I posted my Wordless Wednesday-Our Lovely LEGO Creations last week and I know that many families LOVE LEGO like our family!  Besides the fact that they get all over the floor and they hurt like C.R.A.Z.Y. when you step on them, LEGOs are really great classic toys that help encourage imagination and fun for all ages!

I am grateful for the member on the Workbox Yahoo group (I'm also a member of the Catholic Workbox Yahoo group)  who shared this link that has LEGO building instructions for Easy, Intermediate, and Hard Levels.
http://creative.lego.com/en-us/Familytime/buildinginstructions/BuildingInstructionsmonthly.aspx?month=August&year=2010

Here is the finished LEGO fish from the Easy Level in the August 2010 Archives:  Cute huh?



There are instructions for each month of the 2009 and 2010 years and each month includes instructions for the 3 different levels!

I know that my children don't always have the EXACT types/color of LEGOs that the instructions call for, but that's OK because they get creative and build with what they do have and they have come up with some wonderful creations using the instructions as a guide.

I feel like I hit the "LEGO jackpot" because I know these fun LEGO activities will keep my children entertained for awhile!  So after I printed out the different creations, I put them in page protectors and I will place them in a binder so I can keep the instructions all together in one place.  Then I can easily take them out of the binder and slip them in my children's workboxes for our homeschool.  Here are a few that I have already printed out and put in page protectors: 


Children (and adults) can build a fish, watermelon, turtle, robot, school bus, lion, lioness, lion cub, globe, ice cream cone, clown, etc. etc. etc.  There are lots of fun creations to make!

For some time now I have been searching the LEGO website, knowing that somewhere there were LEGO building instructions for children in their archives, but I could not find them for some reason.

FYI:  After I saw the link from the Workbox Yahoo group, I went back to the LEGO site homepage and wrote down what to click to eventually get to the building instruction link.  It's not very easy to locate the instructions if you don't know what you are looking for (at least it wasn't an easy find for me) so I thought I would list them here for easy reference:

Go to LEGO homepage
Click on "Products"
Click on the 2nd "Products" page until you see "Bricks & More" at the bottom
Click on "Bricks & More"
Click on "Family Time"
Click on "Building Instructions"
Click on "Monthly Building Instructions"

Now I see why I had so much trouble finding the instructions :)

Anyway, I hope you find the LEGO links and this post as useful and as fun as we have!

 Cupcake #1 (Grade 5)

• Handwriting & Daily Oral Language (D.O.L): Seton's Handwriting 5 for Young Catholics & Daily Grams for Grade 5
• Math: Saxon 6/5
• Spelling: Catholic Heritage Curricula My Catholic Speller, Level E
• Reading: Pathway Readers and workbook for Grade 5 (Living Together)
• Writing Tales, Level 2
• Religion: Faith & Life, "Credo: I Believe" text combined with an online curriculum that goes with the Faith & Life text.  The online curriculum is at My Catholic Faith Delivered.  I also review The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism, No. 1 with my child.
• History (I do this subject with all 3 of my older children together) :  Famous Men of Rome from Memoria Press ( I do Ancient Roman History Monday through Wednesday and then US History, States & Capitals Thursdays and Fridays)
• Science:  Apologia Zoology 2, Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day with Zoology 2 Notebooking Journal (together)
• Latin: Latina Christiana, Book 1 (together)
• Spanish: I have a friend who comes to my home to teach my children Spanish about every other week
• Map Skills:  Maps, Charts, and Graphs, Level E (Seton)
• Piano:  My 3 older children take lessons each week from a friend of mine
• Art: weekly homeschool art classes with an art teacher
• Physical Education:  weekly soccer practice and games with a league

 Cupcake #2 (Grade 3)

•  Handwriting/D.O.L.: Introducing Prints and Handwriting (cursive) Book 1 by Marie Picard and Cursive Writing Skills for Left-Handed Students by Diana Hanbury King/Oral Language for Daily Use by Frank Schaffer Publications, Grade 3
• Math:  Right Start Mathematics, Level C
• Reading:  Little Angel Readers, Level D 
• Shirley English Grammar/Composition, Level 2
• Spelling:  All About Spelling ( My son loves this spelling program!  Since he is still not reading fluently, I thought AAS would be a great program for him since it's very phonics based and hands on as he learns to spell words with magnetic letter tiles vs. just memorizing a weekly list.  We are starting on the most basic level, Level 1, which he is breezing through, but I wanted to lay a good foundation with the program before getting into Level 2).
• Religion:  Faith & Life, "Our Life with Jesus"
• History: with siblings
• Science: with siblings
• Latin: with siblings
• Spanish: with siblings
• Map Skills: Maps, Charts, and Graphs, Level C (Seton)
• Piano: weekly lessons
• Art: weekly classes
  
• Physical Education:  weekly soccer practice and games in a league

Cupcake #3 (Grade 1) 

• Handwriting/D.O.L:  Catholic Heritage Handwriting Series, Level 1: Moving Onward/Oral Language for Daily Use by Frank Schaffer Publications, Grade1
• Reading/Writing/Spelling:  Sing, Spell, Read, & Write
• Math:  worksheets from a Grade 1 Math resource book and Math U See, Alpha level
• Religion:  Faith & Life. "Our Heavenly Father" with workbook
• History: with siblings
  
• Science: with siblings
  
• Latin: with siblings
• Spanish: with siblings
• Map Skills:   Maps, Charts, and Graphs, Level A (Seton)
• Piano:  weekly lessons
• Art: weekly classes
  
• Physical Education:  weekly soccer practice and games in a league

Cupcake #4 (almost 3 years old)

• Math:  counting how many times she makes it to the potty with no accidents (she's doing great potty training which she initiated one day recently by changing from her diaper to panties (she has to keep up with her older siblings, you know)
• Social Studies:  learning how to be social one on one with a sibling while mom works with her other siblings
• History/Science/Latin:  learning how to take good naps in the afternoon so Mommy can finish up with school time in these subject areas with her 3 older siblings.
• Signing Times:  She LOVES these sign language videos and my whole family does too!  Post coming soon on how we saw the creator of Signing Times in concert recently!  Awesome!
• Piano: learning how to have clean hands when approaching piano and to not bang on the keys while her siblings are practicing
• Art: draws on everything, including paper :)
• Physical Education:  she runs away from Mommy and Daddy and into our arms for hugs and kisses

Many of our curriculum books can be found under the links that I have on the left sidebar titled "Homeschool Resources We Use".   If you homeschool, what curriculum do you love to use with your children? If you have a post up about your curriculum choices for this 2010-2011 school year, put the link in my comments section. I'm always interested in what works/does not work for others when it comes to curriculum choices!

In an earlier post, (Organization) System Saturday-Our Helping Hands, I talked about the system I came up with to get our children to help in the kitchen on a daily basis.   Then in my (not quite) Wordless Wednesday-Our Homeschool Classroom post, I had pictures and descriptions of our homeschool room in our house.  One of those pictures was our chore chart that is used for my children's everyday morning chores and daily chores that is located just inside our homeschool classroom.  This post has the pictures again with descriptions:
The blue paper is covering up each child's name for privacy.  We bought 4  key rails at our local  Lowe's hardware store, (I only could find white ones for the link) one for each child.

The first two hooks on each rail are for each child's everyday/morning chores or reminders. So the first one is to "Get Dressed", then behind that I have a picture/word card that says "Make Bed", etc.  The last two hooks are for their chores that they are assigned Monday through Friday.  So on Monday, they know to "Change (their bath) Towels" and bring the dirty towels down to the laundry room to be washed.  Each day of the week they are assigned a different chore to complete.

This photo shows how they flip their chore cards over and place it on the next hook.  So this child already got dressed and flipped the card.  The next card, "Make Bed", will remind her to do that next and then she will flip it.  The third hook has "Put Dirty Clothes in the Laundry Room" and I wrote Wednesday on this card because she is to do this chore each Wednesday.  On the other cards I have written the other days of the week to go with each type of chore.  I laminated the chore cards and I write the days of the week on the cards with a Vis-a Vis pen so that I could easily erase and change days if I needed to.

I spent alot of time searching for the best type of chore chart system that would work best for our family. There are so many great ideas on blogs, websites, and search engines for chore charts it's mind boggling and overwhelming!  I knew I wanted a chore system that I could make changes to easily to fit our family's needs through the years.  With the key rails and chore cards I can easily take chore cards away or add other types of chores without having to spend alot of time remaking another whole new chore chart.

I found most of the pictures for the chore cards on the Workbox Yahoo group that I am a member of under the "Files" section of the group.  I then added/deleted chores from the existing chore page that was in the  "Files" section to fit our family's needs.

I have the chore cards that I made and used saved as a word document and I don't know how to save it as a link for this post.  If you would like a copy of the chore cards that I used for the key rails, you can Contact Me here and fill out the form
and I will be more than happy to send them to you as an attachment.