Littles Learning Link Up: May 3, 2016

 Each month you will find:

• A seasonal round-up (toward the beginning of the month)
• A guest post featuring crafts, activities, tips, snack ideas or other early childhood topics. (toward the end of the month)
• Posts where I share what I have been up to with my preschoolers and/or early elementary children (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme.  Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up. 

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

What have we been up to?

As usual, we are still playing catch up. I thought I had caught us up pretty good, and then I realized I somehow skipped a whole section of our reading in My Father's World Adventures. So, we are sort of reading that while plowing ahead with our new week.

We learned about Eli Whitney and the cotton gin. Then we used cotton balls to make sheep to go with our memory verse "The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." John 1:29. Amelia decided she wanted to make something different, so I allowed her to, as the little sheep were more for something for the younger two to do anyway.  We still have to do a hands-on activity of pulling "seeds" out of cotton balls.

The sheep says, "baaaaa":

We have been working with three different science curriculum lessons. In our My Father's World Adventures lessons, we are learning about living things versus non living things. And we have also been learning about cells. I had printed off some worksheets about cells from SchoolhouseTeachers.com earlier in the school year, when we were reviewing the site for the Schoolhouse Review Crew. The girls never got to those worksheets, and I am so glad because I didn't realize we would be studying cells at this point of the school year, so now they had worksheets to use. We still have to make our cell model (things just keep coming up). 

Additionally we have been using a book called Big Bible Science: Experiment and Explore God's World by Erin Lee Green. The other day we took a crazy van drive to pretend to demonstrate Newton's First Law of Motion.

We are also using Science Shepherd's Introductory Science course, which is an online program with physical workbooks.  

Speaking of review products, here is a look at what else we have been up to:

I recently posted my reviews for Talking Fingers from Read, Write & Type and the Mini Courses from A+ Interactive Math.  We are still enjoying learning about Mozart with Zeezok Publishing, Poetry Memorization with the Institute for Excellence in Writing and Greek Myths with Memoria Press. These reviews will be posting later this month, along with the one for Science Shepherd. We just received a game called Sunya, the review for which will post toward the end of May.

In June, you can look forward to reviews from Essential Skills Advantage, VeritasBible.com and Forbrain. Tabitha and I will also be reading a book called "The Glass Castle" by Trisha White Priebe and Jerry B. Jenkins, this review will also go up in June. And finally, I will be sharing my review for the Hey Mama! Planner from The Old Schoolhouse. (I am really hoping it will help to get me organized for next year, this year hasn't gone too well.)

As you might be able tell, our review products are continuing to take up a lot of our schooling time. Which could explain how we have fallen behind in our core curriculum. Fortunately, the children are learning lots of great subjects, and we are so thankful for these great review products.

A few somethings I would like to share with you:

As Mother's Day is coming up really, really soon, I invite you to check out my Round Up from last year: Springy Flowers and Mother's Day Round Up. 

Don't forget to check out last month's round up: Creepy, Crawly, Buggy Round Up.

And finally, don't miss last month's Guest Post: Using Crayons to Learn About Rocks.

I know I plan to do this activity when we reach our Rock unit next year.

I am lining up my guest posts for the new year. If you would be interested writing a guest post for Littles Learning Link Up one of these months, please leave a comment or contact me via my contact info on my About Me page. I will need to have your email address so I can contact you. I am looking for posts that have to do with young children: crafts, activities, foods/snacks, tips, or other ideas. I am open to suggestions.

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 13 wonderful posts linked up! 

Unfortunately, there were no clicks, so I will be selecting two randomly selected posts. 

Please don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's Randomly Selected Posts are:

Healthy Moms Magazine shared Teaching Children Empathy.

Lisa from Syncopated Mama shared The Piggy in the Puddle Handwashing Fun.

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

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An InLinkz Link-up