Summer Fun Day 5 - Pom-Pom Creatures

A pile of pom-poms, a few scraps of felt, googly eyes, school glue, and no "help" from Mom.

Sometimes simple summer fun really can mean...



...simple summer FUN.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Summer Fun Day 4 - Sudoku Floor Puzzles

I thought I was giving the children a pretty simple challenge yesterday, with our 4x4 Sudoku sugar cookies. However, when a couple of the puzzles proved to be surprisingly difficult, even for the older children, I decided our logic skills could use more practice.

So, this morning, inspired by a large sidewalk chalk pattern puzzle I'd seen over at The Usual Mayhem, but forced inside by the threat of rain, I taped out a 4'x4' Sudoku grid on the living floor, using masking and painter's tape to mark off the squares.  Neither tape is very sticky, and can be pulled back up from the carpeting without any trouble.

I cut eight sheets of construction paper (two pieces each of four different colors) into fourths.  Then, I placed some of the paper pieces into the grid, using tape donuts to secure them, following the pattern of an online puzzle.

I taped the rectangular pieces of paper into the grid vertically.  Then as the children used the rest of the pieces to solve the puzzle, they could place their pieces in horizontally, making it easy to spot the original pieces, that could not be moved within the grid.

Once all of the children had solved each puzzle, I re-positioned the taped pieces (masking tape can be pealed from and re-stuck to the back of construction paper a number of times) for the next puzzle.  And, I left plenty of enough room on the floor to expand the grid for more difficult puzzles, as the children's deductive skills improved.

It's amazing how much easier it is to solve the puzzles in the larger, hands on, format.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Summer Fun Day 3 - Sugar Cookie Sudoku

It's been quite a while since we've had a sugar cookie snacktivity.  So, when the children interrupted me, seconds after I'd sat down to work the Sudoku puzzle from the penny ads, to ask if I couldn't possibly be persuaded to mix up a batch of cookies for them, I thought - why not?  Actually, first I thought - why don't you make your own cookies? Then, I remembered the freshly cleaned kitchen, and thought better of it.  

Really, there was no reason we couldn't all have our way.  The children could have cookies, and I could include them in some puzzling fun.

So, I mixed up a batch chocolate sugar cookie dough (click here for the recipe), rolled it out about 1/4'' thick, and used a paper template to cut 4''x4'' squares...

...scoring the unbaked cookies into quarters...

...and then twelfths, with a butter knife...

...before pressing the candy pieces into the squares, following the pattern of a few simple Sudoku puzzles from Essential Kids, substituting one color of candy for each of the four numbers used in their puzzles.

 After the cookies were baked and cooled, I marked the division of the fourths with frosting, and placed sufficient candy pieces with each cookie...

 ...for the children to use to solve the puzzles, explaining to them that there should be one of each of the four colored candies in each horizontal and vertical row, as well as in each of the four larger squares.

Then once they solved the puzzles, I gave them frosting to pipe on to hold their candies in place, saving their solutions for posterity...

...or at least until after dinner.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Summer Fun Day 2 - Impromptu, Old Fashioned, Summer Picnic

How do you turn a regular old backyard lunch into a super fun, old fashioned, summer, family picnic?

First, dress the part by searching through the closets for the most "old fashioned" attire you can pull together.

Second, add some pizzazz to the preparation of the food.  "Old fashioned" sounds wholesome and healthy, so don't forget the fruits and vegetables.  Then again, a summer picnic calls for a touch of a treat, so don't discourage your mother if she happens to offer to mix up a quick sheet cake for dessert, or suggests Kool-Aid instead of water.

***Cake mixes, and packages of unsweetened Kool-Aid are two more of the "must have" items on our summer boredom buster supply list, though generally the powdered drink mixes are used as art or science supplies, rather than for drinking, making a pitcher of Kool-Aid a rare treat*** 

Finally, leave time after lunch for a few "old fashioned" family games.  A stretchy cotton headband, or two can come in handy for a three legged race...

...or a quick game of blind man's bluff.

And, if you can manage to time things just right, so that a summer squall brings the whole shebang to a hectic, snatch-and-run finish, so much the better.

And yes, we know, as this is only May, technically our summer squall was really a spring shower, and we should still have a few weeks left inside, sweating over schoolwork, but it is after all...

...great to be a homeschooler.

Summer Fun Day 1 - Toilet Paper Tube Playhouse

We kicked off our summer fun on this on again off again, rainy, long weekend with an indoor project.

1 large pile of empty toilet paper tubes (somewhere around 200), that I'd been saving up for a rainy day, a couple of rolls inexpensive masking tape, the tail end of our freezer paper (you can buy it by the roll in most grocery stores - it's a "must have" in our boredom buster supplies), a few children, a smidge of creativity (and Disney's Swiss Family Robinson playing in the background for inspiration), and just like that - we had the makings for a perfect afternoon.

Summer, when every child can be a homeschooler :)

Composite Head Collages - Art for Children - Arcimboldo

Materials: 

• Different colors of construction paper
• Glue sticks
• Scissors (child safe if appropriate)
• Magazines or catalogs (seed catalogs would be especially good) for cutting apart
• Books about the artist (see suggestions below)
• Video links and websites.

Project: This is a very simple, cut and glue, collage art project based on the composite heads of the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Review some, or all of the books, videos, and websites linked below with your children.

Cut out as many pictures of fruits, vegetables, flowers, or really any other items desired, as you can find in your magazines.  Older children can do their own cutting, but you will probably want to present younger children with a pre-cut selection of pictures.

Provide an assortment of construction paper or card stock sheets with glue sticks, and let the children go to town piecing together faces from the fruits and flowers.

Book Suggestions:

Hello, Fruit Face!  The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo by Prestel Adventures in Art.

Sticker Art Shapes:  Arcimboldo by Louise Cognard - This entire series has been a big hit in our house.

Video Links:

Arcimboldo: Nature and Fantasy, from the National Art Museum's online resources for their Arcimboldo exhibit, narrated by Isabella Rossellini.

And, one more from YouTube, featuring teams of children designing different faces using the same basket of play fruit.  It's a little long and slow, but makes for good discussion of how the same items can be used create very different faces depending on the eye of the artist.

Website Suggestions:

Giuseppe Arcimboldo the Complete Works

The Denver Art Museum: a printable lesson plan for young children.

Do Art!: a very similar project to the one above, but with a little more detail to interest older children.

Let's Face It: A lesson plan with pictures of fruit and vegetables included to be cut out and used.

The Child's Paper Academy: A short lesson, some additional links, and more collages (theirs are very good).

An Arcimboldo Coloring Page

Art Projects for Kids:  A short lesson idea, and a printable 40''x48'' mural to color (downloadable for $5.00 - we've done one of her murals in the past, it was worth every penny).

This sort of project is an unschoolers dream, because it presents so many jumping off points for further study - symmetry, zoology, botany, the Age of Discovery, the Hapsburg Empire, Leonardo da Vinci, the modern surrealists, and so on and so on to wherever fancy and imagination takes you.

 It's great to be an homeschooler.

Easy Dinosaur Fossil Birthday Cake

Pipe melted peanut butter chips, or white chocolate chips if you prefer (about a third of a bag) from onto a plastic freezer bag (or parchment paper if you have any), placed over a dinosaur skeleton coloring sheet (like this one) to use as a guide.  Allow the peanut butter "bones" a few minutes to harden up...

 ...and then plop them right into the frosting of your otherwise ordinary birthday cake (in our case a round, double-decker, chocolate cake with chocolate - or rather dark chocolate - peanut butter frosting), and top with a generous handful of crumbled chocolate sandwich cookies...

...to complete the transformation of an unassuming, everyday, frosted cake into a dinosaur lovers delight.

It's great to be a homeschooler.