What and when/ learning styles and more

So this comes up a lot...How do you know what they need to learn and when..Each state has had a lot of different standards (it may change with common core). There are several things you can do to give you an idea of what the kids should be able to do and when according to the public school system (Since we do mostly child led interests I don't pay much attention other than to make sure they are progressing and have hit most of the marks since we do have to do state testing here in Oregon).
Some people really like the "what your __ grader should know" series which can be a nice reminder of things or give you idea's! Also check with your states Department of Education online, they should have a list of standards on there you can print out or bookmark. There's also a couple of other websites you might take a look at and bookmark...Core Knowledge and World book.

The other thing that I run across a lot is people trying to figure out their kids learning style. A couple of recommendations. Cathy Duffy has a lot of good information (from a Christian worldview) There are lots of other options as well. Amazon has a great selection with reviews so check them out. I've been reading from this book lately...

But haven't finished it yet, so can't really give a review/recommendation at this point.

and for the more part...
We just got this in the mail for the girls...

It has some fun things to start thinking about money, saving, budgeting, wants vs. needs, etc. We ordered it free from here.

Also with Earth day fast approaching...

It's free on the Kids discover website as a download/printable. You can check it out here. They have some great free resources so check them out.

I was also asked about some of the materials we are using for our Archeology/Ancient Egypt unit. Here's a couple of the books/magazines we are using...

The kids discover magazines Archeology and Ancient Egypt both have free lesson plans as well...

Which is great and can give you lots of ideas. We're also of course using a lot of online resources and crafts etc. as well.  You can find some of the links in the cool/fun/educational website as well. I'll try and link a few of our crafts as well in a bit. Some of the materials are middle school level, so I do recommend checking for things your kids may not handle well (mummies, etc.) and work around them.

I think we have reached the saturation point on the eggs/coloring. We'll be keeping the eggs around for the next science club event so everyone can see what happened with them as well as trying the other experiment again.

Off to get things done. Today is our "off" day each week, which it turns out was a good thing today, because the coffee doesn't seem to be doing much for me today!