Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!
Did I ever show you what my lad made the other day?
He was searching for something to do for his Friday project and decided to make a cat toy for our new cat Lizzie.
I was surprised at the good work my lad did, taking things that Miss Lizzie liked and incorporating them into a toy that moved, had interesting bits, and actually intrigued her.
He used green craft wire, pom poms, pipe cleaners, hot glue and yarn to make a safe, but effective toy for a very curious cat.
I was working hard today and got to thinking “I haven’t done my art post for today”. I have no book so what can I do?
I remembered some art posts I’ve recently saved to my Art Pinterest board lately and how much fun I thought they would be to do as a class with my homeschool group. Making Dolls was a whole lot of fun and it would be great to do it again. 🙂
Ergo inspiration was born. Why not inspire YOU my faithful readers with a class you might want to teach.
20+ Cute and Original Origami for kids. Don’t these look fun to do? Mind… I don’t know I’d ever do them as I’ve tried origami before and well… struggled a bit more than I would have preferred. but wouldn’t it be a fun art class to teach? Talking about places in the world, or Japan, or critters. You could easily build a whole fun study around them. 🙂
Leonardo Da Vinci anyone? I love the ideas found here. Or perhaps Henry Matisse is more your style? What about Rembrandt or Van Gogh? Trying things out and learning about our past…it’s a great thing to do. Conversations that would hopefully be spawned… makes my heart just go pitter pat! 🙂
Generally I like to teach students that are 8 years and up, one time I was asked if I’d consider teaching a class of littles (like preschool/kindergarten). I blanched! 🙂 BUT if I ever did, I’d want to do classes that used fun things like sponges, or potatoes, or tissue paper. Objects that would be easy for them to manipulate on their own and I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time fussing over. Using unconventional items to express creativity is wonderful to do with littles…but I’ve never been brave enough to tackle it with a group of younglings. Perhaps one day I shall hmm?
Oh.. one of the ideas that is making my head spin with ideas lately doing a class with olders making gifts for youngers. Like designing a fairy garden, or building a house, or a farm out of popsicles sticks. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful class to teach? To that end I’ve been searching out popsicle craft ideas.
I wanted to teach a leather working class one time but by the time I sussed out the price for the leather, needed tools and what not, I decided I’d price myself right out of a class. I don’t think co-op classes should cost a whole lot of money… It’s hard with leather to make it your own without all the gees gahs to go with it.
There are just so many possibilities for doing art… go out and find something that looks fun and grab up a bunch of kids and go do it together. Art is meant to be enjoyed in one’s own unique way. Let’s celebrate it!
Last year it was the delight of my son and I to join in on a day learning about World War 1 and Canadian participation. We joined in at a large event featuring various highschools as well as homeschooled middle school through high school students from London and the surrounding area. This was a very enjoyable day that my son was truly delighted to participate in. I can’t promise that I will remember everything exactly anymore but I’ll do my best eh? 🙂
Learning to march was part of the fun that my lad enjoyed. He found it interesting to keep pace with another student, and to follow along well.
They also learned the value in presenting a solid line of force against the opposing enemy.
Being the keen eyed observer that my lad is, he discovered another keen eyed observer.
After this we proceeded through a few more stations.
We had a great day out together. I’m so glad we had a chance to do this day together.
Do you remember I did a class on making dolls? We had a lot of fun though admittedly we did the class differently than I had planned.
You see my kids wanted to learn how to sew. This wasn’t on my agenda at all. I remember teaching my son to sew and thought two kids, sewing.. NOT. But they really, really (to the extent of begging) wanted to learn so I bite the bullet.
I have to admit, the hardest part was trying to make sure Dad wasn’t helping their lad too much. “Let him do it himself I kept instructing!”. The children had fun learning to make a simple block stuffy, giving them their own personalities and colour.
The final day I gave them three different options for what to make. Paper dolls, Topsy-turvy dolls or Clothespin dolls.
Know what they both chose? Topsy Turvy dolls! What fun! And easy enough to make. Take a sock (like you are going to make a snow man doll) but instead you make a face on both sides and give the doll a cape to you can show which side is up.
I loved how the children made these dolls their own. 🙂
Let’s see what else did we make. OH.. the wooden stick dolls. Which well.. we didn’t use wooden sticks from trees (like we were supposed to) I had long white things (surgical supply I think) and dowels, it was great letting the children decide which they wanted to use, and we had fun being creative! One child decided he wanted to make a cat! The other did a doll with a striped dress. My son did “Dr. Who”.
We also made a doll that could move on strings. But I will have to show you that another day as it’s getting late and I’m rather tired. 🙂
My goal is to teach this class (or another like it) to a different group of children. I am hopeful to do that this summer. Would be fun to teach it again…it was a great class to do.
We found this recipe at Practical by Default for making chili. It said “child friendly” so the lad and I set about testing out that theorem.
These are the ingredients that we used:
2 tbsp of Oil
2 lbs of Ground Beef -precook and drain
1 extra large can Chick Peas
1 can Red Kidney Beans
1 can Navy beans
2 cans 28 Fl oz Tomatoes – one crushed and one diced
1 large Yellow onion
3-4 cloves of Garlic .. we used minced garlic
Spices:
First time we used a pack of chili seasoning,
Second time: Chili powder, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, tossed in some molasses, made it work. It’s good to discover the joy of taste testing and figuring out needed ingredients. Basil, oregano, thyme…
For directions… well we cooked the meat, then tossed it and the rest of the ingredients into a crock pot let it cook for six hours or so on high the first time, the second time we put it in for 8 hours on low.
Easy as can be. We changed up the beans ratio too.. the second time we used a romano bean mix with black beans and white kidney beans. Beans are beans and they all taste just fine in chili.
YES.. the only thing my lad asked for help with was browning the beef because we were cooking it from mostly frozen and that was a new one for him to do. It’s been added to his very own recipe folder. 🙂
We ate it as is, or put it on bread or over pasta, also served it once in some taco bowls I’d found on sale. Chili is really versatile as my son is having fun discovering. He likes it with applesauce a lot too.
Now it’s your turn.
Have any recipe to share? Would be great to have them. Expand our repertoire if you will.
The other day I offered my son a choice…. finish your schooling (doing bookwork) OR help me with some gardening. He actually stopped to think about it! 🙂 In the end he said “Mom it’s really nice out here, are you sure it’s okay if I help you instead?”
Hands On Learning while being helpful … it’s a win-win in my book.
In the fall we thought we were going to move, so friends of ours asked about getting part of our red currant bush. I told them sure, take a piece off. Saw it this spring and realized they had dug the bush up but …. hadn’t covered the roots and what not so figured I’d move it. It wasn’t hard getting it out…but I couldn’t move it on my own. The lad to the rescue! “I’ll help mom, just where do I grab it?” He took one side and I then other and we got her planted in a new spot. One that gives us access all around. Anyways, this granted us the ability to examine the root system of a currant bush. They are not very deep for the size of the bush and spread out all over. The root system was probably about as big around as the bush, but only 1/4 the depth of the height. We were quite surprised at this.
Well, I raise rabbits, and in the summer they get greens out of my garden. A big part of those greens is my large patch of chervil and parsley. We moved it from the messy, full of weeds patch to a new section of garden, effectively increasing the patch size from a half garden to almost a full garden. We only moved about half the patch today, the rest I worked on over the course of a week.
We moved the black currant bush and discovered we had two of them. We moved the bigger one where we wanted it, with compost on the roots, then made a temporary home for the smaller one. Decided we would sell that one if we could. He made me laugh. I managed to sell it for $10 and my son’s immediate response was “I want to grow more mom! Then I can sell them next year!” WOOT WOOT! I’m raising a fine entrepreneur. I taught him how easy it was to start new currant bushes so now the red and black currant bushes have some brick holding down branches waiting to start new plants. Black currant roots are fewer in number and more spindly. Very easy to dig up and move.
Our next task was the bee garden. We call it that because we have a bumble bee who lives somewhere in the middle of the wood pile. We are fairly sure she lives under the big piece of wood in the middle. We don’t like to bother her and it’s been fun having her bumble around us this spring on the warm days. She never bothers us. Anyways, we pulled out all the dead leftover stuff and tided up the bed, replanted what should grow again. We have a wee bit to do yet, but then we got hungry as we forgot lunch.
Lunch is an excellent thing to have after a hard days work you know? Lunch was followed by in rhetoric by Silverdale Press. It made for an excellent day all round.
Today starts off the first day of the 5 day blog hop from the Homeschool Review Crew. Everyone who is participating gets to choose their own topic and write on it for five days. Since life is rather busy for me lately I thought I’d do something easy and fun. 🙂
Things I love is my topic and today I’ll be talking about how I love when homeschooling meets life. j
Recently hubby started a job working at McDonald’s. They supplied him with a uniform. Shirt that fit nicely and pants that were WAY too long. He didn’t discover the length of the pants until 1/2 an hour before he needed to go in, so being in a pinch, I quickly taught my son how to tack a hem. This is an important skill to have if you need to make an emergency hem.
Day two of Dad’s new job required that tacking to be turned into an actual hem. My lad was eager to learn how to do this so I showed him what to do and off he went.
He needed to learn how to measure length, the threading of the sewing machine, how to stick pins in for ease of removal, how to guide the sewing foot to ensure an even hem, and so forth. It was an excellent time of learning.. not only how to sew but how to pitch in when Dad needed help.
In the end he did a FAR better job than his mother did as his attention to detail ranks up with his dad (and not where his more global minding mother’s is). 🙂
It’s a great thing when a real life need provides an educational opportunity isn’t it?
How have you seen this in your homeschooling journey?
