Monday, September 30, 2013

A Skip Counting and Fancy Nancy Vocabulary Apple Harvest


I decided to slip in a couple of last apple themed lessons for my youngest, before turning the page on the calendar to pumpkins and the like.  It was super simple with the help of a "count by fives" apple printable from Doodle Bugs, which I cut out and paper clipped to our fall leaf list tree...


...for C to harvest and place out in order on the table, as she counted by 5s.


Then, I reset the tree for a Fancy Nancy vocabulary, pick and match-up, activity using an apple template from dltk-kids.com, modified in Paint to add the vocabulary words...


...and their definitions from...


...the back of Jane O'Connor's Fancy Nancy Apples Galore.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Apple Stamp Learning - A Fall Mini-Unit



As a reward for helping me pick the last of our apples, and as a way of using up the "good" half a few the birds had sampled, I covered the table in butcher's paper...


...and poured fall colored paint onto paper plates...


 ...for the girls to use for apple stamping.  They had a great time decorating the table.  And, as a bonus, their artwork turned out to be a pretty good backdrop for a lot of learning the next day...


...when the children labeled the different colored apples in the languages they are studying giving us a chance to discuss adjective placement and gender agreement.


Then, C (age 7) numbered the apples, while E (age 8) followed along printing out the number words in English, followed by D (age 10) with Spanish number words, A (age 12) and G (age 14) with French, and T (age 16) with German - which really was more like a multi-lingual spelling challenge than language learning, but good all the same.


When they got tired of that, they switched over to each child counting all of one color of apple (with T double checking the totals)...


 ...for the younger children to graph, with M&M's representing the paint colors (blue taking the place of "mixed paint" stamps)...


 ...while their older sibs reviewed the concepts of mean, median, mode, range, and percents with the same data.


We switched gears, and brainstormed adjectives describing the different colors of apples (ie. common for red, sour for green, sweet for yellow, rotten for brown, unnatural for orange, and so on) printing the words out in matching colors of crayon to the apples we were describing.


And finally, while we waited for an apple pie (made with the apples the birds didn't get) to come out of the oven, we passed the time spotting ink blot style pictures in the stamps - like the dinosaur below, crying over a lost tooth.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Two Piece Cardboard "Slip Together" Playhouse



I have to thank Crafty Crow and Lilla A for inspiring the perfect project for using up a couple of large pieces of packing cardboard the Man of the House brought home from work.  A quick Internet search proved I wasn't the first person to think of enlarging a slip-together dollhouse design to accommodate children. But, since everyone has a little different approach to a project, I'll give you my step-by-step anyway.

I started with two large pieces of sturdy cardboard - just about 5' x 4'.  Measuring out from the center of the top of each of the pieces, to spots about a foot and a half down the sides, I trimmed off the top corners, with a razor blade (protecting the table underneath with additional cardboard), to form roof peaks.


I cut a slit halfway down from the peak of one piece, and halfway up from the center of the bottom of the other piece...


...so the two pieces would slip together to stand.


Then, I slipped them back apart to make it easier to cut out doors...


...and a window...


...before slipping the pieces back together to form the finished house with a front door leading into a living room, that has a door through into a bedroom, that has a door through into a kitchen (not the best floor plan - I know, but we do what we can), that has a window looking back out into the yard...


...super simple, and ready to decorate.


It's great to be a homeschooler.