Sharla Kostelyk

Our Top 10 Read-Alouds

There are some books that as a family, you just go back to over and over and they become part of your family’s culture and vocabulary. For us, those books have become worn and tattered over the years, but they still hold such a special place in our hearts.

It was hard to narrow it down to just 10 books. In fact, I had to come back and update the list to add more than just 10 because I didn’t want some of the other ones that are so dear to me to feel left out (!).

Our favourite read-alouds for kids:

I Promise I’ll Find You Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type Leah’s Pony I Love You, Stinky Face I Don’t Have Your Eyes A Bad Case of Stripes I Love You More Than Rainbows Big Red Barn Oh, the Places You’ll Go!I Feel Orange Today 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore Animalia

I Promise I’ll Find You – Oh, how I love this heartwarming book about how a mother would search to the ends of the Earth to find her child. The kids love not only the message of the book, but finding the child on each page. Also, a portion of the proceeds of the book goes to fund finding missing children, so what’s not to like about that?!

Click, Clack Moo…Cows That Type – How can you not love a book that features typing cows?! We’ve been reading this one for years and the kids still ask for it, though they pretty much have it memorized. We did a mini unit on it and you can check out the corresponding activities we did here.

Leah’s Pony – Some of you who’ve followed my blog for awhile may be sick of hearing about how much we love this book! I love a book that makes me cry every time I read it and that teaches good values and provides opportunity for discussion. This one about a girl growing up during the Depression provides opportunities to discuss history, family, and the goodness of people.

I Love You Stinky Face – Any book that has the word “stinky” in the same sentence as the word “love” has to be a classic! This book reassures kids that we love them no matter what!

I Don’t Have Your Eyes – We own an awful lot of adoption related books for the kids, but this seems to be the one that they like the best. It’s especially good for transracial adoption.

A Bad Case of Stripes – This is another book that we loved so much, we turned it into a mini unit! This book is just awesome…if you have never read it, you are missing out! You can see the crafts and activities we used to go along with this book here.

I Love You More Than Rainbows – When I look over this list, I’m suddenly aware of what a sap I am! Apparently, if it’s a book about how much I love my kids, I love to read it to them! This one is one of those that has really seeped its way into everyday conversation. I say things to the kids like, “I love you more than Slurpees” or “I love you more than my special chocolate”. It’s fairly common to hear the kids say something like, “I love you more than my special blankie” or “I love you more than riding my bike”. Any book that can create conversation like that in our house is a winner in my books! We also expanded the book into learning about rainbows.

Big Red Barn – This book is usually for younger kids, but my kids still love it! I have had it memorized for years and the kids like it when I add in some animal sounds and they sometimes create a competition after we read it to see who can do the best animal sounds. This is just a simple, yet great book!

Oh, the Places You’ll Go – I couldn’t have a read-aloud list that didn’t include at least one Dr. Seuss and this is our favourite Dr. Seuss of all time! It has a great message. It helps the kids to talk about feelings and the future and it is a great gift for celebrating occasions such as graduation or baptism. It’s a keeper! We are huge Dr. Seuss fans and even held a party to celebrate his birthday.

I Feel Orange Today – When you have a child with Aspergers and some kids who have traumatic histories and are/have been in therapy, your bookshelf tends to collect titles about FEELINGS. We have many. Other favourites in this category are Today I Feel Silly, The Way I Feel and I Talk to God About How I Feel.

I know that’s 10 already, plus 3 more mentioned (what can I say…I really love books!), but I just have to mention 2 more because they are awesome and no library is complete without them.

17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore – I like a read-aloud that makes me laugh and this one does. If you have an active or strong willed child, this book will have you laughing or at the very least, nodding your head in agreement.

Animalia – This book is one of the first ones I ever bought with kids in mind. It was purchased before I had my kids and it still gets pulled out a lot. It has great illustrations, is cool and is a great alphabet reinforcement tool.

What are your family’s favourite read-alouds?

Top 10 Reasons My Kids Like Being Homeschooled

By Sharla Kostelyk

1. Muffin Tin Lunches

When asked by other kids why they like being homeschooled, one of the first things my kids say is “because we get awesome muffin tin lunches”!

2. Field Trips

Field trips are always fun!

3. Annual Homeschool Track Meet

This year’s track and field day happened to be yesterday and it did not disappoint!

4. Sensory Bins

These have been such an incredible addition to our homeschool this year. For our kids with sensory differences, they have been especially helpful, but they are a highlight for all the kids. I add all of their favourite sensory bins to one post for easy reference if you are looking for ideas.

5. Body Movement Breaks

I find the kids learn best when they have some movement moments dispersed through our learning time, so I have them take movement breaks. Their favourites are the trampoline and the parachute. If you are interested in the concept of brain breaks and getting some fantastic ideas, I would highly recommend The Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks.

6. Activities

There are so many wonderful opportunities for homeschool activities in our community offered during the day such as homeschool art classes, gymnastics, swimming, skiing.

7. Family Fun Night

Our themed Family Fun Nights that often incorporate something we are learning about, such as Titanic, are a huge hit!

8. Reading anywhere and everywhere

Their favourite places to read seem to be the bean bag chair, the trampoline and on the deck.

9. Math…this answer only came from Snuggle Puppy and for the record, the other kids do not agree!

10.Relationships with friends, extended family, mom and dad, and each other

My Top 10 Must-Haves for Homeschool

By Sharla Kostelyk

In no particular order:

1. Bible – we use this for reference, reading, scripture memorization, and devotions. I also use this Bible app on my phone (it’s free) and love it for being able to look up verses on the go or for reading the kids the verse of the day when they’re all piled in our bed in the morning!

2. Story of the World – our favourite curriculum

3. Paper, paper, and more paper – we often get free paper from workplaces of friends and family. We just flip it over and use the blank side in the printer or for drawing, doodling, and writing. We go through so much paper!

4. Simple Craft Supplies – glue, scissors, paint, markers, crayons, pipe cleaners, tissue paper, coloured paper, paper plates. We use a hanging shoe organizer to keep all of our craft supplies at the ready.

5. Books – all shapes, sizes, topics, and levels…WE LOVE BOOKS!

6. Imagination – something I try to nurture in my kids. When I find myself lacking in the imagination department, I look to others for inspiration (see #7).

7. Pinterest – this would have been a very boring year for the kids if I hadn’t discovered Pinterest! If you want to learn more about how it fits into homeschool, read my series on using Pinterest in homeschooling. As an added bonus, it’s free! Follow me on Pinterest to see what other projects we might try.

8. Patience – this is one of the top of the top must-haves for me. I don’t always have enough patience and some days, it feels like I have next to none and it feels like homeschooling takes every ounce that I have, but no one can successfully homeschool without it.

9. Prayer – our days always go so much better when we start together with prayer. Our prayer wall gives us all a visual and helps encouragement. And for me, a busy, sometimes stressed-out homeschool mom, prayer is everything.

10. Flexibility and Grace – the nature of homeschooling demands flexibility from year to year, day to day, and child to child. It is also necessary to give yourself grace. No one is perfect and us homeschool moms are no exception. I often have expectations of myself that no human being could live up to and am working on allowing myself more grace. I think grace is also a must for gifting our children with and for teaching them through action.

Pirate Week

By Sharla Kostelyk

Our pirate week was a lot of fun, but I managed to squeak in a bit of learning here and there too!

I found an awesome printable for an outdoor pirate nature scavenger hunt where the kids could find things in the yard. Pictured here:

-swashbuckling sword (stick)
-jewel (rock)
-ye eye patch (leaf)
-pirate’s hooks (curved sticks)
-two pirates sword fighting!

Other items found included gold doubloons (acorns), plundered pearls (berries), and a place to bury the treasure. This awesome printable is available on The Flourishing Abode. The kids had such a memorable time! It was a great kick off to the week!

The kids made pirate ships using foam kits and made a paper color and play pirate ship.

Snuggle Puppy sailed his ship on the high seas!

To incorporate math concepts into the pirate theme, we did math worksheets and interactive math using crocodiles and the less than/more than concept.

I found great pirate printables. The kids were able to work on math concepts, sentence structure, vocabulary, history, spelling, and story writing through these and other worksheets. For those interested, I am providing links to as many as I can remember.

Pirate Count and More

Sentences and Creative Writing

Vocabulary, History, Research

Spelling, Math, and Fun

The kids took turns making this pirate puzzle (Melissa & Doug):

The sensory bin is always popular and this week was no exception.

The pirate muffin tin lunch our first day was a huge hit!

There were some opportunities for dress-up.

We used some books of course as part of our study. For reference, we mostly used the Pirates Eyewitness Book. The kids especially enjoyed learning about all the different terms for pirates and how women pirates used to have to dress up like men!

For fun, we read The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything and the kids watched the Veggie Tales movie. As a read aloud, we read Grandma and the Pirates. It’s a book that we’ve had for a long time and for some reason, there’s just this goofy element to it that the kids really relate to and it was just perfect for this week’s theme!

To end the week off, we celebrated with a treasure hunt complete with maps with X marking the spot and loot! Each of the kids made a treasure map and hid the treasure for one of the other kids. To make the treasure maps, the kids crumpled a piece of white paper, tore off the edges, soaked the paper for a few minutes in tea water, and let them dry before drawing a map on them. The treasure included ring pops, sour keys (for opening a pirate’s chest!), and yo-yos (a play on “yo-ho-yo-ho”!).

Pirate Week Kick Off!

By Sharla Kostelyk

This week, we are going to be doing a pirate unit. I think I am even more excited than the kids are because there are so many really fun activities I’ve found to do! To kick off the week, I made a special pirate themed muffin tin lunch and set up a pirate sensory bin.

In the trays: cantaloupe pirate ship, ring pop, sweet potato swords with pirate toothpick, Babybel cheese cut with the red part cut to look like a bandana and face drawn with edible markers, teriyaki salmon, gold coins (chocolate) set in a pirate muffin tin liner and a gummy crocodile for Miss O. because she is allergic to the coins.
The sensory bin included a pirate toob, a compass, eye patch, doubloons, and two little pirate puzzles. I also set a pirate hat beside the bin in case the kids wanted to get into character while playing.

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

Magnets, Magnets, and More Magnets

By Sharla Kostelyk

For the past few weeks, we have been doing a study of magnets. It’s been interesting as well as fun.

For our magnet sensory bin, I paired it with worksheets for the kids to fill out with a spot for them to either write the name of the item or draw a picture of it (for my pre-readers) and then fill in whether it was magnetic or not.

The sensory bin is a very simple one of white rice and various household objects, not all of which are magnetic. I also included a strong magnet and a magnet wand.

I included magnet activities in the workbox rotation. These included:

magnetic wand and chips

cut up pipe cleaners in a plastic bottle that can be moved around using a magnet or magnetic wand on the outside was a very popular activity

file folder game of sorting objects into magnetic and non-magnetic categories

I gave the kids worksheets (you can get them here) with a pile of objects to kick start our magnet unit:

This was a fun activity and easy for all the kids to understand.

The kids did all kinds of activities and experiments using this Magnet Science kit. The one that the kids liked the best was when they could make it look like the little car was going on its own by moving a magnet under the table!

We also used Magnetic Marvels, a really neat kit that included lots of magnet tricks, which the boys loved and activities like extracting the iron from our cereal.

I also had plans to build a compass with the kids but the weather hasn’t been cooperating for that one, so we may pick that up when it gets nicer out. I think the neatest part about our magnet study was how easy it was to adapt to the different ages and ability levels of the kids. They made some great observations on their own and had a lot of fun with all of it!

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