Pastel Printable Multiplication Table

In third grade, I had no choice but to memorize multiplication facts using flash cards. My parents would practice with me at home, I would practice at school, then I would get tested by the teacher on how well I knew them. I had to learn one set before moving to the next. I remember the 8s and 9s kicking my butt. I also remember my mom giving me a little prize, like a book, after I'd mastered the harder ones.

These days I notice that public and private school kids alike don't know their facts. I remember trying to do it with Joel and failing miserably. Kids in school have a handy dandy multiplication facts table like the one below that I created. I think the reasoning is that they will learn them this way if they have to look them up over and over, and I've found it to be a really helpful resource.

I created a cute multiplication table in my Etsy shop for just $1.00 and would love for you to come over and check it out.

Happy mathing!

Easy Ways to Homeschool High School

“Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” ─ Goethe

Update 5/15/2020 and this is my first homeschool graduate

People look at me like I just sprouted wings when I answer YES to their question of, "Are you going to homeschool throughout high school?"

I mean, we've been doing it for 3 months now during freshman year for my oldest and it's going well. He enjoys it and doesn't want to go to "normal" high school, as one of his Catholic school friends put it. Guess what? Homeschooling might be the NEW NORMAL for a lot of people! BAM! Take that!*

Yes, it's a leap of faith but that's what we took 10 years ago when we first started. Has everyone learned to read on schedule, is everyone caught up on math, do they all know their state capitals and important historical and scientific facts? Nope. And I'm not freaking out about it as much as I used to.

The worst that happens is my youngest two need help in religious education classes and at coop with their writing and reading. For now. They will pick it up and be off and running when they are ready. I can have this kind of confidence because I saw it with my 13-year-old, my 15-year-old and also my 11-year-old who is just NOW starting to read great (thanks, honestly, to Instagram messages and postings and texting her friends).

Oh, and the other bad thing that happens is when they play a game in gym and have to know the state capitals to advance, and my kid is like, "HUH? That's what GPS and Google and your computer and phone are for and when do I ever need that information?"

I feel like I have to address the social thing, even though it's super ridiculous. My high schooler is overly socialized. Like I spend a fortune in gas socialized. He gets a full day on Wednesdays ... I'm talking 10:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. ... at our local Catholic homeschool coop and then Theology of the Body for Teens. And Mondays he takes Latin there. Then there's Boy Scouts, and he's currently the Senior Patrol Leader in his troop. Oh, and there was that field trip to the World War I museum he recently went on and that field trip to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum (socializing AND learning at the same time ... WAHOO!). And I'm forgetting a ton of stuff. But don't worry, because even though Kansas doesn't seem to care what I do, I keep an Excel spreadsheet for my high schooler for the purposes of his transcript. I keep track of hours and he's doing great.

He has a lawn care job (when he's not soccer reffing or working at the gymnastics place or babysitting or altar serving funerals for income) and works with friends. He is always going to movies with friends and hanging out with friends and adults like extended family and there you go. Oh, and did I mention he's starting to DRIVE?

All YOU have to do is Google "homeschooling high school" and check out all the bazillions of links, like:

• Curriculum links for real books
• Khan Academy for math and more (free!)
• Time4Learning (we used this for a year). Here's my referral code!
• Virtual school (we've used it; free!)
• Discovery K-12 (put your own thing together FREE)
• Reading Eggs (we use it)
• Math Seeds (we use it)
• ABC Mouse.com
• IXL Math
• CTC Math
• The math they use in public school that made my kids cry because it was timed and stressfu
• Life of Fred (we love it)
• The What Your (fill-in-the-blank-grade) Grader Needs to Know series through 6th grade
• Starfall
• Saxon, Seton, Singapore, Teaching Textbooks, Catholic Heritage Curricula
• And about 75,000 other resources that are either free or middle-of-the-road  or costly.

And yes, question-asker, I have lots of friends who have homeschooled up until 9th grade then decided to send their kid to high school. I try to never say never these days, and I realize we could be sending a kid to high school someday. I have 5 kids and they all have different personalities and dreams and goals and wants and needs. I respect that. It's working for us right now and I am going to just be totally thrilled about that and enjoy every minute of it.

So, don't worry, Friends Who Send Your Kids to School and Family Who Sent Your Kids to School ... I got this.

*Disclaimer: I did not write this post to spark a debate. I fully realize homeschooling is not for everyone. I can't imagine my parents homeschooling me! I just wrote it to point people who ask to a post so they can read my views instead of getting the deer-in-headlights look from me because they have caught me in the middle of a busy day to ask me a very complicated question! Do I think my kids will be perfect if I homeschool them through high school? Of course not. They are subjected to some of the same temptations as any other teens, and they have hormones just like any other teens.

Time4Learning $12 for up to FIVE KIDS in Same Family Through April 30, 2016

YES YES YES! Okay, so we already made the decision to switch over to Time4Learning instead of virtual school for 2016/2017 and supplement with some Teaching Textbooks for Math.

Anyway, it would be $90 for all 5 of my kids per month. But they give a discount for big families and it was going to be $70 per month, which I was cool with.

Then I logged in today to find some things out just for fun and saw that if you sign up by April 30, your FIRST MONTH IS ONLY $12 for up to five kids!

BAM! SOLD! Why not sign up now and get it going? I can pause the membership over the summer if we want to (I've heard some kids still dig doing it in the summer) and start back up end of August or early September.

I'll be back to let you know how it goes for our family. We only really have two computers and one is mine for work purposes most of the time, so I'm going to have to relinquish it for hours at a time ... which is no big deal because I wasn't using it when homeschooling usually anyway. So my plan is to get two kids going at a time on Time4Learning while the others play or read. Then the next two can go, then the final kiddo. Maybe that "final kiddo" will be Callie, who loves to homeschool at night anyway. Probably do half hour increments or so many lessons or whatever but we'll see how it works best for our family!

Here are some screenshots from the site:

Here's my referral code!

Figuring Out My Daughter's Homeschooling Style

My other kids come to me to do their schoolwork pretty willingly. My daughter I have to practically chase down and beg and plead with to get her to do anything. I made the mistake once of saying she learns better at night and she has run with that and refuses to do any schoolwork in the mornings. So I gave up because I have other kids to fry. I mean, fish to homeschool?

Yesterday I popped her on CTCMath.com and she did so many lessons I was shocked. She would freak out if she got a 90% instead of 100% and go into a drama-filled soliloquy fit for a girl on a Disney show, but she did the work. She has quite a bit of match catching-up to do so this is terrific! I feel hopeful for the summer and for next year!

Then it hit me. She likes to work independently. My older son and I like to work side-by-side and my next son is somewhere in between but this girl likes to do it herself with VERY minimal help from me.

Since she still struggles with reading a bit but did well with a program we tried a year or so ago called Reading Eggs, I am going to order that program for her today. If my kids can play games and have fun and still learn something, I'm happy.

There are all kinds of helpful things on the Internet about how to figure out your kid's learning style. But just observing them without the busy chaos of daily life is so important and is something I had not taken the time to do, I am ashamed to admit. Then we took a trip to Houston to be with my husband while he worked and I had some time away from our normal life to just observe my kids instead of manage them. I'm finding out some pretty cool things and have since dropped some things off my Life Plate so I can focus on homeschooling as much as I should be.

How's your homeschooling journey going?

Learning Fractions with #Legos

A lot of people are posting this on my Facebook timeline and I wanted to share it because it's a great thing. I like to use M&Ms for counting because they are yum to eat when we're done, but for the Lego-obsessed, this is fabulous!

XtraMath.org ... We Hated It

I heard about XtraMath.org from God-knows-who or where and wanted to try it. I had been avoiding math for a long time due to having baby after baby and losing brain cells left and right. So I was at a point where I was checking out every math program that came my way, especially free ones (by the way, we have settled on CTC Math, and you can find that post here).

Immediately my kids hated this. It's timed drills and my kids feel so pressured and stressed with timed stuff (well, the oldest two, anyway). Then the public school kid comes over and is like, "Hey, we use that at my school."

At first I was like, we are going to forge ahead with this because memorizing times tables and such is VERY IMPORTANT.

Then when they were literally in tears every time I turned it on, I said, SCREW THIS. So this is what they do in public school? M'kay, that seals it for me. I don't WANT TO BE LIKE PUBLIC SCHOOL. There is a reason I am homeschooling and it's to be DIFFERENT and ... sorry, school friends, but I have to be honest and say ... BETTER. And better to me means more relaxed but still learning great, important stuff.

Bottom line:  if your kid likes timed drills and thrives on that kind of stress, go for it!

CTC Math at 60% off for Homeschoolers! (and a Confession by Me) and UPDATE

I am so excited to be working with CTCMath.com! I found them through another homeschool blogger and was shocked to be able to get 60% off their usual rate. This means I only pay $15.97 per month for my entire family, which is 4 kids right now that are homeschooling and Sam will be ready in another year! This is a major deal for me.

The thing is, I used to use IXL.com and it was fine (and, I believe, more than $15 per month). But there was no teaching. It was only tests. So if I didn't prep them well enough, they would get frustrated. And teaching so many grade levels was so difficult to do in addition to our busy lives. Here's the confession part ... So I kind of just gave up. We tried Xtramath.org, which is used in public schools, and they literally cried because they hated the timed drills.

I did not enjoy math growing up because teachers were not able to take the time needed to make sure everyone understood a concept before moving on. In 10th grade Geometry we had a horrid teacher first semester. We could not understand what he was saying and we were all flunking. Second semester we got a red-headed phenom and she made sure every single kid understood something before moving on. She did not care what her superiors thought; she wanted us to GET IT. And we did not berate each other for not understanding a concept or slowing the class down. We helped each other and only tested when we were all ready.

I wanted to be like her with math and did not know how since I am an "English girl."

Enter CTC Math. It has wonderful, explanatory videos for every skill set your kids needs. Things are explained in different ways and NOT JUST ONE WAY because WE ARE ALL NOT THE SAME and we understand things differently!

Your kid watches a video that is pretty short. If they get the concept they answer questions. You set the passing grade. I have mine set to 90%. If they don't pass, they get two more chances to take it again. You get lovely parent reports so you can see that you are making progress. My kids aren't moaning and groaning about math anymore. They see progress and they see they are mastering concepts, even if we had to start back a couple of grades just to make sure they are comprehending stuff so we can move on.

So click here to get the homeschooler's deal and there are a number of different ways to pay. I think $15.97 per month for math without tears is a darn good deal, especially for people like me who have a slew of kidlets!

Let me know if you have any questions ... I'm happy to answer anything at all about homeschooling!

Happy Mathing!

Updated April 2015 and we still love this program and it is worth every penny. It helps pre-teach some math concepts so that when we hit our Calvert virtual school checkpoints on the same topics they are ready to roll and comprehend it all better!

5th Grade Benchmarks (Scope and Sequence)

So I've typed up in Excel all the Fifth Grade benchmarks from the book by Rebecca Rupp called "Home Learning Year by Year". Benchmarks are things a typical school kid "needs to know." But you be the judge of that. 

Obviously, some stuff is important and leads to other things. There are other things on this list that you might just say, "Sure, but we can hit that hard later on." And you would be fine. If you are teaching one child right now, it will be no problem to hit all these points. If you are like me and teaching 4 kids while wrangling a younger one, you might choose to put some things off while focusing harder on others. Maybe you choose to focus more on life skills. You are not doing it wrong at all!

Other grades can be found here at the blog under the Blog Category of Benchmarks, as well as by grade.

Here are the benchmarks for Fifth Grade. As I'm putting them into Excel and uploading them to Google Docs.  I'll be adding the others as fast as my fingers can type!

I suggest buying the book so you can also benefit from all the wonderful resources the author provides, as well as a longer description of each benchmark.

The Tater Tot Casserole Cookbook ... #EasyMeals

I never thought I would put a cookbook together. Cooking is NOT my thing. Kids, yes! Writing, yes! Scrapbooking, yes! Homeschooling, yes! Travel, yes! Loving on my man, yes! Cooking and housework, not so much.

But, with the help of our daughtersitter Jordan, it got done. You see, tater tot casserole all by itself ROCKS. It's the ultimate yummy comfort food. My kids see it's for dinner and are HAPPY! The next morning you can scramble the leftovers in some eggs for breakfast. It's quick and easy and has 5 basic ingredients.

Somehow Jordan and I brainstormed 34 total recipes for tater tot casserole, including BBQ, gluten-free, bacon cheeseburger, fish stick surprise, Italian, pizza and more! It's a great dinner for those nights when homeschooling has been a long process, whether fun or not!

Then I popped in 7 dessert recipes, including Tutu's Chocolate Stars and Grandma Solsberg's Easy Brownies! These come in handy when you have had a stressful day!

And you know cooking teaches MATH (measuring, counting tater tots, ounces, temperatures, times) and CHEMISTRY!

If you don't have a Kindle, no problem. I don't have one, either. There's a thing on Amazon called a Cloud Reader where you can download all your cool freebies and save them to read on your laptop or PC or iPad whenever you want to later! They also have an app for smartphones.

Here's the link!

Daily Homeschool Checklist Sheet Second/Third Grade

So I finally have my brain back. Well, the best it can come back after 5 kids sucked my brain cells up. That's a sacrifice I was willing to make, though. Moving on ...

My point here is that I WANT SO BADLY TO GET ORGANIZED in my homeschooling yet I am somehow a Type A Free Spirit. Yep, I am both organized/structured and also a rebellious hippie. I love my planner so I can see what we have done, even though my state doesn't require me to even keep records.

And I love when we take Forget Homeschooling days. There is a tad bit of guilt but as the years go on and I see that my kids are indeed learning and, most importantly, learning how to be kind individuals, it gets easier to take a day off to go to the zoo (nature/science!) or to Kaleidoscope (art there plus history at the Hallmark Visitor's Center!). I tell people we half homeschool/half unschool.

It's also difficult to get anything done in the midst of remodeling and not being able to find half the books, but that is another post!

So here's the Google docs link of Callie's checklist so you can see how I have set it up. She pretty much asked for this since she knows we are starting a new school year and she wants to keep all her stuff straight. I put it in a page protector so she can use a dry erase marker to cross things off. Maybe we'll do something like by Friday she has 5 checks by some stuff and only 2 checks by the history and science. Or maybe she'll want to cross it off each day and I'll log stuff in the planner.

Then there comes that day that I want to chuck the planner across the room and just play with my kids and read to them and have fun with them. It's all in the balance and moderation. I can be a Free Spirited Fun Homeschooling Mom and a Let's Get Some Stuff Done For Real Today Homeschooling Mom, too!

Review: Education.com

I found Education.com when I was Googling math worksheet helps. I get sick of buying workbooks that are full of fluff and that sit on my shelves. And I also get sick of getting workbooks for my older kids that are full of pages and pages of the same darn thing. I mean, once they get it, the get it, you know?! (interabang!)

So since I'm now trying to make sure my kids are learning much of what they are "supposed" to know (as well as tossing in puh-lenty of play and free and reading time!), I don't have to worry about having every stinking resource imaginable on my shelves. I'm not that homeschooling mom with 10,000+ books on her shelves. We have plenty for the kids to read and learn from, then we supplement with the library!

Okay, so I found Education.com and signed up because I get 10 free worksheets per month. Soon I found that wasn't going to be enough. I could either sign up for $3.99/month and pay for a year all at once or I could sign up for 1 month at a time at $4.99 (and they gave me a free month via email, probably because I was waffling). So as of the other day I'm sitting on a free month then only pay $4.99 per month to print all the worksheets I want.

The more expensive monthly plan only allows me a limited number of entire mini-workbooks, but that's okay because there are so many worksheets and slideshows and activity ideas that I think I'm all set.

What I'm saying, people, is that when I need to teach a kid about symmetry, I print some fun-looking worksheets, we cover it til the kid gets it, then we are done. Maybe we come back to it in a year to make sure it stuck. Oh, and the stuff on their site goes all the way through high school, from preschool!

So it is possible to homeschool for CHEAP! (of course I'll be spending a fortune on printer ink!)

Kitchen Math

Today's guest post is courtesy of Summer Nanny Jobs. Oh, how I wish I had done some nannying during those summers I was laying around doing nothing! I love kids and could have made money playing with the all day. Then I could have gone to my night waitressing job and been RICH RICH RICH, folks! Have your sitting-age kids check out this site!

Little learning opportunities for some extra education can be found everywhere for parents and children alike. If you’re trying to teach your preschooler some basic math functions, or helping your young mathematician sharpen her skills, you may need look no further than your own kitchen for a potential classroom. Here are ten simple ways you can teach your kid math in the kitchen:

1. Recipes – measurements involved with preparing recipes often require adjusting the prescribed amounts in order get the number of servings you need for your family. This is a great opportunity to impart some valuable multiplication or division skills.
2. Measuring cups – Your child can learn how various measurements relate to one another, and learn some pointers about fractions too. Show him how many tablespoons are in an ounce, and then let him figure out how many tablespoons he’ll need for x number of ounces.
3. Receipts – An ideal tool for demonstrating addition, your grocery store receipts can be used as practice for your child to see if she can add everything up and match the right “answer”.  This could also provide the opportunity to teach your child the use of a calculator and about percentages with the sales tax.
4. Coupons – Your kid can learn some financial tips to go with some exercises in subtraction by figuring out the family’s savings by clipping coupons. Let her work out the differences between prices with and without the savings.
5. Geometry – Slicing a pizza, cake or a tray of brownie squares is a great way to demonstrate not only division, but how objects are measured. Four brownies times nine brownies equal 36 square brownies. Subtract two for testing to get 34 total. Every good food geometry lesson needs room for a taste test!
6. Calendar – The calendar on the fridge can help a child understand the number of days in a week, month or year. Learning how to determine dates by counting the number of days, or using multiples of seven, is a valuable skill.
7. Microwave Math – A child can learn to count backwards by following along on a microwave timer. She can also learn how to tell time, how many seconds are in a minute, and how many minutes are in an hour. Let her figure out what time it will be when a dish is ready by adding the cooking time to the clock time.
8. Counting Calories – Nutritional information on packaging shows different data, such as the number of calories per serving. Let him figure out how many servings are in the package, then figure out the total calories for the entire package.
9. Thermometers – Using kitchen thermometers with multiple scales can help your child learn how Fahrenheit temperatures relate to Celsius and vice versa. Demonstrate boiling and freezing points using the stove and the freezer.
10. Let your child divide up servings of a food item like cookies, carrot sticks, or grapes into equal parts. Setting the table and dividing up servings helps demonstrate the relationships between numbers in a practical way

Crying Over Homeschooling Math (in a good way!)

Sometimes it's hard to learn something new. Sometimes we push our kids to learn something new before they are ready because we have outside pressures to push them or we have our own internal reasons.

The other day I had THREE kids having a little trouble with math. They were discouraged. I tried to explain their subjects a few different ways, didn't act frustrated, but they are always harder on themselves than I could ever be.

Then, for EACH OF THEM, it just clicked. When that happens, I tear up a little bit.

Take place values with Michael. When he finally got it, I knew it because of the look on the face and the way he looked at the problems on the computer (we use some ixl.com because they generally enjoy it and I teach WITH it). He was then whizzing through the problems and tears came down my face. I joked to him that I had something in my eye, that I have allergies or something. He grinned; he was on to me.

I have to give a lot of credit to school teachers. It would be hard to attempt to have 25 kids "get it" at roughly the same time. Hard? Try impossible. Well, not really. I had a teacher in 10th grade who waited until EVERYONE got it before moving on. It was a little frustrating for those who got it the first time, but it taught everyone patience and how to be kind to others instead of making fun of them for being "stupid" at math.

I used to say I was BAD AT MATH. Now as I teach it I realize I am not bad at math! I just didn't learn it my way, at my pace. Now that I am re-learning things, it's clicking and I'm enjoying it. More importantly, I'm enjoying teaching it to my kids in fun and varied ways.

Life of Fred Math: Apples

I think I may have finally found a math program that my kids will like. It's probably no shock to you that my family loves humor. We hate dry worksheets and dry workbooks and repetitive crap. So when someone on my Facebook homeschool group gave a glowing review of the Life of Fred series, I had to check it out.

I went here to order my first book, Life of Fred: Apples. I went through his ordering house, ZTwist Books, and paid a flat $16 for it. I paid through PayPal, and at first PayPal tried to charge me for shipping, but I just hit the back button and tried my order again, and PayPal got a clue and took off the shipping. We got our book within a few days.

It's the first book in his entire series, which runs through Calculus, something I can't even comprehend in my wittle head right now.

Callie, who is 6, LOVES IT. It is a silly book written like a story with a couple of math questions at the end of each chapter. My older boys LOVE it also. I figured I'd read the story to them, too, since I'll be buying ALL the books in the series to use with all my kids. My husband is not a fan because, after all, how can learning be FUN? It wasn't fun for us! And he believes in the workbooks and worksheets and repetition until you are pulling out your hair. We'll just have to show him that the kids can learn and have fun at the same time!

Click here for sample pages from the books. Gotta go ... all Callie wants to do anymore is read this book. I'd better go order the next book, or the entire set!