SK or SC Stuff

The Scaredy Squirrel books by Melanie Watt are great SC books!

Activities

Scales

When I do this with Asher, I plan to coordinate my books a little better with the activity for the day, finding a book that has the same topic as the project. Look for that circa 2012. When I finally get around to that, I'm definitely going to read The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister with this project.



The book is about a fish with beautiful scales, many of them shiny, who learns that the most beautiful thing is sharing with others and ends up giving his beautiful scales away. Good message and plenty of SCs to sound out.

We made this scaly fish.



It was pretty simple. I improvised a white fish and glued him on a blue piece of paper. Then I cut out several different colors of scales from tissue paper and included a couple from foil. Tal got to glue the scales on.

Scarecrow

The Wizard of Oz series is pretty big at our house these days; Grandpa is reading the books nightly to Talmage. They are currently reading Ozma of Oz. So when I suggested we make a scarecrow, Tal was certainly excited.



I improvised a shirt, pants, head, and a hat. Tal glued the pieces on a black piece of paper and added the details. We then took some dead grass from my most recent weeding excursion and glued it on.

Sky

This was a fun idea that ended up looking totally different than what I anticipated. I put some blue water color paint in an empty spray bottle. I have some nice paints in tubes, so I just squeezed out a bit into the bottle, but I bet if you could break a chunk off a Crayola set it would work just fine. I then added a cup or so of water and shook it until it mixed together. Talmage and I painted horizons along the bottom of our papers (I did use watercolor paper for this one so it would absorb the paint well). We then took our pictures outside and sprayed on a blue sky. I sprayed minimally and got a rainy sky.



Tal didn't want a rainy sky, so he sprayed a lot.



I have to admit; Tal's picture turned out awesome.

Treasure hunt. scale, scarfs, skirt, skin. The treasure was Skittles.

PR Stuff

The Prince Won't Go To Bed by Dayle Ann Dodds was probably our favorite book of the week.

Activities

Frog Prince



I found the idea for this little guy here. I printed off this sheet on both green and yellow cardstock. The site recommended craft foam, which I'm sure would have been cuter, but I didn't have any and cardstock worked well. Tal and I went rock hunting, and after we found an appropriately sized rock, I painted it green and glued on googly eyes. We glued the rock onto his legs and added the yellow crown. Tal felt he needed nostrils and a smile.

Handprint Butterfly

Print seemed a good PR word and we did a really fun activity with handprints during H week but I didn't want to repeat it. So we came up with a handprint butterfly.



I let Tal pick three colors and we brushed the tempera paint on his hands. We positioned the prints facing outward. After it dried (again, with the help of a blowdryer) I drew a butterfly body with a black Sharpie. Talmage added the butterfly smile.

Praying Mantis

Tal loves origami, and I'm always trying to think of ways to insert more math into this project, so I got ambitious and thought we'd make this folded praying mantis. I got through 5 of 100 steps. Once it started talking about waterbomb bases I got lost.

So instead we started to make this guy.



Now I admit that at this point we had already spent a good half-hour on the other praying mantis, so I didn't finish putting him together. So follow the instructions listed here. (You'll have to scroll down a bit.)

Treasure hunt: prince, princess, present, praying mantis. The treasure was chocolate covered pretzels.

PL Stuff

Plantpet by Elise Primavera was kind of a weird book, but it was great when we made plantpets.

Activities

Planets



We took a piece of black paper and made stars with a toothbrush and watered down white tempera paint. Then I took this idea from Ehow: Use the pinky to create a red dot for Mercury, the ring finger with yellow for Venus, the ring finger with blue for the Earth, the pinky with red for Mars, the thumb with orange for Jupiter, the thumb with yellow for Saturn, the middle finger with green for Uranus, and the pointer finger with blue for Neptune.

I thought it turned out pretty cute.

Planetarium

We went to the Clark Planetarium.

Plantpets



I wanted to do these during GR week as grassheads, but I never made it to the store to buy grass seed. This week, however, we read a book named Plantpet, so the projects worked well as a PL activity.

Cut off the end of a nylon stocking, leaving about four inches. Spoon about 1 Tbs of grass seed into the bottom of the stocking. I added roughly 1/2 cup of dirt from my backyard at that point, but various websites recommended sawdust. After tying off the bottom of the dirt, we added a rubber-banded nose. Other images on the internet had rubber-banded ears, too. Googly eyes helped complete the effect. "Dress" a Yoplait yogurt cup with paper, buttons, anything you want. Fill the cup at least half-way with water, and place the head on top of the cup, letting the nylon dangle in the water. The nylon will serve as a wick. The grass will begin to grow in about a week, provided you keep the water level above half-way.

Treasure hunt. plane, planets, plates, pluto. The treasure was Good and Plenty. I was certain he wouldn't like it. I was wrong.

GR Stuff

Activities

Green Painting



I mixed three colors of green. We painted with them.

Grandparent's Cards



I've mentioned before Tal's love of card-making. This time we made cards for his grandparents. The most adorable part was the things Tal thought of to say thank you for. Here is my favorite.



Treasure hunt. green beans, grapes, grass, grater, groundhog. The treasure was 100 Grand.

GL Stuff

Activities

In general I try not to spend too much money on these projects and instead opt for stuff that's generally already in my craft supply, but there were just so many fun GL things at the craft store, that I bought everything.

Glitter Glue



These were a big hit. What's more fun than shiny adhesive?

Stained Glass



This craft involved putting different colors of plastic beads into the frame and then melting them in the oven. Not actual stained glass, but I counted it.

Glow-in-the-Dark Paint

This stuff was AWESOME. I picked up a pillowcase from the DI this week and let Tal decorate in with this fancy glowing paint. Here's the end result.

Treasure hunt: glue, glasses, glove, glow-in-the-dark pillow. The treasure was Black Forest Gummy Glo Worms.

FR Stuff

Most of the books we used had "friend" in the title.

Activities

Frame

This is also a repeat from F week. Tal was a little more rushed with this years frame. But he was excited about what happens when red and green mix.



I thought the frame set off Tyler's mountain picture nicely.

Fractal

This is a Sierpinski Triangle.



It is a fractal, which means it is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole." I didn't teach Tal that, but we did make a Sierpinski Triangle.



We actually made one on each side of the paper, and Tal then wanted to cut it out. Hence the incompleteness of the fractal. Don't tell Mrs. Keir. I'm not sure Tal understood any of this, but he got good practice drawing triangles. I didn't realize until we did this that he didn't really know how, so I made three dots and he connected them.

Frog I ran out of time this week, but the frog we did during F week would have fit nicely here.

Treasure hunt: fractal, frame, freezer, fruit, frog. The treasure was fruit snacks.

FL Stuff

There weren't any books that really stuck out for me, but I did discover that books with "flower" in the title are pretty girly.

Activities

Egg Carton Flowers



I cut apart a cardboard (Cardboard? Non-styrofoam, at least) egg carton into it's individual egg cells. Tal then painted each of the cut apart carton pieces in bright colors. We then cut about 2" squares from various pieces of tissue paper. After the cartons were dry (with the help of a blow-dryer) we pushed the tissue into the carton cavity and held the whole thing in place using a pipe cleaner through the center. I bunched up the pipe cleaner at the top so it didn't slide through the flower.

Plastic Stain Flowers

We made suncatchers (imitation stained glass with plastic frames and glass stain). Here is a website that sells something like what we did.



Flag

Like I've mentioned before, I didn't plan on continuing this project once I finished the alphabet, so there are many projects that I did back in F week, for example, that really should have been FL projects. I'll fix this all in two years when I do it with Asher, but in the meantime I'm just going to repeat some things. It was fun to see Tal's progress, however.

Here is Project Flag 2009:



Note the random number of stripes and haphazard arrangement of stars.

Here is Project Flag 2010:



This time we looked at pictures of flags online and Tal was very specific that we needed 13 stripes and 50 stars arranged geometrically. This led us into a discussion of what the stars and stripes mean, which led us into a discussion of what states are, so I printed of this map and we found all the states where his cousins live.

Treasure hunt: flower, flour, flag. The treasure was Flipz (yogurt covered pretzels).

CR Stuff

Old Cricket by Lisa Wheeler was the best CR book ever. Old Cricket is cranky and crotchety and suffers from creaks, cricks, and cracks; and that's all before he meets Old Crow.

Activities

Crawling race.

We had Tal's friend Luke over and we did a variety of races in the front yard, beginning with crawling. We also jumped, hopped, walked, tip-toed, and, of course, ran.

Crown



I cut out a long strip of thin cardboard (a cereal box worked well) and measured it to fit around Tal's head. 2 or 3 inches wide. Then I cut yellow paper the same length as the cardboard but about an inch wider. I glued the yellow paper to the cardboard, lining up the bottom edges. This gave me room to cut the points. Tal decorated the paper side (not the cardboard side) with all sorts of craft bling. Finally we made a ring and stapled it.

Note that Tal added his jewels in a very mathematical and ordered way. We also glued cotton balls on the bottom to give it a furry crown look.

Crocodile



I found the instructions for this guy here. I'm going to pull their images to explain this because it was a bit complicated. Or you could just go to their website where the craft is very clearly explained.

With scissors, I cut two 16.9 oz soda bottles in half and then trimmed one of the bottom pieces to about 3 inches.



Then I cut about three slits up the bottom of the longer bottom piece so that I could fit it over the other and used packing tape to fix them in place. After I slit the top pieces so they too could fit over the ends and fixed them in place with packing tape.

Finally, I hot glued four bottle caps to the bottom for legs, and two to the top for eyes.



Then came the fun part. I mixed 2 Tbs Elmer's glue with 2 Tbs water. Working in chunks, I spread the mixture over the surface of the crocodile, and affixed 1" squares of green tissue paper. Once the glue was covered by tissue paper, I then spread another layer of glue over the paper. I repeated this until the entire surface was covered and I liked the thickness of the tissue paper skin.

After the glue dried, we added details. Googly eyes for the eyes, points down his back, and feet for his legs. Voila! Craft crocodile.

We sang a whole long of "Never Smile at a Crocodile" during the making of this project.

Treasure hunt. crayons, craft box, crown, cricket, crocodile. The treasure was a Nestle's Crunch bar.

CL Stuff

Activities

Clay Coil Pot



I found this self-hardening clay at the craft store and taught Tal how to make a coil pot. We rolled out long snakes of clay and then circled them around until we had formed a pot.

Tricks I remembered from high school pottery: Scratch and wet each layer before adding the next one. I guess that's it.

Clown Collage



I found this project in the Usborne Art Treasury (see link at left). Have I touted the virtues of this book yet? This book has fantastic ideas for art projects using not much more than your basic craft materials. If you've got paint, paper, and glue, you're pretty much good to go. The authors connect each project with a work of art, and this project was connected to Picasso and his collages.

Clock

I used some clock flash cards to teach Tal how to tell time. He's pretty good. He definitely gets that the little hand points to the hour and the big hand points to the minutes. He also got pretty good and counting by fives.

Treasure hunt: closet, clothes, clay, clock. The treat was eclipse gum.

BR Stuff

Bobby Bramble Loses his Brain by David Keane was full of BRs and HILARIOUS to a four year old.

Activities

Braid



He learned how to braid really well! You know, bring the outside clump in the middle. We added some beads for fun.

Bracelet

I bought Fruit Loops. This was HUGE. In our house we purchase Cheerios, Kix, Chex, and for when your feeling a little outrageous, Life. So the Fruit Loops were a great big giant deal.

I measured a piece of yarn that fit around Tal's wrist and he strung it with Fruit Loops. I envisioned him leaving it intact until Daddy got home to take a picture of it. It didn't last more than 15 minutes.

Breadsticks

Here is my favorite recipe.

1.5 c warm water
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp yeast
3-4 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cube butter
garlic salt
parmesan cheese

Dissolve yeast in water and sugar. Add flour and salt. Mix and knead 5-6 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes. Melt butter. Pour half of melted butter in cookie sheet. Spread around until entire sheet is covered. Roll out dough until covering most of the pan, and a uniform thickness. Pour remaining butter over the top of rolled dough. Sprinkle very generous amounts of garlic salt and Parmesan cheese. Let rise 15-20 minutes. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Treasure hunt: broccoli, broom, bread, brother. The treat was brown licorice.

BL Stuff

We've pretty much covered letter combinations that make unique sounds (like Sh, Ch, and Dr) so we're going to cover letter combinations that you often find together. For example, B and L Talmage could sound out on their own in the word black, but bl as one sound would make the process easier. I think we'll work through the alphabet this way, (using the examples on this website) before we start to tackle vowels.

Again, I'm making this up as I go along with no real trained method in mind.

Anyway, I had no idea back at B Stuff that I'd still be doing ABC Stuff come 2010 and past the end of the alphabet. So a couple of the activities from B Week will do for Bl week. Maybe when I do this with Asher I'll get more specific with a better variety of B activities.

FHE Blessings: Daddy got into BL Stuff, so when it was his turn to teach Family Home Evening he did a lesson on blessings. He taught Talmage that blessings are something Heavenly Father gives us to help us in life and then he and I listed the blessings we are grateful for. Each of us then drew pictures of our blessings.

Daddy is grateful for:



Talmage is grateful for:



That's a picture of Daddy. Daddy is 29 years old. Mommy is also 29 years old, but she's less of a blessing in Tal's life.

Picture Blocks:



I let Tal pick 12 pictures that he liked of our family (easily available here) and printed them out. We then bought two 2-inch blocks (I had hoped for 3 inch, but 2 inch is what Michael's had. Robert's had nothing.) I cut a 2 inch by 2 inch square out of a piece of paper and let Tal use it to frame his favorite part of the pictures. I outlined the frame and trimmed the pictures down.

We then mod-podged the square faces and attached pictures. I then added two more layers of mod-podge over the top of the pictures to seal and finish.

Blackberry and Blueberry crumble: This dessert was super simple and super fantastic. I mean really fantastic. Really, really. Fantastic.

It came in handy as Tyler NAILED his administrative interview today and so we had Blackberry and Blueberry Crumble to celebrate.

Black and Blueberry Crumble

1/2 c Blackberries; fresh or frozen
1 1/2 c Blueberries; fresh or frozen
2 tb Sugar
1 ds Nutmeg
1 c Oatmeal
1/2 c Flaked coconut
1/3 c Melted butter
Vanilla ice cream

In saucepan, combine blackberries, blueberries, sugar and nutmeg. Cook over low-heat. Set aside. In a measuring cup, pour oatmeal and toast in microwave, cooking on high heat and stirring once. Combine toasted oatmeal, coconut and melted butter. Set aside. In dessert bowls, spoon an ice cream mound. Pour toasted oatmeal mixture on top. Spoon fruit over all.

Approximately 15 minutes.

Black painting (crayon resist): This is a fun project and one I remember from my elementary school years. Talmage and I colored pictures on a white sheet of paper. (Light colored crayons work best for this step, but I didn't limit Talmage.) Once our pictures were done, we took watered-down black tempera paint and covered the entire sheet of paper. Crayons are waxed based, so they repel the water-based tempera paints. Once the black paint had dried, we scratched a design in the picture that removed the layer of black paint.





Treasure hunt: blocks, blueberries, black (marker), blue (shirt), blood. The treat was a blow-pop.

TR Stuff

When I realized trucks and trains started with TR, I knew we'd have no problem finding TR books. Our favorite find of the week was Russell and the Lost Treasure by Rob Scotton.

Activities

Train. Since we painted a choo choo train during CH week, I had to change the activity a bit. This time I bought a wooden train from the craft store. Tal painted it.



Truck. Similar to above, this wooden train came in a kit with markers. Tal colored it.



Tree



For this activity, Tal traced my hand on white paper. We cut out the hand a glued it on blue paper. I then cut leaves out of various green and yellow papers and Tal glued them on.

Rice Krispie Treats.



Find the original recipe here.

Treasure hunt: Truck, train table, train tracks, trash can, tree, trunk. The treat was a store bought Rice Krispie treat. Tal pointed out that anything would work because treat started with a TR.

DR Stuff

Daydreamers by Tom Feelings is wonderful for its illustrations, but the lyrical text provided Drs for us to read. Dream Hop by Julia Durango was fantastic.

Activities

Drum.



Oatmeal container. Decorated with all sorts of bling. Cut a whole in both ends and strung yarn through it so it can go around Talmage's neck. The site I found the project on recommended making drumsticks, but I thought hands worked well.

Dragon.



How cool is that dragon? I found the instructions for it here. We took a 12-egg egg carton and cut it in half. We painted one half one bright color, and after cutting two egg holders (is that what you call them?) and painted that part another bright color. Then I followed the inspiration of the activity village creator and cut out flames and and nose out of other bright colors. Tissue paper for the head and body. Talmage wanted to add ribbon for a tail and I thought that was a nice touch.

On second thought, follow the link I attached for more clear instructions.

Dragonfly.



I googled "dragonfly craft" and came up with a couple ideas and then combined them for our dragonfly. Talmage colored a large popsicle stick with markers and we affixed googly eyes on the end. I used the wings you can find here and here. (The person who made the images made them large, so for them to fit on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, click on print preview and reduce the image to 30%. I also switched the paper to a landscape orientation.) I printed the wings on bright paper and let Talmage decorate them. Being a dragonfly, I thought glitter would be a nice touch. Talmage did, too.

Dress-up Dolls. I found these ethnically diverse, not afraid to be man enough to put on a unitard or a one-sleeved dress, boy paper dolls here.



Creepy looking, aren't they?

I thought it would be more fun for Talmage to color them, so I opened them in Photoshop and turned them into colorable outlines. The only problem is that in the process, I lost the little tabs to fold back on the clothing so that the clothes can attach to the dolls.







Talmage took issue with me calling them dolls. Apparently dolls are for girls. Of course the first thing Talmage did with one politically correct dress up guys was attack the other politically correct dress up guy.

Treasure hunt. dragon, dragonfly, dress, dresser, drink. The treat was gumdrops.

TH Stuff

TH was a little tricky, because TH makes two sounds--the voiced TH (as in there) and the unvoiced TH (as in three). We stuck with the unvoiced TH because that's how it's found in the majority of words. However the majority of common words (like the, there, they, them) it's voiced. Ah well.

I also realized Talmage has a speech impediment this week. For Ss he makes the unvoiced TH sound and for Zs he makes the voiced TH sound. Who knew? I'm sure that'll get cleared up in elementary school. I, of course, said my Rs as Ws until I was nine.

Books that talked about the three little somethings (pigs, bears, grasshoppers) worked well. You wouldn't believe the fairytale variations we found. We only sounded out the words that made the unvoiced TH sound.

Activities

Thermometer: We found the instructions to make a homemade thermometer here. I purchased all the required ingredients--water bottle, red food coloring, rubbing alcohol, playdough, and a clear plastic straw. We couldn't get the fluid to rise up the straw. So instead I got one of our many digital thermometers and talked about what happens when you're sick.

Thank-you note: We've been a card making factory here at the Howe home. With Valentine's this last week, we made over 50 valentines. I made him stop when we couldn't think of any more people to send them to. So he was THRILLED to make thank-you notes.



Piece of paper. Folded in fourths. Decorate with crayons and hearts and glitter. Things Tal wanted to say thank you for? Thank you to Hana for letting us go to McDonald's. Thank you to Daddy for letting Tal play Labrynth 2.

Last Name, Thousand (Tyler's story of place value): One of Tyler's classic math lessons involves number houses. Due to many hours of playing on the TI-83 (yes, our family's nerdy like that), Talmage is able to read three digit numbers, but struggles beyond that. We tried out Tyler's number houses lesson, and Tal did shockingly well. By the end, he could correctly read this number: 234,000,762,027,123.

Here is the PowerPoint Ty used. I'm not going to explain it more than that, but would be happy to answer questions.

Alpine Utah

Crazy Threes: Matching games are big at our house, so I thought we'd add a new level to your traditional matching game. I made sets of three images that I cut out and faux laminated with contact paper. We mixed them up and placed them upside down on the table. Each turn a player turned over three cards, and you had to find the entire set of three to earn that set. I was prepared to turn it into a traditional matching game, but Tal loved the threes.

For fun I used images that have to do with the concept of threes.







A word of explanation on the bottom two pictures on the third page: that's a bishopric, see (with three members of it), and Star Wars is a trilogy. At least it is at our house, where Tyler elected to show him the original three and pretend the more recent three never happened.

Treasure hunt. thermometer, three, thank you note, thumb. The treat was a Heath bar.