World Travels France Letter

 

World Travels With

Written by Michelle Morgan for her son

For private use only, you may print and use in your own homeschool. Do not copy or replicate without express permission. Copyright Michelle Morgan 2015

Find the rest of our series here.

 

Hello!

Dinah and I enjoyed our first trip on the hot air balloon so much! It was amazing seeing the earth from so high up. We floated through the sky for a very long time, going wherever the wind blew. The wind brought us from the United States of America, across the Atlantic Ocean, to a huge city!


Standing in the middle of the skyline was an incredible tower, the Eiffel Tower. We saw so many cafes, bakeries, and architecture. In Paris, France there is so much to see and I wanted to see it all.


Dinah reminded me that not everyone can see the sights that we were able to see. She told me that about 200 years ago there was a boy named Louis Braille. He lived here in France. When he was just three years old, he had an accident in his father's workshop that caused him to be blind. As he grew up, the one thing he wanted to do was read. Louis left his family to attend a school for the blind in Paris.


In Paris, he was able to learn to read. The letters were raised so he could read with his fingers. There weren't many books to read though. Louis began to think of a new way for the blind to read, a way that could make books for the blind easier to make and to read. He created the Braille Alphabet Code. Each letter was made with a series of dots that are easy to create, feel, and read. Braille's alphabet is still being used by the blind today.


I can't wait to learn more about countries all over the world. They are all bound to have their own amazing stories.


Till next time,





 

Image via Nicole Codega


 

France is our first stop on our study around the world. Netflix and Amazon Instant Video should be great resources to find documentaries about Paris and France as a whole. This is your chance to break out your flag sticker book for the first time too. At my house, we put the big flag for the country in our passport and the little flag on or near the country in the book. Then we color in the country. Here are some other things you can add to make your study of France more enjoyable and hands on.

World Travels With Delbert and Dinah

When we did kindergarten we selected Little Passports as part of our curriculum. We really loved it and Jayne loved getting a package in the mail every month. Then we had some big life changes and knew that it just wasn't in our budget. So we finished the second half of the school year by creating a DIY Little Passports type series called World Travels With Delbert and Dinah. It was a hit with our son and with our readers.

We stopped when kindergarten was over because our little guy's interests had moved from geography to math, go figure. Below I have the entire series linked. As we near our move to a new country, geography is beginning to perk our son's interests again. So, we are considering bringing the series back. What do you think? Would you like to see us bring it back?

World Travels: Introduction

World Travels: Guatemala

World Travels: The Netherlands

World Travels: Ireland

World Travels: Saudi Arabia

World Travels: Australia

 

 

Wedding Gifts

I love making gift basket type stuff though I haven't had many chances to do it. We have some weddings to go to this spring and here is what I came up with.

Storage jar with marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers

Pitcher with a variety of Crystal Light packages

Regrowth From Groceries

I have seen several times on Pintrest that you can regrow some of your veggies from the grocery store. You most certainly can. I did this with my green onions and my romaine hearts.

I have had this vase for years and finally found something to use it for. You can see where the white of the onion stops and the regrowth starts. The onions are about as big as they were when I bout them  a little over a week ago. All that is in there is water and beads. We will be putting some miracle grow in there soon just so the plants have some food.

You can see where these were cut off too. This is how tall they grow in a week and it is just barely enough to have on taco night each week. I am looking forward to spring finally settling in so I can grow my favorite french blend of lettuces. Till then, this is a great way to get in some lettuce without having to pick it up every week.

World Travels: Saudi Arabia

Hello!

This month we landed somewhere very hot! We landed at the edge of an ocean of sand called The Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. We met an Arab boy named Fadil. He came with his camel to see our balloon. 

Fadil brought us to his home at Al-Khamasin. There were even more camels there because this is an important area of the country for raising them. We visited with Fadil's family and told them about our adventures so far. They told us some wonderful folk tales from Saudi Arabia. 

When it was time to leave, Fadil gave us a book to read during our long days of flying in our balloon, 1001 Arabian Nights. We can't wait to read some more of their fantastic folk tales! 

Till next month,

The photo from this month is from this site: http://americanbedu.com/2011/11/02/saudi-arabia-how-empty-is-the-%E2%80%9Cempty-quarter%E2%80%9D/

This month I decided to browse some goodies and let them inspire the month. Mister has developed a love for Squinkies and when I saw this Aladdin themed set (which is also not ultra girly, yay) I knew I needed to look into Saudi Arabia. 

The middle east is a rocky topic for many people, but they are still people just like us and with interesting geography. We shouldn't let the bad news broadcasts sway our thinking of an entire people group. They never share the good things happening in a country after all. Soooo anyway...back to geography...

Our goodies this month are the Squinkie set shown above and a Children's version of Arabian Nights.

I also found this show that is free to watch with Amazon Prime, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations which has an episode on cuisine from Saudi Arabia. We will probably have to watch the Disney Aladdin too.

I would love to hear what you added to your Saudi Arabian studies this month! Just share in the comments.

Squinkies House

The Squinkies in our home are no longer homeless! I know we have all been fretting and losing sleep over their lack of housing. I first got the idea from old faithful (pintrest) to use an Altoids tin and cover it in decor. Then I saw at Toys R Us that you can get pop up scenes, like a pop up book, for your Squinkies to play in (at the low, low price of $3.99 for 2 cards). This got my gears turning and I came up with this...

I made the template for the tin cover by coloring the raised section with washable marker and stamping it onto the paper. The residue cleaned off easily. For the inside I cut out card stock. We decorated them with scrapbooking stickers and I covered them all with a layer of clear contact paper. They all have 4 sticky magnet squares on the back to connect them to the tin. We made a second tin to hold all the cards, so he has one for storage and one for play. One of our sets was an Octonauts picture I printed out and we made another from a photograph from one of our long ago vacations.

Playing with his new playset

Volcano!

On Tuesday we read The Magic School Bus Blows it's top. Thursday we crafted our own volcano and Friday we set it to erupt.

Sculpy on a formed pie tin make the volcano. Baking soda, a few drops of red food coloring, and vinegar make the eruption.

What to do with a clay volcano? We filled the center with polyfil and glued it to a piece of felt. Add some cut up red felt and you have yourself an instant volcano play set!

World Travels: Ireland

Hello!

The wind blew us to Ireland this month! We landed at the Cliffs of Moher. The cliffs overlook the Atlantic Ocean. There were so many birds! The sea birds make their homes in the cliff face.

While we were in Ireland we learned all about Saint Patrick. He was brought to Ireland as a slave, escaped, and then came back to share his love of Jesus with the Irish people. It is an exciting story from the history of Ireland and Christianity. 

We had a lot of fun exploring this beautiful island and found a lucky four leaf clover. We look forward to sharing our next stop with you too!

If you are sharing with your kiddos this month, it is perfect timing! Ireland is a great topic for March and learning about St. Patrick. Here are some things we will be doing to add depth to our letter...

The Cliffs of Moher has a fantastic website, complete with virtual tour. I plan to do that with little guy and this is the address: http://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/default.aspx

I am ordering a fun clover cutter as his special gift. At $8.63  (on Amazon) it is still far less than the $15 I was spending on Little Passports, in case any of you are keeping track. We will use it to make quesadillas for St Patrick's day with green tortillas, of course.

We will be reading about St. Patrick in I Heard Good News Today which was a part of our Sonlight curriculum. We use this book sparingly as Little Guy doesn't like to read it much.

Man V Wild has an Ireland episode, SCORE! We did one of these with the Guatemala lesson and  Little Guy still talks about Guatemala. It really brought the lesson to life for him, so I will use these as much as I can!

I hope you are all enjoying my World Travels series so far! We certainly are. If you would love to see a favorite country or share a country you have visited, let me know in the comments section. The next 3 months are covered and then any locale is fair game!

Be Mine

I know it is still a little early to give my little guy his Valentine, but I simply couldn't wait. I used my pile of felt scraps to make him a Minecraft playset. It was a huge hit! It is nice to have him off the screen but still 100% imersed. It is a great way to keep him busy and quiet at church, appointment, and when I just need some time alone. The bonus is that it works on his fine motor skills and creativity. He are some pics...

Me MINE...get it? And, yes, I know the pig is in the water. Somehow the animals in the game always end up floating in the water.

I made 6 characters too: Steve, spider, creeper, skeleton, zombie, and pig.

Building and building!

Other than the 6 characters the rest of the set is just tiny squares of felt. 

Art, School, and the End of the Year

 We have been having a blast doing lots of pintrest inspired artwork this month! I even got Little Guy to let me paint his hand, a big step for a kiddo that doesn't like anything messy. We have been off of school for the entire month and it is going well. I continued to write down anything "school" related we did over our break, and if you look at the list it hardly looks like a break at all.

We have done many art projects, advent devotionals, read tons of books, and Jayne even read a few stories to me to keep up on practice. We also did some research on goblin sharks after reading about them in one of his picture books. You can see our favorite goblin shark video below.

It is only a few days till Christmas and it has been a huge month for us! Honestly, it has kind of felt like some sort of crazy dream between good news, bad news, and just good old fashioned fun. This year is certainly going out with a bang. The biggest event for us is our upcoming missionary activities, which I am sure will be keeping us quite busy in the coming year. Right now it hasn't exactly sunk in yet. I am still cleaning and cooking and doing all my normal everyday activities. For now I have to focus on those till we get the date of training, because if I don't I will wile away the hours wondering and waiting. We have had a few people ask us about details of the future and we really don't have the answers right now. God will provide a way, support us, and sustain us. He has our faith 100%

Odds and Ends

Today is St. Nicholas Day! Did you know that this is the day Santa used to come? Well, at our house that is what is happening and so today's post was scheduled in advance so that we could enjoy our holiday and you can check out some of the stuff I never got around to last month...

We made a Popsicle stick theater! You can print off these guys here: http://whatsinthebible.com/popsicle-stick-theaters/

That's right, our theater is made out of an unused silverware box. It feels good to give something that is unused a new life!

Little Guy's Uncle is in Germany for a year for college and he is busy writing him a letter.  It is even legible  pretty good for a 5 year old!

Advent

I did a review of Everyday Emmanuel a while back now and thought I would share our calendar. It cost less than $1 to make! We used wrapping paper that we already had as the back and the pockets are made of envelopes. We had a lot of fun making it! It is filled with fun things to do and learn about. Little Guy is really looking forward to making Pepperkaker (Swedish gingerbread cookies). We also put the magnets from our Christmas tree countdown magnet in the pockets. It has been a great way to focus our holiday. We want Jesus to be the focus of our Christmas, and this is helping a lot. Christmas is all about Christ after all!

So far we have learned about advent, who Santa was, played board games together, and made hot chocolate.

Window Quilts

I am going for it! I am making window quilts. I am even hand sewing the blocks, except 1 which is my seam allowance guide. It all started out with Adam running out of window plastic and saying, "I don't want to buy more, every." Well, I was ready with a solution  window quilts. Hand stitching is coming along quite slowly and I will switch to the machine when I need them done more quickly. At the moment I am just enjoying it as a leisure activity. Plus I have had the pieces cut for a quilt for my room for nearly 7 years and now they are finally getting put to good use!

You can see some of the hand stitching on this block.

I think they are going to be great! They will keep us from buying plastic and throwing it away every year, yay green! With the unseasonably warm weather we have been having occasionally  it also means that we can open the windows one day and have the winterized the next. That will be esspecially nice when spring comes around. You never know what the weather is going to be like in southern MN. They will look great too. As for living in the dark...we tend to keep the curtains shut in the winter for warmth anyway, so it still would have been dark.

Some of the finished blocks...can you guess the one that is machine stitched?

Tepee

We studied the early native Americans a little before Thanksgiving. Little Guy's book had this great and very simple tepee art project and we had a blast doing it. The tepee is basically a half circle with the top cut off. the sticks are made with straws and held down with play-doh. It was so easy! Here is a shot of the kiddo with his finished project.

Pizza Day

It is Saturday and in our house that means pizza day! Normally I make 1 very large pizza and we have half for lunch and the rest for supper. Last night at the grocery store Jayne really wanted to have  Lunchables pizza packs. You know the ones with the little crusts and you build your pizza with lots of highly processed foods and cheese flavored shreds. I said yes. Before you get to thinking that I bought us a pile of Lunchables, I made it from scratch! Instead of using my crust for a huge pizza I made little ones and baked it on it's own. Then we built our pizzas with real cheese, sauce, and pepperoni  Jayne loved it! It was a lot more work than 1 pizza, but it was fun and tasted great. Here is a pic of our extra special pizza day...

Birthday Boy

My little guy will be 5 in a few more days! I really can't believe it! We had his Lego Star Wars party on Sunday and it went very well. Now on to the pics...

This is his yearly birthday mural (yes, we did miss the last 2 years). 

Inside our Lego guy jars we had homemade play dough for the littlest kids and Lego mini kits for the bigger ones.

Time to blow out the candles!

We always have a little themed snack and this year was light saber pretzels. 

This is our little instruction sheet for how to build the Lego ship. We hit the Lego store at MOA and hand selected each of these little guys. The staff and customers thought it was just the most amazing thing...we just thought the price was better than purchasing actual kits.

Adam made Wookie sandwich cookies instead of cake this year. It made things so much easier!

Here is a close up of the Lego Darth Vader. He turned out so well with our collaboration!

Bedroom Update

The bedroom project is really coming along. It looks so much bigger and cleaner now that the walls are a solid color. There are still some details to finish like the doors and the switch plates. Here are some of the newly finished things...

I lied about the drawers last time, sorry, they weren't done after all. Now they are since they have been legofied and are now drawers/lego tables.

The first wall nearly done! You can see a bit of what used to be.

This was a gingerbread clock (one of those gifts you just can't think of a thing to do with) but has been transformed into a death star! This is Adam's handy work. I love the light saber hands.

Here is another of Adam's projects. Items needed: clear tubing, flashlight, grey attacher thing, and metal corner thing. I'll be honest, I have no idea what either of those things are called, but they did come together nicely to make a light saber wall sconce!

Some layers of red plastic wrap make the glow red.