Felt Treasure Map

Lately my kids favorite thing to play is pirates. "Arrgh matey" & "Ahoy Captain" have become everyday phrases around here. So the other day when Petie asked me if I could draw him a treasure map, I jumped at the chance to do something creative. Knowing that a paper treasure map would be destroyed by my kids in about 2 seconds, I decided to use something slightly more substantial, and grabbed my stash of felt.

This was the result! I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. The only problem is I only made one and so there is constantly a fight over who gets to use the map. He insisted that his island have a skull cave on it. He's such a boy!

Birthday Cake = Homeschool Success

Have I been teaching Patty to bake in school? Nope. What about cake decorating? Nope. So why then do I consider this birthday cake to be a homeschooling success? It's because this shows that I accomplished one of my main goals this year, and that is to instill in her a love for history. Patty doesn't think of history as a bunch of dates and old people, but rather as a collection of really great stories. So when she chose Ancient Egypt as the theme for her birthday cake, I was thrilled. That was of course before I realized that I now had to figure out how to deliver on that one. It's not perfect, but she loved it and that's all that matters. So you can keep your Disney Princess and Barbie cakes, we're eating history around here.

Our Published Artist

A few months ago Patty sent a picture she had drawn into Your Big Backyard magazine. The other day she got a letter in the mail telling her they had published her picture! She was so excited!!

P.S. She wants everyone to know her hair doesn't usually look like this :)

Find The Match

Here's another simple activity I did with Peanut this week. I chose a selection of things that I had two of from around the schoolroom, trying to vary the shapes, sizes, and textures of the objects. I put one of each item into a fabric bag, and laid their matches out on the table. I would choose an item, then Peanut would put her hand in the bag and try to find the match just by feeling for it. We have done this game several times now and Peanut just loves to play it.

Here are just a few things to consider about this activity:

1) If Peanut was having trouble finding the item I showed her, I would have her pick an item up in her hand, feel it, and then tell me which item on the table matched what was in her hand before she pulled it out to look. We both found this to be a little easier for her to play this way.

2) The possibilities for this game are endless since you can really chose anything from around your house. You could do all things from the kitchen, all things that start with a particular letter, a holiday theme etc... The only requirements are that you have two of each item, and that they fit in the bag.

Schooling & Sewing Superhero Style

We started out our school week last week doing some Presidents Day activities, but for the rest of the week, I did a Superhero theme with Petie. He had a lot of fun with this one. We used the Batman Preschool Pack from 1+1+1=1 for the bulk of our activities. I also printed up some simple words for Petie to read and make Superhero sentences. Here he is sounding out See Doctor Octopus cut the power lines. For the harder words like Doctor Octopus and power lines I would use pictures for him to fill in the blanks with.

Other examples of sentences we did were:

Get the net to nab ______.

_______ is a bad man.

Go the the ______ at six.

For filling in the blanks I found images online and used them for words like Spiderman, Superman, The Penguin, Batcave, Batmobile, Bridge, etc... I had tons of simple words, so there were numerous sentence combinations. Petie does not get excited when I bring out his reading book to read, but he loved this hands on way of practicing reading.

I also made him a reversible cape using this tutorial. He has had so much fun rescuing every person and stuffed animal in the house from impending danger.

And then there's this little monkey who thinks she has superhero abilities as well. As long as she's doing this off the arm of the couch and not the top of the bunk bed, I think I'm ok with it.

We had a discussion about superheroes and the different powers each one had and so on. I then asked Petie who was the most powerful, super protector he could think of. Patty suggested God as the answer (the answer I was looking for of course), but Petie promptly ruled Him out suggesting that God couldn't be a superhero because He doesn't have a cape. I try, I really do.

School Post: The One Where Things Erupted

I have to say, I'm not really a big fan of messy projects. Or rather, I'm not a big fan of messy projects in the hands of my kids, since they have the ability to make an already messy project about 10x messier. So, for this history lesson I really had to relax a little and just have fun.

We've been using The Story Of The World: Ancient Times for our history this year, and I really am enjoying it. I enjoy it a lot more when I actually take the time to do the projects that go along with each chapter. This chapter we discussed life in early Crete and talked about the volcano that erupted on the island of Thera. The kids had a lot of fun building and then erupting our volcano. I may just have to let my hair down and get messy a little more often.

Science Fair

Last night Patty was able to participate in the local homeschool science fair. She and the Professor worked on a project about the best way to grow sugar crystals. Her division was the K-2nd grade group and she won a trophy for Best Use of the Scientific Method. We're so proud of her and can't wait to see what she comes up with for next year.