Super Cute Village Ornament

I am part of a card making group that meets once a month to exchange cards and make a craft. December is my favorite month to do card group because we all make a little something special for each other, wrap it up, and meet for breakfast.

This year, I made these cute little Christmas Village Ornaments from a pattern I found a few years ago on the internet, not sure where (if you know...leave a comment). Click here for the pattern.

If you cut the pattern out, you can fit two houses on a piece of 12 X 12 scrapbook paper. The embellishments come from other pieces of paper. The wreath is pipe cleaners. To size them correctly, I wrapped them around my finger and cut. Then I put ribbon on them to jazz them up a little.

Merry Merry! I hope you enjoy.

Teaching Young Children to Read

As a tutor, I get a lot of questions about how you teach children to read. Of course, just reading to them daily is a great way to start while they are young. With my own children, I have used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

I like this book for several reasons. It is based on phonics and makes a great foundation for reading skills to develop. It has a special way of writing the words called, "orthography". It has a few simple to understand symbols that are next to the letters to help the child understand which sound that "a" is making in the word. The other nice thing about this book is it's scripted. This helps you know what to say during the lesson.

Around 4 and a half, my kids have shown an interest in learning how to read. It has worked well for me to just go with it when they are interested. They love it at first and then by lesson 30 they want to give up because it seems hard. But we always talk about how learning to read is hard work and they are capable of working that hard.

I've found that using this program to teach my kids to read has really given them a leg up at school. My kids are doing really well and are able to not stress so much about all the assessments that happen because they know they can read! It's an amazing program that I would highly recommend.

To back up this program, I also like BOB books. They go great with this program and progress with sounds about the same.

Coming Soon!

Hi Friends in Blog Land!

I am setting up a shop on Teachers Notebook soon and will be featuring freebies, math units, and my most favorite...My Brain Tower! You can play this game SOOOOO many ways. I am getting way excited. These are hand crafted by none other than me :)

The best part is I am getting a new logo and blog design soon too. I can't wait to show it to all you blog hoppers.

Thanks for stopping by!