Thursday, May 17, 2012

{Summer bucket list: Science and Messy Art}

I've been collecting various ideas for art and science related projects that don't necessarily fit in with our regular curriculum. Many of them are also messy so I've been waiting for the sunshine when we can make messes to our heart's content....in the back yard.

I plan on putting together some other summer to-do lists, but this is a start.

Drawing Dough
Drawing Dough from Family Fun



Marble Painting from Play Create Explore



Painting with ice cubes from Inner Child Fun


Textured finger paints from Getting Messy With Ms. Jessi



Gelatin cubes from Teach Preschool


Lava Lamp from A Girl and a Glue Gun

Recycled container water play from The Wonder Years


IMG_5502Solar Oven from Totally Tots


Slime from Trendy Treehouse

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

{State Study Books}

Along with our Five In A Row studies for next year we will be rowing our way through the US. I've created a list with books from FIAR volumes I, II, and III and categorized them by area so while we spend just one week on a FIAR book we may spend five weeks in the Appalachia area.
We won't be covering every state this go around but will be touching on at least one state in each region. I plan to do more extensive state studies in a couple of years.

Enchanted Homeschool Mom recently did a post in which she shared her resources for their upcoming school year and it includes some great sites and books you might want to consider.
So far this is what I've put together. I'm sure I will add library books and others that I find along the way but these are the ones that are ready and waiting.

The Arrow Book of States
The Arrow Book of States. This one is older but includes quick reference for each state with inspiration for possible go along studies.

I spent forever looking around online for some good state coloring pages and finally found some decent ones via Crayola.com. Then when I was going through my bookshelf I found this gem in the form of an old Dover coloring book. I LOVE Dover. I made a copy of each state we would be covering and put them in our weekly file. I will be using these pages again in the future so I didn't want to color directly in the book.

America: A Patriotic Primer. Another of those books that I've just collected along the way. The pages are full of illustrations and bits of information.


The Cornerstones of Freedom. I love this series, and I've collected a few here and there. They are full on information in an easy to read format with plenty of illustrations. We will be reading these as they fit. 

Childhood of Early Americans series. This is a great series for biographies. These were purchased when I was homeschooling, my nieces and nephew used them, and now they are back at our house. I'm not stressed about getting through the entire series, I've picked a handful out that I thought Bubby would enjoy like Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone. 

The Scrambled States of America. We have read the book and also watched an illustrated move from the library that is really fun.

Other things we'll be using:


USA (with names)

State Cubes from Mama Jenn's Education Cube series

   Geography report thumbnail
State Study page from Enchanted Learning 
I may or may not actually use these this year as I think it's still a bit over Bubby's head. I will most likely save them for our later studies but we'll see.


US Flag book from Enchanted Learning


Monday, May 7, 2012

{Recent Pins}

Just some stuff that's on my to-do list

 
Word wheel from E is for Explore!  You spin the wheel to get your action, then choose a word from a vocab list, spelling list, beginning reading words, whatever, and then you have to do with the word what the wheel says. 


 
Water Balloon Experiments from E is for Explore! Perfect for those upcoming hot summer days.

 
Lava lamps along with several other fun ideas for recycling jars with kids via A Girl And A Glue Gun

 
A fun post on Elijah McCoy and the origins of a popular phrase at Mama Jenn I'm hoping to fit this in with our FIAR studies somewhere.

 
A great way to use those dried up lid off markers kids seem to leave everywhere at Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds