My Teaching Library

{Disclaimer:  I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.}

My Teaching Library is a website offering thousands (yes, thousands!) of educational resources to download. You can purchase either an annual or lifetime Download Club Subscription Plan, which is the most cost-effective option, or purchase individual resources, which is better if you only need a few of the products. The Download Club gives you unlimited downloads.

The resources are organized by grade and by subject, which makes it really easy to find what you're looking for. There is a "Miscellaneous" category, where you'll find things like seasonal and holiday-themed products. You can also find several articles to read giving tips on educational resources.

(You can see the different categories above. There are sub-categories for each one as well.)

I have used quite a few resources from My Teaching Library the past month. Some of my favorites were the CVC Word Family resources. I am teaching a Kindergarten relative this year, and I'm using some of these printables to teach him how to read. We have used the -at and -ad word families so far. There are tons of activities in each "bundle", including cut and glue worksheets, word sliders, flashcards, games, and more. He really enjoys the activities, which making learning to read fun.

There are tons of resources for learning to read, including sight word bundles, flashcards, mini-books, and phonics books for your child to read.

My kids and I also used the "Foliage Creations" art activity as part of our autumn nature study. We went outside and gathered different sized and colored leaves and glued them to paper in the shape of animals and insects. This was a fun project with lots of colorful examples to show the kids!

I really enjoyed the seasonal activities, like the Pumpkin Poetry and Pumpkin Science. We will be doing both of these in October! The Pumpkin Poetry includes writing acrostic, diamante, haiku, limerick, monorhyme, cinquain, minute, tanka, and shape poems! My kids love reading and writing poetry, and they are going to really enjoy this.

There are book units of books for all ages, including Dr. Suess's Ten Apples Up On Top (perfect for an autumn apple study) and Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (my favorite childhood novel). I have several downloaded for future use with my kids.

We have also downloaded several poster sets including the Solar System and Nouns. There are interactive notebooks for many different subjects, shape books, writing lessons, entire textbooks to download, including one of Marine Science, math games and worksheets, foreign languages, and electives such as home economics. There are so many different resources I cannot possible name them all here. 

When you download a resource, it goes into your account's Download Library. You get an email notification that it is ready to download. This keeps all of your downloads in one central location, making it super easy to glance at what you have and download whatever you need at the time. I like this feature, because I could download several different resources and they were sent right to my Download Library, ready for me when I was ready for them! This helped me not get sidetracked or frustrated trying to download one thing at a time before looking for something else.

If you're looking for a place that has literally thousands of resources from birth to 12th grade, check out My Teaching Library!  It makes planning the fun seasonal activities so easy! See what other reviewers thought about this amazing resource by clicking the banner below.

Homeschool Highlights Link Up!

This week we had another busy week, but I am actually posting this on time! Yay for me!

We did our cottage school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It's a lot of fun, but it's also exhausting! I do like having a dedicated place to do our work, and my mom or my mother in law comes and watches Zeke in the back room (which we have set up like a playroom). It's nice to do school without so many (sweet) interruptions a few days a week. 

Thursday and Friday we do school at home, just language arts, math, and handwriting for the boys. Mercie has every subject to do those days. 

We also started using Rooted Childhood for our "Morning Time". That's in quotes because it's not usually in the morning, except on Thursdays and Fridays. We made autumn wreaths this week and read some fun fall poetry. We are going to make Zeke some spiced play-dough this afternoon or tomorrow. I love Rooted Childhood because there is literally something for everyone in it! We can do simple things like making animal felt masks for Zeke to embroidery with the older kids, from simple songs to poetry, and lots of fun seasonal stories.

Mercie had an orthodontist appointment Wednesday afternoon. We live in the boonies, so we have to drive nearly an hour to her orthodontist (an an hour and a half to Mikaela's OB/GYN and hospital). The girls and I took Zeke and the boys stayed at my mother in laws. We stopped and ate Huddle House for lunch (Zeke loves waffles!) and ran into the dollar tree for some fall flowers and leaves for our autumn wreaths. I actually picked up the wreath forms there, too!

Mikaela and I teach at TeamKID at our church on Wednesdays (I'm actually the director, as well), so we rushed home through flooded roads and pouring rain to grab our lesson books and supplies and rushed back to church. 

Zeke had several fun Tot Trays this week! Here are a few:

We also took pictures (before all of the rain!) on our driveway. We really have a beautiful place where we live.

The boys and Mercie got haircuts today - Rod's aunt makes house calls for us! Mikaela has a doctor's appointment and ultrasound next Friday. We are super excited to get another glimpse at Daniel! 

How was your week?

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Wisdom Wonder Project

Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.

For the past month, Zeke and I have been using a really great curriculum from Wisdom Wonder Project. Many of you have seen the Tot Trays I set up for Zeke's tot school each day. I took the ideas and plans in the Little Wonders Preschool and used them for Zeke's Tot Trays this month! We have absolutely loved them.

WHAT IS WISDOM WONDER PROJECT?

Wisdom Wonder Project offers homeschool curricula for young children that is literature based, classically inspired, age-appropriate, and hands-on. They offer many different levels and subscriptions from preschool through 2nd grade. The Little Wonders subscription has a Preschool, Junior Kindergarten, and Kindergarten level. The three core subjects in each level are Literature, Block Play, and Little Masters (art). They also have Young Scholars for 1st and 2nd grade with History/Literature, Science, and Little Masters as the core subjects, Singapore math videos for Kindergarten and up, and an A La Carte Supplemental section for all ages!

WHAT DID WE RECEIVE?

Zeke and I received the Little Wonders Preschool Bundle subscription with Literature, Block Play, and Little Masters.

The Literature curriculum is designed around a book each week. There are tons of ideas to make the book come alive for your child - hands-on play, sensory play, fine motor play, discussion, art, and more! The Little Masters curriculum focuses on one artist a month, exploring their work and applying their techniques. The Block Play curriculum also focuses on one book a month, teaching your child about spatial development and engaging their imagination.

Each collection is available by itself as a monthly or yearly subscription. You can also bundle all three collections and save 20% on the subscriptions!

HOW DID WE USE IT?

I ordered the books for the first several weeks and we dug right in! The curriculum doesn't have a daily schedule, but it does have a suggested schedule. Zeke and I didn't follow the schedule; instead I pulled several of the ideas from the curriculum that I knew Zeke would enjoy and that would be within his abilities and made them into his Tot Trays!

The first book we read was "Peter's Chair" by Ezra Jack Keats, and the first activity we did was build a tall tower using wooden blocks, just like Peter did in the first part of the story. Zeke really enjoyed building with the blocks!

Another day I gave Zeke a cup of pink water, an empty glass, and a dropper. He had a blast learning how to suck water up in the dropper and drop it into the cup! This tied in the "pink" in the story.

We also measured his length with a piece of yarn. The curriculum instructed the child to paint glue onto a piece of paper and arrange the yarn on the glue. I decided to use contact paper for Zeke. I laid out a piece and taped it down with masking tape. He arranged the yarn and then I folded the contact paper over to seal it. 

The next book we read was "Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchinson. Zeke absolutely loves this book! The first activity we did was working with positional words by using a wooden block and a plastic chicken. I asked Zeke to put Rosie on top of the block, under the block, beside the block, behind the block, and in front of the block. He also made her walk around the block and jump over the block. He enjoyed this activity and I was pleased to see he already has a great understanding of positional words!

We also made a sensory tray using cornmeal and plastic farm animals. I added a scoop and a metal bucket. This was messy but Zeke loved it.

Then we read "Planting a Rainbow" by Lois Ehlert. One of the suggested activities was to create a rainbow with toys and other objects. I decided to modify that for Zeke and create sensory color cards. I gave him a cup with different objects in the same color and he glued them to pieces of cardboard. He loved doing this, and they turned out great.

We also went on a flower walk and picked some wildflowers and some flowers from our trees and bushes. We sorted them by color and played with them. We also deconstructed them and counted petals. 

We also did a unit in the Block Play collection. The book for the month of September is "Changes, Changes" by Pat Hutchinson. Zeke built a house with wooden blocks and tried to build as high a tower as he could.

We also explored shapes with play-dough. We "stamped" the blocks into the play-dough and talked about the shapes. I also had him match the wooden blocks to the play-dough impressions. 

The Little Masters is a fabulous beginning art course for any young child. We haven't had a chance to really dive into this yet, but I am so excited to! The September collection focuses on Andy Warhol. Your child will be exploring lines and mixing colors, and studying and replicating one his pieces of work, "Illustration of Cats."

WHAT DID WE THINK?

I love the Wisdom Wonder Project! Zeke is a bit young for the targeted age for this curriculum, but it was so easy to adapt it to his abilities. I really appreciate the fact that there isn't a set schedule. You can go as quickly or as slowly through it as your child needs to. 

I love that there aren't any worksheets in this curriculum! The learning is all done through hands-on play! The suggested activities are perfect for young children and (mostly) easy to set up for the parents. Purposeful play is the method I use with Zeke, and this curriculum is full of ideas!

The book choices are fabulous! We love using literature as the basis for our learning, and that is what Wisdom Wonder Curriculum is all about. I'm excited to read all of the books listed!

Each week has a shopping list with the materials you will need, as well as recommended products that would go along well with the theme. For example, for the first week (Peter's Chair) the recommended products are a chair stacking game, a wooden dollhouse family, a pink suitcase set, and a plush puppy. You don't have to buy any of these products (I didn't), but it does give you some ideas of toys you may have already that would fit the theme.

There are also recommended books and other books by the same author that you may want to get for that week. Again, you don't have to buy any of these but it may help you remember a book you already have that is similar.

I cannot recommend this curriculum enough! If you are a mom of a toddler or preschooler, the Little Wonders Preschool is a gentle, literature-based, hands on curriculum that will expose your child to many new concepts and ideas through play. Visit my Instagram @toddler_school and follow along on on Wisdom Wonder Journey! Click the banner below to see what other reviewers thought of Wisdom Wonder Curriculum!