Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 « A Mother’s Journal

The Pumpkin Runner

By Lynn, on October 14th, 2008%

Yesterday we started our study of The Pumpkin Runner using lesson plans from Five In A Row Volume 4.

With pumpkins currently on the front porch and Princess of the Universe getting more and more interested in geography, how could we go wrong?! Australia will be our focus for the next week or so, of course using Five In A Row as our guide. Oh, I could take off on my own making plans to study The Pumpkin Runner, but I love sitting down with my Five In A Row manual, choosing what I want to do for a given day and just taking off from there. It makes everything so easy for me.

I’ll continue adding links as we go, and I’m envisioning plump felt pumkins for the doll house.

Lynn

Make Your Own Book

By Lynn, on October 14th, 2008%

This is a project that my public school son did. I really enjoyed seeing this come together. He had to make a book for children about the French and Indian War.

He and I sat down to talk about what kind of paper he wanted to use. He did all the decision-making, but I had a ton of paper and craft supplies that I thought he might want to look through.

He chose a very heavy stock for his pages – 2 sheets. First we folded on a horizontal line and cut the sheets in half. Then we stacked the sheets evenly and folded on a vertical line to make a little book. This produced a book with 8 actual pages, 16 if you count front and back.

The search then began for images to go along with the text he had written and printed out. This was fun and informative.

Once everything was formatted, glued in and perfectly in order, I laid the pages open and flat, to the center of our little book, and sewed with large stitches on the old Singer, right down the middle. (I was glad he chose heavy stock for his book.) This made for an old-looking binding, and part of the challenge was to make the book look old.

I couldn’t help but think how awesome an idea this is when you are combining older and younger students for a study. Having the older students write and design their own book for younger children is a way in which simple ideas can be brought out and retained by all.

Fun!