Evan-Moor Skill Sharpeners Geography Grade K

Geography is a hugely diverse subject that can be taught in many ways. Some years, our family includes geography with our history, and at other times, we do independent geography. We have a big family trip coming up in honor of my oldest son’s graduation. With that in mind, I wanted to give my kindergartner a good overall exposure to geography to prepare him for the trip. That made the opportunity to review Evan-Moor’s Skill Sharpeners Geography from Timberdoodle an easy choice.

What Is Skill Sharpeners Geography?

The Skill Sharpeners Geography Grade K book is a consumable text designed to introduce kindergarten students to various geography concepts, including map skills, landforms, bodies of water, the globe, and weather in our world.

The book contains four units: Map Skills, Looking at the World, Landforms and Bodies of Water, and Weather in Our World. In addition, those four units are separated into two to five lessons per section.

Each lesson includes a couple of pages of introductory geography texts to teach the concept to the student. There are also ideas for talking to your child about the covered concepts. Next are written practice activities and a hands-on activity. Finally, at the end of each section, there is a certificate of completion to celebrate their hard work.

The written work is designed with kindergarten students in mind, including activities like coloring, tracing, connecting similar objects, crossing out wrong answers, or circling correct pictures.

The book contains full-color pictures to help non-readers understand the concepts (though the parent will need to do some reading and explanations).

How We Used Skill Sharpeners Geography Grade K

There are a variety of ways to use this book. In our family, we chose to do one lesson each week. This makes the book last about fifteen weeks, perfect for completing it in one semester with a little wiggle room for busy weeks.

My son enjoyed doing all of one lesson in a day; it usually took him about thirty minutes to complete an entire lesson. However, you could spread the lesson out and do one activity per day. If you want the book to last for a whole school year, you could spread the lessons over two weeks and add additional reading or activities.

The hands-on activities were often cutting and pasting, which my son enjoyed, but were also very simple for me to facilitate. The only additional materials required were scissors and a glue stick.

There is also an answer key at the back of the book in case there are any questions about correct answers (though generally, at this level, the answers were self-explanatory).

What We Thought/Conclusions

Overall, we were delighted with this book. I felt like the concepts covered gave my son a general understanding of the fundamental physical geography concepts. This will make it easier for him to learn more as we travel because he will have the basic vocabulary and understanding already mastered.

My son enjoyed the book and looked forward to that part of our weekly school time. He loved the pictures, and the activities were engaging. I appreciated that it kept things simple so that it was not overwhelming.

I would recommend this book to any student in Kindergarten (or even first and second grades) who needs a basic understanding of physical geography concepts. The book is engaging and easy to implement. Go to the Timberdoodle website to learn more and purchase your copy. You can also check out the other levels offered for older students and to continue their geography studies.

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When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

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This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

Simple Summer Learning Ideas

Each summer looks different in our family, but I always need a break from our school schedule. Our schedule with two teens is a bit busier than usual this year. My teens love church camp and are spending several weeks attending as campers and helping as junior counselors, my son is in the busy season of his farming business, and my daughter also has several weeks of day camp for her music.

Some links in this post are affiliate links, see disclosure below.

I didn’t want to overfill my plate, but I did want to make sure to spend some time focused on my two younger boys as well. We are making a conscious effort to include plenty of time for homemade popsicles, read-alouds, and water play in our days. (Check out our summer bucket list post for more ideas on this.)

However, I also wanted to include some educational activities for them without making it feel like we were “doing school .” I found a lot of great free or inexpensive options for fun summer learning. These are great for various ages and can keep children growing and engaged while having a great summer.

Science Courses

Journey Homeschool Academy (our go-to choice for high school science) is offering several online science camps that are fun for the whole family. They send an email with a video once a week, so it is a small time commitment but a great way to engage together as a family.

Art Camp

We have been using art lessons from Nana over at ChalkPastel.com for years, and we love them. They have some fantastic ideas for using the lessons to create your own summer art camp. In our area, the days can get really hot, so by lunchtime, I am looking for activities that my children can do inside to get a break from the heat. Art lessons are the perfect solution. We try to do art throughout the year, but it is much easier to make extra time for it during the summer and encourage my children’s creativity. Their summer camp ideas are all included with their membership.

Summer Reading Programs

There are some excellent summer reading programs available. First, I highly recommend checking with your local library. Ours has some great summer activities and reading logs, the kids can fill out to earn prizes for their reading. Books a Million, Barnes and Nobles, and Book It all also offer summer reading programs that are free.

Nature Study

While it does get hot here in the summer, and we often try to spend afternoons indoors, we enjoy spending lots of time outside exploring and playing together. Summer is a great time for nature study. There are so many plants blooming and fruiting, birds and animals are active and visible, and if you live close to water like we do, you can cool off at the river or lake while exploring. You can study nature simply by being outside, observing, and reading about what you see. However, if you’d like help or some fun ideas, my two favorite nature study resources are our Homeschool Nature Study membership and the Peterson First Guides.

Bowling

This one may not be educational in the traditional sense, but it is a great way to get in some physical activity in the air conditioning on those really hot or rainy days. This free summer bowling program is valid at hundreds of bowling alleys across the US. Our family loves it because it is so inexpensive (2 free games per day for the children, and adults can join at a very discounted rate to be able to bowl with them) and lots of fun.

Enjoy Your Summer

Finally, make sure to take time to relax and have fun. We love including educational activities throughout the summer, but there is value in downtime and play and fun. Do not feel you must plan and schedule every minute of the day or week. We include 2 or 3 things each week that are fun and educational and read most days. That allows for plenty of free time and creativity.

What fun and educational ideas do you have for this summer?

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Have you signed up for #LifeSkillsNOW? This is such a fun and beneficial program.

Life skills help kids be confident, capable, and ready for anything.
Your kids and teens will build critical thinking and know deep down that they can do hard things.
Productive screen time instead of passive scrolling
The #LifeSkillsNow Screentime Promise: We promise to give your kids the shortest amount of (productive) screentime possible, and then OFF into the real world.
Expose your kids to topics you’ve never thought about (and might not know yourself).
Bridges the gap in traditional education with practical life skills, critical thinking, tech savvy habits, and understanding money

If your feeling a bit overwhelmed with homeschooling and all the decisions and options, check out this boot camp with Kerry Beck that is live next week!

Journey Homeschool Science has some great online summer camps coming up soon! They are a fun way to keep the learning going for the whole family.

Giving the Gift of Art: Art of the Month Club

*Some links are affiliate links; see full disclosure below*

My eight-year-old wanted to give gifts to many of the special people in his life, and he had been saving up his money to be able to purchase gifts. However, he is eight, so his budget was still limited. He wanted to be able to do something special, but that didn’t cost a fortune.

We discussed it, looked at his budget, and designed a fun idea that would be special and inexpensive.

What is the Art of the Month Club?

He created Benjamin’s art of the month club. You could title it whatever you wanted and choose the frequency that works for you, but the idea is that they would be getting new art once a month.

We found artwork frames that are easy to open, add new artwork, and store the older painting. We purchased ours from Michaels Craft Store, but you can also find similar ones on Amazon.

(I did realize after purchasing that I was going to need to get some bigger paper to fit well into the frame, and I was able to get these pads relatively inexpensively.)

Benjamin loves doing paintings with chalk pastels or acrylics and often gives them away. This idea allowed him to gift art in a way that made them easy to display and store.

He used one of the beautiful nativity chalk pastel lessons from Nana at ChalkPastel.com to put into the frames. Then we typed up a paper that explained to the recipient that each month for the next year, they would receive a new painting from Benjamin.

With the frames he gave them, they can simply open the frame and put the new picture on top of the old one. Super simple and easy, even for those with strength or motor skills issues.

With our You Are An Artist Membership, Benjamin has access to hundreds of different lessons and can choose a new painting each month that goes with the season, a holiday, or just something he thinks the recipient will enjoy.

Other Art Gift Ideas

Benjamin gave these to both sets of grandparents. Since he gifted it to the pair, he had a meaningful Christmas gift for two people for about $15. He also chose some simple document frames from the dollar tree to put paintings in for some other relatives and neighbors whom he was gifting just one picture.

While we used this idea for Christmas gifts, it would work great for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or a birthday.

He loves creating and sharing his creations, and the people in his life enjoy seeing his art and knowing he was thinking about him when he did his paintings.

If you are looking for even more ideas for gifting art, you can check out this post about The Art of Kindness.

Do you use any artwork for your gifts? I would love to hear other ideas for sharing your art with those you love.

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library, you will get a link and password to the library; we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you updated on what we have going on.

Resource Library

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always, I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in, and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

Deals and Freebies

If you have not tried SchoolhouseTeachers.com, you don’t want to miss this sale!

This Celebration Bundle is a great deal, and you can use code: schoolinswag to get an extra 10% off! There are over 60 products to add fun and celebration to your homeschool throughout the year.

My favorite fitness program has a new membership. Fit2B Lite offers a few great workouts that change every month for an even lower monthly rate. You can try this program out right now for less than $4 a month, and you get a free 7-day trial. It is a great way to get started on your new fitness goals without the overwhelm of hundreds of workouts to choose from.

Feeding the Hobbits or Homeschool Snacks

The Review Crew is talking about homeschool snacks this week and I wanted to share a few of our favorite healthy snack ideas. I don’t know if we read too much Tolkien or if it is just being at home all day, but my children eat like hobbits.

They want three meals and lots of snacks. So it is important to me to have easy, healthy, and inexpensive options available.

*Some links are affiliate links, see disclosure below for more information*

Healthy Homeschool Snacks

I have learned that if I keep the healthy homeschool snacks easily available and the treats not as easily accessible it is easier to make sure that we are eating a healthy diet. We all enjoy the occasional cookie or brownie but I try to mostly make those homemade so that they aren’t always around.

Fruits and Vegetables

Fruit and Vegetables tend to make great healthy snacks but can sometimes be expensive. I have found that I can keep it inexpensive by choosing fruit that is currently in season, growing some of our own, or using vegetables like carrot sticks that are almost always inexpensive at our local grocery store.

Right now we are enjoying all of the fresh strawberries! Our local u-pick has them for only $1.35 a pound. They are so sweet and tasty, but also full of vitamins.

If you want to make vegetables more exciting you can add a dip or make them into shapes. We sometimes give them a variety and they can make their own creations before eating them.

Protein

When children are growing, they can often need extra protein and it is a great way to keep them full a little longer. My children love beef jerky and it is great for being easy and nutritious but it can get expensive.

For cheaper high protein options, we like boiled eggs, peanut butter balls, cheese sticks, or mixed nuts. I have also found that by using Ibotta, I can often get really good deals on protein bars.

For those days when they are extra hungry between meals, these tuna kits are a great snack. They are more that what we would often eat for a snack, but packed with protein.

Salty Snacks

Buying chips and snacks in bulk packaging is often the cheapest way to go. We especially love buying big bags of popcorn kernels that the children can pop in the air popper.

However, I have found that if I buy the individual serving sizes it makes portion control a lot easier. It also makes it easier to bring snacks on the go. To get a better deal on snacks like Veggie Chips, Apple Straws, and popcorn bags, I like to use Amazon Subscribe and Save.

The newest favorite in our house are these Simply Cheetos! We love that they don’t have dyes and are healthier than the regular version but very tasty!

Tell Us More!

Do your children seem to always want a snack? What are your favorite snacks?

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Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

Resource Library

Deals and Freebies

Fit2B is having a great Mother’s Day sale! I highly recommend them as an excellent fitness program and they are tummy safe!

Up to 75% off Science and STEM from Evan Moor!

FREE Month of Kindle Unlimited: I have been using this for my own pleasure reading as well as books for my son and daughter and really enjoying it.

PhotoSnack for Your Special Events!

I’m a very busy mom this month. Numerous special events coming up at church, out of town visitors coming, our daughter’s graduation to plan, VBS to organize…the list goes on. I want to tell you about my journey to the land of Slide Show Happiness!

I wanted to put together a little slide show for our daughter’s graduation party. I started gathering photos…hunting through Facebook albums, scouring various folders on my computer, editing, formatting, downloading. All very time consuming things. Then came the equally time consuming quest to find a tool to help me put together this slide show…I’d never done one before. **Cue the ominous music.**

I experimented with downloading programs (and then uninstalling them) in what seemed like an endless, disappointing cycle. Why couldn’t I find a tool that was reasonable, had the features I wanted, and didn’t require a manual and an associate’s degree to get it to work?

After the last attempt, I decided to search one more option, called PhotoSnack. I’d never heard of it before, but I liked it immediately. All I had to do was plug in my email address, and I was ready to play with all the tools and options.

I selected a title and description for my project. I found it was super easy to download photos, either by clicking the “Browse” button, or dragging and dropping.

I just had to click and drag photos to rearrange. On the Customize screen, I chose what type of template I wanted…how I wanted the presentation to look when moving from one image to the next. I chose “Simple Fade.”

Next, I selected a color as background (nice patterns and textures are also available). I could include my own background music or choose from those offered on the site. All of this is tweakable, to get it just right.

The free version of the tool allows you to make a presentation with 15 photos, and you can share your final product on Facebook and Twitter.

Here are the packages they offer:

You can check out examples here. You can “Like” their Facebook page here for special discounts and contests!

In addition to the slide show tool, look at this extensive list of other “Snack Apps” which are available! This is literally your “one stop shop” for online, easy to use apps, for sure!

I don’t have a lot of time to play with all these wonderful options at present, but I did go explore snackwebsites and “pretend” I was setting up a blog. It was very intuitive, with immediate response time, and I had this set up in less than ten minutes:

Pretty neat! You really need to go explore this site!

My graduation slide presentation was very easy to put together, and it has a nice, personal feel to it. Inside of an hour, I had everything customized the way I wanted it. I showed it to our daughter, and she just sat there, hugging the laptop, grinning from ear to ear. It was an effortless gift of time and thoughtful organization to me…to her, it was a loving journey of her life, capturing precious memories that can be shared with all the special people at her celebration.

Thank you, PhotoSnack!

Charlotte Mason Freebies

If you are a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, or have heard the name but are unfamiliar with this approach, Old Schoolhouse Magazine has plenty to offer:

Who is Charlotte Mason? What is copywork? What are nature studies? What is art study? What is literature-based math? What is twaddle? What are living books? You will find out all about this gentle teaching approach at this week’s freebie links!

I use the Ambleside Online curriculum mentioned here. They’ve done a great job of organizing and providing links for many of the books free online. I have also found the “Charlotte Mason Companion” to be helpful. Just click on the image to follow a link to Amazon.com.

Hope these are a blessing to you.