Collage Pumpkins

A few days ago I had the girls make pumpkins out of torn pieces of orange construction paper.  This turned out to be a much bigger task than I imagined.  Sabrina really had difficulty tearing the pieces of paper.  She couldn't seem to understand that she had to hold the paper still with one hand while tearing with the other.  Catherine could do it, but got tired and quit after a few minutes.

 They both did a good job with gluing the pieces on:

 Sabrina with her finished project:

Georgia Study

Of course we studied Georgia, our home state!

We talked about peaches and peanuts, famous Georgia crops:

We discussed the Okefenokee Swamp:

 We discussed Jimmy Carter (I have never been to Plains and we'll do a day trip there some time soon):

 We discussed Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts and is from Savannah:

 Lastly, we talked about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement:

Hawaii Study

The best state we have studied so far was Hawaii.  One struggle I have had with the 50 State Study is that some states have very little exciting, interesting aspects.  But, Hawaii has so much of its own culture, that we had a lot of fun studying it.

I should have taken some pictures at the time, but we had some leis in our costume center, so the girls wore them while we did this craft.  We also cut one of the plastic flowers off and glued it on as the state flower (hibiscus).  We even practiced hula dancing:

 The girls thought it was neat that the Hawaiians make necklaces out of flowers:

We went to Hawaii on our honeymoon, so I showed the girls the scrapbook I made of that trip.

Idaho Study

We got out of the habit of doing our 50 state study.  But, Catherine asked several times if we could study another state.  So, the next one we had to do was Idaho (I know I haven't blogged about all of them).

The girls really love finding the state on the map and coloring it in:

The highlight of the activity was talking about potatoes, which grow in the dirt:

Every time we add some sort of 3-dimensional aspect to a craft project, the girls are thrilled!

Burning Bush

Recently we told the girls about the story of Moses and the burning bush.  I think they got it, but am never sure.  I do think they understand the concept of "miracle."  Here is the craft we did with it:

The girls loved making flames out of tissue paper.  I have found that any kind of 3-dimensional aspect I can add to a craft makes it considerably more fun to them.

Letter Mazes

I found some Do A Dot mazes which included upper and lower case letters.  The girls loved finding and stamping the trail with their markers:

Finger Paint

Wow, do the girls love to finger paint!!  I bought this kit of 4 colors at the dollar store.  I wasn't sure if it was washable or not, so I made the girls take their shirts off.

Catherine actually made pictures with hers:

Sabrina's paintings were more abstract:

Clear Contact Paper

As you know I waste spend a lot of time on other people's blogs looking for ideas.  I have seen lots of people make art projects with clear contact paper.  So, several months ago I bought a roll.  I put it on a shelf and forgot about it for awhile. 

Finally, I pulled it out and we used it.  The girls had a blast with this new tool.  First, we took tiny purple flowers and green leaves, spread them out on a sheet of construction paper, then covered it with contact paper.  Wow, we had made place mats:

 Then we made a bunch of bookmarks:

 The girls really loved peeling the contact paper backing off:

Fall Trees... and Then Other Trees

Now that it is October, I wanted to do a fall project.  I drew stick trees and gave the girls a little bit of orange, yellow and red paint.  They loved using their fingertips to make leaves!  I am constantly impressed with my kids.  Both of them told me they are going to put some leaves on the ground and some in the air on the way to the ground, because leaves fall off the trees in the fall.

While we were doing the fall trees, Catherine asked me if we can do winter, spring and summer trees.  This was not in my plan, but I went with their excitement.  Catherine's class at school has been studying seasons and weather, so I think that is where she got the idea.  Here's Sabrina putting snowflakes on a bare tree:

I was so proud of Catherine when she made little tiny leaves on her spring tree, telling me that in the spring the leaves are just sprouts, so they are smaller.

Letter S Study

Today was Labor Day, so there was no school.  The girls asked if we could play "homeschool."  I asked them what they wanted to do, and they said they wanted to do another letter study.  We had stopped our letter studies at M, so I was going to do N.  But, they both said they wanted to do S.  So, we started by painting upper and lower case S's:

 The girls loved using the new metallic paints Catherine just got for her birthday.

Catherine could come up with tons of words that start with the letter S.  Sabrina didn't seem to understand what I was asking, as every word she kept saying did not start with S. 

I wrote tons of words that started with an S for Sabrina to trace with a pink highlighter.  For Catherine, I wrote a list of words and made her copy them onto lined paper.

 The last activity we did was a letter sorting activity with yellow dot stickers:

Here is Sabrina's final product.  She had to be guided through the whole process.  I am not entirely sure she understood the concept of sorting.  She put some stickers on top of others, some sideways, etc.

Catherine's final product was (to my utter delight!) far more orderly.  She did the letters in order: first all the S's, then the Ts, etc.  I had only given her 4 X's and she asked me for an extra one, so all the "letter boxes" would be the same.

Color Books

I know I have not posted any "educational" activities lately, but we have been busy.  One of the fun activities we have been doing lately is to focus on painting with one color per day.  Each day the girls pick one color and I make three different shades of it: light, regular, and dark.  Then, they paint as many pictures as they can with just those three shades.  I then assemble their paintings into a book.

Here are my mixed color for yellow.  When I added black to the yellow, it took on a green tint:

 When we did red, Catherine told me that "light red" is really pink and "dark red" is really burgundy.

I also make the girls give me a title for each page they do.  Both girls frequently do pages full of dots.  Catherine also made a painting of her swim team on our blue day.

Catherine painted a flower, with rain drops.  She also did a page of three stripes, each a different shade of blue.

 It should not be surprising that Catherine painted Rapunzel's tower and a castle.

Here are Sabrina's pages from our red day.  She likes to make her handprints.  She also did a rainbow with the shades of red, and a self-portrait.

Here is a picture of a dress she painted, and I am not sure what Sabrina's second painting is.  A lot of her artwork is still fairly unrecognizable.

So far we have done red, blue, yellow, purple, green, and black/white/grey.  It is interesting how creative the children are becoming with this project.  At first Catherine would tell me "I'll use red for the leaf, but pretend it is green."  Now she will try to draw things that are generally the target color.  Sabrina is not as concrete because she is younger, so she will just paint whatever comes to mind.

Tour of Publix

We go to Publix at least once a week, so it seemed kind of silly to tour the grocery store.  But, Catherine's Girl Scout Daisy troop took a tour (and Sabrina tagged along).  They loved it.  All the girls got reusable bags which contained a Publix apron with a name tag for each of them:

They also got hair nets to wear throughout their tour. We stopped at the cook's center at the front of the store.  She told us about the sample foods that she cooks for shoppers and gave us some menu cards:

 We stopped at the floral section and were given pink balloons:

 The deli section gave us some sample meats and cheeses:

 The butcher gave the girls some meat stickers:

 And he let them pet a live lobster:

Probably the most interesting part was the bakery, where the girls got to decorate a cupcake and a cookie.  First, they had to watch their hands:

 A demonstration of making a frosting flower:

Sabrina squeezing frosting onto a cupcake:

 Catherine decorating a cupcake:

The refrigerated food tour included a tour of the actual walk-in refrigerators and freezers in the back of the store (the girls did a lot of giggling in there).

 They lifted the girls up to show them the huge trash compactor:

 The girls loved riding the lift on the loading dock (up and down, up and down):

We met the police officer and got a tour of the security room (where we could see all the cameras used).  I had no idea that our Publix has a police officer on duty every single day in the late afternoon - evening.  He explained to the girls what to do if they lose their parents in the store. 

 

I actually learned a little about the store and was thoroughly impressed with the level of service the store provided.  Publix went all out for us and I would highly recommend your group taking this tour.