Welcome to Monday After School Link Up. This week I am featuring posts from the last week that really caught my eye and made me read, think, and act.
Last Week on Planet Smarty Pants
I was away on a business trip to Israel, but my daughter is used to my absences and had a very regular week with play dates, gymnastics, books, and a lot of Minecraft play with Papa. Our weather turned very warm, and our “backyard lab” opened for business a week earlier with an experiment to explore an unknown liquid.
Featured Posts from the Last Week
I am delighted to have terrific co-hosts for Afterschool Link Up. We have a system of splitting comments where each of us comments on posts with a certain number. After I do that, I select the posts to feature. My original thought was to feature Easter learning posts, but I decided to wait another week or two to get a better range, since I want my round up to focus on Easter math. Instead I chose to profile the posts that are not focusing on one craft or activity – posts that made me look, read, think and, in some cases, act.
1. How do you open up the world of art to your children? Rediscovered Families has a lot of great ideas for Enjoying Art With Your Children with links to several other kid blogs.
2. A new blog Student Led Learning has an interesting post on questions leading to creative discussions and higher order thinking. We certainly try to promote this kind of discussions at home.
3. My daughter is a good speller, but I was still very interested in reading study strategies for spelling and sight words offered by Fantastic Fun and Learning.
4. I enjoy reading posts that share tips on how to engage children in acts of service and kindness. The Good Long Road shares an important post on fighting hunger in American children – something that is sometimes hard to fathom and acknowledge. She writes about a Very Hungry Caterpillar Food Drive and about Breakfast after the Bell campaign.
5. I have very mixed feeling about worksheets and very annoyed about how many of them children are expected to complete every week as part of their school day. My co-host The Measured Mom offers her own perspective on worksheets in her post Are Worksheets Good or Bad?
6. As my readers know, we love math, and I couldn’t miss a post from my other cohost What Do We Do All Day about fun math reference books for elementary school. Some of her choices are familiar to us, but I try to keep daughter well supplied with math books, so I’ll be looking for a couple of titles on this list.
2014 After School Link Up Hosts
The Educators' Spin On It
Planet Smarty Pants
Boy Mama Teacher Mama
Coffee Cups and Crayons
Little Wonders' Days
Mama Smiles
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
The Measured Mom
This Reading Mama
What Do We Do All Day For more creative ideas for students age 5+, please visit our collaborative board Afterschool Activities and Adventures.
Share Your After School Week
We would love to have you link up your School-Age Post (Ages 5 and up) about your learning week after school including Crafts, Activities, Playtime and Adventures that you are doing to enrich your children's lives after their day at school, home school or on the weekend!
When linking up, please take a moment to comment on at least one post linked up before yours and grab our after school button to include a link on your post or site! By linking up you're giving permission for us to share on our After School Pinterest Board or feature on our After School Party in the upcoming weeks! In the next round up I plan to be featuring Easter Learning ideas. Don't forget to follow along and join our After School Enrichment Community. I am also linking my post to my favorite kid blogger link ups and share days.