Japan: Kite festival

Okay, so last month was Japan in our Around the World in 12 Dishes, but I didn’t get it written then, and these are just too cute for words.  Besides, it’s something that is important to make sure you know about.

Did you know that Michael’s stores host kids’ crafts for free?  I found this out when a local blog, Free Fun in Austin, posted about it, and it just so happened to work with our schedule, so we headed off to make some Japanese kites.


They gave the kids fish to color, and then a piece of card stock to decorate with glitter glue, and sequins.  Princess was in heaven.  I think she might have floated off of her chair, that and added about 5 pounds of glitter glue to her kite.

After they cut out their kite, glued on their fish, and put a ribbon tail on.

I think she likes it, what do you think?
Here’s a great video with some more information about the actual festival.

Japanese Kite Festival, one of several videos about Japan in this series

As a side note, after we went to Target to get new laundry baskets, because our old ones were rather broken down.  I wonder why?

Linking up at:
Around the World in 12 Dishes
iPhone Photo Dump

Craft Fail: Make a castle

I could have sworn I’d seen this at Almost Unschoolers, but after searching for along time, I can definitely say it’s not there.

SUPPLIES: empty oatmeal carton or lemonade carton, contact paper, cardboard, sharp knife

1.  Trace the bottom of the can to make a floor.  You know, so it can be a two-story tower……

 

2.  Trace out the circle on your stone patterned contact paper.

 

2b.  Stop and make a pipe cleaner mustache.

 

3.  And then here’s where it went horribly wrong.  Why?

 

A.  I didn’t clean out the inside of the silly container.  Yes, stupid I know.  So there was a fine layer of lemonade dust, so the contact paper didn’t stick.  Second, contact paper doesn’t stick super well on smooth surfaces.

B.  Poor measuring and application of the contact paper.

C.  Bad planning to put the floor inside.  I thought it would just stay up with contact paper, it did, kind of.  Not at all.

 

But the girls had fun decorating it, and that’s what counts right?

 

I still have a few more left, so I think that will be my entry for the Craft Wars challenge the kids and I have going on.

 

Why am I sharing this?  Because I want to make sure everyone knows, not everything turns out the way you want.  And that’s okay, it’s the experience that matters sometimes.  At the end of the craft, I had two happy girls who played with these things.  They didn’t care that it wasn’t a super cute craft.

 

linking up over at All Things Beautiful’s Summer Learning.

Science Sunday: making a dam

 

As I mentioned earlier this week, we had a lot of rain, and our backyard flooded.  Jeff and I took that as an opportunity to teach the boys some engineering.  We challenged them to create a dam to stop some of the water.

Some of the challenges were the white waters in the stream, and the water flow was rapid enough to take away many of the building materials they could create.


They started by weighing down the big bucket with some rocks, then they remembered the huge pile of bricks in our backyard, but transporting them one by one is tedious and boring.


But a wagon……..  That’s easy and you get the amusement of pulling it through the water.

Eventually this is what they came up with.  It’s an odd combination of bricks, buckets, watering cans, and what have you, but it raised the water level on the upstream side about 6 inches, and the downstream side was significantly lower.

All in all a good spur of the moment engineering lesson.
Let’s see what others did this week:
Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

Source: homeschooljournal-bergblog.blogspot.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Over at All Things Beautiful Phyllis shared how to make a terrarium.  I can’t wait to see updates on it and what happened to it.

Source: homeschooldiscoveries.com via Ticia on Pinterest

Homeschool Discoveries shared why sodas explode in the freezer, it was a fun read and I know I’ve left a soda or two in too long while trying to instantly freeze it, and SUPER kudos for using Dr Pepper.

Source: teachingstars.com via Ticia on Pinterest

I loved how Teaching Stars used bubbles to explain nuclear fusion.  BRILLIANT

<a href="http://adventuresofmommyness.blogspot.com/search/label/Science%20Sunday" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1097.photobucket.com/albums/g344/Ticia1/AiMScienceSundaycopy.jpg" alt="Science Sunday" /></a>

How to make a mini book with no staples

Since, this is going to be one of the primary features of tomorrow’s post, and it takes some explaining to put together, I figured I’d better explain it here.

Back in college I learned how to make these, and then forgot it.  When I went to the homeschool convention a few weeks ago, I was reminded of this.

Supplies: scissors, paper (at least 2 sheets), pencil, optional ruler


1.  Hamburger fold both of your sheets of paper in half.  You could fold it the other way, but it looks more like a normal book this way.


2.  Mark on the fold of each piece of paper a line, approximately two fingers up.  If you want a more exact measurement, then use a ruler to measure one inch.


3.  On the first piece of paper, cut on the fold up to the mark on both ends.


4.  On the second sheet of paper shave a little bit of the fold off between your two marks.


5.  Roll the first sheet of paper like a burrito.  You want the fold to line up in the middle.


6.  Take the rolled piece of paper and put it through the middle of the other like you see in the picture.


7.  Fiddle with the rolled piece so the two slits line up with the uncut portion of the spine.  If you didn’t measure or cut correctly you may need to make the cut a little bit bigger.


And now you have a bound book that didn’t require any tape or staples to make it.  If you want more sheets you can do more.  If there is an odd number, than you need to put the larger number of pages in the second type of page (where you shaved the edge off).

Quick simple and fairly easy.  My 5 year old daughter was able to follow the instructions for this, so if you child already has some crafting experience, than you’re golden.

Maine: Lighthouses

Our final Maine book, and our second lighthouse one was a fun true story of one girl keeping the lighthouse lit through a terrible storm, and encouraging her sick mother and her two sisters while waiting for their Dad to return with more supplies.



After reading the story, I gave them a bit of specific direction on how to draw a lighthouse.  We carefully drew out our pictures, and since I had rushed out of the house that day we didn’t have the watercolors to make it look dark and stormy.  But, they did enjoy drawing and coloring the lighthouses.

The instructions came to draw it came from Art Projects for Kids Lighthouse lesson

I loved how varied their results were:

I found Superman’s especially interesting because he had a definite plan in mind for his lighthouse, and after a while I realized he was trying to make one like in the book for the pattern.

Childhood to do list: WATER FIGHT!

Step 1: Fill a large bucket (or cooler) full of water and sponges.  If you’re fancy make these from Inner Child Fun (what I originally bought the sponges for).


Step 2:  Grab as many water filled sponges as you can.

Step 3: Start throwing sponges as fast as you can.

You’re guaranteed to be told, “Did you know that you’re my best Mommy ever?”

Of course if you’re participating and trying to get pictures at the same time, that means you get lots of pictures like this:


And after all is said and done, take some time to build with the sponges and swing on your swing.