History Timeline Cards: Ancient Times

Up in the Shop is our World History: Ancient Times Timeline Cards and Booklet.  The file includes the following:

• 40 timeline cards of the ancient times (occurred between the period of 5000BC to 500BC). The timeline cards has
• 40 definition cards for each timeline card
• 3 pages of timeline sheets can be connected to form as a guide. The pages are in A4 paper size.

Check out how we used it here (History of Ancient Europe Study) and here (Study of the Timeline of European History).

Hope you like it, enjoy!

Get this here:

Object Baskets for Letters A to H

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I’ve been working hard for the past days organizing our object baskets for Vito’s phonics practice.  Vito knows his alphabet and numbers, he names half of the alphabet with their phonics sound.  Like he calls letter B as “bah”, and H as “huh”.  I guess this is the result of me teaching Vito the sound first, before the name of the letter itself. Something like “this is mmmmmmm, M” or “this is ssssssss, S”. 

What is an Object Basket

These are baskets that contain a letter along with 3 dimensional objects to match to the letter by beginning sound.  The concept behind this is similar to the object boxes of Montessori (for reading)  , but we are not going there yet.  The object baskets are simply for exploration, vocabulary and learning phonic sounds.

Assembling the Object Basket

Each of my basket has an uppercase and lowercase letter.  We are using the letters from Hape Uppercase and Lowercase puzzles and the Munchkin foam bath letters.  I wanted to add the magnetic letters from Melissa & Doug but I was thinking that there’s too much letters in basket already, so I’ll just reserve those for my future object boxes (reading). 

I wanted to add sandpaper letters but mine is a DIY years ago and its incomplete. I plant to get a set this Christmas as gift to self LOL but still waiting for the discounted price (hoping!).

Gathering objects is the most exciting part.  I would search in the kitchen, bedroom and my kids’ toys for appropriate objects to add in the basket.  Since Vito is only 2 years old, I limit the number of objects in the basket, maybe 3 – 5 only.  They don’t have that stamina and attention span for 10 objects so better keep it simple and avoid overwhelming the little ones. 

Object Baskets from Letters A to H

So I just completed these baskets, took photos and print the set so that it’s easier for me to assemble once we start with the activity (we’ll do this after the holidays).  Will display this on top of our shelf and worked on it after we do our daily routine of reading books.

A Basket:  alligator, ambulance, A foam letter, apple, A picture booklet

B Basket:  book, banana, block, B foam letter  and B picture booklet

C Basket: cow, carrots, C foam letter,  car and C picture booklet

D Basket:  dinosaur, diaper, Duplo, DIY sandpaper letter, letter D

E Basket: eye (McDonalds), elephant, egg (McDonalds), DIY sandpaper letter

F Basket: feather, four, letter F, upper and lowercase F, fork, flower, fish, fence, DIY sandpaper letter

G Basket: grapes, giraffe, goggle, upper and lowercase F, F foam letter,  DIY sandpaper letter

H Basket:  upper and lowercase F, DIY sandpaper letter, horse, heart, hanger, hippo, hammer, H foam letter

Ideally, we will work for on one letter a week, but this doesn’t always happen.  So I usually schedule the next change of basket after 2 weeks.  I am still gathering up objects for my second batch.  Hopefully I can finish it soon so I can share it with you.  And that’s it for the first set of my object baskets! Stay tuned for second set from I to P

Hope you find this inspirational!

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FREE Life Cycle Matching Cards

I have a bunch of life cycle figures which my Aunt brought from the US a few months ago.  I did not really intend to introduce them yet to Vito as he is too young.  But I observed that he’s into matching activities these days, so I managed to create matching cards for all of my life cycles. Wow, he definitely surprised me! He worked on all of these in one day and always picked these for his activity everyday!

How I Make Our Learning Cards

I’ve been wanting to post about this for the longest time but I just couldn’t convince myself to make one.  Anyway, let me share with you the complicated ways I create our learning cards.

So in our homeschool,  there are 3 ways I make our printables:

• Cards (Montessori cards, matching cards for Vito and seasonal themed cards)
• Learning booklets
• Mats and poster diagrams

Basic materials I used:

• laminator
• 125micron (a total of 240micron) or 5 Mil  laminating pouch
• 80micron (a total of 160 micron) or 3 Mil laminating pouch
• HP Inkjet 100gsm paper
• White cardstock (at least 160gsm) or 110lb Cardstock
• Colored cardstock (at least 160gsm) for borders
• One hole puncher
• binder rings

MAKING THE CARDS

Includes: nomenclature or 3 part cards cards, picture cards, matching cards, history cards, science cards… all cards used in general.

By default I used the combo: 125micron and 160gsm cardstock paper.  This will make the card really sturdy and hard enough for the little one to fold.  I don’t like doing A LOT OF CUTTING so what I do is I laminate then cut.

If I decide to use borders, then I use the combination of HP 80 or 100gsm paper and think pouch. I cut the printed materials then stick it on the colored cardstock using a glue stick.  Then laminate and cut. 

Now, if the thick pouch is not available or too pricey, using a 160gsm cardstock with the thin pouch is more than enough.  The cards will still turn out sturdy.  The only reason why I’m using the 125micron pouch is that they are currently on SALE in AMAZON UK and are MORE CHEAPER than the thinner ones LOL.

MAKING THE BOOKLETS

I’ve started making booklets this year for the boys. I wanted them to last long so I am laminating each pages of the booklets. 

The pages of my booklets are laminated back to back. You can see how its done here on the video of Confessions of a Homeschooler.  I use the HP Inkjet Paper for this one and a 125micron  pouch ( or a 160gsm cardstock and 80micron pouch would do). 

Once they are laminated, I cut and punch holes to form the booklets!  For the cover pages of each booklets, I use the process in MAKING THE CARDS because I want the cover to be harder than the pages.

MAKING THE MATS AND POSTER DIAGRAMS

For the mats and and diagrams, I just laminate them back to back using the thicker pouch and the 160gsm cardstock.  But for best result, better laminate it individually with either a thick or thinner pouch. 

IF YOU HAVE NO LAMINATOR

When I didn’t have a laminator yet, I just printed my materials on a white cardstock paper and covered them with a contact paper or better yet a transparent tape! Yes, I basically did that when we were in Belgrade.  Worst, we didn’t have white cardstock so I printed my materials in a white paper and glue the paper on the colored cardstock then cover it with tape. 

And that’s just about it!  I hope you find this helpful and NOT CONFUSING LOL. If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, I am more than willing to talk to you for more tips and insights.

Thank you!