'Practice makes perfect.'

That's a phrase I think many of us are familiar with and even though we rarely become 'perfect' at the things we do, we certainly won't improve if we don't practice.

Letter recognition is one of those skills that is necessary at the beginning stages of the learning process because it is fundamental to all other literacy skills.

Use this printable as a practice for your Pre-5 aged children to recognize the lowercase letter 'a' as they will encounter it in printed materials. 

Younger children may be able to recognize this letter, but I think this page requires a little more time and attention than they may be able to give it.  For that reason, I'm working on another set of mazes with the younger child in mind.

Directions:
Start at the top left corner with the colored letter box.  Find the box next to it, either horizontal, vertical or diagonal, that contains the same letter.  Color that box, then repeat the process.


Thanks for stopping by.  Please let me know if you use this and how you like it.

Elizabeth

We love to read at our house and would continually be adding to our already large collection of books, if it weren't for financial contraints.  We do shop thrift stores and add to our shelves occasionally, but not nearly often enough to satisfy the voracious appetites of all the readers here!

Enter Gutenberg.org, or, Project Gutenberg; a free website that shares books in digital format that are no longer under copyright restrictions in the United States.  (ie. Books in the Public Domain.)  They offer many options from HTML, to .txt, and even .mobi and ePub, which you can view on your Kindle or other eReader.

You can read all about the origins of this wonderful enterprise here, and then enjoy the first review we have to share;  a fun tale of a Norwegian farm girl and the life she lives on Hoel Farm.

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you visit Project Gutenberg and please let us know what you think of this wonderful resource and our little friend Lisbeth.


Elizabeth

I can't decide what color I want to use for my new recipe cards.  I'm actually thinking I might use a variety of colors, assigning one color to each category in my recipe book.

I'm thinking of doing that, anyway.  I haven't decided.  But just because I haven't decided what I'm going to do, doesn't mean you can't have another option for some fun, bright recipe cards.

Here you go!  Enjoy!

Just popping in really quickly to drop this off.

Another crazy day here, but I'm trying really hard to stay on top of these posts.  A dead battery in my car made some trouble for me, today.  It's such a long story, I'll spare you the details, and it's really enough to say I had a lot of unexpected things to do, which crouded out the planned things for the day.

At the bottom of these pages you will find labeled spaces for lists that span the whole week, such as 'emails', 'phone call', & etc.  I like to put these at the bottom of my page, then insert the category title on the daily list.  When it's time to do 'emails' on Monday, I check the list at the bottom of the page, send off what I must/can, based on priority, then check the item off there.  This method saves me lots of space on each day's list.  Also, I'm not re-writing the same email note, or person to call on three or more days of the week before I actually accomplish that task!

To print this, I recommend 22# paper, or heavier.  Set your printer for two-sided printing and then punch holes along the side to put your pages in a three ring binder.  I left plenty of room in the margin for the holes.

Hope you can make good use of these!  I'm almost wishing I didn't have my planner  printed for the year.  I like this design much better than what I made for myself! =P

Here's a  more masculine version of a chore chart.  I had my ten year old son look through graphics with me to choose a background for this.  Not what I was thinking a ten year old boy would like, but I told him he could choose, so that's that.

The temperature has taken a dip down into the single digits again.  My children were very much enjoying the January thaw, and began looking for spring to come . . . soon.  I wonder how many years it takes to realize the vagaries of the seasons as well as the realistic timing of the changes?

It all reminds me of this verse:

Family is a very important thing. 

Last night, my husband and I had to have a Husband~Wife/Parent conference, which is why I'm late again with the freebie post.

I'm so glad we had that conference last night, even as late as it was.  If we had waited until this morning there would have been a lot of independent thoughts, emotions and reactions that would have clouded the pressing issue.

Our relationships are the most important things in our lives and they need to be treated with Tender Loving Care . . . even when it means staying up late to do so.

Part of the Parent/Child relationship is teaching our young ones how to be responsible and what skills they need to cope with their own faults or weaknesses in fulfilling their responsibilities. 

In our family, there are a lot of us, and a lot of tasks needing to be done.  In order to keep it all straight and make sure I'm staying on top of my responsibilities as a parent to train my children, and as part of their training, to know how to keep track of their responsibilities, we use lists.  I know I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I can put a checkmark on my list, and I think my Little Ones feel it too, when they can do the same, as well as not being overwhelmed by all they think they have to do.

So for today, I have a fun, flowery chore chart for girls.  It's pretty simple and you have to fill it in by hand, but whether you make it reusable by laminating it or putting it in a page protector, or choose to print a new one each week, I hope that each time you write on this, or help your child to check something off, you will realize you have just added a piece to the puzzle of a very valuable relationship. 

Thanks for stopping in. 

Hi there!

I'm so sorry for the late post today.  Things just sometimes get in the way.

Although I'm a homeschooling mom, and most of what you find on this blog is for homeschooling, I thought I'd include some lunch notes as a freebie today.

You may be someone who sends your children out the door for school every morning, or maybe you aren't.  Whatever the case for you, I hope you can find a use for these.

Thanks for stopping by!

The other night, my teenage daughter and I spent I don't know how much time browsing Pinterest and Google Images looking for some printable recipe cards.  There are a lot of cute ones out there, but none that jumped out and shouted "Use me!"

Consequently, I've been working on designing my own, and because I'm not quite sure what exactly I want, I have a few different styles in my files.  I dug down in there to pull one out for the Febulous February Freebie today.

Thanks for stoppin by today.

Hope you enjoy having some fun, colorful and cool cards to keep track of your recipes.