Making "coloured glass" suncatchers

This is a very simple activity that can be quite versatile once the "coloured glass" is produced. You can use it as suncatchers, ad see through cards, or as material for making mobiles...

Toddler fun

Keeping the little ones busy is challenging, but they are learning too :)

I definitely believe that all activities with a practical end are so much more satisfying to little children! My daughter enjoyed this one so much it was hard to keep her from dumping the shapes box again to start all over!! :)

Other cool activities for toddlers:
Flower garden

Practical life

More practical life :)

Wonderful art resources

If from time to time you feel a bit depleted of art ideas, here are some projects from this wonderful blog, The elementary Art Room, that can give you fresh inspiration!

Here is a little sample of what you can see there:

I am also pretty happy with this site, Artcyclopedia, which has wonderful pictures of artists for art appreciation.

Enjoy!!

A little more about leaves

Nothing inspires us more to do Botany studies than a nice walk through the neighborhood, on a fine Spring morning.

Today our project was very simple. Walk, take our time, stop as many times as we needed (i.e. every time we found something interesting) and come back home with a very diverse collection of leaves.

Back at home, we observed, described, identified. And we marvel at the wonderful details.


We use our window as a "back light board". The children were amazed to see all the details!

The next step: Pressing them and placing them in our folders.

Writing center

Let's face it. Many times creative writing does not come so easily to children, especially boys :).
So I decided to create special materials to encourage creativity while making the writing process more enjoyable.

And that is how our writing center was born. It is all contained in a big folder, with enough pockets to invite new materials in every once in a while.

Apart from the obvious (a paper pad and pencil) it also includes:

* Our noun phrase game

* Grammar cards to make more phrases (For now we are just using nouns, adjectives and verbs, with their corresponding symbol in the Montessori materials). As a story starter, we pic two of each category and try to use them all in a story.

* Story cards: an assortment of photographs of  objects, people, animals, actions glue onto 3" x 4" cards. (we use old National Geographic magazines for all our projects). You can use these in the same way as the grammar cards to start a story, randomly picking one at the time.

* Any other pictures that could be inspirational.

You can include anything that helps getting things started...

1 Corinthians 13 for Homeschool Moms

I just LOVE this and have to share it with all the homeschooling moms out there!!!  It comes from the Encouraging beautiful motherhood blog

1 Corinthians 13 for Homeschool Moms

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and teach my children Latin conjugations, Chinese and Portuguese, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, and no matter what I say, they will not hear me.

If I have the gift of prophecy, and know my children’s bents and God’s plan for their lives, and know all mysteries and all knowledge,and am the keeper of the teacher’s editions and solutions manuals, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, and even keep up with my giant piles of laundry and dishes, but do not have love, I am nothing, even if all the people at church think I’m Supermom.

And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and my formal dining room gets turned into a schoolroom and our family vacations look more like educational fieldtrips, and if I surrender my body to be burned, never having time to get my nails done, put makeup on or even take a bath, but do not have love, it profits me nothing, because all my family cares about is the expression on my face, anyway.

Love is patient with the child who still can’t get double-digit subtraction with borrowing, and kind to the one who hasn’t turned in his research paper.  It is not jealous of moms with more, fewer, neater, more self-directed, better-behaved or smarter children.  Love does not brag about homemade bread, book lists, or scholarships and is not arrogant about her lifestyle or curriculum choices.  It does not act unbecomingly or correct the children in front of their friends.  It does not seek its own, trying to squeeze in alone time when someone still needs help; it is not provoked when interrupted for the nineteenth time by a child, the phone, the doorbell or the dog; does not take into account a wrong suffered, even when no one compliments the dinner that took hours to make or the house that took so long to clean.
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness or pointing out everyone else’s flaws, but rejoices with the truth and with every small step her children take in becoming more like Jesus, knowing it’s only by the grace of God when that occurs.
Love bears all things even while running on no sleep; believes all things, especially God’s promise to indwell and empower her, hopes all things, such as that she’ll actually complete the English curriculum this year and the kids will eventually graduate, endures all things, even questioning from strangers, worried relatives, and most of all, herself.
Love never fails.  And neither will she.  As long as she never, never, never gives up.

Misty Krasawski, December 8, 2008