Life Over C's and ITeachToo

Hi! I’m Kim, Creator of Life Over C’s. With over 16 years of experience teaching preschool and kindergarten, in homeschool and classroom settings, I love sharing my favorite hands-on activities with you!

I love teaching activity-based lessons and using games that cover subject content thoroughly, but enjoyably.

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Associates Degree in Christian Education with a minor in Music Theory.

I currently homeschool my four daughters and love it! We are in our 16th year of homeschooling While homeschooling, we traveled to 44 of the United States, 3 Canadian Provinces and 4 other countries and continue to add to that list as time passes. After several years of trying to fit our learning/teaching styles to the pre-written curricula and being unsatisfied, I began to make learning materials to supplement. What do I create for Life Over C's (printable activities) and I Teach Too (digital activities) Ready to use activities for special learners Would this fit onto an IEP rubric for mastering a skill? Or is it just a time-filler? I have spent years partnering with teachers to create attainable rubrics for special learners. Breaking down the process of learning to count to 10 into even more bite-sized chunks that provide opportunities for progress-monitoring, as well as, allowing for continued forward movement. Knowing that 6 addition problems on a page can be too overwhelming, but an addition mat that covers the same content, one problem at a time is more manageable. Elaborating on the purpose behind a simple tic-tac-toe game, word search, board game when it appears not to meet a lesson objective. (BTW, those games offer critical thinking, visual cognition, cooperative learning… just to name a few.) Engaging, but Not Distracting Are the pages engaging without being overly distracting? If the pages are busy, can I make an additional theme/set that would provide a more focused setting without being boring? I often offer many themes of the same activity to cater to kids who have a hard time working with non-preferred themes. Or those who are exceptionally motivated when a unicorn pops up on their alphabet activity. While you may not have a unicorn theme planned into your year, providing a child with materials that are unique to them can be very motivating and be ‘just the thing’ to get their attention. Tested and Proven Activities for Kids Is this something I would actually use in my own homeschool or preschool classrooms? Drawing from 16 years of homeschooling (at the preschool and kindergarten levels especially, due to our youngest daughter’s special needs), running a daycare and preschool, teaching in the preschool classrooms and developing curricula specific to the needs of those classes has provided years of opportunities to know what works and what does not work in those environments. I also worked with children who didn’t speak English or were in the beginning stages of learning English for 9 years. While some of my teachers did purchase materials for our preschool, they regularly informed me that many of those materials were overwhelming, not on-level, hard to prepare, and hard to maintain. And I ended up working with them to adjust those materials to work in their classrooms. Every Life Over C’s activity is created with those criteria in mind. Developmentally-Appropriate Resources and Activities Do the art, craft, sensory and science activities provide developmentally-appropriate ways to explore? Understanding the different purposes between process art and product crafts and the value of both. Recognizing that sensory bins are not ‘just for play’, but also build vocabulary, work on fine motor skills, provide opportunities for social emotional role play, and bridge motivational gaps for learners of all abilities. Breaking down science activities to an accessible level to give kids exposure to experimenting in a safe, engaging way. Stress-Free Kids’ Activities I believe that real life and learning should be tightly joined together. I share hands-on learning activities, transparent life stories and even some great recipes and DIY projects with you in mind. All of them are designed to be things that YOU can do without special equipment or supplies. Because who needs all that extra stress!?!? At Life Over C’s I focus on: Hands-on, multi-sensory learning Developmentally-appropriate resources and FUN!!!