20 Best Tips

White-Out Snow Craft

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All of our kids had a great time working on this craft ~ especially Kaleb. Actually, Kaleb had way too much fun. By fun, I mean that Kaleb was painting his face with the white-out brush, painting the table, took a lick of white-out, and then dropped it on the floor.  Now I’m trying to figure out how to get white-out off my wood floor.

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BUT the end result was much better than the actual process, so maybe MY misfortune can help you all find a better process. :)

The project is actually two layers ~ a transparency sheet lays over top of a picture that your child has colored. Then you add ‘snow’ to the picture by painting on the transparency layer.

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What You’ll Need:

  • a jar of white-out
  • white paper
  • clear tape
  • colored pencils
  • transparency sheets
  • scissors or paper cutter

How to Make Your Snow Scene:

Our pictures were a half sheet of paper {5 1/2” x 8 1/2”}.

  • Cut your sheet of paper and overhead transparency sheet in half so that they are the above size. You can use a full sheet if you want to also.
  • Tape the transparency sheet to the top of the paper on one of the sides, so that you can open it like a book.
  • Have your child color a scene/picture on the paper using colored pencils or crayons.
  • Flip the transparency over top of the picture and let your child add snow to the picture scene.

Here is how Zachary’s picture looked with and without his snow.

White Out Painting

Learning About Nigeria {Week 2}

The girls were a little more excited about Nigeria this week because they realized the Compassion child we support lives very close by to Nigeria. This week we focused more on the book The Village of Round and Square Houses. The book actually takes place in the neighboring country of Cameroon, but we had fun trying to recreate a round house similar to one someone might live in the Central Africa region. For some reason, collecting twigs and sticks was a HUGE excitement for the kids. :)

Monday

  • Reviewed geography song of West Africa
  • Reviewed things we talked about last week: flag of Nigeria, geography terms {rainforest, plains, plateau, gulf}
  • Completed a mapping activity of Nigeria and surrounding countries {see below}

Nigeria map Click on thumbnail to download pdf file

Tuesday

  • Review geography song
  • Read The Village of Round and Square Houses by Ann Grifalconi
  • Created a round house like the ones in the story. We collected twigs/sticks and made a miniature version of the house.

Wednesday

Thursday

  • Review geography song
  • Tried saying some phrases in Nigerian Pidgin {English is the native language of Nigeria, but many speak a form of Pidgin {a mix of native languages and English}
  • Reading together book on Nigeria {from our bookshelf}
  • Stamped our passports and we’re packing our bags for a trip to South Africa next week!

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using

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Learning About Nigeria {Week 1}

Our study of Africa continued with the country of Nigeria. For some reason, the kids really enjoyed the book picks that we had for Nigeria. Master Man: A Tall Tale of Nigeria by Aaron Shepard was read so many times I could almost recite the story to you all…

Monday

  • Introduce new song about West Africa
  • Use atlas and globe to locate Africa and Nigeria
  • Talked about the size of Nigeria {about twice that of California}
  • Independent reading {pick from the bookshelf ~ see carousel below}

Tuesday

  • Review geography song
  • Learn some new geography terms: rainforest, plains, plateau, gulf
  • Learned about the flag of Nigeria and completed notebooking page
Click on thumbnail to download pdf file

Wednesday

Thursday

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using

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Exploring Egypt: Mummies and Pyramids

This week we wrapped up our study of Egypt and used the Magic Tree House Mummies and Pyramids as our primary guide for the week. Each day we read a few chapters and then worked on a few minit books that I found to go along with the chapters at Homeschool Share.

We didn’t put together an entire lapbook ~ more like a lappage. The minit books were just glued onto a piece of cardstock and then we put them into our geography folders. We also had fun making a mummy of our own with a Dollar Tree doll and rolled bandages. Our apple experiment wrapped up this week {can I just say – ‘yuck’} and our results were definitely not what we anticipated…I’ll have to post more on that later!

Here’s a look at what we did this week:

Monday

Tuesday

  • Read chapter 6 in Mummies & Pyramids ~ learned about different types of pyramids, how pyramids were built, and also about the Great Sphinx
  • Had fun building our own pyramids with 1″ blocks and also legos.
  • Worked on minit book for Pharaohs and Book of the Dead

Wednesday

Thursday

  • Read chapter 8 & 9 in Mummies & Pyramids ~ read all about King Tut and the many famous treasures that his tomb held {and how long it took to find his tomb}.
  • Minit book about Great Sphinx
  • Uncovered our apple mummies and compared our results to what we thought would happen.

 

Resources and Websites

  • Homeschool Share ~ Ancient Egypt Unit Study. We used different lapbook pieces to make up our lapbook page
  • Living and Learning ~ great pictures for making your own Barbie mummy!!!
  • Newton’s Apple ~ science experiment to see which concoction will best mummify apple slices
  • King Tut One ~ puzzles, mazes and trivia for kids
  • Odyssey Online ~ resources on the people of Egypt, mythology, daily life, death/burial, writing & archeology
  • Neferchichi ~ TONS of great links and resources for ancient Egypt
  • Pyramid of Man ~ some great games and links for Egypt

Books We’re Using


Toss the Globe Geography Game

{a.k.a. An excuse to throw a ball at your brother’s head and pretend it’s all in fun ~ ahem}

Need a quick and fun game to play with your kids that will get them thinking and learning ~ but still have a little fun?

We recently bought an inflatable globe and play a game of catch with it. Whoever catches the globe has to name where either of their thumbs have landed.

Depending on who is playing, they have to tell me capitals, a famous landmark in the area, important features of that country, etc. This is great for learning map features such as mountain ranges, rivers, and borders as well as identifying the continents and oceans for younger children.

It’s quick, easy, gets a little energy out, and the globe is soft enough to not cause any major head trauma.

Need some more geography games and ideas? Be sure to check out this post at Heart of the Matter Online.

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Exploring Egypt: Week 2 {Mummies and More}

This week we narrowed our focus a little bit and used the book Mummies & Pyramids by Mary Pope Osborne along with our studies. The highlight of the week? Mummifying apples! The kids were so excited to do this experiment ~ but we’ll have to share the results with you next week!

Monday

  • Quick review about what we learned about Egypt last week
  • Sing our geography song: Northern Africa
    Learn about the flag of Egypt {worksheet below}
    Independent reading {pick from the bookshelf ~ see carousel below}
Click on thumbnail to download pdf document

Tuesday

Wednesday

  • Review geography song
  • Read chapter 3 of Mummies and Pyramids ~ Egyptian religion. Talked about the different gods and goddesses {Horus, Osiris & Isis, Bastet, Thoth, and Bes}.
  • Visited King Tut One site ~ kids spent some time playing games and exploring the site

Thursday

  • Review geography song
  • Read chapter 4 in Mummies & Pyramids
  • Visit Time for Kids site on Egypt
  • Mummified an apple – fun science experiment!! I’ll be sharing more details on this later with you all.

Resources and Websites

Books We’re Using