Posts Tagged ‘Homeschooling’

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Timelines for Homeschool

Monday, January 13th, 2014

timelines-for-homeschool

I was asked to be a panelist for an upcoming Google+ Hangout: History Timelines for Homeschool. (The show airs live Tuesday, January 14th, 2014, at 2pm Central time.) I thought I would snap a picture of my main timeline downsairs that I’ve used over the years. On the hangout I will also be showing an accordion-style timeline that I’m using for our Bible Notebooks this year. I will also show a timeline from our Ancient History notebook, which is not accordion style; the figures were glued to black card stock paper punched by a 3-ring hole punch. These two timelines are perfect alrernatives if you do not have the wall  space for a timeline. For this article, I will focus on wall timelines, which are my favorite.

What can you gain by displaying a timeline in your home, and adding figures as you study them in history?

Your children will begin to gain perspective on time. You can step back and see how all the pieces fit together. You can map out in your mind, for example, that certain events occurred before Christ, and other events occurred after Christ. You can begin to conceptualize the rise and fall of empires and nations. You will be able to talk more intelligently about history. You have something in your mind on which you can hang events.

Use black paper as a background for your timeline.

I have a definite opinion of how wall timelines should be done to make them look great, like a natural and elegant part of your home. Use black paper as a background for your timeline. Black is elegant and beautiful and causes everything else on it to pop. That’s why, when you wear a beautiful necklace, you usually will wear a black dress to showcase the jewelry. It’s the same way with timelines. The great thing about black is that you can make anything look good. Even if all you have is young children who scribble outside the lines, if you cut out their artwork and put it on black, it will look fabulous.

Border the paper with black teacher bulletin board trim. This will cause the timeline to disappear into the wall, and your attention is not drawn to it.

There are no rough edges on the top or bottom paper if it’s bordered. It also looks polished and finished as a display. I use staples to put the trim up, but you can use sticky tack. Black flat thumb tacks would work also, because they would be camouflaged into the timeline.

I like to circle a large room once, along the top of the wall.

The only drawback of having it so high up is that your kids can’t see it as closely. Instead, it causes them to step back and have perspective on time, which is the whole point of having a timeline.So for me, it works better to have it along the top of the wall, where the rest of the room can have regular home decor. The room looks like a home instead of a classroom. Besides, they’ve already seen each figure up close as you study that person or event, and all they need is a small visual reminder of how that figure fits in to the rest of history.

I hope you enjoyed my tips on how to make timelines look fabulous on your wall. More fun ideas for using timelines for homeschool will be covered in the Bright Ideas Press Google + Hangout tomorrow, January 14th, 2014, at 2pm Central time. Join us!

If you missed the show, here is the replay:

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Posted in History | 6 Comments »

Oil Pastels on Black Paper

Monday, January 6th, 2014

oil-pastels-on-black

A simple yet elegant art project to do with kids is to color with oil pastels on black paper. The bold colors really pop against the black. You can do an outer space scene, a night time scene, or a cave. You could draw confetti or fireworks against a dark sky. Another design would be to start in the middle of the page with a star or circle, and draw designs outward from it, making everything symmetrical in a radial pattern.

Oil pastels are brighter than regular crayons, and you can get them in the art supply section of most stores. The lighter colors show up better than the darker ones, if you are using a piece of black card stock paper or construction paper for the background.

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Here are some other ideas for night time scenes:

  • a city with all the windows of its buildings lit up
  • the Milky Way
  • the phases of the moon going across the sky
  • Big Ben in London
  • trees with snow silhouetted against the night sky
  • an observatory
  • a spaceship moving through outer space
  • an owl swooping down to catch a mouse
  • bats hanging upside-down on a tree branch

Make sure you have plenty of black paper before you begin! You can also spread out a huge black paper on the wall, and kids can use oil pastels to draw on the black wall!

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Posted in Art | 4 Comments »

Orange Globe

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

orange-globe

orange-globe-2When I was a little girl, I saw this orange globe activity in many books. Recently my daughter read about it in a McGuffey reader, and I decided to make this fun orange globe to understand why flat maps are distorted on the top and the bottom of the maps.

First you will need an orange, a black Sharpie marker, and a knife. Draw a globe on the orange, using a real globe or a picture of a globe to draw the outlines of the continents. Then fill in the continents so that they are solid black.

If you have more than one orange, you can show your children the equator by slicing the orange in half right at the middle. The top part of the orange is the Northern Hemisphere, and the bottom part of the orange is the Southern Hemisphere. You can talk about lines of latitude and longitude.

But if you only have one orange, you will want to cut it into quarters from top to bottom. Scoop the juicy orange out of the peel, being careful not to smudge the marker. Then flatten the pieces of orange on a piece of black card stock paper. Now you will be able to compare this to a flat map of the world. Your kids will laugh at how stretched out the flat maps are, compared to the orange segments.

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Since the earth is round, a flat map must be distorted in order to show the globe. This is why globes are a more accurate representation of the continents than flat maps. However, flat maps are more useful for many practical reasons, including trying to find your flight at the airport, to find the most direct route to your destination. To see the entire earth at one time, we must make the map flat.

Here is a short video showing how to make this orange globe:

If you enjoyed making this orange globe, you will love Living Geography: Travel the World from your Living Room.

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Posted in Geography | 12 Comments »

Decorate Your Own Canvas Bag

Monday, December 9th, 2013

decorate-your-own-canvas-bag

Here is a tutorial for how to decorate your own canvas bag, making it unique to keep or to give away as a gift. My 8-year-old daughter wanted to learn to sew, so she was excited to start this activity.

You will need a plain canvas bag, which you can buy at any craft supply store. You will also need a needle and thread, fabric scissors, and some scraps of cloth. Design your own scene, using the scraps of cloth. If you don’t want to sew, you can use fabric glue and be finished in about 5 or 10 minutes. Otherwise you can pin the pieces in place, one by one, layer by layer like we did.

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First my daughter wanted to sew a sky onto the whole scene as a backdrop. I ironed a rectangle of blue patterned cloth, folding down the 4 edges and ironing them. I pinned the blue cloth onto the canvas bag. My daughter sewed the cloth onto the bag.

She wanted to add a green meadow, so we added some green. After ironing the cloth and folding down the 3 straight sides, we pinned and sewed the green hill.

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Next we wanted some trees for a forest. You could use some green felt, cutting out trees. (If you use felt for everything, you will never need to iron or hem, because felt doesn’t become unravelled. This makes it perfect for the finishing touches to decorate your own canvas bag.)

One short-cut is to get patches at a craft supply store. You can sew these on, iron them on, or just use fabric glue to attach them. We found a tree, some birds, and some flowers. My daughter arranged them on the canvas bag and glued them down with fabric glue.

When you decorate your own canvas bag, it will look something like this:

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Posted in Art | 10 Comments »

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