Bean Plant Experiment Finale

What did we learn? Sun and water give the best affect, of course. We also saw that water and sun are not equally important to plants. A plant can still grow and produce beans without water, albeit stunted. No sun and  the bean plant is doomed to death. Plants 1 and 2 both have bean pods growing now.

Log Cabin Project

To round out our kindergarten year we are reading Little House in the Big Woods. Mister loves learning about "Great Great Great Grandpa times". He has enjoyed every book we have read that covers the late 1800s. We kicked off our book by making a cabin. We used straws that I cut in half. The roof is made with the bendy portion. We lashed it all together with lots of masking tape.

We added some brown paint to make it look more like logs.

Mister drew the boards onto our floor piece and colored the paper plate base green for grass.

 We used foamie stickers to make 3 beds, a table and chairs, and a red fire place. He laid it all out like in The Little House on the Prairie movie we watched via YouTube.

 The finished log cabin with removable roof, door, and windows.

Of course, no house is complete till it has been successfully turned into a squinkies play set  We have a winner on that front!

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

Castle-rific!

 It was a castle-rific school week at our house! We have been reading the first section of Usborne Book's Time Traveler, which is all about Baron Godfrey, his castle, and the lifestyle of the time. Jayne came up with a great project to keep all thoughts on castles...make the Baron's castle in Minecraft! We started on Monday by drawing out plans for our large scale project. For those of you who are not familiar with Minecraft, you mine the supplies you need and build by laying 1 block at a time. We are all able to enter the same game on our separate Kindles (or any tablet nearby) and it became a great family project. There are also block zombies, creepers, skeletons, and spiders that can get us as we try to build this massive monument, as shown on Little Guy's yellow draft paper.

 I also surprised him with Angry bird printables since we are ahead of schedule on our normal work I thought I would let him switch it up a bit. He loved them and is still talking about them even though we finished them up on Tuesday. I got them at homeschoolcreations.net!

Minecraft tour:
It is not quite finished in the photos, but you can get the idea...
In this shot you can see the view from the top of the castle. There is an inner wall and an outer wall. In the distance, between the trees, is a series of entrance gates and a ditch with "draw bridge".

Here you can see the castle. It is 4 floors and is on the other side of the inner wall that you can see the doors to here. You can also see Jayne building a tree house out of the tree to the left (not part of the original castle).

Here are my guys working hard. It took a lot of teamwork, but it was sure fun!

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.

A Bed for Taylor

This week we have been learning about the french nobles and a little about the revolution. For some hands on time we made a 4 post bed for Taylor, Little Guy's little guy. It turned out great and Little Guy made sure all the details were just so. Here are some pics:

Pencils, a box, and some scraps of fabric are about to transform!

Lots of  glue!

We have since glued down a fitted sheet, because Little Guys bed has 2 sheets and so should Taylor's

The finished bed with Taylor all tucked in!

October

Have you missed me? I have! Last Sunday I pulled into the driveway with our dog in the kid carrier. It hit the curb and flipped. The dog is fine, but I came out with a sprained right wrist. That means I can do very little, typing included. I did want to pop in and say hello though and share a bit of what we have been doing the last couple of weeks...

Jayne makes a ruff for history class

Halloween decor went up

Jayne and I made this just days before the sprain...thank you pintrest!

Jayne learns about cells!

on the left is the animal cell, on the right is the plant cell. Our organelles are dried currants and the nucleus is a prune.

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.

Homeschool Fun: Space

Space week has come and gone (last week) but I thought I would share the big art project. Here are the supplies we used: Black construction paper, foamie stickers, lids from various containers, and a stamp pad.

The first part of the project was to make the stamps. It was super easy! Just put the foamie stickers on the lids. I do believe that the lids shown here are from a gallon of milk, a medicine bottle, and BBQ sauce. The space stickers came with his bike decorating set. We also used basic shapes for a previous stamping project.

Part 2 was to have a blast stamping! We used a silver pigment stamp pad. It worked great because you can see it really well on the black paper. It really pops.

Jayne had a great time making his space picture. He even had to make a second one to share with a very lucky grandma.

Stretch It: Winterizing

Winterizing your house is a great way to save on your heating bills during the winter. That is a must here in Minnesota! There are 3 main things that we have done/do to make our home more efficient during the winter.

Insulate - You can go through and find spots that let in cold all over your house. The main spots for us were lighting fixtures and outlet/switch plates. For the lighting fixtures Adam cut circles out of a clear storage tote that got a crack in it. He drilled out the holes for the wires too. Then he removed (please take great care in this and make sure the power is off, use common sense!) the light fixture or ceiling fan and connected the wires through the plastic circle. This is really a 2 person job by the way. He caulked the circle to the ceiling and reattached the fixture. You can't see it at all and it keeps a considerable amount of cold air from coming in. The switch plates are much easier, though you should still be careful. You will need an exacto knife or something like it, a cutting board, and some light weight foam sheets (the kind that come in packages like the light weight foam around books you order online). Cut out the size you need and the holes in the center and screw it on under the plate. Super easy! Plus both of these were done with recycled materials and little cost.

Vacuum - The vents that is! We have baseboard heaters and last year we found out how to clean them. Take off the faceplate, again, be careful they are sharp. Then vacuum. It is as simple as that. It takes a lot of energy to heat through all that dust and debris. It is an easy way to make you heater more efficient, thus saving money. Take the time to find out how to clean your heating system, it pays off.

Plastic - Plastic sheeting on the windows will not win any beauty contest, but it will save you money. The shrinking kind that we get is relatively inexpensive and it helps a lot. How it works is this...The cold air touches the window and is released into the air. If there is no sheeting, that air is the inside of your house. With sheeting, the air is trapped between the window and the plastic. It has to go through 2 layers to get to the warm air inside. Our sheeting goes on the inside of the window which I prefer as I have to stare at the neighbors house with plastic on the outside for half the year and I can't say that I like the way it looks.

Please take care doing any of the projects I have listed here. They are quite easy to do, but don't do something stupid like get hurt in the process. I would really love to hear what all of you do to winterize your house. We could always stand to make our little house run a little better!

Sprucing Up My Pillows

The decorator pillows on our couch have seen better days. Now that is putting it lightly because one has ripped open across the whole zipper and the other has ripped open from side to side across the center of the pillow. They have been that way for a few weeks now and I finally got around to making them new again. I took 2 of our no longer worn shirts and turned them into pillow covers. It is as easy as sewing a square and they look so fun on the couch. Plus one is from a play I did in high school and it is fun to have the tee out where I can enjoy it. I also like not having pillow fluff sticking out all over my couch too!

Fun and Clean Art



Jayne draws on his paint mat

I did this with Jayne and my 1 year old daycare kiddo today. I thought it would be nice to do something art related as a group today and we all had a blast. The paint mats are mess free. I gave the kids 1 rule, no fingernails! They drew shapes and letters and it led up to sing a what starts with this letter song. A good time was had by all and the best part is that we can use them over and over again.

If you want to make a paint mat for your little menagerie, you will need 3 things: paint, heavy duty ziplock bag, tape. First put paint in the bag. Get as much air as you can out when you shut it. Tape it to the table and start playing.