Tuesday 30 July 2013

Busy, busy, busy {and a home-ed freebie find!}

I just wanted to check in, to let you know I am still alive and well!  Just very busy!

This is the week we have our Holiday Bible Club at our Church.  It's crazy for the days leading up, and crazy busy the week it is on. But, such a worthwhile thing to do.  Reaching boys and girls with the news of salvation!   We had 21 Yesterday, and 29 today, so we are rejoicing in that. Praying for even more children tomorrow (and I have ordered extra craft supplies in the hope that we do!)

Please pray that the Lord would bless this week, and we would see souls saved.

I just wanted to also quickly share something with you.  With Tapestry of Grace, we sometimes have classic stories which the older ones read.  I like the younger ones to share these stories, but at their own level, so I have bought Penguin Young Classics in the past. They are also included as literature books, officially, on the way through TOG.

I had picked up one, last Christmas, of A Christmas Carol, to work on in the last week of school before Christmas.  I had googled free worksheets, and found a random page to accompany the Penguin Young Classic book. It had various types of questions to accompany the book, chapter by chapter. It was a great find, and I intended to find out exactly where this PDF had come from, but had forgotten.
Scroll forward to last weekend.  A fellow TOGster  (what we fondly call other TOG Mums! - a TOG-Sister!) had asked about literature suggestions for a reluctant reader.  I had suggested subbing in some of the classic books, with Penguin Young Classics, instead.  It then got me looking for the list, which brought me to the website, upon which I stumbled across the source of all the *FREE* wonderful worksheets and teacher idea sheets to go alongside each book!!!

FIND!!!

All you have to do is go to this page, click on "Teacher's Area", and it will ask you to register with the website.  Once you have registered, go back through that area again.  You will find a box on the left which says "Go to Penguin Readers".  Click on that, and it will bring you to a page with an orange bar down the left side, with various headings.  Click on "Downloads Area".  That will bring you the page, with the 6 levels of readers.  Click on the level you want, and it will list ALL the books available for that reading stage, and then "Teacher's Notes", "Activity Worksheets" and "Answer keys".  I was very excited about this find, as you can turn simple literature assignments into a deeper learning experience, ALL FOR FREE!!! The teachers notes give great ideas for discussion and related activities.  The Activity worksheets give you all sorts of different comprehension and deeper study questions.

Considering it is all free, I think it's a great place to find ideas to expand the experience - instead of simply reading a story, they can think about what they have learnt as well.

Having now just looked a bit deeper, whilst typing up this post, I found something ELSE!!! With that log in that you have done for the above, you can also access resources for their new range of graded reading books! They are called "Penguin Kids - Graded Readers".  Most of them are adaptations of Disney animations, with a few factual ones as well. Go HERE, log in with the same details that you registered above, and you will see a link, in a green picture box on the right, to "Teacher's Notes and Audio".  You can then find lots of great, fun ideas to expand the themes in these books, and worksheets to go alongside!! Also, the audio version of each of the books - so they can become a "read-along"!!  Again, it turns a simple reading book, into a whole literature lesson! If you don't like Disney stories, this will not float your boat.  If you do, you will be thrilled!  It would be especially great for young readers.

I would definitely say that this is my Home-ed find of the week!!!

All you need to do now is look at the lists of books available, choose one (or, maybe more....!!) and get started! You may even be able to pick them up in your local library, but if not, they are not very expensive on Amazon.

Ok.  That's all folks.  I am alive.  I am tired.  I am sharing!!!

Have fun, and I hope to get another post up later in the week.



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