Making it work

Sometimes you make something work, just because you have to.  Finding a way to teach is kinda like that sometimes.  It might not be a conventional method sometimes, sometimes it is, but its all yours and your child's.  Homeschooling gives you a great sense of satisfaction.  YOU taught this to your child, despite many people doubting you could do it.   So here's a big HIGH FIVE to all you Moms and Dads making it work!

Thank you to FAN POP:

So last week we made it work by creating an early America village, complete with a giant pumpkin, scarecrow, and perched turkey on a log.

 

We used Popsicle sticks to create the cabin walls and roof. One lessen I learned, wood glue takes a while to dry but Bear really did work ok with it. I was very proud of how carefully she placed each "log" for the walls. The roof we had some trouble with. Its lopsided mostly from my own ineptness.

 

The steps we used in creating the cabin....

 

I dug out the old white board that has the unused chore chart one one side and happens to be magnetic as well.  Handy little craft/school board to have, despite not using the chore chart portion.  The Popsicle sticks were a bag I bought for a $1 at the Dollar Tree locally (They had been roaming around my future project drawer for several months). 

 

The glue may have been a bit of an overkill...  We used Gorilla brand wood glue.  I liked the thickness and was easy for Bear to use just a dot on each corner.  Those worried that your kiddos will go haywire and glue everything in sight, I discovered when she was tasked with such an important project like this she was very very precise with her dot of glue, much more so than I was. 

 

I did the base and then let her loose with the rest.

 



 

The lopsided roof was my fault.  When I was building the end frame with her I didn't measure to make sure we were doing it the same on each side.  I discovered my error after we put the roof on.  Oh well.....  We had been learning about how the settlers would have to re-chink the walls each year and how the kids would be tasked often times with helping.  Bear wanted to take the cabin outside and coat it in mud, I nixed that idea last week.....  But we may make a bigger version this spring, OUTSIDE, and I will see about letting her go to town. 

For the trees we used a paper towel roll and construction paper in fallish colors.  The tan from the roll lent it self very well to the color of wood.  Bear cut out a shape I traced (I did clean it up a bit--curves are still harder to do) and then she used her school glue stick to glue the paper on to the roll.  Bear doesn't have a lot of patience to sit and hold something until it dries so I used a clothes pin to hold it for a few minutes.  Worked great!

The pilgrims were another fun craft from toilet paper rolls.  They dwarf the cabin so this is not to scale.  We used a toilet paper roll, construction paper and school glue sticks, sharpie pen, and a clothes pin again.  Bear's one comment as she was putting on Pilgrim Patty's bonnet was, "She kind of looks like a chef Mommy...."  *grin*  yeah I guess she kind of does at that.  I told Bear that back in the Pilgrim times the women prepared all the food so a chef hat was fine.... 

 It was a fun craft week to work on together talking about pilgrims, what they came to the New World for, what kinds of things we thought they might have grown, and more.