Fun History!

What a shock my kids had when I walked into the room like this!

(Excuse the slightly blurred photo.  My 10-year-old was giggling too much to focus the camera properly!)

It was a great way to introduce the British Occupation at the Cape and the 1820 British Settlers for our Footprints On Our Land history curriculum.

All Miss.L10′s narrations were done with the mask and a most ‘proper’ British accent!

(And lots of giggles from Miss.K13 studying in the background!)

Some novelty and fun makes History fresh and exciting!

Hope you and your kids have fun now and then!

Blessings,

Corn Starch Clay Decorations

Thanks to Pinterest I have discovered some wonderful ‘new’ recipes!

           This lovely baker’s clay from woodsidekitchen.blogspot.com is cheap and simple to make,

smooth and easy to work with,

 comes out the oven white and hard,

and looks pretty even un-painted!

We used our normal play-dough cutters,

and I gave the girls our rubber stamps to use for texture and embossed designs.

Fun!

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 Cup Corn Starch

1 Cup Bicarbonate of Soda

3/4 Cup Water

* Mix all ingredients together in a pot.

* Stir over heat until the mixture thickens and resembles thick mashed potatoes (really!)

* Remove from the stove and place as a ball in a bowl and cover with a damp cloth until it cools.

* Roll out, cut, shape and decorate.

* To make the holes we used a drinking straw – press down, twist, and lift, then blow out the little centre into your hand to re-use the with the scraps.

* Bake@ 180○ C for about 10 minutes or until firm and hard.

* Cool and paint, varnish, or enjoy as is.

Great for Xmas decorations, place-name settings, gift tags and gift embellishments.

Give it a try!

Blessings,

3D Models into Art

“Busy hands while I read aloud”

This is a wonderful recipe to success in a literature-based curriculum like Sonlight.

My kids have modeled in clay, made prints, colored-in, painted, woven wool, built a Lego ziggurat, tied knots and built paper models.

In Footprints on our Land, we recently studied the French Huguenots and their influence on the culture, architecture, agriculture, language and religion in the Cape.

I had some postcard paper models of Cape houses from my old teaching-days.  I made color photo-copies (to save my originals) and gave them to Miss.L10 to cut and glue while I read aloud.

She enjoyed the intricate cutting and scoring,

glueing and forming …

The water-mill was quite tricky!

Once she had finished “playing” with the little paper people around her houses, we put the models up on the window sill on display.

This week we finished off the read aloud.  While I read the last few chapters, we solved the “where do we store the 3D models?” problem with an artistic application ~

• cut the models apart
• use the front, the sides and the back to create 3 houses from 1 model
• paste them on a blank page
• draw, color and paint the background and the details
• and we have wonderful, detailed, colorful pages for in our notebook file!

This way we achieved ~

1. creative and busy hands while I read aloud
2. storage for a 3-dimensional object in our notebook file
3. creative problem-solving = make the models fit into a 2-dimensional design (she had to cut the roof in different angles to look “true”, she made a door where there was only a window, she wanted both sides of the water mill and created a full water flow through several buildings!)

How do you store your children’s 3D models?  What busy-hands activities have been the most successful/ creative?  Please share in the comments.

Blessings,

Narrations 103 Puppets

This is number 3 in my series of Narration posts. (Read the previous posts Jot & Draw and Type & Print)

Many young children love to tell their narrations!

What better way to dynamically retell the story than with

Puppets!

Some of our best puppet shows were spontaneous -

Finger Puppets

The children simply drew outline pictures of the characters from the story.

They stuck a strip of paper to the back of the picture,

wound the paper strip around the finger and taped it closed,

and narrated the story.

Children with a flair for the dramatic include accents and actions.

They swap finger puppets to narrate different characters.

Folded flat, the children pasted their finger puppets on their notebook pages.

Paper Puppets

Our free Aesop lapbook came with paper puppets.

My youngest enjoyed hours of free play with her puppets.

Paper Doll/ Men Puppets

During our Sonlight World History studies we created our paper doll series.

These paper dolls were fun to use in narrations.

Laminated and stiff, the children played out their narrations and stories.

But you could paste the paper doll on a wooden stick and make “proper” puppets!

They provide hours of creativity – coloring in,cutting out, pasting clothing and narrating.

We store ours in clear plastic zipper bags.

Hand Puppets

Our hand puppets have been enormously popular

and have lasted for years!

We made our fist puppet show

Esther Play for Purim

with puppets, backdrops,
props and a full script.

A few years later we updated our puppets,

made new backdrops,

added some animal puppets on sticks

for our new play ~

Nativity Puppet Play

Whether simple and quick,

planned and prepared,

practised or spontaneous,

puppets take centre stage.

They divert attention away from the child

and give the child something to “do” while narrating.

Allow your child the freedom to express their narration in a way that is not always dictated or written.

Try puppets!

Blessings,

Related articles

• How to Build a Simple Shadow Puppet Theater (innerchildfun.com)

Decorated Frames

Friends visited us for a week during our winter school break.

While we sat through a rainy spell, the older girls asked to do a craft.

We decided to use a few old frames lying in a box.

I wanted them to make this a special frame,

decorated with things found on the farm.

It could be made into something useful;

with hooks or wire or mesh to hang jewelery on,

or simply a pretty memento of the time together.

Miss. T made a jewelry frame as a gift.

First she painted the wooden frame in a lovely light teal green, left it to dry and then scraped off some paint to create a distressed look.

She covered the back of her frame with some lace and fabric off-cuts that she sewed together and ironed flat.

Then she pulled the material over the hard board back and taped it down.

She used a piece of rusty old chicken mesh to cover half of the material.

Now she secured the frame to the back.

She glue-gunned some dried rose buds she had in her stash to one side of the frame,

added some interesting pieces of lichen she found on an old tree,

and completed her frame with 3 brass hooks which she embellished with some buttons and ribbon.

Lovely!

Her friend, Miss. C, found a lovely picture of a heart and a crown in a Christian magazine as her inspiration.

We made a colour-copy of the original.

She spent some time embellishing the picture with pen, glitter and then glued some crumpled brown paper edging.

As she felt that her frame was a little narrow, she wrapped her rusty mesh over the sides of the frame.

She found some rusty tin which we carefully snipped to form a heart.

Her mom had crocheted a cotton heart and Miss. C attached the hearts to her mesh with the same thread.

Beautiful!

Both frames were so unique.

What a lovely rainy-day craft.

Pop over to my project pages for more crafty inspiration!

Blessings,

Kitchen Connections

My daughters are learning home-making

and cooking

is one of the most important skills.

Recently, when I went away for 9 days, my young ladies proved just how well they are managing in the kitchen!

And my stepson is an excellent cook!  He often steps in and cooks up a fabulous meal.

Over the years I have tried several approaches:

1. “Watch – Do – Teach”  Basically it works like this = My girls watch the technique or skill I am showing them, then they do the same activity while I observe them and then they must teach the cooking lesson to one of their siblings.
2. Menu plan and make the meal – We all brainstorm and suggest ideas for lunches and dinners for the week.  They then choose any main meal or lunch to prepare on their own.
3. One-on-one with mom - Each daughter spends one day assisting or cooking with me for the day each week.

But I really love to have the whole family and visitors join in to cook or bake together in the kitchen!

In fact I often plan meals with this in mind when we have friends visit and stay over at our farm.

These are my favorite cooking connections:

We all make pizzas.  Everyone cuts, slices, grates cheese, pips olives, spreads the pizza bases … and then we all cover the pizzas with a delightful variety of toppings.  Delicious and fun!

Another good meal for everyone to join in is a stir-fry.  There can all help prepare the food: cut and slice veggies, slice and dice meat and mix sauces. The actual stir-fry is also a big communal event as everyone clusters around the fry plates and stirs and fires!

Many a soup dish or stew is a great family effort.

Children love to bake. Biscuits are fun to do with kids of all ages.  They love rolling, cutting, coating balls, flattening with forks, sprinkling with toppings … and of course, nibbling titbits along with all the trimmings.

What about these ideas to bring cooking into your children’s lives?

• Buy a really good cookbook to stir some new excitement in a young new mini-chef’s cooking.

• Buy quality cooking utensils and equipment for their birthdays.

• Watch excellent cooking programs.

• Start a cook/ bake class with your homeschool group.

• Join a cooking demonstration.

• Ask a family member or neighbour to teach new skills.  A friend is teaching my girls how to make cheese. My mother-in-law’s neighbour used to be a chef and she loves to teach others.

• Do a recipe-exchange and commit to making one new recipe each week.

What ideas do you have?  How do you inspire and teach your children to cook and bake?  Feel free to share in the comments.

Blessings,

This post was submitted to the SACH Carnival. Join us and see what other South African Homeschoolers are cooking up in this carnival’s theme “Kitchen Fun!”

Fun Ideas for Creative Homeschooling

Welcome to our 3rd SACH Carnival of 2012!

Join South African homeschool moms

as we share our

inspiring

creative

fun activities

in our homeschooling.

Taryn of Hayes Happenings shares a whole host of creative homeschooling activities, many of these shared with their homeschool group called the “Lunch Bunch”.  They have so much fun, don’t you wish you could join them too?

• crafting Egyptian style
• Egypt Day @ Lunch Bunch
• Passover @ Lunch Bunch
• Easter / Passover 2011
• Tutorial: Hobby Horses
• Craft: Lunch Bunch’s rain sticks
• Afrikaans fun

Here at Practical Pages I have written several posts of our fun and creative lessons!  Here are a few of my kid’s favorites:

• Tunnel books made our narration 3 dimensional
• Learning Geography with “Simon Says“
• 3D Model of Seurat’s “Bathers at Asnieres”
• Lego hole-punched pictures for narrations

Trixi from Trixi’s HomeEd Academy has found lapbooks have brought the joy of learning to her homeschooling days.  She shares some her creative posts:

• Kitchen Maths with some videos of their creative learning
• Misha’s first attempt at lapbooking
• Big Box Little Box Lapbook
• South Africa Lapbook
• Solar System Lapbook

Donette of The Journey wrote her post specially for the carnival and shared the fun and creative ideas for her children who are all under 6.

Thanks to all who shared in this carnival!

I’m sure you all have creative, fun activities that stand out as your homeschooling highlights.

Would you care to share them too?  Write a comment and leave a link to your post.

Blessings,

Tunnel Books Made our Narration 3 Dimensional!

Tunnel books form 3 dimensional pictures made from cut out layers stacked on top of each other, almost like a peep show!

I thought this would be a creative way to illustrate the overcrowded immigrant cities we read about in our Sonlight  American History studies.  (Busy hands while I read aloud …smile)

Here’s a 4 frame tunnel book tutorial:

• I prepared 4 frames, each one slightly wider than the next.
• We looked at photographs and pictures to plan each frame.
• I suggested that the objects become slightly smaller on each frame and that some objects stick out into the inside of the frame. (You’ll notice the sizes decrease in the tunnel book above and really create a sense of depth!)
• The girls illustrated and cut around the inside details.
  

  4 frames with 2 concertina strips

• They placed this frame over the next wider frame and planned where to place their new objects that would stick out.  Objects that joined across the frame looked really good!  They planned new details to show where the top frame would not hide them.  They drew a few pencil lines around these and illustrated the new frame.
• Once they drew and cut around the 2nd frame, they placed this on the 3rd frame and repeated this on the 4th frame.
• We did not cut out the middle of 4th frame, but  illustrated the centre as the background of the picture.
• We folded 2 concertina to have 4 folds each and pasted each page on the folds on both sides.
  

  Matching each frame to a fold on the concertina

• Viola!  A 3 dimensional tunnel book!

And it was such a lovely creative project,

and really easy!

Tips:

• This would be done best on cardboard or stiff paper.  We did ours on plain paper, but it worked well.  It will not be bulky in our notebook folders.
• Coloured card or paper would be lovely.  We started with black pen outlines and felt that this was detailed enough.
• Use just 4 layers: one is the front cover and the 4th is the background.  You could add as many as you need.
• You could make this tunnel book into a card and include narrations or notes inside the card.
• Moms could make a simple template for younger children to cut and colour and paste into a tunnel book.
• You need not have 4 frames.  Instead use a front frame, the next 2 layers just make some sides and paste these against a 4 layer which could be a full photo or picture.
• Be creative and adapt the idea to suit your child’s age or the concepts you want to include in the tunnel book.
• You could use 4 photocopies of the same picture or photo and layer these on each frame in the same way that people make 3D pictures with the same picture mounted above the previous one.
• Have fun!

More tunnel book ideas on the net:

at instructables.com,

a fantastic gallery of great tunnel books,

another gallery,

artbookscreativity.org,

a pdf of a zig-zag version,

and this beautiful easy photo tutorial.

I especially loved the map/ globe tunnel book …

Could we use this in Geography?  Weather systems, atmospheric layers, soil and rock layers …

Or what about life cycles or ecosystems in Biology and Natural Sciences?

Cell structure? Zoology of a pond? …

Or a scene from a play/ poem/ story?  Characters, scenes, plot?

I’m tickled to think of all the other possibilities …

And you?

Blessings,

How Handicrafts and Life Skills Become Great Assets

I strongly advocate handicrafts!  Not just because we are an ”arty-crafty” kind of family and love to make gifts, do projects that beautify the home, and create things to trade/ sell.  Many gifts and ideas are frugal - making “something out of nothing”.  But I have seen the value of a child learning valuable practical skills when they work with their hands.

I seldom blog about my eldest daughter, now 16 years old, who amazes me with her flair with sewing, embroidery, flower arranging and handiwork. May I share a little about her ~

• She is in grade 10 and has  a lovely business called Captivating Beauty Boutique  where she and her dearest friend who lives about an hour and a half away sew and create bridal dresses, bridesmaids and flower girls dresses which they rent for weddings to the workers in the district.
  

• They have done 2 weddings already! They did the brides and bridesmaids’ make-up, hair and accessories, transforming these ladies into beautiful women for this special day.

• They helped arrange tables and decorate the halls for receptions and created beautiful church flower arrangements.

• They hosted their first fashion show in July 2010, showcasing their wedding apparel to the local community.

•  Not only did they sew the clothes, they trained and dressed the models, did their hair and make-up and selected jewelry and accessories.

• They created beautiful flower arrangements and they organized friends and family to help with the music and the lovely tea afterwards.

• Right now she is hard at work preparing for the next fashion expo for the matric/prom dresses and evening gowns to be held next month.

Flower girls model pink satin and organza dresses made by my daughter

• In addition to her handiwork skills, she demonstrates a flair on the computer with graphic art.  She designed their business cards, created professional posters for advertising, made stunning invitations and created lovely programs for their expos.  In time she will create a fantastic blog too!

• I have every confidence in her future!  She has demonstrated the necessary skills to make and create beautiful garments, work with clients, meet deadlines, organize, prioritize, delegate and assist others in big projects.
  

• Once she has completed her schooling she may well rent a gorgeous little Victorian house, convert the front into a vintage tea room and sell dresses from her exquisitely arranged boutique   … or she may join a business and be an asset as an employee.

I agree with Miss Charlotte Mason”s four points kept in mind when selecting handicrafts and life skills  (from Home Education, p. 315)

1. The end-product should be useful. The children should not “be employed in making futilities such as pea and stick work, paper mats, and the like.”
2. Teach the children “slowly and carefully what they are to do.”
3. Emphasize the habit of best effort. “Slipshod work should not be allowed.”
4. Carefully select handicrafts and life skills to challenge but not frustrate. “The children’s work should be kept well within their compass.”

This year my younger 2 daughters and I started quilting.  Our first project was an appliquéd and quilted hearts for gifts/ decoration.

Miss. L9's mini quilt in progress

The second quilt project is still in progress.  We are sewing a set of appliquéd quilted squares to hang in the dairy area of our kitchen.  My youngest (9) still needs to finish stitching the binding and my 11-year-old needs to complete the tabs and press her quilt square – quite a lovely simple project!  I can’t wait to hang these mini quilts on a dowel stick and enjoy seeing their handiwork everyday when we strain and store milk and make our dairy products.

What skills can your children learn?

Handicrafts

• Beading
• Calligraphy
• Carving
• Ceramics
• Chalk drawing
• Charcoal sketching
• Clay sculpturing
• Crocheting
• Cross-stitching
• Embroidery
• Finger painting
• Flower arranging
• Gardening
• Iron sculpturing
• Kiting
• Knitting
• Latch-hooking
• Leather tooling
• Loom weaving
• Macrame
• Oil painting
• Pencil sketching
• Photography
• Picture framing
• Pottery
• Quilting
• Robotics
• Rubber stamping
• Scrapbooking
• Scroll sawing
• Sewing
• Spinning fibers
• Spool-knitting
• Videography
• Watercolor painting
• Weaving
• Weaving pot holders
• Whittling
• Woodworking

Life Skills

• Auto mechanics
• Baking
• Canning
• Changing a car tire
• Changing a lightbulb
• Checking the car’s oil
• Cleaning: mirrors, sinks, toilets, tubs and showers, baseboards
• Clearing the table
• Cooking
• CPR
• Driving a car
• Drying: clothes, dishes
• Dusting
• Electrical wiring
• Emptying trash
• First Aid
• Folding: clothes, towels, sheets
• Mopping
• Mowing the lawn
• Organizing: closets, cupboards, sheds, attics
• Painting a room
• Plumbing
• Raking leaves
• Setting the table
• Sweeping the floor
• Vacuuming
• Vegetable gardening
• Wallpapering
• Washing: clothes, dishes, windows, car
• Welding

Life Skills but also Business Skills

• Computer skills
• Keyboarding/Typing
• Tracking personal finances

A child is equipped when she learns practical skills.  A child may discover a gift or talent when they learn a craft.  Their self-image is boosted when they are able, useful and can say “I can”.

I hope your projects and handicraft activities bring you and family great joy!

Blessings,

 

This post has been submitted to the upcoming Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival.

 

Toy Car Travel Mat

Here is my latest homemade gift for 2 little boys ~

A Toy Car Travel Mat!

This great car mat has pockets for the little cars and folds and rolls to neatly store and carry.

You can see the tutorial at my Making Gifts page.

I found other wonderful ideas here:

@homemadebyjill.blogspot.com has an excellent cozy-car-caddy-tutorial with numbered pockets and templates

@obsessivelystitching.blogspot.com has a lovely mini-travel-car-mat in a little draw-string bag

@edeenutcreates.blogspot.com shares a toy-car-travel-mat

@mygratitudeattitudes.blogspot.com has a step-by-step car-cozie-tutorial

@alittlegreat.com shares an amazing little-crafty-make-playmat with zipper pocket and it folds up in a tote bag.

Blessings,