Archives for June 2015

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My youngest child adores fact cards. We have a basket full of colorful flash cards from the Target Dollar Spot. Several books filled with animal fact cards sit on a homeschool shelf. She loves looking and touching and learning.

*Disclosure: I received a free set for review purposes and am being compensated for my time. I am not required to give a positive review.  As always,  I am sharing my honest opinion with you.

Sweetpea actually did a little dance when I opened up our box of Everything You Need to Know Fact Cards from Silver Dolphin Books.  They were developed in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute. There are two levels of these beautiful cards available: Grades K-1 and Grades 2-3. Be sure to enter the giveaway below!!

Using Fact Cards for Summer Exploration

I’ve learned to pay attention and take note when my daughter starts asking questions about certain cards. That is my clue to use those particular cards as a jumping off point for further exploration. I can then hunt up some videos, craft projects, and recipes to go along with the cards.

Summer break is the perfect time to pull out a box of Everything You Need to Know Fact Cards. Choose a place to start and then hop on over to Pinterest to find some fun crafts and activities. Maybe even do a theme a week.

For example, let’s say you choose the dinosaur cards from the Grades 2-3 set. Everyone is talking about dinosaurs because of a certain blockbuster movie. 😉 For Dinosaur Week, you could make dinosaur ice eggs, excavate some salt dough dinosaur bones, and eat some fossil cookies. If you are a “mean” mom, you can even assign a dinosaur writing project. 😀 (Note: the dinosaur cards do not contain dates, so you are free to tailor them to your beliefs.)

Coming up with themes is often the hardest part of planning a fun summer. The Everything You Need to Know cards solve that problem.

Fact Cards as Kindergarten Curriculum

My favorite use for the Everything You Need to Know Fact Cards would be as an inexpensive Kindergarten or First Grade curriculum. Simply add in a math and a language arts program. If you choose those from my list of free homeschool curriculum links, you can create a a complete Kindergarten or First Grade curriculum for under $20!

There are a couple of ways to divide up your cards for the year. You can do topical studies by working your way through one subject at a time, or you can study cards from several different sections at a time. You could also assign subjects to different days – Monday is geography, Tuesday is science, etc.

The durable cards are tabbed and labeled at the top. You can just stick the cards you’ve used in the back of the box each day without the headache of having to sort them back out at the end of the year, as long as you keep the topics together.

Once you have decided on the cards that you will use for the school year, you can turn once again to our good friend Pinterest to add in worksheets and activities. I chose a few categories from the K-1 Box and hunted up some fantastic Pinterest boards for each one to get you started.

Space/Solar System   1, 2, 3, 4 

Five Senses   1, 2, 3, 4

Plants   1, 2, 3, 4

Money   1, 2, 3, 4

Colors   1, 2, 3, 4

Animal Habitats   1, 2, 3, 4

States   1, 2, 3, 4

Continents   1, 2, 3, 4

Weather   1, 2, 3, 4

Parts of the Body   1, 2, 3, 4

Those are only about a third of the categories between the two boxes, so you could realistically get several years out of them.

Be sure to check out the Silver Dolphin blog for more activities! Follow them below for fun product updates and freebies.

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Giveaway

Silver Dolphin is giving away 10 of the Everything You Need to Know sets. You can choose either the K-1 or 2-3 set. Open to U.S. addresses only.