Making Plural Nouns!

There are so many rules for making plural nouns and I do love the fact that Language Arts and Grammar for 2nd Grade from Annie Moffatt at Moffatt Girls Activity Pack is full of really good and engaging practice.
A quick review of some of the rules:

• Add -s to most nouns to make them plural (chair - chairs)
• Add -es to nouns that end in CH, SH, S, SS, and X (peach - peaches, brush - brushes, dress - dresses, fox - foxes)
• in nouns that ends n -y: with a consonant before y, drop the -y and add -ies (baby - babies);with a vowel before y, just add -s (toy - toys)
• in nouns that end with -f, -fe, change the -f or -fe for -ves (leaf - leaves, knife - knives)

Now, you can check quick video of  Little V practicing making plural nouns with nouns ending in -y.

 She made the plural of candy - candies.

Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Sewing Lessons!!

I love sewing and I've been able to make Little V a dress, and some other stuff myself. My love for sewing of course made her want to learn to sew. So, during the summer break we had a few lessons and she was able to make a pillow case for her doll and we started a quilt for her other doll.

Here's a quick video of Little V sewing:

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Making Good Use of Activities!!

We all know the adage "Practice makes perfection", right? Based on that we all know also that practice helps a student to really get the idea, helps them to feel confident and sometimes we run out of activities or have to search for more activities or we can simply add something to an activity that you already have in order to give them more practice.

On Lesson 12 of All About Reading level 3, Little V was learning about Syllable Division Rule for Three Consonant Tiles. Basically, she had to figure out where to separate the syllables in words that have 3 consonants between the vowels, like in CHILDREN and PUMPKIN.

One way: like in CHILDREN, first you locate the vowels (highlighted in yellow), then you separate the syllable right after the first consonant in between the vowels. CHIL-DREN

Another way: like in the word PUMPKIN, again locate the vowels, but in this case if you separate right after the first vowel, you won't make a word, so you'll move the second consonant to the first syllable. PUMP-KIN

One of the activities of this lesson was to read the word in a loaf of bread and "cut" them (separate) the syllables with a fake knife. I thought it would impress more on her mind if we could use colors. So I asked her to color the vowels, and then we would check which way would be best. She got it and she was really good at it. After we did it with the markers, she was able to do "cut the bread with the knife" as intended and I was happy to know that she really understood the rules of dividing syllables with the consonants between the vowels.

Hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

Addition to Road Trip U.S.A. Curriculum

Geography wasn't a fun subject for me in school, I honestly dreaded it, so it was one of my resolution to make sure Geography would be a fun learning experience to Little V. We did use Road Trip U.S.A while she was in Kindergarten, but at that time my main objective was for her to learn the states, locate them and maybe as a bonus memorize a few capital cities. It went much better than I expected. Last year, for First Grade we used the Expedition Earth Curriculum and that was great too. This year, I decided that we should learn more about U.S.A Geography and Road Trip U.S.A., from Confessions of a Homeschooler is such a great choice because it gives me guidance and at the same time allows me to add more to it, and that's what I decided to do.

I made a Power Point presentation for each region and the states that belong to that region. We use the coloring pages and the postcards activities from Road Trip U.S.A., and I designed a Book Report.

I also, designed Multiple Choices Quizzes for the end of each state or two covered, and also for the end of each region.

We go to the library and get books about each of the state we are studying, and she uses these books to research the information to fill out the book report. She's loving it and we are learning more than we expected.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki

We are back!!

I'm so sorry for being so absent here. Little V is already back in school and is now on Second Grade! Wow!! Time is really flying. It was very encouraging to receive an email from one of our followers and know that people do miss us here. So, let's get to what matters, shall we?

We started school on August 22nd, and as usual we had our first day of school picture, can't skip this tradition!

We have had well over 20 days of school and I have already changed some of the curriculum choices I made, they were simply not working for us. Homeschooling already has many challenges, there's no need to add stress by trying to make a curriculum work out when you know it won't. I'm pleased with the new choices so I'll be showing here what are we using right now! It might look like she has a huge load of school work but it's because I separated Language Arts (which includes phonics, spelling, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar etc...), into different subjects, it just makes it easier for me to keep track of what she's learning.

Math: Math U See Beta

Spelling: All About Spelling Level 3

Reading: All About Reading Level 3

Grammar: Language Arts and Grammar for 2nd Grade no Prep Pack from Annie Moffat @ Moffat Girls

Vocabulary: Vocabulary Workshop Level Purple

Writing: Ready for Writing 2nd Grade from Annie Moffat @ Moffat Girls

Fine Arts: I made our own curriculum based on the book How to Teach Art to Children - Grades 1-6. Also, I did some research from websites like Mrs. Brown's Art Class and Art Project for Kids.


Science: Earth Science & Astronomy for the Grammar Stage from Elemental Science

Geography: Road Trip U.S.A. from Confessions of a Homeschooler

History: I designed our own curriculum based on the books below.

Bible: My Book of Bible Stories and many other activities from jw.org


Portuguese: I designed the curriculum as well.


We are very pleased with the choices we made and we are having lots of fun with our Second Grade Homeschooling.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!

Vanessa Z. Pawlicki