Valentine's Cards in Homeschool?

We have never celebrated Valelntine's Day in our homeschool. I'm not against doing that, but it never really seemed like something that we needed to do. And none of the children ever requested that we did.

But I have been contemplating whether or not to exchange Valentine's cards this year. I think it would be fun to have the children each make a card and then they could exchange them. The only thing is that I am pretty sure that with 3 boys I will get a couple of "that's for girls" statements. But I'm sure GG would really enjoy making anything that is pink or purple with hearts on it. LOL.

I still have until February 14th to figure it out. I think I'll see how the tone of school is going that day and then I'll decide if that's something that we might pursue. I think that the main thing is that I encourage the children daily to demonstrate the love of Christ. That is love 365 days a year. As long as we keep Him as our focus then I don't think it really matters one way or other if we celebrate a day of love once a year.


If you are planning on celebrating Valentine's Day in your homeschool then you may find this list of printable Valentine cards for kids helpful.

Martin Luther King Jr. Book Online

Yesterday I told the children that we would be off from school today because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. And my 6 year old turned to me and said, who's Dr. Martin Luther King? I told him we would talk about it the next day and this morning I woke up early and scrambled to find a Martin Luther King Jr. book online.

I remembered finding one from scholastic a few years back when my oldest first learned about the great civil rights leader. I searched unsuccessfully to find that one. But, I am happy to report that Scholastic has another Martin Luther King Jr Book Online that is free.

The book is for grades K-4. It's a little over 20 pages but it is has just enough information to introduce little ones to Dr. King. It looks like you have to be a subscriber to print the book out the way it was intended to look. But you can view a full screen version for free and read the book directly from your screen. That is what I did with the children. They found the book very interesting and asked me a lot of questions afterward.

Eventually, I did find the book that I was looking for. It's called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream. However, it appears that it is no longer free. You now have to have a subscription to Scholastic's mini-books in order to print most of them out. But I did come across one more Martin Luther King Jr. Book online - Our Friend Martin. This is probably best suited towards preschoolers.

An In-depth Study of Agriculture

At the beginning of this year I decided to utilize as many of the free coloring and activity books as possible. So, I started with the first activity book on the list which is The ABCs of Oklahoma Agriculture. As I started to look through the book I got so happy. The book is a great guide to put together an extensive study on agriculture using various coloring and activity books that I've collected links to over the past few years. I even threw in some recipes that the children and I can make together, to keep school interesting.

Now I can finally put my handy dandy heavy duty stapler to use. Yippee! So below, I have linked to the mini unit study, book(s) , or recipe that I plan to use for each subject.

Agriculture - I used this page as an intro to our studies.
Beef
Cotton
Dogs
Eggs
Feed - I focused on farm instead, since farm animals eat feed. Maryland Agriculture: Farm Fun, Farm Service Agency for Kids,  Southern Maryland Farms
Greenhouse

Horses - Go Harness Racing, Life on a Horse Farm (from NetLibrary)
Insects - Coloring Fun with Insects: I'm going to read the online book to the children. Then I'll let each of them pick out a few insects that they want to color.
Jelly - homemade jelly recipe: We're going to reduce the recipe down to 16 servings, or just one pint.
Kabob
Legume - peanuts (yes, they're legumes)
Milk - Guida's Milk and Supercow, How We Get Our Milk, Milk Matters with Buddy Brush, Fuel Up with Milk
Nuts - Pecan breakfast loaf recipe
Oklahoma - OK coloring book
Pork - Kids Pork Cookbook
Queen Bee - Adventures of Beatrice the Bee
Rain - My Water Activity Book
Sheep - I am the Good Shepherd
Tractor - tractor activity found towards the bottom of the page
University
Veterinarian - Veterinarians
Wheat - whole wheat honey bread recipe
Xylotomy - Trees: A Colorful Look at Our Forests
Yam - yam smoothie recipe
Zucchini - zucchini bread recipe