Eggs!

Yesterday we made Pysanky eggs and the traditional dyed eggs. The Pysanky were really fun and not nearly as difficult as I thought they'd be. It did take hours and hours though but it was a fun activity to do with Grandma.

At one point we had the traditional Paas egg decorating going on and the Pysanky at the same time. Amazingly, we only had one big dye spill and it was the Paas, not the hard core Pysanky dye.

Here's Hannah working on her egg. If you are unfamiliar with how you make Pysanky eggs, as I was just a week ago--here's the basic idea. You use a little tool that you heat over a candle and then fill with melted wax to "write" on the egg. You start with a white egg, use wax to draw a design that will in the end be white. Then you dye it in yellow, let it dry and then put more wax on where you want it to stay yellow, dye it green (or some other darker color), more wax, next color, and on and on. Then you heat the egg and wipe off the melted wax to reveal the design. We got better and better with each egg and although our eggs don't look like the traditional Ukranian eggs, we had fun and love how they turned out.

When they were done we shellaced them, the shellac we had was a little dark and made the eggs a little darker but still pretty.

And, earlier in the week, we made this lapbbook about the Resurrection eggs story. It was super easy and a good refresher of the Easter story.

Exciting Post--A Must Read

Gotcha!  This will not be an exciting post but you are here so you may as well read, right?  I borrowed the title from Ann Marie.  She just thinks it's hilarious to use that as a title and trick everyone into reading her whole post in anticipation of something exciting.  At least I have let you know from the very beginning that the title was a big fat lie.  After reading about the fun easter projects going on over at Peter's Peapod, all of a sudden I was like, "AAH!  Easter is in about a week and I've done nothing eastery with my kids."  So, I've spent the last hour surfing online for some interesting, God centered, not too hard or crafty ideas.  And, I found a great lapbook based on the Resurrection eggs.  AND--we just got a new laser printer today and I can print as much as I want to for the first time in a couple of years so I've been a printing fool tonight.  There is so much free stuff online.  It's awesome.  I'm excited about this Resurrection egg lapbook and we may do an Easter lapbook but I'm not sure about that yet.  I found this site with a free lapbook and some great readings to read to the kids during this next week leading up to Easter.  I've printed out the readings but not the lapbook part yet, we'll see how far we get.  I can get all into big ideas in the dark of night when the house is quiet and I'm all optimistic that my children will wake up and be cooperative angels all excited to do whatever I ask.  Then I wake up and reality hits.  So, we'll see how tomorrow goes.  We have no plans until theatre at 4:30 so we should be able to accomplish something.  I've linked to a few things in this paragraph but unless you run your mouse over it you won't see the links.  So, if you want to check out some of this, use your mouse to find the links.  I can't figure out how to make the text a different color for links.

I was reading Family Fun magazine the other day and in the "My Great Idea" section there was an article about this woman with two little girls.  The little girls would get bored and whiny on errand day and so the mom had a great idea to help her girls deal with errand day better.  She made them each a "passport."  She would cut out pictures of items they were looking for and make lists and all sorts of other time consuming things and then the girls could mark things off as they got them.  Also, she would ask each cashier to stamp or mark in the girls' books just like they were going through customs.  Maybe I've become jaded in my old age but wouldn't it be a lot easier to just train your kids to behave while you run errands or get a babysitter or something.  Who has time to write in little notebooks every time you want to go on an errand?  I have been reading parenting and kid magazines since before Hannah was born and I've seen this idea or one like it dozens of time and I've never gotten why it's such a great idea.  Sorry for the rant but I just felt like ranting...

In answer to all the razzing I'm getting about being an Adam fan--here's why I like Adam Lambert.  #1 He can sing like all get out.  #2 He is creative in his song choices and the way he dresses and styles his hair to match his song choice.  #3 He is so big and tall.  #4 He is always respectful to the judges, Ryan Seacrest, or whatever famous person is mentoring them that week.  #5 He is humble.  I have not seen a trace of arrogance.  #6 He is fun to watch every week. #7 He looks like he could be a vampire and I'm all into vampires.  (Kidding...you guys know I'm kidding about this one right?)  And Julie--I wish I could picture Adam as Edward but I just can't.

Okay, one more thing.  I love to read, I love to talk about books and share my favorite books with other people.  I had this idea about getting a group of people to read "Pride and Prejudice,"  this summer.  Especially if you've never read it.  Then we can have a sort of book club meeting and have a tea party and watch the movie.  Anybody in for this?  (Sorry to exclude my non-local blog readers...do you want to make a trip to FL?) If you have never taken the time to read a classic like this you really should.  As much as I have enjoyed Twilight and as much as I love Jodi Picoult, there is just nothing like classic literature.  Some of my all time favorite books are Great Expectations, anything by Jane Eyre and the Bronte sisters, Anna Karenina, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  Those pop novels hardly compare.  I'll leave you on that note.  I am going to go read. :0)

Space lapbook

Joe and Grace just finished their unit on Space. I used one of the Evan Moor Theme Pockets books for the activities. You are supposed to make a "pocket book" but I made it into a lapbook. I probably will not try this again because the activities don't lend themselves to being put into a lapbook. I made this one work though. I thought they turned out really good.

South America lapbook

We finished our South America lapbooks yesterday. I have to say that this is probably one of my favorite lapbooks that we've made. It was EASY PEASY and turned out great. Here are the mini books in it:

• Where in the World are the rainforests--a world map with the rainforests shaded in. You can see that they are all around the equator.
• Where is Brazil--they colored in Brazil on a map of South America and wrote what continent Brazil was on.
• Another small world map with South America colored in.
• The flag of Brazil
• Layers of the rainforest in a cool layered book.
• Big Cats of the rainforest.
• Reptiles of the rainforest.
• A circle book about anacondas.
• Another circle-type book about leaf cutter ants.
• Common foods grown in South America
• And a cool "rendition" of a Kapok tree

All of these mini books were from Homeschool Share, I love that site!

This is Grace's, I wanted to show the circle snake book. You'll see below on Hannah's that when folded up it is just a little wedge. When you first open it, there is a paragraph about anacondas, and then you open it further and you have a coiled snake.

Olympic Lapbooks

We completed our Olympic lapbooks the other day. I got this off of Homeschool share and it was a great lapbook. I got it all printed and then we did all the cutting, folding, and most of the filling in on our trip. My niece, Ellie, made one as well. I put all the mini books into the folders and the kids finished up the details. One of the things that was really fun is that each kid chose a country to root for and watch during the Olympics. There are two mini books to go with that--one where you put in a map of the country and the country's flag and another where you record the medals that country won. Hannah chose China (because they had the most athletes and she wanted her country to have the most--little overacheiver!), Grace chose France, and Joe chose Italy. We didn't really get to see their countries compete much but I found the medal stats on line. The lapbook also focused on the history of the Olympics, the route of the Olympic torch, some of the sports, an athlete's diet vs. the average person's diet, a Bible verse about running the race set before you, and so on. I'm glad we did it. Joe really didn't do much beyond color his but he has one anway.

Lapbooking ad nauseum

In an effort to wrap up our school year this week we have been doing marathon lapbooking. This is definitely not how I would recommend completing a lapbook. Lapbooks are supposed to be fun but the fun is lost when you are working for an hour or more and pushing to do one more thing. The girls have had good attitudes but I think they would have benefited more if we had done a little bit at a time over the last couple of months. Anyway, we have completed the two I recently purchased and are most of the way through the Fourth of July one that Hannah and I started a year ago.

Grace's lapbook is titled Flowers and Insects in the Garden. It was different than other lapbooks we've done. For one thing, this was way too easy. We created more of an interactive lapbook than one that gives information. There is a flower memory game, matching the number words to the number, reading the color names on a caterpillar. I wish I would have researched it more but oh well. It is cute and she is the type of kid who will play the games in it over and over. We used a tri-fold board for this lapbook and for the Mary Cassatt one. We usually do file folders but I felt like trying something different. I let the girls paint them a couple of weeks ago to make them look a bit more colorful. I really like how they turned out.

This lapbook above and below is the one that we started last summer. It is all about the Fourth of July and our flag. I thought it would be a good way to top off our studies of the United States. We've got all the little books in but have only filled out half of them. We will be working on it the next couple of days.

Then there's Mary Cassatt. Mary Cassatt is one of my favorite artists and one of Hannah's as well. She was an impressionist and showed her work with Degas, Renoir, and Monet. She has a lot of mother and child pictures that are just precious. This lapbook had a lot of writing and it was a little more than Hannah likes to do. She would have enjoyed it more if we could have taken more time on it. She did enjoy it though and learned quite a bit. We both did. At the homeschool convention I bought a small book of stickers with artwork by Mary Cassatt. We were able to use them to liven up this lapbook and add some color. In the same little kit there were Mary Cassatt tattoos. Nothing like a little fine art tatooed to your arm. How corny is that??? We haven't used them yet but I'll take pictures when we do.

Lapbooking

For those of you non-homeschoolers this post will probably be pretty boring. For that matter, it may be boring to you homeschoolers as well :0). I love helping the kids make lapbooks to go with what we are learning. It is such a fun way to display information and a neat thing to go back and look at and review what we've learned. For those of you unfamiliar with lapbooks--they are basically some sort of folded "book" with lots of little books or diagrams or drawings or whatever inside. I did a few lapbooks last year. You can design your own or there are a few companies that design them and you can purchase a "kit" and make a lapbook that way. I've done both and can't really say I prefer one over the other. Of course purchasing a kit is much easier but more restricting. Since we are doing a specific curriculum this year I haven't taken the time to plan for and do any lapbooks but these baby mantises inspired me. So, I forewent (is that a word) Grace's normal school and we blitzed our way through a lapbook. Here's how we did it:

Step 1 is my part. I planned out what I wanted to put in the lapbook. The praying mantises came with a great information booklet and so I used that to help me decide what to include.

Once I knew what to include I pulled out this--see the picture above. Michelle (a fellow homeschooler) does amazing lapbooks and held a workshop about a year ago. During this workshop she taught us various paperfolds to use in displaying information. This is really, really handy! I used this to help me decide what mini books I would make and where I would put them in the lapbook. I did this part last night while watching American Idol. Previous to making the mini books I had surfed the web and printed out a few things to include.

Here's the rough layout we started with this morning. Now, it's time for Grace to join me. I prefer that she do most of the "work" from this point on. I did help with some of the writing but not all of it and she did all of the drawing and coloring.

Here's Grace hard at work labeling the parts of a Praying Mantis.

And here's the finished product. This opens up right in the middle of the front to reveal...The pictures are on a big flap that can be lifted up to reveal more mini books underneath. I left some blank space to add more pictures later.

This is Grace's favorite mini book. On the front it tells what Praying Mantises like to eat and then when you open it a little mantis pops up and a fruit fly is dangling in front of it.

So, that's it! The long part on the side is a diary of our mantises. We will journal a little about them each week, recording their size and what they are doing, their behaviors, etc. I've talked to Joe's preschool about bringing the praying mantises in when they get bigger and Grace will use this lapbook to give a short presentation about praying mantises. It should be fun and a great way for her to further retain the information. A great way to learn is to teach someone else. Now that I've done one lapbook I kind of have lapbook fever. Next we are going to do one on flowers. It will probably be a little bigger than this one but we'll see. I haven't really started the serious planning yet. We will also be following Kirsten's idea and do an owl lapbook and dissect owl pellets. And, last night I bought two kits--one for Hannah about Mary Cassatt and one for Grace about insects and flowers. If you are new to lapbooking I highly recommend buying one to start with, it will kind of give you an idea of how to do it. My favorite place to order from is inthehandsofachild.com. You can have them send you a hard copy or buy an ebook.