to make use of to enhance your holiday season.

I will post another update in the very new future with links to more free homeschool resources.

In the meantime I’d like to mention that today is the 1st day of CurrClick’s most exciting promotion of the season: Our Trunk or Treat Sale and Freebie Event! Today, October 18th (around 10:00 CST) through October 31st, customers can search for 8 FREE education products hidden all over CurrClick.com. And even better, fall (and Halloween and Thanksgiving) themed titles will be discounted by up to 75%! You will not want to miss this exciting and fun event.

These are a few of the most recent major updates for now, so I’ll end off by wishing you a very safe and festive Holiday Season.

Best wishes

Donnette Davis

St Aiden’s Homeschool

Phonic Awareness and Teaching Guides For Young Children

In preparation of reading comprehension activity books created for children and then onward transmission/submission to various organizations or for availability as free downloads on various websites an inordinate amount of time is spent researching age-appropriate content for children. This same principle applies to the formal education system.

The public domain resources available on the internet today are an excellent source of materials with which to begin one’s research, and to source age appropriate material with which to educate young children by way of reading comprehension. One soon realizes that there is little difference between early education and that of today – schools are man-made. Home Education has been around since the beginning of time!

The words and terms utilized when compiling these books should not be outside the general vocabulary of any child in the normal environment. The content of the books that are supplied to children for educational or leisure purposes should be based on the usual experiences of childhood and prove to be full of vivid meaning for children.

Recognizing the eye as a highly important agent in the reading process, it is feasible that in view of studies and research, a plan of presentation of sentences and phrases intended to develop focal fields, wider perception plans, and eye sweeps (from left to right) and to reduce to the bare minimum eye-pauses and eye-regressions.

Much slow, hesitant and uncomprehending reading has been shown to be due to a mechanical distraction or over-emphasis on a word or words or letter units.

It has been demonstrated that these distractions therefore interfere with the formation of correct reading habits, and that they can largely be eliminated or reduced through proper presentation of new material and through carefully constructed exercises which lead the child to first recognize and read the sentence as a whole – afterwards breaking it up into its separate words.

It is suggested that each new step, i.e. learning words, making phrases and then learning the whole sentence, be developed and practiced by the educator first. Further practice may be gained from the development pages in the workbooks, prior to reading the entire “story” in which these preliminary or preparatory steps have their application.

Children should at first be exposed to the “look and say” portions of workbooks, prior to actually reading the story and the preliminary phonic work, i.e. the individual words and phrases, should be developed independently in a child’s first “look and say” primer. In this event we make extensive use of the “220 Dolch words” being the 220 most common used words learned by children from primer to Grade 3 level. Of course this varies from country to country and culture to culture, but the basics remain the same.

In all activities it is imperative that the child be allowed to develop at their own pace and that the learning activity be a fun and interactive activity. This serves to encourage a more enthusiastic approach to learning in this manner.

Donnette E Davis, single WAHM and mother to 6, passionate homeschooler and author of children’s educational ebooks. Host and webmistress of St Aiden’s Homeschool, South Africa. Our website is updated almost daily with free teacher/parent and student resources, with activities for very little people right up to adults, and includes educational resources for family health and family law. http://www.staidenshomeschool.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Donnette_E_Davis

Phonic Awareness and Teaching Guides For Young Children

Footsteps on the Road to Learning
First Phonics for Early Learners

154 pages,
52 Lessons
5.88 MB
only $3.00

Footsteps on the Road to Learning ~ First Phonics Book

This book is suitable for those children who are commencing their reading and writing educational journey, ideally preschool to Grade 1, although exercises in cursive handwriting have been included for the older child. Only about six new words are to be mastered in each lesson. These new words and the new elementary sounds are always to be found in the vocabulary of the lesson in which they are first used.

The plan of the book enables the educator to pursue the Phonic Method, the Word Method, the Alphabet Method, or any combination of these methods.

There are 52 phonics lessons with a number of fun activities in each lesson. That is one lesson for every week of the year. At the end of the book are handwriting exercises in both tracing and cursive handwriting for more common three letter words. The cursive Alphabet in lower and upper case can be found towards the end of the book, as well as 3 pages of handwriting lines : tracing, cursive and standard lines.

Colourful illustrations have been used throughout, and the skilled teacher will be able to use them to great advantage. Printable Flash Cards and Sight Word cards are included for most of the lessons.

The script exercises throughout the book and the writing exercises at the end have been specially written and carefully prepared for this book; they may be used to teach the reading of cursive, and as exercises in learning to write.

I have no doubt that you will find this book a fun, useful and necessary addition to your educational material.

Blessings to you and your little one on your educational journey.
Footsteps on the Road to Learning ~ First Phonics Book