Free Phonics Website for Pre-K and Up.

I just wanted to share this great website I found for my daughter the other day. 

http://www.starfall.com/ 

It's a free website (YAY!) that is geared toward teaching phonics - perfect for our little ones!  My daughter is in love with it!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we have.  :)

The Busy Bag

"What is a Busy Bag?", you ask?  We'll get to that in a moment.  :)

I'm Kristin from over at  Homemaker@Heart currently lending my "expertise" (yeah right Lol) to MandyMom and sharing my homeschooling experiences.  I have a 3 1/2 year old daughter who is SO eager to learn, everyday is an adventure to her (and to myself).  This is our first "official" year of homeschooling. - preschool! :)  I'm winging it and Kylie is loving every minute of it! 

Back to the Busy Bag....

My Grandmother made this very bag for me when I was about 6 years old. (If you do the math, she made this bag roughly 20 years ago!)  You know how Grandma's keep everything.  :)  I was near near tears when I saw Kylie's face as she tore the wrapping paper off of this on Christmas morning!  I remembered how much fun I had with this, how I carted it everywhere with me and now Kylie was going to get that same experience! 

This is what was inside:

A deck of cards - we use these to play Old Maid, War and Slap Jack (or Slap Queens, sevens or twos) "My First Dictionary" - which is great because there is large colorful pictures that go with the definitions, construction paper - which we'll use for just about everything, Go Fish - this deck is kind of neat.  Instead of asking for numbers, in this game you ask for either animals or letters.  IE you can either ask for "b's" or "bears", 120 Bible sing-a-long songs and a work book.  Hours and hours of homeschooling fun and lots of knowledge to be learned. 

There is also a  pocket on one side that holds pencils, one on the otherside that holds a ruler and the scissors, glue and crayon pockets in the front. 

This morning Kylie lugged this bag up to the kitchen table while I was doing up the breakfast dishes and got back down.  A few moments later she came back with 2 bears and a dolly.  I let her go and kept doing things in the kitchen.  A moment later I hear her taking to her stuffed animals "Now you need to obey Mommy.  Today we're going to read about Winnie the Pooh."  I asked her what she was doing and she said "I'm homeschoolin' my bears Mom, they need to learn too!"