Google Maps, a Geography Lesson, and Boredom Buster Rolled Into One

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I love Google Maps. Have you checked it out with your children?

One of our favorite activities is to pick a location, like our house, Grandma's house, the Smithsonian museum, or my favorite - one of the towns I lived in as a child, that my own children have not had a chance to visit in person yet, and bring it up on Google Maps.

We usually start with a country view, and then zoom in little by little, to the town we want, alternating back and forth between street map, and satellite views. I like to point out rivers, railroad tracks, mountains, and the like, to the children as we zoom in. Then, once we pinpoint the particular address we want on the map, we grab the icon of the little man, switch over to a street view, and take a look around.

The children love "walking" by friends' and relatives' houses. They've retraced my steps, with me, from the house I lived in when I was school aged, down the streets to my first elementary school. And, we've taken countless virtual field trips through the streets of larger cities. We've even followed along with Daddy, when he's had to make long distance trips for his work. They love taking a look at the hotel where he's staying, and then panning around in the picture, to see what restaurants, and gas stations are nearby, to share with him when he calls.

There are drawbacks, of course. The street view maps, are from a few years back, so some newer neighborhoods, or buildings, won't show up. And not all cities, or streets within a city, are available for street view. In that case, we switch to satellite view, and get as close as we can, and then try to identify things like shopping malls, schools, and industrial areas.

It's entertaining, educational, challenging, and free.

For more geography lesson, and activity ideas, check out the geography and history link up at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Ice Cream, Ice Cream, We All Scream for...Crochet!

I've been doing a lot of crocheting lately, and thought today, I might practice my knitting. I do pretty well knitting flat pieces, but haven't had much practice at knitting in the round, so I spent some time searching through knitting patterns online, looking for a simple project, that would let me practice the skill.

I came across a pattern at i like lemons, for an absolutely gorgeous set of scooped, and soft serve, ice cream cones. You'll have to click on the link to see just how great they are, because suffice it to say, I still need a lot more practice at knitting in the round.

I was so frustrated with what I ended up with, after an entire morning of knitting, interrupted here and there, by a load of laundry, or random math question, that I unravelled the whole mess, before I remembered to take a picture to share. It was most certainly a craft fail.

I switched instead to a crochet, ice cream cone pattern from Blah, Blah, Blahhhg. With a slight modification to the pattern, and less than a half an hour of work, I had an ice cream cone I was happy with.

After a little more time, and some trial and error, and I even managed a semblance of soft serve ice cream. The pattern at Blah, Blah Blahhhg, comes with instructions for making scooped ice cream, but I had my heart set on soft serve.

Mine ended up somewhat super sized, but the kids didn't seem to mind. I hope to work on a few more tonight - one ice cream cone, and six children, will never do. Once, I'm certain, I have a working pattern down, I'll share it with you too.

That gives all you non-crocheters time to learn the craft. I can promise you it's a lot easier than knitting. It's only been in the last year or two, that I've really crocheted anything, but the single chain stitch, I learned as a girl. I started with Crochet: Learn to Crochet Six Great Projects by Klutz, and then graduated to Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet by Anna Paula Rimoli, with a few simple finger puppets, and the like, in between.

Of course, there are all sorts of learn to crochet sites online, too. Take your pick, grab a hook, and some yarn, and hopefully I'll have a pattern for you sometime this week. That is, if I don't just bag it all, and make a run to Dairy Queen, for some real soft serve instead.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

What Makes a Pop Rock Pop? Kitchen Science for Kids

There's no Science Sunday link up this week, but I already had a project planned, so I decided to go ahead with it.

While the man of the house was out of town, I fed the children on Kid's Cuisines, Poptarts, and whatever else was fast, and easy. And, while I know it wasn't economical, or nutritious, it did lead us to some fun scientific investigation. Oh, and just in case you're terribly horrified, don't forget that apples, bananas, string cheese, and yogurt, are also fast and easy. We may have even had a Brussels sprout, or two, so no need to call the nutrition police!

The Kid Cuisines in question, were the kind with sprinkle covered, pudding desserts. Only ours didn't come with sprinkles, they came with tiny packets of Pop Rocks. While, I can't imagine enjoying pudding laden with crunchy, popping candies, the kids ate it up. And, mid-way through, came the inevitable question, "What makes Pop Rocks pop?".

I found a pretty good explanation here, at How Stuff Works. Apparently, the Pop Rock candy is just a standard hard candy, that has been injected with carbon dioxide gas at 600-psi. Then we learned from Steve Spangler, that psi stands for pounds per square inch. At any rate, when you break the candy, by biting it, or letting it dissolve in your mouth, you release the high pressure carbon dioxide bubbles trapped inside, and they make a popping sound.

I picked up a couple of extra packages of the candy, for our experiments today.

First of all, we looked at the candy through our magnifier, to see the bubbles.

Then, per Steve Spangler, we crushed a few in a dish. They popped, as the gas was released, just like they do in your mouth.

We put some into a balloon, and attached it to a bottle of cola, to see how much carbon dioxide would be released.

We talked about the fact that what we were witnessing was a physical reaction, and not a chemical reaction, like what we've seen before with baking soda, and vinegar. Nothing was being changed chemically, the pop was still pop, the candy was still candy, but as it dissolved it released the trapped gas, which rose to fill the balloon.

The children tasted the pop, and discovered that it was, indeed, still pop - kind of strawberry flavored pop, but still pop.

I suggested we try the experiment again, but with water, to get a better sense of how much gas the candy actually contained. But the children decided they had had enough science for one day, and would rather just eat the candy.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Jonah Craft

Some of my favorite books, as a child, were the rhyming Bible stories by Arch Books. I still have quite a few of them, and pull them out once and a while to read to the children. They've held up remarkably well for 35 cent paperbacks, considering some of them were passed down to me from my older brother's collection, making them well over 40 years old.

Today, I pulled out The Man Caught By A Fish by M. M. Brem, and illustrated by Jim Roberts. I love the way Roberts drew the fish in the story, to resemble a giant goldfish, instead of the whale traditionally depicted in children's versions of the Jonah story. In fact, it inspired us to make our own Jonah craft.

I used a Rainbow Fish template from DLTK-Kids.com, to cut out a fish shape from the center of two pieces of blue construction paper, for each craft. And, I traced out a template from Brem's story, of Jonah praying, that I cut out of black construction paper.

Meanwhile, the girls were covering sheets of contact paper, with small squares of orange tissue paper.

When the sheets were completely covered in tissue paper, we laid the Jonah on top, and covered the whole thing with another sheet of contact paper, sticky side in.

Then, they glued the blue construction paper, with the fish cut out, on the front, and back of the contact paper. Tip: Be careful to put the glue on the right side of the cutouts, so the fish shapes will line up, on each side of the contact paper.

I trimmed them up, and we hung them on the window. We hung them, with Jonah on the backside, so he only shows up inside the fish, when the sunlight is streaming through.

VeggieTale fans, cue the Newsboys.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Spiral Snowman Cutting Craft

Since, the groundhogs are predicting an early spring around here, I thought we better hurry up, and get to a few last winter crafts, like the funny spiral snowman craft we found, while looking for ideas for this month's Unplugged Project.

My youngest two have been in perpetual craft mode, and are always wanting something to cut, and glue. Cutting a spiral was too big a challenge for my three year old, of course, but was great practice for her five year old sister. The link above, has a printable template for the spiral snowman, which they suggest printing on card stock. I just went ahead and freehanded it, on typing paper, so it would be easier for little hands to cut, even though it meant slightly droopier snowmen.

After we cut the spirals, the girls drew on faces in the middle, and glued on construction paper hats, and noses. I cut the hats for them, with the top of the hat on a fold, so there was a hat on both sides, with the head in the middle. Then, I bent the heads forward, and they drew, and glued, matching faces on the back.

Finally, they glued on construction paper arms.

And, I punched a hole in the top of the hats, and threaded through some string for hanging.

Once the spirals are cut, the craft goes together pretty quickly. They make for an interesting display too, looking something like a cross between a snowman and an icicle, twirling above the table.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

What My Child is Reading - February 6, 2010

This week we read, one book by Diane Goode:

We really liked The Dinosaur's New Clothes by Diane Goode, so I had high hopes for Mind Your Manners! - the title alone had promise. However, the text of the book was taken largely from a lesson on manners, contained in a spelling book, from 1802. While that was interesting to me, statements like - "Bend thy body a little downward to they plate, when thou movest any thing to thy mouth." - proved too archaic for the children.

Three books by Loreen Leedy:

I'd have to say we were lukewarm on this one, my youngest two sat through it, but I don't think they really followed, or enjoyed it. The story is told through a series of dialogue bubbles, some for the aliens learning about the humans, and some for the humans, who are making friends. The format proved confusing for my 3 year old, boring for my 5 year old, and too simplistic for the older children.

Apart from an awkward beginning, "The sea turtles swim free in the ocean, eating, floating, mating.", this book wasn't too bad. I found the story, of the life cycle of the loggerhead turtle, a little dreary, and thought the turtles were kind of ugly, but it is educational, and the children did seem to enjoy it.


The Edible Pyramid was a big hit with my 3 and 5 year old. They liked all the bright pictures of food, and we learned a lot more about the newfangled food pyramid.

And, one book by Margarett S. Reid:

This was the big hit for us this week. It is a simple story of a little boy, playing with the buttons in his grandmother's button box. If you go back, and read my post on our button box, you'll not only have the gist of this story, but you'll understand why we love it.

To find out what other's are reading, click the button below.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Spiral Rose Cookies

This months Unplugged Project at Unplug Your Kids (and yes, it's a monthly project theme now, instead of weekly), is Spiral, so I thought I'd share the spiral rose cookies we made for our remembrance tea. They'd work nicely for a Valentine's, or Mother's Day tea, too.

We were inspired to make these cookies from the beautiful Martha Stewart inspired, paper, spiral roses we saw here.

To make our cookies, we started with a half batch of sugar cookie dough, tinted pink, and flavored with 2 tablespoons of strawberry extract, in place of the 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract usually called for. It's a pity the Unplugged theme wasn't sugar cookies - we'd have a hundred posts to link!

After we had rolled the dough out, on a floured surface, we used a butter knife to cut a square for a guide, and then a spiral. Once we had the hang of the spiral, we stopped cutting the square first, and just went straight to the spiral. We also found it was easier to make short, choppy cuts with the knife, rather than trying to drag the knife through the dough.

Then, just as for the paper rose, I linked above, we rolled the spiral up, from the outside edge, in to the middle.



These cookies baked for about 15 minutes, at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

We tried adding some sugar sprinkles to a couple, after they came out of the oven, but we didn't care for the effect, so we left the rest plain, and saved the sugar sprinkles for a more traditional spiral cookie we were making at the same time, with the other half of the dough, that we'd added 1/4 cup of baker's cocoa to.


We actually made quite a few different cookies out of our batch of dough, including some chocolate roses.


You can't really have just one type of cookie for tea!

It's great to be a homeschooler.