Groundhog Day Unit Study

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February 1, 2019 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

February 2nd is celebrated as Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day, Candlemas, and Groundhog Day.

We certainly want to see the end of winter!

The kids loved making crafts and playing with light and shadows.

We like to watch the groundhogs on TV, if he’ll see his shadow. We read books about groundhogs.

We have a family of groundhogs who live near a pond by our house and they really do come out of their burrows at set times every day. They are fuzzy potatoes.

Groundhog Day Activities

Groundhog Books

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Henna Hands Craft

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January 26, 2016 By Jennifer Lambert 4 Comments

We learned about India in our homeschool.

We made a Henna Hands paper craft.

I found this fun henna hands arts project and we used that as inspiration.

We learned about henna art.

I gathered paper, metallic pens and Sharpies, and our art trays.

We listened to fun Bollywood music and later watched Monsoon Wedding.

First, we traced our hands with pencil on white paper.

We went over the outlines with metallic Sharpie.

We used the art pens to draw henna-like designs.

We cut out our hands and mounted them on colored paper.

Our completed Henna Hands!

Tori loved learning about India and completing this craft for the geography fair!

We love learning about other cultures.

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Fall Leaf Crafts

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November 19, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

You know you’re a homeschooler when you save interesting packing material with plans for crafting later.

We’ve loved the changing leaves on our nature walks.

We decided to do some fall leaf crafts.

We got these sheets of semi-shredded paper and I thought it would be a fun textured paint craft.

I helped Alex cut out pieces for a tree.

We used little sponges to create splotches for leaves.

Kate used clips on her sponges for more delicate stamping.

The trees turned out well, kinda like Impressionist paintings. And the kids had fun!

We also painted leaves against paper for neat silhouettes.

And used pencil shavings and glue on a printed tree outline.

I’ve really been making an effort to do arts and crafts with the kids and they’re enjoying the creative time!

More Fall Activities:

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Halloween Crafts

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October 17, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 10 Comments

The kids loved our Halloween craft time!

Alex made a cute paper jack o’lantern.

I used a ruler to draw orange lines for Alex to cut out and then we stapled the strips at the top and bottom. He cut out the black shapes on his own to make the face.

They all made little pipe cleaner spiders.

We used up lots of empty cardboard tubes making monsters and robots.

And I remembered doing something ages ago in school and gave them white chalk and black paper and they had loads of fun!

I had happy kids.

We were together, making crafts, and enjoying ourselves.

And there wasn’t much mess.

It was about relationships.

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Chinese New Year Dragon Puppets

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January 29, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 2 Comments

So thrilled about how these Dragon Puppets turned out for Chinese New Year!

What you need:

Paper bag
Construction paper for head
Construction paper for eyes and nostrils
Streamers for the tail
Glitter and Sequins (optional)

What to do:

Fold sheet of construction paper in half and glue to top of paper bag (where it folds up) to make the head of the puppet
Attach streamers under the back of construction paper head for the tail
Cut out eyes and nostrils in desired shapes – semi-circles for eyes and teardrops for nostrils
Draw lines for mouth and nose with dark marker
Glue eyes and nostrils
Draw on eyeballs in dragon shape
Draw on eyebrows and facial expression (optional)
Glue on glitter and/or sequins to make pretty patterns (optional)

(I think it would be fun to attach an accordion tongue with a strip of red construction paper so it pops out of the fold…)

Kate preferred to make hers look like a lizard. She’s special like that. My crazy third child who dances to her own tune.

Tori asked me to draw cool eyebrows on her dragon. Love her. She always follows directions to a T and is so careful.

Alex used TONS of glue stick. Then he asked me draw his dragon face and I really like how it turned out and his compliments made my day. Then he pretended to fly around with it. Of course. He’s a boy. What do you think?

We’re preparing to celebrate Chinese New Year with lots of red and gold, horse pictures and crafts, yummy food…and I searched my files and found pictures of the Chinese New Year celebration we attended when we lived in Hawaii.

And I get a clean house out of it after I told the kids that tradition. Score!

We cleaned out the library of all the Chinese New Year storybooks. Liz really likes having Big Sister Storytime. Karen Katz is a favorite author. Love her illustrations!

Our plans:

Read more books about Chinese New Year…

Eat Chinese Food: We’ll explore flavors, colors, shapes, and the aesthetic beauty of Cantonese cooking. My kids love Chinese food and we like to try new recipes and techniques. Our Asian turkey wraps are always a hit! I need to break out my bamboo steamer and try to make some steamed dumplings…