Lesson Plans

Ideas and resources

Let’s get this party started: At home

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It’s fun to start thinking about all the great projects you are going to work on with your children.  But before you add kids to the glue and glitter mix, you’ve got to organize your space.

Even though our house is small, I still wanted to dedicate an area to learning and crafting.   My thoughts:  it actually reduces the amount of space that supplies take up (because they aren’t spread out all over the house) AND I know exactly what I have to use (saving money because I can find the boxes of crayons and don’t buy more!).

In my quest to create an organized area of my own, I found some fabulous ideas .

I love this space by Maya at Maya*Made.  She has used peg board and bull dog clips to display her children’s art and a bookshelf with cans of various sizes to hold all of their supplies in just one corner of her house. This way all of the pencils, crayons and paintbrushes are accessible, but not all over the place.  Read more here.

Simple Mom added shelves to a unused wardrobe to hide her art supply stash.

If only I had more space, I would attempt to recreate Lisa Mahar’s room, shown on Ohdeedoh.  I am coveting all of those labeled plastic bins.

And Mandi from Organizing Your Way, lists 10 containers that you probably have laying around your house that will (cheaply) help you organize your craft supplies.

Don’t have an extra corner in your home? Use a tackle box to store a portable art table like Amanda at Kiddio.

Next Plan Idea:

Comments

  3. I am setting up my new office and my daughters playroom in a new house so this post was very inspiring. I just hope my stays looking like that everyday.

Have you read?

Learning about Snow

Not all of us live where there is a lot of snow in the winter (or even where it is winter as I write this, but it can still be fun to learn about snow, what it is and why it falls, so let’s get into it!

First, let’s talk snowflake science with The Homeschool Scientist. They have a free prinatble snowflake science less that’s more than 60 pages long and good for multiple grade levels. The blog post linked here includes some fun snow facts, information about how snowflakes form and why they are both six-sided and (probably) all different.

Expressive Monkey has a great post about how snowflakes are formed and why they have six arms, and also shows some of the pictures taken by W. A. Bentley in the 1920s (more on him below).

You can also grab a free snow facts worksheet with space for kids to draw their own unique snowflakes from Education.com. Simple Living Creative Learning also has a paid snow study resource set that includes things like different types of snowflakes, the snow cycle, symmetry drawing with snowflakes, tips for snow safety, snow-related vocabulary and more.

Homeschool Superfreak has another great page for learning about snowflakes, which includes information about Snowflake Bentley, a great book to read (and person to learn about). It includes lesson plan ideas and links to activities.

Speaking of activities, if you happen to have snow around you can make snow ice cream or maple candy, paint on snow or with snow, or do some snow science experiments. If you get a ton of snow you could maybe even build an igloo or snow structure.

If you don’t get snow you can learn about how animals keep warm in the snow and cold temperatures with this experiment from I Can Teach My Child. Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls can help you learn why big paws (or snowshoes) make it easier to walk in the snow. Or make a snowstorm in a jar like this one from MomBrite.

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