Fun with Shapes - Free Pentominoe Print Outs

A few days ago our son told us about trapezoids - how one is created by cutting off a piece from a trianlge... I thought lets do some activities on shapes then. While browsing for some lessons or worksheets a came across the pentomino puzzle. I liked those as a girl (and turns out I still do)and thought lets try.

We drew them on paper ourselves, so there would be practice for coloring, cutting and counting as well. Turned out even our almost 2 year old wanted to do a puzzle! (of course he can't find a solution yet, but coloring those puzzle pieces and playing around with them seemed to make him happy ;-))
It's fun! There are so many solutions - it's always worth trying again...

Here I found a nice free pentominoe printout:
http://www.scholastic.com/titles/chasingvermeer/pentominoes.pdf

If your child likes to play online:
http://www.scholastic.com/blueballiett/games/pentominoes_game.htm

And here is some history and more information for older children & adults:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomino

Shadow, Temperature, Light - Free Science Lesson

SInce we had some snow in the last few days, we could observe what the sun can do with the snow and what shadow can prevent to happen to the snow:

this picture shows what we discovered:
...photo of the deck behind our house
Where the sun could not reach the snow, it was still there! It was simply not as warm in the shade as it was in the sun.(Our son came to this conclusion by himself (he's 6 yrs old)).
We looked around for some more evidence of this "Play by Nature" and found it here:

The sun could'nt melt the snow where the fence's shadow was on the gras.
...photo taken in our backyard

We might look into this tpoic a bit more once we have more snow.

Free Origami Instructions

We're having some fun activities besides the homework from public school (Our official homeschooling start is after Christmas):

Our son brought home some origami-like folded animals. I told him that we have a book with lots and lots of instructions to fold awesome things. He went for it! Now we're folding and folding and can't stop.

It's a perfect way for practicing shapes and fine motorskills for a kindergartner or 1st grader.
If you don't have a book on hand, here are some free origami online instructions:

Christmas Tree:
http://www.davidpetty.me.uk/mom/mom30.htm

Candy Cane:
http://www.origami-resource-center.com/candy-cane-diagram.html

Star Box (to serve some homemade cookies):
http://www.davidpetty.me.uk/mom/mom41.htm

Bat (my son LOVED this one):
http://www.nickrobinson.info/origami/diagrams/bat.htm

Pilgrim Story - Folded Boat:
http://www.origamiwithrachelkatz.com/stories/pilgrims.htm

Math and Science or Baking LEGO-Cookies

Who would have thought, that doing math could be so much fun! Well, eating the results certainly was ;-)

We did bake some cookies - from scratch of course - today. And since so many numbers and reactions are involved I decided that this joyful activity could be as well a lesson on measuring, adding, comparing etc. I just have to find the correct terms to match the curriculum and - voila - 2 hours are added to our tracking system.

I wish I could post some pictures, but my 'point and shoot' doesn't work anymore - I have to wait for Santa...

Homeschooling it is

Finally, the decision is made!

We thought about the option of homeschooling for a long time, weighed the pros and cons. For now it seems to be the best solution for our family, especially for our son.

We're looking forward!

I hope I can keep this post current. Supposedly it should help learning from our adventure or everyone who's asking themselves as well: "Is homeschooling right for me, for our family?!"
"Is homeschooling for free really possible?"

Good luck to all of us ;-)