My Google Plus Contents - Part 1

Over the year I use Google Plus to share links to interesting articles, movies, or any other goodies. Now that Google is shutting down Google Plus, I thought I just move the contents and share them here. Enjoy!

Inspiration:
The Drop Box Story

One Stitch Closer: Veronika Scott empowers other women

Auschwitz Survivor Gena Turgel Walked Out of Gas Chamber Alive

"Suffering is not a mistake and isn't the absence of God's goodness because He still presents in pain." Kara Tippetts

Only kindness begets kindness; kindness begets love.

Anger does not beget heart change; it begets shame. Yelling does not beget understanding; it begets hurt. Harsh words do not beget love; they beget humiliation. Intimidation does not beget kindness; it begets fear.

I’ve already seen a return on my investment; as I trust God to help me respond to my rebellious children in kindness and love instead of fear and anger, these young hearts are learning that kindness is always right and they treat each other with kindness. What a joy for my mama’s heart!

"Your time spent pursuing love will not be wasted. The time spent embracing your moments, reading that extra bedtime book, sitting together to dinner, loving a child in their unkindness and weakness matter. Live each moment knowing even your unseen movement toward love and away from unkindness matters." Kara Tippetts, Big Love

Most Dangerous School Run

What Would You Say If Your Wife Was Ripped Away

Brother Burst Into Happy Tears Over Hamster Surprise

Challenging Math Questions for 3rd or 4th grader

I found this challenge math questions at Singapore math book level 3 to be very interesting. So I typed and changed the numbers so the boys can do more math practice. Putting them here in case I need them in the future. I also posted another set of 3th grade math problems a little while ago.

1.       The chart below shows the amount of money Simon saves from Monday to Wednesday

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday
$5	$10	$15

If Simon continues to save in this pattern, how much money will he save by Sunday?

2.       Complete the number pattern.

2 , 4 , 8 , 14 , 22, 32, _____ , _____ , _____

3.       A group of 8 people shook hands with one another in a meeting. Each person shook hands with another person once. How many handshakes were exchanged?

4.       Form 2 digits numbers with the digits 2, 3, 4. The digits in each number can’t be repeated. List all the 2-digit number that can be divided by 4.

5.       I am a number between 30 and 49. If I am divided by 5, there will be a reminder of 2. If I am divided by 6, there will be no reminder. What number am I?

6.       Complete the number pattern

2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 17, _____ , _____ , _____

The Learning Habit Book Review - Part 2

Learning to make wise/ responsible decision
One of the hardest things for parents to do is to give their children the opportunity to make choices that may not turn out well. Helping children learn through making both right and wrong decisions is the only way to learn habit of decision making. Our natural instinct is to make excuses, complain about injustice, or blame someone else.

Communicating Effectively
Teach the children respectful adult communication. Four keys sentences:
a. I feel..., I want ...., 
b. I am sorry. I was wrong.
c.  I need help. 
d. I don't know. 

Concentrating on Focus
Lack of self-management skills is part and parcel of the problems children face in developing the learning habit of concentrated focus. Using time-limited tasks is reassuring to children; it's easier to concentrate if you know you don't have to do it for very long.
Use effort based praise such as "Good concentration, I see how hard you play, you were such a good sport today." Catch your kids doing something right and appreciate it make your child feel valued and encouraged.

For rewards to work, they have to be immediately follow the event you want to reinforce; they need to be small, so that you can use them frequently. For instance, having snack only after they put away their toys; screen time only after their practice piano or finish their homework, etc.

Set up your child's study area to be distraction free, with no media. You are nearby but not interacting, during homework time.

Because of their limited capacity for self-regulation, teens and children are susceptible to internet addiction and sleep deprivation. 
Some example of focus boot camp rules:
a. A media-free bedroom
b. Borrow books from the library
c. Limit media/ gadget time to 1 hour or less as a reward when homework and chores are done.
d. Set alarm, get themselves up and ready for breakfast.
e. Spend a certain amount for instance 60 minutes on homework at the same time every day. If the child doesn't have homework have them do some reading.
f. Practice relaxation techniques and positive self-talk when anxious or frustrated. 

The Learning Habit Book Review - Part 1

I found this book from the library couple years ago and kept going back to read it again and again. It filled with so much useful information for any parents or educator. This is just the summary of bits of wisdom I learned; read the book to get further details and examples.

Empowerment Parenting:

• Build habits through clear, realistic, time oriented, and consistent rules that allow them to reach their goals.
• Empower children through choices and allowing children to experience the consequences of their actions.
• Encourage children through effort based praise, for instance: praising for trying hard, keeping a positive attitude, and continuing to work at solving problems. For example saying things like, "You did so well; you must have practiced hard," instead of "You are very smart."
• Encourage children to take responsibility by allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions.
• Establishing a learning environment means encouraging the behaviors that, over time, become habitual. The earlier we start, the easier the task. 

Media Matters: Managing Our Kids' Media Use
Gaming can be just as destructive to a child's academic performance, social skills, and emotional balance as other addictions.

1. Eat dinner with your kids, unplugged.
2. Start a family activity night play spots or board games instead of video games
3. No media in the bedroom, including cellphone.
4. Screen time as a reward (after tasks are done, never before)
5. Unplug the media and bring out the books; you will be helping your child master a skill that will get them both into and out of college - with a degree
6. Introduce media creation instead of media consumption: word processing and presentation skills, digital drawing, Legos: Bricks in Space, and We Do Robotics. Apps: Book Creator, My story, iMovie, iPad Boot Camps.

Math Story Problems for third grader

I notice that my 3rd grader needs more practice to solve math story problems so I made some extra problems for him to do each day. You can download the printable or PDF version here. 

3rd grade Math Story Problem
Unit measurement: Dozen 

1. Beth bought 1 dozen eggs. She used 5 eggs to make breakfast for her family. How many eggs were left? 

2. 1 dozen egg cost $5. Mommy bought 2 dozen eggs. How much money does she has to pay?

3. Wesley bought ½ dozen pens. A dozen pens cost $10. How much money does he has to pay? 

4. Max has $40. He wanted to buy a dozen fishes. Each fish cost $3. Does he has enough money? 

5. Papa bought 1 dozen eggs. He used 4 eggs to make breakfast and 2 eggs to make dinner. How many eggs left? 

6. 1 dozen egg cost $6. Mommy bought 5 dozen eggs. How much money does she has to pay? 

7. Mrs. Allen had 2 pans that each held a half dozen muffins. How many muffin she could bake a one time? 

8. Max has $40. A dozen card cost $18. Does he has enough money 2 dozen of Pokemon cards? 

Unit measurement: Pint, cup, and gallon 
1. Andrew wanted to make bread. He had 1 pint of milk. The recipe called for 2 cups of milk. Did he have enough milk? 

2. Mama need 2 pints of milk to make pudding. How many cups of milk did she use to make the pudding? 

3. We need to buy a gallon of milk. The stores only sells milk in a quart box. How many boxes do we need to buy? 

4. To make macaroni, we need ½ gallon of milk. How many cups of milk is that? 

Summer 2016 Bucket List & Summer Learning

Hi there! We have been summering well these days. It's been a full, relaxing, and rejuvenating summer for me and the boys at least; Chris has been very busy with work prayerfully he is experiencing summer fun too once in a while. :)

I was encouraged when I read this article titled: "Psychologist recommend children be bored in the summer." I love the idea of not cramping too much activities during the summer. At the same time, we know this is the only summer when they are 7 and 5 years old and we want to make some sweet memories with them that's why we make the summer bucket list. You can follow my instagram account to see our progress.

Part of our summer bucket list is doing a light daily learning activities (about 1 hour) each day so the kids do not experience summer slide



The library is having a summer reading challenge, which is an added motivation but the kids love going to the library and read even without the challenge.

The humongous collection of books that the local library has never chase to amaze me. Growing up in third world country, we don't have this privilege.

Besides reading, I also have the kids work on math, language art, and writing.


One of the math activities that the kids do is a daily math worksheet; addition problems for the five years old and multiplication problems for the seven years old. They like to read while doing their business so I thought may as well ask them to do their math. I no longer have to ask if they done their math that day because they automatically doing it before reading books/ magazines. Problem solved! :)


The free math printable worksheet can be found here

Low-Tech Toys

We limit screen time for the boys to 30 minutes a day so I often heard they said, "What should we do now, ma?" once they're done with their screen time and still have some free time. So thought I made this Low-Tech Toys List for my 7 and 4 years old boys and print them out that way I can just point them to it whenever they ask me that question.


You can download the full size resolution HERE

Reading/ writing

Drawing/ coloring/ painting

Biking, click here to read how we teach the kids biking two wheels bike.

 

Ball games: soccer, basketball. We use this indoor basketball hoop

 

Playing tag
 



Playing Light sabers/ sponge swords

Indoor Fabric Frisbee. DIY instruction can be found HERE

Cars/ Trains/ Toy animals

 

Kids Morning Routine

I have been wanting to make Kids' Morning Routine Print Out for the boys but didn't get to do it until last night. Once they woke up and saw the print out below in the morning, they were excited to do the things on the list without a single word out of my mouth. So Amazing! I should have done it way earlier.

You can download mine for free here or make your own. I made mine with Picmonkey.com but Microsoft Words should works just fine.

Our Favorite Books and DVDs for Preschooler/ Kindergartners

Back when Max just turned three, I started wondering about what books are good for him, do I read to him often enough, how come some other kids his age could read already, and so on. Thankfully, my older and wiser friends were quick to remind me that each kid is born with different timetable. Just as each of us start walking or talking at different time, they will start reading at different time.

There some great book lists for young children such as these:
Sonlight Read-Aloud Booklist
Simply-Charlotte Mason's Favorite Read Aloud Books
and Simple Mom's Top 10 Picture Books for Young Children

After many trips to the library, we {me and the boys} came up with this lists:

Our Favorite Books & DVDs for Preschooler/ Kindergartner:
a. For Bible Reading. Here are the Children Bibles we used and like.

The Story for Little Ones

The Beginner's Bible

Children's Favorite Bible Stories

I use this book to teach about character

Little Boy After God's Own Heart

The inside:


b. Baby/ Toddler Books that Our Boys Love:

Our Summer Learning and Activities

We are nearly the end of our summer holidays. We spent the first few weeks of summer with our family in Indonesia, followed by Vacation Bible School at the church nearby.

Afterward, the kids spent two weeks at summer camp when I was called for jury duty.


We spent the rest of the summer working on our summer bucket list, which include light daily learning activities. The kids usually able to get them all done in one hour

For my Kindergartner/ First Grader:
1. Bible Reading. We use this Bible

One Hundred Chart and Alphabet Printable

 

We used  the number chart from Ruth Beechick's book: The Three R's a lot for teaching the kids math. It is a great way for students to learn their numbers, discover number patterns, learning addition, subtraction and skip count.

However, since our learning space is in the middle of living room, I thought I make one with less sparks and colors so the space doesn't look too much like a kindergarten class room. :)

Field Trip: Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

A friend told us that last New Year Day was the lowest tide of the year; perfect time to explore beautiful tide pools. So off we went to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach with some friends to check it out.
Click the video below to learn more about tides and tide pools:



The tides was still pretty high when we arrived so we went hiking the surrounding area first.

Good articles on homeschooling

We are officially begin homeschooling our kindergartner last week and it went great so far. It helps that we kicked out the first week at Lake Tahoe, spending time with visiting extended family while still doing school.

I promised to share later on how does it goes, the curriculum we chose, and why in the world we do it but many who are smarter and cooler than me already did so I just put together the links to their writing on this post: Why They Home-school

Some more great articles I came across on homeschooling last week:
Off the Cliff by Ashley @ thehandmadehome.net
10 Things Every New Homeschool Mom Should Know by Alison Agnew @nancherrow
How to start homeschooling by Penelope Trunk
6 Homeschooling misconception erased by Laura Grace Weldon.
How American Homeschoolers Measure Up

Last but not least, the most popular TED talk of all time by Sir Ken Robinson titled How schools kill creativity. I think the talk is applicable for all kind of schools: public, private, and homeschooling. It is important for any teacher, educator, or learning coach to be aware of what kill creativity.

Interesting Thoughts on Education

“The fact is that given the challenges we face, education doesn't need to be reformed -- it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” Ken Robinson

“Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do. We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.” Seth Godin


1. Curiosity comes first
2. Embrace the mess
3. Practice reflection
"An educator is the cultivator of curiosity and inquiries" Ramsey Musallam

I didn't agree with all their points for instance I disagree with Mr. Godin's opinion that memorization isn't needed. I think it does in certain subjects. That being said, I was inspired and love their perspective in education.

Learning in love the preschool years

image source

I had been listening to this wonderful audio sharing about Learning in Love the Preschool Years by Renee Tougas It's one out of 97 resources that I got from the ultimate homemaking bundle sale.

Below are my takeaways from her sharing:

The important ingredients:

The Way We Learn

I attended a homeschooling conference two weeks ago thanks to Fonda who kindly babysit the boys. One important lesson I learned was about Learning Style. I read Cynthia Tobias' book: The Way They Learn on the past so I thought I am familiar with this but turned out I only knew the surface or I may have forgotten what I read. =P Each individual learns in different and unique way. We need to figure out how other people learn or process information so we can understand them better and communicate effectively. As homeschooling parents or teacher, we need to implement this knowledge on regular basis in order to see the blessing.

I wish I knew this sooner there would be less frustrating moments when I try to communicate with others. Below are my notes from the workshop the ones in *Italic is my personal notes.

Teaching kids to do things themselves

One big lesson I learned from The Montessori's Way is to encourage independence by teaching kids to do things themselves. 

Maria Montessori wrote, "Don't do for your child what he can do himself. We habitually serve children; and this is not only an act of service toward them, but it is dangerous, since it tends to suffocate their useful, spontaneous activity. It requires much more time and patience to teach a child how to eat, wash, and clothe himself than it does to feed, bathe, and clothe him."

I learned that I need to take the time to show and teach them on how to do certain tasks and organize their stuffs {clothes, toy, learning materials, and eating utensils} in places where they can reach them without our help.  Below are some things that we encourage our kids {age 4 and almost 2} to do on their own:

Pick up their toys. Great article from Money Saving Mom: Instead of yelling, try helping.

Eat on their own. Starting when they are able to pick up food with their fingers then moving on to using spoon or fork. It's messy in the beginning {even 'till now} but I have no regret on letting them eat on their own as early as possible:

Grab their eating utensils and drink. I placed their eating utensils, glass, and water container at the lower drawer or shelf, where they can reach on their own.

 

Wash their hands. Good safety tip from our pediatrician: turn down the water temperature on the water tank that way when the kids accidentally turn on hot water their hand won't get burn.

Throw trash in the garbage bin:

Put on their clothes without our help

Play on their own. 

It's true that we need to sing, read, snuggle, and give them our undivided attention but I don't think we need to entertain them all the time.  Kids are wired with creativity and curiosity and are able to entertain themselves with almost anything. Safety note: make sure to baby proof the room and keep sharp and dangerous things away from their reach. When in doubt, keep them away from the kid - lesson I learned the hard way

Clean up: vacuum dirt {with a lightweight hand vacuum}

 mop the floor,or wipe the furniture

Be involved and "help" us:

Peel daicon or carrot

Help unloading the dishwasher:

and the grocery
 

Do the number No. 2 on the potty once they can sit unsupported. I shared on how we do it in detail here

Help with simple chores such as watering the plants:

Put their clean clothes in the dresser

or taking the garbage bin out:

What other thing that you encourage your kids to do it themselves?