Rockin' The Dollar Tree

 

This Letter Recognition work is brought to you almost entirely by the Dollar Tree (and a little work by yours truly) These awesome see-through alphabet tiles are made from the flexible cutting mats that Dollar Tree (DT) sells in their kitchen utensil section. I cut each one into quarters and used a Sharpie--also available at DT--to draw on some capital ABCs.  They come in a 2-pack so I needed 4 packages to make the whole alphabet. 

The cute buttons were bought at Michaels in their dollar bins so for $4 we got about 100 bright little buttons. Not bad.

My kiddos use these letter tiles for lots of things--forming letters with playdoh, using other seasonal materials to form letters (acorns, confetti, small leaves, flowers etc.) using them to spell out words, tracing them on the light table or window to practice writing etc. 

So for a grand total of about 10 bucks we got what I thought was a LOT of materials that are fun and versatile--I try never to have toys or learning materials that can only be used in ONE way. My kids are pretty used to the phrase, "What else do you think we can do with that?"

Puppet Theatre: Worth the Effort

The girls received a puppet theatre for Christmas 2012 and also some handmade puppets of well-known fairy tale characters. I wasn't sure how well they would play with this b/c it requires a bit of storytelling effort for the show to be really enjoyable.
If It's Pretty They Will Play
They initially loved the look of it and handling all of the puppets but my hesitations proved correct when they didn't seem to know how to really "use" it. So after many, many puppet shows directed and performed by Mom (some better than others depending on my patience level) they finally seemed to get the hang of it.
If It's Working, Invest in It!
We've managed to collect many more puppets in the last year which has broadened the scope of our little puppeteers and has vastly increased the length and variety of storylines--which is appreciated by their main audience (Mom & Dad.)
Storytelling Skills
The best things to come from our experience with the puppet theatre are the ways in which the girls understand story concepts now (plot development, characters, suspense, setting etc.) that they may not have learned without having to work it out using the puppets. And also their ability to think spontaneously and creatively to create a story. This didn't come right away, mind you--but it did development after many attempts and a lot of encouragement. Which therein lies the other benefit we've seen--perseverance. The girls can look back now and remember how difficult it first was to come up with stories and see how much they have learned about how a good story can be crafted.
Now the puppet theatre has become a favorite playtime toy and one that I enjoy seeing them use. (even if I still have to put on a few performances now and again.)

May Flowers for Mary

These were collages made from Burpee seed catalogs that I can just never bring myself to throw away. They have such beautiful, colorful images of flowers that I just knew we'd use them sooner or later. And here they are transformed into wreaths of flowers for Mary, celebrating her crowning in the month of May. We printed out the Hail Mary prayer and the girls glued them onto their papers and then chose lots of flowers to cut out and arrange around the prayer. This was a great way to identify types of flowers they knew as well as spot some new ones to look for as the summer months begin.

Christmas (or anytime) Gifts 1

This was a small painting I made as a gift this past Christmas. I saw the idea on Pinterest but it was for S. Carolina and said the "Palmetto State" (that's S. Carolina, right?) but I thought I could pretty easily tailor it for the more awesome state of Michigan. 

Fall Letter Recognition Works

October 2013: We had a letter matching game for each of the girls that kept them busy for days and wasn't too difficult as far as prep goes. The simpler version was simply fall leaf shapes with the capital letters on them. These had to be put in alphabetical order. Simple, but challenging enough at first.

The second set was a set of leaf & pumpkin shapes that were both upper and lower case letters. These had to be put in alphabetical order and then the lower case matched to its upper case letter. This was pretty challenging at first but both girls managed it after a few tries and it really helped with their lower case letter recognition.

Summer Nature Looms

July 2013: Earlier in the school year we made simple looms that the girls used with ribbons to do a little weaving practice. (We made these using only Dollar Tree materials, btw. $3.00 total) When we finally got some lovely things growing outside in abundance we went out with our bags and did a little nature collecting. Bringing back our flowers, grasses, weeds, seeds etc. we sat outside and gently wove all of these things into a really beautiful nature display. Both girls needed a bit of help doing this without destroying the more delicate specimens but we all enjoyed doing this activity together. We hung these outside and watched them change as they dried in the sun.

Summer Nature Collecting and Collages

 May 2013: We ventured outside one sunny morning to do a little nature collecting. We returned with our findings and used them to make a nature collage on bright yellow paper. I originally wanted the girls to think a bit more "outside the box" and use the flowers, leaves etc. to create a different image such as a face or an animal, but they wanted to use them to create a nature scene--pretty much a replica of right where we collected them. But in the end I think they turned out really well and they had fun imagining all of these separate plants growing together as one new plant. So, not exactly what I had in mind but they really loved collecting and creating with the natural materials which was the goal anyways.

Father's Day Cards

June 2013: For Father's Day this year I printed off one of those questionnaires that were all over Pinterest. The girls had to answer basic questions about their dad that of course produced hilarious results that both entertained and embarrassed said Dad. Fun was had by all :) And then we made handprint accordions into cards that the girls REALLY enjoyed making. I think these are a not-so-typical way to use your child's handprint but equally cute as some more traditional handprint crafts. Dad loved them--almost as much as his girls loved giving them :)

Spring Blossom Tree

April 2013: When there aren't yet REAL blossoms on the trees outside, we made our own from a bare branch and some tissue paper. The girls enjoyed making the pretty flowers from petal shapes that I pre-cut from pink & white tissue. They needed a little help affixing them to the actual branch but with some patience we made it happen. It was a nice, Spring-y addition to the schoolroom and a hopeful sign that one day Winter would indeed end.

Lion & Lamb of Springtime!

March 2013: We made mobiles to illustrate the phrase, "In like a lion, out like a lamb" that is so often used to describe the season of Spring. For some reason I only have a pic of the lamb which we made using cotton balls but the opposite side had a lion's face that we made using yellow yarn. The materials we used were also useful in a discussion about textures. The girls were very happy with these and liked to see them hanging in the window. We also used them as part of our weather each morning--deciding if the day's weather was like a lion (wintry) or like a lamb (mild and Spring-like).

St. Patrick's Shamrocks

March 2013: We love St. Patrick's Day at our house and my girls really enjoyed hearing the story/legend of the real man, St. Patrick this year. We created some shamrocks to decorate our dreary March windows that were also visual lessons on the nature of the Trinity: Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

Easter Artwork and Poems

March 2013: We decided to try our hands at writing acrostic poems for Easter this year. I helped out some with coming up with words that would fit, but really they did most of this on their own and I was so pleased with their finished poems. We will definitely be trying this for other holidays and themes.

March 2013: These were 2 of the activities we did for Easter this past Spring. the girls LOVE coloring and especially coloring in something I draw for them--their own custom coloring book pages--so we did some rather ornate eggs and they enjoyed coloring them (some got further than others...) and adding some Easter stickers. They were very proud of these :)

MORE Spring collages

We were really on a collage spree in the Spring, the girls wanted to keep working in this media so we did! Here are our rainbow collages that we created using photos from magazines. The girls had WAY too much fun being distracted by the magazines themselves so I began helping them by cutting out large blocks of colors and letting them cut them down to the size they needed for their rainbows. They did really enjoy making the actual rainbows once all of the cutting was done :)

Spring Collages

 

April 2013: We traced the girls' hands to make a tree throughout the 4 seasons of the year. We chose tissue paper to create a collage to show the different stages of foliage the tree would display during the changing seasons. They really enjoyed this project and especially thinking about/remembering what trees look like in Fall and Winter.

Winter Indoor Activities

February 2013: These are craft stick "ice skaters" that we made in the freezer and then the girls had fun skating them in the "ice-rink" (bathtub) until they melted.

Our NEW house (and schoolroom!)

October 2013: These are the first photos we took in our new home and new schoolroom. We did candy corn math matching and handwriting practice using the girls' names.

Homeschool 2013-14

I've revamped what was a once, long-ago blog dedicated to the doings of my oldest daughter (she was born 6 years ago today!) and am trying to create a simple, and I emphasize SIMPLE blog where I can record some of the things we do here at home with our now 3 daughters as we homeschool, get crafty, experiment and generally grow together. Basically it's a place where I can document the things I want to pin to pinterest :)