Saturday, January 14, 2012

Memories Made of Paper.

 School is fun this year.

Well, I'm not sure that Violet would agree,
but I think so.

We're taking trips all around the world,
learning about different countries.

I use the "My Father's World" curriculum,
and they nicely tie together the subjects for learning.

While studying Mexico,
we learned about deserts in our science class,
a brief history of Mexico,
and the lifestyles of the people there,
as well as how to pray for missionaries there.

When we moved on to South America,
our science included rain forests,
as well as a study of rivers, like the great Amazon.
The story of Nate Saint, and the other missionaries 
who were murdered on the beaches of the Amazon
was included in our Bible lesson.

Our central verse and theme for the year is John 3:16.
We had a fun time using a book we have
that has pictures and information about little children all over the world,
to use as samples for the paper chain people we made for our wall.

 We ended up using the whole day (after getting math, grammar, and spelling done)
just to read that book
and draw our people;
but it was a fun school day,
a rare time to really delve into what we were interested in learning.

 Violet studied the people before she created hers,
trying to get them just right according to the book.



 I'm glad she enjoys doing crafts like this with me.


Our people,
along with the colorful flowers that we made when studying Mexico
helped to dress up our school wall.




A really useful item we made this year
involved a small "decorate-it-yourself" flip calender I got on sale in the summer.

I imagine that they'll be going on sale again soon,
and I hope to pick up another for next year.



Craft stores usually have them.
 They come with just about everything you need to decorate the pages.


Instead of making a calender,
we used the colorful papers to cover the calender blocks,

 and while Violet decorated the cover,


 I typed up the verses she is supposed to memorize
to fit the pages,
trying to use fun colors
and accentuate key words
to hopefully make them easier to learn.



After gluing the verses onto the pages in the order she would have to learn them,
I let her choose stickers and such
to decorate them however she chose.




Some of her choices are kind of funny,...



but I wanted to let her be creative.













 I have to admit,
I couldn't help laughing when I saw the page
decorated with ties.

 Maybe she thinks this verse is meant for men,
perhaps because her dad is such a hard worker.


I hope to find another of these for our verse flip chart next year.
It's nice to say,
"Go through your verse book and say each of the ones 
you have learned two times each,"

and the verses are always neatly altogether.


We're going into our final week of studying Germany,
and the suggestion was to try building a castle of some sort
since Germany has some pretty nice ones.
That sure sounds like fun project material, 
but since we were both sick in the beginning of the week,
we just read a book about them.

Besides going out and gathering fieldstones,
do you have any "castle" ideas?

Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by!


Joining some of these fun parties:

7 comments:

  1. Hi there, sounds like you have a wonderful time home-schooling Violet. I would have loved to have been able to do that when my children were little. Thanks for sharing. I have recently found your blog and am now following you, and will visit often. Please stop by my blog and perhaps you would like to follow me also. Have a wonderful day. Hugs, Chris
    http://chelencarter-retiredandlovingit.blogspot.com/

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  2. Oh my. I am enchanted with that little child garland. Really, really sweet!

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  3. Love the garland....I used to do very similar activities when my girls were young...finding it harder to be creative these days.... A 24 1/2 year age span from youngest to oldest means lots of STUFF constantly going on. Enjoy these years!

    For a castle....maybe something simple like tearing construction paper or cutting out various shapes from construction paper to glue on paper for a castle...or used mixed media....small craft sticks would make a great drawbridge...Use canned goods to make a castle..take a picture and put them alway?

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  4. I LOVE the people garland! How beautiful!

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  5. That's wonderful! The people garland is just beautiful and I LOVE the verse flip-book. I think I may try that for us next year.

    Castle suggestion: they have little craft blocks (foam ones) that look like stones. You could possible use those to build a mini-castle. And Usborne has a great see inside castle book.

    PS. Found you on the HHH. God bless you & Violet.

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  6. The memory flip book turned out wonderfully!

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