Do you have a child in love with Moana?! My two boys love the movie -- especially Maui! With this being the new found love around here, I decided to start making handwriting worksheets with that theme. If you've already seen my Paw Patrol handwriting worksheets, these will be very similar -- just different characters. I've only completed the Letter A so far, but there will be more to come...

Please see below for links to letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z.

It's been a fun day in our house. The rest of our 2017-2018 curriculum arrived! I don't know about you, but I'm one of those nerds that gets excited about Back To school deals and getting all the new fun supplies. The day our curriculum arrives is just as exciting, ha!

If anyone is looking for an amazing phonics curriculum, look no further. All About Reading is seriously the best! I really can't praise it enough. It's simple yet thorough, requires very little prep (my kind of setup!), and builds a great foundation for success in reading. The best thing about it for us -- it helped knock out my son's speech delay! No joke. I will give all the credit to All About Reading! If you follow my personal blog, then you already know all about this, but I thought I would share it here as well -- seeing as how this is a space for all things homeschool...


After completing Level 2, I felt like I had to reach out to the team at All About Reading and let them know how much I absolutely loved their program. After all, my son went from not being understood at ALL to speaking clearly -- how could I not let them know how grateful I am?! Well, they loved hearing about it so much that they asked if they could share Sam's story on their blog so that it may help others. I'm sure this post will be shortened/edited before they put it on their blog, but here's what I sent them. Please feel free to share this with any friends that might be researching phonics/reading curriculum or has a child with a speech delay...

Do you use one? I feel like I can't function without it! My Type A personality needs it, ha! I like to map out what we're doing in each subject for at least a month out (my hope is to plan even further out this year, but that may be wishful thinking!). I like to be able to cross off what we've accomplished and be able to reference back to see what we've done and what we still need to knock out.

Of course, the options are endless! There's the Happy Planner, Erin Condren Life Planner, and countless others like this...

They all look awesome, the sky's the limit on price, and they all offer different things. All I really want is to list what we're doing for each subject, each day. Basically, my checklist for the day. Being that my son is like me, he likes to see the plan, too. There's a sense of accomplishment when he sees everything crossed out for the day, ha. Yes, we're nerds.

So last year, I made a couple different printable planners thinking that I'd use one and sell the rest on Etsy. Then as it turned out, someone gave me a lesson planner that they weren't going to use. By that point, I figured I'd just use that over printing or buying one. Why not? It's free! While it was incredibly basic/plain, it did the job and that's all I really cared about. Well, with it being SO basic, I decided to go ahead and do something else this year. It did the job, but I wanted something a little more fun. With that said, as we're about to start a new school year, I decided to make a couple new options (here and here), and yet I found myself checking Target's One Spot for the simple cheap one again to avoid the hassle of printing my own. Well, they FINALLY put it out and it's terrible. Who puts grid lines on the areas where you'd actually write your lessons? It'd be hard to even see what you're writing -- not to mention, super annoying. Yeah...so I'm back to the plan of printing one of the versions that I created. I know that's probably my best option -- especially since I can customize everything about it and cater it to exactly what I need/want (plus, it's cheaper than Happy Planner or Erin Condren Life Planner)...

 So, as I've mentioned before, I'm an affiliate for several companies. One of which is Crazy 8 / Gymboree. I love their clothes! When I saw them on the list of affiliates, I figured I may as well sign up. After all, I already shop there for my boys and love their clothes!

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Are any of your kids hooked on YouTube??? Better yet, do they have their own channel???

My boys are both hooked. In fact, I think that's how Caleb has learned all his colors -- I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed, ha. Among all the fun stuff the kids can find, they both love the kids that have their own channels. They could watch eggs being unwrapped, toy reviews, and kids playing superheroes and making hot wheels tracks all day long! Lately, Sam has been asking if he could start making his own videos -- he wants to be a YouTube kid, too! Considering there's a lot to learn while doing that, I decided to go for it. After all, he can learn filmmaking -- I suppose I could add that to our curriculum list this fall, right? Ha!

I didn't find out until after we started enjoying the series (and well after we read Let's Visit Cairo!: Adventures of Bella & Harry), but they also have a website full of activities, lesson plans, and teacher guides. What?!?! Amazing. I feel like I just might use this as my sole base curriculum for history for my 3 year old when he hits kindergarten. Well, mix this with Little Passports and we're set!

Do you shop at ALDI? Here in California, we've only had them for about a year now. I was super excited when they announced that they were coming, as I used to love shopping there when we were stationed in Germany years ago. I absolutely love their prices and sales! Typically, the quality is great, too. They also have a section called ALDI Finds that rocks! Sometimes, you can find some killer deals!


While stopping by earlier tonight (I feel like we live there with as much as my boys eat!), I decided to check out their ALDI Finds section. I wanted to see if anything was marked down and low and behold, we found this awesome magnetic memo board! I always see people ask on forums about creative ways of using the All About Reading and All About Spelling magnetic letter tiles and this is perfect! To be honest, we didn't end up using our letter tiles all that much last year. We have a huge IKEA magnetic dry erase board (like this), so it was just too much of a hassle to pull it out just for the lesson. I suppose that sounds lazy, ha. Either way, the AAR magnetic letter tiles will definitely get some use this fall now that we have this handheld board. With that said, I realize we could've bought something similar long ago, but I always dismissed the idea since we had a board, albeit huge. However, for $3, it's a no-brainer! As you can tell by the low res cell phone picture above, my soon-to-be 1st grader is thrilled, ha!

Who doesn't love Paw Patrol!?

My two boys absolutely adore it! In fact, as my 6 year old is slowly outgrowing the show, my 3 year old is starting to get hooked. It's adorable hearing him say all the names of the characters with such enthusiasm in his sweet little voice!


Because of our love for the show, I decided to make handwriting practice worksheets for my (then) 4 year old. The idea started when my son was working on a generic handwriting printable and asked for a Rocky sticker to put on his worksheet to make it more fun...



I immediately thought, why don't I just skip that step and make him some Paw Patrol worksheets?! He immediately fell in love. In fact, we love them so much, I plan on using them again with his little bro when it's time!



For those of you that have tried a traditional curriculum like Handwriting Without Tears, I highly encourage you to still try these out if your child(ren) like Paw Patrol. We tried HWOT for a year and to be honest, we ended up going back to these instead. I know I might be the only one out there that isn't a huge fan of HWOT, but these ended up showing better results in my son learning handwriting (while enjoying it)! While Handwriting Without Tears is a great curriculum and I know many who LOVE it, it just didn't work for us. In the end, whatever makes handwriting exciting -- I'm game! Whatever you choose, don't feel like you have to stick with it even if you don't feel like it's working...

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