Is it possible to be a dedicated homeschooling mom while still making time for myself as an individual (a girlie girl who likes cute shoes)? I like to think so. Follow along, and I'll let you know for sure.

Trust me . . . it's not ALL about the shoes.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Teaching Tool Tuesday - Custom Word Searches

Don’t tell, but my wish lists at Lakeshore Learning and Amazon are much longer than the one I have at Endless.com. Honestly, I’m a complete sucker for books and educational games, software and toys. But this past year I’ve honed my ability to discern which tools will be fun once or twice and which ones we'll use over and over . . . and I’ll be sharing our favorites with you every Tuesday. 

Since I've spent the past few months researching and selecting curriculum for the upcoming year, I've found so many fantastic tools that it's hard to pick one to start with for Teaching Tool Tuesday. But, since I'm working on a lapbook right now, my thoughts are running along the lines of tools that work to support a unit study.

I'm a fan of Lakeshore Learning on Facebook (and just a fan in general, really), so I've been seeing all the great teacher aides they offer. My favorite so far is this PDF tool that lets you create a custom word search.

Just enter a title for your word search and the individual words you want included, then select a few options about the orientation of the words. With the click of a button, the tool will create your own word search, which can then be saved as a PDF file. You can even print the answer key in case you need help finding the answers!

The one in the picture is from our 4th of July unit from this summer, but I'll be making them for our cars, oceans and money studies this fall.

4 comments:

  1. sounds silly but I use the Magna-doodle all the time and I save trees!

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  2. Love this idea . . . I always feel guilty about all the paper we use. Need to check the toy bins and see if I can find ours. Thanks for sharing! :)

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  3. Christi, another friend shared this link on the HIH FB page for something similar. Thought you might enjoy it as well: http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/.

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