Blocks And 3d Puzzles

There are four tips here today for you to implement if you are a working home school parent.  The first part of this article was posted on May 30^th.

Make Smart Use of Your Daily Drive – There are a lot of people who home school and commute to work every day. One of their secrets is making smart use of their daily drive to and from work. Instead of making extra trips to the art supply store or library with their kids, they take the time to run these errands as they are going to or leaving work.

Assign Lessons to Children During the Day – Obviously, if you and your spouse are working daily jobs, then someone has to be at home with your children. You can assign your children lessons to do during the day and ask your childcare professional to oversee the work and make sure that it gets done.

Home school at Night – How many college students take night classes? There are many that do, so why can’t you home school your children at night after you get home from work? You can easily go over lessons at the dinner table or a couple hours before bedtime.

 Always Plan – For those who work outside the home and want to home school too, planning is essential. You need to make a weekly schedule that clearly dictates when lessons will take place. This will save you a lot of time and make homeschooling go much more smoothly.

If you have toddlers that need a quiet type toy to play with while you are teaching your older children browse through our childrens wooden toys.  Our toddler learning toys, such as our Jungle Buddy wood blocks are an interesting educational for young children to play with.

As a concerned parent you will want to understand the importance of using quality materials as often as possible. While quality is more important than quantity, sometimes it does costs more. However, sometimes you can compromise quality, but there are other times in homeschooling where you can’t. Therefore, it’s important that you understand the times when quality is crucial and when it isn’t.

When cost is an issue you will find you have many resources to help cut the cost and still get quality materials. By making heavy use of the library, used book sales, borrowing, and common materials on hand, one can do an adequate job with minimum cost.

Packaged curricula and video courses come higher, up to several hundred dollars per child per year (this is still much cheaper than a private school), but do your research using the Internet and/or talking to other parents and homeschooling groups to help you locate quality yet less expensive materials.

Parents who have to purchase used materials or look for things online will spend more time and energy finding those items, but they might have a greater sense of accomplishment and be teaching their children how to manage their money well.

 Educator’s Family Services puts on conferences and book fairs several times yearly at various locations. State homeschool support groups often sponsor book and curriculum fairs yearly in conjunction with conferences and workshops. These are open to the public (there is a cost) and are wonderful sources of teaching materials. Some local support groups operate libraries, too.

 Of course, extras such as dance, art, martial arts, voice or instrument, public speaking, sports, horseback riding, or summer camp can add much more to the bill, but most parents would choose at least some of these for their children even if they were in a conventional school.

Often the cost of homeschooling can depend on a parent’s goals. If their goal is for their child to attend an Ivy League school when they graduate, then they will need to spend a lot more than someone who either doesn’t want to attend college or is able to earn their degree from a less prestigious university.

 When you have decided on your books and other teaching materials remember to help keep learning fun for your toddlers by incorporating a few quality children’s wooden toys to encourage creative and fun play.

 ImagiPLAY, located in Colorado, is a company that makes quality toddler learning toys including 3d wooden puzzles and wood blocks. One such item that kids will enjoy is their Safari Stacking Blocks.   

Safari blocks are multi-functional toy blocks and children will use these wooden blocks as individual animal toys for all sorts of creative fun play. These wooden children’s toys are stackable for even more fun. Visit All I Can Imagine to explore all our other kids toys!

Sooner or later you will be purchasing some ABC blocks for your young children. With the variety of ABC blocks on the market this will probably be sooner. Alphabet blocks are thought to be the first type of building block toy produced and have been around since the 17th century in England.

Located at the Strong Museum  in Rochester, New York, the National Toy Hall of Fame has recognized the ABC toy block as America’s toys of national significance. Spawned from the simple concept of the basic toy block, many toys have been developed over the years.

ABC blocks are both fun as well as one of the best educational toys on the market. This type of block will help teach your children about shapes, colors and might very well be the first exposure your children will have to letters and numbers besides some children’s TV shows.

Another popular toddler learning toy for young toddlers is wood blocks with pictures on them. These children’s wooden toys are manufactured by Smart Monkey Toys, LLC located in Wisconsin and may be purchased from All I Can Imagine. Backyard animals, farm animals and jungle animals are the three sets of wooden blocks sets available.

Each set of wood blocks will form six different puzzles featuring colorful animals. Each four piece kid’s toy block set comes with its own storage tray that measure 3.5″ x 3.5″ x 2.5″.

When going to a baby shower blocks with either ABC’s or pictures will make a very nice gift. Always remember to buy blocks that are splinter proof and painted with non-toxic paints.

One of the best ways to make homeschooling less expensive is to take advantage of the free educational resources in your community. For example, the local library offers a ton of free resources for homeschooling families.

Spend time getting to know the librarians; there are even some librarians that are willing to help homeschoolers find the books and materials needed to teach various lessons thoroughly. Other places to look for free resources include churches, homeschooling groups/societies and the internet.

Take care not to spend so much that you can’t change course while you take time to plan for the future. Take advantage of opportunities to borrow materials or to get some free supplies outright.

If you want to get your students involved in humane education there are exciting and informative books, magazines, comic books, videos, posters and DVD’s available to teachers, librarians and other educators. Visit TeachKind to receive free materials. Membership is free.

Homeschooling Groups Save Money

When you are homeschooling, it’s important to join a homeschooling group as those involved in these groups often help each other out, especially with saving money. The parents in these groups are usually full of tips for saving money and also may be willing to trade teaching materials and supplies, as well.

Most homeschool families are connected with the outside world through their church, drama groups, 4-H clubs, and many other community organizations.

Your local support groups can vary in size from a few families to several hundred families. Support groups are often involved with arranging field trips and other activities where larger numbers of families can jointly participate in an educational experience.

During the difficult times that are sure to arise, you will find that your support groups will provide a dedicated network of homeschool families who can provide much need support and encouragement.

**For those of you who have toddlers in your home make sure to visit our website, All I Can Imagine for quality, safe educational toys and 3d wooden puzzles.  These toddler learning toys, will keep your boys and girls busy as you are homeschooling your older children. Begin with a pretty alphabet puzzle and your child will have a tool in which he can gain self-confidence while learning his abc’s.

Look for Quality – Just because a particular curriculum comes with a lot of  books and materials, does not mean that it’s better. You need to place more emphasis on your children’s learning style than how much comes with various curriculums.

If you are thinking that the curriculum of a public school will be superior to what your child would receive at home you may be surprised to learn that some of the books in schools have been found to have complicated illustrations and irrelevant photos that detracted students from learning the subject at hand.

Finding the best home school curriculum that fits the needs of your individual student is extremely important. School books and materials are available in several tried and true complete packages. Some can even be tailored to cover a large set of needs. This will mean a curriculum for home school that takes into account the abilities of a student as well as the specific learning objectives or interests.

If you’re lookig for a more religion/bible based education being provided then a Christian homeschool program may be right for you and your family. Some families are interested in Christian based education and as such, have turned to homeschooling.

 Homeschool Supercenter can help your children get Bible based education that will be consistent with this goal regardless of the denomination of your faith.  Here is the website for Homeschool Supercenter.

  Christian home school curriculum, Sonlight Curriculum provides quality, literature-rich K-12 and related educational products, resources, and programs. Their desire is to instill in children a life-long love of learning, preparing them to engage new ideas in order to make a positive difference in the world. Sonlight selects engaging books and readers that cover topics such as Bible, history, language arts, handwriting, math, science, and more.

 Donna Young’s website is wonderful and she has printable fraction manipulatives. I like that hers have the fraction, percentage, and decimal form on each of the pie slices.

You should also consider the fact that you may be able to make your own learning materials and not have to purchase them. For example, you may be able to make your own manipulatives instead of buying them.

***Selling your used curriculum is a great way to get some money to reinvest into the next school year.

Visit our toys website, All I Can Imagine and see our unique puzzle playsets. Choose from three wonderful topics, sea life, rainforest and dinosaur. These wooden kids toys will make a perfect addition to your toddler learning toys and will help you create interesting and fun lessons for homeschoolers.

You can teach your kids about dinosaurs anytime of the year and you do not have to wait until October. Even though October is the International Dinosaur month your kids will love learning about the fascinating world of dinosaurs anytime of the year.

Delve into the fascinating prehistoric world to learn all about these large, extinct reptiles from the Mesozoic era. You can easily find many references online that will provide your students with interesting facts about the Stegosaurus, T-Rex, and Triceratops. You’ll also find drawing activities and lessons for math and social studies to incorporate dinosaur activities across your curriculum.

 One place to start is at this teacher resourse website.  Here you will find many teacher resources for helping teach your kids about dinosaurs.  Learn how to Dye Dinosaur Eggs – great for grades 1-3. (Click the back button when you are done visiting this website to return to this blog post.)

Or get a Tyrannosaurus Rex Cut-Out (at the above link) and have your students color, cut out, and assemble Tyrannosaurus Rex. Appropriate for grade levels Pre-K – 3.

Visit a museum.  If you live in New York City take you family to the American Museum of Natural History and find out how a 60-foot dinosaur live, breathe, eat, and move. An upcoming, exciting exhibition will feature cutting-edge research about super-sized sauropods-including the giant Mamenchisaurus, one of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth-and offers new insights into how their colossal bodies functioned. Opens April 16, 2011.

 Gather you kids around the computer and click on this link for a preview of this amazing exhibition. 

 Another idea, on a smaller scale, is to provide your children a dinosaur toy.  At All I Can Imagine we provide wooden kids toys by ImagiPLAY.  These unique toddler learning toys will enhance your lesson plans.  See our dinosaur puzzle playset with 13 individual animal figures to help with your children’s lessons.

You will provide your toddlers many educational toys in their early years. Carefully considering your child’s age, interests and maturity will be leading factors in the selection of toys you provide your boys and girls.

Toddler learning toys keep young children busy and engaged in quality, fun play and help then learn to concentrate on one task making a 3d wooden puzzle a toy they will play with over and over again.

Wood puzzles with numbers on each piece will help your child learn sequential counting. As your toddler plays with puzzles with either numbers or letters he will be learning and not even know it!

Thirdly, children who have a variety of wooden puzzles to play with will have hours of quiet play time and they will improve and develop their manual dexterity, memory and coordination skills.

Although jigsaw puzzles help strengthen numeric and visual skills parents must select puzzles for the correct age-group. If children are given puzzles that are too difficult they may become frustrated and lose interest in their toy.

It is a good idea, however, to have at least one “advanced” puzzle on hand for the day when you notice the puzzle he is playing with does become too easy and you can whip out a new one to keep his interest.

Visit our website All I Can Imagine today and see all our alphabet, number, wild animals and domestic animal puzzles!

Dec 19, (THAINDIAN NEWS) With the extensive use of mobile messaging and emailing, certain new words have become an integral part of our life, although they made no sense during the colloquial period. Therefore, the Oxford English Dictionary, which is considered as the “accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium” have happily incorporated several new words in its dictionary, which are now more relevant to our daily life.

Some of the new words that has been incorporated in the latest edition of the OED are “Catastrophizing”, that means viewing or presenting a situation as worse as it actually is. “LBD” is yet another word which probably makes no meaning for an ordinary person, but the girls would be happy to know that they need not spell the “Little Black Dress” anymore.

“Frenemy” is a common word that was not incorporated so far, but now it is. “Cool hunter” refers to a person, who makes observations or predictions about new trends and styles. “Defriend” is a term that is widely used by the netizens. It means deleting a person the one’s friend list.

You can read what “Soft skills”, “Overthink”, and “Chillax” mean at the link listed here and read the complete news article:   http://tinyurl.com/25yqesr

For parents with toddlers who are working on learning their ABC’s  you will want to explore our preschool learning toys for children.   When your toddlers are learning their first 100 sight words our Little Reader Blocks will be one of the most important toddler learning toys you can buy. This is a good time to make your purchase as these toddler toys are on sale!

It is important for your child’s early learning development that they are provided toys and crafts that involve two or more skill building activities. Lacing toys are one good example of just such educational childrens toys.

There are several important benefits in providing toddler learning toys which promote good eye-to hand coordination. These include general physical coordination as well as increased self confidence in successfully completing a task.

LacingScapes, a new lacing toy from ImagiPLAY, will provide your children ages 3 and up hours of educational play as they lace 15 creatures into the 8” X 10 “ ocean or pond background. This is an ideal toddler toy to help your children develop fine motor skills as well as problem solving skills.

Children can quietly play and increase confidence in their ability to complete a task all on their own.  These toddler learning toys are unique in that they are made from wood and the background and all the creatures and yarn can be safely stored in its own wooden tray.

From the head down towards their trunk the child’s development will progress and providing toys to help improve your child’s eye-hand coordination will help keep their reflexes sharp. The more your child makes use of these types of skill building activities the better they will get.

Special daycare toys of different colors, shapes, sizes and purposes were first introduced to the child care sector. However, the daycare toys available to children today are a far cry from the sandbox, monkey bars, wooden building blocks and rocking horses of a few years ago.

Today, not only do some companies specialize in the production of daycare toys but also mass produce them. The daycare toys themselves include such diverse items as play sets, pianos, easels, clocks, miniature ATM banks, talking microphones that improve speech and a truly amazing array of electronic and computer games/ toys.

Amidst all this sophistication, it is of course comforting to realize that simple wooden railway sets, alphabet/ number blocks, finger paint packs and coloring books are also still much in demand.

It has been proven that daycare toys increase self-confidence, coordination, language skills and creativity while also contributing to the emotional well being of children. As they grow older, children can also be introduced to electronic, computer, magnetic and a myriad of other educational daycare toys.

Wood blocks are as popular as ever and children 18 months and up love the feel of these children’s wooden toys.  But, remember to make sure the blocks you purchase are splinter-proof and painted with non-toxic paints and varnishes.

ImagiPLAY is one such manufacturer and you may see their wooden toys on our website, All I Can Imagine.  There is a line of Buddy Blocks that just came into the market place last year that children wil love playing with by themselves or with the help of a parent.

Your kids will enjoy owning all three varieties; Backyard Buddy Blocks, Jungle Buddy Blocks, and Farm Buddy Blocks (pictured).  Each set includes four, 3.5” square blocks with portions of 6 different animals on each cube.