This past week was our second week learning about Japan! We tried our hand at origami and had a lot of fun making boxes, baskets, and animals! We did many tutorials from this website here. Some had videos that we could watch and fold along while others had pictures of the steps. Coming from someone that normally does not have the patience for origami, the steps from the website were easier to follow than some of the books we had! Being that we have 2 cats that sort of rule our home here, we decided to read more about the Japanese Welcoming Cat! We read some history at this site and then created our own clay versions! Goosey also made a Shoji, paper screen, by cutting pieces of cardboard strips and gluing them together to create a window type panel. Then she painted everything black and when that was dry, she glued white tissue paper to the back. She created 3 panels that way. To attach them together she hole punched a hole on the top and bottom and tied yarn to hold it together.
1 Comment
We finished our first week back after Christmas break and it went quite well! We finished up week 19 of TOG. This week was concentrated on Asian history (China/Japan), we focused a little more towards the Japan side and traveled along with Map Travelers! Goosey made a Mount Fuji (well a little version of it) out of clay and then painted it. Once everything was dry she added the baking soda, food coloring, and vinegar. Then came the explosion! I found these snacks over at World Market so we taste tested these and they were quite tasty! We've had these kits for a couple of years. I found them clearanced out at Barnes and Noble so they painted these Japanese gold panels. Last but not least I found these Zen gardens at the Dollar Tree last year as well. Originally we were going to make our own but then I thought for $1.00, I can't go wrong! We plan on carrying over our journey to Japan next week as well!
Goosey finished up her Apologia Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics book in Dec. so I wanted to keep the momentum going! I found this awesome Thames and Kosmos Physics Workshop kit last summer at a used curriculum sale so she is continuing the rest of the year with that! So far this week she did an experiment on finding balance, made a contraption to spear a potato, and then she built a car which she had a lot of fun with! The kit consists of a booklet and parts/pieces to build things. She reads a section of the booklet, then completes the experiments by building and carrying out an experiment with what she built, and finally it has a short explanation on what is happening. So far it is going very well!
We are HUGE board game fans here so it was without surprise that the kids received games for Christmas! I thought it would be fun to list our top favorite board games since we have been playing so many during our Christmas break! My kids are on the older side so the games that I list will be for older kids. Without further ado, here is our list in no specific order... 1) Dutch Blitz-this is a new game for us that we all love! It reminds us all of the game spoons. This is a fast paced card game where you try and play sequenced numbers in a central pile all the while trying to get rid of your 10 pile Blitz. This can get a little crazy but we all love it! Ages 8 and up 2) Ticket to Ride-we have had the US version for awhile and we just welcomed the Eurpoean version into our board game family! This is just a simple but fun game! You try and build trains to link cities together by collecting colored cards. The European version just adds more challenges such as tunnels and ferries. Ages 8 and up 3) Settlers of Catan-we just discovered this game and it has been a lot of fun! You build roads and settlements by collecting resource cards. Ages 10 and up 4) Scotland Yard-another Christmas game. The detectives work together to try and find Mister X (1 player is Mister X and the rest are detectives). We only played this twice, it is a challenge to find Mister X and a lot of strategizing but it is fun! Ages 10 and up 5) Who What Where Drawing Game-Fun twist on Pictionary! We all had plenty of laughs with this one! My only complaint is the kids didn't know some of the people so I just ended up pulling all the people they didn't know out of the deck which made the who deck a little smaller. Ages 12 and up 6) Zooreeka-an oldie but goodie! We have had this game for years and it is still a favorite! From the price of this on Amazon though, it looks like they do not make it any more. This would be a good game to watch out for at garage sales or yard sales. Collect cards to trade in for animal habitat tokens. Ages 8 and up 7) Pandemic-we've had this game for awhile as well. You work together as a group to try and fight diseases. This is a challenging game! We have yet to beat it but we do enjoy playing and the challenge (I am determined to beat this game one day!!) Ages 13 and up 8) Pay Day-my kids discovered this game while playing it at a friend's house. We were able to find it in great condition at a used book store that also sells used board games so it has been a favorite over here (the one we have is the 70's version)! You travel through the month all the while collecting bills, saving money, getting paid on payday, etc. Ages 8 and up 9) Clue-another oldie but goodie game but it's still fun to play. You try and solve the clues on who commited the crime. Ages 8 and up 10) Monopoly-I had to put this in here because Speedy is a collector of Monopoly!! He has quite a few versions! His favorite though is the Disney version which we found at the used book store for a really great price. That is our list of favorite games right now! I am sure we will be collecting more as the years go by and we'll be having new favorites!
We all had so much fun learning about the Victorian Era that we decided to have a Victorian Christmas Party as our end of unit celebration for TOG! Speedy's ongoing project was the food portion of that time period so he made most of the food that day! Upon learning everything they ate, we opted to create a more "simplified" and do-able menu (we weren't up for trying ox tail soup or oysters)! For our menu we had roast chicken, wasail punch, a variety of cheeses with crackers, mashed potatoes (I don't think this was Victorian but it went well with what we were eating), cranberry sauce, yule log for dessert, and several samplings of coffee. Everything was delicious! Along with Speedy learning about the menus and recipes, he also learned that they set their tables in an elaborate manner where many of us kept asking "which fork do I use for this"! We also dressed as Victorian as we could get! The kids wore their hats that they made, Speedy had his cane he made, and then I had each of them read a part of the Christmas Carol outloud.
WOW! Christmas and New Years has gone as fast as it has come! I haven't updated the blog in awhile so I thought I would catch up today! We finished wrapping up week 18 of TOG the week before Christmas and are taking a break from school until next week. For week 18 the kids made Native American paper baskets out of newspaper. They folded sheets of newspaper to create strips (they glued the long edges together) and then weaved the paper to create a basket. They ended up taping several strips together to get the sides of the basket to go all the way around. Speedy painted his and Goosey left hers as is. We also tried our hand at candle dipping and it was a lot of fun! I had always heard that they were difficult to make but we didn't think so. It was time consuming but not very hard. We picked up a kit from a used curriculum fair last summer and it had all the supplies we needed so we were good to go! The kids had a lot of fun making them and are ready to buy more supplies to make more!
|
SearchAuthorWelcome to our little space on the web!! I'm a mom homeschooling my kids and blogging about our school days. My kids are 19, 17, and 14 years old and we share a household with 2 crazy cats, an African grey parrot, 2 hermit crabs, and a turtle. Curriculum we are Using...Goosey-14 year old
-Map Travelers -Tapestry of Grace Year 1 -Math U See Geometry -Physical Science -Easy Grammar -Bible Road Trip Year 2 Archives
January 2016
Categories
All
|