After the paper mache dried completely, I cut off the balloon tails. The balloons pulled away from the inside of the egg. You could try to remove the balloon if you wish, I didn’t bother. Then I made a little paper mache to patch over the holes.
Once that dried, the kids painted their dino eggs. You could try to paint the eggs camouflage colors, but I let the kids pick the colors they wanted. Pixie completely covered hers, Bug went with a speckled theme and Fairy’s was more patchy – using all the colors.
These eggs could be used as fun Easter decorations. Fill a large egg with treats and use it as a pinata or maybe use smaller balloons and fill the eggs with little treats… instead of using plastic eggs.
The kids decided that they wanted to make a dinosaur nest after reading one of the Magic Schoolbus books where Frizzle’s class went looking for Maiasaurus eggs. So it was time to make some paper mache dino eggs.
My mom did this project in her preschool whenever she ran a dino unit. It can be quite messy… of course three kids at the dining room table is nothing compared to the year when I helped in her classroom with 24 students. Yikes! Preschoolers can easily do this project… though in my experience only about 1 in 4 will stick with it long enough to completely cover their egg.
I’ll give you one guess which one of my kiddos completed hers and helped me finish her siblings… Pixie girl of course. You can’t tell me that 2 year olds don’t have amazing attention spans.
You need one balloon per egg, a bowl to set the balloon in, newspaper shredded into long stripes (my kids loved that part) and a basic mixture of paper mache goo (I used approximately 1 part flour to 1 1/2 parts water mix).
Be sure to cover the entire balloon with paper mache, leaving just the knot exposed. (You might want to cover your table first – ours is a second hand table that we plan to refinish at some point in the future so I generally skip that step). Using a bright colored balloon can help you see any gaps. Try not to make it too thick or it will take forever to dry but you do want solid coverage or the egg will collapse when you pop the balloon.
Once the eggs have dried hard (btw – flip them over in the bowl occastionally so all the sides get air) we will paint them… I will post more when we get to that part.
Bug turned SIX this past weekend. My little man is getting so big. He had a wonderful day and was showered with things he loves. Thanks everyone!
Just thought I would pop on with a quick post today. We have all been battling a nasty little cold. I was hoping this morning we could get back to business as usual but of course last night Bug ended up with a temp again. Not sure if it is more of the same or something new. Having everyone curled up on the couch all week hasn’t been all bad though. There has been lots of snuggle time. The kids have enjoyed having free reign on the DVD player (we normally have strict time limits during the week – I did have to tell them enough Mamma Mia! – no more Abba for a few days please.) And I was able to do some totally ‘fluff’ fun reading and tore through the entire Twilight series. It has been awhile since I have indulged in a little fantasy reading and I enjoyed the series more than I expected.
Anyway, I hope we are back to our normal routine and postings in another few days.
Recouping from nasty colds this weekend, all we managed today was to spent the better part of the morning working on Valentine cards for all the grandparents. While everyone was busy working on their cards, I read about Saint Valentine. What a beautiful book! I think we might try a mosaic craft latter in the week to mimic the illustrations in the book.
I wanted to let everyone know that we are giving away a very cute Owl Doorstop this week at my other site WeeFolkArt.com.
Percy will be heading to a new home on February 25. Everyone is welcome to join in the fun. Just stop on by and leave a comment to win.
Please tell me your desk ends up look like the above photo! Papers, books, art supplies pile up in what seems like just a few moments around here.
Then there is the chaos of recording what we have worked on, what we are working and what we would like to work on. I’ve played with many a store bought planner. I even demoed several home school record keeping computer programs (which btw Homeschool Easy Records was my favorite) but in general nothing I found seemed to fit my needs.
I don’t plan daily. I don’t want us to ‘fall’ behind the preplanned schedule, so I don’t plan ahead sequential lessons like math. We do a lot of spontaneous project activities, which for the most part, wouldn’t be accounted for in a more traditional planner. And of course, sometimes life happens… and well, you know how that goes.
So where am I going with all this…
I thought I would share my cork board/binder based system. My record keeping seems to have three or four distinct parts. Even if you have a totally different system… I thought some of you might find the pages I designed useful.
First a Month a Glance Planner page for the binder. Here I keep track of all the out of the house activities such as, Tae Kwon Do class, play group, field trips, doctor’s appts, etc.
Then there is the Weekly Record. This I print out weekly and hang on our bulletin board… empty. I fill in the boxes after we do things. Being on the wall means I feel free to jot stuff down throughout the day rather than feeling like I have to pull out the binder… which I would push off until the evening and then inevitably forget some of those spontaneous lessons. At the end of the week, I three hole punch it and put it in the binder behind the month at a glance. Aha, a true record of what we did. I can fit both of my kiddos on one print out for now, but I could see needing to print one for each of them down the road if they really branch out into different activities.
I also have some activities each week that I like to use an Assignment Checklist to make sure we accomplish… at some point during the week. This includes stuff like our Nature Study theme for the week, a special craft or recipe, a specific book I want to make sure we read, etc.
As for math and reading, those I just assume we do every day and pick up where we left off last. I just note what we did on the Weekly Record. We review as needed, spend a day playing games instead or what have you… never falling behind and I no longer have to keep adjusting my planner.
The fourth part is documenting some of the kids project activities. For this I referred to Lori’s post about her project journal on Camp Creek Blog. What I have done is developed a bunch of journal pages for the kids that I print out and leave where they can get to them without having to ask. I use the same journal pages to track their project progress adding photos and notes.
Journal Page – 1 Image Box, Dotted Mid-line Text Lines
Journal Page – 1 Image Box, Standard Text Lines
Journal Page – 2 Image Boxes, Standard Text Lines
Journal Page – 4 Image Boxes, Standard Text Lines
I’m happy I finally took the time to develop my own planner system and I hope some of this stuff is helpful for others as well. Feel free to print as many pages as you need for personal use, co-ops, or any other non-profit need. Also, please let me know if you find any typos.
I’m not going to kid myself into thinking that Spring is here. I am fully aware that we still have a full month or two of winter left… BUT we are coming out of the bitter cold and we have had proof that there still is a Sun! If nothing else, this past weekend was rejuvenating in its teasing sense of Spring. What struck me most were the sounds!
Little joys of the day…
We spent over two hours at our favorite farm were there was an adorable litter of 5 day old piglets. What a noise they made at feeding time.
The sky was filled with birds. Swooping, diving and chattering up a storm. It must have felt nice to stretch their wings.
There was a constant sound of running water. The streams were vigorously flowing… icicles dripping. And who could resist the splash of jumping in all those puddles… oh so tempting.
Gone was the squeak of stepping on super cold snow, replaced instead with a satisfying crunch. We trudged through the 2 foot deep mounds without feeling cold just in our fleece coats and stocking caps. It was the perfect wet snow for packing to make snow forts and for throwing snow balls that landed in a thudding splat.
Once inside, hot chocolate was served by Gammy in English Garden tea cups that made such a delightful clinking sound.
Yesterday we played a fun game of Color I SPY, inspired by the Unplugged Challenge theme Color. Each of the kids chose their target color. Then we spread out a play silk of that color on the floor to serve as their home base. Once set, I gave the kids a subject to find… dinosaur, book, train, puzzle piece, food, etc. They had to search around to retrieve an object in their color. The older kiddos helped Pixie who, surprisingly, wasn’t as into it as I would have imagined. The older two had a blast though and strangely enough seemed to enjoy putting the pieces back one by one as much as finding them. Go figure!
We had a glorious weekend. It actually hit 45 today! While we enjoyed being outside for a few hours… we took some time to catch up on our Nature Studies.
Here is our entry for squirrels. This is a mammal we are able to observe daily at our feeders. We read about squirrels a couple weeks ago in the Handbook of Nature study as well as the fun book Nuts to You! We also enjoyed the You Tube videos Barb posted. After teaching the kids what to look for… searching for squirrel nests in the bare trees has become a fun game in the car. They are so easy to spot this time of year.
This weekend we were finally able to get some photos to share. Here are some squirrely photos…
Here are some photos of squirrel nests…
And here is Fairy Girl’s journal entry (that is my messy handwriting that she dictated)…
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