Fun with Clay

For art today colin made a self portrait and conner made his cat. I joined in on the fun. I really have always enjoyed anything artsy so this was great. I too made our cat. Conner actually joined in after colin was done and I started to make something. I think he didnt want to miss out. What a great way to get him to do some art. He also ended up having a good time.
I took some pictures.











Colin hard at work painting his clay self.









He told me that the pants are different because they have different colors on each side. What an imagination :-)









Here are all of our finished products. Conner's is to the right. Mine is in front.
Im sure if I had started to paint mine Conner would have joined in this activity as well. There's always something isnt there.
















Conner so proud of his art. This is his cat turtle. We've posted pics of him before.

Weaving

Colin does and art project where he learns to weave. He really enjoyed this activity. Colin really likes art and does retain alot of the information. He loves using the word " texture" when applied to art or cooking. It's so cute.


Our cat, Turtle really likes this project too. I think Colin had an even better time when his buddy came to help him with the string.

This picture is so cute and had me laughing so hard. It's actually the main reason for posting all this. Colin asks at this point " So mom why do girls like doing this so much? and "How do you get the string in that small hole?" Should I get out my cross stitch stuff and let him try putting the string in those teeny holes??(snicker, I love being evil)

" Yeah, I finally got it." He absolutley insisted on doing this himself. It was a proud moment on his part and mine. Way to go Colin.

During the weaving we discussed looms and indian art( that was what the lessson was based on)we even checked out some looms online....who knows his b-day is coming up (in april).

What are my limits?

We are on Day 7 of our Penguing Lapbook. Today we are discussing different penguins and I had put together pictures and basic facts concerning penguins. Some of our mini books were pre-done thanks to some wonderful moms (sigh, I will learn to do this eventually, mabey when they are grown). The ones I had only covered six penguins. In a moment of inspiration I located pictures of the other penguin types and the basic facts like where they live, how tall they are and how much they weight. Unfortunatley this meant we needed to make the mini books . Now up to this point I had precut and folded just about all the books. This took some time during which I was glad that I had taken the effort to do this so we could concentrate more on learnning about penguins than making the mini books.
So this is how it went.
Me: We have to make mini books for the rest of the pictures and then put the basic facts about each penguin in each book.
Boys: Graon
Conner: (big round eyes) We have to cut?? (Groan some more and of cours a hint of eye rolling.)Why do we have to cut?
Colin starts happily cutting without another word.
Conner throws up his hand states: I cant do this, How are we supposed to do this.
Me: (mildly irritated, I mean they didnt appreicate that I precut everything else) Fine, I will help you.
We cut and fold and tape.
Colin still no fussing (sigh, why cant they all behave like this?)
Conner get another sheet of paper and so I start to help colin since he is being so pleasant.
Conner actually say ( actually chukkling now about it, not at the time) Why are you folding for him? Mom I need your help, I cant do this.

The point is Conner is very lazy and I am completley unsure of how to fix this. The other point is I was frustrated and saw that I made something fun into something that was alot of work. I felt like I had destroyed Conner wanting to learn about penguins. The Penguin book was his idea.
I now know it works much better when I predo alot of the cutting and folding as it leaves more time for learning. It leaves the frustration out of our day as well.

It's Finally here

After what seems like forever we finally have our check from the insurance company. Our basement had a pipe burst back in November, one week before thanksgiving. The company finished our basement fix-up mid January. We have been back and forth with our agent getting all sorts of different stories. But today we got our check.
Yeah.
So we will pay off my car. This will free up almost $500 a month. Then we will be able to put a major dent in our credit card. Since the flood we have used it for several things to replace things we lost in the basement. My poor two younger boys basically lost all of their toys and have become somewhat horrible about sharing what they have left. I am working on this.
I am so excited.

Making Laundry Soap

In my adventures to becoming more trifty I came upon recipes to make your own cleaners. These reipes included Laundry soap. So I finally bought the needed and hard to find Fels Naptha Soap and Washing soda and set to work. About an hour later we had finshed now all we need to do is let it sit for 24 hrs and then put it in containers.





Here is the recipe I followed

3 Pints water

1/3 Bar Fels Naptha Soap, grated(smaller is better in this case)

1/2 cup Washing Soda

1/2 cup Borax

2 Gallon Bucket

1 Quart Hot Water

Hot water



Mix Fels Naptha Soap in a saucepan with 3 pints of waterm and heat on low until dissolved. Stir
in Washing Soda and Borax. Stir until thickened, and remove from heat. Add 1 Quart Hot water to bucket. Add soap mixture, and mix well. Fill bucket with hot water, and mix well. Set aside for24 hrs or until mixture thickens. Use 1/2 cup of mixture per load.



I also worked out the cost of this, phew all this frugal stuff is getting to me. Here are the cost of the items and then broken down to how much it cost per recipe.

Fels Naptha $1.25 + $0.65(shipping) ; Recipe $0.41, $0.63 includes shipping

Washing Soda $2.99 ; Recipe $0.20

Borax $4.99; Recipe $0.28



I couldnt find the Fels Naptha Soap except online at Soaps gone buy. I will continue looking for better resources to alll these products although at this price per recipe who can complain.

Giving me a total cost of $0.89 per recipe or $1.11 including shipping. I also calculated that each recipe will yeild 64 loads at the recommended 1/2 cup per load. You do the math. You just cant beat the price. If I'm correct it works out to 1-2 pennies per load. Wow.

Penguins

This is what I've come up with for our unit study on penguins. Its a very simplified plan that will probably take a week if you do two to four activities a day. I opted to go with a smaller version because when I do two to three weeks of study on one thing my kids eventually say " Can we be done with (fill in the blank)". This makes it more stressful for me and them so simpler is better. Of course the more fun they have with it the better they absorb the information.

Books:

365 Penguins

Antartic Antics

Magic School Bus :Penguin Puzzle

Penguins (by kids books)

Vocab/spelling

Diving

Tobogganing

Porpoising

Swimming

Waddling

Krill

fish

Squid

Orca

Leapord Seal

Skua Gull

Rookery

egg

Nest

Incubate

Brood pouch

Chick

Creche

Fledgling

Molting

Regurgitaion

the definitions can be found here http://www.d81.w-cook.k12.il.us/kennedy/asmith/penguins/vocabulary.html

Using the lapbook from http://www.lapbooklessons.com/LapbookPenguin

and this lapbook http://books.lulu.com/content/1828361

I was able to put together a lapbook at my kids level (4th and 5th grade).

the first lapbook is for early elementary level and the second is at a higher elementary level, in my opinion.

Money money money

To start our new yr off I asked the boys what they wanted to study for the remainder of the yr. Colin wanted to study, drum roll please, money big surprise there. Conner wants to learn all about golf. The other things they mentioned are
Money
Golf
4-h(they want to participate)
manners,
Penguins
Cooking
Colorado
Florida
Farm life
I have gathered some material for the money and penguins so we will be doing those first. Im sort of excited about the money. The mint has lesson plans for the state quarters that we can use to do a "geography of america by coins" unit/lapbook. There are all sorts of interesting things I found here is some links.
Money
http://homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks/money.htm
http://www.usmint.gov/kids/teachers/lessonplans/50sq/download.cfm?grade=3
Penguins
http://www.penguinscience.com/index.php
http://www.makinglearningfun.com/themepages/penguinsPolarBears.htm
http://www.lapbooklessons.com/LapbookPenguin

More to come as I work on this. But so far I have some good stuff already. We just picked up some books from the library on penguins


365 Penguins
Antartica Antics
Magic school bus Penguin puzzle