Skill Building: Staying sharp during summer.

Having a nice vacation clears our minds and helps restore tranquillity.  Our kids tend to clear their mind so well over the summer break that they forget essential skills in Math and Reading.
Incorporating review into their normal day can be a challenge when all they want is free time.  So we take the challenge and try to make it fun for them at the same time.  This is what we do to help them stay on track.

• Scheduling and Planning Ahead.  Meal Planning and a trip to the grocery store can help young ones with spelling, reading, following directions.  (Include them in making the grocery list, reading the list and finding the items in the store)  Older kids can learn price comparison.  Not to mention the lessons in attention to detail, they pick up from being helpful and following directions.
  
• Counting.  My 4 year old helps make coffee everyday.  He counts the scoops of coffee we put into the coffee basket.  He is so excited he gets to push the button to start it.  If we are reheating it in the microwave, we tell him what numbers to push on the microwave.
  
• Reading.  Going to the library often, really encourages them to read.  I know my 12 year old is outside reading through book after book, while she sits in the sun.  My 9 year old is trying so hard to find something that she is interested in, that she starts books and doesn’t finish them.  The point is she is reading regardless.  My 4 year old loves the library and enjoys our trips there,
  
• Computer Skills.  I have set my girls (12 and 9 years old) up with limited email accounts, and have encouraged them to become pen pals with their friends over the long summer break.  This teaches them essential skills in computer literacy, reading and typing skills, they can’t get enough of it.
  
• Intermediate Math.  Helping cook in the kitchen.  My 12 year old is adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. While my 9 year old is learning and becoming familiar with fractions.
  
• Basic Math.  Now to brush up on memorizing simple math facts, I have replicated a game for them that I played in my 4th grade class. I found that it really helped me.  It was called  “Beat the Clock”.
  
•   Making sure to creatively incorporate fun learning skills into as many activities as possible. Will really help your children from forgetting fundamentals over the summer.  Good Luck, I hope this helped.

If you have other ideas about helping kids stay on track over the summer, please feel free to comment and share with others.  Thanks!

Boredom Buster: Local Events

We are all so busy, sometimes we don’t have time to scout out what’s going on around us.   Like in our area right now there are tons of signs for the circus that is going on tonight, so its pretty obvious we are going to know about that one.  But there are a lot of places or events you could attend that are inexpensive or sometimes even free.  Examples of places we look for are:

• Museums
  
• Zoos
  
• Amusement Parks
  
• Gardens/Farms
  
• Aquariums
  
• Community Centers
  
• Library
  
• Fairs

To make sure we don’t miss out on times when these places offer lower or even free admissions.  This is how we find recent opportunities to do just that.
Doing a little legwork we:
-Local Newspaper/Nearest City Newspaper
-Word of mouth. Getting out there and just striking up conversations with people in the area.
Ways that we set up to conveniently come to us are:
-Signing up for online newsletters- this can be a wonderful way to stay up to date on discounted admission fees or possibly free days.  *Note:  I do this myself, but I devote an entire email address specifically to this, so I can just check it whenever I am planning my weekly events and it won’t overwhelm my regular email.
-Subscribing to websites RSS feeds, and using a wonderful feed reader like “Google Reader” or “Windows Live Essentials” to organize them conveniently.

1. “Google Reader” is an online only application that organizes everything so brilliantly, and it tracks back to the beginning of the feed.
   
2. “Windows Live Essentials” is a desktop application that you can download to your desktop completely free.  It does everything from organizing your Calendar events, checking several emails at once, organizing your contacts, has a feed reader and it even picks up your newsgroups all at once and in one convenient place.

-Social Networking sites.  An example is Facebook, you can find the businesses page and click on the link to like it, and you then receive all updates that they post.
*These are a few to get you started on having a less expensive summer filled with events with your kids.  Please leave any additional ideas that you would like to add in my comments. 

-

Boredom Buster: Decoupage

There are many projects you can do with decoupage.  You can cover a lot of things with little scraps of paper, or small pieces of cloth and decoupage glue.  Some examples are dressers, tables, hat boxes, tissue boxes, wooden trays, lamp shades, decorative plates, journals, vases, big chunky jewellery, sneakers, wooden chairs and barstools. The possibilities are almost endless.
I had never decoupaged before today.  We were working on our theater and our project was a simple introduction to how it works.  But I am on the hunt for making things do-able and affordable.
I found the recipes for the glue online:

1. I made the school glue.  I let it cool for about 2 hours.
   
2. I made the decoupage glue by replacing their “white glue” with the school glue I made earlier.

Items needed for this project:

• Decoupage Glue
  
• Paint brush
  
• The pictures you would like to cut out, (we wanted letters to apply to title our theater, so we had fun choosing a font and color, then printed it out on the computer.)
  
• X-Acto knives
  
• Cutting Mat
  
• And the object that you are putting your fabric/paper onto.

Using the cutting mat, cut your picture out with the exact knives.

Since we weren’t so experienced with the X-acto knife, the pattern in the picture above isn’t the one we ended up using.  It was too hard to do to cut out all of the curly accents.
Then we applied the glue to our box where we wanted the lettering to go.  We then applied the letters and let the glue dry.

Next we applied another coat, over the lettering. then to the entire box.

This gave our flat cardboard have the appearance of wood, because it added roughness from the brush strokes.  Wasn’t expecting that, but it was a nice surprise.

Overall It turned out very nice.

Check back for more ideas. 

Boredom Buster: Become a Puppeteer #1

Building a theater:
Creating a Puppet Theater can be a wonderful craft with a few supplies. It can be used to incorporate the fun of crafting with the expansion of literature. I have one little one still so… we won’t be doing Shakespeare quite yet. Just remember to keep it simple in order to keep the interest of little ones (puppet/scene making and the stories used). You can let your imagination carry you away. My daughters suggested having actual shows that we invite people to.
I am all for creativity, but to make things nice sometimes it seems like we need to spend money.  My husband came up with the plan for the theatre that I built, all with supplies that we already had.  The price couldn’t have been any better…. free.  
First I sat down with my husband and we talked about what I wanted out of this theatre.

• Portability.  It being small enough to take to our parents homes, for future shows, with simple breakdown and rebuild that I could handle by myself.
  
• A Stage.  In the case that the kids might want to use props they would be able to enhance their shows with them.
  
• Space for a Backdrop.  I think plays that have scenes in the background really help you see the whole picture better, especially for kids.
  
• Free.  I didn’t want it to cost anything if possible.
  
• Simple.  I wanted to be able to build it myself without help. I knew that if it is simple enough for me to build, that anyone reading this could do it too.

Next we talked about the materials and he drew out a plan for me to build.

• Large Box.  We used our flat screen TV box.
  
• A Marker.
  
• A Ruler
  
• Masking Tape
  
• Box Cutter
  
• Scissors

The Plan

I Drew the pattern onto the box.

• 5” in from the top and bottom and 7” in from each side.
  
• Breaking the vertical lines inside the inner box into thirds.
  
• Bisected the center piece. 
  
• Now our box opened at the top so we placed the flaps at the bottom, we will add weights to them later to hold the theatre in place.
  
• Bisected the bottom half of the center piece

With the Box Cutter I cut along all of the blue lines.
I folded along all of the green lines.  There will be a small piece left over.
Next Step to work on the back of the box.

• Making a rectangle on my box by drawing lines 5” in from the top and bottom,and 7” in from the sides.
  
• Using my box cutter I cut out my rectangle.

Back to the front now.  I measure the width of the opening of the box, horizontally.  I measure the depth of the stage area and the depth of the ceiling area.  We need to fill in the gaps, the stage and ceiling need to be up against the wall piece for structural support.
Using the scrap piece I took out from the back of the box, I measure out two strips.

1. Depth of the stage by the Width of the box opening
   
2. Depth of the ceiling by the Width of the box opening.

  Then I tape the strips I just cut along the underside of the ceiling and the stage pieces.  I then am able to tape the walls against the ceiling and stage pieces and I have made a complete opening.

From the back:

From the front:

In Boredom Buster:  Become a Puppeteer #2

• Priming and Decorating Theater.
  
• Hanging a curtain on the front and for backstage.

In Boredom Buster:  Become a Puppeteer #3

• How to make puppets and costumes.
  
• Choosing Stories to play out.

Mix It Up: Popsicles

Popsicle are one of those summer must haves with kids in the house.  You can easily pick up a holder at a dollar store to make them.  I bought ours at the Family Dollar for $1.  It makes 8 small pops.  I have compiled a list of different things you could use to try for you next batch of popsicles.

1. Juice or Juice Blends
   
2. Drink Mixes (lemonade, cool-ade)
   
3. Puddings (chocolate-makes fudgsicles,)
   
4. Smoothies (Yogurt, fruit, vanilla, sugar with a touch of milk to thin it a bit in the blender)
   
5. Coffee Drinks
   
6. Herbal Teas sweetened with honey
   
7. Ice Creams (softened)
   
8. Yogurts (frozen yogurt softened).
   
9. Jell-O's
   
10. Sodas
    
11. Flavoured Waters
    
12. Fruit Puree

If you have any additions to this list or if you try any of these, leave a comment I would really love to hear from you.