DIY

Have you discovered diy.org yet?

I'm a huge fan of this website, it encourages kids to try new things and develop their skills. There is an incredibly wide range of skills available, from Forager, Papercrafter, Writer, Chef, to Minecrafter, Animator, Backend Dev, or Game Designer!

Here are a few of the things we've been up to -

Homemade rocket pictures with pastel & watercolours (from Artventure which we've just signed up for!)

and pastel planet pictures, Earth & Venus respectively - 

both for the Painter skill. 

They harvested some potatoes - 

which qualifies for the Backyard Farmer and Gardener skills.

Lexi made a pizza -

 and a character cake -

for the Baker skill, which earned her the patch for that one! 

She made a bracelet for the Fashion Designer skill -

thus completing another patch

She made a homemade sprinkler from a bottle - 

 for a Summerologist challenge

 and some tiny treasure chests, out of matchsticks, cardboard, and quinoa -

for Toymaker, and the photo of them for a Photographer challenge!

And Eli learnt to use a mitre box for the Woodworker skill -

It's great fun, and very flexible, I just wish there was one for adults!

.............................................Space!

We're pretty big on space in this house. Four of us, quite coincidentally, have astronomically themed names (Nova, Alexis, Maia, and Leo). So as a topic theme, space seemed like a pretty good choice.

For a start, we dragged out our collection of space-related books - 

 (I'm possibly a little optimistic putting Measuring the Universe; The Historic Quest to Quantify Space up there, but you never know)

We made a big brainstorm poster of what we already knew, what we wanted to find out, and how

(gold star if you can spot the error with the "word wall" of planet names..) 

And I got a little carried away printing out resources from Teachers Pay Teachers and Homeschool Share - 

Then we got to work!

We tackle this sort of stuff usually after lunch, and in a gentle, self-initiated way. I scatter resources around the place, make suggestions of things they might like to do, then wait to see what piques their interest.

Eli  decided to draw the major planets, some space tools, and an astronaut. He later added a rocket too.

Lexi has been quite taken with NASA's Eyes on the Solar System simulation, which you can use to explore the solar system, including hunting down various missions like Voyager I & II, and the I.S.S.

Of course there was the ubiquitous polystyrene ball solar system model, most decidedly not to scale -

but we're quite proud of it -

 (I couldn't cope with the fat polystyrene ring that came with the kit, so improvised one from clear plastic & paperclips)

Of course we raided the library - 

 the 13 Planets one is quite good; it includes the most prominent dwarf planets, which is quite rare unfortunately!

And I recently added A Collection of Wonders with Professor Brian Cox * to our DVD stash, so we've started watching Wonders of the Solar System to begin with -

we're doing a little bit more each day, so I'll be back with more links and activities that we've been enjoying!

(* Affiliate link! If you click on that link and then go on to purchase something, we get a small percentage of that sale, which would be really nice!)

2012 Olympics

Here's some of Lexi's work on the 2012 London Olympics, most of the printables are free from Teachers Pay Teachers, which is an awesome site!

I popped a whole heap of pages into a clearfile, and let Lexi choose what she wanted to work on...

First we did a "Thinking Rings" (based on de Bono's six thinking hats, which are conveniently the same colours as the Olympic flag) to find out what Alexis already knew about the Olympics, how she felt about it, and what we wanted to find out about -

This one you get to invent your own event - 

 Lexi's new event is called "Ice Pot". A winter Olympic sport, it is played on an ice rink, with two teams of 19 players. The players pass a diamond shaped pot of ice (ouch!) around the rink to their team mates, intending to keep possession for as long as possible, with one point per minute of continual possession awarded. First team to 20 points wins. Players aren't allowed to tackle opposition players, but the ice pot can be intercepted during passes. Additional rules are no pushing, no talking, no being bad winners. Rule breaking results in being sent off the rink & your team deducted one point.

Spot the theme -

 "What is one interesting fact about that country? Two volcanoes erupted when the olympics where on onese [sic]" Yep, two of our north island volcanoes - Whakaari (White Island) and Tongariro erupted during the two weeks the Olympics were on! And Lexi did our flag from memory too... I think it has blended with the Australian one slightly ;)

Lexi really loved doing this one! She's asked to do it again several times -

I can't remember where I found this - I think it was a lapbooking site - but you have to match the event descriptions to the name & image -

Lexi was dubious about this, but really enjoyed it once she tried it out, it's the classic 'see how many words you can make from these letters' concept, using "gold medal" -

This was Lexi's first ever foray into using wikipedia -

Designing your own medal -

 and symbol/flag -

This is a poem she has been learning -

 umm.. yeah...

and her event pages - 

 You'll see a recurring theme of seating (those square things), and encouragement to try or watch the events, funny girl.

 "all the other horse moves"

there were a few other things that were half done, but I think that ship has sailed ;)

I've put the event pages template (which could be used for anything really), and another, more complex, event description page up for free download on TPT here!