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Homeschool friends: Now is a great time to score a new abacus — and it’s a cute one! Red and pink for Valentine’s Day! There’s also some other special colored abacuses on sale right now as well – 14% off and free shipping until the end of February with code V20D21S.
We really love the RightStart abacus, and it’s one that can be used in any math curriculum. This tool is divided into sets of 5 so that you can easily make calculations – so 5 dark, 1 light bead = 6. The first 5 rows (dark-light) plus the next row (light – dark) = 60. Another great pro for this abacus is that it’s hand-assembled at the RightStart offices in North Dakota.
If you’re looking for a great, hands on math curriculum to use with your preschool, elementary and middle school students, RightStart is a fantastic curriculum to use. You can learn more about our experience with RightStart Math in some of my other blog posts.
One thing that RightStart is strong on is its games. My kids are loving playing Corners – they request it quite often, and my eldest was super excited to beat her dad a few weeks ago too!
Family Updates
I thought I’d give you a little snapshot into other things we’ve been doing over the last little while! Being that it’s freezing cold and everything has shut down again, we haven’t really been on any field trips, but we’ve been making fun at home.
My youngest received this little felt toy sewing kit for Christmas and loves doing it. It’s great for her fine motor skills! I quite like this kit. It does require my help, but many of the small pieces can be glued on first. The kit comes with everything you need.
Holiday baking was a hit! I picked up this library book, “United Tastes of America,” and my eldest has loved making various things from it. The book contains a recipe for each state and territory, along with information and fun facts about each location.
Board games have been a hit too – Labyrinth, Chess, and Azul. (Amazon and Target both have sales on board games at the moment too!)
My youngest is a huge fan of the drawing lessons on Read Aloud Revival‘s premium membership platform. I think this one is an angel.
My son loves to build these “mech’s” from Lego. Every day he’s showing me a new one that he’s built!
This is the extent of our field trips: the grocery store. We live in an area with high ethnic diversity, so within a 10 minute radius, I can get to at least 3 huge Asian grocery stores. The highlight of course, are the the fish tanks.
And I wanted to give a shoutout to a super talented friend of mine! She recently started her own Etsy shop featuring art that she’s created. I had to buy the Rockefeller Tree owl print for my youngest. She was so excited to get it! You can check out the rest of her artwork on her Instagram page – @EuniceSketches
Reading & Spelling
My son is LOVING reading, and he was super excited when one of his words last week related to his newly constructed Lego snake. The kid is Lego obsessed! (We use All About Reading and LOVE it! I wrote an overview of All About Reading and Spelling over here).
My preschooler’s favorite subject is also reading! She’s doing All About Reading Pre-Reading and ADORES the Ziggy puppet so much! I had thought I could get away with just using a random puppet as “Ziggy” but I’m glad I got the Deluxe version instead. She adores how soft this puppet is and insists on Ziggy’s assistance with all things reading related. Ziggy often ends up missing however… I am constantly finding him camping out in her bedroom.
Following the Read Aloud Revival podcast and website has exposed me to so many awesome books for kids! I stopped in at 2nd & Charles, a used book store here, and stocked up on some well reviewed books that I thought we may ultimately want to keep in our family library rather than borrowing. My pile was originally a bit bigger than this… I had to restrain myself in the end LOL. $20 for all of these though was a bit of a steal in hindsight.
My older two kids are loving playing spelling games during our All About Spelling sessions. All About Learning have a bunch of free spelling boardgame printables on their website that are perfect for engaging your children in their spelling lessons.
As for me, I’ve been devouring audiobooks – mostly while I sew at night. I’m currently listening to Becoming by Michelle Obama, read by Obama. I’m a fairly smack-down-the-middle voter but I think it’s a fantastic listen – I highly recommend it! My kids and I have all been listening to the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place – the audio for that is fantastic too. We also just got back into our winter read-aloud, Adventures with Waffles. My kids are loving the shenanigans described in this book! You can follow me on Goodreads if you like!
*I am a RightStart Mathematics Affiliate, and am committed to writing a monthly blog post about our journey with this curriculum. Any purchases you make using my affiliate links will earn me a small commission (this will not affect the cost to you!).
*I’m also an All About Learning affiliate and received the Pre-Reader Deluxe kit complimentary in exchange for review. Opinions are 100% my own. Any purchases you make using my affiliate links will earn me a small commission (this will not
auschick sews 
My kids are just off yours ages so you’re recommendations are perfect! We are COVID homeschooling and using the same programs too!
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Oh great! I hope you enjoy your school year (s) together ♥️
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