Little Passports Program (#1)

Little Passports program came available on Mamapedia (one of those deal sites that I really should stay away from because I am such a sucker for a GOOD DEAL that it's BREAKING the bank!  haha)  You can find the link to Mamapedia on the right hand side under GOOD DEALS!  You can see my first blog about the purchase here .

This is definitely one deal I'm glad I tried out!  We are really liking it, and it's a great way to learn about other countries around the world!   C loves to get mail, and is always excited when he goes to his work box and finds another package!

I have decided to expand some more on the countries they highlight and I just purchased EXPEDITION EARTH curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler.  It is a religious curriculum, but can quite easily be made secular by eliminating the praying portion of the study, if you so desire.  The curriculum is only $15, but does require some other supplemental books (a few of which are Usborne books!).  You can look at a sample of the curriculum and the required and suggested book list at her website.  She also provides an animal unit study for FREE!  The curriculum is designed to do one country a week (there are 31 countries total), However, we will be using it slightly differently.  We will be doing one country a month to go along with whichever country we receive our Little Passports souvenir from each month.

So now more about the Little Passports Program  (you can also click on the Little Passports button on the right hand side of my blog).

So this is what you get with the first package:

There is a letter from 'Sam and Sophia', a world map, a passport, a puzzle sheet (so you can figure out where your next package will be from), a suitcase, some stickers, and a pass code to go online.  It also includes a picture of Sam and Sophia.  We already had a world map hanging, so we have been using it to mark their travels.

By decoding the secret message on the puzzle sheet, we determined that they would be going to Brazil, so we put their picture on the map, found Brazil, circled it and put an arrow from the picture to Brazil.

Now if you want to use the Expedition Earth lessons as a supplement to the program, you could start learning about Brazil at this point, or you could wait till your package comes.  Unfortunately for me, it was an after thought to use an around the world curriculum...so we will start with the arrival of our Brazil package.    The Expedition Earth curriculum also has an introductory lesson to maps and globes, so you could start that at this point or even prior to the first package arrival.

The Little Passports program we purchased through Mamapedia was for the 3month introductory package, we then were offered a renewal at the $11.95/mo rate, which we opted for.  You can cancel at any time.  The other cheaper option would be to pay in full for a 12mos subscription which comes out to $10.95/mo.  What a great gift for the little one in your life!!

I'll be blogging about our Little Passports journey, so stay tuned!
First stop BRAZIL!

If you decide that Little Passports looks like something your child would enjoy, please be so kind as to click on one of my Little Passport links to purchase.  We liked Little Passports so much that I have become an affiliate with them, and therefore make a small profit on sales, which help support my blog and our home school.  Thank you!  We are also an affiliate with several other businesses, including Amazon.com.

Now we await our Package from BRAZIL!  Stay tuned!

Linked up at Link&Learn with No Time For Flashcards



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Wordless Wednesday

Getting into things!

Go Wordless HERE or HERE and HERE

Workbox Wednesday

Some things we have had in our workboxes last week and this week:

(Also check out my other posts from Monday and Tuesday this week to see other items we have used!)

My 2yo
Letter O activities from Letter of the week curriculum
Matching cards taken from In the Ocean

Letter O puppet and story from Alphabet Stories: Puppets and Picture Stories that Teach Letter Recognition and Sounds

Circle collage - blue paint and circle cookie cutters

Ocean Stamps and blue ink

Octopus craft (glue 8 long ribbons and 2 googly eyes onto a paper plate)

Letter rubs using sand paper letters

Blue playdough, HWOT letter O playdough card, Letter O cookie cutter

My Blue Collage 

(Collage print is free from itsybitsy and stickers are from Eye Like Stickers: Colors; we also did a letter O collage, I printed the letter page from here and got the stickers from  Eye Like Stickers: Letters.  I put the papers in cover sheets, stickers are reusable)

Letter O sticker collage

My K
We finished up Snake and Lizard and started The Boxcar Children #1 (one of my childhood favorites)
Read about Amphibians and watched the internet linked videos from Usborne Animal Encyclopedia
Listened to Growing Frogs with Audio: Read, Listen, & Wonder

Frog life cycle book from Enchanted Learning

Better Chinese Book #3 and Song #3
Handwriting without tears - Letters E & D, number 1
Saxon Math K
Explode the Code
Read Aloud Poems from The Llama Who Had No Pajama: 100 Favorite Poems and The Arnold Lobel Book of Mother Goose: A Treasury of More Than 300 Classic Nursery Rhymes

Beethoven's Wig, Child-Size Masterpieces

Practing spelling words with Melissa & Doug Deluxe Alphabet Stamp Set

Practicing spelling using Creative Hands Sticker Bucket ABC Dotty

In addition to our Zoo Field Trip last week, we also went to the Library!

More Education Cubes

We started using the education cubes more this past week.  So I wanted to report on it!  The kids really enjoyed it, and I def plan to start incorporating it weekly.

First off, I realized I had not been printing the inserts correctly (I thought they looked small), and this was posing a problem, since they would move around and fly out when my children kicked and tossed the cubes around.  But I figured out that the printer was printing them in portrait mode instead of landscape mode....problem now solved!   Thank goodness, b/c it was getting frustrating!

I used them this week for two different activities.  The first was for colors with my 2yo.  We used one cube, and a container of vehicle shaped counters.  He would roll the cube, and then find a vehicle that matched the color.  We got the color templates from the Education Cubes Member Only Site.

 For my K we put his Chinese flash cards into the cubes, and the kids rolled, kicked, etc... them and he would say the chinese word of the card that was facing up

Definitely more fun than normal old flashcards!

Math Monday - Money (pennies and dimes) and skip counting by tens

We started this money activity a few weeks ago with 10 pennies.  We discussed how each penny is worth 1 cent.  Then we price tagged 10 can goods from 1-10cents and practiced buying them with the pennies.  He really enjoyed this activity.

This week we moved on to dimes.  We talked about how each dime is worth 10cents, and practiced counting by tens to 100.  Then we took 5 canned goods and priced them fro 10-50cents and again practiced buying them, but this time with dimes.  We set up a conveyor belt using 4 pieces of construction paper, and also used the time to practice ordinal numbers from first - fourth.

I had him pick the 4 objects, place them on the conveyor belt, then I would ask him which item was first, second, third, fourth (in random order); how much that item cost, and then how many dimes he needed to pay for that item.

We also used this game (scroll down to math, click on paint brush skip counting) to practice counting by 10s (can be used for 2s and 5s as well).

What my Child is Reading - June 26, 2011

 

and linked up with Book Sharing Monday

For school:

We finished up this chapter book, cute story of two friends, snake and lizard.
"Snake said, What you mean you don't know the difference between chickens and rattlesnakes?"

Read some more about reptiles and amphibians, and visited the internet links

Cute story about a baby python that doesn't want to grow up and be green and lazy like all the other adult snakes he knows.  Moral of the story - you can still be a child at heart!

C and Z both are a big fan of Beethoven's Wig: Sing Along Symphonies, so we got a book to learn more about the man behind the music.

Our next read aloud chapter book, one of my childhood favorites!

Some other just for fun reads that we picked up at the library

and my 2yo's FAVORITE:

We will be doing a unit study on Popcorn this week (our vacation week) and will be headed to the library to find some good POPCORN books!  Any suggestions??

*I need to start putting what we read into a pile for the end of the week, we have read more than this, but we read so much...I never remember what we read, unless it was on the lesson plan.