Greetings and News from St Aiden's

Features Updates

Updates or additions to the following sections have recently been made

Good Morning Everyone



Spring is nearly here, and 01 September is Casual Day in South Africa. How this year has flown! A quick update on our main website. Unfortunately the technical problems could not be ironed out and so I am working furiously on editing, linking and republishing every single page in the site - page by page - it is a long process, and it was definitely more fun first time around but we are getting there!



A few updates that I believe have been successfully uploaded are:



Our African pages, (those countries that we have done). Anansi the Spider, well-loved West African legend of the greedy little spider finds his place in the hall of fame with a few dedicated pages, as well as a number free mini-unit studies. The individual mini-unit studies comprise the full story and a few questions and answer pages. More will be added soon. A lovely little collection to have and the kids love the little rascal!

www.staidenshomeschool.com/africa/anansithespider/africa-anansi-the-spider.html

African Geography for kids - Take the fun online geography quiz and see how many countries of Africa you can identify... ummm I am not giving out my answer... :) suffice it to say I tried again and again to better my original answer...


http://www.staidenshomeschool.com/africa/africageographyquiz.html

Face Aids - is a campaign to mobilise and inspire students to fight AIDS in Africa. Please join our effort!

Free African Educational Software and Games - A nice selection of free software and games, some on trial but really worth looking at. Much of it is play & print so you get to keep your creations as well.


http://www.staidenshomeschool.com/africa/themes_Africa.html

Africa Notebook - Africa A to Z (almost**) Notebook - Listing the countries of Africa, their flags and anthems with notepages for kids to complete their own research. This will be uploaded in the next day or so.



Away from Africa but still focusing on fun educational activities we have been blessed to have been given the rights to an online puzzlemaker by James of FancyGens - this is an awesome little programme that I fell instantly in love with. Choose from the big selection of pictures in the online gallery or upload your own photos, favourite pictures or clip art and create a puzzle that you can play, print and/or save to your computer. Great idea for kids to create their own and then print out onto cardstock and laminate for further use. There are almost no limits!


www.staidenshomeschool.com/games_activities/puzzlegenerator.html




Spelling Word Lists & printables for the first 4/5 years can be accessed here as well as the full free spelling curriculum (PDF download - large file, please be patient) and some brilliant free spelling software for little ones...





For little learners, computer & mouse skills are wonderful fun ways of developing coords and motor skills. Online colouring books, painting activity and mouse colouring book are great because they are play and print. Our kids get to keep their creations. Wonderful to print and laminate for your child's brag book.

Grandparents Day is on 9 September and a beautiful gift would be for your child to start working on a *Me & My Family Scrapbook* to give them as a gift. The PDF eBook can be downloaded here.

http://www.staidenshomeschool.com/activities/family/FAMILY-DAY.html


That's about it for now, I will post more updates as I get through each section. Please don't forget to check out the links sections for some exceptional educational sites. This week's pick is one of my absolute favourites and well worth a visit. Even though we are in the southern hemisphere and this site is born in the N/H there is no end to ideas and activities for kids - we can bank the ideas for summer. Marcia will be your hostess, and share with you her wealth of information and creative ideas. Why not visit All the DAZE www.allthedaze.com for some brilliant Books and printables as well...



Have a great Tuesday

Blessings

Donnette

http://www.staidenshomeschool.com

General Info

Remember EVERYTHING on the site is free and you will find more external free stuff on http://www.staidenshomeschool.com/freebies.html which is also updated regularly




If you wish to send this on to any other person who you feel may be interested please do so, if you want any more information on anything please mail info@staidenshomeschool.com






I would love to hear from you



Warm wishes



Donnette





http://groups.yahoo.com/group/staidenshomeschooling (join our interactive mailing list)





http://www.staidenshomeschool.com (main website)

Events, Celebrations an Interesting Facts

~~~TODAY I SMILED~~~



Today I smiled and all at once

Things didn't look so bad.

Today I shared with someone else,

A bit of hope I had.





Today I sang a little song

And felt my heart grow light,

And walked a happy little mile,

With not a cloud in sight.



Today I worked with what I had

And longed for nothing more,

And what had seemed like only weeds,

Were flowers at my door.



Today I loved a little more

And complained a little less,

And in the giving of myself,

I forgot my weariness.

Relevant Links

The direct hyperlinks (the the pages mentioned) contained in this newsletter may not display. This newsletter has also been sent in plain text with all hyperlinks visibly working and can be accessed at http://goups.yahoo.com/group/staidenshomeschooling or send me a mail and I will forward it to you :) To join our interactive e-mail forum where we can share ideas, units, a chat and a laugh, please join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/staidenshomeschooling
where members can share their own unit studies for upload to the main website. Free printables and reproducibles can also be sent via this forum

I have been researching and building up a special section on curriculum available to us in South Africa and sadly we are rather limited.... I have however stumbled across via one of my other sources two absolutely amazing FREE curriculum sites the information for which which I am busy adapting and uploading to the site now. This site in particular has a free classical curriculum guide that I found very helpful:





http://www.veritaspress.com/store/SL_Resource_Download.asp









Through this resource I also came across the Charlotte Mason approach to schooling. While it is not a classical curriculum, it fits in with it nicely. There is a free curriculum that includes online versions of Charlotte Mason's books here: />



http://www.amblesideonline.org

Things to Note

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Links for Your Favourite sites, links to link your fave sites will be found on the Links pages and on most pages in the site, simple 1, 2, 3 steps to get your website some traffic... Remember please, we are a child-friendly site and will only accept links to educational child/student-friendly sites and do not accept adult content sites into our links...