Homeschool

Donut Place Value Math Center

Does everyone love donuts? They just seem to be more fun than other snack foods. And more fun, means you want it more. Which is why I created this donut place value math set. For you to have fun with your learners, while they are learning.

Donut Place Value Math Center

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

I like to make learning fun. I wholeheartedly believe that kids learn more, understand more, when they are engaged and having fun. What is more fun than donuts?

Place Value Activity with Donuts

$3.00

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Learning place value in math seems like an easy thing, but it can be very confusing for kids. Different columns of numbers,

This math center is great for second, third, and even fourth grade learners. Of course you also have those who do no fall into those grades and are learning place value, have fun with that too!

Students will love using base ten blocks to create the sprinkles on their donuts. Educational and fun.

Included in this set:

There are 3 differentiated response cards and challenge cards for you and your learners.

There three black and white donut templates and six different colored donut templates.
One page of 100 blocks
One page of 10 and 1 blocks

You can use colored paper such as the Astro paper to add a pop of color to your math work. I used this for the base ten blocks so the “sprinkles” were colorful.

I like to use the black and white version, and either color it myself for a little something to do while waiting television, or to have my kids color.

Donut place value - hundreds, tens, ones

Using this Donut Place Value Math Center

Write a number on the response card for your learners to show their work on their donuts, and write in what the H, T, O is in the boxes.

You’ll of course provide them with the hundreds, tens, and ones pieces that I have included.

Create the donuts and the learners show their work writing in what the H, T, O is in the boxes, and writing out the number. Two different cards sets are included.

Let them teach you.

Get creative in teaching your learners. Or, let them teach you. Kids get a kick out of teaching something. It is a great way to see how much they understand, and demonstrate their knowledge.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein.

More Mini Donut Fun for Kids

Donut Writing & Art – Persuasive Writing

Donut Fractions – Fun Math Center

Mini Donut Recipe

Maybe while you are learning place value, you might might want to make a little snack to go along with your lessons. These chocolate mini donuts are delicious!

You can find more mini donut recipes here too. They are all super popular around our house.

Simple Mini Donuts

Mini Donut Recipes

Peanut Butter Mini Donuts

How to Use a Mini Donut Maker

How to Include Delight-Directed Learning in your Homeschool

by Sara Panning Leave a Comment

One of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is finding which type of learning style or method works best for your family and doing that. Each child can be encouraged to learn on their own terms, in their own way, which helps them to take ownership of their education. This helps to create a lifelong love of learning, which is where delight directed learning comes in.

Including Delight-Directed Learning in your Homeschool

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

We have chosen a path of delight-directed learning because it works best for our family. Delight-directed learning simply defined means following the interests of your children and including those things in your homeschool lessons.

It’s also known as eclectic homeschooling, child-led, or interest-led. It’s a natural way of learning or unschooling.

Through our years of homeschooling, I’ve talked with other moms who would like to implement this style of learning, but they just aren’t sure where to start.

Donut Writing & Art – Persuasive Writing

$3.00

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They’re afraid of going off the beaten path and stepping away from the textbooks or boxed curriculum. They lack the confidence to trust the learning process due to their fear of learning gaps in their child’s education. There’s nothing wrong with having some concerns about this. In fact, it shows that you are deeply invested in your child’s education, which is a great asset to have!

In order to reassure you if you’re having these kinds of thoughts, I’d like to encourage you to take baby steps toward a more relaxed way of learning. If you’re used to following a strict schedule or lesson plan, dropping it completely might be too drastic for you.

I recommend including delight-directed learning gradually so you can see how well it works before taking the plunge and throwing out all your lesson plans.

Two Simple Ways to Include Delight-Directed Learning in your Homeschool

Unit studies: Unit studies are a fun way to explore interests while covering many (or all) of the subjects in your curriculum. Allow your child to choose an interesting topic and then center your history, art, math, language arts, science, and any other subjects around that specific topic. Your child will have the benefit of thoroughly exploring a favorite topic while using real life applications to learn. For instance, if they’re interested in penguins, choose a read-aloud or chapter book about penguins, study penguin habitats for science and geography, draw/paint pictures of penguins, and include some kind of penguin manipulative in your math time. These are just examples and the complexity also depends on the age of your child, but you get the idea.
Lapbooks: Make a lapbook to go along with the unit study or as a stand-alone creative project. Allow your child to choose a subject and make a visual display of what they’ve learned with a lapbook. Not sure how to make one? You can read about how to make your own lapbook for ideas.

Learning with Online Unit Studies - Online Courses for Homeschoolers

You don’t have to design your own unit studies and lapbooks if you’re pressed for time or need something that’s low to no prep. There are homeschool curriculum companies that provide pre-made lapbooks and unit studies so all you have to do is download and print them. There are even online unit studies that you can start right away.

If you’d like a relaxed, natural way to learn that allows your children to explore their interests, consider giving these two tools a try to include delight-directed learning in your homeschool today.

This post was written by Sara Jordan Panning of Heart and Soul Homeschooling, a site dedicated to encouraging curiosity, creativity, character, and connection through delight-directed learning.

Recommended Resources:

What Does a Typical Homeschool Day Look Like

by Ashley Mullen

What does a typical homeschool day look like? It looks different for every family. There really isn’t a typical looking day, even each homeschool family is going to have different looking days. I see it asked all the time, what does a typical homeschool day look like?

What Does a Typical Homeschool Day Look Like

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

Here in our home, homeschool lessons always start in the morning. After breakfast and washing up, we sit right down to do school work. We have been doing it this way for the last three-ish years, because it’s what works for us. Getting it done and out of the way.

Science experiments/labs happen in the afternoon, after lessons are finished, after Momma has finished her coffee.

How Homeschool Days Vary

We have changed the way we homeschool, in terms of the time of day. We have started doing our school in the morning, and then switched to the afternoons for a little while, before going back to the morning. There was a period where lessons in the afternoon just worked better for our family.

Done by noon?

We usually are finished by noon. Lower elementary are finished well before noon, and the higher we go up in grades, the longer we take. This is typical of homeschoolers that we know. It doesn’t take as long as you might think to get your lessons finished if you have a plan and know what you are going to be working on, it can go quite smoothly.

What our Secular Homeschool Day Looks Like

Four or Five Days?

We are in the four day camp. We do a little more each of the those four days so that we can take a day in the week and not worry. This is often our grocery shopping and errand day. A four day a week schedule might be so you can a join a weekly coop or homeschool group that meets weekly.

But you don’t have to. You can stick to five, or even six days if that is what works better for you family.

Relaxed Homeschool Days

This past year, the only scheduled subject and lesson plans we had were math. Math got done after breakfast, 4 days a week. For the rest of our learning we did a very relaxed homeschool. My kids learned so much. They consumed books and documentaries like they were starving. Relaxed homeschooling can be great for you and your homeschoolers.

How A Homeschool Mom can Earn Money

by Ashley Mullen

There is this preconceived notion that homeschool moms don’t, or can’t work, but that isn’t true in the least, and I’m not just talking about the hard work they do raising and educating their children. There are a lot of different ways a homeschool mom can earn money and an income while taking care of her family.

How A Homeschool Mom can Earn Money

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

As a homeschool mom I am always looking for and interested in ways to earn an income from home. And I have been successful at it in different ways and I want to help you homeschool moms do the same.

Blogging – Long Term

Obviously I would mention blogging as I do this, and have been doing it for a number of years. However, blogging is not a great rich quick thing. I’m definitely not rich, but do make enough from ads and the occasional sponsored post to pay for the cost of running it.

You want to find something that you are passionate about, and willing to work hard at. When you are passionate about the topic or niche that you chose you’ll never run out of things to write and share about.

You could also freelance write working for other bloggers if you don’t want the commitment of your own site but still enjoy writing.

Earn Money Babysitting

I just stopped babysitting again and I have to admit that babysitting is hard to do while homeschooling, at least for me. But it can be a really great way to have some money coming in. You could also look at providing before/after school care which might fit with homeschooling so much better, or offer occasional care for other homeschool families.

Become a Reseller

Become an online seller. It is fun and easy. Like with all work at home jobs there is a learning curve but it doesn’t take long to pick it up. Both eBay and Amazon allow you to sell items online to their huge audience. There are fees involved to sell so you need to keep that in mind when pricing.

When you are first getting started, don’t buy things to sell them, in stead start looking around your home. Sell the things that you don’t use anymore. Some ideas include:

Curriculum you are no longer using
books – yes, part with books that are just collecting dust
board games
appliances you don’t use – like a blender, or mini donut maker (check out this recipe first though)

Swagbucks and Rakuten (Ebates)

Both are in the form of rebates or gift cards but it is a way to add money to your pocketbook all the same. I’ve included these simple ways to make money for those who may not be ready to start a business from home or as extra quick cash ideas.

Swagbucks

I have been using Swagbucks since 2010, and I always cash out for Amazon gift cards. It’s a nice and easy way to buy something for myself without feeling guilty, to buy birthday and Christmas presents, etc.

I use it if I am looking for something easy but not if I am doing research.
I do not suggest doing the surveys, they take too much time and are not worth it at all.
By using their search engine you earn points and can exchange them for Amazon gift cards.
You can add their Chrome extension and it will alert you as to whether or not you can get points when shopping at different online stores. Some online stores include: Rona, Indigo, BestBuy.
And you can scan your receipts and earn points that way.

Ebates

Do your shopping through Ebates and you will get a check in the mail or via PayPal.

Think about how much you spend yearly at places like Walmart, Walgreens, Target and so on. Plus they have over 2000 online stores. Just by doing your regular shopping through Ebates you will get money back. I’m telling you, it all adds up.

If you have not already signed up you can earn $5.00 with purchase by using my link.
Do your shopping through them and get cash back for purchases.
Just go to the site and choose the store before shopping.
After you get started you can invite friends to Ebates and earn that way as well.
This is an easy way to bring in some extra cash with very little effort.

Selling Crafts to Earn Money

If you are a create person you can start selling your handmade items on a number of different sites and earn money to pay for the craft materials but also for the time and effort you put into them.

Etsy

Etsy is the most popular homemade site to sell on and to buy from. You can use my link here, to receive 40 free listings when you open your shop, and I will earn 40 as well. Etsy is a global online marketplace, where people come together to make, sell, buy, and collect unique items.

Amazon Handmade

You can also now sell on Amazon Handmade, but I don’t know as much about that option at this time.

Teachers Pay Teachers

If you make your own curriculum or teaching resources you can sell those on Teachers Pay Teachers. I started doing this a year ago and have been happy with my results there.

You can also sell clipart and resources that other teacher authors (sellers on TpT) may want for creating their products. If you have skills on Illustrator this could be very productive for you.

This is in no way the only ways that you can earn an income or make money from home while homeschooling your children. Homeschool moms are inventive, creative people, who really can “do it all”.

Storage for Homeschool Supplies You’ll Love

by Ashley Mullen

We are in the middle of a kitchen reno after moving and everything is getting a face lift, including my table box that my husband made me a few years ago. Now instead of beat up painted jars that were catch all jars, I have pretty painted jars that are storage for homeschool supplies.

Storage for Homeschool Supplies You’ll Love

This post contains affiliate links, see my disclosure policy for more information.

This was a simple up-cycle, reuse project. We have an eat-in kitchen and the dining room table is where we do the majority of our lessons. I have a warm, inviting pale pale yellow with white wainscot on the walls, with grey cupboards. I wanted to use more grey at the eat-in side of the kitchen and this was the perfect place to do it.

What I used:

old jars – I used tall salsa jars
paint – color of your choice
twine

What you need:

hot glue gun
hot glue gun sticks
paint brush
plastic flowers of you choice – I got mine from the Dollarama.

What I did to make these decorative storage jars:

I painted my jars outside because the day was perfect, nice and sunny warm, making the paint dry fast. Painting on glass, in my experience, is not easy. I did I quick coat over each of the four jars and let it dry. I did not paint the very top where I was going to be gluing the twine.

The next coat I cheated a bit on, I only painted down as far as I needed, to where the box would hide the rest. I just did a quick and let it dry until the next day.

Using my hot glue gun I wrapped and glued the twine around the top of jar. My finger tips were sore by the time I finished all four jars.

Storage for Homeschool Supplies

I knew I wanted to use these jars to store our school supplies. Things like pencils, scissors, glue sticks, erasers, etc. But I didn’t want it to look ugly so I picked up fluffy, plastic flowers that would cover that covered the tops of the jars.

We cut them down to size so they fit perfectly in the jars. The pencils are holding one flower up, but that is because they are new and my kids haven’t had a chance to use them all yet. That flower will be sitting right in no time.

Homeschool

Donut Place Value Math Center

Donut Place Value Math Center

Place Value Activity with Donuts