Pipe Cleaner Wigwam

We've been reading Charlotte and David Yue's The Wigwam and the Longhouse this week, and it's been spawning quite a bit of creative play - fire pits...


...and Indian camps in the backyard, and that sort of thing.


The Yue's, while leaning pretty heavily in the direction of the "noble savage" in their depiction of the eastern Native American tribes, do a fantastic job presenting the details of their daily life gone by in a way that makes it seem very real, and appealing. We will definitely be looking for some of the authors' other titles, dealing with the history of native cultures from across North America.

The easy to read text flows along almost poetically, accompanied by engaging black and white illustrations of the objects or scenes described, drawing the children in. My girls, in fact, were very excited to learn that wigwams and longhouses were once the property of the women who made them, or more specifically of the matriarch, or oldest woman of the families living in them.

In fact, they were very keen to build a wigwam of their own to use as a fort in the backyard. But, when I refused to give them an ax for cutting down the saplings on the green space, they opted for a smaller, pipe cleaner version, for their Polly Pockets, instead.

Following the Yue's instructions, they traced out the footprint of their wigwam in the dirt (or in their case, on the cardboard).


Then, since they could not push the spiked ends of their "saplings" into the dirt, they secured them in place with bits of air-drying clay...


...overlapping, wrapping and...


...lashing them together with string...


...until they had a wigwamish sort of frame, with an opening left in the front for a door.


They covered the frame with strips of felt - light brown to represent the reed mats women might have once used, and dark brown for mats of tree bark...


...being careful to leave an opening for smoke from the fire pit to escape through, at the top.


They briefly considered sewing the felt to the pipe cleaner frame with a few stitches at the top of each strip, but it sounded like a lot of work, and the afternoon weather outside had turned unseasonably warm, so they secured the mats with an external pipe cleaner frame, to keep everything in place...


...and headed out, I can only assume, to play Pilgrims and Indians.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Linked with :

The Geography and History Meme at All Things Beautiful










And, the stART (story + ART) link-up hosted by A Mommy's Adventures.

Apple Spelling

We've been reading slowly through Charles Micucci's The Life and Times of the Apple, this week. It's a nonfiction, picture book, that is good for younger, and older children to enjoy together. Covering topics from the biology, and life cycle of an apple, to geography, history (with an old earth perspective, mind you), folklore, and uses of the apple, there is something new to learn on every page.

Each topic is presented in a two page format. The first page contains a short paragraph, or two, which younger children should enjoy along with the lively illustrations. The second pages go into greater detail, such as labeling the parts of an apple blossom, mapping and graphing apple growth around the world, charting cross-fertilization of apples, or illustrating the step by step process of grafting.

There's a fantastic amount of knowledge contained in the short 32 pages. Did you know, for instance, there are almost 10,000 kinds of apples known, and grown around the world? That's certainly more than we normally see represented at our local grocery store.

While we discussed the varieties of apples illustrated in The Life and Time of the Apple, and in a few of the other books we've been reading this week, I traced out a few apple shapes, for the girls to color in, and cut out.


Once they had them ready, I traced out letters on the the apples, in glue...


...for them to cover in apple seeds...


...for some impromptu spelling practice.





For more story themed arts and craft extensions for children, be sure to check out the stART (story + ART) link-up, over at A Mommy's Adventures, which has been on summer hiatus, but will be stARTing back up this fall (excuse the pun - I just couldn't resist).

And, although the project above is not a geography or history project, Micucci's book contains enough maps, time-lines, and historical tidbits, to link it into the Geography and History link-up at All Things Beautiful.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Cookie Road Map

We have a chance to tag along on an overnight business trip with the Man of the House, this week, and explore the big cities of Butte and Bozeman, while he works.

Before a road trip, it's always wise to consult the map - or eat it, if it happens to be a cookie.


To make our edible road map, the children patted out a batch of sugar cookie dough (click here, for the recipe) into the shape of Montana. Actually, they used slightly more than 3/4 of a batch of dough to form the state, setting the rest aside, to use for decoration.


When they had it roughly in the shape of Montana, they added chocolate chips to mark the "large" cities and major towns, with a tiny blob of the extra dough, mixed with a drop of yellow food coloring, as a star, under Helena, the state capital.


The rest of the dough was mixed with a few melted chocolate chips, and turned into mountain ranges.


Blue sugar (sugar + a drop of blue food coloring), was sprinkled on for Flathead Lake (rumored to be the home of a cousin of the Loch Ness Monster), and the Fort Peck Reservoir (where the T-Rex are being found).


They decided the state looked too plain, and added some green sugar for color.


After correcting the placement of the Missoula chocolate chip, I baked the cookie for about 20 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit.


When it had cooled, we piped on butter cream frosting, in blue, for rivers. We didn't get too involved with the rivers, because we hope to study those, later. But, we did briefly discuss the continental divide, which we hope to cross on our trip, and its effect on the direction the rivers flow.


Then, because it was supposed to be a road map, we piped on roads - green for interstates, and pink for highways.


It ended up being a messy cookie - but a lesson we could sink our teeth into.

You can find more fun with history and geography, at this week's History and Geography link-up, hosted by All Things Beautiful.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Geography

Just when I think we can't possibly get anymore educational value out of a chocolate chip cookie, I come across a book like Susan E. Goodman's All in Just One Cookie...



...that leads us through, not just a recipe, but a geography lesson, too...


...with butter from Vermont (our butter actually comes from Oregon, but that's okay, because we substituted shortening from Ohio, anyway), and eggs from chickens everywhere (though in the book they are from New Hampshire)...


...sugar from Hawaii...


...vanilla from Madagascar...


...baking soda, mined in Wyoming, mixed with salt from the California coast...


...flour, from Kansas wheat...


...and of course, chocolate chips from West African, or South American, chocolate.


We tried to read the story, which as you might have guessed from the above, is pretty similar to Marjorie Priceman's How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, only with chocolate chip cookies, as we mixed the ingredients, but got lost in the enjoyment of the moment, somewhere around the salt, and settled for making the cookies first, and then poring over the story, and accompanying map of ingredients once they were baked.



For more fun with geography, be sure to check out this week's History and Geography link-up, now hosted by All Things Beautiful.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Nest Spotting Drive and Nature Mapping - Beginning Birding For Children

The snow stopped, and melted, turning from a blizzard-like flurry, into a beautiful spring evening, in a matter of minutes, yesterday. You've got to love the spring! So, while we had clear roads, and fairly clear skies, we gathered the children, binoculars in hand, into the van, and headed out on a nest spotting drive (with the younger children anyway, because we had to drop the two oldest at youth group, on the way).

The Man of the House took us by a cavity nest, he'd spotted earlier in the week, on a business call.

But, for the most part we were looking for nests in trees...

...and on platforms.

Some, like this hawk's nest, even had a mother bird in residence. We kept our distance, but even so, she gave us a nice loud hawk scream of greeting/warning.

Of course, we had to stop to take a quick picture of a neighbor's domestic Bison, for you non-Montanans, just to prove we are in Montana (in case the mountains in the backgrounds of our photos aren't proof enough).

And, we spent quite a bit of time trying to count a herd of elk, grazing near the road. We lost count somewhere around fifty-nine.

On the way to take a look at an osprey nest, we caught sight of this little guy, fleeing the scene.

It was a good thing too, because near the osprey nest (which also had a bird in residence), we spotted a hawk's(?) nest, and while we were watching it, a large hawk (so large in fact it may have been a golden eagle) popped up, and soared off for some evening hunting. Needless to say, we'll be returning to that spot with a spotting scope, to get a better look at the gorgeous raptors.

We'll also be returning to our church with a tape recorder (or some modern equivalent), because while we were waiting to pick up the older children, after youth group, we could hear an owl calling from a group of large trees, and being answered by what we assumed was a mate, from somewhere further away. We spent quite a bit of time listening to owl vocalizations from the online Montana field guide, but would like a recording of "our" owl, for comparison.

Taking an idea from the online resources of Carol L. Malnor and Sandy F. Fuller's The Blues Go Birding Across America, we made started a habitat map...

...first, outlining our drive on a mapquest map...

...then sketching it out larger, so we could glue on thumbprint photos from our drive...

...and finally, taking a look at the satellite images on mapquest to add in some details, like the large pond to the east of the osprey, and hawk/eagle nest, and the river, and our favorite fishing hole, to the west.

We also spent some time reading Dean T. Spaulding's Housing Our Feathered Friends, a nest themed, nonfiction book, probably best for ages 8-12...

...Yvonne Winer's Birds Build Nests, a very simple, poetic, beautifully illustrated, picture book, about all different kinds of nests, including an identification guide at the back.

And, we watched a number of the "Inside Birding" tip videos from Cornell Lab's "All About Birds" site, which proved extremely helpful on our drive.

It's great to be a homeschooler.