Posts Tagged ‘Homeschooling’

How to Organize a Nature Display

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Are you looking for nature display ideas? You’ve come to the right place! I’m Susan Evans, your homeschool organization guru, and today I’m going to show you how to organize a beautiful nature display.

  • nature-display-ideasFirst you will need some sort of wooden shelf with compartments. I got mine at a yard sale for $3.
  • It had no backing on it, so I went to the store and bought a posterboard that was black and very stiff. (You can also use black velvet board.) The black color really pops to help make your display look gorgeous, by the way.
  • I cut the posterboard to size. Then I used an industrial stapler to stick it to the back of the display. (You can use the industrial stapler for other home decorating projects, so I recommend getting one.)
  • After I had the backing on the display, I wanted something strong to hold it up because you’re going to have nature collections that include objects that are heavy. So you want a heavy-duty wire, and then use your industrial stapler to staple the wire into both sides on the edges.
  • Here are some items you can have in a nature display: fossils, a bird’s nest, rocks and minerals, feathers, animal sculls, snake skins, pine cones, seeds, seashells, moss, old cocoons, blue egg shell from robins, etc.
  • The items are just leaned up against the back. If you don’t want the items to slip down, you can put a little tiny dab of hot glue on the back that would hold it in place.

Now you have a nifty, fabulous nature display area for your homeschool. If you would like more ideas on Organizing for a Fun Homeschool, I have a two-hour video workshop where I show you every room in my house just like this. Go check it out!

Silly Gold Crowns

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

silly-gold-crowns

Gold crowns are super easy to make. Get yourself some gold paper, and cut it into a strip the thickness of a crown. Cut it along the top in a zig-zag. Then staple it together. You’re done. It took you less than 5 minutes.

If you want to print out your crown on card stock paper, you can download your crown here. Go ahead and print two of them, and staple the four pieces together, the size of your child’s head.

If you want to decorate it more, use whatever you have in your art supplies. One of my sons used fancy toothpicks that look like fireworks all around his crown. (They were left over from the Fourth of July.) You can staple or tape it on. I fished some red Christmas tinsel out of the trash, and we hot glued that on. He glued some buttons on, too, and some gold rope along the bottom.

how-to-make-a-paper-crown

My daughter glued fake jewels onto her crown with white school glue. She wanted to put pom-poms at the top of each peak of her crown, so I put hot glue on it, and she stuck the ball at the top of each one. We put some gold trim on the bottom, and we found some bees. (I think my mother gave me some fake bees one day, and I threw them into the art supplies.)

paper-crown-craft

My goofy son put large google eyes on his crown, and a moustache. An orange feather was hot glued to the front, along with small jingle bells in a random pattern. (He wanted his crown to make noise when he moved.) Fake jewels, more feathers, and fancy Fourth of July toothpicks rounded out his goofy crown.

silly-crowns

My oldest son always complicates things. He made an orange umbrella completely out of paper. He folded a boingy orange thing off the side and re-enforced it with a popsicle stick. He hot glued jewels to it, and a plastic spring from a broken toy. (Yes, I salvage cool stuff off broken toys before tossing them in the trash.)

Behold, our fabulous crowns. Easy, fun, and goofy.

happy-new-year-14

The Nutcracker: First Time for Kids

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

the-nutcrackerThis year my husband and I took our children to see “The Nutcracker” for the first time. The children were familiar with Tchaikovsky, having listened to his music since they were infants. The dancing, twirling ballerinas were mesmerizing for the children to watch.

When we arrived at the theater, we walked far up the balcony and off to the side. That’s what I get for booking the tickets two days before the show. On the website, you could check a box that said you were willing to have an obstructed view. Ummmm… really? Right, that’s what I want when I go to the theater, to have an obstructed view. Why do they even make seats with an obstructed view?? Before sitting down in the theater, I tried to see where the seats with the “obstructed view” were, and my husband said that you had to look through plexiglass at the show.

Even though I hadn’t checked the box “Obstructed view,” unfortunately I had checked the box “Find best price,” which translated means “the worst seats where you will definitely need binoculars.” That is where we found ourselves. Yes, the mice that were dancing around on stage looked like monsters from where I was sitting. Maybe my eyes are going bad…

My musical son had such a beautiful expression on his face as he watched the show. A lovely, tranquil smile could be seen through the glow of the theatrical lights. I could have sat there staring at my son’s expression the whole night.

When the Nutcracker danced with the girl, it was lovely. I prefer dancing between a man and a woman rather than lots of women in stiff tutus. I leaned over to my husband and said, “You probably just see this whole thing as girls dancing around in tutus.” “Pretty much,” he said, laughing.

Later on in the show, I saw my husband laughing to himself, and I said, “What?” He answered, “I always think of pink hippos dancing whenever I hear this song.” “What, from ‘Fantasia?’” “Yeah.”

If you are going to take your kids to the symphony, this is a great way to do it. During most symphony performances, all you have to look at is the musicians. This has the musicians and twirling dancers, with some of the most famous music in the world. I highly recommend going. But book the seats far ahead of time, and bring binoculars just in case…

Make Your Own Twig Frame

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

twig-art

Last summer I came across a book entitled Nature’s Art Box. While at a park one day, my kids and I picked up a large number of twigs of all sizes. When we got home, I asked my children to look through the book to see what art projects we could do with twigs. We found two simple twig art projects that looked really fun and relatively easy.

The first one was a twig frame. All we had to do was get a frame, plug in the hot glue gun, and glue the twigs onto the frame. My 6-year-old daughter enjoyed doing this activity, and the frame came out looking rustic and beautiful enough for a gift. (Click on the picture of the twig frame to look at it close-up.)

twig-basket

The second art activity we chose was a twig basket. We made a square of twigs and glued it together with hot glue. Then we continued putting twig squares until the basket was as high as we wanted it (or until we almost ran out of twigs; save enough twigs for the bottom of the basket). Then we hot glued twigs along the bottom of the basket. The twig basket was cute.