Sharla Kostelyk

What is the Right Math Curriculum for Your Homeschool?

I’m in the final stages of finalizing what we will be using for our curriculum this year and am doing well in choosing every subject except for Math. We had been using Math U See and it works well for some of our kids, but not for all of them.

$What is the Right Math Curriculum for your Homeschool? A breakdown of the different math curriculums available$ There are many factors to consider when it comes to choosing math curriculum. Math is my least favourite subject and the one that is my personal weakness so I am not confident in teaching it. When the kids were younger and I was only teaching simple addition, choosing curriculum wasn’t as big of an issue, but as they get older, the stakes get higher.

In our family, there are also several special needs to consider and a variety of learning styles so there may not be a one-size-fits-all curriculum for us. My preference would be to use just one math program for all of the kids but I am going into this search open to the possibility that I may end up having to go with more than one program and customizing it for each child.

I reached out to my fellow homeschooler bloggers for their help and advice on this curriculum quest and they have not let me down! With their help, I have compiled a list of math curriculum reviews that may help you or I in choosing a homeschool math curriculum.

There are many other math curriculum options including Singapore, Abeka, ALEKS, BJU, Lifepac, Math Mammoth, Christian Light Education, Switched on Schoolhouse, and more.

$What is the right math curriculum for your homeschool square$ If you have any experience you can share regarding the math curriculum you are using or have used in the past, please add it into the comments section. I’m looking for all the help I can get with this decision and I know that your experience will also help others with their choice as well.

$Math Board Games for Kids$ Math Board Games for Kids

The Kissing Hand Activities

By Sharla Kostelyk

The Kissing Hand book by Audrey Penn has been a book that we have read a fair bit over the years especially in preparing the kids to be away from us for a period of time such as getting them ready for their first sleepover at their grandparent’s house. Recently, we were preparing some of the kids to go to sleep away camp for the first time so I pulled the The Kissing Hand book out again and used it as a starting point for discussion about their feelings about going away and to reassure them that our love would stay with them while they were away.

The Kissing Hand Activities

The Kissing Hand

The Kissing Hand is a book that we used to use with some of our foster kids in conjunction with their biological parents as a way to teach them that they could carry the love of their parents with them even when they weren’t with them. In the book, a little raccoon is nervous about being away from his mom on his first day of school and she kisses the palm of his hand and tells him that if he is feeling scared or lonely, he can press his palm to his cheek and feel her love with him.

When we used to be foster parents, if we had contact with a child’s biological parents, we would explain about the Kissing Hand book and ask that they kiss the child’s palm when they visited them and that way, we were able to remind that child that their mom or dad’s love stayed with them even at our house. was helpful for the kids but it also was helpful in reaching out to the biological families and helping them to see that we were both on the same side.

We still occasionally pull the book out with our own kids and with some of our kids going off to camp, we read the book again and talked about how my love would be going along with them. I also talked about how God would be with them at camp too (the book does not mention God).

I used the book as a kick-off for them to talk about their feelings about going away, to talk about other times they may have felt nervous and to brainstorm other ideas for how they could manage their feelings while they were away.

I of course kissed the palm of their hands and had them do the same to mine and we practised pressing them to our cheeks.

The Kissing Hand Crafts

To reinforce the “kissing hand” concept, they traced their hands on coloured paper, cut them out and then pressed a heart onto the palm using red paint and a stamp we made from an apple.

I found this Kissing Hand activity idea too late but there is a cute snack idea to go along with The Kissing Hand book that incorporates chocolate kisses on Kidney-Garden.

I’m linking this up with iHomeschool Network’s A Book and a Big Idea. Find all kinds of other activity ideas to correspond with many incredible children’s books…

Looking for a way to help your kids manage those strong emotions?

Click on the link>>> Teaching Emotions Toolkit

I’ve put together an emotional toolkit full of fun printable games and activities for parents to teach their kids about emotions and how to manage them.

Click here for more ways to teach feelings:

Feelings Jenga Game

Children’s Books About Emotions

Feeling Activities For Preschoolers

Free Printable Emotion Faces

How To Teach Kids Emotional Regulation

Mom’s Monday Macaroni

By Sharla Kostelyk

This is the first meal I ever learned to make. In fact, when I got married, this Mom’s Monday Macaroni recipe and a veggie pizza appetizer were the only things I knew how to make! My poor husband was a very good sport. To this day, he still thinks of this as one of his favourites! I think it’s probably just sentimental familiarity.

There is some discrepancy as to the origins of this recipe. I have a vague recollection that it either came from my Auntie Judy or my Gramma.

Mom’s Monday Macaroni Recipe:

1 Tablespoon butter
1/2 cup chopped onion

Sauté onion in butter and transfer to a casserole dish. Add:

1 1/2 cups UNCOOKED macaroni noodles
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
19 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 cup water
pepper, oregano, basil, crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

Stir. Cover and bake at 350° for 65 minutes.

Buried Treasure Discovery

By Sharla Kostelyk

This is something that I’ve had planned for awhile. It’s even something I put in my Summer Bucket List. This is the one thing in this 5 Days of Summer Sensory Activities that did cost more than a few dollars. I went to the bank and bought a roll of quarters ($10) and a roll of nickels ($2) and hid them in our sand pile. If you don’t have a sandpile, a box of rice or dried lentils would work just as well.

I then let the kids dig and sift to their hearts’ content but I made it clear beforehand that all money found would be pooled at the end and divided equally among them so that there wouldn’t be any fighting. Another idea I had that would work well for a traditional sandbox would be to rope off sections using ribbon or tape and assign each child a section, being sure to put equal amounts of money in each section. Or of course, you could divide up the money beforehand, hiding it one bit at a time and letting the kids search one at a time but that would take far too much time in my opinion and may lead to complications if one child weren’t able to find all of his treasure.

It’s obvious that we have had fighting occur with things like this in the past since you can tell that I’ve put quite a lot of time into thinking about that aspect of it! If you are the parent of an only child or children that never squabble, it’s lucky that you won’t have to make those considerations!

I have to say that it was pretty fun watching them explore and find the coins. I’m glad that I did this with actual money. In the past, I’ve done treasure hunts with pretend coins and it’s still really fun for them but this was such an unexpected surprise that they could hardly believe it! They talked about what they would do with all their riches afterwards!

For more fun activities, you may want to follow my Kids Activities Board on Pinterest.

Edible Freezie Painting

By Sharla Kostelyk

This was one of those activities that probably was better conceptually than it actually was in reality but the kids were just happy to have an excuse to get to eat a freezie!

I used fingerpainting paper because it is glossy and doesn’t tear easily. Incidentally, this seems to be my go-to paper for all edible art projects as it is also what we use for pudding painting and condensed milk painting.

This is as simple as cutting the tops off of store-bought freezies (or making your own) and handing them to the kids to paint or drip onto the paper. Some of the kids chose more of an abstract creation while some chose to make shapes or houses or trees.

Some of my kids even chose to lick their papers! And of course all of them chose to eat the rest of their freezie when they were done their painting! (a few clever kids even convinced me that their art needed more than one colour, therefore they needed a second freezie to complete their masterpiece!)

This is part of my series of Summer Sensory Activities.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

Frozen Treasure Find

By Sharla Kostelyk

I find that it’s so much easier to think of fun sensory activities when the weather is nice! While this activity did require some prep work on my part, it was so worthwhile because this kept the kids occupied for a very long time!

I actually made one big frozen treasure find for the kids all to work on together and then little ones for each of them just for fun.

For the individual ones, I used empty yogourt containers and put a few small items in each. I used glittery foam stickers, sequins and pompoms. I then filled them with water and froze them. The little ones were much more challenging to unmold than the big one was, but after having them sit in water for a minute, they came out easily.

The larger one took more time to make as I made it in layers. I used an empty ice cream bucket and placed some items at the bottom before adding a layer of water. I then put that in the freezer and when it had set, I added a few more items and a layer of water that I had added some blue food paste to so that it created layers of blue. The interesting thing is that the layers of regular water I added afterwards each took on a bit of the blue but less with each layer, creating a really cool effect that was completely unintentional!

The weather hadn’t been great, so I wasn’t in a rush to complete this and took a few days of adding layers here and there and keeping it in the freezer in between.

For the “treasures”, I used a few play coins, sequins, ocean life shaped ice cubes, pompoms, silk flowers, foam stickers, string that I wound through the layers, toy fish, and mini pinwheels. I tried to stick with a summer theme.

I ran the bucket under the water for a few seconds to release the ice creation from the ice cream pail and set it outside for the kids to play with. They used spray bottles, squirt bottles, a turkey baster, and plastic spoons to try to release the treasures from the ice.

This occupied them for a long time and it morphed into a bit of a science project as they decided to experiment with different temperatures of water in their bottles and with different techniques. It was also a good way to cool off on a hot summer day!This project is part of my series on Summer Sensory Activities.

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get your Sensory System Behaviours Easy Reference Cards.

Sharla Kostelyk

Teaching Textbooks

Right Start Math

Life of Fred

Miquon

Math U See

Horizons Math

Saxon

Rod & Staff Math

Time4Learning

Math on the Level

A+ TutorSoft Interactive Math

Beast Academy Math

Shiller Math (based on the Montessori method)

Ray’s Arithmetic

Khan Academy

Other

The Kissing Hand Activities

The Kissing Hand

The Kissing Hand Crafts

Looking for a way to help your kids manage those strong emotions?

Click on the link>>> Teaching Emotions Toolkit

Click here for more ways to teach feelings:

Mom’s Monday Macaroni Recipe: