Art - Paper Crafts

This week for art we made paper crafts. Isabella found a kit for winter crafts that was half off at Barnes & Noble this week and she just had to have it. Since we were going to be doing a snow unit this week and an Antarctica unit next week I decided to give in.

To me the fun thing about this is that the box is really sturdy and when she is done doing all of the crafts I will also be able to use the box to store and organize school supplies on my shelves!  There are 12 crafts in the box, and they take a lot longer than we thought because this was actually not made for kids necessarily. So far Bella has only made a couple:

The birdhouse is just one craft, but I am showing you the front and the back. The snowflake is actually only half done, she didn't have time to finish it yesterday. 

So, are you interested in making some paper crafts? If so, I found a couple of cool links for some cool crafts for free that you can just print on cardstock at home for your kids! 

http://www.creativecloseup.com/100-exceptional-free-paper-models-and-toys

http://paper-craft-style.blogspot.com/2010/05/free-paper-crafts.html

http://papertoys.com/

There are a TON of things here to get you started, and at every different skill level. Have fun exploring! 

Geography, Week 1 - the World

We are using Expedition Earth as our main geography curriculum this year, and I love it! My kids are pretty far apart in age, Isabella is 8, and Alex is 3, but they both enjoy the curriculum and are learning from it. I mostly design things around what Isabella needs right now and then I just try to find ways for Alex to still feel included, be kept busy, and be learning. We got our Expedition Earth curriculum from Erica over at

It has been such a help to me because for some reason I found geography daunting and didn't know where to start! Now our whole family is enjoying it, and I couldn't be happier.

One of the fun things we got to do this week was to make a creation lapbook:

Both of my kids made these, but for Alex I cut everything out in advance so that he would just participate in the coloring, circling the letters of his name, gluing, etc. It made it much easier.

Another fun thing we did was to make a paper mache globe. I found a website with lots of fun ideas I might use later and good tips for paper mache.

How To Paper Mache

Another thing that we did was start our display boards for our animals. We made our Animals of North America first, since the animals we are studying for our Little House in the Big Woods curriculum can go on here. 

(So far our bears and wolves are on here)

So that was our week of geography.  Next week we plan to study Antarctica because it goes so well with the nice snowy weather we are having. What about your family? Any fun ideas to share?