learning

Education nation!

July 13, 2018by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

Summer time is the time for tons of play, vacation, and overall fun, BUT it’s also a time for learning!

During this one-on-one time with our children, we must dedicate time to reading, playing fun activities, and exposing our kids to all types and styles of learning!

So far this summer we have done science experiments, danced to math songs on YouTube, practiced our shapes and colors while driving, and have done a ton of workbooks!

One of the things that my school aged kids (ages 4-7) are loving right now are word searches!! They love to practice matching their letters, and identify words! Summer fun starts now with this word search! Be sure to check out Education.com for more learning resources.

If your kids don’t necessarily like word searches, they have tons of different worksheets to choose from such as:

Maze
Matching list of words with images
Crossword puzzle
Word scramble
Subtraction
Division
Multiplication

There is honestly something for everyone agres 3-11! The kids in my house range from 6 months old-7 years old and I love that there is something for them all!

So the next time your kids think they are bored, tell them let’s do something fun and head on over to education.com!

Hope you are all having a great summer!

**Sponsored Posts: This is a sponsored post by Education.com. All reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view.

Adoption, foster, work

From failing to passing!

March 13, 2017March 13, 2017by Sheridan Johnson2 Comments

From failing to passing!2

Let me just tell you that our journey with our 8 year old foster son has been one of the hardest things we have been through, ever. He came to us with a lot of a anger, unresolved issues, and lack of love and affection. He has been through so much in such a short amount of time, that no child ever deserves to happen to them. He needed love, nurturing, and lot of affection to heal his wounded heart.

When he first came and started school with us, he was failing his reading class, and the ones that he wasn’t failing, but he wasn’t doing as well as he had previously done in his other school.

When foster children first come into your house, you only know what is given to you, and what the schools have transferred over. When he was in his other schools, it didn’t seem like he was having any major learning difficulties and did really well in school.

We couldn’t pin point what exactly he needed to help him flourish and thrive in school, so basically we tried all learning difficulty techniques and it seemed to have little to no effect on his comprehension ability.

We knew that consistency is key, and we kept speaking positive encouragement to him, and kept trying different ways to help him understand what he was reading and truly what the questions on his tests were asking him.

I will let you know five strategies that we used to help him learn and start to comprehend a lot of what he was learning:

We started making flash cards with his vocabulary words. He makes them himself and cuts them out on Monday night, and studies them all week to prepare himself for his test on Friday.
We practice his spelling words and he tries to find him in his “story of the week” required from school. We do this daily.
We do a “mad minutes” game at home which mimics what he is doing in school with learning how to do fast math, by memory, in a short amount of time (less than 3 minutes).
Myself or Shane will read to him, and he has to draw out his version of what we are reading on a piece of paper and re-tell us his understanding of the story.
We ask him the questions at the end of his required reading books he gets from the library (if they come with a set, or we make up our own questions from what we remember reading from the book).

Those are just a few tips that we use weekly to get him to where he needs to be, and he has loved the encouragement and one on one time he gets from these activities!

Plus he is finally PASSING all of his classes for the 4th 6wks report card!! In just two 6 weeks, he has gone from failing and barely passing, to literally shocking all of us with putting in the hard work, time, and dedication each week to now passing! We are beyond proud of him, and we see his love for learning and school and know that he will go very far in life!

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Book club, Book review, foster, learning

My picks

September 8, 2016by Sheridan Johnson8 Comments

my-picks-of-the-week-1

Every Thursday, since the kids have been in school, I drop off them off in the morning at Happy Hearts (Mother’s Day Out) and I head to the library with baby girl. I have loved doing this, because it gives me time to actually go through the books and select which books would be best (rather than letting a 1 year old little boy and a 3 yr old little girl choose their own).

The library is the best idea to getting out of a rut and watching the your children choose the same books, night after night, and not switching up their choices.

I love our little local library, because the people there know me (and my husband) and my kids by name and always asking how everything is going with us, and the kiddos. Story time at the library is especially fun with all the fun crafts, and activities they plan for the kids. They get to use their imagination, and also learn how to learn patience when listening to direction. I love it, and I wish they had it weekly (they only do story time about once a month, here)! You should definitely go check out your local library, and find some good reads!

This week, I wanted to incorporate some of Brielle’s favorite things (pink and cupcakes), and also little mans favorite things (eating, and animals) into the book choices, and I think I made a pretty good selection! I always try to get one bilingual book as well, because I think knowledge is power, and number two.. I could always help learning spanish!

Here are my picks for the week:

Pinkalicious by Victoria Kahn and Elizabeth Kahn- This story depicts a little girl, who is obsessed with all things PINK. But she could not listen to her parents with they were telling her that she could not eat any more pink cupcakes. Well, turns out she ended up pink. It’s an adorable read for young girls and shows the importance of listening to your parents.
The Gobble Gobble MOOO Tractor Book by Jez Alborough- This story is cute, because it incorporates a lot of animal sounds, plus a cute little story on how all the animals hop on a tractor and want to take it for a ride, but then the farmer finds out and they get caught.. cute story, very good pictures and colors!
Fancy Nancy by Jane O’ Connor- This story is about a little girl, who loves to pretend to be glamorous, and doesn’t understand why everyone else in her family is so plain. It wasn’t until her family decided to be dressed up and fancy with her, that she got to appreciate the effort they put in, but that they were more happy just the way they are.
Just Me and My Babysitter by Mercer Mayer- This story is cute, because it details all the things that you can do with a babysitter around, that your mom and dad wouldn’t particularly like you doing. He loves to just have a mess, and play with his sister, and it’s fun to let the kids read about.
10 little Fish (Pececitos) by Harriet Ziefert- This book is so cute and teaching the kids to count in english/spanish and the differences between the colors, and shapes of all the fish. Very Cute and love this read!
Bedtime for Button by Stewart and Layn Marlow- This is such a cute story about a little bear who was having trouble sleeping and his Dad told him a cute story about how when the little bear was born he would song a sweet lullaby to him every night and it would put him straight to sleep, with no worries in the world. It was so sweet and is definitely good for Brielle when she has nightmares at night.

Brielle, Connected parenting, crafty

DIY picture frame

May 22, 2016May 21, 2016by Sheridan JohnsonLeave a Comment

DIY picture frame

I remember back in the day, when I was in Elementary school, we made little picture frames out of popsicle sticks, and I wanted to re-create that with my little toddler!

Here are all of the supplies you will need:

crayons
popsicle sticks
beads of any sort
stickers/decorations
hot glue gun (to make sure it sticks as well)
a picture cut to fit the sticks

-First, I let Brielle color the sticks any colors she wanted (front and back)

-Next, I took the glue gun and glued all of the sticks together in the corners and added the beads on top with hot glue and then let that dry

-Then, I let Brielle place little stickers and decorations all around the sticks

-Finally, I let her help me cut the picture to the correct size, and I hot glued it to the back of the frame, let it dry, and it was complete

So easy, and so fun! Brielle and I used this craft as a learning time experience practicing colors, shapes, and improving her fine motor skills.