Happy New Year from Unionvale School

and the McCready family.

[caption id="attachment_442" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The red holiday lights on our Magnolia Tree"][/caption]

We hope your New Year is blessed. Thank you for stopping by our little spot in cyber space.
by the way, unvlmom (the author of the blog) merged the old family blog from blogger to wordpress so feel free to snoop around while the dust settles.

Going, Going, almost Gone!

Do you love the Old Schoolhouse Magazine? Either digital or print has tons of fun and supportive articles, insight from homeschool families, and lots of information about different curriculum options.

Going . . . going . . . almost gone!

The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine is saying good-bye to their $7.95 subscription price (one year, U.S.) and international sale prices of 40% off at midnight on December 31, 2009. There is still time to treat yourself or share the gift of homeschool encouragement with your family and friends.

Receive 4 issues of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine RIGHT NOW for only $7.95 (U.S.)! That is less than $2 per issue. Canadian and international subscribers save 40%! Your subscription will start with the Spring 2010 issue. This includes one-year gift subscriptions!

Order the one-year plus current issue option and enjoy the Winter issue in January 2010 for only $12.95 (U.S.)!

Plus, new and renewing U.S. subscribers receive bonus gifts!

Get all of the details here.

link: http://www.thehomeschoolmagazine.com/Homeschooling/Almost-Gone.htm

Hurry! December 31 is the deadline for the sale prices!

Having Old School Magazine available to homeschool families is an awesome blessing, don't miss out on this great deal.

Workbox/ Math-U-See Game

For Christmas Cameron received a package of dice, 3 regular 6 sided dice and 2 12 sided number dice. We will be adding these into our workboxes along with his decimal street game supported by his Math-U-See blocks and book. Currently we just come up with the number for him to build and write on Decimal Street, with the new 12 sided dice we can roll for our number (I had hoped to get some 9 sided dies but no luck at the local stores I was at.) The Game will work something like this... Each player will roll the die and write the number in the Units section of decimal street, then roll again to get the tens number as well as the hundreds place. If they roll a 10, 11, or 12 they will have to roll again for now...
Both boys can play the game together or by themselves. roll, say, write, build, repeat.

12 Days of Christmas Day 1 review

The boys began their 12 days of Christmas units on Christmas Eve. (Yes I had the boys doing school work on Christmas Eve).
Cameron worked on 2 activities from the 12 Days of Christmas Unit from In the Hands of a Child., while Nathan did day 1 activity from 12 Days of Christmas Fun with some modification. We did activity 1 which is suppose to be either a CD or paper plate craft. Nathan decided to make his smaller to include it in his lapbook. Once we finished the partridge he decided we need a pear tree so we cut our of scrapbook paper a pear tree complete with 6 free hand cut golden rod paper pears. (picture to come later). Then we wrote Partridge and Pear on our word strips and attached them to the wall..
Monday we will work on Day 2 and maybe Day 3.

Merry Christmas Homeschool friends

Merry Christmas to all our homeschool friends, blog readers, and anyone else who happens to stop by.
This season started out stress filled and has turned to blessing filled.
Be save and surrounded by God's loving arms this holiday season.

Workbox activity cards and place card sorting

This is on my list of things for the kids to do.
[caption id="attachment_303" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="our recycled cigar box for workbox cards"][/caption]Right now all our workbox related cards are in decorative cigar boxes (recycling when I can), the problem with that set up is inside there isn't a way to sort the cards, they are just piled in the box... It works but not great.



So I was searching for another idea and came across this idea (someone on the yahoo group had the idea originally), a sorting bin for hardware, even better Home Depot has a kit for the kids to build, it is a little more expensive then I would normally spend on a workbox piece but since the boys can build it and decorate it themselves I am really thinking for getting this one.
We love going to the Lowe's Build and Grow workshop locally and wish we had known about the workshops when Home Depot had this one as a workshop, oh well maybe next time. For now though I will probably order the kit for a January activity.

Holiday Fun with Making Learning Fun

Workboxes have been pretty light the passed couple weeks with Holiday prep and such... however today Cameron had 3 boxes to work through. 1 box was a Disney Phonic workbook from the Dollar Tree, the other 2 were activities from Making Learning Fun . If you haven't checked out Making Learning Fun's pages you need to... Jo does an awesome job with themed activities perfect for PreK and up... I would say depending on the activity and the child you could use it through 2nd grade.. Cameron loves the mazes and crafts and Nathan enjoys the games. Jo has some awesome letter tile activity cards we have used, she even put up printable letter tiles since some people were having trouble finding the tiles. Note, I get the tiles at my local Staples where they have a small package of lower case letters as well as color coded word tiles.

Hands of a Child: 12 Days of Christmas

The boys and I are going to be working through the 12 days of Christmas lapbooks from In the Hands of a Child beginning Christmas Eve (Christmas Day will be too busy for any schooling). I decided to use both versions of the lapbook and will add in the Unit Extender from the Super Member area as well to complete the study.

The daily activies work well into a 12 days of Christmas plan, but could also be used prior to the Christmas Holiday as a way to learn about the season.

Back on Track with Blogs, I hope

Wow, I didn't realize I had fallen off the Blog Wagon for our homeschool.... It has been over a month since our last homeschool update... UGH!! Well I will start off with a couple reviews that are sitting here on my desk waiting to share...