Author: Liesl - Homeschool Den
Here’s a little activity I put together for theseason. I got some cheap little ornamentsto hang on this little Christmas tree. I madethe tree out of pipe cleaners and placed someself-hardening clay in a little plastic cup sothe tree would stand up. I wound up needinga bit more support for the tree, so used thebottom of a paper cup to make it a little morestable.
The girls have been enjoying these Christmas lacingcards from http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/christmas_lacing_cards.htm. I used some yarn with a short pipe-cleaner twistedtogether at the end instead of a needle.
LD has always loved jets (his grandpa was a propulsionengineer and worked on the development of the JointStrike Fighter). He and I worked on this paper plane,a model of the Nighthawk.
Here is a foam map of Australia that DD and LD enjoyputting together.
The older kids are always given a small pitcher to pourtheir milk into their cereal. ED now has a very smallpitcher of milk to pour into her bowl. (She’s been doing thisfor a couple of months now, probably starting around 20months old, I think.) If she dribbles any milk she knowswhere the washclothes are and will go grab one out of thedrawer to wipe the table.
One question that I’ve been asked pretty regularly is “how do you homeschool with kids of such different ages?” My first response lately has often been, just imagine taking your three favorite students out of a class of 25. They have different needs and abilities, but so do the kids in a traditional classroom setting. I get to work every day with the kids that I most enjoy being with...
Homemade Graham Cracker Recipe
While we were away, I was doing some browsing online and found a recipe for graham crackers (which my kids love — I even have had people send us boxes from the States!) We gave the recipe a try and they turned out wonderfully. In fact, we made TWO batches in the past couple of days. I rolled ours out really thin, so they are very crunchy. LD said they...
We just got back from our three week holiday down toAdelaide, South Australia. We drove down. If you’veever wondered what the Australian Outback looks like,here are a few photos that are pretty representative ofwhat it’s like for 1200+km. There are lots of smallshrubs. Sometimes there are occasional hills, but mostlyit’s flat. Every now and then (somewhere between 50 and250kms) there are roadhouses where you can fill up onpetrol/gas. Most roadhouses...
This is pretty typical of the petrol stations you’ll find incentral Australia… not a town, but just a few buildingsand then nothing again for a LOoooong time!
I had lots of crafts ready for the kids to do in the car. Thepom pom was a huge hit. This isn’t the way I grew upmaking them, so I thought I’d post a few pictures in caseothers of you hadn’t seen this method. It was greatbecause even ED, now 22 months, was able to wrapthe yarn around. Be sure to cut out two circle shapes to make it easier...
The kids also really enjoyed decorating Chinese food take-away boxes (that I got in the local dollar store). I gavethem Christmas stickers and all three kids spent a lotof time carefully covering their boxes. Later in the tripI gave them markers to decorate the box. They also enjoyedcoloring in wooden Christmas ornaments. DD really enjoyed the felt board materials (I added asnowman, Christmas tree and ‘ornaments’, and things likethat. I...
We stayed in Coober Pedy on our way down to Adelaide. Coober Pedy is an opal mining town. It gets very hot (45+C in the summers, 110+F), so many of the houses and hotels are underground. The kids were really excited to do some noodling of their own. They had great luck in the museum noodling pit, but not quite as much luck in the public noodling area.
We did find a lot of gypsum in the noodling area, a kind of delicate, flaky rock that disinegrates into fine strands. We all thought that was pretty neat. The last picture above is just to try to show how many mounds dot the landscape. It’s quite a strange place!