Science Jim Show: Jr. Frog Saver

We are still working on the items we have saved up over the years in our Currclick account! Tomorrow is Save The frogs Day and we are doing a mini unit on frogs! This was the perfect start to our unit!

We were looking for some information about Save the Frogs Day and we came across this great video, and it's FREE!!! Science Jim host an interview with this sweet young lady and she tells us all about frogs and their importance in the environment. It's very short but fact filled! After we watched the video we were inspired to start out on little frog pond in our back yard! It's in the planning stages now and we can't wait until we see some frog visitors! The young girl in the video also has a facebook page as well as a you tube channel. She is so smart and we loved learning from her!

You can read more about her on her facebook page

The young lady also runs micro business from her home to raise money for non profits. She also created Care Cans This program brings nature to home bound folks. You can help by coloring nature cards for her to pack into the cans!

Any unit here at the Sack house includes library books! Here are the ones that we read!

Celebrate Earth Day with a Giveaway & Discount from Educents & Conscious Box!

Educents & Conscious Box have teamed up to offer you a chance to win a free Conscious Box – delivered right to your door! Conscious Box offers a monthly subscription service that delivers the purest, most natural products on the planet, right to your doorstep! You’ll be introduced to the purest, most ethical companies on the planet, every month! So what are you waiting for, sign up below for your chance to win and teach your kids about being eco-friendly! As you wait to find out if you’ve won the box, we encourage you to: Like Conscious Box (Facebook.com/ConsciousBox) and Educents (Facebook.com/Educents) on Facebook! Leave a comment and tell us why you want the box! Share the giveaway with your friends!

PLUS, if you aren’t the grand prize winner, you can still get a 3-month subscription to Conscious Box for less than $12/month by heading over to Educents.com. For one week only, Educents will be offering the Conscious Box for 40% off! In addition, ALL profits from the sale of this box will be donated to The One Fund, which will provide funds to help those families most affected by the tragic events that unfolded during Monday’s Boston Marathon. So enter to win, and then head on over to buy the Conscious Box for yourself or a friend to celebrate earth day and support our fellow Americans in Boston!

This giveaway is sponsored by Educents.com. Conscious Box only ships within the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. They can also ship overseas to APO addresses, as well as US territories. Educents, a flash-deal website, is an easy way to get huge discounts on the educational products you know and love (and maybe even some you’ve never heard of!)

In a world where education is becoming increasingly expensive, Educents is a company with a mission: to provide every family access to affordable educational materials. They focus exclusively on handpicked, unique educational materials including online curriculum, learning tools, educational toys, software, e-books, and more. With new deals added every day, Educents is quickly gaining popularity amongst parents, teachers, homeschoolers and learners of all ages. Come check out Educents.com to find your favorite brands at up to 90% off retail prices!

Good Luck! The giveaway ends Saturday, April 27, 2013. The winner will be contacted and on May 10, 2013, a Conscious Box will be sent to the winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Virtual Fieldtrip - Arlington National Cemetery

Arlinton is such an amazing place and I would love to take my children. One problem, it's 9 hours away from our home and we just don't have to time to take a long road trip right now. With Kathy's product: Virtual Fieldtrip - Arlington National Cemetery we did the next best thing, we made a visit via the internet. We started out by reading the introduction. This gave us some background information that prepared us for our "trip" Next we visited the websites that are listed. These were a collection of YouTube links, websites, and blog posts with pictures. This gave us a inside look of Arlington. What an amazing place! We all learned so much, mom included! After the virtual tours we went over some fun facts. Then we completed our lapbook that will showcase all that we have learned on our trip!

Also included are ideas from lunch and snacks. We plan to give some of these a try. They all had a patriotic theme to them. To wrap up our tour you need a souviner to take home. Ideas for craft projects are included. We plan to make the American Flag cards this weekend to send to our troops! Kathy has several other field trips in this series! We can't wait to do more! Please check her products out on Currclick if you are in the market for some fun ideas!

Pockets of Time for Junie B., First Grader Dumb Bunny/Currclick Review

We are still busy working our way through some of the items in our Curclcik account! One of the items that we are working on this week is the Pockets of Time for Junie B., First Grader Dumb Bunny

This was our first Pockets of Time purchase and it will not be our last! This is such a creative way to check for reading comprehension. My girls are 8 and 9, they do not enjoy writing so this was neat change of pace! The product comes with cards that the child colors a certain color. The cards have things that happened in the story written on them. After the chapter is read the cards are placed in order as they took place in the story. Coloring the cards gave my girls their hands something to do while I read aloud. The product also includes the pockets that you make to keep the cards in when you are done with the activity. The instructions were a little confusing so I emailed the publisher. She lead me to her website so that I could see photos of how the product was put together! This was VERY helpful! Great customer service!

For you visual folks (like me) this is what the pockets look like when you put them together, this is for Chapters One and Two

Here are the cards the girls are coloring, they are them cut apart and placed into the pockets.

I love happy faces during school time!

WE are excited to look into more products published by Fortunately For You Books. You can check them out on Currclick.com or on Facebook!

Draw the Magic Pink Fairy

For art time this week we have been working our way through a brand new book called Young artist (especially little girls) will love this drawing book. The instructions are very easy to follow. The pages are made of a thick high quality paper. Not only does it give details on how to draw fairies, it leads children on how to draw clothing, accessories and other magical things that might be found in the magical realm. My girls are 8 and 9 and they were able to draw many wonderful pictures using the directions found in the book. Here are some of the drawing that we have made this week!

One of my favorites, Emma's raccoon!

Another favorite the frog!

(We were given a free copy of the book for our honest review)

C is for Currclick! Blogging Through the Alphabet

Currclick.com is a homeschool mom's dream come true! They offer free and low cost material for all ages. They have classes and clubs to join as well.

Each Monday they offer a free download of some sort. I always try to snag them when they update! Some times it will be just something small to supplement your curriculum and other times it may be a whole unit study or lapbook. As holidays pop up, such as Christmas and Easter, they also hold scavenger hunts for chances to collect more freebies! As you can imagine my download library is FULL of great stuff. I am on a mission to use some of those great items! This week we have used quite a few!

Each month we attend the FREE American Girl book club. The meetings are recorded in case you can't make it at the time the club meets. We enjoy trying to make the live meetings. The teachers discuss the novel with the kids in the club and give them a chance to answer questions about the book. A history lesson is given as well. Craft and snack ideas are emailed to the parent prior to the club meeting. This month the book was Meet Rebecca. This months project is making a Tzedakah Box. This is used to collect money for charity. Perfect for this month because Evamarie is collecting change for Relay for Life as a community service project in 4-h!

For science one day this week we watched a video in our account that we had gotten for free at some point. It was by Science Jim. The video was called Mechanics 1: Gravity. The science teacher gave a lesson on gravity and showed us how to do a few experiments of our own.

Another item that we had in our library was called 730 Craft Recipes From St Aiden's Homeschool. This book is not as the title suggest. It's NOT filled with 730 craft recipes. It includes recipes, craft project ideas and a few science experiments as well. Most of the craft projects we have tried before. Fun stuff to have access too! It would have been helpful if the book had an index so that you could find the projects listed more easily. We looked over these ideas and tried a few. One that we really enjoyed was making our own sidewalk chalk!

I printed this out for Emma to pracice her handwriting. It's called A-Z Beginners Handwriting Book From Discovering Homeschool. It's FREE! It has all of the letters with room to practice them in upper and lower case. Then it gives a word to practice and room to draw at the bottom. We slipped this into our Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center This is perfect to take along in the car for carschooling!

I have TONS more great items in my library! Stay tuned for more posts on what we are using! If you have a currclick account I challenge you to start using those items! Let me know what your favorites have been! And if you don't have an account get signed up today!

B is for BOOKS! Blogging Through the Alphabet

In our homeschool B is for BOOKS! We love to read. One of our favorite places to go is our local library! We are there at least one a week, often more than that!

Our library bag is ALWAYS bursting at the seems!

We volunteer at our library's exam center. This is where publishers donate brand new books to our library. Most of the books are one that have just been published. This means that we often get special sneak peeks of great new books on the market. The only catch is that some one must read and review them before they are put into circulation. My family and I have read and reviewed about 1,000 book for them so far. We are glad that we can help.

We are like kids in a candy store when we visit this special section of the library. Look at all the books just waiting to be read!

This is just one shelf, there is another on right beside it that is JUST AS FULL! We are off to pick up a new stack today!