The Homeschool Classroom

I was recently asked to begin writing a monthly post over at The Homeschool Classroom (I was told the inspiring Amy at Raising Arrows recommended me – thank you so much, Amy!).  My first post is over there today, so please go check it out.  I’m very honored to be a part of the great group of ladies there!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Craft Time – Father’s Day Salt Ceramic Paperweight

Father’s Day is less than a week away, and so today we got ourselves in gear and made little mosaic paperweights for Daddy, Papa, and Grandpa.  Who doesn’t need a paperweight, right??  So – they are not only cute, they are useful too! ;)

I found the recipe for this salt ceramic mixture in MaryAnn Kohl’s book Preschool Art.  She didn’t mention using it to make a paperweight, but she did say it will dry “rock hard” without baking.  Perfect.

Mix 1 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of cornstarch, and 2/3 cup of water together in a saucepan.  Cook and stir over medium heat until it looks like this:

Take it out and plop it onto some foil.  Let it cool.  It’s very hot, so to reduce cooling time I flattened it out:

After it’s cool, knead it several times until it’s pliable and soft.  It will be a tiny bit sticky,  but that’s ok.  This recipe made a ball about the size of a large grapefruit.  I separated it into 3 parts and rolled each part into a ball. 

At this point, M decided he wanted lunch first, so I placed the dough in a baggie to keep it from starting to dry out.  Here’s how I had the project set up for him (I put everything on wax paper so the dough wouldn’t stick to the table):  

I gave him a variety of items to press into the paperweights – buttons, sea glass (from a stepping stone kit we did a long time ago), seashells, flat glass pebbles,  and colored macaroni.

We took the balls of dough out of the baggie, then slightly flattened each one.
M had a great time choosing things to press into the dough.  He got a bit more elaborate with each one. 
Here’s the one for Daddy (done first):
Papa’s:

And Grandpa’s: Let’s hope Grandpa really, really likes seashells. ;)

These really turned out nicely.  You can’t tell in the photos, but the salt gives a bit of a sparkle.  The sparkle, along with the whiteness of the dough, makes it look kind of “beachy”, so the shells and sea glass really look nice in it.  They are like mini beach-scapes.

The men in M’s life are really going to love these… but not as much as we love them. :)

I think this “salt ceramic” would work nicely for handprints too, and could even be painted after it dries.

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – June 14, 2010

Another week of letting M choose his own art box supplies… I am going to have to limit him to 4 or 5 items per drawer (so 8 to 10 items total) I think, because he just grabs and grabs and grabs, and it ends up looking like this:And honestly, I’m not sure what all was there!   He was a busy, busy boy!

He was in love with the little sticker roll he’s holding in the above picture.  He called it his “sticker machine” and used up the entire 200 stickers.  Yep.  200.  Thankfully I’ve had them for ages, not knowing what to do with them, and they only cost $1.00.

I’ve been thinking of ending my little Art Box series on here because, really, how interesting is it (to someone other than Mama) to see hundreds of paintings and collages made by a 3 year old?  And interest in the link-up seems to have waned (which is fine, I’m just sayin’)… but I realized what  wonderful memories of this time I have from these posts.  M has been nothing if not a creative and artistic little guy; I remember when he was 1 year old and hopping mad about something (who knows what) and after crying and screaming about it, all he wanted was “paint!”  “red!”  :)  He expresses himself so easily with art, and I love looking through his artwork and seeing how he’s progressed. 

Also, I have to say, it’s soooo much easier for me to pitch a bunch of it in the recycling knowing that I’ve got photos of it on here!  ;)

Speaking of recycling, sometimes it irks me a bit when he uses entire sheets of foam in a collage, like this: or those perfectly good pipecleaners, or whatever.  I must say if it’s not a work of art that we intend to keep I eventually strip it of all useful and reusable items before tossing it.  He has no idea how many times he’s used those buttons and craft eyes, etc.

So, on to business…

This week he made the following masterpieces -

Glitter, macaroni, eyes, and buttons:

Tissue paper circles: 

Sparkly pens, flat marbles, buttons, colored glass pieces, shells, pasta, eyes, oh my:

And he tried out some new stencils with his dot markers:

I think he’s leaving the painting phase he was in forever and entering into some new and glorious collage phase. :)

Thoughts or opinions about continuing to make this a linky?  Let me know in the comments!  I’m fine with these posts being  just for my memories, with the hope that others will get ideas of what to supply their preschoolers with.

If you do have a post you’d like to link up… it’s below!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Book Review – She Walks in Beauty, by Siri Mitchell

The golden age of New York, the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, has always captured my imagination.  Balls and gowns and opulence… lots of pretty, sparkly things. :)  I loved this book.  It made me laugh and cry, and if you know me, you know there is no better recommendation.

Clara is a young and somewhat naive debutante, who in fact becomes the debutante of the season, and while she is supposed to be pursuing the heir to a well-known family’s fortune, she is drawn to his younger brother instead.  The story is a mystery as well as a romance – Clara is not completely sure why her family is pressuring her to reclaim their honor by marrying the heir, and she learns some unpleasant things about her father’s life and the death of her mother. 

There is a social commentary going on in the book as well.  It describes the gap between the wealthy of the city and the very, very poor who reside in dirty tenements and live like animals; as well as the status of women as decoration and no more, made to fit into a too-tight corset both literally and figuratively.

I could criticize a few areas… the suicide of one young man comes as a bit of a surprise and the way in which it’s treated seems a bit unrealistic.  It’s mentioned in passing, in one paragraph, and seems mainly to be an attempt by the author to get rid of a minor character that has served his purpose, and for whom she could not think of a better conclusion.  Clara brushes the death off lightly, which seems completely out of keeping with her character.

At other times I felt that the story was a bit contrived to suit the purposes of the author, and some of the characters weren’t as well developed as I had hoped they would be.  However, all in all, it was a fantastic book that I could not put down.  The romance between Clara and Harry was played out very well, and ends very satisfyingly.  There were lots of sighs and tears here as I read the final pages. 

There’s nothing like a good love story, and this one is very good.

Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for sending me this book to review free of charge.

3-D Nature Art

M has a “nature basket” that he just adores.  Anything interesting that he finds outside is lovingly placed in his nature basket.  Quite often it’s mainly full of leaves and I empty it every once in a while (he doesn’t seem to notice).  This time, however, it had lots of really cool things in it – a group of leaves still clumped together on a stem, several pieces of bark (he’s taken to sawing the bark off of our fire wood), some maple seeds, and some tiny pinecones.  I decided these were keepers and set up an art activity for him one morning.

Here’s what we used:
His nature basket, an egg carton, and some playdough that we need to use up so we can make a new batch.

(As an aside, this playdough has been around since Valentine’s Day – seriously!  And it is still in perfect condition!  I am loving our homemade playdough.  I know I posted our recipe at sometime… I’ll have to look for that link!)

M was really excited about this project, even more so than I expected him to be.  He rolled small portions of the playdough into balls and set them inside the egg carton sections, pressed them down a tiny bit, and then stuck his nature treasures into the playdough:
We didn’t have enough playdough for 2 of the sections, so he decided to leave the two sections in the center empty.  We've noticed he's very symmetrical with things like this - is that odd for a 3 year old?

Here’s what his final product looked like:

And the view from the side:
M was very proud of it, and I absolutely love it!  It looks so neat sitting on a table in our breezeway.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Corner / Weekly Wrap-Up – Bugs!

We finished our bug unit a couple of weeks ago, but… life intervened and I haven’t had a chance to write it all up until now. 

I use the term “bugs” to mean any creepy crawly thing, so although we talked about how spiders are not really insects, we still included quite a few spider-ish activities. 

I wrote about the bug books we read in this post,  and a couple of bug crafts we did here and here, in case anyone is interested. :)

To begin, I set up a sensory bin that was full of Easter grass, and hid 20 plastic bugs in it.  M had to find them, then use the tweezers to pick them out and place them on the grid.  I also had his little bug viewer out in case he wanted to examine some of them more closely.  (The grid was used so he would know when he had found all the bugs).M has been using his bug viewer (Target!) quite a bit outside – capturing bugs and them looking at them.  I’m… let’s say – not exactly a bug person… and somehow I always end up worrying about them escaping and getting on me and forget to take pictures.  But, believe me, M has spent plenty of time outside looking and learning about real bugs (even telling caterpillars that they are going to turn into butterflies – so sweet!), there just aren’t many photos to prove it. :)

We talked about the names of the various insects, then sorted them by color onto a color wheel:
For a fine motor skill, I showed M how to wrap bugs up in yarn… like a spider wraps them up in order to save them for eating later.  He had so much fun with this!  He had a little spider web and a plastic spider from a community center activity we’d done recently.   So he played for a very long time, pretending a bug would get in the web, then he’d wrap it up, then along would come the spider and eat them all up.  It was getting pretty gory, let me tell you, and M had a ball with this ! :)
At our nature center M did some pond dipping with the other kids… using a net to scoop up interesting things and then examining them in a bowl.  My pictures weren’t great, but he caught a damselfly, a dragonfly nymph, and a tiny snail, along with lots of plant life:      We also saw this lovely spiderweb, which fascinated him: 
I found an amazing bug book at a garage sale over a year ago.  It includes a tray of bug parts that snap onto each page.  You can create the bugs that are described, or use the pieces to make a weird bug creation all your own.  M had a blast with this book!
I’ve also been holding onto some beautiful bug flashcards I found about a year ago.  Here’s a sampling of them:
There’s 36 in all, and I have 2 sets.  I split them in half and placed 18 of them in a circle on the floor around the room.  The matching cards were placed in a pile.  He took a card from the top of the pile and had to find its match, by moving the way that particular bug moves, as he went around the room.  So here he is hopping like a grasshopper:
Crawling like a spider:
Wriggling like a worm or caterpillar:
And flying like a butterfly (with a bit less gracefulness) :He really worked up a sweat with this one!  But he had so much fun, he begged to do the remaining 18 the next day! :)  If only I could think of activities like this for everything we do… he is such a kinesthetic learner, and I am such a non-kinesthetic kind of mama.  {sigh}

I found some storyboard pieces here that go with the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.  I made them into magnets and M had fun retelling the story with them. 
I made a file folder game, inspired by this one at Mama Jenn’s blog, but using butterflies from Prekinders that I had already printed out. 
The idea was to match up the halves.  We talked about how butterflies are symmetric, meaning each wing is a mirror image of the other.  M understood this, but was completely NOT into this activity.  I’m not sure if the more muted colors were not to his liking, or if it was a bit overwhelming – it is a pretty tough visual discrimination activity, with many looking almost alike, but not quite.  Or maybe he’s just tired of this sort of thing. 

He loves doing “what’s different” activities, so I made up these little cards for him  (you can download them here):They were laminated, so he could use a dry-erase marker and erase them – something everyone loves, right? ;)

I put these little foam capsules out for him and he enjoyed watching them open up in warm water.  This time we used pretty hot water and he took them out with tongs.  They dissolved so much more quickly than they have in the past with only lukewarm water.   These were all bug-shaped and we identified each one, then made them into stamps by gluing them onto peanut butter lids.
We played some basic grid games using bug grids that I made and printed out.  These can be downloaded here.  These are great for math and reading skills!  Going from left to right and top to bottom mimics the movement of reading.  He loves doing these – we just roll the die and stamp out that number of bugs.
I found the following two activities online, and thought they were great ideas.  M did not like them.  Not one little bit.  Maybe he wasn’t in the mood, I don’t know, but they were huge flops! However, I still think they are good ideas so I’m sharing them anyway. :)

First, a ladybug visual discrimination activity from Making Learning Fun:
And a phonics activity from Sparklebox, using caterpillars.  I wrote all the letters of the alphabet on 26 flat glass marbles from Dollar Tree, and the idea was to match them up to the beginning sound of the objects pictured on each caterpillar section :
Look at that face… bored out of his mind! :)  Oh well, I try to not let this kind of reaction discourage me.  Writing these posts helps with that, because I can see how many things he really enjoyed and learned!

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up – check them both out for some great activity ideas!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Great Books for a Bug Theme

These are the books we read during our little bug unit... I recommend all of these, and I know there are a lot more out there that we didn't get to.  Feel free to leave your favorite bug book(s) in the comments! :)

We especially enjoyed the Backyard Books "Are You A..." series - we only read the spider and dragonfly ones, but they were so well done I'm anxious to read them all. They interested M and described the insect in perfect terms for a young child, while helping him imagine himself as the bug. I just can't say enough good things about them - be sure to check them out if you can find them!

Have a beautiful day! :)