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

Michigan: Clever Beatrice

 

When researching books for Michigan, I discovered this gem of a tall tale called “Clever Beatrice”.  It’s about the cutest books I’ve seen, and one of the few tall tales that’s about a girl.  To make matters even better she win the day by outwitting her foes, not by being the prettiest or anything like that.  She rather reminded me of Jack from the many and varied Jack tales (Jack the Giant Killer, Jack and the Bean Stalk, the trickster archetype).

 

After reading the book I thought about some fun ideas for outsmarting or out-tricking someone, but none of them seemed age appropriate, and I also didn’t want to encourage my children to start acting like her about certain things…….

 

 

Instead, I googled visual puzzles, and came up with many to solve online, and a few that were find the hidden picture puzzle, but nothing too clever.

 

Then I found a heart tangram.  This seemed like a nice little math puzzle and some fun for the kids all at the same time.

 

I printed it out and set them to cutting and coloring.

 

They happily spent several minutes attempt to put the hearts back together.  A quest, that I admit stumped me at first, until I figured out the trick.  Which sadly I still haven’t figured out for the square tangram.  Isn’t that sad?

 

I’m going to pop over to All Things Beautiful and share this on her Summer Learning Fun.

Science Sunday: Shark report

 

To finish up our study of Swimming Creatures I had each of my kids choose their favorite sea animal to write a report on.  I was able to predict exactly what animal each of my kids would write about.

We used the stapleless book I shared about yesterday.


Today, I’m going to share Superman’s report, Sharks by Superman.  Very original title.


Each page had one fact and an illustration of that fact.
Sharks hach (hatch) out of egt (egg) cas (cases).
Make sharks teeth are sharp.



The whale shark is the bigest (biggest) shark.
The Tiger Shark teeth are like a sa (saw).


Sharks hav (have) cartilage.  (I let him copy cartilage).
Sharks are colb bloobb (cold blooded).

Two pictures of sharks drinking sprite (his favorite drink).

About the author page: Superman and his sharks.


Then he made a visual aid of a shark.  You can see it in the bottom corner of the left hand picture and read his report to two different adults, Daddy and Mrs. E.  He was SO proud of himself.  I don’t blame him.

I see a shark there, don’t you?

Have you ever had your kids do reports?  Did you grade them?  This time I didn’t, but I think next time I’ll use a rubric.

Let’s see what others did this week:

The Homeschool Scientist shared about the snake they found and some follow up ideas.


No Doubt Learning shared their model eardrum.  I loved her follow on suggestions.

Fit Kids Clubhouse shared about “Solid, Liquid, and Gas” for pre-schoolers using balloons.

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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.

Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg

Jan Brett writes some of the cutest stories, and this book is no different.  Hoppy is excited to make his first ever Easter egg to show the Easter bunny and he asks all of the different bunnies how they make theirs.  He has all sorts of wonderful ideas and then he sees a robin’s egg that has fallen out of its nest.

 

I had grand plans I was going to make suncatcher eggs.  It was going to be so cute.  We got out the paper and started tearing.  I went to the closet to get out the contact paper and it wasn’t there.  But there was wax paper.

 

So I traced an egg on the wax paper gave them a glue stick and let them have at it.  My intention was to iron it closed and tape it up.

 

 

Well, they had a different plan.  They each wanted to make two and they didn’t want to fold it over.  So, they happily made eggs, cut them out and we taped them up to our windows.  Well some of them.  The others disappeared upstairs into their rooms.

 

 

Louisiana: Jean Laffitte

Jean Laffite is a real historical figure.  He was a pirate and probably a few other things that sailed mainly out of New Orleans until he got kicked out of there and then he moved to Galveston, where he founded the town.

This story is a cute tall tale about how he saved New Orleans when a whale got stuck in the Mississippi River.


Well after reading it I decided we’re going to make our own whales.

Here’s what you need: googly eyes, milk cartons, blue paper, glue, paint, and paint brush



Princess opted to paint hers, so she had the relatively simple job of just putting lots of blue paint all over it.

She really enjoyed doing it this way because we haven’t painted for a while, at least not with tempera paint.



The boys went with the “decoupage” option and glued and tore to their hearts content.


We all really enjoyed making our whales, and it was quite the project.  Now I need to scrounge up more milk cartons for any future projects I come up with.

I'm linking up to: A Mommy's Adventures